COMMENTARY / OPINION
The West’s lethal error in the war against Israel Melanie Phillips
The distinction between Hamas and “ordinary” Palestinian Arabs is largely spurious. Opinion.
Jan 18, 2024, 9:10 PM (GMT+2) – (JNS) In the current war in the Middle East, it’s a given that a distinction must be drawn between Hamas and the “ordinary” Palestinian Arab residents of Gaza.
This distinction, however, is largely spurious.
An article in The Washington Free Beacon that drew upon interviews given to Israeli TV by freed hostages has confirmed that ordinary Gazans were deeply involved in the Oct. 7 pogrom and subjected the hostages to cruelty, abuse and starvation.
Nili Margalit recounted how Gazan “civilians, regular people” took her hostage at knifepoint in the Oct. 7 attack. Margalit said a “boy … 17, maybe 18 years old” and an “older man with the knife” broke down the door of her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz and forced her, barefoot and in pajamas, into a stolen golf cart.
Margalit said she saw a “mob, thousands of people,” including “women and children,” pouring across Israel’s breached border with Gaza less than two miles away. (There are photos, ed.)
She saw two boys, one “no more than four or five years old” and the other 15 or 16, riding an all-terrain vehicle that belonged to her father, a cattle breeder who was among those murdered that day. The boys had apparently already made one trip from Nir Oz to Gaza and were returning for another round of carnage.
A number of the freed hostages said they spent part of their captivity in family homes, hospitals and other civilian sites in Gaza where they were locked into rooms, starved and ill-treated.
Mia Schem, who was shot in the arm and abducted from the Supernova music festival, said her captors brought her directly to a hospital in Gaza as she was bleeding to death.
Schem then received no further treatment or even pain medication. She was taken to a private home where a man and his family held her captive with “pure hate,” forbidding her to speak, cry or move. She would go days without receiving food and was never allowed to bathe.
Bad as their conditions were, the hostages’ captors repeatedly told them that their lives would be at risk if they were discovered by ordinary Gazans. The hostages hardly needed any such warning.
Sharon Aloni Cunio recalled how she and her twin three-year-old daughters were mobbed on Oct. 7 as terrorists brought them into Gaza on a tractor from their home in Nir Oz. “People start beating everyone who was sitting on the tractor—just beating us, from all sides. It was horrific,” she said.
The testimony of the freed hostages carries particular weight because these aren’t extreme nationalists. They are Israelis who, in general, were until Oct.7 the most fervent believers in peaceful coexistence with the Palestinian Arabs, ferrying Gaza residents to hospital in Israel, employing them and establishing many bonds with them.
They believed that whatever the failings of Palestinian leaders, the Palestinian Arabs just wanted to live alongside them in peace and security. Now they say something very different. “I experienced hell. Everyone there are terrorists,” said Schem. “There are no innocent civilians, not one.” [Emphasis added]
[Ed.: “Not One”?? I remember when (several years ago,) God was looking for even one good man in Sodom and Gemora. ‘A good man is hard to find!’]
Jonathan Pollard: Israel and the Farce in the Hague [5:16] Machon Shilo
January 19, 2024
Jonathan Pollard: The U.S., the Neutron Bomb and the Houthis [28:37] Machon Shilo
January 18, 2024
MUST WATCH FOR ISRAEL’S LEADERS: Jonathan Pollard’s Recommendations for the Northern Front [17:00] Machon Shilo
January 18, 2024
“The Catholic Church is not the Pope’s Church and Catholics are therefore not papists but Christians”: An Exclusive Interview with Cardinal Gerhard Müller Cole DeSantis
Cardinal Müller addresses the nature of papal infallibility, the limits of papal authority, and the possibility of a heretical pope.
January 18, 2024 – I recently sent some questions to Cardinal Gerhard Müller regarding papal infallibility and the Cardinal’s recent words describing Pope Francis as having endorsed material heresy. The Cardinal was gracious enough to answer my questions in the following email exchange.
How would you describe the nature of papal infallibility? Under what circumstances does papal infallibility apply?
