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Could the protests sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini be a tipping point for the Iranian people to affect real change in their country? Investigative journalist Lisa Daftari sits with PragerU CEO Marissa Streit to discuss Iran’s role in terror attacks around the world, the strange alliance between far-leftists and Islamist extremists, and what the West can do to support the Iranian people in their fight against their tyrannical government.
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The new lawlessness gripping America
Mindless nihilistic destruction is now tolerated by the elites.
The new lawlessness gripping America
By Sean Collins
US correspondent
One evening a few weeks ago, about 100 young people ransacked a Wawa convenience store in Philadelphia. The mob stole merchandise, knocked over shelves and threw food and drinks around, leaving the store looking like a natural disaster had hit it. Many got their phones out to record the madness. As chaos reigned, a young woman twerked on a counter. Fighting spilled out into the parking lot.
The rampage in Wawa mirrored an incident in Philadelphia a month earlier, when dozens of youths trashed the Zion Cuisine restaurant in the Germantown area of the city. Teens flipped tables, broke glasses and threw chairs at the staff. And scenes such as those at Wawa and Zion Cuisine are not unique to Philadelphia – they are happening all over America. Two weeks ago in Virginia, a group of teens assaulted a movie-theatre employee while ransacking a concession counter.
There is a lot of talk about crime in the US at the moment. Republican candidates have prioritised the issue while campaigning for next month’s Midterm elections. Their focus on crime is understandable. Since 2020 and the George Floyd riots, there have been spikes in assaults, burglary, robbery and car thefts. Homicides jumped up 29 per cent in 2020 and rose again by 4.3 per cent in 2021. Crime is also a concern shared by many Americans. A Morning Consult poll finds that more than three-quarters of voters think violent crime is a major problem in the United States. And another poll, from Monmouth University, finds that crime is the second-highest priority, after inflation, for all voters going into the Midterms.
At the same time, we shouldn’t slip into thinking that the latest crime discussion is just a revival of traditional ‘law and order’ politics. Yes, the Republicans are trying to use the issue to their advantage. But rising crime is a real problem. And while some Democrats respond with shouts of ‘that’s racist’, both black and white Americans are concerned about crime – indeed, black people in urban areas are disproportionately the victims of crime.
More importantly, many people now feel American society is spinning out of control. There is a growing sense of social breakdown, a sense that the veneer of civilisation is being eroded.
As with the rampages at Wawa and Zion Cuisine in Philadelphia, it is the randomness of the damage and violence stands out. There were no obvious reasons for the ransackings – beyond a nihilistic desire to destroy. And it is all captured on phones for the fun of it.
The disorder is everywhere. Innocent pedestrians on the streets of New York and other cities get sucker punched by attackers, often for no apparent reason. Carjackings by juveniles are skyrocketing in Washington, DC. In Brooklyn, a man shot and killed a McDonald’s worker after his mother complained about being served cold French fries.
A visible marker of social disorder is the phenomenon of mass shoplifting in pharmacies and other retail stores, which is happening so often that it is becoming normalised. Videos capture people filling huge bags with goods and facing no resistance from staff as they stroll out the door. Stolen items are then resold on the streets, on eBay or, in the more sophisticated operations, relabelled and shipped overseas. Pharmacy chain Rite-Aid reported in September that it had lost $5million in stolen goods in the prior three months. Last year Walgreens was forced to close more than a dozen of its stores in San Francisco due to shoplifting.
The roots of this social breakdown no doubt run deep. But it’s clear what has triggered the recent spate of crime – the riots following the death of George Floyd in May 2020. Those political protests very quickly degenerated into anti-social destructiveness, causing billions of dollars of damage and resulting in dozens of deaths. That rioting was tolerated – indeed celebrated – by liberals. In many places, the authorities sent a clear signal that it is okay to tear things down – anything goes. When social order was not enforced, a wave of homicides and other crimes followed.
Immediately following the riots, Democratic Party officials began adopting a range of policies favoured by the Black Lives Matter movement, such as demonising and defunding the police, ending cash bail and ‘decarceration’ – that is, reducing the number of violent offenders in prison. Whether through design or not, police numbers in many cities have declined significantly since 2020. Philadelphia has a critical shortage of officers with 500 unfilled vacancies. Los Angeles has lost 700 officers since the riots. Police are often slow to respond to reports of crime, if they respond at all. According to Chicago Sun-Times, police made arrests in just 12 per cent of reported crimes last year, which is the lowest level in Chicago history.
