17 and buff
91 and skin and bones but still upright
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Liberal Jews
Essay By Dick Berkowitz
This essay is devoted to Liberal Jews and why they maintain their loyalty to a party that has “shivved” them 3 times, ie. FDR, Obama and now Biden.
Many books have been written about why an intelligent and accomplished people have ignored reality and remained loyal to the Democrat Party. I have consistently acknowledged there are many plausible reasons,
However, the one I consistently return to is the one Norman Podhoretz wrote about in : “Why jews are liberal.”
Podhoretz maintains, Liberal Jews do not understand their religion and mistakenly believe their mission is described by the phrase, Tikun Olan, ie. they were put here on earth to better the world and politics is the substituted method by which they best accomplish this commandment.
Jews have proven, throughout history, to be accomplished in a variety of fields and endeavors but Liberal Jews refuse to admit they act in ways that are destructive, not only to society but also to their fellow Jews.
I have maintained, progressives, by and large, are an unhappy lot. This makes them susceptible to seeking/embracing change even though the solutions they adopt consistently lead to failure. Furthermore, because they are known to be intelligent and thus, have risen to positions of success they have had a disproportionate degree of influence.
Think politicians like Schumer, Schiff, Sanders,, Lindler. Think billionaire oligarchs like Soros, Schultz, Zuckerberg, think Hollywood Icons like Streisand and Rob Reiner. Think a powerful union chairperson like Weingarten, publishers like Ochs and Sulzberger, highly placed Cabinet Officials like Blinken, Mayorkas and Garland and the list is endless.
Because of their visibility and mostly negative impact, when the world is in turmoil , the need to find a scapegoat rises and history has proven Jews are an easy source/target upon which the world can project its fears and concerns.
Specific to America, I believe the rise in anti-Semitism is directly related to the fact that neo-Marxists have penetrated virtually every institution, upon which our republic rests, and the results have proven both financially a disaster but also a societal one. and Jews are a convenient source to blame. They are largely professionals and thus, have significant visibility.
We allowed what is happening and have no one to blame but ourselves. “The enemy is us,” as Pogo said.
To make matters worse, we happen to have a corrupt leader as our president, a man who not only is mentally infirm but also has been wrong on virtually every major decision and is a chronic, pathological liar,
But the tragedy does end there. Though I am willing to vote for Biden's alleged opponent, former president Trump, I understand the distaste a large segment of voters have for him.
Consequently, America finds itself dispirited. We find ourselves at a crucial point in history and, though there seems to be the beginnings of a blow back, even if we find a paddle and row the ship of state back to shore , I seriously doubt America will ever be the nation we once were.
We have allowed politics to become weaponized. We have rejected law and order, we have turned on our police and have lost faith in government., our justice system and those we elect to serve us and you know the rest.
We are a disunited nation groping for solutions and seemingly overwhelmed by serious challenges we ignored at our peril. The foundations upon which our republic was founded are crumbling. Our adversaries are gloating and rising in strength and in abilities to challenge us in ways we may not be able to meet.
An America adrift is not healthy for world stability.
Blaming Jews, radical know nothing's swarming university and college campuses in support of fascist Islamists and a president uttering nonsense is not the solution as appealing as that may appear to the unwashed.
Biden has Israel and Hamas' back!
Israel Hamas
tiny shoe lumber jack boot
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It’s By Design: Democrats Let Iranian Hostiles in Pentagon Conduct Spying Operations
By ROGER STONE AND SHANE TREJO
It was recently revealed that Robert Malley, Biden's special envoy to Iran who is now on unpaid leave due to scandal, held classified national security documents on his personal email and cell phone, Hillary style, and this information was eventually accessed by a "hostile cyber actor," perhaps at the behest of Malley himself.
For context, Malley was the architect the infamous “pallets of cash” policy that funneled billions of dollars into the Iranian regime while serving as leader of the Middle East desk of the National Security Council under Obama. Malley was then named Obama’s special ISIS advisor in 2015 just in time for the terror group to make its rise to prominence with brutal acts of terror throughout the Middle East.
After being laundered back into the Biden administration, Malley is up to his same subversive tricks, allowing a dangerous Iranian spying operation to develop within the Pentagon under his watch, and the feds are happy to ignore his actions. Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued a letter to Secretary of State Andrew Blinken demanding answers on Malley’s malignant behavior.