Cardinal Müller: The nature, conditions, and limits of papal infallibility as an expression of the infallibility of the whole Church are defined in Chapter 4 of the Dogmatic Constitution Pastor aeternus of the First Vatican Council (1870). With reference to the integration of the supreme authority in the college of bishops, of which he is the visible head, Vatican II declares:
The infallibility with which the divine Redeemer wished to endow his Church in defining a doctrine of faith and morals extends as far as the deposit of divine revelation (divinae Revelationis depositum), which must be purely preserved and faithfully interpreted, requires. (Lumen Gentium 25)
The German bishops, with the approval of Pope Pius IX, declared to the German Chancellor Bismarck, who wanted to misuse Vatican I to justify the destruction of the Catholic Church in the “Kulturkampf”: “…the infallible magisterium of the Church is bound to the content of Holy Scripture and Tradition as well as to the doctrinal decisions already given by the ecclesiastical magisterium” (Denzinger-Hünermann no. 3116). This is also what Vatican II says with the highest authority in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei verbum (Art. 10). It should be added that the faithful must render “religious obedience of will and understanding” to their bishops and in particular to the authentic magisterium of the Bishop of Rome, even if he does not speak by virtue of the highest magisterial authority (ex cathedra). This applies according to the emphasis placed on a particular doctrine, which must, however, be explicitly or implicitly contained in revelation.
What has the Church traditionally taught on the limits of papal authority?
We’re in a regional war … and the US doesn’t see it [42:59] CAROLINE B. GLICK
The U.S. is Blind!
(January 17, 2024 / JNS) – The Houthis step up their attacks on shipping on the Red Sea; the United States continues to appease Iran and its proxies; and Israel faces a regional war on multiple fronts. All this and more on Caroline Glick’s “In-Focus!”
Gender Pay Gap Hearing Goes Horribly Wrong! [17:43] Awaken With JP
Jonathan Pollard on Upcoming Israeli Elections [14:49] Machon Shilo
The Genocide Charge Against Israel Is a Moral Obscenity Bret Stephens
Jan. 16, 2024 – In recent decades, as many as three million people perished in a famine in North Korea that was mainly government-induced. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians were gassed, bombed, starved or tortured to death by the Assad regime, and an estimated 14 million were forced to flee their homes. China has put more than a million Uyghurs through gulag-like re-education camps in a thinly veiled attempt to suppress and erase their religious and cultural identity.
But North Korea, Syria and China have never been charged with genocide at the International Court of Justice. Israel has. How curious. And how obscene.
It’s obscene because it politicizes our understanding of genocide, fatally eroding the moral power of the term. The war between Israel and Hamas is terrible — as is every war. But if this is genocide, what word do we have for the killing fields in Cambodia, Stalin’s Holodomor in Ukraine, the Holocaust itself?
Words that come to mean much more than originally intended eventually come to mean almost nothing at all — a victory for future génocidaires who’d like the world to think there’s no moral or legal difference between one kind of killing and another.
It’s obscene because it perverts the definition of genocide, which is precise: “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Notice two key features of this definition: It speaks of acts whereas part of the genocide case against Israel involves the misinterpretation of quotes from Israeli officials who have vowed Hamas’s elimination, not the elimination of Palestinians. And it uses the term as such — meaning the acts are genocidal only if they are directed at Palestinians as Palestinians, not as members of Hamas or, heartbreakingly, as collateral deaths in attempts to destroy Hamas.
If Israel were trying to commit genocide, it wouldn’t be putting its soldiers at risk or allowing humanitarian relief to arrive from Egypt or withdrawing many of its forces from Gaza. It would simply be killing Palestinians everywhere, in vastly greater numbers, as Germans killed Jews or Hutus killed Tutsis.
It’s obscene because it puts the wrong party in the dock. Hamas is a genocidal organization by conviction and design. Its founding charter calls for Israel to be “obliterated” and for Muslims to kill Jews as they “hide behind stones and trees.” On Oct. 7, Hamas murdered, mutilated, tortured, incinerated, raped or kidnapped everyone it could. Had it not been stopped it would not have stopped. One of its leaders has since vowed to do it “a second, a third, a fourth” time.
It’s Hamas, not Israel, that started the war, keeps it going, and would resume it the moment it has the arsenal and the opportunity.
It’s obscene because it validates Hamas’s illegal and barbaric strategy of hiding between, behind and beneath Palestinian civilians. From the beginning of the war, Hamas has had a double aim: to kill as many Jews as possible, and to incur Palestinian fatalities to gain international sympathy and diplomatic leverage.
What is happening now at The Hague will never be a victory for ordinary Gazans, no matter the I.C.J.’s verdict. Their victory will come only when they have a government interested in building a peaceful and prosperous state, rather than destroying a neighbor. But it will serve Hamas as an unparalleled propaganda triumph — quite a turn for a group that only months ago proudly filmed itself murdering children.
