There are at least 24 international LGBTQIA+ awareness days in addition to Pride Month. Some of these days are Drag Day, Pronouns Day, Trans Awareness Week and Month, and Trans Parent Day. No other subject known to humanity has been afforded such a salute on our yearly calendars as the LGBTQIA+ issue. Of course, these occasions provide political proponents ample opportunity to commemorate the day with a legislative agenda.
This was no less true last week on International Transgender Day of Visibility, which is now turning into days and weeks, with comments and legislative directives continuing from the White House, the Department of Justice (DOJ), the State Department, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), just to name a few.
On the day, President Biden stated, “Affirming a transgender child’s identity is one of the best things a parent, teacher, or doctor can do to help keep children from harm.”
Biden’s misleading statement that transgender procedures are the best practice for children was soon followed by a letter addressed to state attorneys general from the DOJ’s Civil Right Division. The DOJ’s letter basically stated that withholding hormones and surgical procedures from children is tantamount to bullying and should therefore be considered a civil rights issue.
Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said, “The Department of Justice is committed to ensuring that all children are able to live free from discrimination, abuse and harassment.” She continued, “Today’s letter reaffirms state and local officials’ obligation to ensure that their laws and policies do not undermine or harm the health and safety of children, regardless of a child’s gender identity.” In the letter, Clarke claimed, “gender-affirming care for transgender youth is not only appropriate but often necessary for their physical and mental health.” Necessary?
Then, to give the appearance that these statements are based in sound empirical evidence, SAMHSA released remarks declaring that LGBTQIA+ youth “deserve evidence-based care.”
To this last statement, I couldn’t agree more. The youth of America do deserve evidence-based care. They deserve to know the long-term physical and psychological effects of delaying puberty through pharmaceuticals, taking the opposite sex’s hormones, or surgically removing their body parts. They deserve to know about the quality of evidence and whether there is enough to justify a claim that these invasive practices will bring peace to their mental distress.
The problem is, there’s more evidence to show the harms of transgender “medicine” than to support the claim touted by politicians and big medical and mental health groups that these practices are saving lives. After years of research, we can see where it’s possible to say that there are medical procedures that save the life of a cardiac patient. This is not the case with gender-affirming care, and yet claims are made all the time that trans-identifying children are saved by removing healthy organs and pumping them with hormones. The basis of these claims comes from the results of web survey data that is used to capture attitudes about these practices.
This is a profoundly dangerous premise for such a radical physiological intervention. It must take nerve for advocacy groups, practitioners, and politicians to rest their careers and, more importantly, the lives of American children and families on scientific evidence thinner than rice paper. One thing is clear, the scientific literature on transgenderism shows that there’s more opinion from big mental health and medical groups than there is sound scientific evidence to undergird the idea that these practices benefit children.
Among the internationally recognized 24+ days and full month dedicated to LGBTQIA+ issues, there’s no governmentally sanctioned day that recognizes the harms done to people who underwent gender transition procedures or who were delayed in receiving the proper care that is truly necessary to address the real issues behind gender dysphoria.
When the house of cards that built the transgender ideology falls, we will need at least one day to recognize the growing number of children and families who have been ignored, experimented on, and have experienced permanent damage to their minds and bodies from those who lead the charge towards destruction.
In the words of Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, “Thank you for your continued commitment to improving the well-being of children and their families.”
Dr. Jennifer Bauwens serves as Director of the Center for Family Studies at Family Research Council. In her role, she researches and advocates for policies that will best serve the health and well-being of families and communities.
Jennifer has a Ph.D. from New York University, where she was bestowed the Robert Moore Memorial Award and granted valedictorian for her dissertation on Hurricane Katrina.
Dr. Bauwens has worked extensively as a clinician providing trauma-focused treatment to children in foster-care and behavioral health settings and to adults who’ve experienced interpersonal traumas, such as sexual abuse and assault. She created programs to mitigate the effects of traumatic events for survivors of domestic violence and abuse, and she’s trained on violence prevention for youth and adults in both national and international contexts.
Her scholarship has focused on the effects of psychological trauma, including man-made and natural disasters. She’s worked on projects to investigate the long-term psychological sequalae of witnesses and survivors from September 11, 2001, and other acts of community violence. Additionally, Jennifer has taught on psychological trauma and research methods in several graduate programs, including Rutgers University and Princeton Seminary. She has also served as an editorial consultant for, and published in, peer-reviewed journals focused on clinical practice and traumatic stress.
Psaki Says Sex Reassignment Surgery, Puberty Blockers for Kids Is ‘Best Practice,’ States Preventing It Will Be Held Accountable pic.twitter.com/ZmboFDFIYx
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2022-04-09 08:42:332022-04-09 16:04:47We Must Acknowledge the Damage Inflicted by Transgender Ideology
Each week 2ndVote takes a look at popular companies that either score well or score poorly. We then provide alternatives that either better align with the 2ndVote values, or that should be avoided to the best of your ability. This weekly series is called The Company Contrast, and the company we will be focusing on this week is The Daily Wire (4.01).
The Daily Wire is an American conservative news outlet that’s based in Nashville, Tennessee. Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing, in partnership with Caleb Robinson, launched the DW in 2015 with the original episodes of The Ben Shapiro Show and The Andrew Klavan Show. Since its inception, the company has seen huge success, largely in part due to the Ben Shapiro Show which is one of the most popular podcasts in the nation. At this time the DW boasts five hit shows and is even starting its own children’s tv network, DW Kids.
The Daily Wire scores a 4.01 with 2ndVote primarily due to their unwavering support of life, basic freedoms, and the 2nd Amendment. Additionally, in response to Disney’s policies on forcing the LGBT lifestyle on children, the CEO of the DW announced it will be starting a children’s tv network. The aim is to allow kids the opportunity to enjoy appropriate material for their age without being subjected to the twisted liberal left attacks on the traditional family structure. According to CEO Jeremy Boreing, the Daily Wire will commit $100 million to the kid-friendly network and already has two shows in production.
