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I have always said Californians are not real people and they have determined our values for far too long.+++
And:
Normal people in California must think they're living in a nightmare.
For those who don't know, Newsom has made California a "Sancturary State" for "transgenderism" and the State government will "protect" any one who wants to "transition" including the 10 year old child who's divorced mother who moved to California so she can get him hormones and surgery to be a girl, the father in Texas has joint custody, but the Courts have turned down his efforts to stop her.
And the Democrats list Gavin Newsom as a potential Presidential Candidate.
+++Why Is the LA Zoo Inviting Children to Their Drag Show?
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LA Zoo hosted an "All Ages" drag show with tickets available for "Children" and even "Infants" in partnership with LA Pride. Aldo attended the event to ask parents, zoo administrators, and drag participants why children should be allowed to participate in a sexually charged event.
Learn more about the evils of early sexualization of children, speak out, and take the pledge to protect children’s innocence.
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As long as radical Californians and New Yorkers, malcontent progressives and nut cases in the Democrat Party remain in control of our government our Republic is at risk of dying.
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American Democracy Is Still In Danger
By Larry Diamond, Erin Carter, Brett Carter via Foreign Affairs
Two years ago, the United States’ democratic system of government faced an unprecedented test when supporters of President Donald Trump sought to overturn his election defeat—some through extralegal schemes, others through a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol.
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Name me a nation founded by The UN, is then attacked daily by that organization? Name me a nation constantly reported upon by the world's mass media in biased reports that always blame Israel for misdeeds when objective military officers tell you Israel is one of the few nations in the world that goes over board to avoid civilian casualties.
Israel serves as the world's piñata. Why? Because the world needs a pigeon to blame for everything under the sun. No wonder the blatancy of these attacks roll off their backs as they should..
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What killed the two-state solution? Cheers and cash for terrorists
The Biden administration and leftist groups insist that Israel pave the way for Palestinian sovereignty. But broad support for anti-Jewish terrorism explains why it’s a non-starter.
By JONATHAN S. TOBIN
(January 6, 2023 / JNS) In his initial phone conversation with new Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, to congratulate him and the rest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on taking office, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken conveyed two contradictory messages.
As his boss, President Joe Biden, has done in the last two years, Blinken gave assurances that the administration was committed to Israel’s security and the alliance with Washington. He also paid lip service to a desire to “advance mutual interests,” including Israel’s further integration into the Middle East and a need to address the threat of a nuclear Iran—two points on which Biden’s policies have actually undermined the Jewish state’s interests.
He then got to the real purpose of the call: to “emphasize the continued U.S. commitment to a two-state solution and opposition to policies that endanger its viability.”
This is more than opposition to the presence of Jews in the heart of their historical homeland in Judea and Samaria, or to Jewish rights in all of Jerusalem, including its holy places, such as the Temple Mount. It’s a policy mindset that further empowers forces like Hamas and the supposedly “moderate” Palestinian Authority, the ultimate aim of which is the destruction of, not coexistence with, Israel.
This is the same message Israelis have been receiving from both left-wing and mainstream American-Jewish groups and leaders grudgingly welcoming Netanyahu’s new government. They still cling to the illusion that the phrase “two-state solution” is a magic formula that must be propped up despite the evidence of the last three decades Palestinians have no real interest in it.
This is in stark contrast to public opinion in Israel, where even most of those who voted for the Yair Lapid-led coalition that was defeated by Netanyahu’s right-wing/religious bloc want no part of the kind of policies favored by Biden and liberal Jews abroad.
Lapid may have nodded to a two-state solution as a theoretical ideal, but neither he nor his political allies campaigned on the issue, focusing instead on a failed effort to persuade a majority of voters Netanyahu was a criminal and his coalition a pack of irresponsible extremists. Other than for far-left parties like Meretz, which failed to garner enough votes to win seats in the Knesset, the “peace process” with the Palestinians is a dead letter in Israeli politics. Still, few American-Jewish liberals, for whom this issue is an article of faith, seem willing to grasp their Israeli counterparts have largely discarded faith in the two-state myth.
The release on Thursday from jail of Karim Younis, Israel’s longest-serving security prisoner, is an example of an incident that has a profound impact on Israeli public opinion, but makes no impression on Americans.
