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American university students honor imprisoned Palestinian for murdering one of their classmates:
- Murder of Israeli teen was “heroic operation”
- “National duty” of students to participate in visit to murderer’s family
A student faction at a PA university arranged a visit to honor the family of imprisoned terrorist Muntasir Shalabi who shot and murdered 19-year-old Israeli student Yehuda Gueta and wounded two other young students – Benaya Peretz and Amichai Hala – in a drive-by shooting attack near Ariel on May 2, 2021.
And:
Jewish Organizations have been overpaid and led mostly by wimps for years:
Two Rallies
The contrast between the two rallies pretty much captures the trajectory of American Jewry
by Yonoson Rosenblum
Mishpacha Magazine
Shortly prior to the third Reagan-Gorbachev summit, scheduled to take place in Washington D.C., in December 1987, Natan Sharansky, who was then one-year out of the Soviet Gulag, came to the US to organize a mass gathering of American Jews. The message of the proposed rally would be that America was demanding the release of all Soviet Jews who wanted to leave.
Over 250,000 American Jews came to the capital for that rally. And their message was heard. At the outset of their summit, President Reagan asked Premier Gorbachev whether he had heard about the huge rally on the Mall the preceding Sunday. Gorbachev sought to turn the conversation to the topics important to him — e.g., arms control — but Reagan would not let go. He kept speaking about the size of the turnout and the importance of Jewish emigration to the American people.
Two weeks ago, prominent American Jewish organizations announced a D.C. rally against anti-Semitism. According to the Washington Post and a number of other news organizations, those who showed up numbered in the hundreds. And that, at a time when physical attacks on Jews have reached, in the words of former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile, "pandemic proportions."
The slogan of the latter gathering was "No Fear," which the organizers belied by distributing hats with no Jewish symbols or anything to indicate a connection to a Jewish event.
The contrast between the two rallies pretty much captures the trajectory of American Jewry. But they did have one thing in common. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post on the 30th anniversary of the 1987 rally, Sharansky recounted his enormous debt to Elie Wiesel. He told Wiesel that he was encountering resistance to his idea among mainstream Jewish organizations.
Wiesel replied, "Natan, don't waste time on meeting with Jewish organizations. Only students can do this. They will convince the organizations."
Elisha Wiesel, one of the organizers of the recent gathering against anti-Semitism, would have been well-advised to have heeded his father's advice about what a broken vehicle the Jewish organizations would prove to be.
THE FECKLESSNESS of American Jewish leadership was on full display at the recent rally. The organizers felt the need to emphasize that the rally was "against all hatred," not just anti-Semitism. That message both distorts and trivializes anti-Semitism. In the wake of what the Rutgers Hillel called a "social media pogrom," followed by acts of vandalism, on a campus with 6,000 Jewish students, the chancellor and provost of Rutgers University condemned "the sharp rise in hostile sentiments and anti-Semitic violence in the United States." They scrupulously added "and against other targeted and oppressed groups on our campus and our community."
But protest of anti-Semitism was still too much for Students for Justice in Palestine, who argued that the focus on anti-Semitism distracted attention from the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Remarkably, the senior Rutgers officials quickly retreated and apologized for failing to "communicate our support for our Palestinian community members." When the Jewish community pushed back, they issued yet another anodyne statement that "all forms of racism, intolerance, and xenophobia are unacceptable whenever and wherever they occur." That, of course, ignored that it was Jewish students and student organizations who were under attack, not Hindu students, or Muslim students for that matter.
In 2019, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar tweeted about US Middle East policy, "It's all about the Benjamins, baby," a reference to the image of Benjamin Franklin on $100 bills, implying that Jewish money determines American foreign policy. But after the ensuing uproar, even she happily voted for a congressional resolution condemning all forms of hatred, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
The false linkage of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia has become the all-purpose defense of any and all attacks on Israel, and even a cudgel to be used against those who call attention to anti-Semitism. Whenever Omar or one of her fellow "Squad" members in Congress is criticized for absurd charges against Israel, she is quick to accuse her critics, particularly Jewish ones, of employing "Islamophobic tropes," without identifying what those might be, unless any criticism of anything a Muslim says is, by definition, Islamophobic.
