America has been taken over by Marxist thinking and actions in the form of DEI, Wokeness, BLM, and a host of other lunatic concepts based on government control of human behaviour and other debaucheries that define democracy.
The number of adherents and radical protesters are relatively small but their cacophony is loud and their anti-social behaviour has been allowed to get out of hand.
This is why it is critical for Democrats to lose and lose big in 2024 and for true conservatives, return us on the path set by the "founding fathers."
All national elections have a variety of consequences but none as critical as this one if we are to save our republic.
It is abundantly clear, we have an inept president and a corrupt one who is protected by agencies that have failed to live up to their constitutional obligations, ie. The IRS, The FBI and The Justice Department. They have provided a shield behind which Obama and Biden have hidden.
Furthermore, we have a mass media crop that is nothing more than a Trojan Horse of neo-Marxists and are predominantly anti-American. They no longer play the role of an ombudsman and therefore, cannot be trusted. The vast number of "deplorables" distrust them, as well they should. They have become shills for radical anti-Semitic Democrats who align with fascist Islamist terrorists.
America is no longer recognizable. We have sunk to depths that may be irretrievable.
Time will tell but one thing is certain - The Enemy Is Us!
And:
We have a "New Neighbor" program at The Landis too:
We have a "New Neighbor" program at The Landis too:
Finally:
Hikind you might as well go to The Wall in Jerusalem, and talk to it.
+++
This is NOT the time to waver, it’s NOT the time to be weak, nor play politics to appease radicals in your party!
This IS an opportunity for leadership and courage, so enough with the mixed messages!
By Dov Hikind
Hikind was a Democratic New York State Assemblyman who represented districts in Brooklyn...... He is outspoken and he sure speaks Truth in this short video......
+++++++++++++++++
How the Growing Rot of Academia Has Made Jews Enemy #1
We should take some comfort that the farce of DEI is finally being exposed. The fear of being called “racist” just for criticizing DEI is gone. Just as it is open season on the Jews and Israel, it is also open season on DEI.
By David Suissa
++++++++++++++++++++++++
I loved "Papa's"s style of writing but he was one big mess as a human. As for being an anti-Semite, he was also a big one.
+++
Hemingway, and the antisemitism also rises
For the past 24 years our culture has been so out of whack, so full of garbage, so that, in frustration, historians will dump this generation onto the cutting room floor .Op-ed
https://www.
Screw the U.N. Has been a worthless organization for decades. We should leave it.
+++
The U.N. Piles On Israel
Wild allegations increase pressure on Israel to leave Hamas in power and set precedents that will hurt America’s ability to fight terrorists.
And:
Israel-haters aren’t refighting the Vietnam War
Today’s anti -Semites are modeling their campaign on 1960s protesters, even though the two conflicts are very different. Still, the same toxic ideology influenced radicals of both eras.
By JONATHAN S. TOBIN
Many Americans are baffled by the mobs on college campuses and the streets of major U.S. cities chanting for Israel’s destruction and the genocide of its people.
That so many of their fellow citizens—regardless of their age, education, ideology or background—would openly take the side of Hamas, the terror group that started a war on Oct. 7 with the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, remains mind-boggling. So is the fact that those who call themselves “progressives” are now rooting not just for the cessation of suffering for Palestinians but for the survival of a reactionary Islamist terrorist organization that despises their beliefs.
Take, for example, “queers for Palestine,” who practice an alternative lifestyle that would have earned them a brutal execution in pre-Oct. 7 Gaza ruled by Hamas, but who sympathize with the Oct. 7 barbarians and deplore Israel’s efforts to eliminate them. It’s equally true about most others sounding the “from the river to the sea” slogan, whose grasp of the conflict is so flimsy that few can identify either body of water.
The problem transcends such obvious absurdities.
Even their manifest tone deafness about the way they are trafficking in traditional tropes of anti-Semitism similarly provides little insight into their motivations. How can anyone demand that Hamas be allowed to emerge triumphant from a war begun by atrocious crimes against humanity, or that the Islamists ultimately be allowed to enact their fantasy of a world without Israel and its 7 million Jewish inhabitants?