“Due to the Department’s evasiveness and lack of transparency, we have worked to glean information from other sources,” Sen. James Risch (R-ID) and Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) wrote in the letter to Blinken, adding that they were “deeply frustrated” by the Biden State Department’s apparent unwillingness to hold Malley accountable.
With the Biden administration looking the other way, America First Legal has launched a probe into the actions of Malley and his protégé, Ariane Tabatabai, who is credibly alleged to be an Iranian asset. Tabatabai still serves as the current Chief of Staff for the Assistant Secretary of Defense despite being part of “a covert Iranian influence campaign,” which was initially broken by original reporting at Semafor.
The influence campaign, called the ‘Iran Experts Initiative (IEI)’, was spearheaded by interests close to the Iranian Foreign Ministry in 2014 with Tabatabai serving as one of the “young experts” tasked with peddling Iranian influence through influential Western bureaucracies. Tabatabai, a second-generation Iranian living in America, has since wormed her way up to the highest levels within the Pentagon in a Democrat Party that values diversity and tolerance above all else.
House Freedom Caucus member Dan Bishop (R-NC) incredulously addressed the House Homeland Security Committee about the allegations last year, dumbfounded how virtually everyone is willing to look the other way while a mockery is made of national security.
"This could be the biggest infiltration of the government by a spy since Alger Hiss. The communist spy working for the Russian who was exposed by Congressman Richard M. Nixon," one seasoned Capitol Hill observer told Big League Politics.
While it’s easy to blame these sorts of disgraceful actions on incompetence — and there is certainly much of that going around within the rotting federal agencies that operate with no accountability and perverse incentives — we must be willing to consider a darker possibility. This harrowing notion is that operatives like Malley are deliberately playing fast and loose with American secrets to garner plausible deniability after they are given away to interests that fanatically wish to see “The Great Satan” brought to heel.
The Biden administration is filled with individuals with ties to foreign governments who are working to sell out America. Enemies foreign and domestic are mollycoddled while American citizens are demonized and treated as a threat. The refuse of the third world is allowed across the border, as a marching invading horde set to destroy all vestiges of traditional American life sooner or later. Since it is obvious that Biden cannot cognitively function at this unfortunate stage of his life, he is not making these decisions, which begs the question: Who is calling the shots?
Could it be the aggrieved elitist with severe daddy issues that once rose to power with Biden as his Vice President? Is it possible that the person who came into the Presidency to oversee the rise of subversive elements such as Black Lives Matter and the LGBTP+ movement is the man behind the curtain? Could it be the shady individual of dubious origin who boasted he would love a term as President only under the cover of a “front man” who he could control with an “earpiece” while “in [the] basement in [his] sweats?” Could it be the man who purged the military of its strongest patriots to soften the country up for this current age of unprecedented and unfathomable tumult?
The answers to these questions are little more than rhetorical at this point. Biden, a corporate Democrat and establishment man, would not be keen to oversee the destruction of America. But as a vassal, a husk, a meat puppet ordered around by former President Barack Hussein Obama and his minions, this is exactly what Biden is accomplishing and too vacuous to understand the damning implications of his policies. Unless Trump is successful in winning back the presidency in November, Biden’s legacy will not only be the destruction of America, but also of Israel, and unleashing millions of Islamic butchers to doom civilization as we know it.
While Congressional Republicans may be too timid to frame the debate in these terms, MAGA patriots should not operate under any delusions. This administration is illegitimate and actively at war with its citizens. If it were not for the 2ndAmendment of the Constitution, these rogue elements would be doing far worse than committing aggressive lawfare to destroy the best among us. Because of their technological capabilities, the federal octopus is capable of bigger atrocities than any of the despotisms of the 20th Century. There is only one end game: We must rise to defeat the Great Evil of our age, else have our very humanity snuffed out by our lesser's and do our heroic revolutionary ancestors a great disservice.
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Buried facts about the Gaza war
Connect the dots: It’s America and Iran against Israel. The American appeasement of Iran has left many people mystified. They should have been paying more attention. Opinion.
By Melanie Phillips,a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column for JNS.
Currently a columnist for The Times of London, her personal and political memoir, Guardian Angel, has been published by Bombardier, which also published her first novel, The Legacy, in 2018. To access her work, go to: melaniephillips.substack.com.
( JNS) The extent to which the political class and the media are burying facts that undermine their poisonous narrative in order to defame and undermine Israel’s war of survival has become simply jaw-dropping.
