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Is it free markets or government intervention that is mostly to blame for the diminishing middle class in this country? Batya Ungar-Sargon, Newsweek’s deputy opinion editor, joins Dennis and provides a Marxist perspective on the issue. You may be surprised how Dennis responds!
| Watch Now +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Putin has cancer? +++ Vladimir Putin has cancer and likely survived assassination attempt: US intel analystsEvan Simko-Bednarski ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Biden follows in Obama's footsteps when it comes to Israel as does Blinken: +++ Biden Is No Friend of Israel by Con Coughlin Nothing better illustrates the Biden administration's deep-seated antipathy towards Israel than the leaking of highly classified material about the alleged role Israeli intelligence played in the assassination of a top-ranking Iranian terrorist, Colonel Sayad Khodayee, of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC). For decades, Israel and the US have enjoyed a unique intelligence-sharing relationship whereby the two countries share the most sensitive material on their respective intelligence, security and military operations. But the deep-seated bond of trust that forms the bedrock of this vital relationship has been seriously compromised as a result of the Biden administration's egregious decision to leak details of Israel's alleged involvement in the killing of Colonel Sayad Khodayee, a senior commander in the Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC). Khodayee, a 50-year-old officer in the IRGC's Quds force, was killed earlier this month when two gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire as he sat in a car outside his home. He has subsequently been identified as the deputy head of Unit 840, which is tasked with conducting attacks against foreign targets, including against Israel. Western intelligence sources say Khodayee was directly responsible for attempted terrorist attacks against Israelis, European and American civilians as well as government officials from as far afield as Colombia, Kenya, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Cyprus. Khodayee's importance to the Quds Force was reflected in the fact that several senior commanders of the IRGC and Quds Force paid their respects at his funeral in Tehran. The Israeli government, which has a long-standing policy of neither confirming nor denying its involvement in overseas operations, declined to comment on the killing, which took place in Tehran on May 22. Iran, however, was quick to blame Israel for carrying out the attack, with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi claiming "the hands of global arrogance" -- a reference to Israel and the US -- were responsible. "I call on security officials to seriously investigate the crime and I have no doubt that revenge on criminals for the pure blood of this honourable martyr is inevitable," he said. IRGC spokesman Ramazan Sharif said the killing of Khodayee would strengthen its determination to "defend security, independence and national interests and to confront the enemies of the Iranian nation". Iran's view that Israel was behind the shooting will have been strengthened, moreover, by the leaking of classified information by the Biden administration claiming Israel was responsible for the attack. According to a detailed report into the killing in The New York Times, an administration official claims that Israel provided Washington with a top secret briefing that it was behind the killing. Whether or not this report is true is almost academic. The real crime, one that represents a serious breach of the long-standing intelligence-sharing arrangements between the US and Israel, is that one of President Joe Biden's senior officials has been willing to betray the trust of such a close ally. The anger felt by Israel's entire security establishment about the leak were reflected in comments made by Israeli Member of Knesset Ben Barak, the chair of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee who is also a former deputy head of Mossad. Speaking on Israel's Radio 103 FM, Barak declared: "We have very many close relationships and a lot of cooperation between us, which all depend on trust, and when it is violated in some way then it damages future cooperation." At a time when tensions are already running high between Iran and the West over the stalled nuclear talks, there are quite justifiable concerns in Israel that the leak will prompt Iran to exact revenge by attacking Israeli targets, even if it later transpires that Israel was not responsible for the assassination. The timing of the leak also indicates an underlying willingness on the part of the Biden administration to undermine Israel when, in public, the White House is seeking to portray itself as an ally of Israel, as indicated by its recent seeming decision not to remove the IRGC from the US list of designated terrorist organisations. As for