Leftist prosecutors have overridden criminal laws passed by state legislatures and have instead simply decided to stop enforcing many offences, on the grounds that the laws have a racist impact. In Philadelphia, district attorney Larry Krasner has overseen a 70 per cent decline in prosecuting felonies and misdemeanours. Krasner’s negligence has led to the highest murder rate in Philadelphia’s history, a record number of carjackings and a wave of theft and other crimes. In San Francisco, former district attorney Chesa Boudin adopted no-cash bail, reduced incarceration and other BLM policies. He also declared he would not prosecute street offences, such as public camping, public urination and blocking sidewalks. After having to live with the effects of Boudin’s policies – which led to an increase in murder, burglaries, car theft and homelessness – even the people of this most liberal of cities could no longer tolerate him. Boudin was recalled from office by voters in June.
While these policies are advocated in the name of ‘anti-racism’, they are often not popular among black Americans. Research by Zach Goldberg finds that white Democrats are the strongest supporters of defunding the police, while black Democrats express much weaker support for cutting law-enforcement policies.
Most voters don’t have an ideological agenda and those who live in high-crime areas experience the bad effects of not enforcing the law. In contrast, guilt-ridden Democrats appear to have adopted a saviour complex towards black people. As Goldberg notes, in the aftermath of George Floyd, white Democrats have become ‘fixated on distinguishing themselves as “good white people”, who are doing something (however counterproductive) to protect minorities from the “racist” institutions that “victimise” them. The downside of de-policing either doesn’t register, is rationalised or dismissed altogether.’
Serious spikes in crime and social breakdown are happening and it is not racist to notice. No one, whatever his or her background, wants to live in a society where stores get trashed by rampaging teens or people are subject to random violent attacks just for walking down the street. Affluent people can insulate themselves from this disorder – whether by living in safer areas or by hiring private security – but most people have to live with the consequences of the elite’s misguided policies.
American society is breaking down because the people in charge won’t enforce the law. The authorities have abdicated their responsibilities. Ordinary people will need to take matters into their own hands. They can start by exercising their democratic rights to hold those officials to account.
Sean Collins is a writer based in New York. Visit his blog, The American Situation.
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I cannot wait for Bibi's autobiography - "My Story," to be released.
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Netanyahu: Obama had ‘not just bad policy, but malice’ towards Israel
The first time Netanyahu met Obama was in 2007 when the former was opposition leader and the latter was a freshman senator.
The Obama administration tried to “force confrontations” with Israel, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says in his new autobiography, Bibi: My Story.
In their first meeting in the White House in 2009, US President Barack Obama threatened Netanyahu, the latter alleged.
“You know, people often read me wrong, but I come from Chicago,” Obama said as the meeting was about to end. “I know how to deal with tough rivals.”
Then Netanyahu said that Obama did something else “that deeply shocked me because it was so opposed to his restrained character. The message was clear and it was meant to strike fear in me.”
Netanyahu does not say what Obama said or did to threaten him, but in a recently published biography of the prime minister called Cracking the Netanyahu Code, journalist Mazal Mualem said that Obama gestured as though he was slitting someone’s throat while saying he knows how to deal with Netanyahu.
“Mr. President,” Netanyahu responded, “I am sure you meant what you said. But I am the prime minister of Israel, and I will do all that I can to defend my country.”
The first time Netanyahu met Obama was in 2007, when the former was the opposition leader and the latter was a freshman senator. Netanyahu thought even though they had very different points of view – Obama “championed the social-democratic idea; I was an economic conservative and security hawk” – that they could work well together.
Netanyahu dismissed his first impression a paragraph later, calling it “wishful thinking,” and scoffed at Obama as someone who “saw the world through anti-colonialist glasses,” but did not understand the historic facts of the Israel-Palestinian conflict in which “if there is any colonialism... it is Arab colonialism that began in the Muslim conquest of the Land of Israel, after which the land was emptied of most of its Jews.”
After Obama became president, Netanyahu wrote that he felt the tension between them was beyond the usual pressure from US presidents over the Palestinian issue, but was rather “something much deeper, ideologically and personally.”