The Biden administration has gone to great lengths to appease the genocidal and terrorist Iranian regime. It has funneled billions into Tehran’s coffers through sanctions relief. It has refused to effectively respond to repeated Iran-backed attacks on U.S. interests. And it is doing everything it can to prevent Israel from taking action that would damage America’s relationship with the Iranian regime, such as the destruction of Hamas, a vital force in Tehran’s proxy army against Israel and the West.
The American appeasement of Iran has left many people mystified. They should have been paying more attention.
Twelve days before the Oct. 7 pogrom, Jay Solomon reported on the Semafor site that Ariane Tabatabai, chief of staff to the U.S. assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, was part of an “Iran Experts Initiative” created by senior Iranian Foreign Ministry officials to bolster Tehran’s position on global security issues, particularly its nuclear program.
In other words, Tabatabai was an agent of influence for Iran at the heart of the U.S. government and with the highest level of security clearance.
Semafor and the Iranian opposition group Iran International obtained a large cache of Iranian government correspondence and emails. These revealed that, in 2021, Robert Malley—who was the point man on Iran under both the Obama and Biden administrations until he was removed in June 2023 following a still unexplained “mishandling of classified materials”—had infiltrated Tabatabai into the U.S. State Department to assist him in his negotiations with Iran.
The day Solomon’s article appeared, 31 U.S. Senators wrote to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to express their concern. They wrote: “We find it unconscionable that a senior department official would continue to hold a sensitive position despite her alleged participation in an Iranian government information operation.”
They noted that, in March 2021, shortly after Tabatabai was appointed senior adviser to the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, Iranian dissidents reported her long history of echoing the Iranian regime’s talking points.
That month, Adam Kredo reported in The Washington Free Beacon on these dissidents’ shock at Tabatabai’s appointment. They claimed she parroted the Iranian regime’s position at multiple public appearances and that her father was part of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s inner circle.
In April 2021, several members of the House of Representatives requested a review of Tabatabai’s security clearance. In response, the Biden administration dismissed these claims as “smears and slander.”
Even more astonishingly, Tabatabai runs the office overseeing hostage negotiations. Three weeks after the Oct. 7 pogrom, a reporter asked White House Spokesman John Kirby whether it was appropriate for Tabatabei to be in such a position given the claims made against her. Kirby stalled.
Tabatabai is still there.
Online, several commentators (including myself) wrote about this. The mainstream media studiously ignored it. Over the past few days, they’ve ignored another vital revelation.
From the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, Israel has been accused of disproportionately killing Palestinian civilians. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry put out daily figures of civilians who had been killed that rose to more than 35,000, of whom the vast majority were said to be women and children.
These figures, promoted by the United Nations and used by both the Biden administration and the U.K. government to berate and threaten Israel, have fueled mass demonstrations and attacks on Jewish people worldwide.
On May 8, however, the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs halved its figures for the number of women and children killed in Gaza from the number it gave the day before.
Preposterously, U.N. Spokesman Farhan Haq tried to maintain that the claim of 35,000 dead remained “unchanged” and the only new development was that more than 10,000 bodies still had to be fully identified.
This, however, was merely an attempt to cover up the fact that the U.N. had been putting out Hamas figures that were always demonstrably ludicrous since they did not differentiate between terrorists and civilians.
In early April, after statisticians authoritatively demolished these figures as “statistically impossible,” the Gaza Health Ministry quietly admitted that it had “incomplete data” for more than 10,000 of the individuals on its lists and revealed that it had even obtained some of its numbers from the media. Now the U.N. has felt forced to adjust its own figures while fudging the reason.
Given that Israel says it has killed some 14,000 combatants, the ratio of civilians to combatants killed stands now at around 1:1—a far lower proportion of civilians killed than any other country has ever achieved in war.
In other words, this is a total refutation of the incendiary lie of “disproportionate” killing of civilians with which the U.S. and British governments and Western media have been beating up Israel and fueling incitement against Jews around the world. Yet not one word has been heard about this from either the government or the media.
Now comes an admission by Fatah—the ruling party in the Palestinian Authority whose leader is P.A. chief Mahmoud Abbas—that it took part in the Oct. 7 pogrom alongside Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups.
Abu Muhammad, the official spokesman for Fatah’s military arm—the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades—said in a video message last week that the Brigades participated in the invasion “and together with our brothers in the Palestinian struggle organizations captured many Zionists; some of them were transferred to us and some are still in our hands.”