April Powers, who is both black and Jewish, was until recently the "chief equity and inclusion officer," at the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). But then she made the mistake, in the wake of viral videos of Palestinians going through Jewish areas of Los Angeles looking for Jews to beat up (and finding them), of posting on Facebook, "The SCBWI unequivocally recognizes that the world's 14.7 million Jewish people (less than 0.018% of the population) have the right to life, safety, and freedom from scapegoating and fear."
That was enough for one Arab member of the organization to demand a refund of her membership dues on the grounds that SCBWI had shown itself a "Zionist... organization that doesn't serve ALL children," by virtue of not having published a statement denouncing Israeli actions in Gaza.
The SCBWI's executive director issued a groveling apology and announced the "resignation" of Powers. The latter offered her own apology for failing to note the "rise in Islamophobia."
But there has been no such rise in Islamophobia: No one is driving around looking for Muslims to beat up, even in the wake of murderous attacks by individuals proclaiming, "Alla-hu Akbar." In the first five months of this year, there were 86 hate crimes against Jews (including numerous vicious beatings) in New York City, a 37 percent increase over the record number of such incidents the previous year. During the same period, there was one anti-Muslim hate crime.
SHORTLY PRIOR to the recent rally, Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, one of the rally's sponsors and long considered the leading Jewish defense organization charting anti-Semitism in America, had a eureka moment, in the form of a Newsweek op-ed titled, "It's Time to Admit It: The Left Has an Anti-Semitism Problem." In a conversation with the New York Times, he acknowledged that of those attacking Jews in America's cities, "No one is wearing MAGA hats."
Until then, Greenblatt, a former special assistant to President Obama, had been the most enthusiastic proponent of the New York Times line: "Anti-Semitic violence in recent years was largely a right-wing phenomenon, driven by a white supremacist movement emboldened by rhetoric from former President Donald J. Trump."
That was no more true "in recent years" than today. Far from being perpetrated by white supremacists, most of the attacks on Jews in urban centers have for a long time been committed by non-whites.
Greenblatt pretends to have known nothing of the venom directed at Jewish students on campus, or that originating from leading progressive organizations such as Black Lives Matter. At several campuses with large Jewish populations, there have been highly organized efforts to bar from student government anyone who has been to Israel on a Birthright trip. The express purpose of those efforts is to intimidate Jewish students from identifying as such, or from expressing support for Israel.
The pervasive progressive doctrine of intersectionality, which seeks to link all "oppressed" groups and which confers virtue according to the degree of group oppression, has been frequently used by BLM, as well as by congressional critics like Rep. Cori Bush, to castigate Israel. Bush argues, for instance, that what Israel does to Palestinians is exactly the same violence perpetrated by the US government against black people in America.
In a lengthy recent CNN piece, two Jewish students describe how they are ostracized from all progressive groups unless they first renounce their Jewish identity and deny Israel's right to exist. Both Julia Jassey, at my alma mater, the University of Chicago, and Blake Flayton at George Washington University, relate that they have received numerous death threats for their failure to deny Israel's right to exist, despite their progressive bona fides. Both have been struck by the casual and open anti-Semitism. Jassey was told that "the Holocaust was an extended vacation for the Jews who never came back."
Jassey feared to return to campus after the distance learning during Covid. She has formed a social media group, "Jewish on Campus," from which she learned that many Jewish students find themselves, like her, increasingly targeted by their own peers. And she notes that the hatred directed at Jewish students on campus is much more threatening to the Jewish community in the long run than that from fringe right-wing groups: "Those people [i.e., her peers at elite universities] grow up to become doctors and lawyers and politicians and lawmakers." Researchers at Harvard and Tufts recently ascertained that anti-Semitism, in contrast to all other forms of prejudice, is consistently higher among young people. And that is being generated on college campuses.
THE SPEAKERS AT the anti-Semitism rally were carefully mooted to exclude any ardent advocates for Israel or anyone who might be charged with Islamophobia, no matter how implausibly. Thus David Sapirstein, former political director of the Reform movement, was featured, and predictably referred to Israeli "occupation." The organizers, he said, formed a big tent — J Street was actively courted — but haters were not welcomed. The only problem being that for Sapirstein, anyone who opposes biological males competing against women in sports or wandering around women's locker rooms is a hater.
No speakers were called upon to demonstrate the absurdity of claims of Israeli apartheid and genocide or to explain why they are anti-Semitic — i.e., precisely because they are so absurd. Yet the large number of American Jews, nearly a quarter, who responded to a recent poll that Israel is committing genocide and apartheid might have benefitted from learning that from 1967 to 1992, when Israel was in full control of the West Bank, life expectancy increased 50 percent, from 48 to 72; infant mortality dropped 75 percent; seven universities were built, where none had existed; and by 1992, the West Bank had the fourth-fastest growing economy in the world. If that be genocide, it is of the most peculiar sort — one in which the "victims" prosper.