Unfortunately, every hero has a nemesis, and today that nemesis is Disney (1.55.) The Walt Disney Company is a leading international “family” entertainment and media enterprise with five business segments. Disney scores a 1.55 with 2ndVote due to their support for pro-abortion organization, their blatant disconcern for Christian values, attacks on the American right to bare arms, and support of sanctuary cities. What’s worse is that as the parent company to numerus mainstream brands such as Pixar, Marvel, and ESPN, it has the full attention of children around the world. While their innocent eyes are simply looking to them for cartoons or superheroes, Disney seems hell bent on exposing children to inappropriate content. As highlighted in last weeks “In the News” article, such actions include exposing kids to the sexual preferences of the gay community and sexualizing children’s characters. Don’t let Disney get away with its immoral action, stop supporting their services and let them know you are informed thanks to 2ndVote.
An electric vehicle requires six times the mineral inputs of a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle, according to the International Energy Agency.
At one time, “Saving the Environment” and “Fighting Climate Change” were synonymous. That is no longer true. The quest for Clean Energy through electric vehicles (EVs) epitomizes “the end justifies the means.”
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), an electric vehicle requires six times the mineral inputs of a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle (ICE). EV batteries are very heavy and are made with some exotic, expensive, toxic, and flammable materials.
The primary metals in EV batteries include Nickel, Lithium, Cobalt, Copper and Rare Earth metals (Neodymium and Dysprosium). The mining of these materials, their use in manufacturing and their ultimate disposal all present significant environmental challenges. Ninety percent of the ICE lead-acid batteries are recycled while only five percent of the EV lithium-ion batteries are.
Oil has been so demonized that we tend to overlook some of its positive traits as a power source relative to the battery power of EVs. The power for an internal combustion engine, oil, is a homogeneous commodity found abundantly around the world (especially in our own backyard). In 2019, the four top oil producing nations were the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Canada. In contrast, the power for EVs is dependent on a mixture of diverse commodities from just a handful of third world countries.
In spite of the environmental hysteria about oil drilling, the surface area disturbed is relatively small since the oil is extracted from under the ground. In contrast, many of the materials prominent in the clean energy revolution are obtained through open-pit horizontal mining which is extremely damaging to wide areas of the environment.
Nickel
Nickel, a major component of the EV batteries, is found just below the topsoil in the Rainforests of Indonesia and the Philippines. As a result, the nickel is extracted using horizontal surface mining that results in extensive environmental degradation: deforestation and removal of the top layer of soil. It should be noted that Rainforests play a major role in “fighting climate change” by removing Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. The environmental battle cry “Save the Rainforests” needs to be replaced with a new slogan reminiscent of this one from the Vietnam War: “It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” Here is the new environmental bumper sticker for all Clean Energy EVs: “It was necessary to destroy the rainforest in order to save the planet”.
Lithium
Over half of the world’s Lithium reserves are found in three South American countries that border the Andes Mountains: Chile, Argentina and Bolivia. These countries are collectively known as the “Lithium Triangle”.
According to the Institute for Energy Research, Lithium is found in salt flats in very arid areas which complicates the mining process. A multi-mineral mixture containing Lithium is removed from beneath the salt flats. The Lithium extraction from the mixture is a lengthy, 12 to 18 months, evaporation process that is water intensive. Each ton of lithium produced requires 500,000 gallons of water. Besides the discarded mineral salt mixture, the process can result in water and soil contamination plus a depleted water table.
It should be noted that the United States is 4th in total Lithium reserves behind the Lithium Triangle countries. However, NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) environmental protests to “Save the Planet” have stymied efforts to develop the US Lithium market. It seems that our provincial “Earth-Firsters” want to maintain a pristine US, but have no problem turning a blind eye to the environmental exploitation of third world countries.
Cobalt
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) produces 70% of the world’s Cobalt. While there is no shortage of environmental issues with its Cobalt mining, the overriding problem here is human rights: dangerous working conditions and the use of child labor. Cobalt is a toxic metal. Prolonged exposure and inhalation of Cobalt dust can lead to health issues of the eyes, skin, and lungs. Because Cobalt can be easily extracted from the ground by hand, small scale, bare-bones “artisanal” mines are common. The simplicity of the operation discourages/negates the need for occupational safety measures and encourages the use of child labor.
According to the Wilson Center, “small-scale mining in the DRC involves people of all ages, including children, obligated to work under harsh conditions. Of the 255,000 Congolese mining for cobalt, 40,000 are children, some as young as six years.”
Amnesty International has also made similar comments. “Thousands of children mine cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Despite the potentially fatal health effects of prolonged exposure to cobalt, adult and child miners work without even the most basic protective equipment.”
The “suspect” (bad) Cobalt is mixed in with the “legitimate” (good) Cobalt that comes from the large-scale mines that have the required safety standards and employ only adults. This co-mingling of “good” and “bad” Cobalt serves to mask the human rights abuses in the country’s mining operations.
As it turns out, however, this charade is largely unnecessary since the majority of the DRC’s cobalt mines are owned or financed by Chinese firms.
Eighty percent of the DRC’s Cobalt ultimately ends up in China, a country not known for being a champion of human rights (the Uyghurs?). So, what is more important: Fighting Human Rights Abuses or Fighting Climate Change?
Copper
Chile is the leading producer of the world’s Copper. The vast majority of Chile’s Copper comes from open-pit/strip mines. This type of mining negatively affects vegetation, topsoil, wildlife habitats, and groundwater. The next three largest producers of copper are Peru, China, and the infamous Democratic Republic of the Congo. Number five happens to be the United States. Several states in particular, such as Minnesota and Arizona, show promise as new sources for domestic copper using underground mining instead of open-pit mining.
However, on January 26th, the Biden Administration canceled two copper mining leases in Minnesota. Commenting on the matter, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said, “the Department of the Interior takes seriously our obligations to steward public lands and waters on behalf of all Americans.” This decision was applauded by the strongest supporters of America’s quest for Clean Energy: Environmentalists and Democrats.
It’s Time to be Honest about Clean Energy
In December, President Biden issued an Executive Order saying the United States government will “provide a strong foundation for American businesses to compete and win globally in the clean energy economy while creating well paying, union jobs [except in mining] at home. Today’s executive action further reinforces the President’s directive to Buy American [except for clean energy raw materials] and ensure that equity [in the US, but not in Third World countries] and environmental justice [in the US, but nowhere else] are key considerations.”
