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‘Pathological obsession’: Senator Cruz rips Biden over Israel condemnation
The Biden administration has “consistently sought to undermine Israel’s security and sovereignty over its territory,” Cruz claimed.
By World Israel News Staff
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Wednesday attacked the Biden administration’s “pathological obsession” with undermining Israel was endangering U.S. national security, following the U.S.’ condemnation of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s visit to the Temple Mount.
“A visit by a minister from Israel’s government to a site inside Israel is not a change in any status quo arrangement, and it should not be controversial for a Jew to visit the holiest site in Judaism,” Cruz, a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, said in a statement released on Twitter.
“The statements from the Biden White House and State Department, which suggest otherwise, will further destabilize the Middle East and risk inciting terrorism. They convince Palestinian officials that compromise is unnecessary because Democrat administrations will coerce our Israeli allies into making dangerous concessions.”
The Biden administration has “consistently sought to undermine Israel’s security and sovereignty over its territory,” Cruz claimed.
He listed several apparent affronts by the administration towards Israel, including, its refusal to use the term “Abraham Accords” coined by the Trump administration; seeking to reopen a Palestinian consulate in Israel’s capital of Jerusalem after the Trump administration shuttered it; “unleash[ing] the FBI against the Israeli army, and publicly ostracizing parts of Israel’s democratically-elected government.”
“Meanwhile, the administration is pouring over a billion dollars into Palestinian areas and bringing officials from the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization to Washington, D.C. Now it is doubling down on these disastrous policies,” he concluded.
State Department spokesperson Ned Price on Tuesday condemned Ben Gvir’s visit to the Temple Mount saying, “We are deeply concerned by the visit of the Israeli minister at the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. This visit has the potential of exacerbating tensions and lead to violence.”
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides told Axios reporter Barak Ravid that any perceived changes to the status quo were “unacceptable.”
“To be very clear – we want to preserve status quo and actions that prevent that are unacceptable. We have been very clear in our conversations with the Israeli government on this issue,” he said.
Former Mideast envoy under the Trump administration, Jason Greenblatt, also came out against the Biden administration: “The demands to maintain the so-called status is completely unhelpful & deepens the problem,” since “like so many things about this conflict people say different things – ‘status quo,’ ‘historical status quo,’ ‘legal status quo’ & people define these differently.”
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Notwithstanding Biden's antipathy towards Israel and the influence of Obama upon this administration, AIPAC continues to assure support for Israel in Congress. I have edited this e mail:
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Dear Richard,
As both the new Congress and Israel’s new government convene this week, the U.S.-Israel relationship has never been more important. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Kevin McCarthy is now The Speaker and presides over a contentious, and self serving, GOP slim House majority. He agreed to some demands that made sense and others that weakened his ability to perform. Time will tell whether he can thread the needle. The GOP has some good people who will be conducting needed investigations and one would hope their results will prove better than Durham's. If guilt is uncovered, as is highly likely, any trial held in DC will be heavily weighted with a black jury so getting convictions, as Durham learned, will be virtually impossible. Meanwhile: Maxine has been floating slush campaign funds to her daughter's company in the total amount of $1.2 million. Rep. Pat Fallon has introduced legislation to end this nepotism. Waters has also allegedly floated money to her husband's bank on whose board he serves. They also live in a multi $million home, surrounded by the homeless. Being in government has been a rewarding picnic for many of our black representatives and no doubt comparably so for white politicians. Want to get wealthy serving "we the people," get elected and become an elite crook. Obama probably has made the most out of being a former president. However, please don't forget about Madam Pelosi whose husband raked in millions in stock transactions, much of which was based on inside information. +++ Dem Rep. Maxine Waters Paid Daughter’s Firm More Campaign Cash California Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters has paid her daughter over $1.2 million in total over the last decade and it’s all been legal. Now, Republicans are aiming to put a ban on lawmakers from putting family members on the campaign payroll after many prominent Democrats have been called out over the practice. Republican Texas Rep. Pat Fallon has introduced legislation called the Family Integrity to Reform Elections Act, which would prevent campaign funds from going to a candidate’s immediate family. The bill, if passed, would also make the candidate directly responsible for knowingly violating the provision. “The Family Integrity to Reform Elections (FIRE) Act is a critical step to reducing nepotistic practices in American campaigns. Allowing direct family members to be on the take of campaigns must come to an end. For example, Maxine Waters, the worst perpetrator, has given her daughter over $1.1 million in