The Brigades, he said, were participating in the fighting against the IDF in Gaza and had carried out more than 470 “military missions” since Oct. 7.
According to a report by Arutz Sheva, the Brigades revealed on Telegram that, over the past few days, their forces had fired an anti-tank missile at a tank in the Jabalya camp, set off an explosive device aimed at a tank south of the Zeytun neighborhood and launched rockets at IDF forces at the Netzarim junction.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades are yet another Iranian proxy army through which Iran can attack Israel under the cover of “plausible deniability.” As Phillip Smyth wrote last December in an article for West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, elements in the Brigades have thanked Iran and Hezbollah for weapons and equipment and openly asked Iran for money. In 2023, an unnamed P.A. security source told The Jerusalem Post that the group was being paid by Iran via the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Just think about this:
-The military arm of Fatah, the P.A.’s ruling party, is holding Israeli hostages.
-Fatah’s military arm is fighting Israel in Gaza and the disputed territories.
-Fatah’s military arm is being funded by Iran.
-The Biden administration is funding the P.A. and appeasing Iran.
-The Biden administration is trying to force Israel to accept a P.A.-run administration in Gaza after the war.
-And Ariane Tabatabai is still in her post at the Defense Department.
The mainstream media says nothing about any of this because nothing can be allowed to destroy the left’s driving narrative of Israeli oppression and Palestinian Arab victimization.
Biden’s betrayal of Israel is widely attributed to his need to buy off the hard left of the Democratic Party. But his administration was rotten from the start, widely seeded with Obama-retread officials who are viscerally hostile to Israel. Some of them have histories of supporting Palestinian Arab terrorist groups.
Now Iran is said to be nearing the ability to make nuclear weapons. When it announces it has succeeded, the United States and the United Kingdom will doubtless say they did everything they could to stop it. And if Israel tries to defend itself against this nightmare scenario, the West will accuse it of aggression.
The dots have been obvious for years. Connect them.
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Biden’s bribery of our ally Israel over intelligence on Hamas honchos is beyond despicable
By Post Editorial Board
President Joe Biden apparently decided on his new Israel-bashing approach well in advance of his Holocaust Remembrance Day remarks, the editorial read. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
It’s official: President Biden’s policy on Israel makes no sense except as a sudden, all-out drive to stop the war completely, leaving Hamas able to recover.
The Washington Post reports, citing four sources, that the White House has offered Jerusalem “sensitive intelligence to help the Israeli military pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders and find the group’s hidden tunnels” if the IDF doesn’t go full-scale into Rafah.
Huh? Why not just hand the info over ASAP? It’d help the IDF target those leaders now, and make the precision strikes the White House says it wants more likely — it’s not like Israel wants to take the casualties of a full-on assault if doesn’t have to.
And this follows the freeze in many munitions the Pentagon was about to send over — including precision bombs, which (duh) are also beyond helpful for precision strikes.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is suddenly touting a new report claiming Israel’s use of US-provided weapons in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law.
“When it comes to the use of weapons, concerns about incidents where given the totality of the damage that’s been done to children, women, men, it was reasonable to assess that, in certain instances, Israel acted in ways that are not consistent with international humanitarian law,” he said.
With zero public details on what weapons, used when and where, nor how any law was violated. Plus, what “international humanitarian law,” exactly?
As for “the totality of the damage that’s been done to children, women, men,” what hard info does Blinken pretend Washington has on that, when it’s basically impossible to learn while the war is still on?
The whole “assessment” was plainly cooked up for a talking point.
Notably, the United Nations just stopped treating the victim-counts by the Hamas-ran Gazan health authority as meaning anything — a wise move, as those numbers were plainly made up from the start.
Meanwhile, the consensus count of civilians fleeing Rafah has hit 360,000, more than a fifth of the number estimated to be there just a week or so ago.
So the “humanitarian” case for keeping the IDF out keeps weakening, even as the need to let Israel greatly ease delivery of aid — by completing its main combat actions by finishing off the last Hamas battalions and leaders now holed up in Rafah — grows.
Other grim news: Biden apparently decided on his new Israel-bashing approach well in advance of his Holocaust Remembrance Day remarks, but held off on any public steps until he’d given that speech — which, bizarrely, made an excellent case for why Israel must destroy Hamas.
