Sen. Schumer gave an excellent speech against American anti-Semitism. I have to hand it to him. He minced no words. He has never been one of my favorites but I compliment him for his strong speech.
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American Jews Are Politically Homeless Again - WSJ
Then, too, the socialist strain among Jews has always been strong. Irving Kristol, in his 1999 essay, “On the Political Stupidity of the Jews,” noted that “the majority of former socialists—in almost every country—remain opponents of capitalism. Socialism today is a political goal that dares not say its name, because socialism as a system has been discredited.”
Most Jews may have given up on socialism—with Jewish socialist thinkers from Leon Trotsky to Harold Laski having been disqualified—but many have been unable to turn away from the sentiments behind it: a sympathy for those it takes to be the underdog, a rough notion of justice that puts them on the side of all minorities, a disregard for political tradition. According to Kristol, himself Jewish, Jews tended to favor theory over practice, so they viewed even anti-Israel institutions like the United Nations favorably.
At the entrance to the nearby synagogue where my own sons long ago had their bar mitzvahs, there is a large sign in support of Black Lives Matter, an anti-Israel movement tinged with antisemitism. I have twice called to suggest the sign be taken down, to no avail.
Meanwhile the Jewish antipathy for the Republican Party goes back to the days of Jewish academic quotas, restricted neighborhoods and corporate discrimination. Those Ivy League and other universities that for decades strictly rationed the number of Jews they allowed in, those neighborhoods with unspoken agreements not to sell or rent real estate to Jews, those large corporations that for decades refused to hire Jews, all were thought to be run, inhabited, owned by Republicans.
During World War II the Republican America-first policy didn’t help. People such as Chicago Tribune publisher Robert “Colonel” McCormick argued that America had no business in the war, while Hitler was killing millions of Jews. Not that the Democrats were so solid on this front either, for we now know that Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his day a heroic figure to many Jews, failed to lift the quotas on Jews being admitted to this country and thus prevented more Jews from escaping the Holocaust. He also decided not to bomb the rail lines leading to Nazi death camps.
With memories of all this, it has been difficult—make that all but impossible—for many Jews to vote for Republicans. And it remains so now, even with Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar claiming that American support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins, baby.” She is supported in her antisemitism by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who has long accused the Israelis of apartheid and more recently has opposed American aid to Israel, whose policies, in her view, were the cause of the massacre of Oct. 7. Another Democrat, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, has been accusing not Hamas but Israel of war crimes. Sen. Chuck Schumer, while speaking in opposition to such views, has failed to denounce those people in Congress of his own party who espouse them. And then there is Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Jew who is no friend to Israel. No, it’s distinctly not our fathers’ Democratic Party.
The Democrats can no doubt count on the Jews voting as a bloc for them yet again. But then, where else, politically, are American Jews to go? As long as Donald Trump is the all but titular head of the Republican Party, voting Republican is not a very appealing option. The critic Dwight Macdonald long ago referred to our two political parties as “Tweedledum and Tweedledumber.” Which, Democrat or Republican, is the dumber? On this complicated question, I’ll let you decide.
Mr. Epstein is author, most recently, of “The Novel, Who Needs It?”
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More White House intrusions.+++
White House: IDF op in southern Gaza must be ‘different’ than in north
The U.S. has “reinforced in very clear language” that the next round of IDF operations must not “produce significant further displacement of persons,” says senior Biden administration official.
By MIKE WAGENHEIM
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Do these events connote a tipping point?
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The Populist Wave in Argentina and the Netherlands Is a Necessary Course Correction
By Jonathan Tobin Editor in chief, JNS.org
One of the laziest tropes of political analysis is the impulse to link political results from different nations in order to produce a narrative about international affairs. The point of such efforts usually has little to do with events on the ground in these disparate places and everything to do with the politics of the United States.
That's why pundits label the victors of recent elections in Argentina and The Netherlands as the "Donald Trumps" of their respective nations and treat their victories as calamities. It has a lot more to do with the political establishment's alarm about the possibility of the original Trump winning a second term in the White House in 2024 than it does about what has happened in Western Europe or South America.
The main issues that drove the victories of Javier Milei in Argentina and Geert Wilders in The Netherlands have little to do with each other. It was the hyper-inflation destroying the Argentine economy that lifted the eccentric libertarian economist and political novice Milei to victory. Meanwhile, the opening that gave Wilders his win was the sense that Dutch society and its liberal values are being subverted by out-of-control immigration from Muslim countries; Wilders has been campaigning on this issue for decades amidst constant death threats from Islamists.
And like other supposed "Trumps"—Brazil's Javier Bolsonaro or Hungary's Viktor Orban—Wilders' and Milei's ability to govern and to stay in office will hinge on local issues and their ability to represent more than a protest vote in a single election cycle.
Still, the loose talk about the existence of a populist wave sweeping the globe is rooted in more than liberal pearl-clutching about Trump leading President Joe Biden in the polls. As much as the voters in these two countries were primarily motivated by unrelated issues, the successes of both Milei and Wilders do have something in common. They reflect a willingness on the part of voters to listen to those who are treated as dangerous outliers by the political establishments in those countries and to elect them to high office.
But far from that signifying a new era of fascism driven by uncouth rabble-rousing hatemongers, as the punditry class would have it, these victories actually demonstrate the awakening of voters in very different places to the idea that they need to re-evaluate the conventional wisdom that ruling elites have been peddling. Whether you call it populism or anti-globalism or, in the case of Trump, "America First," the success of these candidates and parties is part of a necessary course correction that is happening across the board as ordinary citizens in democracies begin to pick up on the fact that the governing classes are disinterested in what concerns them.