The 65-year-old Arab Israeli from a village near Haifa was one of three terrorists who, in 1983, kidnapped and killed IDF Cpl. Avraham Bromberg, 20, when he was on leave and hitching a ride home.
The three members of the Younis family were convicted of murder and sentenced to death, but had their sentences commuted to life in prison. One of them, Karim’s cousin, Sami—who had instructed his two younger relatives to commit the murder—was released in 2011 as part of the deal to free abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity in Gaza.
The sentences of Karim and Maher Younis were reduced in 2012 to 40 years in prison by then-Israeli President Shimon Peres at the behest of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. The move was intended as a goodwill gesture to the P.A. as part of the Obama administration’s many failed attempts to broker a two-state deal.
While Maher is expected to be released in a few weeks, Karim had the distinction of being the terrorist serving the longest consecutive time in an Israeli prison. Anyone who was expecting the latter to emerge after 40 years in jail a changed man repenting for his callous crime, or for his release to be ignored by fellow Arabs ashamed of his conduct, knows nothing about Palestinian society.
Indeed, he was defiant upon his release, expressing pride in his evil act and stating that he would have been glad to give another 40 years for the Palestinian cause. Despite the efforts of Israeli authorities to ensure the event be a low-key affair, Karim Younis was treated to a hero’s welcome in his village where, draped in a Palestinian flag, he was carried around on the shoulders of his many admirers.
It should be noted his hometown is not in the disputed territories, but inside pre-1967 Israel. Yet, he and those cheering his return spoke as if they, too, are “occupied.” Moreover, as Palestinian Media Watch director Itamar Marcus noted this week, not only has he been honored and financially rewarded by the leadership in Ramallah, he was the focus of a recent campaign, organized in P.A. schools, in which 40,000 students wrote letters welcoming him home and lauding him as a role model.
This is hardly an isolated case, as a shockingly biased article published last week in The New York Times showed, Palestinian society is obsessed with honoring “martyrs” who died trying to kill and injure Israelis and Jews. The conceit of the piece centered on the assertions that the Israel Defense Forces have been killing growing numbers of civilians, and that 2022 had been the “deadliest year” since 2005 for Palestinians. But efforts to smear the IDF are being undermined by the fact that most of the Palestinian casualties from such encounters are claimed as operatives by Hamas, Islamic Jihad or terror groups, like the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, associated with the Fatah Party that runs the P.A.
As Honest Reporting pointed out, 90% of those killed by the IDF were involved in violent incidents, with 60% taking part in armed attacks on Israeli civilians and security forces, and the rest being participants in riots. The claim of IDF targeted killings of innocent Palestinian civilians is worse than bad reporting on the part of a journalist biased against Israel, as CAMERA noted in an article on Times correspondent Raja Abdulrahim; it’s a blood libel.
Lies about Israeli actions aside, a crucial fact repeatedly omitted from most coverage of the conflict is that the factions competing for popularity among Palestinians understand the way to gain political influence is by playing a role in terrorism and shedding Jewish blood. The problem is not just that the P.A. engages in a pay-for-slay scheme that rewards Younis and his ilk with salaries and pensions. It’s that such an incentive is so popular neither P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas nor any of his potential successors would dare end it.
The valorization of terror is an integral element of Palestinians’ culture. It’s part and parcel of the way their national identity is inextricably tied to the century-old war on Zionism.
Indeed, Palestinian protests are not motivated by grievances about Israeli policies or aspirations for statehood. Rather, they are about rejecting the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its boundaries might be drawn. That’s why Abbas and his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, refused numerous compromises and peace offers, dating back to the Bill Clinton administration, which would have resulted in the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
This leaves Israel with an anomalous situation in which it must not relinquish security control over Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), even as the Palestinian population is governed in most of the area by Fatah and by Hamas in Gaza, which has functioned as an independent Palestinian state in all but name since the 2007 coup that ushered in the rule of the radical-Islamist group.
All of the above explains why Israeli voters turned their back on parties that support a two-state solution and brought to power a coalition that has stated its determination not to tolerate more Palestinian terrorism.
