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Batya Ungar-Sargon: The Anti-Semites Scream. And I Stiffen My Spine.
The worst thing that could come out of this moment would be for Jews to embrace the victimhood narrative.
Batya Ungar-Sargon
About a week after the October 7 massacre, I passed a large group of people in an airport who were waiting to check in for a flight to Cairo. One of the women ostentatiously clocked the Jewish star I wear around my neck and started whispering with her compatriots. As I walked by, she shouted at me, “Palestine will be free!”
I chuckled as I walked to my gate, thinking, Not if Egypt has anything to say about it.
Before October 7, I would have considered this whole scene to be wildly offensive. A stranger shouting an anti-Israel slogan at me, holding me responsible for the actions of the Israeli government simply because I am a Jew.
But in the post–October 7 world, I had a different reaction: let her scream.
It’s uncomfortable to be barked at by strangers. It’s not pleasant to find out that your classmates will not condemn the murder of your people, or to hear thousands of them gleefully chanting the slogans of a genocidal death cult committed to your erasure from this planet. It’s unsettling to know that your peers have adopted a worldview that allows them to convince themselves that you are the bad guy, you are the privileged monster who wants babies to burn—even as they justify and celebrate the burning of Jewish babies.
It is scary to realize that the same administration that “protects” your fellow students from every perceived slight and insult will side with them against you as they literally call for your annihilation. It can be deeply isolating to open social media and see post after post calling your people the perpetrators of the exact forms of murderous violence that was done to them not three weeks earlier. And it is maddening to watch those who hate us and wish violence upon us fashion themselves as victims—even as heroes.
But that feeling you get when you are facing those things down, that quickening of your heart rate, the flush on your face, the chill down the spine—these unpleasant sensations are what courage feels like. They are the physical symptoms of a moral compass that works, the manifestations of pride in who you are, of the fact that despite millennia of calls for our murder, we’re still here. You’re still here.
Treasure those feelings. Do not cower. Do not tremble.
I’m not suggesting you put yourself in actual danger. The assaults on Jewish students at Harvard and UMass are crimes and should be prosecuted as such. On Sunday, 69-year-old Paul Kessler dared wave an Israeli flag on a Thousand Oaks street corner and died after being assaulted. His murderer should spend his life behind bars.
But the worst thing that could come out of this moment would be for Jews, especially Jews on campus, to embrace the victimhood narrative that their peers subscribe to—and that universities large and small have reified in sprawling DEI bureaucracies. That worldview is a large part of what has brought us to this moment.
So do not cast your lot as a competitor in the oppression Olympics. Instead, reject that entire way of looking at the world.
Here’s the thing: it’s good to be unpopular with a mob whose worldview has done away with the concept of right and wrong and decided, with a Nazi-like commitment to racial ideology, that you are Jewish and therefore you are white and therefore you are bad. It is good to be unpopular with people who spent the weeks after October 7 on the hunt for Jewish exaggeration, Jewish lies, Jewish crimes. It is good to be unpopular with people who cannot separate evil from power and virtue from skin color. (Unpopularity, for now, is your fate, unless you are willing to cosign your own humiliation and join the left’s token “good Jews” who advocate against Zionism from the comfort of the diaspora for plaudits from the Squad.) We don’t answer to them; we answer to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Rock of Israel and its Redeemer.
The good news is: it may not feel like it, but this country is on your side. College students are in one of vanishingly few spaces in America that sides with Hamas. Your professors will live and die in irrelevance, signing their names to their silly little letters and coming up with new jargon with which to defend terrorism while nurturing their grandiose hero complexes. Most of your peers will grow up and abandon their radical chic commitments. The progressive movement has taken a big hit, having shown its true colors to a nation that knows what is good and what is right, that can separate barbarism from civilization.
But for now, remember this: to be a Jew is to refuse to kneel and refuse to bow. The stakes of standing upright have never been clearer than they are today, in this post–October 7 world. It’s good to have these people as your enemies, because the world will always have people who oppose what’s right and what’s good, and it is our destiny to fight them. Do it with pride.
Batya Ungar-Sargon is the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek. Follow her on X @bungarsargon. And read her last piece for The Free Press, “The January 6 Hearings Changed My Mind.”
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US NEWS
Soros-Backed Prosecutor Faces Potential Criminal, Civil Charges: Missouri AG
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Highlights of Chapter 9 in "The Genius of Israel."