The Dutch election, in which Wilders and his Party for Freedom won an unexpected plurality, was decided by the growing concerns across Western Europe about the impact of unlimited immigration. Wilders is routinely categorized as being on the far Right, but while he is extreme in his rhetoric about Islam and Muslims, he's actually a liberal. He speaks for those who rightly understand that a society that restricts freedom in order to cater to the demands of Islamists is one that is doomed.
Others who led on this issue were either assassinated, like Pym Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh, or driven from the country, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali. But while Wilders is damned as an Islamophobe, decades of efforts by the Dutch political establishment to ignore the way their country is changing for the worse as a result of the refusal of immigrants to assimilate have only bolstered his standing.
While the political and cultural elites may see open borders in Europe and the United States as part of their vision for a better world, the Dutch electorate has had no choice but to turn to populists like Wilders in order to try and put the brakes on the disintegration of their national identities.
Immigration isn't the problem in Argentina. Their worry is a corrupt governing class that has presided over a failing economy for decades because of the country's addiction to socialist ideas. The legacy of Peronism, a unique combination of a neo-fascist authoritarianism and collectivist economics with a populist base, still hangs over Argentina. Milei's platform opposing globalism, socialism, and the "siren song of social justice" and replacing it with one based on economic freedom provides an alternative that the elites fear and long-suffering Argentine voters welcome.
Both Wilders and Milei face formidable challenges implementing their ideas and, like Trump, could well be derailed by their own inexperience in office and a concerted campaign by the establishments in their countries to ensure that their victories are transitory.
One thing they have in common is that both are sympathetic to Israel: Wilders spent time working on a moshav as a young man and Milei has contemplated conversion to Judaism. And both are pro-Israel at time when many of the globalists who oppose them are taking sides against the Jewish state in the wake of the Oct. 7 terrorist atrocities committed by the Islamists of Hamas. Far from irrelevant to the discussion about populism, the fact that they are both willing to push back at the leftist elites' lack of interest in opposing the antisemitism that is integral to the attacks on Israel, is an indication that the talk about their victories representing a new wave of fascism has it backwards.
Yet the common theme in these elections is the way both illustrate the pushback against leftist orthodoxies and an acknowledgement of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the governing elites, no matter what political labels they put on themselves.
Far from these populist uprisings representing a threat to democracy, the growing support that people like Trump, Milei, and Wilders are getting shows that voters understand that a shock to the system and questioning the elite's orthodoxies is exactly what is needed to save it.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.org and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow him: @jonathans_tobin
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Easier said than done. However, I totally agree and addressed this circumstance in a previous memo. More than hostages are involved. An entire nation is at stake.
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Dick: I thought it critically important for voices to be heard clearly calling for Israel to maintain its momentum in Gaza. I fear there are a multitude of forces that would be thrilled, or at least content, to see that campaign stop. Such a result would be a serious blow for Israel. We simply cannot afford to stop until we defeat Hamas.
The Israeli people demand victory
Our leaders must not allow the natural desire to return hostages to derail the urgent need to destroy Hamas.
By DOUGLAS ALTABEF
Israel is currently focused on the sequential release of groups of our hostages held by Hamas. According to reports, some 52 hostages will be released over a four-day period as part of a temporary truce deal between Israel and the terror group. Three-quarters of them have already been released.
The question is: What follows? This is where things get not only murky, but potentially frightening.
Hamas is clearly hoping that we will become addicted to a daily schedule of releases, which will require a prolonged ceasefire. This scenario makes Hamas the puppet-master. It will be in full control of events and their timing. Moreover, as ceasefires are extended, Israeli leverage, born of battlefield success, will diminish. And it will embolden those who want Israel to stand down and end its military operations.
American and European leaders will proclaim: You’ll get all your people back, you inflicted heavy damage on Hamas, you killed a lot of Gazans—that sounds like enough. There is also the enormous economic cost of keeping hundreds of thousands of IDF reservists in the field.
Taken together, this could mean that the drumbeat for winding things down will become increasingly, even irresistibly loud.
This is a formula for disaster.
Israel is not fighting a war to recover hostages. We are fighting for the ground we stand on. Hamas’s barbaric Oct. 7 massacre taught us that we can no longer tolerate its existence on our border. Not if we want to have a southern Israel.
Thus, the danger inherent in the scenario outlined above—the loss of the determination to destroy Hamas—is absolute.
Israel’s troops in the field have certainly not lost their determination. A mountain of anecdotal evidence indicates that IDF soldiers are chomping at the bit to resume fighting and are completely opposed to winding down the war.
It is therefore easy to believe that the war will continue. We are just taking a pause because we had no other choice.
I hear this a lot, but forgive my skepticism. This skepticism is not directed at the Israeli people, even those fully immersed in the effort to bring all the hostages home. It is directed at our leadership.
That leadership first insisted that all the hostages be released, then caved in and agreed to the current truce. Given this, it is hard to have confidence that the chest-thumping of today will not soon yield to a far less aggressive posture.
What can we ordinary Israelis, who are hellbent on Hamas’s destruction, do about this?
First, we need to constantly remind our leaders that we, their constituents, demand resolution and determination from them. We will be very unforgiving of any deviation from the goal of defeating Hamas.
One example of this kind of reminder is the giant banner that my organization, Im Tirtzu, has just unfurled adjacent to the Beach Highway (Route 2) near the Gilot Junction between Tel Aviv and Herzliya. The banner says: “The People Demand Victory.” It then goes on to remind our leaders of the objectives that Israelis overwhelmingly support:
1. Eliminate Hamas.
2. Permanently secure the Gaza corridor.
3. Secure the release of hostages.
4. Strike back in the north to neutralize the Hezbollah threat.
It is the job of Israel’s leaders, not their constituents, to plan for and execute these objectives. But once again, I fear that the citizenry is thinking more clearly and is more committed to achieving urgent national objectives than is our leadership.