campaign funds. This is utterly egregious, and I will not stand by as the integrity of our elections is further diminished,” Fallon told the Daily Caller. The bill would not be good for Waters. “Waters’ campaign shelled out $8,000 in September to Karen Waters, a surplus to the over $1 million her daughter has raked in from the campaign since 2003, according to Federal Election Commission filings. But scrutiny over lawmakers paying family members with campaign money has heightened as of late, with some Republicans aiming to bar the practice through legislation,” the Washington Examiner reported. “The over $1 million given to Karen Waters, including the $8,000, has been for slate-mailer operations. Karen Waters has also been paid for things such as “administrative services,” “fundraising,” and “rally expenses,” according to filings. Waters came under fire a few months ago for paying daughter another $24,000 in campaign cash during the most recent quarter,” the outlet added. Over the summer, the New York Post published a similar report. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Split-Screen U.S. Economy The Editorial Board The good news is that employers added 223,000 net new jobs last month while the unemployment rate inched down to 3.5% from 3.6% as 439,000 Americans joined the labor force. The labor participation rate climbed 0.1 percentage-point to 62.3%, as the number of unemployed fell 278,000, including 146,000 who were jobless for six months or more. A closer look at the labor report suggests more cause for concern. There were large losses in temporary jobs (-35,000), and declines in administrative and support (-28,600), non-durable goods (-16,000) and information (-5,000). These losses dovetail with recent business layoff announcements. Temp jobs typically fall at the end of a business cycle when employers worry about trouble ahead but don’t want to have to lay off full-time employees. Average weekly hours worked also fell to 34.3, the second monthly decline in a row and down from 34.8 a year ago. Manufacturing overtime also declined by 0.2 hours to 2.9 hours, and much of the employment growth in December was for part-time work. The jobs report showed some decline in wage pressures, with average hourly earnings rising 0.3% last month, the smallest rise since February. All of this shows growing employer caution, but no imminent recession. The same can’t be said of the Institute for Supply Management’s PMI report for December, which came in far lower than expected. Services activity fell to 49.6%, which is contraction territory, from 56.5% in November. The report for new orders was especially glum, declining for the first time since May 2020, to 45.2% from 56%. The services decline is all the more notable because goods production has already been easing and services were supposed to power growth going forward as the pandemic effects ease. Which side of the screen is telling the real economic story, and which will have the most impact on the Federal Reserve? The jobs report looks backward, while the ISM surveys are forward indicators, so it’s possible the economy is entering the slowdown that so many CEOs are anticipating. That seemed to be the view of investors, who took the old bad-news-is-good-news line and bid up stock prices on a bet that the Fed will end its current cycle of interest-rate increases sooner. Our guess is that the Fed will use the strong labor market as a justification to keep attacking inflation, so irrational exuberance may not be in order. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Pretty damn sick and we have radical Democrats and nut progressives to thank. I remember when my generation had to suffer the Hari Krishna's who went around beating their tambourines and styling their hair in long braids. +++ Parents say their kids were brainwashed at school, seek deprogrammers By Dana Kennedy Beth Pensky, a single mother from New Jersey who now lives in Florida, said her children do not speak to her because they are woke and she is not. Marika Salamakha/Studio White Flower for NY Post Beth Pensky, a 54-year-old single mother from New Jersey who now lives in Florida, never tells anyone that she’s estranged from her only son and daughter. “I lie all the time,” said Pensky, who told The Post her kids have rejected her because they’re “woke” and she is not. “I can’t tell anyone I don’t have a relationship with them. I had so much shame about it. It looks awful for me and makes me feel terrible so I lie.” But her attitude changed when she — and a number of other mothers — read a Post story in November about Annabella Rockwell, a graduate of Mt. Holyoke College who claimed she’d been “totally indoctrinated” into hard- left ideologies at the school and had to be deprogrammed. “I saw Annabella’s story and my life turned upside down,” Pensky said. “I realized I wasn’t alone and I saw what happened to her was similar to what I think happened to my kids. I never even considered trying to find a deprogrammer. I didn’t know they existed. But I think it’s too late for me and my kids. They won’t even talk to me.” A Manhattan mother of five daughters told The Post she saw their indoctrination into gender and race ideologies start at Dalton, one of New York City’s poshest private academies — and worsen when her girls went to colleges. Most of them went to Ivy League schools. “The emotional stress is unbelievable,” said the mother, who did not want to be publicly identified. “I consider myself a Democrat and a liberal but it doesn’t matter. I’ve had fights with some of my girls just because I wouldn’t get myself a Rainbow pride Starbucks cup. The cup itself became this huge battleground. Apparently it matters what cup you hold.” The mother said two of her daughters have tried to estrange themselves from her because they’re critic al of what they see as her lack of political correctness and disinterest in gender