motivation, it is unclear if the leak was deliberate, to harm Israel, or from not fully appreciating the jeopardy it could potentially cause Israel, an act which would reflect the Biden administration's profound lack of understanding as to what is at stake with the entire Iran issue. Israel had fiercely resisted Iran's demand, made during the nuclear talks, that removing the IRGC from the terrorist list was a pre-condition of agreeing to a new deal. But Mr Biden has denied the Iranian demand, and last week confirmed that the IRGC would remain on Washington's Foreign Terrorist Organizations list. Whatever goodwill Mr Biden hoped to generate with Jerusalem by keeping the IRGC on the list will, though, have been dissipated by his administration's utterly contemptible treatment of its Israeli ally. Con Coughlin is the Telegraph's Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at Gatestone Institute. +++++++++++ US Secretary of State Antony Blinken seems to think that his job entails creating moral equivalence where it doesn’t exist. The way in which he approaches Palestinian Authority aggression against Israel is a prime example. In fairness to Blinken, he was appointed to toe the line of US President Joe Biden and the crew behind him. Luckily for all concerned – other than the Jewish state – America’s top diplomat possesses the right ideological outlook and ambition to fulfill the task with little effort. The only pushback he encounters emanates from “Squad” Democrats and their apologists, who consider Israel to be a criminal entity and view the Palestinians as its victims. In other words, while Blinken places Palestinian terrorism on a par with Israel’s response to it, the far-left members of his party don’t even bother with the charade of equivocation. This distinction is moot, however. Nothing short of Israeli suicide will satisfy Squad or Palestinian demands. So, peace of the kind that the Biden administration touts is nowhere on the horizon. Blinken and Abbas IT IS NOT clear whether Blinken is oblivious to this or merely enjoys going through the motions that playing his prominent role in international relations requires. Either way, the game itself is dangerous for Israel. “Good to speak with Palestinian Authority President [Mahmoud] Abbas… to discuss maintaining calm and refraining from escalatory actions and the importance of advancing a two-state solution.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken According to the Abbas-controlled WAFA news agency, the head honcho in Ramallah was buoyed by the Blinken-initiated conversation. Whenever the little despot is treated by Washington with deference, he is encouraged to up his ante. Nor does he listen to any form of nuance. While Blinken may have been referring to both Israelis and Palestinians when he mentioned “maintaining calm, refraining from escalatory actions and the importance of advancing a two-state solution,” Abbas heard it with selective ears. It is thus that WAFA’s report on the telephonic tête-à-tête had a very different ring to it. In the PLO mouthpiece’s recounting of the call, Blinken and Abbas “discussed… the grave situation on [sic] the Palestinian arena, in addition to the ongoing Israeli escalation against the Palestinian people in Jerusalem and its holy sites.” The publication further cited Abbas as having “indicated that the current situation cannot be tolerated given the absence of a political horizon, the lack of international protection for the Palestinian people and the Israeli occupation authorities’ evasion of their obligations under signed agreements and resolutions of international legitimacy, along with their ongoing unilateral actions and settler intrusions into Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, including the recent ‘March of the Flags,’ organized by Israeli Jewish supremacists to celebrate Israel’s occupation and colonization of East Jerusalem.” It went on to assert that both Blinken and Abbas “touched upon the fact that Palestinian [sic] are denied access to Jerusalem’s holy sites to perform their religious rites and prayers freely in flagrant violation of the historical status quo in addition to ongoing forced expulsions of Palestinian families from Jerusalem neighborhoods, home demolitions, extrajudicial killings, unabated colonial settlement construction and settler terrorism.” DESPITE BLINKEN’S leanings, it is doubtful that he was an active participant in the above depiction. Furthermore, as a perpetual liar, Abbas likely fed WAFA an embellished account even of his own ramblings. Self-aggrandizement, especially at Israel’s expense, is his modus operandi – a way of pretending to the Palestinians over whom he rules that he is not only relevant on the world stage but just as bent on Israel’s destruction as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. This explains the rest of the WAFA article, through which the PA chief boasted about what he ostensibly announced to Blinken: that the “Palestinian leadership is in the process of taking