It’s obscene because it’s historically hypocritical. The United States, Britain and other allied nations killed a staggering number of German and Japanese civilians on the path to defeating the regimes that had started World War II — often known as the Good War. Events such as the bombings of Dresden or Tokyo, to say nothing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were tragic and far more indiscriminate than anything Israel stands accused of doing. But no serious person holds Franklin Roosevelt to be on a moral par with Adolf Hitler. What the Allies did were acts of war in the service of a lasting peace, not genocide in the service of a fanatical aim.
The difference? In war, the killing ends when one side stops fighting. In a genocide, that’s when the killing begins.
It’s obscene because of its strange selectivity. Reasonable people can argue that Israel has been excessive in its use of force, or deficient in its concern for Palestinian civilians, or unwise in thinking through the endgame. I disagree, but fine.
But how curious that the discussion has turned to genocide (and did so from almost the first day of the war) because it’s the behavior of the Jewish state that’s in question. And how telling that the accusation is the same one that rabid bigots have been making for years: that the Jews are, and have long been, the real Nazis — guilty of humanity’s worst crimes and deserving of its worst punishments. A verdict against Israel at the I.C.J. would signal that another international institution, and the people cheering it, has adopted the moral outlook of antisemites.
It’s been nearly 50 years since Daniel Patrick Moynihan condemned the U.N.’s “Zionism is racism” resolution as “this infamous act.”
“The abomination of antisemitism,” he warned, “has been given the appearance of international sanction.” Maybe the I.C.J. will make a similar mistake. If so, the shame and disgrace will rest with the accusers, not the accused.
Bret Stephens is an Opinion columnist for The Times, writing about foreign policy, domestic politics and cultural issues. Facebook
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 17, 2024, Section A, Page 23 of the New York edition with the headline: The Charges Against Israel Are a Moral Obscenity.
The End of Iran [16:33] Tom Nash
00:00 Iran’s Critical Mistake
00:14 Israel Attacks: Part of Large Geopolitical Game
01:22 Iran, Russia and China Axis
04:11 Iran’s Masterplan
07:13 U.S. Masterplan for the Middle East
08:53 Iran’s Counter to the U.S. Plan
09:34 Iran Puts Israel in Catch 22
11:05 Iran’s Plan BACKFIRES
12:18 The Iranian Miscalculation
12:52 Iran Gets Exposed as Mastermind of October 7th
14:15 The End of the IRGC Regime
[Ed.: Excellent analysis! EXCELLENT.]
Israel’s Thin-Skinned Supreme Court Messes Up Twice BY GADI TAUB
The country’s top legal authority compounds its worrisome anti-democratic tendencies by showing it is deaf to the national mood
JANUARY 15, 2024 – If there was one positive development in the wake of the Oct. 7 horrors, it was the widespread call for unity among Israelis. People who were at each other’s throats over judicial reform, just over three months ago, are now serving together, risking life and limb united in the common cause. There’s even a “shut your mouths” video trend on social media: Reservists on active duty, recording themselves in battle gear and fatigues conveying short blunt messages, Israeli style, to journalists and politicians: “If you don’t have something unifying to say, then shut your mouths.”
But there are those who won’t shut their mouths because they don’t care about national unity. Prominent among these are our Supreme Court judges, who picked this of all times to drop two bombshells on the country’s emerging spirit of solidarity, in two controversial decisions, that are clearly political and that make little judicial sense.
Reigniting a controversy over legal reform that almost tore the country apart, in the midst of war, is bad enough. But the court did more than that. It attempted to use the war as cover for a final unilateral resolution of the country’s most controversial political question in a way that grants one side total victory and the other a humiliating defeat. It did so by striking down the only remaining element of the now-defunct reform, the constitutional amendment that forbade the court from using the “reasonableness” criterion to nullify political decisions.
Augmenting the power of judicial review to include the process of constitution-making means that the court has now appointed itself the complete master of the legislative function of government. In the process the court has offhandedly transformed Israel’s political system from a democracy into a juristocracy. [Emphasis added] As Supreme Court Judge Noam Sohlberg put it in his dissenting opinion, the court’s decision “de facto cancels the basic democratic element” of our government, “the sovereignty of the people through their elected representatives.”
The Return of the Swastika BY ALVIN H. ROSENFELD
In 1959 there was a global swastika epidemic. What does the last resurgence of this symbol of Jewish hatred tell us about the current one?