Netanyahu also expressed frustration at being unable to swing the Obama administration to his side when it came to stopping the Iranian nuclear program.
Former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel “tied America’s ability to stop Iran’s advancements in the nuclear area to our advances on the Palestinian track,” the former prime minister lamented. “The equation he made was clear as day: the US had no possibility to advance in stopping Iran without getting something in return for the Palestinians.”
During a 2010 White House visit, Obama gave Netanyahu and his staff “an assignment,” which the Israeli leader resented, saying that the president talked to them “like we were employees in his business, or students in his class, not representatives of a sovereign state.”
The assignment was to come up with concessions in Jerusalem that would renew talks with the Palestinians. After a few hours, Netanyahu walked out of the White House.
Ahead of Netanyahu’s visit to Washington the following year, the administration told him that Obama would be publicly calling for a “Palestinian state based on 1967 lines with land swaps.”
Netanyahu called secretary of state Hilary Clinton and asked: “Why are you forcing a confrontation?”
After Obama talked about 1967 lines in the Oval Office press gaggle at the end of that meeting, Netanyahu said: “It’s not going to happen,” and spoke at length about Israel’s security challenges.
Netanyahu said that Obama’s chief of staff, William Daley, told his diplomatic adviser Ron Dermer: “Does your boss always lecture people hosting him in their office?”
“Only when they’re kicking our country in the face,” Dermer retorted.
Perhaps the best-known Obama-Netanyahu confrontation occurred when the prime minister spoke against the Iran nuclear deal in March 2015 before both houses of Congress, a speech that the Obama administration vehemently opposed.
While Netanyahu writes about the tension and drama before the speech, and of being warned by various members of Congress and friends in high places in the US that he should either back off giving the speech entirely or tread very cautiously, he writes almost nothing about the fallout.
Netanyahu implies that the fallout from the speech and damage to bipartisan US support for Israel was a fiction cooked up by political rivals like Prime Minister Yair Lapid and critics in the Israeli media, citing concurrent polls about Americans’ support for Israel.
Conversely, Netanyahu portrays the effect of the speech as neutral to positive, saying that Sen. Chuck Schumer, currently majority leader, told him that the speech moved six Democratic senators to support a bill requiring Congressional review of any deal lifting sanctions on Iran. He also quotes several US newspapers talking about the speech as likely to have a big impact.
Netanyahu, who hopes to return to the Prime Minister’s Office after the November 1 election, was very careful not to criticize US President Joe Biden, and portrayed him as a friend of Israel.
He writes that early in the Obama years, vice president Biden told Netanyahu that he does not have many friends in the administration, but that Netanyahu can call him anytime.
In March 2010, the Jerusalem Municipality announced the construction of 1,600 homes in Ramat Shlomo, a neighborhood beyond the Green Line, during Biden’s visit to Israel.
Netanyahu said he was surprised by the announcement, and accused an unnamed Jerusalem City Council member from the Meretz Party of trying to sow conflict between him and the Obama administration.
Biden and Netanyahu worked together on their response; Netanyahu expressed regret for the timing of the announcement, and said that this is just a preliminary step in the planning process.
Then, Netanyahu wrote, they had a pleasant dinner, without mentioning that Biden came an hour and a half late. According to Netanyahu, Biden even thanked him for making the public statement and removing him from the midst of US-Israel tensions.
It was the rest of the Obama administration that escalated, Netanyahu said, recalling that Clinton told him the construction announcement was “a personal insult to the president.”
Netanyahu also provides plenty of Biden-isms, with various folksy statements and stories Biden told him.
For example, Biden advised Netanyahu: “There’s no sense dying on a small cross.”
Or when Netanyahu told Biden that for the US, stopping the Iranian nuclear threat is important but for Israel it is an existential matter, Biden told Netanyahu a joke: a chicken suggested to a pig that they give their farmer some bacon and eggs. The pig says to the chicken, “for you, that’s a one-time donation. For me, it’s a lifetime commitment.”
Bibi: My Story was published in Hebrew on Friday, and is set to be released in English on Tuesday. The quotes in this article are translated from the Hebrew version.