Therefore, we the people should be unequivocal. We must tell our leaders that they must not let the natural desire to rescue hostages derail the urgent mission of defeating Hamas.
It ought to be crystal clear by now that negotiating for hostage releases without solving the underlying reason that there were hostages in the first place is simply an invitation to further abductions and further destruction.
It is us, the people, who must ensure that our leaders understand: They cannot let us down. They cannot assume that Israel will ever be safe again unless this threat is removed.
We take their claim that Hamas leaders are dead men walking very seriously. Make it happen.
No amount of humanitarian concern, no amount of international pressure, can change the Israeli people’s determination. Great leaders emerge in such times. They rise to the challenge and bring us along with them in their laser-like determination to achieve victory.
Netanyahu, Gallant and Gantz, the nation is looking to you to be steadfast, resolute and determined. This is your moment. Seize it. Bring us the victory that we, your citizens, demand. We will accept nothing less.
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The Casualty Figures in Gaza Are a Scam
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Lithium batteries are as volatile as Muslims but probably not as dangerous.
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And:++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Terrorists playing the Western Wimps like a drum.
Hamas Holds Everyone Hostage
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The terrorists traffic in human beings to achieve their bloody aims.
Now Hamas is using the hostages to play on Western respect for human life. Hamas knows its strategy is dividing Israeli opinion between those who prioritize the release of the hostages and those who want Hamas defeated so it can never again slaughter 1,200 people.
Hamas is also manipulating the world, including the Biden Administration. President Biden said Sunday he hopes the initial four-day military truce can be extended so more hostages will be released. That includes the unknown number of Americans held in who-knows-what condition underground. Hamas released the first U.S. hostage on Sunday, a 4-year-old American-Israeli girl, Abigail Edan, whose parents were murdered in front of her.
But every day the truce lasts the more time the jihadists have to regroup, slip out of Gaza, rearm, or plan more ambushes against Israelis. And the longer it lasts the more odds increase of an extended cease-fire, which is what Hamas really wants. The onus will fall on Israel to end the truce, though Hamas is unlikely ever to release all hostages, who are its only source of leverage.
This is a terrible choice that Hamas doesn’t have to make because it considers civilians, including Palestinians, to be expendable weapons of war. That’s why it hides in hospitals, schools and mosques—and kidnaps women and children to serve its murderous ends.
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Biden's disappearing border. How illegals get here! Watch this 10 minute video
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https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/HUklrX2dVk4
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Will he cave? Will he go wobbly? I fear he will.
Michael Goodwin is the NYT's version of a conservative along with Bret Stephens.
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Biden must be reminded Hamas is a terrorist group as he panders to Muslims in secret, publicly backs Israel
By Michael Goodwin
No American should need to be reminded that our government has designated Hamas a terrorist organization. But apparently one very important American does need to be reminded.
That would be Joe Biden.
The news that the president apologized for casting doubt on Hamas’ casualty reports in Gaza is stunning. All the more so because Biden made his apology in secret.
He backed down in a meeting with five Muslim Americans, a fact that suggests Hamas has garnered sympathy if not outright support among some Americans and immigrants from Muslim lands.
That’s troubling in its own right, but Biden’s apology signals he’s willing to pander to them privately while publicly supporting Israel.
Truth emerges slowly
The incident began on Oct. 25 when the president, in a rare news conference, addressed the issue of civilian casualties from Israel’s attacks. This was about a week after Hamas and its servile Gaza Health Ministry insisted Israel had bombed a hospital and killed 500 Palestinians
It was a big story, thanks to sensationalizing play by The New York Times and other media outlets primed to condemn Israel.
The truth, as usual, emerged slowly and showed the hospital was not bombed and that an explosion in an adjacent parking lot was almost certainly caused by a Hamas rocket aimed at Israel that blew up prematurely and crashed.
The dramatic 500-dead angle should have set off alarms that Hamas was using its old playbook of inflating civilian death claims to drum up sympathy for itself and provoke international outrage at Israel, leading, the terrorists hoped, to a quick cease-fire that would protect them. To this day, it remains uncertain if there were any fatalities at the hospital that night.
It was against that backdrop that Biden scoffed at Hamas casualty figures, declaring “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.”
He was right, and at the time I thought that was a bold thing for the president to do and showed he understood the war was not a battle between moral equals.
Hamas had savagely broken the cease-fire on Oct. 7 with its slaughter of 1,200 Israelis and carried away nearly 250 hostages, and Biden’s comment was part of his then-ardent defense of the Jewish nation’s right to respond.
Yet it turns out that 24 hours later, Biden flip-flopped in a meeting with the Muslim American activists who got an hour to say they were furious at him for casting doubt on the numbers.
He told them, “I’m sorry. I’m disappointed in myself. I will do better,” according to The Washington Post, which first reported on the meeting.
The paper said one visitor told the president, “Palestinians are dying. We’re not OK with the numbers of their dead being disputed.”
Benefiting terrorists
But accepting the numbers benefits Hamas, which has a long track record of lying. That’s what Biden should have said instead of apologizing.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat who was the first Muslim elected to Congress, was one of those invited to air grievances.
Subsequent reports say Biden met with other Muslims in recent weeks, though there is no word on whether he repeated his apology or made other statements at odds with what he says publicly.
What is certain is the president fears his support of Israel could cost him votes, especially in states that have large numbers of Arab-American and Muslim voters.
Nationally, there are an estimated 1.1 million registered voters who identify as Muslim, and two-thirds are Democrats, according to advocates.
