Our 3 dinner guests this past Sunday (10/29) are memo readers and all complained they have been overwhelmed since Oct 7. I totally understand. My goal is not to always be current, necessarily, but I try my best to remain topical. I hope the shelf life of most of what I post has a shelf life past the minute I type. Furthermore, I expect most will pick and choose, be selective according to their own interest.
Obviously with two wars, inflation, campus rioting along with a government under serious stress, all simultaneously, there is much fruit on the vines to pick.
Finally, I repeat certain postings because readers do not always read at the same time and sometimes I want as many to read a particular item as possible.
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All Hamas are in-human. Most Palestinians are simply sick psychopaths. As Prager states, society favors the weak but fail to realize, often times, the weak are also evil. Proportionality is an amoral concept when there is evilness. Educated Progressives, who believe otherwise, are equally evil and dangerous. Soros is evil and dangerous. Because of his enormous wealth and sickening son he may never die.
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The west's mass psychopathy moment
The Palestinian cause has destroyed the free world's moral compass
By MELANIE PHILLIPS
Palestinians gloat over lynching of two Israeli reservists in "West Bank", 2000
The massive demonstrations of support for Hamas on the streets of European and American cities, with baying mobs calling for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews everywhere while the liberal, educated classes are either silent or are actually supporting barbarism against civilization, signifies a profound crisis for the free world.
This mass psychopathy moment has a number of causes. For now, let’s just discuss one of them. A principal contributor to this cultural degeneracy is support for the Palestinian cause.
This support is the default narrative for the “progressive" classes throughout the west. There are a number of reasons for this, including the “colonialist” anti-west narrative, antisemitism and the shallow and meretricious liberal article of faith that all actors in every conflict are governed by reason and self-interest, and that as a consequence every cause is negotiable and open to compromise.
This has led to the fixed belief, very much on show in the Biden administration and underlying all liberal discussion about the Hamas pogrom and the war in Gaza, that while there are “bad” Palestinians, called Hamas, there are also “good” Palestinians called “Gazan civilians” and the Palestinian Authority (PA) led by Mahmoud Abbas— who after this war is over must be assisted to realise their “legitimate” aspiration for a state of Palestine, which will bring this conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to an end.
This is all based on a fundamental and egregious set of errors.
While there are undoubtedly Palestinians in both Gaza and the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria who desire nothing more than to support their families and live in peace with their Israeli neighbours, the division between “good” and “bad” Palestinians is a liberal fantasy with murderous consequences.
In Gaza, despite the fact that the election there which brought Hamas to power was hardly free and fair, polling persistently reveals that a majority of Gazans support Hamas and that around three quarters of them support the killing of Israelis.
Once the scale of the Hamas pogrom became known, ordinary Gazan civilians were filmed in scenes of exited jubilation, handing out sweets to celebrate the murder of 1400 Israelis and kidnap of more than 230. Ordinary Gazan civilians were filmed spitting on and desecrating the bodies of the Israeli victims who had been dragged into Gaza and paraded around the streets. And ordinary Gazan civilians poured through the shattered boundary fence after Hamas had broken through and joined in the orgy of bloodletting and hostage-taking in the kibbutzim along the border.
Hamas may wear green bandanas and military fatigues while PA officials wear suits, but the PA’s aims and motivation are the same: the eradication of Israel and the waging of Islamic holy war against the Jewish people.
The PA make this plain time and time again. Their officials and preachers incite holy war to “defend” the Al Aqsa mosque against “Jewish destruction” (the utterly false and murderous Muslim casus belli ever since the 1920s); the state of “Palestine” displayed on the PA’s maps and insignia occupies the whole of Israel; and their preachers and educational materials teach their children that their highest calling is to murder Jews and steal all their land.
And these “good” Palestinians have been cheering on Hamas for its depraved atrocities and urging more of the same. As Nadav Shragai records in Israel Hayom, Abdel-Rahman abu Arab, a member of the Fatah in Jenin, described the morning of the massacre as a morning of joy, victory, and pride, and blessed the “heroic martyrs in Gaza”.
Abbas Zaki, a member of Fatah's Central Committee who had already admitted that “the goal is the end of Israel,” praised Hamas for the attack and threatened to crush the skulls of all the Jews and Americans in the region. Jamal al-Huwail, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council in the PA, promised a “big surprise” in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) and hoped that the carnage in Israel’s border communities would be replicated there as well.
Palestinian Media Watch has been documenting more such reactions among the “good” Palestinians championed by the Biden administration and “liberals” everywhere. Mahmoud Al-Aloul, the deputy to Mahmoud Abbas in the PA’s dominant Fatah movement, exulted:
The blood of the [Hamas] heroes will turn into a curse that will remove this occupier (i.e., Israel).
A senior Fatah official, Iyad Jarrad declared:
We stand alongside our brothers in the Gaza Strip, because truly they are a source of pride, heroism, and honour for the Palestinian people.
While the Hamas pogrom was still taking place Fatah’s terror wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, rejoiced that the Hamas terrorists, were recording spectacular epics of heroism and sacrifice,while Fatah member Raafat Alayan lauded the heroic operation that the resistance carried out on October 7.
In Ramallah, Palestinians chanted:
If you have a rifle ... you should either kill a Jew or give it to Hamas.
One of Fatah’s student factions, the Student Union Council and Fatah Shabiba Student Movement at Palestine Polytechnic University ,issued the following “request” about the Jews:
Allah, count them and kill them one by one, and do not leave even one of them.
Palestinian Media Watch reports elsewhere:
At the beginning of this war, PMW documented that Fatah’s terror wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, called to kill Jews and “strike the sons of apes of pigs... slaughter everyone who is Israeli.” A few days ago, the PA instructed all preachers to teach worshippers in the mosques that extermination of Jews is an Islamic imperative. Abbas’ own adviser on religion has defined the war as a holy war: “Jihad.”