Believing in their own righteousness
The answer is simple. They think they are the good guys and that their opponents are intrinsically evil. And that is why the attempts on the part of publications like The New York Times to analogize the anti-Israel protesters to those who demonstrated against the Vietnam War more than a half century ago are worth considering. Such claims are wildly inaccurate since the two conflicts have nothing to do with each other. But in some ways, this evocation of the past provides a telling insight into the psychology and motivations of contemporary left-wing anti-Semites.
The first thing to understand about such a discussion is that the corporate press is desperate to legitimize protests rooted in Jew-hatred. The Times article is, like similar pieces—such as a Washington Post story that seeks to engender sympathy for “Young U.S. Muslims” marching for Israel’s extinction in even unlikely settings like Huntsville, Ala.—primarily an effort to treat a deplorable campaign as a righteous cause taken up by brave idealists.
The anti-Israel bias of publications like the Times is no longer even open to debate. On the same day that it published its article titled, “In Campus Protests Over Gaza, Echoes of Outcry Over Vietnam,” it also ran a piece on its opinion pages by Yahya R. Sarraj, the Hamas operative who was mayor of Gaza City. The piece, which mentions Oct. 7 only in passing, focuses on the destruction that his organization brought to Gaza by starting a war with savage crimes like rape, torture, beheadings and the murder of entire families.
But it concludes with a passage that is gobsmacking in its disingenuousness: “Why,” he asks, “can’t Palestinians be treated equally, like Israelis and all other peoples in the world? Why can’t we live in peace and have open borders and free trade? Palestinians deserve to be free and have self-determination.”
The answer is so obvious that even a New York Times editor ought to know it, which should have led the passage to be deleted even under the newspaper’s current low standards. Palestinians can’t have peace, open borders and free trade so long as they are led by and overwhelmingly support groups like Sarraj’s Hamas, whose avowed purpose is to destroy Israel and slaughter its people.
The idea that Israelis are simply supposed to sit back and await the next promised, vicious attack from Hamas would be considered ridiculous were it posed to any other nation than the one Jewish state on the planet. But that’s the assumption on the part of all those who are currently marching against Israel.
Nothing to do with Vietnam
But what has any of this to do with the Vietnam War?
As even the Times was forced to concede, not much. America’s involvement in Vietnam began under the administration of President John F. Kennedy and escalated during that of Lyndon Johnson before Richard Nixon ended America’s direct involvement. It didn’t conclude until 1975 with the complete military conquest of South Vietnam by the Communist government of North Vietnam. But whatever one’s take on the rights and wrongs of that conflict, it has little in common with the century-old Arab war against Zionism or the events of the last three months.
The Vietnam War was justified as an attempt to prevent the spread of communism around the world. The result of the North Vietnamese victory was the imposition of a brutal totalitarian regime in the South with millions put in “re-education” camps and many more forced to flee as “boat people.” That proved that the pro-war cause was nobler than its critics, who damned it as imperialist oppression of Third World people, understood at the time.
A radical core of the anti-Vietnam movement led by the far-left may have seen it as part of an ideological war against the West, in which Communist oppressors were to be lauded because they were fighting imperialists. But most Americans who opposed the war had a different perspective.
The protests gained widespread support primarily because many believed that there was no good reason for a generation of young Americans to die in a civil war in Southeast Asia that wouldn’t ultimately impact the outcome of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The large-scale anti-war movement was a response not so much to an unsympathetic South Vietnamese ally. Nor was it really about the war’s mismanagement by Johnson and the Kennedy appointees that LBJ kept in place and allowed to drive the nation further into a war they were unwilling and unable to win.
The real reason for the protests was self-interest. It was a response to the draft, due to which young men who couldn’t get out of being conscripted through various exemptions (primarily a function of their economic status) were forced to serve. As soon as Nixon stopped sending draftees to Vietnam and then ended the draft entirely, the antiwar movement evaporated. By the time the war actually ended, few Americans cared then or since about its consequences for the Vietnamese people.