None of this makes sense except as a strategy for appeasing the pro-Hamas protesters (because Joe thinks he’ll lose in November if he doesn’t) while creating excuses that (some) Israel supporters might buy for abandoning our ally.
It’s beyond despicable, and yet another gross violation of the president’s oath of office.
Election Day can’t come fast enough.
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‘I am as my people are’
How—and what—can we celebrate in the wake of Oct. 7?
Posted By Ruthie Blum
One lesson Israelis should have internalized by now is that things can always get worse. As we moved on Monday night from mourning to celebration—when Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism abruptly transitioned into Independence Day—we’d have done well to remember what we were complaining about last year at this time.
In the wake of the Oct. 7 massacre, it’s impossible to believe that Israelis of all walks of life were treating judicial reform like a matter of life and death. Though it’s an issue that warrants serious debate under normal circumstances (whatever that means in the ever-besieged Jewish state), retrospect has a way of rendering previous concerns ridiculous.
While duking it out over the selection of judges and the power of the Supreme Court, Hamas was deep in the throes of the genocidal plan it would carry out a mere few months later. Breaking down the border fence, the Iranian-backed terrorists, joined by gleeful Gazan civilians, committed atrocities impossible for any human being with half a soul to fathom.
Initially, the shock and horror of the that Black Sabbath—families snuffed out; babies burned; women and girls raped; young men beheaded; bodies left mutilated beyond recognition; and 250 people of all ages violently abducted to tunnel dungeons in Gaza—brought the nation together in grief and anger.
How, we asked, could the authorities have allowed this to happen? Where was the attention of the security services and government while Hamas was carefully plotting and training for its mass assault? Why did it take the Israel Defense Forces hours upon hours to come to the rescue of the victims, so many of whom perished while waiting?
Our shared pain at the carnage, and common conviction that Hamas had to be defeated once and for all, soon became the source of a split. Given the degree of the trauma and character of Israeli discourse, the schism was inevitable.
This is literally and figuratively a crying shame. We’re a country at war on multiple fronts, desperate to secure the release of the remaining 132 hostages in the hands of Hamas.
That we can’t afford the luxury of political discord at this juncture should be as obvious to us as it is to the Oct. 7 massacre mastermind, Yahya Sinwar, and his patrons in Tehran. But we’re the same stiff-necked people we’ve always been; and even more anxiety-ridden.
Such a state of affairs makes marking Israel’s 76th birthday with any gusto especially difficult. After all, cheering while our friends and family members are in Gaza—either wasting away as hostages or risking their lives in uniform—doesn’t seem appropriate.
On the other hand, despondency isn’t conducive to victory. Nor is pessimism about the future beneficial.
Thanks to an interview on Saturday night with Eliasaf Peretz, I regained a lot of my own wavering confidence in the country. He is the son of Miriam Peretz, the recipient of the 2018 Israel Prize for lifetime achievement. After the death of two of her sons during their IDF service, she became a symbol of resilience and Zionist unity.
Eliasaf worked through his personal loss by establishing the “Our Brothers” initiative for bereaved siblings, to promote the values and love of homeland that their brothers and sisters possessed. What he told Channel 14 was both comforting and eye-opening.
Asked by “The Patriots” host Yinon Magal how he’s feeling with the approach of Memorial Day, Eliasaf quoted the late poet Haim Gouri. “I am as my people are,” he replied.
He pointed to the paradoxical mixture of sadness and joy Israelis are accustomed to experiencing during this period: pride in the soldiers holding their heads high on the battlefield and simultaneous devastation at the news of those killed.
“It’s a pendulum of emotions, swinging from one extreme to the other,” he said, proceeding to recount a metaphor he had used an hour earlier when addressing a group of religious girls about to enter the IDF. Likening Israel’s situation today to a house undergoing renovations, he said, “When you look at such a structure, you see everything broken and dirty, and that causes irritability.”
He went on, “After 76 years, Israel can’t contain all that it’s achieved without adding another floor. That’s what we’re doing—building another level of spirit, of resolution and of choosing life.”
That, he explained, is the message he believes we’re receiving. “We witness despair and rage all over the place, leading us to wonder what’s going on and what lies ahead.”
Well, he concluded, “I think the answer is that it’s going to be good. For thousands of years, one thing our people never lost, no matter where we were, was the aspiration to return to this land. Every day, we prove that we know how to fight and die as brothers. Our great challenge is learning how to live as brothers.”