One faction of Fatah’s Student Movement praised Hamas murderers as “Allah’s roaring lions” and called for terror in the West Bank. Other factions have urged Palestinians in the disputed territories to emulate Hamas’ massacre and carry out terror attacks against Israelis.
Moreover, anyone who thinks only Hamas is depraved should think again. In Israel Hayom, Shragai records some of the Israeli Jews slaughtered by “ordinary” Palestinians not from Gaza but from the disputed territories:
Hallel Yaffa Ariel, a 13.5-year-old girl, was slaughtered in her bed in her home on the outskirts of Kiryat Arba with a knife. Ori Ansbacher, a 19-year-old, was raped and brutally murdered in Jerusalem, and then her body was mutilated. Her killer gloated in his trial that “raping and murdering a Jewish woman is the most important thing I have ever done”. The Fogel family from Itamar was murdered in their home shortly before Purim in 2011. Yoav, 10, and Elad, 4, were strangled and stabbed, and Ehud and Ruth, their parents, who tried to save their children, were stabbed repeatedly in their neck, throat, and abdomen. The three-month-old baby, Hadas who was found because she was crying, was also killed by the Nazis (now it is acceptable to call them that).
On one Saturday night, a similar massacre took place in the Salomon family's home in Halamish. Esther Horgen was killed with a rock that crushed her skull. Shalhevet Pas, who was less than a year old, was executed in her stroller by a sniper. Kim Levengrond Yehezkel was tied up in the Barkan industrial zone and was then shot to death.
Few of these massacres were even fully reported by western media, let alone provoking appropriate reactions of horror and revulsion. That’s because many of these victims were Israelis living in the disputed territories. For western “liberal” supporters of the Palestinian cause and the “two-state solution”, such people are “occupiers” and thus aren’t even to be considered properly human.
Given this brutalized callousness, why should anyone be surprised by the “liberal” west’s current psychopathy moment?
Now people are asking whether Israel’s war in Gaza can be a “just war” if no settlement for post-war Gaza is being proposed. In The Times (£) of London this morning, Phil Collins argues that people like the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, are urging a degree of restraint on the Israelis not on the grounds that their war is wrong in intent but that it cannot hope to succeed. He writes:
Prudence on this point is not just a problem after the fact. It is part of the moral case for the intervention itself. If an action has no feasible hope of success, the moral case for war is damaged… It is easy to see how the Israelis get into Gaza, but there is a fog shrouding how they get out. What plausible regime can Israel leave behind?
The precise composition of Gaza’s administration after the war is indeed impossible to see at present. However, this is to seek an answer to the wrong question. The solution to Gaza depends on the solution to the Palestinian issue, and that depends in turn on identifying the problem correctly. This is not, as the west tells itself, a conflict over the division of the land. It is a century-old jihadi and genocidal attempt to drive out the Jews from the ancestral homeland to which they alone are legally, morally and historically entitled.
This terrible conflict has been kept going by the west, which by supporting the Palestinian cause has indulged, funded, sanitized, legitimized and incentivized an agenda of annihilation, ethnic cleansing and murderous anti-Semitism.
The problem of Gaza will only be solved, like the Palestinian issue itself, if the west stops supporting the Palestinian cause -- and start addressing this conflict not as a fight over the division of land but as a genocidal war of extermination against Israel and the Jewish people.
Israel is fighting in Gaza not just against Hamas but against Iran. It is fighting a war for its existence against a genocidal enemy. That’s why this is a just war by Israel — indeed it could hardly be more justified. And the failure by the west to grasp how this has come about is why the west is now being convulsed by the forces of barbarism from within.
For it’s impossible to exaggerate the extent to which support for the Palestinian cause has destroyed the west’s moral compass. It’s not just that it’s been supporting an agenda whose aim, whether people understand this or not, is the annihilation of Israel and the murder of Jews. It is that it has produced a diabolical and deranged inversion of morality, which views genocide against the Jews as resistance and Jewish resistance as genocide.
As a result, the west has the blood of countless Jewish and non-Jewish Israeli innocents on its hands — and unless it purges this poison from its culture, its hands will be stained by yet more.
Recent posts
My most recent exclusive post for my premium subscribers observes that the west has been sleepwalking into the civilizational crisis that has now erupted within it. This is how the piece begins:
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MBS seeks to become a modern nation and thus has no choice but to eventually align with and learn from Israel. Hamas fears this alignment because they are driven by demonic religious hate not progress and modernity.
MBS wants to throw off the Saudi's past "yolk/yoke." Hamas wants to crush their "yolk's."
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A Saudi-Israeli Peace Deal Isn’t Dead
By Karen House
The Gaza war makes it more difficult but also reminds officials of the horrifying alternative.
image
Now his grandson Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is the kingdom’s de facto leader, and he is actively trying to revive Saudi-U.S. friendship by doing the opposite. The crown prince seeks a formal Senate-ratified treaty codifying a new set of mutual commitments between Riyadh and Washington.
The translator for Abdul Aziz’s meeting with FDR later revealed that the king had given the president his advice about European Jewish survivors of the Nazi genocide: “Give them the choicest lands and homes of the Germans who oppressed them.” Instead, in 1948 FDR’s successor recognized the new Jewish state in Palestine. Saudi Arabia never did.
That would change under the prospective new U.S.-Saudi agreement, which would include Israel as a third party. The war in Gaza complicates matters, but the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia are still talking in an effort to create a new, economically integrated Mideast by bringing the dynamic Arab state into overt peaceful relations with Israel. In exchange, the U.S. would sign new trade, security and nuclear-enrichment deals with Riyadh, which would make some pledges of its own, possibly involving oil.
That the three parties continue to hold out hope is a sign of how much both Saudi Arabia and Israel believe their cooperation could transform the region. It was never going to be easy. At any time, groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have the capability to cause chaos, as Hamas did with its Oct. 7 attack against Israel.