The failure of the "No Fear" rally represents the failure over the long run and short of American Jewish leadership.
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Compromise often results in giving more than receiving and that is generally the rule when Republicans negotiate.
This time they traded a few bridges for bailing out Democrat cities that were allowed to be destroyed by radicals because of feckless leadership. All of America paid for pusillanimous public servants in Seattle, Portland, New York etc.
A Not So Grand Infrastructure Deal
The GOP gets roads and bridges. Democrats a green bonanza and more.
By The Editorial Board
And:
Bret Stephens seeks to set the Covid misinformation record straight.
Who cares, what difference does it make.
Covid Misinformation Comes From the Top, Too
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Most nations that collapse do so from within. Is America next on the list. Radical Islamists think so and I tend to agree:
The Extremism Roundup
Promoting Civil Discourse and Marginalizing the Extremes
A weekly compilation of the most important developments in the struggle against radical ideologies
Islamist & Anti-Muslim Extremism
Al-Qaeda: Alt-Left & Alt-Right Extremism in U.S. Will Bring Us Victory
A new video from Al-Qaeda’s media wing shows the group now believes that the growth in Alt-Left and Alt-Right extremism in America is what will ultimately make the jihadists victorious. Al-Qaeda states that “it shall be a civil war that marks its [the U.S.] ultimate doom.”
Clarion Project’s Ryan Mauro forecasted this trend in a 2019 video about the “War of the Extremes.”
A recent poll found that secessionist sentiment in America is growing, with 48 percent of Democrats on the West Coast and 66 percent of Republicans in the South favoring seceding from the U.S.
Latest Islamist Extremism Developments
Amid controversy over Ben & Jerry’s declaration that it will no longer sell its ice cream in “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” it’s been learned that the chairwoman of the company’s board founded an organization that defended the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups.
A new poll found that only 52 percent of Jewish voters in America totally disagree with the claim that Israel is an apartheid state. About 25 percent agreed with the claim and 22 percent were unsure.
An investigation into the Islamic Food and Nutrition Council found that the organization is funding Islamist extremist mosques and organizations around the U.S. In 2019, IFNC reported receiving over $25 million in donations and holding assets worth nearly $70 million.
Latest Anti-Muslim Extremism Developments
The NYPD now believes that the anti-Muslim bigot who committed two attacks on Muslims in Queens is also responsible for a third attack that happened last week. In the latest incident, a Muslim woman was harassed by a man who was saying anti-Muslim slurs while carrying a knife.
Latest Alt-Left Developments
In Portland, Ore., a pro-Antifa rioter who threw a Molotov cocktail at police and lit a police station on fire has been convicted of five felonies and sentenced to 48 months in prison.
After a police officer was shot and killed in Vancouver, Wash., Antifa supporters online cheered. One apparent Muslim celebrated with Islamic terminology.
In Akron, Ohio, charges against the spokesman of Serve the People Akron for telecommunications harassment of a police officer were dropped but may return. The defendant, who also made pro-Antifa posts, accused a cop of belonging to the Three Percenters militia group based on a tattoo on his arm, and publicly posted his name and pictures of his family. The police department denies that the officer is linked to the militia.
In Ohio, a chilling plot by an Incel extremist to massacre women at a university was foiled. The extremist was charged with one count of illegal possession of a firearm and one count of attempting to commit a hate crime.
In California, the white supremacist terrorist who committed a mass shooting at a synagogue at Chabad of Poway in 2019 pled guilty. He killed one person and injured three.
A white supremacist and Proud Boys leader in Kansas is running for the school board. Although he denies being a white supremacist, leaked chats contradict his denial.
The U.S. Air Force has finally kicked out a white supremacist who was publicly identified three months ago. The extremist was a member of Identity Evropa, an associate of neo-Nazis and co-hosted a white supremacist podcast where said homosexuals should be targeted “after we go after the Jews.” His easily found record raises serious doubts about the U.S. military’s vetting of recruits.
In New Hampshire, a neo-Nazi pled guilty to possession of child pornography.
In Georgia, a Sovereign Citizen was arrested for child cruelty.