For all the “happy talk” about Clean Energy, our actions simply show a superficial commitment. We don’t want to do the heavy lifting that it will take to make the transition to Clean Energy. Our role in the Clean Energy revolution will be limited to the final assembly of electric vehicles. But hey, that is good enough for our virtue signalling Earth First environmentalists and politicians.
What is needed, however, is an honest and comprehensive evaluation of the entire life cycle of clean energy from raw materials through disposition. There are pros and cons to all forms of energy. To date, all we have heard are the benefits of clean energy. It is now time to highlight the true costs of clean energy which must include the negative societal and environmental impact as well.
Michael Heberling is the Chair of Leadership Studies in the Baker College MBA program in Flint, Michigan. Prior to this, he was President of Baker’s Center for Graduate Studies for 16 years. Before Baker, Dr. Heberling was a Senior Policy & Business Analyst with the Anteon Corporation. He also had a career in the Air Force retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. Dr. Heberling has over 75 business and public policy publications. His research interests focus on leadership, military history and the impact of public policy on the business community. He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-04-07 16:04:212022-04-07 16:05:08The Environmental Downside of Electric Vehicles
“It’s an organized crime that was perpetrated on Americans”
America didn’t vote for these criminals.
2020 Election Integrity: Georgia – True The Vote Geo-Location Data Reported To Identify Two Ballot Trafficking Transfer-Stations As GA Democratic Party Offices
One of the locations was her headquarters. Developing.
For more than a year and a half since the November 2020 election, debate has raged over exactly how the Democrats pulled off the rigging of the vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Very early on in the discussion of how this happened, people like Mike Lindell, Sidney Powell, General Michael Flynn, Patrick Byrne and others seized and held attention for months as they focused much of the population’s attention like a laser on the Chinese hacking theory.
Lindell spent almost 8 months crafting a narrative in which he was going to definitively prove that hackers stole the election by electronically manipulating the vote totals in all 50 states and most counties. He made a series of boastful videos with names like “Absolute Proof” and “Absolutely 9-0” [which advanced the claim that when the Supreme Court saw the evidence he was going to present to it, all nine Justices would vote to overturn the 2020 election].
All that activity culminated in two embarrassing fiascos: a Cyber Symposium where an audience was lured into attendance based on finally being able to see the much vaunted PCAPs [they were never produced] and supposed Supreme Court filing with multiple states Attorneys General signing on to challenge the 2020 election [the filing was never made].
It may be that instead of relying on electronic manipulation of vote totals by hackers in China or some other foreign venue to steal it for Joe Biden, the Democrats relied on the old tried and true method that has served them so well in the past: good old-fashioned ballot box stuffing. But done on a level never seen before the 2020 election.
This is going to be a painful admission for many like me to make after having spent over a year chasing the rainbow of PCAPs and server images and supposed absolute proof of electronic vote totals being manipulated.
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-04-07 11:14:252022-04-07 11:17:21True The Vote Geo-Location Data Reported to Identify Two Ballot Trafficking Transfer-Stations as GA Democratic Party Offices
Another giant Democrat media hoax/lie goes poof. And still the Democrats continue to hold patriotic Americans in a gulag-style prison without due process.
BREAKING: Jan. 6 defendant Matthew Martin has been found NOT GUILTY on all charges by Judge Trevor McFadden. Big win for the rule of law!
By: Jordan Boyd, The Federalist, April 06, 2022A federal judge found a Jan. 6 defendant who entered the Capitol not guilty on all charges after he said he was waved in by two Capitol Police officers. The decision lays down the groundwork to push back against the Department of Justice’s charge that the hundreds of people on Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021 deserve to be punished.
U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden acquitted Matthew Martin of all misdemeanor charges on Wednesday after he said it was “plausible” that the defendant “reasonably believed” he had permission to be in the Capitol.
Martin made the trek to Washington D.C. after he saw a tweet from former President Donald Trump in December 2020 encouraging supporters to come to his rally. Martin said he entered the Capitol when he was “let in” by two U.S. Capitol Police officers who waved him through a doorway. In his testimony, Martin said law enforcement officers did not try to stop him from entering the building.
McFadden established that Martin’s involvement in the event in the Capitol was “minimal and not serious.” He also said that video evidence shows that “quiet” and “orderly” Martin was merely a “silent observer” instead of an active participant who entertained any of the crowd’s rowdy antics.
When the Sante Fe, N.M., man was arrested a year ago in April of 2021, he faced a myriad of charges including “entering and remaining in a restricted building; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building; violent entry and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building; and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.”
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-04-07 10:55:592022-04-07 11:05:34Jan. 6 defendant Matthew Martin has been found NOT GUILTY on all charges
Woke Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin needs to be challenged like this at every opportunity.
Same guy who ordered a 60 day “stand down” by military to look for and weed out “extremists” in the military meaning conservatives and/or Trump supporters after January 6th, 2020 events in Washington, D.C.
Austin is nothing more than an Obama clone and would not have been a 4 star and SecDef if he wasn’t totally left leaning and WOKE.
🚨Matt Gaetz drops MOAB on woke Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin:
“I'm embarrassed by YOUR leadership! I’m not embarrassed for my country. It's disgraceful that you would sit here & conflate your failures with those of uniformed service members.” 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/ZTkUBrr6wp
Fireworks went off when Rep. Matt Gaetz clashed with Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin who was trying to defend his request to increase the defense budget.
Gaetz accused Austin of being too focused on wokeism instead of defining the nation and called the Pentagon out for being behind China and Russia on hypersonic weapons.
“This is the most capable, most combat critical force in the world, it has been and it will be so going forward, and this budget helps us to do that,” Austin said.
“Not if we continue down this path. Not if we continue to embrace socialism,” Gaetz replied.
“The fact that you’re embarrassed by your country, by your military. I’m sorry for that,” Austin shot back.
“Oh no, I’m embarrassed for your leadership,” Gaetz responded. “I am not embarrassed for my country. It’s disgraceful that you would sit here & conflate your failures with those of uniformed service members.”
Gatez started to explain how the US military has fallen behind the Chinese when Austin cut in and asked, “What do you mean? We’re behind in hypersonics? How do you make that assessment?”