Yet the optimism now for an Israeli-Saudi peace is rooted in the hopelessness of the current Mideast. Israel’s military might and strong U.S. support proved insufficient to guarantee the Jewish state’s security. Iran and Hamas are exploiting the Palestinian issue to undermine public support for Israel across the region, and even in the U.S., where university campuses have hosted violent anti-Israel demonstrations. Perhaps, this thinking goes, the horrors of today’s Mideast will motivate all parties to take previously unthinkable steps to resolve the Palestinian issue and secure widespread Arab cooperation in building a more integrated and prosperous region.
There is a narrow line between motivation and wishful thinking, and the Saudis are anxious for an early end to hostilities. Officials are telling the Biden administration and a visiting delegation of 10 U.S. senators to persuade Israel not to invade Gaza or do anything that will prolong or widen the war. A short look at the horrors of war could create new determination to take risks for peace, but prolonged exposure to death and destruction could also breed a new generation of angry Arabs who block Saudi-Israeli rapprochement. Today’s young Saudis, a majority of whom are under 30, have never seen war as their parents and grandparents did in 1967 or 1973. But if this current war drags on, with television and social media emphasizing Palestinian casualties in Gaza, young Saudis could be aroused against Israel.
To keep hope alive, Crown Prince Mohammed is doing all he can to maintain business as usual in Saudi Arabia. When Hamas’s false claim that Israel bombed a Gaza hospital led to massive street demonstrations across the Mideast, Europe and U.S. college campuses, Saudi Arabia remained quiet. To be sure, demonstrations are risky in an authoritarian state. But a visitor here sees no signs that Saudi citizens are exercised over events in Gaza. The crown prince has set out the parameters for his citizens by condemning the targeting of civilians, calling for creation of a Palestinian state, and ignoring Hamas to support the rival Palestinian Authority.
Last week the crown prince hosted the president of South Korea, and both attended the Future Investment Initiative, an annual three-day confab that draws Wall Street titans and thousands of international visitors. “The Phantom of the Opera” opened in Riyadh, and the city is hosting golf’s Ladies European Tour and a world heavyweight boxing match. At the same time, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia fired drones and missiles across the kingdom toward Israel. But a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Red Sea intercepted them all—a vivid reminder of the importance of U.S. military might in the Middle East.
Foreign-policy observers here believe—or at least hope—that Iran wants to avoid direct involvement in this war because any attack by Iran on Israel surely would prompt retaliation from Israel and could draw the U.S. into hostilities. For its part, Saudi Arabia is doing everything possible since restoring diplomatic relations with Iran this summer to avoid inflaming Tehran. Still, it’s hard to imagine Iran would simply accept a new U.S.-Saudi-Israeli pact to cooperate in the Mideast at Iranian expense.
With war clouds covering much of the region, one thing is clear. Saudi Arabia, having flirted with China and Russia, recognizes that the U.S. is its best—its only—security option. Whether that will lead it to recognize the Jewish state in the current environment is unclear. But if lawmakers put aside their negative perceptions of Saudi Arabia to ratify a deal, it will be because Israel throws its support behind Riyadh.
Ms. House, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, is author of “On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines—and Future.”
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Objectivism and Israel’s right to defend itself
Ayn Rand’s philosophy holds that every nation, like every person, possesses an inherent right to exist and defend its citizens.
In the unyielding battleground of ideologies, the relentless assaults by Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist group, on the democratic bastion of Israel, demand a staunch defense of the principles that uphold the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, with its unwavering emphasis on individual rights and reason, provides an unassailable foundation of support for Israel’s unequivocal right to self-defense in the face of terrorist aggression.
Objectivism asserts the sanctity of individual rights, but it also holds that every nation, like every person, possesses an inherent right to exist and defend its citizens from harm and terror. Israel’s status as an independent democracy is not up for debate—it is a sovereign nation founded on the principles of democracy, freedom and justice. The recent atrocities committed by Hamas aimed at Israeli civilians were not merely an attack on a nation. They were an assault on the very essence of individual rights and human dignity. Objectivism unequivocally affirms Israel’s right to exist and, by extension, its right to defend its citizens from terrorism.
The media’s role in shaping public opinion is pivotal, but it often falls prey to biases and manipulations. Objectivism demands intellectual independence, urging individuals to dissect the media’s narratives critically. In the case of Israel, media outlets have, time and again, failed to portray the situation accurately. They downplay or ignore the constant barrage of rocket attacks on Israeli cities, focusing instead on the Israeli response to these heinous acts of terrorism. We’ve seen this most recently in The New York Times and other nefarious reporting by media outlets, including The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Ayn Rand’s philosophy calls for unapologetic reason in the face of distortion. It urges us to challenge the selective narratives and biased reporting that vilify Israel, focusing on the objective truth: Israel is defending its citizens against terrorism. Objectivism teaches us to question the media’s credibility and to seek out reliable sources that present the unfiltered reality of the situation. Many people could learn valuable lessons taught in Objectivism and how it relates to the world—particularly in this instance of terror vs. good.
Unfortunately, anti-Israel lies have festered not only in the media, but have become rampant on college campuses and in corporate workplaces and social settings. Imagine for a moment if after the murder of members of any other minority community, those who stand against that community were celebrated as heroes. Or imagine if, on Sept. 12, 2001, we allowed Al-Qaeda to march through the streets of New York City. How long do you think any rational human being would have allowed that to occur? The answer is not for one second.
Objectivism, which in and of itself is an atheist belief using reason as its sole means of knowledge, champions individualism, emphasizing the sovereignty of the individual and their right to live free from coercion and violence. In the context of Israel facing relentless attacks, the principle of individualism underscores the importance of peace through strength.