Many founders of start ups insist their acquired companies remain in Israel because of their commitment/connection to their mother country, because of the desire to have their offspring join the military and because of the cultural/societal lifestyle factors.
400 multi international companies are now in Israel in order to solve problems through unconventional technology-based innovation.
Israeli technology is particularly strong in cyber and software. Among it's many technologists the author believes two are standouts: Amnon Shashua (Mobileye and four other companies and Michael Kagan who is a senior official with NVIDIA by way of his sale of (AI21.)
Israel's primary sector focus is climate, health care, food security and agriculture.
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It appears to me that the scheme is to express or do what would have been unthought of 10 or 20 years ago so people would get used to the absurd. Once this is accomplished it could be taken to another level until we would accept anything. At that point all would be lost of common sense and the Majority would be completely in control of the Minority which ultimately would lead to control by The New World Order----Total Loss Of Freedom that the United States once stood for & had as outlined in our Constitution & Bill of Rights! Don’t let the Tail Wag the Dog!!!
Did someone or something seize control of the United States?
By: Victor Davis Hanson
What happened to the U.S. border? Where did it go? Who erased it? Why and how did 5 million people enter our country illegally? Did Congress secretly repeal our immigration laws? Did Joe Biden issue an executive order allowing foreign nationals to walk across the border and reside in the United States as they pleased?
Since when did borrowed money not have to be paid back? Who insisted that the more dollars the federal government printed, the more prosperity would follow? When did America embrace zero interest? Why do we believe $30 trillion in debt is no big deal?
When did clean-burning, cheap, and abundant natural gas become the equivalent of dirty coal? How did prized natural gas that had granted America’s wishes of energy self-sufficiency, reduced pollution, and inexpensive electricity become almost overnight a pariah fuel whose extraction was a war against nature? Which lawmakers, which laws, and which votes of the people declared natural gas development and pipelines near criminal?
Was it not against federal law to swarm the homes of Supreme Court justices, to picket and to intimidate their households in efforts to affect their rulings? How then, and with impunity, did bullies surround the homes of Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas—furious over a court decision on abortion? How could these mobs so easily throng our justices’ homes, with placards declaring “Off with their d—s”?
Since when did Americans create a government Ministry of Truth? And on whose orders did the FBI contract private news organizations to censor stories it did not like and writers whom it feared?
How did we wake up one morning to new customs of impeaching a president over a phone call? Of the speaker of the House tearing up the State of the Union address on national television? Of barring congressional members from serving on their assigned congressional committees?
When did we assume the FBI had the right to subvert the campaign of a candidate it disliked? Was it suddenly legal for one presidential candidate to hire a foreign ex-spy to subvert the campaign of her rival?
Was some state or federal law passed that allowed biological males to compete in female sports? Did Congress enact such a law? Did the Supreme Court guarantee that biological male students could shower in gym locker rooms with biological women? Were women ever asked to redefine the very sports they had championed?
When did the government pass a law depriving Americans of their freedom during a pandemic? In America can health officials simply cancel rental contracts or declare loan payments in suspension? How could it become illegal for mom-and-pop stores to sell flowers or shoes during quarantine but not so for Walmart or Target?
Since when did the people decide that 70 percent of voters would not cast their ballots on Election Day? Was this revolutionary change the subject of a national debate, a heated congressional session, or the votes of dozens of state legislatures? No, of course not.
What happened to Election Night returns? Did the fact that Americans created more electronic ballots and computerized tallies make it take so much longer to tabulate the votes?
When did the nation abruptly decide that theft is not a crime, assault not a felony? How can thieves walk out with bags of stolen goods, without the wrath of angry shoppers, much less fear of the law?
Was there ever a national debate about the terrifying flight from Afghanistan? Who planned it and why? And today, the current administration (Biden) is blaming former President Trump for that disaster!
What happened to the once-trusted FBI? Why almost overnight did its directors decide to mislead Congress, to deceive judges with concocted tales from fake dossiers and with doctored writs? Did Congress pass a law that our federal leaders in the FBI or CIA could lie under oath with impunity?
Who redefined our military and with whose consent? Who proclaimed that our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could call his Chinese Communist counterpart to warn him that America’s president was supposedly unstable? Was it always true that retired generals routinely labeled their commander-in-chief as a near Nazi, a Mussolini, an adherent of the tools of Auschwitz?