There was a lot of cross-talk but then Gaetz added, “your own people brief us that we’re behind and China is winning.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Royal A. Brown IIIhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngRoyal A. Brown III2022-04-06 17:24:052022-04-06 17:29:46Matt Gaetz drops MOAB on woke Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin
The world is still reflecting on “the slap heard ‘round the world”—when Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock at the Academy Awards in front of millions of witnesses for telling a joke about his wife.
Perhaps the most disturbing element of the whole story was the standing ovation Smith received later that night for winning his Oscar.
Soon it will be Holy Week, and I have some Christian reflections on the Oscars incident of March 27, 2022.
Society has progressed in that in previous generations such a conflict would often be handled in a duel. It was the Church of Jesus Christ in its various branches that mostly dealt the death blow to dueling.
When Aaron Burr—the Vice President of the United States, no less—challenged Alexander Hamilton to a duel, the latter reluctantly agreed because it was a matter of honor. Already by that time, in 1804, dueling (through Christian moral influence) was illegal in New York. But it was not yet illegal in New Jersey.
Hamilton did not want to participate but felt compelled to do so. It is widely reported—including in Ron Charnow’s excellent biography, Hamilton—that he had received the privilege of taking the first shot. And Hamilton purposefully shot in the air, not at his opponent.
Aaron Burr had no such Christian compunctions. He aimed for Hamilton’s heart and struck the fatal blow.
Hamilton languished for about 30 hours. He was rowed back across the river to New York, where, by God’s grace, he was able to find a Christian minister who gave the dying man his great wish—to participate in the Lord’s Table. The minister reported that “with [Hamilton’s] last faltering words he expressed a strong confidence in the mercy of God through the intercession of the Redeemer.”
The Bible says, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Why we have seemingly lost our sense of humor these days? Because too often pride fills our hearts.
The Bible says a lot about humility. God blesses the humble, but He opposes the proud. It’s a constant theme.
There are some who can’t laugh at themselves because they are too proud.
There is no right to not be offended. Assaults on religious expression often resort to the imaginary “Constitutional right to not be offended.” A free society with free expression can cause some to be upset.
Christian lawyers working to defend religious liberty have repeatedly had to defend Judeo-Christian symbols from being stripped away in the public arena because someone was “offended” by seeing them, e.g., a display of the Ten Commandments or a cross.
Indeed, while free speech was once seen as a primary American value, it is now viewed by many as a nuisance. The “progressives” among us want to compel people to use inaccurate pronouns and want to punish speech that offends them as “hate.”
But in a truly free society, there is no “right” to not be offended. Reinhold Niebuhr, a 20th century Christian theologian, once observed: “The history of free societies proves conclusively that the dictum that ‘error’ does not have the same rights as the ‘truth’ is a very dangerous one, not because it is not possible to distinguish between truth and error, but because in the endless conflicts of interest in a society, it is dangerous to give any interest group the monopoly to define the ‘truth.’”
Jesus was “slapped” for us, in our place, so that we might have peace with God.
My final thought on the big slap was what happened to Jesus Christ, who was fully God and fully human, who lived a perfect life and then offered Himself as a sacrifice for our sins for those who believe.
As part of the sufferings in His passion, He allowed sinful men to slap Him in utter humiliation—and then do far worse to him than that.
We read in Luke 22 of what happened to Him after He was arrested on the night He was betrayed: “Now the men who were holding Jesus in custody were mocking him as they beat him. They also blindfolded him and kept asking him, ‘Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?’ And they said many other things against him, blaspheming him.”
Why all these things to an innocent man? As Isaiah the Hebrew foretold seven centuries before the event, He bore the punishment for our sins in His passion: “All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Who knew there were so many lessons in this now infamous slap?
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.2022-04-06 17:06:542022-04-06 17:06:54Some Christian Reflections on ‘the Slap Heard Round the World’
“In less than two weeks’ time, the [Disney] company had moved from principled neutrality to open advocacy.” – Ethan L. Clay, Imagineer, Disney Corporation.
Imagineer Ethan L. Clay wrote a column titled “Disney’s Institutional Capture” on March 29th, 2022. Ethan L. Clay is a synonym used to tell everyone how far Disney has fallen from grace and become rotten to the core.
In the column Ethan wrote:
The declarations from Disney’s executive leadership have been agonizing and predictable, remarkable only for their robotic conformity. On March 11th, Disney’s CEO Bob Chapek released a statement which began like this:
To my fellow colleagues, but especially our LGBTQ+ community,
Thank you to all who have reached out to me sharing your pain, frustration and sadness over the company’s response to the Florida “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Speaking to you, reading your messages, and meeting with you have helped me better understand how painful our silence was. It is clear that this is not just an issue about a bill in Florida, but instead yet another challenge to basic human rights. You needed me to be a stronger ally in the fight for equal rights and I let you down. I am sorry.
BTW, the bill HB1557, which has since become Florida law, that Chapek refers to does not have the word “gay” in it.
Ethan states,
What I can offer is the perspective of a Disney insider.
[ … ]
If you roam the halls of the Imagineering department, you’ll encounter Mickey’s 10 Commandments, a distilling of storytelling wisdom that helps us stay on target when developing new projects.
Know your audience—identify the prime audience of your attraction or show before you begin design.
Wear your guests’ shoes—insist that your team members experience your creation just the way the guests do.
Organize the flow of people and ideas—make sure there is a logic and sequence in your stories and in the way guests experience them.
Create a wienie—create visual targets [wienies] that lead visitors clearly and logically through the experience you’ve built.
Communicate with visual literacy—make good use of color, shape, form, texture—all the nonverbal ways of communication.
Avoid overload; create turn-ons—resist the temptation to overload your audience with too much information and too many objects of interest.
Tell one story at a time—stick to the storyline; good stories are clear, logical, and internally consistent.
Avoid contradictions; maintain identity—details in design or content that contradict one another confuse the audience about story and time period.
For every ounce of treatment, provide a ton of treat—you can educate people, but don’t tell them you’re doing it. Make it fun!
Keep it up—everything has to work.
I don’t see the word gay in Mickey’s 10 Commandments, do you?