So, the notion that the alleged idealism of the groovy ’60s is making a comeback among the “from the river to the sea” crowd is pure bunk. Nobody is drafting American kids to go fight Hamas. That’s the obligation that young Israelis have willingly taken up to defend their homes and families. And if American protesters really are that concerned by the impact of war in Third World venues, there are plenty of opportunities to vent their concerns about other conflicts around the globe in which far more people have been killed.
Marxism’s comeback with DEI
Still, it’s not entirely wrong to see the roots of today’s anti-Israel protests in those radicals, who were the most violent elements of the protests against the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Unlike most Americans, the Marxists of the misnamed Students for a Democratic Society—veterans of which were featured in the Times article—wanted the Communists to win in much the same way those who compose the mobs tying up traffic, breaking up Christmas celebrations and intimidating Jewish students on campuses want Hamas to defeat Israel.
Unlike most of the Americans who were against the war in the 1960s without expressing hatred for their own country, the motivations of the large number of young people and Muslims who have swelled the numbers of the anti-Israel movement are ideological in nature. They are the product of a generation of education in which leftists—many of them former ’60s radicals—who believe in the myths of intersectionality that falsely analogize the Palestinian war against Israel to the struggle for civil rights in the United States. They’ve been indoctrinated in the toxic catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), as well as critical race theory, which divides the world into two immutable groups: victims of racism and racist oppressors.
This is a neo-Marxist dialectic not unrelated to the ideas of the so-called New Left that spawned SDS and the radical Weatherman terrorist movement that tried to blow up the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, the State Department and dozens of other targets during their campaign in what might well have been termed a real “insurrection.”
And that is what blinds them to the fact that they are devoting their energy and passion to supporting a cause that is fundamentally evil. The ideological prism through which they view the world mandates that the side that is designated by leftist doctrine as “white” and colonial (Israel) must be wrong and the one labeled as the cause of the oppressed “people of color” (the Palestinians) must be right.
They are insensible to obvious truths about a complex conflict that isn’t racial and that has always been driven by Arab refusal to share the land with the Jews. Their acceptance of the idea that Jews, who are the indigenous people of their ancient homeland, are colonizers in Israel much as Americans were depicted in Vietnam is as egregious as it is false.
But that doesn’t matter to the protesters because they see the facts as irrelevant. Nor do they care about the horrors perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7 or even against their own people as they continue to sacrifice them on the altar of their never-ending war against the Jews
Mainstreaming anti-Semitism
It’s true that Hamas’s useful idiots are using some of the same tactics pioneered by the anti-Vietnam movement. But what those seeking to lionize today’s demonstrators want to obfuscate in their alleged idealism about helping Gazans is given the lie by the antisemitism they are spreading. The arguments about Vietnam were not predicated on the horrible notion that wiping the only Jewish state off the map—an objective that could only be achieved by the genocide of the Jews—is a righteous cause. And even at their worst, the Vietnam protests didn’t target Jewish students, Jewish businesses or seek to drive Jews from the public square as these mobs seek to do.
There’s no denying that the same core ideology driving the movement to destroy Israel is linked to the war on the West and the principles of American freedom that were championed by the Marxists of the ’60s New Left. Yet what is so damaging about demonstrators right now is not just their unabashed anti-Semitism. It’s the fact that their lies are being bought not by just a radical fringe but by a broad cross-section of young Americans who have been educated to believe that a genocidal, Jew-hating terrorist movement is the underdog deserving of support. This is the greatest tragedy of the post-Oct. 7 protests. And it is ultimately one that not just threatens Israel or the Jews, but the future of the United States as a free country.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I listened to one of the best presentations I have had in a very long time. Since Israel will continue to be threatened militarily perhaps they need a true military leader at the helm and if so General Amir Avivi would absolutely be my candidate to replace BIBI.
I am not advocating BIBI be replaced but if that is the Israeli consensus, AVIVI would be outstanding.