Israel’s proactive measures to neutralize threats and protect its citizens align with the Objectivist belief in the right to self-defense. Self-defense is not aggression but a manifestation of the moral duty a government has to protect its people from terrorism. While there was clearly a major security failure on Oct. 7, the current and upcoming response by the IDF will restore order and moral clarity in this battle of good vs. evil.
However, this emphasis on individual rights, reason and self-defense are universal in their applicability. These principles can and should resonate with people from diverse backgrounds, beliefs and ideologies, including the varied religious practices within Judaism. The focus on individual rights and rational thinking within Objectivism makes it accessible and relevant to people regardless of their specific religious beliefs, reinforcing the idea that its principles can be applied universally to support Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorist attacks.
Objectivism does not negate the suffering of innocent Palestinians caught in the crossfire. It advocates for a peaceful resolution but not at the expense of Israel’s security, and certainly not in the face of the memory of the innocent people murdered on Oct. 7. Objectivism encourages the pursuit of peace through negotiations, diplomacy and, when necessary, the decisive use of force to eliminate threats to individual freedom.
In the face of terrorism perpetrated by Hamas, Objectivism stands as a beacon of moral clarity. It reminds us that Israel’s fight is not just a geopolitical struggle. It is a battle for the preservation of individual rights, democracy and, most importantly, human dignity. By embracing Objectivism’s principles—upholding Israel’s inherent right to exist, challenging distorted media narratives and supporting the pursuit of peace through strength—individuals can champion the cause of freedom and stand with unwavering resolve beside the democratic nation of Israel in its fight against terrorism and hatred. In this, we must never waver.
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Yonit might as well speak to The Wall.
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Israeli news anchor to CNN: 'World moved quickly from showing empathy to blaming Israel'
Yonit Levi explains Israelis shouldn't be allowed such a short window of support when fighting Hamas.
Israeli news anchor Yonit Levi spoke with CNN on Sunday about the situation in Israel since the October 7th massacre by Hamas.
Levi described the public sentiment on the war, which has entered its next stage with IDF ground forces entering the Gaza Strip. "Israelis are still very much in this. They are reeling from the worst terror attack that they have ever suffered. Every day, more and more information is coming out. Sources told me that there are still more than 100 Israeli bodies that haven't been identified. Understand what has been done to these people before death and after. This is where we are; the public is watching this very closely, concerned about the hostages and also about what the next steps of this war will look like."
When asked about foreign support for Israel she explains that US support is not only in the form of aircraft carriers but also in the form of advisors who are experts in the type of situations that Israel is facing in the Gaza Strip.
Despite this, Levi feels the foreign support for Israel is waning fast: "I think, from the Israeli point of view, the world has moved on quite quickly from showing very, very brief empathy for what we are still going through to, in many cases, even blaming Israel for what has happened. And I think that now many Israelis feel like their case isn't clear enough, maybe hasn't been clear enough for years. But how do you wage this war against this terror organization, which has been so cynical, that starts by murdering your own children and then hides under their population, not at all caring if they're hurt? So it's a very difficult thing to manipulate and maneuver, I think that Israelis on the one hand do feel like the stopwatch has begun to run its course, Israel always has a short window. But we are also kinda angered by the fact that there is a stopwatch to begin with because they feel like they have been through something that should never happen again."
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Our future?
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NEWS FROM THE YEAR: 2059
OZONE CREATED BY ELECTRIC CARS NOW KILLING MILLIONS IN THE SEVENTH LARGEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, MEXIFORNIA, FORMERLY KNOWN AS CALIFORNIA.
WHITE MINORITIES STILL TRYING TO HAVE ENGLISH RECOGNIZED AS THE THIRD LANGUAGE.
SPOTTED OWL PLAGUE THREATENS NORTHWESTERN UNITED STATES CROPS AND LIVESTOCK.
BABY CONCEIVED NATURALLY! SCIENTISTS STUMPED.
COUPLE PETITIONS COURT TO REINSTATE HETEROSEXUAL MARRIAGE.
IRAN STILL CLOSED OFF; PHYSICISTS ESTIMATE IT WILL TAKE AT LEAST 10 MORE YEARS BEFORE RADIOACTIVITY DECREASES TO SAFE LEVELS.
FRANCE PLEADS FOR GLOBAL HELP AFTER BEING TAKEN OVER BY JAMAICA. NO OTHER COUNTRY COMES FORWARD TO HELP THE BELEAGUERED NATION!
LAST CASTRO FINALLY DIES AT AGE 112; CUBAN CIGARS CAN NOW BE IMPORTED LEGALLY, BUT PRESIDENT CHELSEA CLINTON HAS BANNED ALL SMOKING.
GEORGE Z. BUSH SAYS HE WILL RUN FOR PRESIDENT IN 2060.
POSTAL SERVICE RAISES PRICE OF FIRST CLASS STAMP TO $17.89 AND REDUCES MAIL DELIVERY TO WEDNESDAYS ONLY.
AVERAGE WEIGHT OF AMERICANS DROPS TO 250 LBS.
85-YEAR AND $75.8 BILLION STUDY: DIET AND EXERCISE IS THE KEY TO WEIGHT LOSS.
GLOBAL COOLING BLAMED FOR CITRUS CROP FAILURE FOR THIRD CONSECUTIVE YEAR IN MEXIFORNIA AND FLORUBA.
JAPANESE SCIENTISTS HAVE CREATED A CAMERA WITH SUCH A FAST SHUTTER SPEED, THEY NOW CAN PHOTOGRAPH A WOMAN WITH HER MOUTH SHUT.
ABORTION CLINICS NOW AVAILABLE IN EVERY HIGH SCHOOL IN THE UNITED STATES .
SENATE STILL BLOCKING DRILLING IN ANWAR, EVEN THOUGH GAS IS SELLING FOR 4532 PESOS PER LITER AND GAS STATIONS ARE ONLY OPEN TUESDAYS AND FRIDAYS.