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Israel’s ‘Iron Triangle of Peace’
By Benjamin Netanyahu
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Some policy makers contend that the way to keep it on course is through soft power. The superiority of democratic values and culture, they contend, will overcome the forces of violence and aggression. But such thinking doesn’t withstand historical scrutiny. If evil forces have overwhelming military and economic might, they can and will defeat our best intentions. Even Abraham Lincoln needed a decisive victory in America’s bloodiest war before the better angels of human nature could prevail.
The key to peace and human progress is the combination of soft and hard power. I have devoted most of my life to ensuring that my country, the Jewish state of Israel, has enough power to defend itself, protect its values and secure its future. For this purpose I advanced the concept known as the “Iron Triangle of Peace,” which set out to maximize Israel’s prosperity through a combination of economic, military and diplomatic power.
This necessitated a transformation of Israel’s semi-socialist economy into a free-market one. As finance minister (2003-05) and prime minister (1996-99 and 2009-21), I led a free-market revolution, which unshackled Israel’s economy and turned it into a global powerhouse of innovation and enterprise. Over the past two decades, our nation’s companies made technological advances in such areas as medicine, agriculture and water. Israel’s gross domestic output per capita, which long trailed those of Western democracies, now exceeds that of Britain, France, Japan and Germany.
As Israel’s economic and technological power have developed, so too have its military capabilities. The Israeli military today is equipped not only with fighter jets, tanks, submarines and drones, but also with superb intelligence and cyber capabilities, which have saved the lives of countless Israeli citizens and visitors. The combination has resulted in greater diplomatic strength, as more countries have sought to benefit from our success.
Far from being a pariah state, Israel now has robust diplomatic relations with more than 160 countries. I helped bring about these diplomatic fruits and was the first Israeli prime minister to visit countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, as well as Australia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and many African nations. During my tenure, we forged ties with the Baltic states and the Visegrad countries of Eastern Europe—in addition to developing a pact with Greece and Cyprus to extract gas from our seabed, which we’ve begun to use to supply Europe.
But the Iron Triangle of Peace produced its most dramatic breakthrough in our own neighborhood: the Middle East. For 25 years we were told that peace with Arab nations would come only if we first resolved our conflict with the Palestinians. To many Israelis, that presented an insurmountable obstacle, given that the Palestinians have long demonstrated they want a state instead of—not next to—Israel. There had to be another way. The path to peace, in my estimation, wouldn’t go through the Palestinians but around them. And that is exactly what has happened.
My government’s approach has been made possible by a profound change in thinking among many Arab leaders, who now view Israel not as an enemy but as an indispensable ally against a belligerent Tehran. Many of these leaders took note of my opposition to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which showered the Iranian regime with international approval and billions of dollars to fund its aggression and terror.
Shortly after I addressed a joint session of Congress on this topic in March 2015, several Arab leaders secretly requested to meet with me. These meetings ultimately foreshadowed the Abraham Accords, the September 2020 agreement orchestrated by the Trump administration that normalized Israel’s relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
The results have been remarkable. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis now regularly fly over the skies of Saudi Arabia to the U.A.E. and Bahrain. Sudan is no longer a way station for Iranian arms transported through the Nile Valley. Israeli and Gulf entrepreneurs are busy forming joint ventures with multimillion-dollar investments. A joint railway project among Israel, the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia will connect the region once the kingdom joins the accords, which I believe will happen within a few years. If the policies of peace through strength persist, we may soon be able to envision an end to the broader Arab-Israeli conflict.
I have been privileged to live a life of purpose, one in which I’ve helped bring my vision of peace through strength for Israel into being. For three millennia, the Jewish people have never given up on our dream to live freely and prosperously in our ancient homeland, the land of Zion. Having restored our independence, we won’t let anyone bring an end to this miracle.
Mr. Netanyahu served as Israel’s prime minister, 1996-99 and 2009-21. He is leader of the opposition Likud Party and author of “Bibi: My Story.”
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This Is What You Get When You Offer the Palestinians a State.. The West is full of wimps who believe you can feed a bully without increasing his hunger. Macron , Biden and Merkel are typical examples.
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JNS.org – For more than 50 years, Israel’s critics have claimed that if Israelis would just agree to create a Palestinian state, the Palestinians would live in peace with them. Well, last month, Israel’s prime minister offered to create a Palestinian state. How did the Palestinians respond? Is the long-promised peace at last dawning upon the Middle East?