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Israel’s 41st Day of War
By Sherwin Pomerantz
Today is the 41st day of the war with Hamas. The IDF has now reported 51 deaths in combat with three of those occurring in the last 24 hours. May their memories be for a blessing,
Regarding the hostages, the latest is talk about a release of 50 of the hostages, possibly as early as this weekend, primarily women and children. In return Israel would agree to observe a three day pause in the fighting and release back to Gaza a number of Palestinian security prisoners being held here. Obviously, there is some unhappiness here about stopping the fighting which would let Hamas regroup, but the pressure to bring at least some of the hostages home is mounting daily. The hostage families are currently on a five-day march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem which began on Tuesday. Their intent is to confront the government and urge more aggressive action to get their husbands, wives, sons, daughters and siblings back home.
This morning the news outlets reported that an Israeli hostage who was 8 months pregnant at the time of the massacre has now given birth in Gaza. No other information was available
Israeli troops are now in command of Al Shifa hospital in Gaza where it is known that Hamas used the space under the hospital to operate a major command post. The IDF is also bringing in much needed medical supplies and equipment to the hospital and, for the first time, has begun to allow fuel deliveries into Gaza as well
A large barrage of 20 rockets were launched at Israel from Lebanon overnight. While Hezbollah claims they do not want to enter the war, they continue to launch rockets at Israel. There were no injuries on the Israeli side and the IDF retaliated as appropriate. To date 80 Hezbollah terrorists have lost their lives since October 7th. On the Gaza border the volume of rockets from Gaza has dropped dramatically although Hamas still seems to be able to fire off some of them each night.
In a related incident, the German security services earlier today raided 54 Hezbollah cells in and around Hamburg zeroing in on one mosque there that is known to be a hotbed of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activity. No further details were available.
Earlier today at the main checkpoint into Jerusalem from the south, a car carrying three Palestinian terrorists dressed as Israeli soldiers and loaded with M-16 rifles, hand guns and a large amount of ammunition was stopped by our security forces and neutralized. However, six security personnel were injured in the gunfight, one of whom is fighting for his life. It appears that the intent of the terrorists, if they were to be able to get through the checkpoint, was to enter Jerusalem and cause a significant amount of death, injury and chaos. Thankfully the security people were able to identify the potential problem and eliminate it before any further carnage was caused.
Let’s hope that we will be victorious sooner rather than later and that the hostages will return to their families at the earliest possible date. The two objectives are not mutually exclusive. May the good Lord continue to shower blessing upon all of us.
Sherwin Pomerantz has lived in Israel for 40 years, is CEO of Atid EDI Ltd., a international business development consultancy. He is also the Founder and Chair of the American State Offices Association, former National President of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel and a past Chairperson of the Board of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies.
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Personal Comment:
I find it most ironic that while millions of brainless are parading and accusing Israel of everything Hamas has done key nations, including America, want Israel to re-enter and manage Gaza. Why would Israel, that left Gaza 5 years ago, be acceptable to Palestinians who invited Hamas to govern would want Israel to manage their affairs? The Palestinians hate Israel and want to drive them from the river to the sea meanwhile Hamas brought them only misery and death.
I realize brainless have no use for facts but facts don't lie.