MASSACHUSETTS EXECUTES LAST REMAINING CONSERVATIVE.
SUPREME COURT RULES ANY PUNISHMENT OF CRIMINALS VIOLATES THEIR CIVIL RIGHTS.
A COUPLE FINALLY ACHIEVED SEXUAL HARMONY . THEY HAD SIMULTANEOUS HEADACHES.
AVERAGE HEIGHT OF NBA PLAYERS IS NOW NINE FEET SEVEN INCHES WITH ONLY 5 ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN.
NEW FEDERAL LAW REQUIRES THAT ALL NAILCLIPPERS,SCREWDRIVERS, FLY SWATTERS AND ROLLED-UP NEWSPAPERS MUST BE REGISTERED BY JANUARY 2060.
IRS SETS LOWEST TAX RATE AT 75 PERCENT.
GEORUBA VOTERS STILL HAVING TROUBLE WITH VOTING MACHINES.
"HAHVAHD" DECLARES BANRUPTCY
DUE TO LACK OF JEWISH DONORS.
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Everything Biden is doing, to prevent a widening war, is creating a widening warn because weakness does not work.
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Prepare for an Iranian Escalation - WSJ
The Islamic Republic has always relied on terrorist organizations to do its bidding. Since the 1980s, Tehran’s most operationally savvy protégé, Hezbollah, has given the regime the ability to manipulate Lebanese politics and kill scores of its enemies, including U.S. troops. In the aftermath of 9/11, especially after the 2010 Arab Spring, the Iranians fine-tuned their grand strategy. The collapsing Arab state system allowed the mullahs to assemble nonstate paramilitary outfits that they could deploy to various battlegrounds. Iran-aided militias helped evict the U.S. from Iraq, ensured the survival of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship in Syria, and mauled Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen.
The axis of resistance has transformed the Islamic Republic into the region’s most essential power broker. No government can form in Iraq, Syria or Lebanon without its consent. Iran’s auxiliary forces also deter its enemies. Should Israeli or American leaders consider striking Iran’s nuclear installations, they have to take into account Hezbollah’s formidable arsenal of missiles. And the war in Gaza, for which the Islamic Republic had long been prepping Hamas, has reminded Arab potentates that expanding the Abraham Accords carries enormous risks.
Yet the axis of resistance needs Hamas to survive in some form. Going full martyr—Sunnis die, Shiites watch—would leave Iran caged and embarrassed. Iran’s theocracy has signaled its intent. On his recent tour of the Middle East, Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian warned: “If the Zionist aggression does not stop, the hands of all parties in the region are on the trigger.” Nor was he being coy about one set of hands. “The whole world knows that Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah”—Hezbollah’s leader—“is a man of action and has played an outstanding role in securing the region and Lebanon.” There have already been modest clashes on Israel’s northern border.
Behind Iran’s incremental war strategy is a reasoned diplomatic one. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hopes that a gradual expansion of the war might hasten its end. Arabs will protest more. Europeans will dispatch mediation missions. The Biden team, which seems terrified of a larger conflagration, is already encouraging patience in Jerusalem. Washington has been arguing for limited military intrusions that would kill fewer civilians. Anxious Israeli generals, who would need to keep larger ground and air-force reserves for a more active northern front, may start talking again of “mowing the lawn” via periodic small incursions in Gaza, even though that tactic has failed miserably. Mr. Khamenei knows his regime can restore a degraded Hamas. If Hamas loses too much manpower and leadership, however, it might stay dead even if the spirit of resistance lives on.
The trickiest question for Mr. Khamenei is how an escalated conflict would affect the regime’s standing inside Iran. Direct retaliation by Israel, and especially by the U.S., might trigger a chain reaction of discontent with little rallying-around-the-flag effect. The Islamist regime is wobbly. A struggling economy and a rebellious public scornful of Arab and imperialist Islamist causes—Iran’s “forever wars”—weigh on the supreme leader’s decisions. The more direct the U.S. and Israeli threat is to the regime, the more likely that Mr. Khamenei will retreat. An explicit American threat to take the war to Iran would give Israel more breathing room to dismantle Hamas in Gaza, if that’s what Jerusalem decides to do. President Biden’s decision to bring two aircraft-carrier groups into the region helps. He should go further.
What the White House shouldn’t do is quietly warn Tehran not to meddle in Gaza or to unleash Hezbollah. The Islamic Republic is accustomed to back-channel admonishments. America’s armadas have patrolled the Gulf for years without sufficiently changing the mullahs’ calculus. To make a lasting impression on Mr. Khamenei, Mr. Biden needs to declare publicly a red line: Another Hezbollah missile attack on Israel will invite direct U.S. retaliation on Iran. In 2003, when Mr. Khamenei feared the possibility of the Bush administration unleashing its “shock and awe” warfare on Iran, the clerical regime suspended its uranium enrichment. When the perennially unpredictable Donald Trump killed the Islamic Republic’s famed commander Qasem Soleimani, Mr. Khamenei let loose a short missile barrage at U.S. forces in Iraq but went no further.
Iranian escalation this time around is a certainty. Jerusalem and Washington need to deny themselves wiggle room and threaten the clerical regime, not its proxies. This war is going to get worse. It’s past time for Israel and the U.S. to up the ante.
Mr. Gerecht, a former Iranian-targets officer in the CIA, is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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J’Accuse – An Open Letter to Hamas Apologists
Partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP
By: Daniel Wolf
Those of you who know me recognize that my post three weeks ago about my experiences in Israel at the outbreak of the war (https://tinyurl.com/5xyc24f6) was my first ever on any social media. As we are taught by Ecclesiastes 3:7, “there is a time to keep silent, and a time to speak.” Now is a time to scream.