They argue that Muslims could be the deciding factor in battleground states where recent contests were decided by margins smaller than the number of Muslim voters.
The implication seems to be that Biden’s support of Israel could turn all Muslim voters against him.
The developments underscore my warning that the president’s early support for Israel was at risk of being undercut by his political desperation.
Polls show young voters mostly disapprove of Biden’s job performance. The fact that many young Americans, especially on elite college campuses, are participating in protests against Israel surely heightened the campaign’s fears.
Although antisemitism is an obvious and odious factor in the protest movement, Biden’s team can’t afford to lose many voters under the age of 30, one of the party’s core constituencies
It’s likely the White House’s current push for a longer and perhaps permanent Gaza cease-fire grows out of election fears.
Of course, minimizing civilian casualties and getting the Israeli hostages back are important, but stopping the war before Hamas is eliminated would leave the terrorists in power.
Boost for Iran
That would maintain Iran’s outpost, and along with Hezbollah in the north, leave Israel facing danger on two borders. None of that is in America’s interest.
And having Hamas retain control of Gaza would stunt postwar plans for rebuilding the strip and creating an international governing authority, which are part of Biden’s fantasy plan of a two-state solution.
His political worries are especially focused on the upper Midwest, where so many Muslim Americans live and vote.
Minnesota first elected Ellison in 2006 and he was a rising star in the party despite his support for the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan, a notorious antisemite.
When Ellison left Congress after winning the state AG race, his seat was won by Ilhan Omar, a refugee from Somalia who makes little effort to hide her hatred of America and Israel.
Michigan, of course, is home to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American who has stuck with the lie that Israel bombed the hospital. She also falsely insists the chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” isn’t a plan to eliminate Israel and Jews.
She recently tweeted that “Joe Biden supported the genocide of the Palestinian people,” and her incendiary lies finally earned her a House censure, with 22 Dems voting with Republicans.
The fact that so many other Dems were afraid to denounce an antisemite in their midst is a cousin of the pandering that led Biden to apologize for insulting Hamas. Up and down the party, too many elected officials are calibrating their statements about the war to avoid alienating anti-Israel voters.
They’re cowards who are practicing a form of appeasement that will only encourage the beast. And it’s not just Israel that’s endangered.
As its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, recently warned Americans on Fox News, “If we don’t win now, then Europe is next and you’re next.”
Far-left U. history
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Hunter Biden Art Buyer Advocated for Her Grandniece's Release From Hamas Captivity
By Ben Weingarten, RealClearInvestigations
The American kidnap victim released by the terrorist group Hamas during its ongoing ceasefire with Israel is a great-niece of Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, a major Democratic party donor who paid handsomely for Hunter Biden’s art and won an appointment to a plum cultural post from President Biden.
U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad
Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali: The Democrat donor bought pricey Hunter Biden art and got a plum cultural post. And after the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre, she advocated for the release of the only American freed by the terrorists in the current ceasefire: her 4-year-old grandniece, Abigail, above.
U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad
Hirsh Naftali's Biden connections went all but unmentioned as she advocated in a series of nationally televised interviews for the release of her 4-year-old grandniece, Abigail Mor Idan, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen whose parents were murdered by marauding jihadists in southern Israel on Oct. 7. She is the only American thus far among the 61 mostly women and children exchanged for Palestinian Arab prisoners in a fragile negotiated truce.
While noting that the Biden administration has worked with Qatari and Egyptian mediators to free all the hostages, a senior administration official told RealClearInvestigations that “U.S. officials insisted that Abigail be included on an early list as well as the other two Americans in this category [of women and children].”
“The President raised Abigail in nearly all of his phone calls with counterparts as well as with the Amir of Qatar on Saturday,” the official said, adding that “U.S. officials have also remained in close touch with Abigail’s family members including those the President spoke with on Sunday,” the day Abigail was returned from Gsza to Israel.
After Abigail’s release on Nov. 26, Hirsh Naftali co-signed a statement thanking “President Biden and his dedicated team,” among others, for “securing Abigail's release and reuniting other hostages with their loved ones.”
Rep. Dan Goldman, New York Democrat: Republican questions regarding Hirsh Naftali's buying of Hunter Biden art are "soulless."
Republican House members have been investigating possible connections between Hirsh Naftali’s art buying and her government appointment to the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad since July. In a letter that month to Hirsh Naftali, Oversight Committee chairman James Comer of Kentucky said, "Your position on the Commission is particularly suspicious because of Hunter Biden’s previous actions to elevate his business partner—Eric Schwerin—to the same post while his father was Vice President."
This month, Democrat Rep. Dan Goldman of New York used Abigail’s abduction to demean the inquiry, describing Republican questions regarding Hirsh Naftali's art buying and her government appointment as “soulless.”
According to Hirsh Naftali’s account in media interviews, her grandniece endured sheer horror: She witnessed the murder of her mother and father, the latter shot dead with the girl in his arms as he tried to protect her. Hirsh Naftali suggests this account was relayed in part by the little girl’s two older siblings, 6-year-old Amalia and 9-year-old Michael, who hid in a closet next to their mother's body. Abigail fled to a neighbor’s house, where she was captured.
Georges Berges Gallery
Portrait of the artist as a political hot potato at his exhibition in New York. Georges Bergès Gallery
Even as they hail the administration’s efforts to gain Abigail’s release after her harrowing ordeal, some Biden critics say the episode is another example of how his family’s financial dealings cast a shadow over his official actions by suggesting conflicts of interest.
Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch told RealClearInvestigations: “Once you start making deals with terrorists, even potentially innocent coincidences become controversial. It is fair to ask whether this is another example of Biden's family corruption compromising our national security.”