It’s a tall order. At this point, we might want to aim a bit lower. Suffice it for us in the meantime not to take what we’ve accomplished since 1948 for granted. It’s the envy of all the enemies bent on our annihilation.
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After 76 years of Israeli independence, Jews must still be Zionists
As the post-Oct. 7 pro-Hamas protests and resulting surge of antisemitism have shown, it is the idea of a Jewish state that’s under attack, not Israel’s policies or actions.
By JONATHAN S. TOBIN
Amid the celebrations of Israel’s 50th birthday in 1998, there began to be talk of the Jewish state entering into a post-Zionist era. To many Israelis as well as Jews in the Diaspora, the idea of Zionism or identifying as a Zionist seemed irrelevant to the realities of a country that was, for all of its challenges, a firmly established reality. The very term seemed to conjure up a bygone period when advocacy for the right of Jews to sovereignty in their ancient homeland was a heroic struggle against the odds.
On the eve of the 21st century, Israel had not only won its independence but also several wars in its first decades after its Arab neighbors unsuccessfully sought its extinction. Egypt and Jordan had signed peace agreements, and many believed that despite the abundant evidence to the contrary, the Oslo Accords would succeed and end the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs, too. The Zionist movement may have made it all possible. But it had—in the opinion of many—become a vestigial relic that had no relevance to life in a Hebrew-speaking state that had taken its place among the nations of the global community.
Or so many of us thought.
Fast-forward 26 years later, and despite wars, terrorism and the collapse of that peace process, as well as ongoing political and cultural divisions, it can be argued that the permanence of what had come into existence in 1948 is even more obvious than it was when the term “post-Zionist” first started being thrown around. It’s a nation of 9 million people with a First World economy; a military that makes it a regional superpower; and, barring a nuclear cataclysm or some other black swan event, can no more be wished out of existence than any other established country.
Seeking Israel’s destruction
But as we’ve seen in the seven months since the Oct. 7 massacres perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists in southern Israel—and the subsequent surge in anti-Semitism and pro-Hamas demonstrations throughout the globe—the debate about Zionism isn’t over.
No better example of this could be found than in the controversy over the appearance of an Israeli singer this past weekend at the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö, Sweden. Eurovision is a remarkably silly annual global television show. It is generally only worth noting because of its enormous popularity and the way it serves as a barometer of how low the standards of what is considered good in popular music and entertainment can sink. But this year, it became one more battleground for the movement that seeks the elimination of Israel.
In this case, the focus of their ire was the appearance of Israel’s contestant, 20-year-old Eden Golan. Israeli singers have been a fixture in the contest since 1973 and have won it four times. But opponents of the Jewish state, who claimed to be acting out of sympathy for the Palestinians who they believe shouldn’t suffer any consequences for the war they started on Oct. 7, thought Golan should be excluded. Their loud protests forced her to hold up in a hotel room throughout the competition, besieged by those chanting for her country’s destruction and the slaughter of its population. But contrary to their expectations (and the booing from members in the audience), she was allowed to compete, did well and went on to make the finals, finishing fifth even after winning a plurality of votes from European viewers.
The protesters, who came not only from Malmö’s large Muslim sector (reportedly as much as 20% of the city’s population) but also from leftist elites—like the world-famous environmentalist troll Greta Thunberg—were not merely expressing concern for Palestinians acting as human shields for Hamas. As Thunberg said at a pre-Eurovision protest in Stockholm, her goal is to “crush Zionism.”
That’s the same kind of rhetoric we’ve been hearing on American college campuses in the past seven months. Supposedly educated young people have been indoctrinated in woke ideologies that falsely label Israel as a “white” oppressor and a “settler/colonial state” that has no right to exist. Yet the conflict with the Palestinians isn’t racial. Jews are the indigenous people of that country, and Zionism is their national liberation movement whose triumph was one of the greatest acts of decolonization. But to the intersectional mindset that links underdogs together worldwide, Zionism is racism, and Israel should be wiped off the map.
So, just when many, if not most Israelis were ready to treat Zionism as merely an exhibit in a history museum, the idea of a Jewish state is more relevant than ever in the battle to defend an Israel that, for all of its amazing achievements, is still under siege.