The blood was not yet dry from the wholesale slaughter of 1,400 Israelis, and the chorus of condemnation of Israel, the victim, began from all corners of the globe. I suspect that this reflects the discomfort that Jews suddenly dare respond to the cold-blooded killing of our people. Through so much of history – the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Pogroms, the Holocaust – Jews were expected to just take it. Pack our bags, hang our heads, and move on to the next temporary home.
But now, suddenly those same Jews are responding – we have a voice and we have force. The brave soldiers of the IDF will deliver the military response. But each of us have to raise our voices in response to the rank anti-Semitism exposed by this war.
Until now, cowards excused their hate by telling us that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism, a macabre twist on the “Zionism is Racism” resolution from the moral midgets at the United Nations. That gig is up. You only have to look at the photographs of a Norwegian medical student and a New York City public school student proudly holding up a sign saying “Please Keep the World Clean” calling for the extermination of Jews or the crowds chanting “Gas the Jews” outside the Sydney Opera House to expose the lie.
For those not familiar with the allusion in the title of this post, it refers to the famous open letter published in 1898 by Emile Zola on the front page of the newspaper L’Aurore in the wake of the Dreyfus affair. It was addressed to the French president, accusing his government and army of anti-Semitism for the conviction of Alfred Dreyfus, a French army officer, on false charges of espionage. With all due respect to Zola, I borrow his catch-phrase and style to publicly challenge the moral bankruptcy of the full panoply of Hamas apologists:
I ACCUSE the administrations of many of the nation’s leading academic institutions, including Harvard, Columbia, Penn, NYU, Cornell, Cooper Union, among many others, unwilling to condemn the massacre without equivocation or to loudly condemn the multitude of campus displays of anti-Semitism of pusillanimous cowardice, having surrendered their moral compass and carving a place for themselves in the pantheon of dishonorable academic leaders alongside those of the University of Heidelberg (circa 1930) and the University of Alabama (circa 1963).
I ACCUSE those college personnel and government officials who tell frightened Jews to lock themselves in their homes or college libraries while standing by as pro-Hamas protesters violently riot and threaten the safety of those Jews of having a twisted notion of their obligations to protect free speech and exhibiting an immoral inability to distinguish between their duties to victims and to perpetrators.
I ACCUSE those claiming that their free speech is being infringed when the odd university or employer actually seeks to limit anti-Semitic comments or chants to kill Jews of hypocrisy because they had no issue forcing universities to cancel, or otherwise violently disrupting, speakers who had the audacity to be a Republican or a capitalist.
I ACCUSE those complaining about “cancel culture” coming for the likes of a professor “exhilarated” by the Hamas massacre of forgetting that they had no issue inventing the practice of cancelling academics for failing to pledge allegiance to their list of preferred orthodoxies.
I ACCUSE those complaining about the doxing of students and employees celebrating the slaughter of 1,400 Israelis of forgetting that freedom of speech means only that – freedom to say what you want – but not freedom from the consequences of your speech.
I ACCUSE those leaders, academic, business or otherwise, who refuse to condemn the Hamas massacre by claiming that it is not their place to comment on external affairs of forgetting their full-throated and justified condemnation of the George Floyd murder, anti-Asian violence and the invasion of Ukraine.
I ACCUSE the now proliferating “both siders”, including the Secretary General of the United Nations, who insist that any condemnation of the Hamas slaughter has to be tempered by understanding the “context”, of making common cause with their archvillain Donald Trump and his seeing “very fine people on both sides” of the Charlottesville protest.
I ACCUSE the world media, who could barely constrain their joy in publishing the blood libel of Israeli airstrikes killing 500+ civilians at the Gazan hospital only to be disproved by inconvenient facts, of malpractice of the highest order, relying for their “facts” on the Hamas Ministry of Health.
I ACCUSE the “Squad” and other politicians calling for a cease-fire practically before the Hamas terrorists had finished spiriting their hostages into Gaza of actually being the simple anti-Semites they risibly claim not to be each time they tweet some anti-Semitic trope that they later attribute to their having misunderstood the canard (remember their tweets like “it’s all about the Benjamins baby”, “hypnotized the world”, etc., etc.).
I ACCUSE those criticizing Israel because its response is not “proportionate” of failing to explain what would be proportionate to the rape of women, decapitation of babies in front of their parents, seizing of elderly and toddler hostages, burning alive of families, and parading naked victims through the streets of Gaza while throbbing crowds of civilians cheer and sexually assault the corpse.
I ACCUSE all those screaming at Israel that it must immediately agree to a cease-fire who never once mention Hamas freeing over 200 hostages of having a deeply perverted sense of justice that aligns well with Abraham Lincoln’s definition of a hypocrite as the man who murders both parents and then pleads for mercy on the grounds that he is an orphan.
I ACCUSE those charging Israel of war crimes for withholding fuel from Gaza and thereby causing its health system to collapse of failing to wonder where Hamas gets the fuel to still fire daily volleys of rockets onto Israeli cities.
I ACCUSE those charging that Israel not supplying water to Gaza is a war crime of failing to watch the Hamas terrorists’ own propaganda videos trumpeting their ingenuity of sabotaging the Gazan water system by cannibalizing pipes to manufacture missiles.
I ACCUSE those that justify Hamas’ massacre based on the displacement of Palestinians upon the creation of the State of Israel of eliding the subsequent culture of dependency and victimhood fostered by their Arab neighbors and the United Nations and of willfully ignoring the expulsion of roughly one million Jews from Arab countries in the aftermath of 1948.
I ACCUSE the LGBTQ+ activists marching under the “Queers for Palestine” banner of a decided lack of self-interest and self-preservation – they side with Hamas who prescribe capital punishment for gays and oppose Israel, a mecca of gay tolerance.