The defense team for extremist militia members who plotted to kidnap Michigan Governor Whitmer is predictably accusing the FBI of entrapment. Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who prosecuted the “Blind Sheikh” behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, explained the confusion around the claims of entrapment.
In Idaho, it was discovered that the Lieutenant-Governor’s office has paid almost $27,000 since 2019 to political operative Parrish Miller for “professional services.” A review of Miller’s social media discovered repeated calls for violence against law enforcement and revolting against the government.
In Miami, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio pled guilty to burning a Black Lives Matter banner that was stolen from a church in Washington D.C. and one count of attempted possession of a large-capacity ammunition device.
In Auburn, Mass., a group called Super Fun Happy America held an event to honor the “heroes of Jan. 6” who took part in the Capitol riot. The group’s vice president and at least one other member are facing charges for their participation in the attack.
A Drug Enforcement Agency agent from California was arrested for his involvement in the Jan. 6 riot.
In New York, a man who threatened a federal judge overseeing General Michael Flynn’s case was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He also threatened to start “cutting down” the judge’s staff.
In Haverhill, Mass., a white supremacist was arrested for assault with a dangerous weapon, property damage to intimidate, defacing property and threat to injure at a church.
Hostile Foreign Influence Operations
Senators Introduce Legislation to Tackle Covert Cash to Universities
Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) has introduced new legislation, the Foreign Funding Accountability Act of 2021, to force universities and colleges to disclose any foreign funding above $25,000 (the current requirement is $250,000), disclose the full names of the foreign source of funding and disclose the specific purpose of the donation.
The proposed legislation comes after Clarion Project released its Covert Cash documentary and multiple exposes about the foreign funding of campuses. See the foreign funding to your local college or university here.
The bill currently has three additional co-sponsors: Republican Senators Tim Scott, Marsha Blackburn and Bill Haggerty. It is being considered by the Senate Finance Committee.
Other Hostile Foreign Influence Ops Developments
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, met with the terrorism-linked Qatar Foundation twice over the past year regarding Qatari investment in his district. The U.S.-Qatar Business Council spent $19,000 on sponsoring Swalwell and his wife’s travel. Also on the trip was Rep. Gallego (D-AZ), Rep. McClain (R-MI), Rep. Correa (D-CA) and Rep. Jacobs (D-CA).
The chairman of former President Trump’s inaugural fund, Tom Barrack, was arrested for covertly acting as an agent of influence for the United Arab Emirates. The UAE has spent over $100 million on influence operations in the U.S. since 2016. Saudi Arabia, which is financially linked to one of Barrack’s co-defendants, has spent over $112 million.
The Chinese telecommunications company Huawei has hired Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta. In addition to being viewed as an espionage threat, the Justice Department has accused Huawei of illegally assisting Iran with technology to suppress dissent and of trying to do business with North Korea. Podesta previously lobbied for another entity linked to China’s Communist Party.
An expose revealed that there is a “shadow industry” of online disinformation operations linked to Russia, China and other governments around the world. Researchers identified 65 companies around the world that were hired to influence opinion with disinformation by manipulating social media.
Other Ideological Extremism
Unmarked Graves of Indigineous Children Spark Flurry of Canadian Church Burnings
In Canada, 54 churches have been burned or vandalized over the past two months. The wave of violence was sparked by the discovery of unmarked graves near a residential school that contained the remains of 215 Native American children. Additional graves were subsequently discovered.
Sovereign Citizens Seize Million-Dollar Home
In Baltimore, Md., five extremists with Sovereign Citizen-like beliefs entered a mansion that was up for sale and declared ownership as a “sovereign acquisition” and refused to leave. One perpetrator is a convicted sex offender with previous arrests for burglary and illegal possession of weapons. Public reporting has not stated whether they are connected to the Moorish movement that has been connected to illegal squatting incidents across the country.
QUOTABLE
“Democracy calls us to have uncomfortable conversations. It asks us to listen to each other even when we would rather be listening to ourselves - or to people enough like us that we might as well be listening to ourselves. It is easier and more comfortable for us to live in perpetual high dudgeon inside our echo chambers than it is to have a meaningful conversation with people who disagree with us.
The entire outrage industry has been designed to keep us in our bubbles, never challenged by disagreement and never required to think that we might be wrong.”