Unless and until Americans acknowledge the reality of the conflict and the nature of Palestinian politics, the disconnect between the two countries about two states will continue. What both the administration and liberal Jews need to finally understand is that if their coveted solution is dead, it wasn’t slain by so-called Israeli hard-liners. It was murdered by Palestinian cheer and cash for terrorists.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
And:
The Israeli canary in the west's cultural mine
The attacks on Ben-Gvir’s Temple Mount excursion defy reason
MELANIE PHILLIPS Jewish News Syndicate
Two Jews storming Temple Mount (…joke!!) From Twitter
Those scratching their heads over the way western liberals have lost all connection with reason over issues of race, gender and western “colonialism” might usefully look at the reaction to Itamar Ben-Gvir’s visit to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount this week.
Here was a Jew walking for 15 minutes on the site that is most sacred to Judaism. He did it without fanfare or media attention, early in the morning when the compound was almost empty, and didn’t pray there or say anything to stir up trouble.
Yet his visit provoked uproar with claims that it was an extremist act, that it was likely to spark a new terrorist war and even — this from a Ha’aretz columnist — that Ben-Gvir was leading Israel “on the road to hell”.
In any sane universe, this is simply unhinged. Ben-Gvir was fully entitled to be there. He did nothing out of the ordinary. Other Israeli Jews, including government ministers, regularly visit the site.
The people actually responsible for inciting violence over the Temple Mount are the Palestinian Arabs. Since the 1920s, they have been provoking fanatical religious hysteria and the murder of Israelis with the wickedly false claim that the Jews were either storming or planning to destroy the al Aqsa mosque.
Similar claims were made in 2022 when Palestinian Arabs turned al Aqsa into an ammunition store from where they hurled rocks down at Jews praying at the Western Wall and attacked Jews making their way there.
The reason is that, as the site of the Jewish Temple that was the focus of Jewish religious life in ancient Israel until it was destroyed in 70 CE, the Temple Mount stands at the very centre of the Jews’ unique entitlement to Jerusalem and the land.
That’s why the Palestinians have tried to destroy the archeological evidence that has been dug up at the site over the years. They attempt to wipe the Jews out of their own history in the land — centuries before the first Arabs or Muslims invaded it — in order to support the laughably bogus claim that the Palestinian Arabs were its indigenous people.
Yet this use of the Temple Mount for incitement, violence and religious supersessionism draws no condemnation from the western left. They do not acknowledge that this aggression, which strikes against Judaism itself, is the real cause of the Middle East conflict.
Instead, the Biden administration condemned the Ben-Gvir excursion as an “unacceptable” and “unilateral” action that “undercut the historic status quo”. Not only was this untrue, but the status quo, which Israel has upheld, is itself unacceptable.
The status quo prevents Jews and Christians from praying at their own holy site; it restricts non-Muslims to entry through only one of 12 gates while Muslims can use all the gates; it forbids Jews from drinking from the water fountain in the compound because of the claim that Jews are “unclean”.
While falsely asserting that Israel is attempting to drive Muslims out of their holy site, the Palestinian Arabs bellow that no Jew is to be allowed to set foot on the Temple Mount with what Palestinian Authority chieftain Mahmoud Abbas described as “their filthy feet”.
This odious racial discrimination and violence draws no condemnation from the Biden administration or the western left. Instead, it is Ben-Gvir who is accused of racism.
The Oslo Accords state: “The Palestinian side shall ensure free access to, respect the ways of worship in and not make any changes to, the Jewish holy sites.”
At both the Temple Mount and the sacred Jewish site of Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, which is under the control of the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian Arabs have repeatedly broken this pledge.
For years, Jews visiting Joseph’s Tomb have been attacked by Arab rioters and gunmen, most recently on December 21 2022 when Jewish worshippers and the soldiers guarding them came under heavy gunfire.
Yet this draws no condemnation from the Biden administration or the western left. Instead, there are veiled threats that the US will punish Israel for having Ben-Gvir in its government.
In the same way, successive Democratic administrations and other western liberals have held Israel responsible for the Arab war against it on the grounds that Israel is “illegally occupying” Palestinian land.
This is geopolitically illiterate. Only the Jews have a legal, historical and moral entitlement to this land. The Jews are its only extant indigenous people and the Palestinian Arabs are its would-be colonial occupiers, declaring that “not one Jew” will be allowed to live in a state of Palestine.