I ACCUSE the self-styled feminists siding with Hamas of being phonies – they support Hamas fighters seen on video selecting which Israeli female hostages should be set aside for rape as opposed to mere imprisonment or execution and a Gazan society where honor killings of daughters are rampant, and oppose Israel where an all-female battalion helped repel the Hamas terrorists and where a woman served as Prime Minister more than 50 years ago.
I ACCUSE the abortion supporters marching under the “Reproductive Justice for Gaza” banners of perhaps misunderstanding that the Hamas terrorist who cut a fetus out of a pregnant woman’s body and shot the fetus was not expressing his support for late-term abortion but was simply murdering another Jew, and forgetting that abortion is illegal in Gaza (and every other Muslim country) while being legal in Israel, even having recently been loosened in direct response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
I ACCUSE the BLM leaders publishing celebratory posters of Hamas paragliders of losing themselves in their own slogan and forgetting that Jewish lives matter too.
I ACCUSE Greta Thunberg and her band of climate warriors holding signs supporting Hamas of being insufficiently understanding that Israel was forced to temporarily use non-recyclable plastic body bags for the dozens of babies murdered and decapitated by Hamas because not enough properly-sized coffins were available.
I ACCUSE those gleefully chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as if it is a harmless protest rhyme of conveniently ignoring that it skips over the two-state solution and seeks to complete Hitler’s Final Solution as a hardly concealed code for eliminating Jews from Israel.
While the scale of anti-Semitism and moral bankruptcy on display in the aftermath of the massacre has been breathtaking, I would be remiss if I didn’t highlight support and moral rectitude from various quarters. Not to exclude any others, we need to recognize and offer deep thanks for the unwavering support and leadership of President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, Defense Secretary Austin and many others in the Administration and Congress, Prime Minister Sunak, President Macron, Chancellor Scholz, Mayor Eric Adams, college leaders ranging from Ben Sasse (University of Florida) to Rochelle Ford (Dillard University, a Louisiana HBCU), and corporate leaders like Pfizer, Google and Hewlett Packard.
To conclude, I will come back to the words of Ecclesiastes (and a Byrds song). King Solomon tells us that while there is a time for love and a time for peace, equally there is a time for hate and a time for war. The time now is to hate Hamas for their barbaric crimes and to wage war to eliminate them. And while we deeply mourn the unfathomable loss of life in Gaza, we lay blame where it belongs - in the immortal words of Golda Meir, “When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
Finally:
Dov proposes Jewish students quit whining.
DAILY FOLIOS AND CONSECUTIVE SENTENCES
Jewish College Students:
Stop Whining and Grow Some!
You have to save yourselves, for G-d’s sake!
By DOV FISCHER
I told it to my four-year-old kids, then when they were seven and nine and fourteen and eighteen and twenty-plus. It was a mantra that my Dad, of blessed memory, told me: “Life is not a bowl of cherries. So stop whining!”
Stop whining, O Jewish college students of America. Stop your incessant whining. Your complaining and kvetching. Stop whining. (READ MORE from Dov Fischer: Biden Loves Israel to Death)
You were reared by rich, comfortable, Long Island and Westchester liberals to be liberals and woke. They had abandoned the Judaism of their parents and grandparents, and now had nothing Judaic to offer you. You attended reform temples where you learned nothing Judaic of substance. You learned no Rashi, no Talmud, no Rambam. All you know is that, by happenstance, you were born Jewish just as others, by happenstance, are born left-handed.
Stop marching to the showers like lambs. This is not Auschwitz; it’s Harvard Yard.
The mainstream Orthodox Jews among your generation, the students of Torah and Mishneh and Halakha (Judaic law), have gone to other colleges and advanced yeshivas where Jew-haters do not hold court. But you, the children of the liberals who advanced to be progressive and woke, chose Harvard and Columbia and University of Pennsylvania in an era when all your professors are either woke Jews or non-Jews. They all hate Israel. They all hate observant Jews. Everyone knows this.
Fools: There is no room for Jews in DEI — Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Even as White Supremacists on the Crazy Right say Jews are not White, the reality is, O Jews, you are not Black. You are not Hispanic, even those of you born and reared in Latin and South America, because you are Jews.
You are not Asian. You are Jews. You are not from India, O Jews, like Kamala and Ramaswamy. Even if you win a thousand national spelling bees, you will not ever be of India, O Jews. You do not fit in. You are not Native American, O Jews. Not even in the case of the Jewish mother who goes searching for her long-lost son and finds him in an Indian reservation. She finds he is happy. “Marvin, what are you doing here?” she asks. “Mom, I became an Indian. This is my bride, Floating Feather. This is her father, Flying Eagle. This is her mother, Running Lamb.” The father-in-law extends his hand to Marvin’s mother and asks: “Am much pleased to meet you, and what is your name?” She responds: “Sitting Shiva.”
You don’t fit in with DEI, O foolish left-wing college Jews. Not Black. Not Puerto Rican. Not American Indian. Not Spelling Bee Indian. Not Asian. And G-d knows not Arab Muslim. None of the DEI Chosen People. Even the homosexuals among you do not fit in. One after another LMNOPQ association has voted its endorsement of Hamas-ISIS, the Arab Muslims who throw gay Arabs off rooftops. None of them wants you.
At your parents’ behest, you ran from your roots, foolish liberal Jews, fleeing the anti-Semitism you feared would come from the right because anti-Semitism so often indeed comes from the extreme right. You thought, having abandoned your G-d and His Torah, that you would find succor among the left and the progressives and the Woke because they care about everyone. They care about the climate and the homeless, everyone. So you all became variations on George Soros and Bernie Sanders and Ben & Jerry — fleeing your heritage. “Yeah, I’m Jewish. But not really. I eat pork. I vote for Bernie. The Squad speaks for me. I’m for Palestine. I am woke. I oppose climate change. I fit in here at Harvard / Yale / U. of Penn / Columbia.”