Ethan then says how Disney corporate suddenly changed,
But suddenly, this is all changing. The last couple years have brought COVID, lockdowns, the summer of 2020, and the doctrines of critical theory and its various permutations to the Disney corporation. Ibram X. Kendi was a featured speaker in the “Reimagine Tomorrow” series, an internal Disney effort to promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives within the corporation. Employees stuck behind laptop screens at home joined BERGs and Slack channels, and used their ample spare time for internal political action. The DEI department within the company expanded by an astonishing 633 percent in 2019–21, at the same time that nearly every other department was contracting by 25–75 percent. Most surprising of all was the addition, in April 2021, of a FIFTH key—Inclusion—to the traditional Four Keys used in training. “Like The Four Keys before them,” announced Josh D’Amaro, “The 5 Keys—with Inclusion at the heart—will continue to guide us as we interact with guests, collaborate together, create the next generation of Disney products and experiences, and make critical decisions about the future of our business.”
Ethan wrote,
It’s incredible that a company—particularly a company whose brand is family-friendly content—would oppose the perfectly reasonable view that sexual topics are not appropriate for six-year-olds in a public school setting. The bill puts the onus back on parents, rather than public schools, to decide how and if these conversations happen. That perspective can be debated, but it is not wrong a priori, and a very large number of Florida voters agree with it. But Disney isn’t interested in allowing a genuine debate or conversation to occur, it simply wants to satisfy the DEI activists so they stop making trouble and bad headlines for the company. The result is that they parrot the party line, offer craven apologies, and ignore and silence opposition.
We fully agree with Ethan, Disney was created to provide family friendly entertainment. This is not the vision Walt Disney had for his company.
Ethan concluded his article stating,
Time will tell whether or not Imagineering, and the Disney brand overall, can survive this internal revolution. But current trends are not encouraging. Some of us throw sand in the gears of the DEI machine when we can and produce the same exceptional experiences we always have. The capture is thorough, but Disney has survived periods of darkness before. I encourage everyone to ignore the bloviating of Disney executive leadership, from CEO Bob Chapek all the way down to park VPs. These people are not thought-leaders or cultural revolutionaries. They are cowards held hostage by the prevailing narrative, and they will run in whichever direction that narrative dictates. They do not represent the members of the Disney parks and resorts division. We are as diverse as the country itself, and the company’s attempts to use us as a bloc to push their political agenda is intolerant, exploitative, and profoundly un-Disney.
Evil has entered and is now Disney policy. Disney is truly rotten to the core.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2022-04-06 16:05:212022-04-07 10:07:13WHISTLEBLOWER: Disney has been ‘rotting from the inside for quite some time.’
Jane M. Orient, M.D. is currently president of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. Since 1988, she has been chairman of the Public Health Committee of the Pima County (Arizona) Medical Society. She is the author of YOUR Doctor Is Not In: Healthy Skepticism about National Healthcare, and the second through fourth editions of Sapira’s Art and Science of Bedside Diagnosis,. She authored books for schoolchildren, and Professor Klugimkopf’s Spelling Method, , and coauthored two novels published as Kindle Professor Klugimkopf’s Old-Fashioned English Grammar books, Neomorts and Moonshine, She is the editor of AAPS News, the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness Newsletter, and Civil Defense Perspectives, and is the managing editor of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
TOPIC: COVID-19: Danish Mask Study Published: What Next?
ROBERT KNIGHT
Robert Knight is a Washington Times contributor. his experience includes editor and writer at the Los Angeles Times. A regular weekly columnist for the Washington Times, Townhall.com and OneNewsNow.com. Robert was a Media Fellow at the Hoover Institute. He held senior positions with the Heritage Foundation, Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, Media Research Center. His latest books are.. A Strong Constitution: What Would America Look Like If We Followed the Law? and A Nation Worth Fighting For: 10 Steps to Restore Freedom
TOPIC: Democrats Call for Unity, Vow Vengeance.
CAROLE LIBERMAN, M.D., M.P.H.
Carole Lieberman, M.D., M.P.H. is a board-certified Beverly Hills psychiatrist and an award-winning and bestselling author. When Dr. Carole isn’t seeing patients or testifying at trials as a forensic psychiatrist/expert witness, she’s working as a three-time, Emmy-honored TV personality who has appeared on Oprah, the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, Fox News, HLN, ET, ABC, CBS, NBC and many more. Additionally, Dr. Carole hosts two radio shows/podcasts and travels the world speaking about her books, especially her latest book for children (and their parents and teachers), Lions and Tigers and Terrorists, Oh My! How to Protect Your Child in a Time of Terror.
TOPIC: Five Reasons Why We Should Not ‘Cancel’ Thanksgiving!
Today, I’m going to tell you how to steal an election. Everything I’m about to tell you comes from recent documented findings about problems with the 2020 elections.
If I wanted to steal an election, one thing I would do is engage in ballot harvesting, which is illegal in many places. A citizens’ group found, in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, perhaps 7 percent of ballots put in drop boxes were in batches, not single ballots, and therefore illegal. If you extrapolate this out across the country, it could have been 5 million illegal votes in the 2020 election. A Wisconsin state senator filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission alleging the city of Racine is currently intentionally ignoring the law and court rulings by allowing people to return ballots for other voters. The problem with ballot harvesting is you don’t know the circumstances under which the ballots were obtained, perhaps fraudulently or under pressure, or maybe they are completely made up, you just don’t know. Doesn’t sound like a free and fair election to me.
In fact, there’s surveillance video and cellphone evidence in Georgia of 2,000 mules dumping multiple ballots into drop boxes while wearing latex gloves and disguises in 2020. Not only that, they stopped off at Stacey Abrams’ headquarters and Democrat offices between runs where, it is thought, they picked up the ballots. Does that sound like a free and fair election to you? Before you answer ‘yes’, you should know an official investigation is ongoing.
Another thing I would do to steal an election is make sure the voter rolls were as dirty as possible. There’s been an awful lot of resistance in recent years from elections officials who just do not want to clean up the rolls. For example, 60,000 voters on North Carolina’s rolls are dead, registered twice, or enrolled in another state, according to a new public interest law firm report. If you’re going to steal an election, you need dirty voter rolls to supply names of real registered voters who haven’t voted to which to assign all the fake votes you generate, so things tally and look kosher at the end.