Hirsh Naftali is a Los Angeles real estate investor and philanthropist who served on the 2020 Biden campaign’s national finance committee and donated over $200,000 to his candidacy. In July 2022, Biden announced her appointment to the commission. That nomination came eight months after Hunter Biden’s first art opening at New York’s Georges Bergès Gallery. Business Insider reported that Hirsh Naftali purchased at least one of Hunter Biden’s pieces, which were priced at up to $500,000 each, and which generated sales proceeds totaling nearly $1.4 million. Visitor logs show she visited the White House at least 13 times since December 2021, the month following the art show’s opening date.
It is unclear whether Hirsh Naftali’s art buying preceded her appointment to the commission. Hunter Biden’s counsel, Abbe Lowell, has said his client was unaware that Hirsh Naftali purchased the art until after the sale was executed. The identities of the buyers were supposed to be kept private in what the White House described as an effort to avoid ethical issues.
House Oversight Committee
From Rep. James Comer's letter of July 29.
House Oversight Committee
After Hirsh Naftali was identified as one of the buyers, the House Oversight Committee sent her a letter requesting documents pertaining to the transactions, her appointment to the commission, and her visits to the White House.
Unsatisfied with her response, Comer issued a subpoena to her on Nov. 9 demanding she appear for a transcribed interview.
Hirsh Naftali’s lawyer did not respond to RCI’s request for comment.
In the cover letter associated with the subpoena addressed to Hirsh Naftali’s counsel, Chairman Comer and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) wrote: “The Committees require your client’s testimony to determine whether individuals … are obtaining access to President Biden or securing benefits from him by purchasing his son’s artwork.”
The spokesperson did not comment on whether the committee would explore any of the uncomfortable questions that might be raised about the Biden appointee’s ties to the administration and any nexus it might have to the hostage crisis and U.S. policy deliberations more broadly associated with the Israel-Hamas war.
Hirsh Naftali, a Los Angeles native, has substantial ties to the Jewish state. She moved to Israel during the 1990s and partnered in founding BIG Shopping Centers, a publicly traded company on the Tel Aviv stock exchange. She has maintained philanthropic interests there associated with Israeli and Jewish causes, in addition to serving on the board of the RAND Corporation Center for Middle East Public Policy.
The Biden administration has cited this background in justifying her appointment to the commission, which aims to protect and preserve landmarks including those in Eastern and Central Europe “associated with the heritage of U.S. citizens” whose families were targeted during the Holocaust.
As the current temporary ceasefire is extended, nine Americans remain unaccounted for, according to the Biden administration.
“As the president said, [we] will not rest until every American missing since the horrible attacks on October 7 is located and for those that remain alive returned home to their families,” the senior administration official wrote in an email response to RCI’s questions.
As for the freed 4-year-old, the official added: “We are thrilled that Abigail is now home and back in the loving arms of her extended family. She will receive the care and attention she needs through the Israelis and we are also ready to provide all appropriate support.”
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STOP PSYCHOANALYZING ISRAEL
by Rafael Medoff
(Dr. Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and author of more than 20 books about Jewish history and the Holocaust. His latest is America and the Holocaust: A Documentary History, published by the Jewish Publication Society & University of Nebraska Press.)
Here come the armchair psychoanalysts
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell declared during his recent visit to Israel, “I understand your rage. But let me ask you not to be consumed by rage.” President Biden expressed a similar sentiment upon his arrival in Israel last month. “While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it,” he advised.
The notion that if Israel hits hard at terrorists, it must be acting out of some kind of irrational emotion is inaccurate and insulting. But it’s not new.
For years, some critics of Israel have advocated the idea that Israelis have been collectively traumatized by the Holocaust, a kind of mental disorder that renders them incapable of making rational decisions.
An early promoter of this diagnosis was New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman. In his 1989 book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, Friedman wrote at length about what he called “the Holocausting of the Israeli psyche,” that is, what he considered to be an excessive interest in the Nazi genocide of six million Jews. “Israel today is becoming Yad Vashem with an air force,” Friedman asserted. He alleged that Israelis’ memories of the Holocaust were to blame for their impatient driving habits, unethical business dealings, timid acceptance of high taxes, and reluctance to make more concessions to the Arabs.
Others picked up on that theme in the years to follow. Clinical psychologist Alon Gratch, writing in USA Today in 2015, asserted that “the trauma of the Holocaust has penetrated every aspect of Israeli life,” filling Israelis with “anxiety and rage” over Jewish helplessness. This supposedly has created a “psychological burden” that shapes their attitude toward Iran and influences them to vote for nationalist political parties.
Ian Lustick, a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote an entire book in 2019 about the problems supposedly caused by what he dubbed “Holocaustia,” the mental illness that he said results from Israelis paying too much attention to the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis.
Lustick’s extreme perspective included his claim that Israel put Adolf Eichmann on trial “so as to extend the period of usable gentile sympathy and guilt.” He also invoked Holocaust-related language in accusing Israel of “the continuous mass shooting of Palestinian civilians [in Gaza]…murder[ing] and maim[ing] so many men, women and children trying to escape from the ghetto within which they have been concentrated.” Presumably his use of loaded terms such as “concentrated” and “ghetto” was not accidental.
The Israeli author Yishai Sarid wrote a novel in 2017 about an Israeli tour guide whose visits to the sites of former death camps led him to the conclusion that “we need to be a little bit Nazi, too.” It received a very positive review in the New York Times. Perhaps it is fitting that Sarid’s book is a work of fiction, since that is the only genre in which one could seriously argue that the tour guide’s remark represents how Israelis actually think.
In the years before there was an Israel, there were those who dismissed Jewish concerns about Nazism as a kind of emotional rage from which Jews just needed to calm down.