No, you don’t. You never did. You never will. You know that Greta Thunberg? Guess what, O liberal progressive woke Ivy League Jews? That little snot also supports Hamas-ISIS.
No one respects people who deny who they are. It never works. You should learn about the Soviet Union, a hell that existed once upon a time, and now is dead as a doorknob. Many foolish apostate Jews — people like you — thought that was their ticket to fleeing the endless murderous Tsarist pogroms. So these Jews — like Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev, Karl Radek, and Leon Trotsky — embraced Communism. (READ MORE: Israel’s Ground Incursion Won’t Look Pretty, but Let It Be.)
You know what happened to them, O Jews of Harvard and Columbia? The first three were arrested, forced to sign confessions after weeks of being kept sleepless, then were put on trial in the middle of the night with their signed confessions read, and then were shot in rooms that had shower heads to quickly wash their blood down the drain, one by one. Trotsky hid in Mexico, so Stalin sent someone to slam a hatchet into his head. Trotsky was axed from the Communist party.
So stop whining. “Mommy, they hate us! Arab Muslims and all our friends are turning on us! They are cheering for the Hamas-ISIS butchers who slaughtered peace activists.” Hamas began by slaughtering 270 peace activists, butchering and raping and beheading peace activists at an all-night Trance Rave music festival, while more authentically committed Jews in Israel were in synagogue observing Shabbat and Shmini Atzeret. “Mommy, the Hamas-ISIS terrorists slaughtered families, murdered children, as many as 40 babies in a kibbutz, then cut off their baby heads, set their baby corpses on fire, burned others, cut off limbs, then photo’d and video’d all of it, as the Nazis had documented their atrocities. And all the students here support that, Mommy. And, Mommy, now they are chanting ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine Must Be Free’ — meaning no more Israel because Israel is the only thing that stands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.”
“Mommy, I’m scared. I don’t feel safe here. Mommy, I don’t know what to do. You always taught me that, as liberals, we can count on people feeling sorry for us. You taught us to worship the victims. You taught us victimology. The only thing Jewish you ever taught us about was not the Torah but the Holocaust. But how come no one here is standing with us as the victims, Mommy?”
Stop your damn whining, O coddled and over-protected Ivy League Jews! Grow up. Instead of being Woke, the real world invites you to awake.
The campuses now are flooded with Arab Muslims imported as full-tuition-paying exchange students from foreign lands that hate and despise America, the countries that blew up the World Trade Center or cheered it. They dominate the Middle Eastern Studies departments because the Saudis and their ilk put up the money to fund them. The few Jews who teach in Middle Eastern or even “Jewish Studies” must prove they are anti-Israel to get tenure. The anti-Israel petitions are filled with Jewish signers, all professors of Middle Eastern and Jewish Studies. Hate for Israel is their ticket to tenure.
The Left distinguishes between bad rape and good rape. Hamas-ISIS is good Woke rape. Rape women who want peace. #MeToo.
I went to Columbia University a bit ago. Not only did I attend, but I got the undergraduate student body to elect me to represent the entire college in the University Senate from 1974-1976. Look it up. I, a politically hard-conservative Orthodox Jew with yarmulka and tzitzit, was the elected representative of all Columbia College students. You know how I did it? By being a proud Jew. I was known on campus. No one dared mess with me as I led Jews on campus to make Jewish demands. At the time, Pepsi was dealing only with Arab countries, and essentially boycotting Israel, while they also were dealing with the Soviet Union that persecuted Jews and would not let them leave. At the time, Coca Cola famously was marketing in Israel. So we demanded that Columbia end its contract with Pepsi and replace them with Coke. We won.
We demanded days off for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur — and we got it. We demanded that Columbia end all academic exchange programs with the Soviets until Prof. Vitali Rubin, some Jew who taught Chinese, was freed from the USSR. Columbia responded that they are not going to end an entire academic exchange program just for one Jew. So things happened on campus and Columbia ended its exchange program with the Russians. A year later Vitali Rubin was in Israel, and we allowed the exchange program to resume.
So stop your despicable whining. You are a disgrace and a shame to Jews like my friends and me who, for two thousand years, never had life as good and as privileged as you have it. They were getting butchered in Kishinev, Kiev, and Odessa in their meager hamlets. They were burned at the stake during the Inquisition. The Crusaders broke into their homes and treated them as Hamas-ISIS does. And you are whining that 32 Muslim and Indonesian and Pakistani and Black Student groups sign a statement hating Israel and loving Hamas-ISIS? That is what they are.
Grow up. They cheer the sub-humans who cut off limbs, beheaded, and burned even children and babies. The Left distinguishes between bad rape and good rape. Hamas-ISIS is good Woke rape. Rape women who want peace. #MeToo.
So, O Jews of campuses, stop whining. If they chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!” then gather a hundred of you and chant “From the River to the Sea, Yis-Ra-El Will Be Free!” If they chant for a “Palestine” that is a fraud because there are no “Palestinians.” But then you chant for Israel. Chant for Israel. And really get them angry by singing “G-d Bless America.” (READ MORE: Patiently Waiting for Israel’s Ground Invasion to Crush Hamas)
As Woke leftists, you have been taught to whine, to seek safe spaces, to cringe at microaggressions. But whining will do no good. It never does. Get out there and affirm you are Jews. Affirm Israel’s right to live, even if it must kill 100,000 Gazans as collateral damage to exterminating Hamas-ISIS. Accept that the DEI Woke have no room for you.
Stop waiting to be saved by off-campus organizations. You have to save yourselves, for G-d’s sakes! Christians will respect you for it. Many will join you. You don’t have to let a handful of foreign students — who do not even belong in America — along with a bunch of Jewish self-hating apostates, beat you down. There are more of you than them. Stop marching to the showers like lambs. This is not Auschwitz; it’s Harvard Yard.
Stop whining. Fight back
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