An idea that is integral to Judaism
To take a deep dive into the history of the movement, its leaders and its thinkers, is to see how in the half century before May 1948, the Jewish people sought to take their destiny into their own hands. The basic elements of Zionism—the indissoluble link between the Jewish people and their homeland, and the right of all Jews to live, build and defend themselves in a sovereign state there—are baked deep into Judaism’s rituals, prayers and core beliefs. But for a variety of reasons, support for Zionism wasn’t unanimous. Some religious Jews believed that only the coming of the Messiah should bring a return to Jewish statehood. Socialists didn’t believe in nation-states and thought a European revolution would bring safety and rights to all people, making a Jewish state unnecessary. Some Jews in the free countries of the West wished to strip ethnicity from their Jewish identity and feared that they would lose their rights if a Jewish state were created. And some American Jews thought they had found Zion in a secular republic in the New World.
Throughout the last two millennia, Jews had always been a presence in the land that the Romans named “Palestine” in a failed bid to erase them from history. Zionism was also grounded in Jewish rights, not the Holocaust. The post-World War I peace agreements that created the Mandate for Palestine to facilitate the creation of a home for the Jews also grounded it in international law.
Still, Zionist thinkers like Theodor Herzl and, a generation later, Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky were right to prophesize that Jews were living in perpetual peril in Europe.
A new debate about Zionism
The antisemitism of the Soviet Union and the reality of the Nazi Holocaust destroyed the illusions of the Socialists (or at least should have), as well as convinced Western Jews that there was no alternative to a Jewish state. And once Israel came into existence, those who feared it for secular or religious reasons generally made their peace with it.
Today, there is a new anti-Zionist movement among the Jews that gets disproportionate coverage in the corporate press, yet represents only a minority of non-Israeli Jews. Unlike past opponents of Zionism, it doesn’t oppose Israel’s existence because they have a better idea to protect Jews. Rather, these Jews who belong to groups like IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace exalt Jewish powerlessness and twist Jewish beliefs into a creed that believes Jews alone of the peoples of the world ought not to have the right of self-determination or the power to defend themselves.
It is no accident that they also traffic in antisemitic blood libels, such as the claim that Israel trains American police to murder African-Americans. As the reaction to Oct. 7 has shown, these Jewish anti-Zionists may be loud and have strong support from the mainstream media, but they have nothing to do with normative Jewish values and represent only themselves.
Yet the battle over Zionism isn’t merely this faint echo of past Jewish squabbles. Today, anti-Zionism is a main plank of leftist activists, whether they are environmental extremists like Thunberg (who want the world to give up air travel, the right to own cars, as well as to eat meat or cheese); Black Lives Matter activists in the United States who smear America as an irredeemably racist nation; or the LGBTQ+ community that sees Palestinians as fellow victims, even though unlike Israel but in most Arab countries, they would be in danger because of their lifestyle.
Another variant of anti-Semitism
They claim to speak for human rights but have little interest in any conflict or alleged humanitarian crisis unless it can be blamed on the Jews. Like intellectuals of the early 20th century who blazed the trail for the acceptance of Nazism, they claim to be moved by the suffering of victims of war but have a curious blind spot when those victims are Jews. The plight of the hostages or those who were slaughtered in the orgy of rape, murder, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction committed by Hamas and Palestinians on Oct. 7 move them not at all.
Their nurturing of Palestinian fantasies of Israel’s destruction is helping to doom the supposed objects of their sympathy to a future of more war, terrorism and destruction. The fact that their reaction to Hamas barbarism was not merely to oppose Israel’s justified war to eliminate a genocidal terrorist group, but to vow to “crush Zionism” and erase it from “the river to the sea,” remains proof that it is not so much an intersectional human-rights cause as it is just a new variant on the same old tropes of antisemitism. They aren’t merely criticizing an Israeli government’s policies or actions. Their problem is with the fact that there is one Jewish state on the planet.
They seem to believe the Jews are the only people on the planet whose right to self-determination deserves no respect. While they reject accusations of antisemitism, what else can you call those who discriminate against Jews and judge them by a standard they would never apply to any other people?
Jew-haters are now recirculating tropes that Soviet propagandists first issued a half-century ago to label Zionism as racism. The only rational reaction to this is for Israelis and Jews wherever they live to embrace not just the label of Zionist but the ideas behind it. Zionism recognizes age-old ties between a people and their land, and at its core is a fundamental expression of Jewish rights.