Yet this attempt to erase the Jews from their own country and even from their own history is ignored by the “anti-racist” western left, who instead accuse Ben-Gvir of promoting ethnic cleansing.
In a savage tweet this week, Sen. Ted Cruz said that the Biden administration’s “pathological obsession” with undermining Israel was endangering the national security of America and its allies.
The administration’s attacks following the Ben-Gvir visit, Cruz said, will convince Palestinian officials that compromise is unnecessary because Democratic administrations “will coerce our Israeli allies into making dangerous concessions”. The administration, he added, consistently seeks to undermine Israel’s security and sovereignty while pouring more than $1 billion into Palestinian areas and “bringing officials from the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organisation to Washington DC”.
This perverse behaviour by western liberals, aided by Israeli leftists who fan the flames by even more hysterically promoting these lies and appeasement, hugely incentivises further Palestinian rejectionism and violence. It also actively emboldens Israel’s existential foes among the world’s tyrannies and kleptocracies who use United Nations resolutions and “lawfare” to try to bring Israel down.
Just imagine if America said that these Palestinian lies and incitement have to stop, that Israel has law and history on its side, and that the only aggressors in this war are the Palestinian Arabs who want to destroy the Jews’ right to their country and historic identity.
The Palestinians’ strategy of extermination would collapse overnight — because the main reason this war never ends is the west’s support for their cause.
The result is the unique and insane situation in which Israel is forced to fund people who continue to build an infrastructure of genocidal warfare that they periodically unleash against Israeli civilians; in which so-called allies prevent Israel from taking measures essential to defend its people against mass murder; and in which the same so-called allies now have the gall to tell Israel that the composition of its government doesn’t meet with their approval.
Israel, however, is not the only example of a looking-glass world in which aggressor and victim, right and wrong, truth and lies have been turned on their heads.
Many are observing similar denials of reality and character assassination in the west’s culture wars, and are concluding that the world has simply gone mad.
Israel’s new Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may turn out to behave badly or unwisely. Ben-Gvir and the other two “extremists” in Israel’s government may promote the fanaticism or recklessness with which they are associated. If they do so, they will deserve to be criticised.
But just as happened with former US President Donald Trump, such a rational, evidence-led approach is vanishingly unlikely. To liberals, there are simply no facts or evidence that can reframe the way they view the Netanyahu government — that it has crossed over to the dark side from which there can be no return.
Antisemitism repudiates reason. Anti-Israelism repudiates reason. It’s well known that the Jews are always the canary in the cultural coal mine.
Today, anti-Jewish bigotry is both symptomatic of and fuelled by a far broader and deeper phenomenon. We can see this in the madness of identity politics. The west, having produced the age of reason, is now intent on destroying it.
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I get the silent treatment. Now I understand how refreshing that actually can be. I am getting it right now but I decided not to ask what I have done wrong.
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Police officer pulls over a speeding car. The Officer says, " Our patrol helicopter clocked you at 80 mph. sir."
The driver says, "Gee, officer, I had it on cruise control at 60, perhaps your radar needs calibrating."
Not looking up from her knitting the wife says sweetly, "Now don't be silly dear, you know that this car doesn't have cruise control."
As the officer writes out the ticket, the driver looks over at his wife and growls, "Can't you keep your mouth shut for once?"
The wife smiles demurely and says, "You should be thankful your radar detector went off when it did."
As the officer makes out the second ticket for the illegal radar detector unit, the man glowers at his wife and says through clenched teeth, "Dammit, woman, can't you keep your mouth shut."
The officer frowns and says, "And I notice that you're not wearing your seat belt, sir. That's an automatic $75 fine."
The driver says, "Yeah, well you see officer, I had it on, but took it off when you pulled me over so that I could get my license out of my back pocket."
The wife says," Now dear you know very well that you didn't have your seat belt on. You never wear your seat belt when you're driving."
And as the police officer is writing out the third ticket the driver turns to his wife and barks, "WHY DON'T YOU SHUT THE HELL UP??"
The officer looks over at the woman and asks, "Does your husband always talk to you this way, Ma'am?"
"Oh heavens no, officer. Only when he's been drinking."