+++
Brigadier General Amir Avivi, (Res.) of the IDF
About this webinar:
After approximately 80 days of intense fighting in Gaza, Brigadier General Amir Avivi of the IDF (ret.) will explain the many hardships young IDF soldiers have to overcome in an environment of urban warfare, where there is approximately a 300-mile “metro” system of deep, underground tunnels for Hamas rulers to live for months, where Hebrew recordings of children crying are being made inside dolls to booby-trap soldiers, and where Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists use women and children as human shields, using hospitals, schools and refugee camps, and inserting themselves inside the Palestinian population. Yet many in the international community want Israel to halt the war before their objectives have been met.
In the meantime, Israel’s northern border near Lebanon has been heating up. On Friday, Hezbollah strikes killed an IDF officer, and Israel has therefore stepped up its attacks. As of this writing, Hezbollah is moving its forces north. It is questionable to know how many of the Hezbollah forces have moved north of the Litani River, and whether or not they are in compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 1701.
Will Israel be drawn into opening up another front in its war? Will Israel be able to attain the goals of its war with Hamas of eliminating the Hamas presence from Gaza, and rescuing the hostages, despite attempts by the international community to restrain Israel?
Here to answer these questions is Brigadier General Amir Avivi, (Res.) of the IDF.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Those who demand Israel cease fire are either anti-Semites or downright stupid.
If Hamas is allowed to survive, Oct 7 will be repeated. I seriously doubt they would want the same event to happen in their country and to their citizens.
Second, they should be demanding Hamas cease fire not Israel. Hamas started the war not Israel.
Third, it is evident Hamas used outside funding to purchase cement to build tunnels and other materiel to build weaponry in preparation for their attack.
5) Furthermore, the current food and water supplies are being stolen by Hamas and are not going to Palestinians which prolongs the war and increases the prospect Israeli IDF losses will mount.
Why is it that Israel is constantly berated? Has our Sec.of State told Ukrains to ceasefire? Have he told Russia to stop? Has the U.N. attacked Putin for his bellicosity?
+++
The UN acts in violation of International Law while claiming to uphold it
By Ted Belman
The United Nations’ Human Rights Council has resorted to official enquiries as a precursor to damning Israel — the most recent of which was the Goldstone Enquiry on Cast Lead, Israel’s attack on Hamas in Gaza. And we know how that turned out. Israel was accused of all manner of war crimes, though none were proven to have been committed.
Last week, the UNHRC passed a resolution to “dispatch an independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the president of the Human Rights Council, to investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.” The resolution was based, inter alia, on a written statement produced by Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, a Palestinian NGO financed by a number of European countries.
This statement, under the heading “Concentration and Containment,” accused Israel of applying various land laws and planning laws which aimed at “the ‘confiscation and colonization’ of the vast majority of Palestinian owned land; and the ‘concentration and containment’ of the Palestinian population within small pockets of land, which are dispersed and fragmented across the OPT and within Israel.” A number of allegations are set out in support.
Given the liberal proclivities of the Israel High Court, there should be no worry that anyone’s rights are being trampled on in Judea and Samaria, or in Jerusalem, for that matter. Alan Dershowitz praised the Court with these words:
“Many also seem to be unaware of the fact that Israel’s record on human rights and freedoms is among the best in the world, and certainly the best in the region. Israel has a completely free press, which is generally highly critical of the Israeli government. No Arab country has a free press, nor does the Palestinian Authority. Israel has a completely independent judiciary, the only one in the entire area. Its Supreme Court, one of the best in the world, is the only court in which an Arab in the Middle East can expect to get justice in lawsuits brought against any government.”
So why resort to the UNHRC? Simple. The report will be a basis to delegitimize and demonize Israel and to force her to change her legal course.
The acronym “OPT” stands for “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” The Arabs no longer refer to Judea and Samaria as the “West Bank,” which was Jordanian nomenclature during its period of occupation from 1948 to 1967; they now prefer to brand it as Palestinian land which is occupied.