and race ideology., “We actually would be estranged if it weren’t for me not giving up,” the mother told The Post. “I keep coming back to the battlefield. I wanted a deprogrammer but didn’t know where to get one so I try to do it myself.” K. Yang, 36, a former activist for trans and gay rights in upstate New York at one point identified with “they/them” pronouns. But she said she deprogrammed herself before becoming a full-time deprogrammer in 2018 — and is now busier than ever. In addition to her website, Stop Female Erasure, Yang has a website called The Deprogrammer and runs a YouTube account under the handle “The Deprogrammer” and works with parents and their children individually. Yang often leads anti-gender ideology protests at gender clinics and prisons, as well as at the National Monument in Washington, DC, and outside the United Nations. A typical YouTube video of hers is titled “Blurred Lines: The Agenda to Confuse Children About Sex & Gender.” K. Yang was a trans and gay rights activist who went by they/them pronouns before, she said, she deprogrammed herself from gender ideology. K. Yang was a trans and gay rights activist who went by they/them pronouns before, she said, she deprogrammed herself from gender ideology. Matt Wittmeyer for NY Post “A lot of these parents are completely bewildered,” Yang said. “A lot of them noticed a marked difference in their children’s behavior. Then all of a sudden ‘she’ identifies as ‘he.’ A lot of this is like a cult except parents don’t realize their child is being indoctrinated — not from an old-fashioned cult that takes you away somewhere but through schools and their devices. This is happening to kids everywhere, even those with a robust family life.” Tennessee-born Ted Patrick, now 92, was well-known and often controversial in the 1970s and 1980s as the “father of deprogramming.” He helped hundreds of parents deprogram their children after getting them out of cults like the Moonies, the Hare Krishnas and the Children of God. He got into the work, he said, because his own son had joined a cult. The problem, he told the Washington Post in 1979, was naivete: the college-educated ignorant, Patrick called them. Yang became a full-time deprogrammer in 2018.Yang became a full-time deprogrammer in 2018.Matt Wittmeyer for NY Post “That’s how they get these kids into these cults, ’cause they don’t know better!” Patrick said at the time. They haven’t seen the hard-core life! Man, I grew up with my daddy running numbers and the bootlegger in the apartment downstairs.” Patrick, who lives in San Diego, told The Post that he still helps parents — and that deprogramming work is more in demand than ever. He claims to have deprogrammed more than 2,600 people in his career. “It’s worse now than it was then,” Patrick said of the 1970s. “But parents are more scared and weak than they were then. You’ve got to get these kids alone. I’ve snatched people from Yale. I deal with the mind. You have to go into the mind, into that container, and bring the real person out. Once you get the person out you have to get the person thinking again — thinking like a critical thinker.” Another mother named Dorothy, who did not want her last name used, also recognized her struggles with and near-estrangement from her 27-year-old daughter when she read The Post story about Rockwell The two had long been close but when her daughter went to a prestigious college out West and began taking gender studies and women’s studies, everything changed. “Reading about Annabella was the first time I connected the dots to everything that had happened with my daughter,” Dorothy said. Ted Patrick, well known for deprogramming people in cults in the ’70s and ’80s, says things are worse now. Dorothy said they have been estranged off and on since her daughter’s sophomore year in college, with the young woman once refusing to go to Thanksgiving dinner with the family because she said they were celebrating “Columbus’ genocide.” “She had what she called ‘an awakening’ and became very angry at me and her father,” Dorothy said. “It was a big personality change. We are conservatives so [political leanings] became a huge problem. We were not allowed to visit her on campus. She went on a mission to convert her brother against us. She told him that he should be against us because we’re conservatives and that we all should be against men. “What really scares me,” Dorothy added, “is that it reminds me of the Cultural Revolution in China where there was a whole lost generation of kids who hated their parents.” Yang’s own family escaped China during the Cultural Revolution led by Mao and his Red Guards, but she still fell for what she said are similar indoctrination methods taking place in the US She began her career as a trans activist in 2012 at a gender center in upstate New York, Yang said. Part of her work involved visiting local businesses, doctors and even bars to offer free “cultural competency training” to “educate” employees on gender ideology. She and her co-workers also brought what she says she now believes was “propaganda” about gender into high schools and junior highs in the region. “I thought I was on the cutting edge of promoting rights for gay people,” Yang said. “But then I started looking deeper into where this was coming from and who was paying for it, and I started to get very disillusioned. We were with children talking about sexuality and gender identity without the knowledge or consent of their parents. The Post's story about Annabella Rockwell, who is happy her mother sent her to a deprogrammer after she was "brainwashed" with progressive ideology, sparked lots of reader interest. The Post’s story about Annabella Rockwell, who is happy her mother sent her to a deprogrammer after she was “brainwashed” with progressive ideology, sparked lots of reader interest. NY Post “When you really dig down you can see how much of this comes