measures to confront this Israeli escalation, in light of the international community’s inability to compel Israel to comply with the resolutions of international legitimacy and halt its criminal and occupying practices and measures of ethnic cleansing and racial discrimination, and in light of the US administration’s silence on these Israeli provocations and practices, which flagrantly violate international law.” He wanted readers to believe that he “stressed the need for the US administration to turn its words into actions, and not be satisfied with the policy of condemnation, denunciation and silence on these unilateral Israeli measures.” Interspersing reality with fantasy, WAFA acknowledged that Blinken had “affirmed the Biden administration’s commitment to the two-state solution, preserving the status quo and halting colonial settlement expansion, forced expulsions and unilateral actions on both sides, while stressing the administration’s commitment to reopening the US consulate in Jerusalem.” Blinken probably didn’t use the word “colonial,” but the rest of the paraphrase was accurate, as is evident in all Biden administration blather about the goings-on in Israel. This, of course, now includes platitudes about the May 11 death of Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh during an IDF raid in Palestinian-terrorist-infested Jenin. The PA is propagating the absurd claim that Abu Akleh was targeted by Israeli snipers. Israel is attempting to complete an investigation, requesting neutral American assistance in the endeavor. But the PA is refusing to hand over the bullet that killed her. Blinken and his buddies overseas have been urging Israel to complete a probe into the incident as soon as possible. What they don’t appear to grasp, or would rather gloss over, is that a ballistic examination cannot be performed without the ammunition. WAFA chronicled Blinken’s comment to Abbas on this matter as an expression of the US administration’s “keenness to conduct an investigation… with the aim of prosecuting and holding [Abu Akleh’s] murderers accountable.” It is implausible that Blinken referred to “murderers” in this context, as remarks by State Department spokesman Ned Price suggested. This is undoubtedly due to the assumption that Abu Akleh was caught in crossfire. WHEN GRILLED about it during his daily briefing on Tuesday, Price replied: “Well, I can tell you what we have urged of our Israeli partners, and Secretary Blinken even over the weekend had another opportunity to reinforce this message with his counterpart, Foreign Minister Lapid. As he told… Lapid, we urge the Israeli government to swiftly conclude their investigation… We expect full accountability for those responsible for [Abu Akleh’s] killing, and… have urged that the sides share their evidence with each other to facilitate that investigation. And we continue to call on all sides to maintain calm and to prevent further escalation.” To avoid the wrath of the Al Jazeera reporter questioning him on why the US isn’t getting involved when the Palestinians “don’t really trust any investigation by the Israelis,” Price then shifted the topic to press freedom. “We stand with journalists around the world who are doing their jobs in situations that sometimes are unfortunately dangerous, where they are often in a position of putting themselves in dangerous situations to do a job, to fulfill a task that is indispensable,” he said. What Price and his boss conveniently omitted this week is that Israel – whose forces were in Jenin due to a sharp spike in deadly terrorist attacks – asked for American help with the investigation, while the PA has been refusing to cooperate. But admonishing Abbas would disrupt the Biden administration’s false narrative about the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” and the nonexistent “two-state solution” to it. Such moral equivalence from Washington is simply immoral. Meanwhile: The U.N. Nuclear Watchdog Must Censure IranA new agreement with Tehran is pointless if IAEA inspectors are unable to do their jobs properly.By Jackie Wolcott and Anthony Ruggiero +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ CNN's Latest Effort to Save Itself By Sarah Arnold ++++++++++++ Another outstanding Biden appointment: +++
+++++++++++++++++++++++ Would this have occurred had Dinowitz not been Jewish? +++ NYC Council to Conduct Unprecedented Probe on Growing Anti-Semitism at CUNY Campuses By: Ilana Siyance New York City’s Council has announced that it will conduct an unprecedented probe into alleged antisemitism at the City University of New York and other local college campuses. …..“The embracement and normalization of BDS by both CUNY students and faculty has fostered an extremely hostile campus environment that has resulted in the more blatant forms of Anti-Semitism that are becoming all too common in our city,” said Bronx Councilman Eric Dinowitz,”CONTINUE +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |
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