In 1934, Everett Clinchy, a prominent liberal Presbyterian minister, berated American Jewish leaders for planning to hold a public program to counter a New York City rally by pro-Nazi German Americans. “The situation is now like a tense quarrel between husband and wife in a family,” Pickett counseled his Jewish colleagues, “and when such a quarrel is at its height, the intelligent thing to do is to stop yelling at each other and wait a bit until the emotion of the situation is moderated.”
In the aftermath of the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, Father Paul L. Blakely, associate editor of the magazine America: A Catholic Review of the Week, warned Jews to stop complaining so loudly. Blakely charged that American Jewish critics of Hitler were trying to stir up “a fit of national hysteria” that would drag the United States into “war against Germany.”
The false diagnoses of “Jewish rage” and “Holocaust trauma” assume that all Jews think alike and act alike. Therefore, since some Jews were persecuted in the past, their descendants today must be acting out some hidden psychological problem if they cry out or fight back.
The absurdity of that argument is obvious from Israel’s demographic makeup. The Holocaust happened eighty years ago, primarily to European Jews. Most Israelis today are not old enough to be Holocaust survivors. And most of them are not children or grandchildren of Holocaust survivors—because their parents and grandparents did not come from Europe. The majority of Israelis are immigrants, or the descendants of immigrants, from Arab, African and Near Eastern countries; their relatives were not gassed in Auschwitz.
Certainly Israelis are deeply interested in the history of the Holocaust. And they may justifiably view the Nazi genocide, and the world’s reaction to it, as a cautionary tale, in the same way that many contemporary Western policymakers regard the failed appeasement of Nazi Germany in the 1930s as a lesson in how to deal with dictators today. But that is a far cry from being traumatized or mentally unbalanced as a result of what happened to previous generations.
When Israelis look at Hamas, they don’t see Nazis. They see Palestinian Arab terrorists who, just weeks ago, perpetrated mass murder, torture, rape, and beheadings of Jews. Israel’s response to them is not rage against imaginary enemies. It’s self-defense against real enemies.
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Anti-Semitism in the schools spreads beyond the Ivy League
A riot at a high school in Queens, N.Y., targeting a pro-Israel teacher is the latest incident that shows how Islamism and toxic woke ideology is fueling Jew-hatred.
By JONATHAN S. TOBIN
The tally of anti-Semitic incidents in which mobs have called for Israel’s destruction—and even the genocide of Jews on the streets of American cities and on elite college campuses—grows with every passing week. But the shocking footage of a student riot at Hillcrest High School in Queens, N.Y., shows just how far the poison of Jew-hatred has spread in the educational system.
In the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist atrocities, antisemitism has gone both viral and mainstream. The Hillcrest High riot might be considered just one more example of what happens when the lies about Israel being an “apartheid state” that commits “genocide” or about the necessity to “free Palestine” are fed to impressionable and ignorant youngsters. But as frightening as it might have been, the worst thing about it was the way school authorities reacted to it.
On Monday, Nov. 20, hundreds of students at the school staged a planned demonstration inside the school. They were prompted by the fact that a female Jewish teacher, who has taught at New York City public schools for 23 years—the last seven at Hillcrest—posted a picture of herself attending the Nov. 14 “March for Israel” in Washington, D.C. In it, she is holding a sign printed by the American Jewish Committee that says, “I Stand With Israel.”
Witnesses described what happened as hundreds of students flooded into the halls chanting anti-Israel slogans, waving Palestinian flags and banners, committing vandalism and shouting abuse at the teacher, who they said “had to go.” The New York City Police Department responded to the emergency, and with their help, the teacher reportedly fled her classroom. According to some accounts, she spent hours in a locked office while the students ran amuck. Eventually, the police and school officials herded the teenage rioters back into classrooms, and the besieged teacher was able to leave the building. Social-media posts by students, published subsequently by the Post, contained vulgar threats as well as anti-Semitic propaganda.
Defending the rioters
This isn’t the only case in which high school students have joined those on college campuses, as well as others demonstrating on the street, in acting out their hatred for Israel and Jews. In this case, their actions were not only particularly egregious but also put New York City Department of Education officials and city government on the spot.
There was no public acknowledgment of the incident by authorities until the New York Post published a story about it days later after videos of the rampage were posted on TikTok. Yet even after the extent of the outrage became known, the reaction from those in charge spoke volumes about why such a thing had happened in the first place. Rather than an immediate promise of a crackdown, arrests and stern warnings about the consequences of a possible repetition of this hate crime, the tenor of the statements from New York City Schools Chancellor David C. Banks was more about the need to understand the motivations of the rioters and to condemn those sounding the alarm about the incident than anything else.
An alumnus of Hillcrest himself, Banks seemed most concerned with downplaying the story and defending the students at a press conference held at the school a week after the riot.
He complained about “misinformation” about what happened and asserted that the teacher was never in “direct danger.” If that is true, that begs the question as to why the calls for assistance were such that the NYPD reportedly responded by sending 25 police officers to the scene. Perhaps he would have considered it dangerous if the cops had arrived after the rioters got their hands on the teacher rather than in time to save her.
Banks acknowledged that “violence, hate and disorder have no place in our schools,” and spoke of potential disciplinary actions. But he was clear that it was more important to rationalize the motives of the rioters and to defend them against charges of supporting terrorism than to ensure that violence, hate and disorder are severely punished.
According to The New York Times, “The chancellor also called for a measure of understanding, saying the war was a ‘very visceral and emotional issue’ at Hillcrest, where about 30 percent of students are Muslim. ‘They feel a kindred spirit with the folks of the Palestinian community,’ Mr. Banks said, adding that the ‘notion that these kids are radicalized’ was irresponsible.”