from documents and plans at the United Nations,” Yang said, referring in part to the UN’s “Gender Equality” initiative. “It’s part of a global agenda to restructure society, re- structure our social norms and the economy,” Yang claimed. “They are undermining the sexually dimorphic nature of reality and breaking down the differences between the sexes to break down our identity. They are constructing identities for us and they want us to adopt them.” Both Beth Pensky and Dorothy’s daughters came out as lesbians in college but neither mother said they had a problem with that. “What was upsetting was how she acted toward us,” Dorothy said of her child. “The few times we were allowed to visit her at college, she would barely speak to us and sometimes just walk away from us with no explanation and ignore us for the rest of our visit. I walked on eggshells with her. I am a people-pleaser by nature and I don’t know how to deal with that anger.” Pensky, like a number of other mothers who reached out to Rockwell’s mother, Melinda, believes that her kids began to be conditioned into a new hard-left way of thinking when they were just teenagers in Monmouth County, NJ. “In junior high they’d come home saying they wouldn’t say the pledge of allegiance anymore,” Pensky said. “They told me boy and girl bathrooms were wrong and they should all be gender neutral. That’s how it started.” Pensky said her relationships with her children got worse when they went to college. Pensky said her relationships with her children got worse when they went to college. Marika Salamakha/Studio White Flower for NY Post It got worse when her daughter, Hailey, now 27, went to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and her son Joshua, 24, went off to Northeastern University in Boston. Once they were out of the house, she believes the two were overwhelmed with politically correct dogma at their respective colleges and turned on her. “If you hate your kids and you never want to see them again, send them to school in Massachusetts,” she said. Pensky’s relationship with the kids worsened when she moved to Florida. Yang said of some new ideologists, “They subvert the will of the self and replace it with the will of the group.”Matt Wittmeyer for NY Post “That’s when the break really happened,” Pensky said. “They told me that Florida is full of white supremacists and that I was becoming one. My son said Florida is a scary place full of racist people.” Joshua hasn’t spoken to his mother in four years; one year ago, Pensky said, Hailey told her mother not to contact her anymore. Pensky’s son said “no comment” when reached by The Post. Pensky’s daughter did not return calls. Beth Pensky’s ex-husband Andrew Pensky backed up everything she said in a call to The Post. Andrew said he has slightly more contact with his two kids than Beth, but not much. “It makes you sad and angry at the same time,” he said. “I worked hard to pay for their schooling because I grew up poor and couldn’t afford to go to college. I wanted them to have what I didn’t have. To be cut off without explanation is very tough. It’s even worse for Beth who was a great mother and who was always there for them. I think this generation of kids is being poisoned by what they’re taught in school.” Yang is sympathetic to both parents and children who became estranged over what is taught at school and seen on the Internet. “Children aren’t stupid and they recognize there is injustice in the world,” Yang said. “And, of course, kids don’t want people to suffer and they want to help. So the people behind this new ideology hook them with that and that’s how they get to them. Once they get you in, they can get you to do anything. They subvert the will of the self and replace it with the will of the group … Most kids don’t realize they’ve been made part of a group — and they’ve been activated.” ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A little justice for Israeli's who have been attacked and killed by Palestinians ought to get their attention and force them to face reality. If not, then they pay the price of their stupidity and hatred. +++ Smotrich implements sanctions on PA, transfers millions to terror victims Finance Minister to sign order transferring NIS 139 million of PA finds to 9 terror victims under Litvak verdict. Netanyahu speaks with Religious Zionist party head MK Bezalel Smotrich Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich will today (Sunday) sign the order to implement one of the measures the cabinet decided on last week to retaliate against the Palestinian Authority for seeking to bring Israel before the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The move will transfer approximately NIS 139 million from funds for the the Palestinian Authority to Israeli victims of terrorism, implementing the Litvak verdict. The cabinet also decided to immediately offset the payments made by the PA to terrorists and their families in 2022, according to the report of the defense establishment. Additional sanctions include the placing of a moratorium on Palestinian construction plans in Area C, following illegal take-over attempts by the PA, in opposition to international agreements, denying benefits to VIPs who are leading the political and legal war against Israel, and actions against organizations in Judea and Samaria that promote terrorist activity or any hostile activity, including political and legal action against Israel under the guise of humanitarian work. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir commented: "Our right-wing government has made its intentions clear. We made a decision in the cabinet to take immediate steps against the Palestinian Authority and its leaders. I hope and believe that more measures will be taken against those who support terrorism and try to put pressure on Israel." ++++++++++++++++++++
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