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When Has War Even Been ‘Proportional?’ |
| by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness Israel's conventional disproportionality is proving more effective than the terrorist disproportionality of Hamas. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Placating Xi Won’t Change China’s Behavior Beijing is undermining U.S. interests worldwide, but there are ways of forcing concessions By Thomas J. Duesterberg In an article previewing President Biden’s meeting with China’s Xi Jinping this week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the U.S. has “a pragmatic economic strategy: one that protects our vital national security interests while seeking a stable and healthy economic relationship” with Beijing. But in the perilous and fast-changing world of late 2023, Beijing doesn’t seem interested in that sort of balance. From supporting other authoritarians’ military efforts to trying to displace the U.S.-led global financial system, Mr. Xi is undermining the security of America and its allies. But China’s weakening economy offers an opportunity to win meaningful changes in Beijing’s policies. It will take a hard-line approach to get China’s attention. Mr. Xi certainly won’t be soft in negotiations. He knows two major wars have sapped America’s diplomatic and military resources—in part because of China’s efforts. Mr. Xi has tried to create an alternative to the Western financial and economic system created by the Bretton Woods Agreement. A major component of Beijing’s program is undermining the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency and principal medium of global payments. That system—in combination with Western dominance of high-tech industries—allows the U.S. and allies to enforce sanctions. To become more economically self-sufficient and immune from Western financial pressure, Beijing has worked on its own financial and economic system. The Brics grouping—which also includes Brazil, Russia, India and, as of recently, Iran—intends to displace the dollar by settling inter-Brics trade in local currencies. China also has agreements with various Middle Eastern nations to settle trade in local currencies. Beijing tries to do so through its Cross-Border Interbank Payment System. China has also become the world’s largest provider of development finance, thanks to its Belt and Road Initiative and, to a lesser degree, to the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. In conjunction with this, China has focused its trade expansion on Brics nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Council, a group of eight full members and 10 observers and partners. Total Chinese exports to countries involved in Belt and Road now exceed those to the U.S., European Union, and Japan. These efforts have yielded international political clout, which China has used to undermine U.S. interests. The Financial Times reported that between 2013 and 2020 Belt and Road nations voted with the Chinese position at the United Nations 75% of the time. More ominous, China’s economic and financial reach have already allowed it to bypass Western sanctions and materially support authoritarian regimes. The U.S. organization United Against Nuclear Iran in 2022 accused six Chinese banks—including the world’s largest bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China—of complicity in illicit trade with Iran. Though that matter was seemingly never investigated by U.S. authorities, ICBC has been fined for money-laundering-related offenses by the U.S., U.K., Spain and Canada. The headline program for China’s anti-Western financial system is the purchase and processing of oil and gas from Russia and Iran. China is estimated to be buying more than a million barrels of oil a day each from Iran and Russia, much of it in violation of various Western sanctions. China purchases this fuel at below market price, which aids its growing manufacturing dominance and economic power. China is also aiding weapons production in Russia and Iran. In March, the U.S. imposed sanctions on five Chinese suppliers for selling drone components, while Politico in April reported that China was in talks with Russia and Iran to replenish Tehran’s supply of chemicals for rocket fuel. China and Hong Kong are major sources for Western semiconductors flowing to Russia in violation of sanctions. In light of all this, it’s vital that Mr. Biden discuss new U.S. programs to counter China’s mercantilism, its drive to displace American leadership in the world, and, most important, to impose sanctions on China for its support of Russian and Iranian aggression. Straight talk from Washington will get Mr. Xi’s attention. Mr. Xi desperately needs relief from Western sanctions, tariffs and investment restrictions to prop up China’s faltering economy. China is suffering from demographic decline, rural poverty, ecological stress, underdeveloped social services and youth unemployment. Yet Beijing can’t rely on government stimulus or consumer-led recovery as it has in past economic crises. Local governments provide 86% of public expenditures in China but their financing vehicles are horribly overleveraged. Banks are too, and that combined with falling returns on capital investment and the collapse of the real-estate sector leave few options for an investment- or demand-led rebound. When Messrs. Biden and Xi meet, the latter will undoubtedly offer rhetorical support for cooperation on climate change and better access to Chinese markets in return for substantial reductions in U.S. tariffs, export controls and investment restrictions. Those will be empty promises, as in the past. In September 2020, China promised to begin reducing carbon emissions by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. In January 2020, Beijing said it would increase U.S. imports under the Phase I trade agreement with the Trump administration. Neither happened. In fact, for all the Biden White House’s attempts to slow carbon output internationally, China’s chief climate negotiator in September said that phasing out fossil fuels is “unrealistic.” Carrots have never worked with Beijing. Fortunately, at least four sticks are available to Mr. Biden. First, Washington should find and impose sanctions on the banks laundering China’s illicit purchases of Iranian and Russian oil. The administration has been hesitant to do so, likely because of its nuclear-deal negotiations with Iran and China’s reputation for retaliation. It’s clear pandering hasn’t