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Inflation has peaked and is slowly dropping.
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What if Inflation Suddenly Dropped and No One Noticed?
By Alan S. Blinder
No, that’s not a prediction; it’s a fact. With one month remaining in 2022 (in terms of available data), inflation in the second half of the year has run vastly lower than in the first half. In fact—and this is astonishing—it’s almost back down to the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Even more astonishing, hardly anyone seems to have noticed.
Yes, there’s a catch or two or three, to which I’ll come back. But first the good news:
Over the past five months (June to November 2022), inflation has slowed to a crawl. Whether measured by the consumer-price index, or CPI, which most people watch, or the price index for personal consumption expenditures, or PCE, which the Federal Reserve prefers, the annualized inflation rate has been around 2.5% over these five months
Yes, you read that right. Yet hardly anyone has noticed this stunning development because of the near-universal concentration on price changes measured over 12-month periods, which are still 7.1% for CPI inflation and 5.5% for PCE inflation.
Normally, focusing on 12-month inflation rates is the right thing to do, for two main reasons. First, it guards against hyperventilation over “blips” in the inflation data, whether up or down. Second, it obviates the need for seasonal adjustment, since, for example, you are comparing prices in November 2022 with those in November 2021.
But when the inflation rate changes abruptly, 12-month averages can leave you watching recent history rather than current events. Today is one of those times.
As mentioned, the CPI inflation rate over the past 12 months has been an alarming 7.1%. But the U.S. economy got there by averaging an appalling 10.6% annualized inflation rate over the first seven months and a mere 2.5% over the last five. The PCE price index tells a similar story, though a somewhat less dramatic one. The 5.5% inflation rate over the past 12 months came from a 7.8% rate over the first seven months followed by a 2.4% rate over the last five.
Lest you think I’m performing numerical sleight-of-hand, the same phenomenon can and does operate in the opposite direction: Inflation can surprise you by leaping upward. It happened in 2021.
Between February 2021 and June 2021, the 12-month CPI inflation rate showed a rise from 1.7% to 5.3%. Bad enough. But if you took that 5.3% number apart, you would have seen that it came from a 3.3% annualized rate between June 2020 and January 2021 (seven months) followed by an 8.2% annualized rate between January 2021 and June 2021 (five months). Thus in June 2021, when it looked as if we had a 5% inflation problem on our hands, we really had an 8% inflation problem. (And the 12-month rate eventually peaked at 9% in June 2022.)
So is today’s true inflation rate a mere 2.5%, meaning that Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve can relax? Not quite. Now for the catches I promised earlier.
First, we’ve had this wonderfully low inflation rate for only five months. That’s longer than one or two months, which is why I’m writing this article. But it’s still too short a time to declare victory.
Second, if you concentrate instead on “core” inflation, which excludes food and energy prices, annual inflation over the past five months has run higher: a 4.7% annual rate for the CPI and 3.7% for the PCE. So the Fed’s fight against inflation isn’t over.
That headline inflation has dropped more than core inflation tells you that lower food or energy inflation played a meaningful role. In this case, it was energy. As measured in the CPI, energy prices have dropped 11% over the past five months, whereas they rose 27% over the previous seven. And perhaps this constitutes a third catch. With the war in Ukraine still raging and Iran in turmoil, maybe we can’t count on gasoline remaining at $3 a gallon.
Was the rest of the stunning drop in inflation in 2022 due to the Fed’s interest-rate policy? Driving inflation down was certainly the central bank’s intent. But it defies credulity to think that interest-rate hikes that started only in March could have cut inflation appreciably by July. There is an argument that monetary policy works faster now than it used to—but not that fast.
What did change dramatically was the supply bottlenecks. Major contributors to inflation in 2021 and the first half of 2022, they are now mostly behind us.
Peering ahead, the bottlenecks almost certainly won’t return. Another energy shock can’t be ruled out but looks unlikely. And the anti-inflationary effects of the Fed’s monetary policy are yet to come.
Altogether, the inflation future does indeed look brighter than the inflation past. Happy New Year.
Mr. Blinder, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton, served as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, 1994-96. He is the author, most recently, of “A Monetary and Fiscal History of the United States, 1961-2021” (Princeton University Press).