Speaking of fake votes, remember the truck driver who courageously stepped forward and told the nation he had hauled 288,000 suspicious ballots from New York to Pennsylvania in the 2020 election? The U.S. Postal Service still refuses to release its investigative report on the matter. What’s up with that?
If I wanted to steal an election, I’d get a billionaire friend of mine to dump $400 million into thinly disguised get-out-the-vote drives for Democrats. Mark Zuckerberg did that in the 2020 election, with just enough money going to Republican areas so that the people involved in the effort could think they had covered themselves. But the chickens are coming home to roost. Milwaukee city officials have just been accused of election bribery in accepting grants from a Mark Zuckerberg-funded organization, according to a complaint filed with the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The Zuckerbucks story isn’t over, not by a long shot.
Another thing I would do is rig the machines. You might recall that a court-ordered forensic audit of electronic voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan found the machines deliberately created a 68 percent error rate right off the bat. What’s that about? More recently, an examination of machine ballot images in Colorado showed new databases were created partway through the 2020 election, enabling the machines to essentially keep two sets of books. The examiners further found the numbers did not add up and the log files were overwritten, not accidentally but extensively. No wonder people want to go back to paper ballots and laws have been passed in some states to keep the machines from connecting to the Internet.
There’s lots more I would do: count absentee ballots anyway even though the signatures don’t match what’s on file; get felons to vote illegally; and get school administrators to sweep student records to find more votes for Democrat candidates.
After I did all these things, I would turn around and claim we just had the most secure election ever. The bigger the lie, the more believable it is, that’s Propaganda 101.
All kidding aside, we on the grassroots political Right are not going to let the 2020 election go. We are not going to just ‘move along’. We want all the documented problems run to ground and fixed. The way I hear the story, $20 to $30 million dollars has come from big donors on the Right to fix these problems. That’s buying an awful lot of vigilance now and new efforts from the professional Right to ensure election integrity cross my desk several times a day. So, if Democrats want to steal elections in the future, they’ll need a whole new bag of tricks. And we’re watching – closely – so good luck with that.
Both Murkowski and Romney have been a stain on the Republican Party. Senator Murkowski is likely going to be primaried by Kelly Tshibaka in 2022. Senator Romney must be primaried in 2024 as well. The Republican Party is not sustainable if the RINO Republicans are not punished for consistently betraying the Republican (Trump) voters.
Mitt Romney voted against Ketanji Brown Jackson last year. Now that he knows she gave lenient sentences to criminals convicted of possessing child rapes, he says he will support her nomination. https://t.co/cFIXfQoRQd
The long guessing game is over. Lisa Murkowski is supporting a leftist SCOTUS nominee who will write legislation from the bench and have the potential to harm Alaskans for decades to come. Check out my statement 👇 pic.twitter.com/ZgjABSqal7
— Kelly Tshibaka – Text KELLY to 20903 (@KellyForAlaska) April 4, 2022
Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney Monday said they will vote for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to be confirmed to the Supreme Court, bringing the total expected GOP votes for Jackson’s confirmation up to three.
“After reviewing Judge Jackson’s record and testimony, I have concluded that she is a well-qualified jurist and a person of honor,” Romney, R-Utah, said. “While I do not expect to agree with every decision she may make on the Court, I believe that she more than meets the standard of excellence and integrity.”
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
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http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-04-06 10:50:502022-04-06 10:50:50RINOs Romney, Murkowski, and Collins support Biden child porn nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson for SCOTUS
Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) on Tuesday announced his exit from Congress, notching up a 40-percent exit rate among House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump.
Just before announcing his retirement, Upton noted in a campaign email on Tuesday “very positive” poll numbers in his primary race against Trump-endorsed Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI). Both Huizenga and Upton were running for the same seat due to state redistricting.
“My district was cut like Zorro — three different ways,” Upton told reporters. “So I’ve been here 36 years. When I first ran, I thought I’d be here 10.” Upton was first elected in 1986.
“I got a lot of unfinished business that I’m going to be working on now. … But no, this was our decision, independent of what I did with Trump,” Upton said, acknowledging his failed vote to impeach Trump.
Upton joins three other pro-impeachment Republicans to forgo running for reelection. Those include Reps. John Katko (R-NY), Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH), and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-04-06 10:22:482022-04-06 10:22:4840 Percent of House Republicans Who Voted to Impeach Trump to Exit Congress
In an ominous warning to Israel and regional Sunni countries, Major General Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), on Wednesday threatened those nations that have “established political and security relations with the Zionist regime,” a reference to the Jewish State of Israel.
He added, “We explicitly declare and warn that the continuation of such relations is not acceptable at all.”
Coming three days before the start of Ramadan, the annual month of obligatory fasting and prayer for Muslims and one of the Five Pillars of Islam, the warning should be taken seriously by those specifically identified in Salami’s threat because Ramadan is also traditionally a time of Islamic terror attacks.
Those attacks may already have begun with a deadly spate of terrorism across Israel, in Be’ersheba, Hadera and Bnei Brak (just outside of Tel Aviv) that thus far have killed 11 people in the space of a single week. Assailants, two Arab-Israelis and the last one from the town of Ya’bad, near Jenin in Samaria, were armed with knives and guns, including an M-16 rifle, in the three attacks.
In HAMAS-ruled Gaza, sweets were handed out on the street to celebrate Israeli deaths, and in Lebanon, Hezbollah hailed the attacks with flags and music in the streets.
An official statement from Hezbollah referenced both the Abraham Accords indirectly and more specifically the tri-partite March 22 meeting of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett at the Egyptian resort of Sharm e-Sheikh with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and United Arab Emirates (UAE) Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, declaring that “All meetings of betrayal and the heights of normalization cannot give the enemy security.”
The fact that it was Maj. Gen. Salami, the IRGC commander, who issued the Iranian threat is significant, because it is the IRGC and its subordinate Qods Force unit that provide the support — arms, funding, training — for Islamic terror proxies across the Middle East.
The official statements coming from both Iran and HAMAS, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the wake of the Israel attacks indicate an orchestrated terror offensive, timed for the start of Ramadan. As Islamic doctrine obligates that a warning be given before attack, the Tehran regime is here putting Israel and the entire region on notice that this Ramadan, as others past, will be a violent one.