Zionism has created a nation that for all of its flaws and frailties is a unique experiment in the ingathering of a people in a democratic state. In the last 76 years, Zionist Jews have worked miracles not just in surviving wars waged by enemies bent on their elimination but also in a society capable of enormous economic, technological and cultural achievements. It should be celebrated—not reviled—and people of good will, whether Jewish or not, should know that by embracing it, they are identifying themselves with among the most just causes and most amazing stories in modern history.
Israelis are still mourning their dead since Oct. 7 while they battle Hamas and work for the safe return of the remaining hostages held captive in Gaza. But they are also celebrating a nation that needs no permission from any foreign power to exist and, false accusations of antisemites about “genocide” notwithstanding, whose conduct under excruciating circumstances has been exemplary by any standard.
Zionism isn’t dead. Nor will it be defeated by Hamas and its leftist enablers in the streets of Malmö or on North American college campuses. It is very much alive, and on Yom Ha’atzmaut—Israel’s 76th Independence Day—every Jew with a conscience and sense of self-respect should be proudly calling themselves Zionists.
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Hope this proves accurate:
https://www.realclearpolling.
https://www.realclearpolling.
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Netanyahu on Mount Herzl: It's us or them - Israel or the Hamas monsters
National Memorial Day ceremony for Israel's fallen soldiers and officers taking place at Mount Herzl. PM Netanyahu: 'We paid a heavy price, we're determined to win this battle.'
Memorial_Day
The national Memorial Day ceremony began on Monday morning at 11:02a.m. at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, immediately following the two-minute siren marking a moment of silence for Israel's fallen and those murdered in terror attacks.
Attending the Mount Herzl ceremony are Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi.
Speaking at the ceremony, Netanyahu said, "Our national home is standing - our country is standing, and it is standing thanks to you. But at the same time, the sorrow is terrible and heartbreaking. Dear families, our loved ones who fell in battle, and in all the battles of Israel, the battles of renewal, represent eternal values. It is either Israel or the Hamas monsters. It is either existence, freedom, security, and prosperity - or it is massacre, rape, and servitude."
He added, "We are determined to win this battle. But the price that we are paying - the price that previous generations have paid - is very heavy. There is no comfort. There is life, but the wound will remain until the end of our lives. Our War of Independence has not yet ended - it continues even now."
This Memorial Day, Israel remembers 25,040 fallen, among them 760 who have fallen since last year, 711 of whom fell since the start of the war with Hamas on October 7. According to the National Insurance Institute, 5,100 civilians have been murdered in terror attacks, 834 of them since October 7.
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What a shame.
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Breaking news: Helicopter carrying Iran’s president has crashed, state media reports NYT's
Helicopter Carrying Iran’s President Has Crashed, State Media Reports
Rescuers are trying to locate the helicopter on which President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian were traveling, state media reported. Their status is unknown.
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Rep. Elise Stefanik to address Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem, slam ‘dithering’ Biden
By Mary Kay Linge
New York Rep. Elise Stefanik will address members of Israel’s Knesset in Jerusalem Hall Sunday, slamming President Biden for his “dithering” on American military aid, The Post has learned.
The speech is part of a trip to visit sites where Hamas terrorists slaughtered Israeli civilians on October 7
In remarks released to The Post, Stefanik, who chairs the House Republican Conference, described herself as “a lifelong admirer, supporter, and friend of Israel and the Jewish people” and denounced the Biden administration for withholding military aid that Congress has authorized.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, in an address to members of the Israeli Knesset, will slam Biden for “dithering” over shipments of military aid for the war against Hamas. AP
“There is no excuse for an American president to block aid to Israel — aid that was duly passed by the Congress … or to dither and hide while our friends fight for their lives,” her speech reads.
“No excuse. Full stop.”
Israeli citizens have staged multiple demonstrations demanding the release of hostages still held in Gaza. AP
Stefanik on Thursday helped pass the Israel Security Act, which would force President Biden to swiftly send US weapons to Israel amid its war with Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. Aaron Schwartz – CNP / MEGA
The five-term Republican, who led the GOP’s assault on lefty university presidents and their refusal to tamp down campus antisemitism in a fiery House hearing last year, also plans a swipe at American academia
“We must not let the extremism in ‘elite’ corners conceal the deep, abiding love for Israel among the American people,” she will say.
“The majority of Americans support you and we always will…They have opened their hearts to you in this dark hour.”
Stefanik’s trip makes her the highest-ranking member of the House to visit Israel since the cowardly attack by Hamas, her office said.
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