No one present demanded that Banks explain why a mob chanting for Israel’s destruction with the usual “from the river to the sea” mantra while threatening a pro-Israel Jewish teacher is not evidence of radicalization.
That view was echoed by others who spoke at the event, including the student body president, who defended the idea of students conducting what he said was intended as a “peaceful protest,” that just got out of hand by kids who “lacked maturity” and just wanted “to enjoy themselves.” School administrators agreed, since they, too, think that demanding the firing of a Jewish teacher for backing the Jewish state is a reasonable exercise of the student’s First Amendment rights and not an example of bigotry. If Banks and others don’t think that the students were radicalized, it’s because they—following the lead of corporate mainstream media outlets like The Times that have mainstreamed anti-Semitic attacks on Israel’s existence—believe that there’s nothing particularly radical about such a position.
That mindset governed the way the school handled the incident. As reporting about the lead-up to the riot shows, administrators were aware of the plans for the “peaceful protest” against a member of their faculty for expressing her Jewish identity and beliefs. But instead of acting to ensure that this bigoted attack would be forestalled, they simply let it happen. They were more afraid of being labeled “Islamophobic” or confronting a student body with a record of violence than of protecting Jews from anti-Semitism.
They are not alone in thinking this way. The initial reaction to the Post story from New York City Mayor Eric Adams was to post on X: “The vile show of anti-Semitism at Hillcrest High School was motivated by ignorance-fueled hatred, plain and simple, and it will not be tolerated in any of our schools, let alone anywhere else in our city.” But Adams, generally regarded as an ally to the Jewish community, followed that up with another post about the need for “outreach” with such students.
Banks’s justification for the riot and the New York City Department of Education’s full-court press to defend the rioters rather than the Jewish teacher demonstrates that such behavior is being tolerated.
This may seem reasonable to those who agree with the mob that a Jew publicly standing with Israel is a provocative act worthy of being protested. Imagine, however, the reaction from school authorities had a mob of white students targeted an African-American teacher for supporting the black community against violent attacks. Or if a school with a 30% Jewish population was the scene of a riot in which kids threatened an Arab or Muslim-American teacher.
We know exactly what would have happened. The story would have been on the front page of the Times the next day, rather than buried inside the paper a week later. And those involved would have not just been immediately expelled from school but subjected to arrests with liberal politicians clamoring for the rioters to be prosecuted as adults rather than minors. Certainly, their chances of being admitted to college would be compromised.
But as the Times article made clear, the main concern of authorities was not so much about the riot as the possibility that—as in the case of a high school rally against Israel in San Francisco where the anti-Semitic “from the river to the sea” chant was employed—those involved would be identified because a video of their actions was viewed by millions on X.
Suffice it to say that the Hillcrest rioters are unlikely to get much more than being forced to sit through some meaningless sessions about diversity that will downplay the threat to Jews while focusing on the problem of Islamophobia, which is what attempts to hold Muslims accountable for spreading hatred of Jews is usually labeled.
The consequences of indoctrination
As angry as the public should be about both the incident and the pleas for understanding of the rioters’ state of mind, the problem goes beyond the travails of a New York City public school system that is already widely viewed as failing its students and their families.
The hate that the students spewed as they sought to attack a Jewish teacher is not merely the product of a few teenagers’ extreme political beliefs. It is the result of years of indoctrination about “white privilege” and “decolonization” throughout the schools that, contrary to liberals, has now spread into primary and secondary education. It’s also due to the Muslim-American community’s embrace of hatred for Israel and support for groups like Hamas.
The leading anti-Israel group on college campuses throughout the nation is Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which traffics in the crudest anti-Semitic propaganda. As the Post reported this week, they’ve also created a cut-and-paste toolkit for high school students to use for planned “Days of Resistance” and walkouts to publicize their hate for the one Jewish state on the planet. Among the graphics they provide to kids is one that depicts a hang-glider descending on protesters—an invocation of the Hamas slaughter and gang rape of young Israelis at a music festival on Oct. 7.
This amply illustrates the danger that the spread of toxic left-wing ideologies like critical race theory and intersectionality pose. Groups like SJP clearly cross over the line that separates legal protests guaranteed by the First Amendment into incitement to violence and thus deserve to be banned from college campuses as some leaders, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have tried to do.
For all of the lip service that is paid to the post-Oct. 7 surge of incidents of hate crimes targeting Jews, so long as we’re asked to “understand” the motives of those who buy into the anti-Semitic propaganda that fuels these attacks rather than to seek accountability for those who commit and justify them, they will continue unabated.
American anti-Semitism is no longer a problem of a few “lone wolf” armed right-wing lunatics or even the toleration of a small cadre of Jew-hating leftists who use anti-Zionism as a thin disguise for their efforts to intimidate, shun and silence the entire Jewish community.
What happened at Hillcrest High is a warning that woke ideas and acceptance of Jew-hatred come with consequences Americans are only just beginning to glimpse. The mainstreaming of the lies about Israel—and the nature of the Palestinian war to destroy it and commit the genocide of its Jewish population—has reached a critical point. High-schoolers in Queens have been led to believe that they are entitled to riot, threaten and chase a Jewish teacher who had the temerity to stand with Israel out of school and not face the most severe punishment. If that is so, then U.S. education is in a downward spiral that will require urgent and even radical reform if it is to be saved.
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The one with Mike Rowe, a train, and the importance of Place and a Purpose in a World Gone Mad
By Salena Zito
A wonderfully powerful podcast with Mike Rowe, myself and Chuck Klausmeyer filled with great storytelling that includes a rather hilarious moment about restoring a model train to honor my father, why the Gettysburg Address was panned then forgotten for 40 years and why Mike serenaded me with a 160 year old tune and how all of that leads back to our profound need for a sense of purpose and place.
listen here:
https://audioboom.com/posts/8407142-a-place-and-a-purpose-in-a-world-gone-mad-with-salena-zito
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The post humanity world is coming and for decades we humans have been the prepared guinea pigs.