The Iranian regime understands that both within and outside of the Abraham Accords, key regional players, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco and others are banding together with Israel in an unprecedented recognition of the threat from an aggressive and rapidly nuclearizing Iran.
Those expanding relationships with the hated Jews, as well as the centuries-old Sunni-Shi’ite split that leaves the Sunni Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in administrative charge of Islam’s Two Holy Places — Mecca and Medina — are what’s really “not acceptable at all” to the Shi’ite Twelvers who head both Iran and the IRGC/Qods Force.
It is especially incongruous that at precisely this time, in this atmosphere, the U.S. reportedly is considering removing the IRGC from the Department of State’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list as one of a slew of concessions to Iran intended to revive the July 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal.
Indeed, indicative of the alarm such reports are invoking, recent articles in the Saudi press have labeled such efforts an “absurd” act and a “crime” that will threaten global security. Writing in the London-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat on March 22, Saudi journalist Abdullah bin Bijad al-Otaibi called the idea of revoking the IRGC’s terrorist designation “a direct threat and danger not only to the Arab states but to the entire world.”
Likewise writing in Al-Sharq Al Awsat, Saudi journalist Tariq al-Homayed drew the broader implications, stating that “Removing the IRGC from the terror list will grant Iran freedom of action in the region as part of a Russian-Chinese-Iranian alliance.”
As the seasons of Ramadan, Passover and the Christian Holy Week culminating with Easter on April 16 all coincide this year, it is urgent that we understand the explicit intent of the Iranian warning to Israel and the region. It is nothing less than a declaration of war against Israel and those regional people who are choosing the pathway of peace and reconciliation with it.
Last night, Tucker Carlson announced a death watch for the Biden presidency. In one of the most insightful, and pathetic, video clips in American political history, he showed the President of the United States being shunned by former President Barack Obama and, God help us, future President Kamala Harris – and everybody else – at a recent White House event.
Think of it as “dead man shuffling.”
Tucker not only confirmed what I said here ten days ago: “Joe must go.” He powerfully showed that to now be the consensus in partisan Democratic circles.
The chilling prospect of Kamala ascending and/or the curtain being pulled back on what is effectively Obama’s third term demands an urgent effort to identify and recruit a non-partisan vice president, someone of real accomplishment, with a robust national security background and who will promise not to run in 2024.
This is Frank Gaffney.
The Secure Freedom Minute – the most interesting, informative and life-saving 60 seconds of your day.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Center For Security Policyhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCenter For Security Policy2022-04-06 09:50:182022-04-06 09:50:18PODCAST: Dead Man Shuffling
Like the New York Times with its roster of anti-Israel contributors, such as the anti-Israel post-Zionist Peter Beinart, the Washington Post favors op-ed contributors on Israel-Palestine who are very much on the side of the Palestinians. A recent example, featuring the Palestinian Mariam Barghouti, is reported on here: “Washington Post Publishes Op-Ed by Mariam Barghouti, Who Compared Israel to Nazi Germany,” by Rachel O’Donoghue, Algemeiner, April 1, 2022:
It would appear that having a documented history that has included comparing Israel to Nazi Germany does not preclude one from offering their opinions on the editorial webpages of The Washington Post, a publication that prides itself on a self-stated commitment to fairness.
Mariam Barghouti, who describes herself as a “writer and researcher based in Palestine,” was recently invited to share her views with Post readers, in a piece titled, “Another group recognized Israel’s Palestinian apartheid. How will the world react?”
Barghouti, who has also previously written for and contributed to outlets including The NewYork Times, The Guardian, and Newsweek, came to HonestReporting’s attention last year after we uncovered a series of now-deleted tweets, such as one in which she asserted that “Israel has been beating Hitler at his own game since 1948,” and another that referred to former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as being “nothing more than a war criminal and a Nazi.”
Barghouti declared in her tweets that Israel was even worse – more murderous, more evil – than the Nazis, for the Jewish state “has been beating Hitler at his own game since 1948.” And Benjamin Netanyahu is a “war criminal and a Nazi.” Yes, we all remember how the Israeli police rounded up hundreds of thousands, or was it millions, of Palestinians and then sent them off to a series of death camps that that “Nazi” Netanyahu had built. Of course, once this grotesque series of tweets was discovered, Barghouti did the only thing she could do: she quickly deleted the tweets, but it was too late; they had already been seen and recorded.
Such remarks are evidence of anti-Jewish bigotry, and are a breach of the IHRA’s internationally-recognized working definition of antisemitism, specifically making comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis and claiming that Israel’s very existence is in itself a racist endeavor.
The IHRA definition of antisemitism includes making comparisons between Israeli policy and the genocidal program of the Nazis, and insisting that Israel is in its very essence a “racist” undertaking. Barghouti’s tweets, now taken down, make both claims.
The IHRA definition has been either adopted or endorsed by dozens of countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Italy, Sweden, Spain, and Germany.
In her latest piece, Barghouti accuses the Jewish state of maintaining a “deep essence of apartheid;” suggests that Jerusalem’s decision to designate six Palestinian NGOs is part of a campaign to “discredit and vilify” critics; and claims that Israel “weaponizes charges of antisemitism to manipulate and gaslight.”
Hundreds of NGOs are active in Israel, many of them quite critical of the Jewish state. But they are not shut down. The six NGOs that Israel banned last fall were not merely critical of Israel, but their members had close ties to the internationally-recognized terrorist group the PFLP. In fact, there was an overlap of the personnel of these NGOs and the PFLP. These six NGOs were, in essence, working hand-in-glove with a known terrorist group, and thus deserved the “terrorist” designation themselves. Initially critical of Israel’s move, Washington asked Israel for more evidence to justify its banning of these six NGOs as “terrorist organizations.” Jerusalem supplied that evidence, which was apparently convincing enough for the Americans, for there have been no complaints ever since from Washington about Israel’s banning of those six NGOs.
Mariam Barghouti’s description of Israel maintaining a “deep essence of apartheid” reflects the latest fashion in anti-Israel propaganda: that Israel is an “apartheid” state. This charge is made ad nauseam, repeated all over social media. For too many, this charge is enough to blacken Israel’s image; the credulous, animated by hate, will believe. Not a shred of evidence is required.