Not quite.
At the United Nations on Sept. 22, Prime Minister Yair Lapid announced his willingness to create a non-terrorist Palestinian state. Did the Palestinian Arab leadership respond by announcing an immediate return to the negotiating table to work out the details of the new state?
Hardly. The Palestinians responded with murderous violence. Within 24 hours of Lapid’s declaration, there was a car-ramming attack against Israelis near Havat Gilad that was publicly cheered by the Fatah movement, which is headed by Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas. Another terrorist was caught trying to smuggle several dozen handguns into Israel via the Jordan Valley. Handguns for peace?
The next day, Sept. 25, a Palestinian Arab mob assaulted Israelis on the Temple Mount. On Sept. 27, Palestinian Arabs threw rocks and bombs at Israeli soldiers north of Shechem and carried out a drive-by shooting as well. On Sept. 28, they fired shots at an Israeli motorist south of Hebron and carried out multiple shooting and bombing attacks on Israeli soldiers in Jenin.
In the days to follow, the Palestinian Arabs continued to respond to Lapid’s statehood offer with bombs, bullets and bloodshed. On Sept. 29, they fired shots at an Israeli tour group near Kiryat Arba, stoned Israeli soldiers in Jilazoun and tried to run them over and tried to stone Israeli motorists to death near Bethlehem. When an Arab child died in unrelated circumstances nearby, the peace-loving P.A. Foreign Ministry immediately blamed Israel for his death.
On Oct. 1, Palestinian Arabs threw rocks, firebombs and explosive devices at Israelis in al-Azariya. On Oct. 2, they fired shots at Israelis near Itamar (one was wounded), shot at an Israeli bus and Israeli taxis on the road to Alon Shvut (one driver was wounded), stabbed and wounded an Israeli guard outside the Rimon prison and tried to ram an Israeli with a car in Jilazoun.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I note that on Oct. 6, Palestinian Arabs near Qalqilya threw firebombs at Israelis, and dozens of others near Ramallah threw rocks, hitting one Israeli in the head. On Oct. 8, Palestinian Arabs shot and killed an 18-year-old female Israeli soldier near Shuafat. Dozens of Palestinian Arabs threw firebombs and explosive devices at Israelis in Jenin and fired shots at them.
As I write this, there has been no let-up. On Oct. 11, Palestinian Arab terrorists murdered an Israeli near Shavei Shomron. On Oct. 14, they opened fire on Israelis in Jenin. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
All of this leads to two obvious questions: Why have the Arabs responded to Lapid’s statehood offer in this way? And why is it that advocates of Palestinian statehood are always mistaken in their predictions about peace?
As to the first question, one need only look at the historical record. The UN offered the Palestinian Arabs a state in 1947. They responded with violence. Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert offered them a state. They responded with violence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered them something resembling a state—again, bombs and bullets.
Clearly, the consensus among the Palestinian Arabs is that a state composed of most of Judea, Samaria and Gaza is insufficient. They consider all of Israel to be “Palestine.” They want it all. Anything less is unacceptable. And the way they show that they dislike something is to murder Jews.
The answer to the second question is that most advocates of Palestinian statehood—the Jewish left, the State Department, much of the news media—simply find it too painful to admit that their cherished belief is mistaken. It is frustrating and disorienting to acknowledge that creating a Palestinian Arab state will not bring peace.
To do so would mean admitting that there is no “solution” to the Israeli-Arab conflict in the conventional sense. Westerners are accustomed to resolving international and regional conflicts through compromise and reason. It’s too hard to accept that, in some parts of the world, compromise and reason simply don’t work.
Thus, supporters of the Palestinian Arab cause can operate only according to theories, never according to actual experience or facts. They have to pretend that their proposal has never been tried before, in order to create the false hope that it can work. But it has been tried before. Over and over. It never works, as Lapid has belatedly discovered.
Stephen M. Flatow is a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror. The opinions herein are his own.
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If Biden does this he will create a constitutional crisis because this is a rejection of a SCOTUS decision whose meaning has been purposely mangled to stir up discord in order to capture the "Soccer Mom"Vote." The real intent and effect of the decision was to give Democracy an opportunity to dictate.
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Biden vows to codify abortion rights if Democrats maintain control: 'We can do this'
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