worked. Second, Mr. Biden ought to revive a U.S. TikTok ban on the grounds of simple reciprocity—U.S. social media platforms don’t operate freely in China—and security concerns. The Justice Department is investigating TikTok for allegedly spying on U.S. citizens, including journalists, even as the platform gains popularity in America. Third, the president should indicate to Mr. Xi that his administration would oppose any Treasury or Federal Reserve dollar relief to China if its faltering financial system suffers a shortage. China’s banks and many foreign investors lavished dollar-denominated loans on Chinese real estate and Belt and Road recipients. Seventy-five percent of China’s Belt and Road loans are in dollars, and these loans are at distress levels not seen since the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s. Finally, Mr. Biden ought to inform Mr. Xi that he will expand investment restrictions more broadly to American portfolio investments in any Chinese firm subject to sanctions by the U.S. or its allies. Perhaps such straight talk at a time of growing domestic problems will induce Mr. Xi to rethink at least his support for Russia and Iran. It’s clear that concessions won’t do the job. Mr. Duesterberg is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of a forthcoming report, “China’s Economic Weakness and Challenge to the Bretton Woods System: How Should the US Respond.” ++++++++++++++++ No they don't need regulation they need new Presidents and boards that understand what our constitution says and they need to read this great document.. +++ America’s Universities Need Serious Regulation If you want real change in large organizations, focus on governance and personal accountability. By Arthur Levitt Americans who are rightfully appalled by the pusillanimous response to anti-Semitism on college campuses have been pulling their donations and calling for restrictions on anti-Israel student groups. Maybe those tactics will work. But in my experience, if you want real change in large and unwieldy organizations, you need to focus on fixing governance and assigning personal accountability. You need to regulate. After the accounting scandals of the dot-com and Enron era, Congress passed laws requiring auditors to tighten their operations, establish clear boundaries between their consulting and audit businesses, and assume far more accountability than they had before. Directors, too, were informed that they bore a personal interest in preventing fraud. One rule made it clear that if a company passed fraudulent numbers off to investors, the person who signed the filing—usually the chairman—would be personally liable. Lawmakers have also tightened anti-money-laundering statutes, requiring banks to review their customers closely and to ensure they aren’t unwittingly providing services to organized crime, terror entities, tax evaders or other bad actors. The rules are difficult to enforce and require a lot of work. But they come with real penalties for failure: Bank officers can go to prison if they fail to prevent money laundering, and several have. Think of the difference this makes. When Russia invaded Ukraine, America’s banks and other multinational corporations quickly had to implement sanctions—including anti-money-laundering rules—on Russia’s government, politicians, financial institutions, oligarchs and others who make up the country’s elite. This happened effectively because people had real skin in the game: their own. Which brings us back to campus. Clearly, America’s universities are in need of similar encouragement. Universities have lately seen a raft of scandals related to their fundamental mission of scholarship and teaching. Students are graduating unprepared for basic work and deeply in debt. Prominent scholars are found to be fudging their own research. Admissions officers and other officials are found to be engaging in pay-for-admission schemes. Athletic programs are regularly found breaking rules and laws. Universities have taken charitable gifts from questionable sources such as Jeffrey Epstein and Chinese military and Communist Party fronts. Add the explosion of anti-Semitism. America’s campuses are the source of some of the vilest Jew-hatred America has seen since 1939, when the German American Bund held a pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. Not only do some faculty and students call for Israel’s destruction; they celebrated Hamas’s brutal massacre as an act of “resistance.” If public companies featured such systematic failures, they would be visited by regulators and called before Congress. Universities, by comparison, are lightly regulated. There are accrediting agencies, and the Education Department focuses on enforcement of civil-rights laws. In the case of professional education, some membership organizations set curricular standards. But these don’t constitute regulation in a comprehensive sense. Universities can pretty much set their own rules, and they answer to no one. They face no meaningful external pressure to tell the truth or honor their promises to students and others. They don’t need to report or punish fraud or corruption. They don’t set consistent standards for contributions or spending. None of this is acceptable. Not to students and parents. Not to alumni and donors. And not to taxpayers, who subsidize universities to the tune of $1 trillion a year. The public has a clear interest in how these institutions operate and deserve to know how they became hotbeds of anti-Semitism. Imagine what a difference it would make if universities were subject to the same kind of regulatory oversight the Securities and Exchange Commission provides to public companies. Administrators would have to meet basic standards of truthfulness and governance or face stiff financial penalties and sanctions, including permanent bans from working in higher education. If criminal acts were discovered, the Justice Department would step in. When I led the SEC, I often spoke about my duty to the investing public. I said every public corporation needs to be trusted, and all should treat their investors with respect. Someone who breaks that trust should pay the price—including with time in prison. Given what we are seeing on college campuses, it is time to impose the same standard on universities, their managers and their directors and trustees. It may be the only way to save them. Mr. Levitt served as SEC chairman, 1993-2001. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |
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