JANUARY 15, 2024 – On Christmas Day, 1959, a newly rededicated synagogue in Cologne, Germany, was prominently defaced with swastikas. Immediately thereafter, a “swastika epidemic” broke out in over 20 towns and cities across West Germany, targeting other synagogues, Jewish cemeteries, and Jewish-owned shops. “Death to Jews” and “Jews go home” were among the antisemitic slogans that accompanied this sudden outpouring of Nazi sentiment. In no time at all, a wave of similar incidents occurred around the world. By early March 1960, swastikas appeared seemingly everywhere, so much so that within a three-month period, public expressions of anti-Jewish hatred occurred in 34 countries. In the United States alone, 637 incidents of this kind were recorded in 236 cities and small towns, some of them accompanied by death threats and attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions.
Many were shocked, for under the sign of the swastika Jews had been murdered by the millions in some of the same countries now witnessing this sudden outpouring of hostility against Jews. Was this renewed display of Jew-hatred a continuation of Hitlerian passions or would it pass?
We are winning, despite the media failing us once again By Avi Abelow, INN
It is the tiny disconnected far left elites in the media, universities, and Jewish-progressive foundations who have tremendous influence on IDF senior officials and career government staff, many of them retired failures, and want us to repeat their terrible mistakes.
Jan 16, 2024, 7:00 AM – Senior leadership of IDF and Shabak are now “advising” the government to allow Arab Muslim workers from Judea and Samaria to work in Jewish communities throughout Israel again as well as advising the government to strengthen the Palestinian Authority.
Many Israelis are in shock, because that was the exact “expert” advice they gave about allowing Gaza workers to work in Israel and giving Hamas money, to help them out economically and prevent terror. In the end, the massacre on Oct. 7th proved that theory tragically wrong. In the end, Gazan workers acted as spies, took part in the massacre, and celebrated with the whole Gazan population as the massacre was taking place. Israelis are in shock that the defense establishment is still stuck with the flawed strategic thinking of Oct. 6th!
If you ask me, every single one of the persons holding senior IDF and intelligence positions should have been fired on Oct. 8th for dereliction of duty. Yet, they are still in their positions pushing the same failed strategy as before the Oct. 7th massacre.
First the defense and media establishment claimed that withholding money from Hamas would lead to terror.
After Oct 7th the media establishment then blamed Netanyahu’s giving money to Hamas for what led to the horrific massacre.
Today the defense and media establishment claim that withholding money from the Palestinian Authority will lead to terror. (By the way, the only one standing and blocking this like a wall, stopping all payments to the Palestinian Authority, is Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich).
Do you think the defense and media establishment have learned their lesson?
Wait, that’s not all…
Here is another example…
The defense and media establishment pushed for Netanyahu to release 1,000+ terrorists so that Hamas would release Gilad Shalit, because Netanyahu was against it. He then agreed to it, after the tremendous media campaign, marches and protests, with the support of defense “experts” in the security establishment. Sinwar was one of those released.
After the Oct. 7th massacre, led by many of those terrorists released in the Shalit deal, the media establishment shamed Netanyahu for releasing the terrorists in the Shalit deal.
Today, the same retired elites of the defense establishment and media establishment are pushing for Netanyahu to stop the war and release as many terrorists as necessary for Hamas to free the captives.
You think our defense “experts” and media establishment have learnt anything?
In 1993, the defense and media establishment supported recognizing the biggest Jew-hating arch-terrorist, Yassar Arafat, as a “peace” partner, pushing us to give away our land and give his army of terrorists guns!
Half the country, the right-wing of course, protested in the streets screaming that it would bring terror upon Israel, which it did. The defense and media establishment called us “enemies of peace” and delegitimized our communities and voices.
In 2005, this same defense and media establishment then supported the disastrous Gaza “disengagement”, which meant destroying 21 thriving Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip and expelling close to 10,000 Jews from their homes.
Half the country, the right-wing of course, protested in the streets screaming that it would bring even more terror upon Israel, including rockets on Ashkelon and massacred in Israeli communities, which it did. The defense and media establishment once again called us “enemies of peace” and delegitimized our communities and voices.
Send in the Clowns Charles Coulombe
Maintaining a sense of humor in light of the depraved and cruel actions of some prelates is a healthy and necessary response for Catholics.
January 16, 2024 – Two recent events in the seemingly endless parade of the bizarre that this pontificate is producing hit this writer all at once. One was of worldwide importance and the other, purely local. The first was the revelation that Cardinal Fernandez had authored some excruciatingly theological hard-core porn and published it some years ago. The second was the surprise suppression of the Tridentine Mass at New Haven, Connecticut’s St. Stanislaus Church after 38 years—in accordance, of course, with the effluvia blowing from the Holy See in the wake of Traditionis Custodes. Strangely, the depravity of the one seemed perfectly matched with the soulless cruelty of the other.