There are a number of points that deserve to be noted in response to such allegations.
For starters, the accusation of apartheid, which has been primarily promulgated by three organizations — Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), and B’Tselem — has previously been thoroughly debunked by HonestReporting.
Let’s repeat that debunking of the “apartheid” charge here. There is no apartheid in Israel. Arabs serve in the Knesset, sit on the Supreme Court, go abroad as Israeli ambassadors. The chairman of the largest bank in Israel, Bank Leumi, is an Arab. Jews and Arabs study in the same universities. Jews and Arabs work in the same offices and factories. Jews and Arabs are treated in the same hospitals, by the same Jewish and Arab medical personnel. Jews and Arabs play on the same sports teams (an Arab is the captain of Israel’s national soccer team), and in the same orchestras. Jews and Arabs own businesses together, everything from restaurants to high tech start-ups. Nothing here bespeaks “apartheid.” The only difference is that Israeli Jews must, while Israeli Arabs may, serve in the IDF.
In addition, two of the organizations, Amnesty and HRW, that have spread this libel have been accused of having a fixation on alleged misdeeds by Israel. For example, when Amnesty released its widely-publicized report last month, an analysis of its Twitter account over the next six days revealed it had posted no fewer than 132 tweets accusing the Jewish state of perpetrating various crimes, compared to just 13 about every other human rights issue in the world.
Human Rights Watch released a 5,000-word report about Israel in December last year, in which it claimed Israeli law enforcement responded to outbreaks of violence in May in an “apparently discriminatory manner.” Yet the same document completely ignored what had been described as “pogroms” by Arab-Israelis against Jews and their property during the same period.
Israel’s police did not “discriminate” in May when they arrested Jews and Israeli Arabs alike who had been attacking one another in such “mixed” cities as Lod and Ramle. But there were many more, and much more violent, attacks by Arabs on Jews than by Jews who, in response, attacked Arabs, during this unrest, which HRW did not see fit to disclose. And that’s why – the only reason – that more Arabs than Jews were arrested.
In April, HRW penned a 213-page report that peddled the “apartheid” canard and a third 6,500-word report was released in May that accused Israel of “war crimes” for its response to the barrage of indiscriminate rocket fire by Hamas during last year’s conflict.
It would be fascinating to see how HRW managed to support its “apartheid” charge when all the evidence – see above — undermines that claim. As for the “war crimes” supposedly committed by the IDF in the May war, there were none. Hamas deliberately placed its weapons, rocket launchers, command-and-control centers, and fighters in civilian buildings, in schools, hospitals, apartment houses, office buildings. It is Hamas that thereby put civilians in danger. Furthermore, Hamas launched its rockets indiscriminately into Israeli cities. The IDF made enormous efforts to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza. It warned civilians to leave, or get away from, buildings about to be targeted, using telephoning, emailing, and the “knock-on-the-roof” technique. No other military, according to Colonel Richard Kemp, commander of the British forces in Afghanistan and the veteran of a half-dozen military campaigns, makes such efforts to limit civilian casualties as does the IDF; it is, he has said, the “most moral” of militaries.
The NGOs that Barghouti claims Israel has unfairly targeted have proven links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terror group by most of the western world.
The six NGOs Israel banned as “terrorist groups” were not only were staffed by members of the PFLP, but served as the conduits for funds that they received from unsuspecting donors, and then were transferred to the PFLP.
The overlap of PFLP personnel with those staffing the six NGOs, and those NGOs also transferring donor funds to the PFLP, proved convincing enough for one European country, the Netherlands, which initially was doubtful about Israel’s charges against these six NGOs, to itself stop its funding of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) this past January; the UAWC is one of the six Palestinian NGOs Israel banned last year due to ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization.
In a letter to the Dutch parliament, two ministers wrote that their investigation found that 34 UAWC employees were active in the PFLP in 2007-2020, some at the same time as holding leadership positions in the terrorist group.
And after it had initially insisted that Israel provide more proof of its allegations about the six NGOs, Washington has gone silent on the matter, presumably because that proof was provided by Israel. The Bidenites still don’t want to follow Israel’s lead and designate those NGOs as terrorist organizations; they are trying to appease the P.A. just as they have been appeasing Iran in Vienna.
Finally, there is an irony in Barghouti accusing Jerusalem of weaponizing antisemitism, when she has manifestly spread anti-Jewish hatred online.
Just this week — mere hours before a Palestinian gunman murdered five people in the central city of Bnei Brak and amid a wave of terrorism — Barghouti tweeted that every year around the time of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Israel becomes “charged with intensified aggression” to create circumstances whereby Palestinians face violence or “the fear and crippling anxiety of anticipated attacks.”…
Ramadan is well known to be a time when Muslim violence erupts, and not just in Israel; it’s the Palestinians, not the Israelis, who during this Ramadan, as in all previous Ramadans, will demonstrate “intensified aggression” against the Israelis. Barghouti turns it upside down, claiming that the violence that erupts at Ramadan will come from the Israelis, and that is why the poor Palestinians, at such risk of terrible violence from the Jews, suffer this “fear and crippling anxiety of anticipated attacks.” That “fear and anxiety” is not felt by the Palestinians, but by their intended victims, Israel’s Jews, who know all too well how the Muslim Arabs customarily behave at Ramadan.
Will the Washington Post, following the “fairness doctrine,” allow an op-ed to be published in response to Mariam Barghouti? Such an article would answer her claim that Israel is an “apartheid” state, by citing all the ways that Israeli Arabs work, study, play, are treated medically, side by side with Jews, and serve in every part of Israel’s government, from the Knesset to the Supreme Court to the diplomatic corps.
And such an article would note that the evidence linking those six NGOs in Israel to the terrorist PFLP has now apparently been accepted by the Biden Administration, as it has ceased to criticize Israel’s banning of those six NGOs.
Finally, the editors of the Washington Post should ask themselves if they think it proper to run an op-ed on the sins of Israel by someone who clearly has exhibited a deep antisemitism, according to the IHRA definition. Shouldn’t such views have disqualified Mariam Barghouti from making her malevolent and baseless claims about Israel from the exalted heights of the Washington Post’s op-ed page?