Not only is the land not “occupied,” but it is also not “Palestinian.” It never was “Palestinian” — i.e., subject to Palestinian sovereignty. Sovereignty of Judea and Samaria has never been allocated, nor has sovereignty been claimed. Israel refers to the region’s status as “disputed,” but I personally reject such a description because the Palestinians have no legal claim to this territory. Israel alone has the right to claim sovereignty over these lands.
During the first half of the last century until the State of Israel was declared in 1948, the Jews living under the Palestine Mandate were referred to as Palestinians and thought of themselves as such. The Arabs living there were generally considered Syrians or Jordanians or just plain Arabs. It was not until the sixties and seventies that they began calling themselves Palestinians so as to claim all of Mandated Palestine for themselves.
Howard Grief, the author of The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law and the leading expert on the subject, co-copied me with three powerful letters in defense of Israel’s rights, in which he writes:
The country of Palestine was created in April 1920 at the San Remo Peace Conference for one purpose only – to be the Jewish National Home, and the term “Occupied Palestinian Territory” is thus an oxymoron since Palestine was never intended to be an Arab land under international law[.]” …
“Upon the re-birth of the Jewish State on May 15, 1948, Jewish legal rights to Palestine were devolved upon the State of Israel. Whatever you may think, those rights never lapsed, were never annulled or voided and never validly or legally transferred to an Arab people known as “Palestinians”, as you so wrongly assume. Moreover, subsequent events – such as the 1947 Partition Resolution, Security Council Resolution 242, the Israel-PLO Agreements or the Road Map Peace Plan – have not superseded or curtailed the rights of the Jewish People to former Mandated Palestine[.]”
Israel’s Deputy FM Ayalon explained The Truth about the West Bank in a now famous video.
The charters of both Fatah and Hamas and the Arabs in general consider the San Remo Resolution and the Mandate to be passed in violation of Arab rights and therefore illegal. They want these laws reversed and Israel destroyed. They have no respect for international law, but they bash Israel in the name of international law, though Israel is not in violation of it.
The international community accepts these legal determinations but applies the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC) to classify Judea and Samaria as occupied territory. Opponents of Israel cite in support the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the apparently questionable legality of the security fence built by Israel. Israel chose not to participate in its hearing. The ICJ determined that the FGC applied and that the construction fence was illegal. With all due respect to them, I suggest that this determination was wrong and certainly not binding..
FGC provides:
In addition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peacetime, the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them.
The Convention shall also apply to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party.
Previous to the ’67 War, Jordon was in possession of the lands, but Jordan’s sovereignty over them was recognized only by Britain and Pakistan. Thus, the lands in question were not “the territory of a High Contracting Party.”
The IJC finessed this precondition by holding that
“the Convention applies, in particular, in any territory occupied in the course of the conflict by one of the contracting parties.”
Be that as it may, the Palestinians, as set out in the statement submitted by BADILS, are not really complaining about violations of the FGC so much as they are complaining about the terms of the Oslo Accords, which divide the land into Areas A, B, and C. The Palestinians are not satisfied with building in Areas A and B, where they are fully in control; instead, they want to build in Area C, where they have no rights and where Israel is in control.
Accordingly, they ask of the HRC, inter alia, to:
Condemn Israel’s policy of land and resources grab in area C and in east Jerusalem in order to build and/or expand colonies while the Palestinian communities in these areas are prohibited from acquiring permits to build houses on their own land. To call upon Israel to immediately revoke all orders concerning the demolition of houses and eviction of Palestinians in the OPT.
Condemn Israel’s practice of prohibiting Palestinians living in Area C and in East Jerusalem of receiving building permits and therewith hindering the natural growth of those communities.
They also ask that the HRC to:
Register Israel’s system of institutionalized discrimination that distinguishes between Jewish nationals and citizens and Palestinian Arabs and extends from Israel Proper to the OPT.
Register Israel’s continuing practices of house demolitions, land confiscations, and its adoption of policies resulting in inadequate housing and living conditions.