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FLASH: ISRAEL-JORDAN PEACE TREATY (1994) GUARANTEES JEWS ACCESS TO THE TEMPLE MOUNT – LET MY PEOPLE PRAY
By Mort Klein
Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein and ZOA Director of Special Projects Liz Berney, Esq. released the following statement:
The ZOA criticizes Jordanian King Abudullah II’s latest illegal threats, violating the Israel-Jordan peace agreements, regarding Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount, named for the holy Jewish Temples that stood there. (Notice it’s not called the “Mosque Mount”). The Jordanian king told CNN that he is “prepared for conflict,” has “red lines,” and that “we have to be concerned about the next intifada” (another terror war in which Palestinian Arabs murder and maim innocent Jews) if there is a “change of status.” Abdullah II is thus threatening violence if Jews (and other non-Muslims) are properly allowed to exercise their legal and religious and moral rights to freely pray at Judaism’s holiest site.
A MAJOR FACT IS BEING IGNORED—the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty, signed by Jordan’s King Hussein (Abdullah II’s father) on October 26,1994, guarantees Jews freedom of access to the Temple Mount. The Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty, Article 9.1, provides: “PLACES OF HISTORICAL AND RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE. Each party will provide freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance.”
Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David M. Friedman, Esq., confirmed this, tweeting on January 4:
“Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty of 1994 required both nations to ensure access of all faiths to significant religious sites, including the Temple Mount…
Jews are not prohibited from visiting the Temple Mount under the Treaty or under the definition of “status quo” (murky as it is) and government ministers have done so on many occasions. No threat from Hamas should impair this reality.”
One should never forget that the racist, sexist, unjust status quo of Blacks and women not being allowed to vote was appropriately ended. The racist unjust status quo of Blacks not being allowed to attend “White” high schools and universities was appropriately ended. And the antisemitic unjust alleged status quo of Jews not being allowed to visit and pray on their holiest site, the Temple Mount, must be ended as well!
Signed international agreements and promoting justice overrule unlawful, discriminatory, antiquated, unjust, antisemitic supposed “status quos” which violate those agreements. Israel’s 1967 “Protection of Holy Places Law” likewise requires free access to holy places.
In fact, the real “change in status” has been the unjust, discriminatory, illegal restrictions on Jewish access and prayer, and the Jordanian Waqf’s decades of malfeasance, destruction of Jewish antiquities and violations on the Temple Mount. The proposed Temple Mount Preservation Act of 2001, co-sponsored by 37 bipartisan Congressmembers, confirmed that the Jordanian Waqf engaged in “large-scale bulldozing and destruction of the Temple Mount antiquities. Thousands of tons of fill have been unearthed and simply dumped into the nearby Kidron Valley. Archeologists have verified these artifacts date from the period of the First Temple [over 2,500 years ago].”
Allowing and facilitating Jewish access and prayer on Judaism’s holiest site would merely help restore the agreed-to lawful status of this site, as a place where all people will have free access to pray.
Abdullah II’s violent threats also violate additional provisions of the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty, including the requirements that Jordan must: “refrain from organizing, instigating, inciting, assisting or participating in acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, subversion or violence against the other Party [Israel] (Article 4.3.2); respect Israel’s sovereignty and territorial integrity (Article 2.1); mutually cooperate on security (Article 4.1); and not interfere with Israel’s inherent right of self-defense (Article 4.a).
The Jordanian king’s threat is exacerbating the recent arrogant, antisemitic, racist, discriminatory, unlawful, unjust demands and propaganda falsehoods employed by the Biden administration, Hamas terrorists, the Palestinian Authority terrorist dictatorship, and certain other Arab governments, to make the Jewish people’s holiest site “Judenrein” (off limits to Jews). Minister Itamar Ben Gvir peacefully strolled on the perimeter of the Temple Mount for about 13 minutes (without stepping foot in the mosque). And yet, Israel was absurdly and falsely accused of “storming the mosque,” “invading the mosque,” “provoking violence” and planning to build a “new Jewish Temple” there. (See “The Biden Administration Sides with Discrimination on the Temple Mount,” by Morton A. Klein, JNS, Jan. 4, 2023.)