Watch this reel https://www.facebook.com/share/r/8qhcnK7c58LWV1ET/?mibextid=sy1ut2
And:
What has happened to the Democrat Party during this time?
1) they have embraced cultural Marxism.
2) They cause more problems than solve them.
3) With respect to the black vote, which they are losing, they came to expect it rather than earn it.
4) They have become the anti-Semitic Party.
5) Their messaging has been controlled by Muslims and radical Islamists.
6) As Levin writes, they hate America.
And:
A U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs attorney is under investigation after posting a video to social media to mock Israelis as they plead for the return of their hostages taken by Hamas-led terrorists.
Shekeba Morrad, an appellate attorney for the Office of the General Counsel of the Department of Veterans Affairs, posted a video in which she takes a sarcastic tone and says, "We just want our hostages back. Give us our 200 hostages."
Morrad has since taken the video down, but it was picked up and shared on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, by Canary Mission, which according to its profile "exposes hatred and antisemitism on college campuses and beyond."
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Dennis Ross like the NYT's Friedman is a certified idiot.
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Former US Diplomat Tries to Rescue Hamas Dennis Ross wants to rescue terrorist leaders. Will it bring lasting peace?
By Moshe Phillips
Posted By Ruth King
Former U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross has a plan to rescue Hamas from destruction, and he unveiled it on MSNBC just as announcements were being made that Israel and Hamas agreed to a temporary ceasefire.
Appearing on “Watch the Beat with Ari Melber,” on November 21, Ross said that “the way to end the war in Gaza” would be for Israel to allow the Hamas leadership to leave the territory in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages. Ross said he hopes the Biden Administration will promote such a proposal.
Ross cited a precedent: Israel’s decision in 1982, under U.S. pressure, to allow Yasser Arafat and the rest of the PLO leadership to leave besieged Beirut.
Ross forgot to mention what happened after Arafat left Lebanon. He didn’t ride off into the sunset of some quiet retirement. He sailed to nearby Tunis, set up PLO terrorist headquarters there, and embarked on twenty more years of terrorism. Shootings and stabbings. Bus bombings and intifadas. Thousands of Israelis murdered or maimed.
And now Ross wants Israel to repeat that tragic mistake. Once again, he wants to see terrorist leaders rescued, which would leave them free to orchestrate more October 7-style massacres.
But then again, Ambassador Ross has never been very good about learning the lessons—including the lessons from his own actions.
This is, after all, the same Dennis Ross who has publicly admitted—on the op-ed page of the Washington Post—that he pressured Israel to let Hamas import concrete. Ross insisted the concrete would be used to build houses. Israel was afraid it would be used to build terror tunnels. But under Ross’s pressure, the Israelis gave in, despite the danger.
Years later, when the damage was already done, Ross admitted that the Israelis were right to be worried.
Today, it is Israeli families that are paying the price for Ross’s mistake. Hundreds of innocent Israelis, and other foreign nationals including American citizens, are being held hostage in those terrorist tunnels, which were built with the concrete that Ross helped bring into Gaza.
Former American diplomats often lead a charmed life. Ross and the other ex-Middle East envoys—Daniel Kurtzer, Martin Indyk, Aaron Miller, Richard Haas, David Makovsky—have comfortable paid positions in various think tanks and universities. Perched in those ivory towers, they dish out unsolicited advice on how Israel should conduct itself.
They are quoted regularly in the New York Times, and appear frequently on television shows where hosts such as Ari Melber ask them softball questions. They are treated as if the fact that they were involved in past Middle East diplomacy somehow makes them experts on how to bring peace to that part of the world today.
Nobody seems to notice that all their diplomatic efforts, ranging over three decades, were complete failures. Not only did they not achieve anything remotely resembling peace—they actually made things worse. Much worse.
They pressured Israel to make one-sided concessions that were never reciprocated. They intimidated Israel into setting free hundreds of terrorists in worthless “gestures.” They emboldened Palestinian Arab extremism by covering up the Palestinian Authority’s constant violations of the Oslo Accords. And they helped turn world public opinion against Israel, by constantly blaming Israel as the main obstacle to peace.
And after all that, now they have the gall to show up on op-ed pages and talk shows, posing as neutral experts, trotting out new proposals that are supposed to magically succeed where every previous proposal of theirs has failed.
Ex-diplomats never have to deal with the consequences of their bad advice. After their diplomatic efforts flop, they return to comfortable jobs and the warmth of friendly television shows. They continue to enjoy the feeling of importance that derives from being quoted in the news and they are deluged with prestigious speaking invitations. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Israeli women and children have to face the snipers and stabbers and bombers whom those diplomats helped set free.
Isn’t it time to learn some lessons from recent history? Isn’t it time to learn from the mistakes of Dennis Ross and his colleagues? Rescuing terrorist leaders always leads to more terror. That’s what happened with Arafat in 1982, and that’s what will happen if Israel listens to Ross today.
Moshe Phillips is a commentator on Jewish affairs whose writings appear regularly in the American and Israeli press.
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DeSantis is not whatthe leftists would have you believe. In fact he is extraordinarily intllgent, courageous as hll,a Seal, a fabulus Governor anda clear eyed consrvative whois not afraid to move inthe direction he believes is best.
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The Fight for New College
This short (9-minute) documentary speaks to the state of numerous universities and how changes can be made with a bit of effort:
https://christopherrufo.com/p/the-fight-for-new-college
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