Israel is treating all residents living in Judea and Samaria, whether Arab or Jew, pursuant to Occupation Law and is treating all residents of Israel, whether Jew or Arab, according to Israeli law. Any house demolitions or land confiscation in either place takes place according to the law of the land.
Essentially, the Palestinians, with the aid of the international community, keep rewriting the rules of the game to favor their cause.
Israel accepted Res. 242 in ’67, which allowed her to stay in occupation until she had an agreement for secure and recognized borders. The resolution also permitted Israel to keep some of the land. It was not until ’83 that Yasser Arafat accepted the resolution, which he was required to do as a precondition to entering the Oslo Accords. In reality, he and the PA rejected the resolution, and they still do, as they demand 100% of the land in any settlement. And the PA violates said resolution by inciting and perpetrating violence every day.
The Oslo Accords were silent on the question of settlement construction, yet the PA demands the cessation of same as a precondition to negotiations. And now they are demanding that the Accords be amended to allow them to build in Area C.
Unfortunately, the U.N., the EU, and even the U.S. support them in their endeavors.
The sooner Israel abrogates the Oslo Accords for cause, the better. But that won’t stop the delegitimizing and demonizing. It will just change the playing field.
Pursuant to her legal rights as defined above by Howard Grief, Israel should claim sovereignty over Area C and settle it as she sees fit. It is her right.
And:
This from a dear friend and fellow memo reader:
"Several issues. First, the hostages. Are they collateral damage to the Western Press? They're rarely mentioned these days and the Red Cross has still not been allowed to see them. Second, does anyone recall that Hamas began this war with an invasion of Israel and the killing and raping (and worse) of 1200+ innocent Israeli citizens? Last but certainly not least, the people of Gaza are "ruled" by their government, Hamas. Blame Hamas for the problems in Gaza. Let's not forget that the people of Gaza, before the war, protected Hamas, willingly or complicit, and cheered the invasion and the deaths of Jews. Bad choices. Live with the consequences."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Israel’s 82nd Day of War
By Sherwin Pomerantz
Israel insisted on Tuesday that our war in Gaza will not end soon and pledged to complete the mission to dismantle Hamas no matter how long it takes, despite widespread international calls for a cease-fire. The IDF is “striking continuously” in the Gaza Strip, said Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the armed forces Chief of Staff. The fighting, he added, would continue “whether it takes a week or months.”
“We are very, very determined,” General Halevi said in a televised statement filmed along the Gaza border. “Everywhere our forces operate, they are accompanied by heavy fire from the air, sea and land.” His comments came after a defiant statement from Prime Minister Netanyahu, who visited the front line on Monday, and they preceded a meeting on Tuesday in Washington between a close adviser of the prime minister and members of the Biden administration. The adviser, Ron Dermer, Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs and a member of Israel’s war cabinet, was scheduled to meet Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, on Tuesday afternoon
Hezbollah fired a salvo of 18 rockets at Kibbutz Rosh Hanikra in the Western Galilee on Wednesday morning, with several Iron Dome interceptions reported.
There were no initial reports of injuries or damage. The Iranian terrorist proxy took responsibility for the attacks, which triggered air-raid sirens at 10:02 a.m. and 10:15 a.m. The Lebanese Shi’ite group said that it was targeting an Israeli military position near a navy base. In response, the IDF said that it attacked the source of the launches. Rosh Hanikra is the northernmost point in Israel along the Mediterranean coastline and a popular tourist destination with its grottoes along the Lebanon border.
Overnight Tuesday, an Israeli Air Force fighter jet struck a Hezbollah “military” site in Lebanon. Israeli forces exchanged fire with Hezbollah on Tuesday after anti-tank missiles fired from Lebanon struck St. Mary’s Greek Orthodox Church in the village of Iqrit in the Western Galilee, wounding at least 10 Israelis, including a soldier reported in “serious” condition. Hezbollah has been waging a low-intensity conflict against Israel since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis.