The long Jewish history on the Temple Mount pre-dates the beginning of Islam by over 2,200 years. Abraham bound Isaac there in approximately 1677 BCE. King David purchased the Temple Mount and built an alter to G-d there, and David’s son King Solomon completed building the First Jewish Temple on the site in 957 BCE – over 1,600 years before Islam was founded in 610 CE. The Jewish temples stood on the Temple Mount for approximately 1,000 years – again, long before Islam came onto the scene. Jews made pilgrimages three times a year (on Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot) to the Temple Mount. 180 (out of the 613) mitzvahs (Jewish commandments) relate to the Temple. And while Muslims pray facing their holiest place, Mecca, Jews all over the world pray facing their holiest place, the Temple Mount.
By contrast, the Muslims’ (false) claim that the site is holy to them was invented in about 1100 CE –centuries after Mohammed’s death in 632 CE, and is based on a mere dream, not an actual occurrence, that Mohammed visited the “farthest mosque.” Notably, Al-Aqsa Mosque wasn’t even built until decades after Mohammed’s death and wasn’t and could not have been the “farthest mosque” in his dream. Moreover, there wasn’t a single mosque in Jerusalem when the Koran was written. Mohammed moreover never visited the Temple Mount in real life. Thus, a misrepresented dream is being used to try to wipe out thousands of years of actual Jewish history.
King Abdullah II revealed his real goal when he made egregious and numerous illegal demands last April to fully control the Temple Mount. Jordan absurdly demanded: (i) giving the Jordanian Islamic Waqf full authority over the Temple Mount, including authority to severely restrict (or prevent) non-Muslim visits; (ii) requiring non-Muslims to apply to visit in writing in advance; (iii) forbidding needed Israeli security from entering the Temple Mount, even when Palestinian Arabs violently riot, shoot and/or throw rocks, iron bars and Molotov cocktails at Jewish and other worshipers on the Temple Mount or at the Kotel (Western Wall) plaza below; (iv) banning non-Muslim prayer necessities (prayer books, Torahs, tallits); (v) restricting non-Muslim visitors to groups of no more than five people (thereby preventing Jews from forming a minyan to pray); (vi) restricting non-Muslim visitors to tour routes of no more than 150 meters in each direction; and (vii) dictating dress codes for non-Muslims (demeaning dhimmi dress codes for Jews). In addition, the Wakf planned to charge non-Muslims admission fees – requiring Jews to pay Muslims to visit Judaism’s holiest site! All these demands violate the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty’s guarantee that Jews will have full access to their holiest site. (See ZOA Condemns Jordan’s Egregious Demands to Control Jews’ Holiest Site – the Temple Mount – and to Limit Security & Non-Muslim Visits, April 28, 2022.)
ZOA urges Jordan, other Arab/Muslim countries, the U.S., other countries and the U.N. to respect the provisions of the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty and the religious, moral and just rights of the Jewish people. Enough with this conspicuous Jew-hatred and Israel-hatred! Let my people pray!
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Kim and The McCarthy Mess.
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GOP Rebels Need to Take the Win
New rule changes will restore the House. Further demands are a recipe for chaos.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
Donald Trump’s Wednesday statement on the GOP House chaos included some useful advice, overlooked amid the news that he supports Kevin McCarthy as speaker. “Take the victory,” Mr. Trump advised the Republican rebels, and he’s right. The anti-McCarthy crowd risks blowing up whatever good they’ve accomplished.
Process arguments can be boring—up to the point that they become necessary. Some of the participants in this week’s drama are in it for the showboating; Matt Gaetz wilts without a regular infusion of attention. But for the bulk of the 21 holdouts to Mr. McCarthy’s bid, the fight revolves around the most prosaic of process questions: how to fix a broken House.
No Republican disputes that the institution no longer operates as the Founders intended. Congress hasn’t complied with its own budget process for more than two decades, though that’s proved the least of the recent dysfunction. Beginning with Nancy Pelosi’s forced march of ObamaCare in 2009-10, speakers increasingly have centralized control to their office. Committees barely function. Members have no ability to debate or amend. Leaders disappear into back rooms to cook up mammoth bills that are dropped on the floor for last-minute take-it-or-leave it votes. Add Mrs. Pelosi’s Covid “proxy” voting rules, and most of the House didn’t even bother to clock in.