―
Prof. Michael Austin, We Must Not Be Enemies: Restoring America's Civic Tradition, (2019)
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This from a dear friend and fellow memo reader:
Georgia Democrats Admit They’re ‘F**ked’
A couple of months ago, I had a long phone conversation with an old friend from Douglas County, Georgia. Among other things, we talked about the election there and, when I mentioned suspicions of fraud, my friend said he didn’t believe Democrats had fabricated votes in Fulton County. Instead, he said, they had exploited the Secretary of State’s decision (contradicting state law) to permit widespread mail-in voting with drop boxes. What Democrats did with that loophole, my friend explained, was to deploy an army of ballot harvesters who were soliciting votes in grocery store parking lots and they knew whose votes they were looking for, IYKWIMAITYD. So, according to my friend, the election wasn’t exactly stolen, but it was not exactly legitimate, either.
That experiment in mass mail-in voting was made necessary, according to its defenders, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Be that as it may, the Georgia legislature was determined to prevent any future such improvisations, and passed a new election law which, as Gov. Brian Kemp has said, makes it “easier to vote, but harder to cheat.”
Without cheating, can Georgia Democrats win? They don’t think so:
On Monday, Politico channeled the freakout from Georgia liberals. The eye-grabbing headline:
‘We’re f—ed’: Dems fear turnout catastrophe from GOP voting laws
There’s growing concern — bordering on alarm — about the potential impact in 2022 of the raft of new voting restrictions.
Reporters Maya King, David Siders and Daniel Lippman began:
After Georgia Republicans passed a restrictive voting law in March, Democrats here began doing the math.
The state’s new voter I.D. requirement for mail-in ballots could affect the more than 270,000 Georgians lacking identification. The provision cutting the number of ballot drop boxes could affect hundreds of thousands of voters who cast absentee ballots that way in 2020 — and that’s just in the populous Atlanta suburbs alone.
…“If there isn’t a way for us to repeat what happened in November 2020, we’re f—ed,” said Nsé Ufot, CEO of the Stacey Abrams-founded New Georgia Project. “We are doing what we do to make sure that not only our constituents, our base, the people, the communities that we organize with, get it. We’re trying to make sure that our elected officials get it as well.”
Sometimes mainstream media outlets toss out numbers to make political points without citing the sources. . So where did Politico come up with that 270,000 number? They don’t say. They also don’t say if that number includes those who are not legally residing in Georgia or even if they’re U.S. citizens.
In any case, that number seems rather high since without ID you can’t do banking, driving, or just purchasing a beer among many other things. . . .
The most likely source for that 270,000 number is . . . an Atlanta Journal Constitution article published on June 1. Ironically, that same article makes clear that requiring identification is not really a barrier to voting.
What is incomprehensible to me is how these 270,000 people somehow got registered to vote without being able to prove who they are.
Let’s think about this: You could fill out a voter registration form just using any name — write in “Max Dorian Fried,” for example — and any address (e.g., 755 Battery Ave SE) and you’re a registered voter. And so far as we know, there are 270,000 such phantom registrations in Georgia, of “voters” who have no way of proving they actually exist, much less that they meet the legal eligibility requirements for voting.
This was how Stacey Abrams and her crew were able to work their electoral voodoo in 2020, a species of swindling they call “democracy.”
(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
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Selected from HOOVER DAILY(edited.)
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Mazel tov to Dr. Deborah Lipstadt on her nomination by President Biden as the Special Envoy to combat antisemitism. We hope that the Senate will speedily confirm her as Ambassador.
Atlanta has long been fortunate to have Dr. Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University and the founding director of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, as an active member of our community, blessing us with the opportunity to fully appreciate all her gifts. She is a meticulous historian, a passionate teacher, and a fearless advocate for the Jewish people, and she is our friend.
We know the depth of expertise that Dr. Lipstadt will bring to this role once she is confirmed will help to advance the work of combatting the ever-concerning surge in global antisemitism, work that is more important now than ever. We wish Dr. Lipstadt continued success as she begins this new role. We are confident that her leadership will push us forward in unparalleled ways.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The more outrageous the myth the longer it persists because you cannot grab a cloud:
The Myth of ‘Occupied Palestinian Territories’: Part One | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
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Melanie gets it:
The invisible victims of jihadi violence
Controllers of this “narrative” don't get the agenda of the people who are coming for them, too
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Jackie Mason insights:
https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/interviews-and-profiles/jackie-masons-last-interview-the-famous-comedian-
spoke-at-length-about-his-long-relationship-with-
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