One of the terms we hear used often when discussing Israel’s reaction to attack is “proportional response.” It is term that generates much discussion as the meaning is not always crystal clear. Some of you may remember a TV show a few years ago called “The West Wing.” That subject was deal with in one episode, and it might be instructive to watch this 3-minute excerpt that dealt specifically with this topic. You can see it here….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXJRVVgz5aU
As of today, Wednesday, it appears that for all practical purposes, the effort to dismantle Hama’s destructive capabilities will take many months and exact a heavy personal and economic toll on the country. Nevertheless, the military and the general populace both agree that Israel is fighting a war for its survival and there is no option but victory, whatever the cost. May our efforts in this regard be blessed.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
U.S energy production is at an all time high despite Biden's stupidity and this is having a positive effect on our GDP as well as our trade imbalance.
+++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Fanni is another black hater who needs to be driven out of office but Fulton County Voters are clueless. She is a destructive theatrical tornado and a disgrace to the law profession.
+++
Fani Willis, in an Appearance With Shaquille O’Neal, Says There Will Be No Leniency for Trump and Forecasts ‘Appropriate’ Prison Sentence
The 45th president can expect no ‘special’ treatment from the district attorney, even if he appears destined to return to the White House.
By A.R. HOFFMAN
Shaquille “Shaq” O’Neal, a giant man who played basketball with balletic thunder, is known for his prowess on the hardwood, having been elected to the NBA Hall of Fame. Now, the district attorney of Fulton County, Fani Willis, could be attempting to replicate that success in the courtroom against President Trump.
The prosecutor and the seven-footer appeared together at a charity event at Atlanta hosted by the district attorney. Ms. Willis took the opportunity to tell CNN that Mr. Trump would receive an “appropriate” sentence if she convicts him for racketeering and a battery of other charges related to alleged interference in the 2020 election.
Ms. Willis expanded that she is of the opinion that “everyone in society is the same, and I don’t know why that’s such a difficult concept for people. You can look at the charges, and based on those charges, we’ll be recommending appropriate sentences. No one gets a special break because of their status.”
Mr. Trump faces a maximum of 70 years in prison if he is convicted on all 13 charges handed up by Ms. Willis’s office. This is not the first time she has contemplated the case’s endgame. Last month, the district attorney allegedly wrote to the 45th president’s attorney that she and he would still be practicing law “long after these folks are in jail,” meaning Mr. Trump and his 14 co-defendants.
Ms. Willis’s insistence that the book will be thrown at Mr. Trump despite his “status” telegraphs that she does not plan to relent should he secure the Republican presidential nomination or even return to the White House. Standing tall alongside Shaq, she explained that her case could take “a while” to conclude, adding that “the judicial process is a long process,” not one given to “instant gratification.”
The district attorney has suggested an August 5 start date for Mr. Trump’s trial, and derided any chance that it could be moved due to the pendency of his candidacy as “silly.” This could put her on a collision course with Mr. Trump’s team, which has signaled that it will likely mount constitutional arguments should Georgia’s trial impinge on Mr. Trump’s pursuit of federal office.
ADVERTISEMENT
That question, which is at heart a dispute over federalism and the prerogatives of the federal government against the states, is likely to be heard eventually at the Supreme Court. The justices could choose to stay, or pause, Ms. Willis’s case during a potential second Trump administration. That would result in jury selection in 2029. Ms. Willis says she can be ready for trial within 30 days.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Ms. Willis acknowledged that “I’m never going to see eye-to-eye with Shaq,” alluding to their height differential. The same, though, could be said of her and Mr. Trump, whose head does not scrape the clouds. Arrangements in the form of plea deals, though, have been reached with four of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants — Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis, Scott Hall, and Sidney Powell.
Ms. Willis has said that hers is a “very serious case” and that “there are consequences to violating serious laws.” The Guardian reports that proffer deals — guilty pleas and testimony in exchange for not serving time behind bars — will not be available to Mr. Trump, Mayor Giuliani, or Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. All of them face prison time if convicted.
If the White House is one possibility as a future residence for Mr. Trump, another is the notorious Fulton County Jail, where Mr. Trump visited when he was booked for arrest and where he would await transfer to a Georgia state prison were he found guilty and sentenced to hard time.