This is bad for democracy. It makes a mockery of representative government and it also plays a big role in today’s partisanship, since it robs members of the opportunity to work together. But as the rebels note, it’s particularly bad for conservative causes. Big-government types love back-room legislating, since it produces vehicles for giant spending and bad policy that nobody has time to expose or stop. Those hastily written products also tend to be (purposely?) vague, empowering the bureaucratic state to fill in the regulatory blanks.
House Freedom Caucus members as early as last summer began demanding a fix should Republicans take power. Mr. McCarthy largely ignored them until the close midterm results meant he no longer could. Yet in the negotiations leading up to this week’s speaker votes, he agreed to sweeping changes.
Under the proposed new rules package, committees are back in charge of legislation, with rules designed to ensure that bills address single subjects—rather than catch-all legislation. It similarly gives members new power to challenge amendments that aren’t related to the topic at hand. And it revives “Calendar Wednesday,” whereby any committee chairman can bring a bill straight to the floor.
It includes new provisions for accountability and transparency. Proxy voting is history, as are virtual committee meetings. It requires a 72-hour rule to give members time to read legislation. It ends Democrats’ wild experiment with staffer unionization, which threatened to tie the chamber up with crazy demands.
And it makes it much harder for the House to tax and spend. It imposes a “cut go” rule—requiring any mandatory spending increases be offset with equal or greater mandatory spending cuts. A three-fifths supermajority vote will be required for tax increases. It revives what’s known as the “Holman rule,” allowing appropriations bills effectively to defund the salaries of specific executive-branch officials or specific programs. It also requires each committee to submit an oversight plan that lays out what action it intends to take on unauthorized or duplicative programs.
These changes will produce the first functioning House in years, even as they tie the hands of spenders. Take the win! Instead, the rebels continue to hold out for provisions that have the potential to negate this victory by plunging the House back into chaos. At the top of the list is the continued demand to allow any Republican member to call for a motion to “vacate the chair”—essentially a snap vote to oust the speaker.
Talk about inviting the dysfunction the holdouts claim to want to end. Conservatives used such a motion in 2015 to force John Boehner out, and while his successor, Paul Ryan, avoided the same fate, today’s raucous environment and the GOP’s narrow margins make it a destabilizing weapon. It’s designed to continue to make Mr. McCarthy a hostage to the rebels’ every whim. If you think the House is a mess now, imagine a scenario in which Mr. Gaetz or Lauren Boebert or Andy Biggs can bring the place to a standstill every time their noses are out of joint. Assuming their noses are ever in joint.
Between this and other provisions, the rebel message is that they won’t accept Mr. McCarthy as speaker unless he is stripped of all his power. Brilliant. Returning the business of the House to members is one thing. Neutering a leader of any ability to set a direction or maintain order is suicide. Just what the country needs: 222 headless Republican chickens running around, all claiming to be in charge.
At this point, the rebels can no longer plausibly claim they are fighting for “the people.” This is their own power play. Just take the win.
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Strong Jewish State KEY to Middle East Peace - REBEL NEWS
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Iran Claims it Conducts 50 Operations Per Day Against Israel
Brig.-Gen. Esmayeel Qaani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force predicted that the Palestinians would soon evict Israelis from their homeland. By JNS.org
Corps (IRGC) Quds Force said Tuesday that 40-50 actions are carried out against Israel in the West Bank daily, reported Iran’s Fars News Agency.
He predicted that the Palestinians would soon evict Israelis from their homeland.
In August, IRGC Commander Maj.-Gen. Hossein Salami said, “The Zionists have no safe haven in occupied Palestine and all parts of the land are within the reach of Palestinian resistance movements’ firepower.”
He added, “When Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah is added to this equation, the conclusion is the deployment of hundreds of thousands of missiles pointed at the Zionist regime.”
Salami continued: “This year, many Zionists have been killed in operations by resistance groups’ members in occupied Palestinian territories. The number of attacks by the Palestinians cannot compare with that in the past.”
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$180 Oil Is Coming – Here's How to Prepare
Goldman Sachs believes that oil could fly past $200 a barrel,
which would send the right oil stocks up 10x or even 20x
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