The facility at Atlanta is under investigation by the Department of Justice over “credible allegations that an incarcerated person died covered in insects and filth” and that the “Fulton County Jail is structurally unsafe.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Approaching 2024: A Year of Renewal
By SHERWIN POMERANTZ
As we approach the end of 2023 and look to 2024, we are all finding it challenging to be optimistic about the future. Regardless of how we felt about 2023 on October 6, everything was turned on its head by the events of October 7 and the almost twelve weeks of war that followed. Yet, out of every tragedy, there are lessons we can learn and significant new opportunities that open up for us. Acknowledging both gives us hope for the future and permits us to look forward with anticipation to the new year.
What did we learn?
- We learned that we cannot be complacent. There is nothing we have today—no joy or comfort that we experience—that cannot be taken from us in an instant, just as it was that fateful Shabbat.
- As a nation, we cannot afford internal dissension, as it both tears us apart as a people and projects weakness to our enemies. A nation this small simply cannot risk divisiveness ever again.
- It is important to listen and take seriously every action that signals a possible threat, even if doing so goes against all logic. The risk is too great not to take each threat as if it has “doomsday” written all over it in big, red letters.
- Our people are much more resilient and patriotic than we led ourselves to believe. The overnight switch from a divided and antagonistic society to one fully united in battling the enemy, was nothing short of miraculous. It spoke to the essence of our being and generated the envy of the rest of the world as well.
- Sadly, we now know – if we didn’t already – that anti-Zionism is indeed equivalent to antisemitism, a hatred that will be with us forever, no matter what we do to combat it.
On the positive side, significant new opportunities have developed that we should be leveraging for future growth.
- Israel may be on the cusp of a surge in aliyah from the West because of rising antisemitism. Note that nearly half of British Jews are now considering emigrating, while between 25 and 40% of American Jews are doing the same, the variation in numbers reflecting the level of personal Jewish observance. We need to prepare for that and capitalize on it.
- The level of achdut (unity) that has developed in Israel since October 7 is a national asset that needs to be built upon so it can form the foundation for a new social contract between the government and the people, one based on mutual trust and cooperation. We dare not let that dissipate.
- As we emerge from a war footing with our economy more or less intact, the world will be interested once again in tapping into the technical genius of the country. We should mount a major advertising campaign indicating we are open for business and welcoming new investment. It will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to encourage a significant bump in economic growth.
- Both here and in the Diaspora, there has been an awakening of the personal connection to Judaism. This represents the possibility of forging a new bond between the two communities by coupling the incredible level of teaching that exists in Israel with the increased levels of Diaspora interest in Judaism. Leveraging that to increase the bond between Israel and the Diaspora is a national imperative.
- More than likely, there will be new elections in 2024, with the possibility of a change in government. New, younger leaders should be put in place who know how to manage large organizations and build economies. It’s time for those who manage some of Israel’s largest companies and institutions to give four years of their lives to helping Israel achieve its post-war potential.
2024 will not be an easy year. There will be challenges on every front. Nevertheless, Israel, which for 75 years has defied all the naysayers and has achieved what no other 75-year-old country on the face of the earth can claim, is definitely up to the task.
Theodor Herzl said it best when he commented: “Our opponents maintain that
we are confronted with insurmountable political obstacles, but that may be said of the smallest obstacle if one has no desire to surmount it.”
We as a nation have surmounted the insurmountable, and we will continue to do so because, as Gold Meir said, “We have nowhere else to go.”
There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations, much is given. Of other generations, much is expected. This generation of Israelis has had a rendezvous with destiny and 2024 will be a year where we will meet our destiny head on and reign it in. Let us hope that we are up to the task.
Threats by conservatives against companies engaged in DEI practices has caused them to pull back.
You no longer have to fear being called a racist because you do not buy the DEI garbage.
The "tipping point" is becoming more evident but the battle to take America back is far from being won.
+++
No comments:
Post a Comment