Of course, with the constant barrage of this sort of drivel, it is easy to become despondent and/or bitter—to hate the moral and mental munchkins whence comes all this abuse. But that is a temptation straight from the devil himself, who wishes us to share in his hatred and despair. There are two sane and complementary responses to the problem.
How to End the Suffering of the Palestinians by Bassam Tawil
January 16, 2024 at 5:00 am
- Palestinians in Lebanon are “prevented from employment in 39 professions such as medicine, law and engineering… are socially marginalized, have very limited civil, social, political and economic rights, including restricted access to the Government of Lebanon’s public health, educational and social services and face significant restrictions on their right to work…” — United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees, updated September 2020.
- Arab citizens of Israel…. can own, buy and sell property, can vote and run in national and local elections, have equal access to free public healthcare, education and other services…. Many Arab Israelis serve in senior positions in hospitals, universities and colleges, courts, the civil service, and even in the Israel Police and the Israel Defense Forces.
- Neither Syria nor Lebanon grants citizenship to the Palestinians living there…
- [W]hat is happening inside the Syrian detention centers against the Palestinians is “a war crime by all standards.” – Action Group for Palestinians of Syria, alquds.co.uk, November 29, 2023.
- By ignoring the profound suffering of the Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon, these self-proclaimed “pro-Palestinian” activists and groups are once again proving that their goal is not to help Palestinians, but only to make Israel into a pariah state.
- If these activists and groups want to end the suffering of the Palestinians, they should be demanding that the Arab countries end their discriminatory and repressive measures against their Palestinian brethren. The activists and groups should also be raising the plight of the Palestinians at every available international platform instead of blaming Israel.
- The real anti-Palestinians are not the Israelis at all, but the same old racist Jew-haters and antisemites who cannot be bothered to learn the truth when it comes to the actual human rights abuse of Palestinians: it is delivered from the hands of Arabs.
Israel 101 Days of War and What Stands in Its Way to Victory [42:43] The Caroline Glick Show In-Focus
January 15, 2024 – Caroline Glick looks at the war in Gaza after 101 days of fighting and what is preventing Israel from achieving full victory against Hamas and Hezbollah in the North namely…the State Department.
Can Men Get Pregnant? College vs Street! [15:42] Awaken With JP
[Ed.: Although this video is a total waste of time, it is an entertaining waste of time.]
Taiwan Voters Just Cut China’s Xi Jinping Down to Size by Gordon G. Chang
January 14, 2024 at 5:00 am
- The Taiwanese, especially after seeing how Beijing suffocated Hong Kong in the past four years, do not want to be ruled by the Chinese regime.
- Xi Jinping at the moment must be fuming. In his 2024 New Year’s message, he signaled he is soon going to annex Taiwan. “China will surely be reunified, and all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” the Chinese leader declared in a paragraph that appears to list what will happen this year.
- The people of the small island of Taiwan are not afraid of large China. They are an inspiration to free people everywhere.
CHAPTER 1: What Is Reality? by Linda Goudsmit
Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier—Reality Is [upcoming release March/2024]
January 14, 2024
Globalism is a replacement ideology that seeks to reorder the world into one singular, planetary Unistate, ruled by the globalist elite themselves. The globalist war on nation-states cannot succeed without collapsing the United States of America. The long-term strategic attack plan moves America incrementally from constitutional republic to socialism to globalism to feudalism. The tactical attack plan uses psychological, informational, asymmetric warfare to destabilize Americans and drive society out of objective reality into the madness of subjective reality. The primary target of the globalist predators is America’s children.
What is reality? Objective reality is the world of facts. Subjective reality is the world of feelings. Objective reality is the fulcrum of human sanity, the foundation of ordered liberty in our constitutional republic. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously remarked, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Opinions are based on feelings; facts are based on actuality. Feelings are not facts.
The ideological moorings of ordered liberty require consensus on what is real. This is no small matter. Language is based on such consensus. Laws are based on such consensus. Without agreement on what is real, there is no societal order, only chaos. It is for this reason that globalists support the leftist Culture War on America and its attack strategy to replace factual, objective reality with subjective multiple realities based on feelings.
Canadian biological psychologist, Dr. David Nussbaum, captures the multi-dimensional destructiveness of the attack on reality in his precise, unambiguous, and succinct definition of Woke:
Woke is a Culturally Acquired Disorder denying reality in any fashion that will undermine traditional Western societies, values, and positive identity to help destroy them from within. (David Nussbaum, “Personal Communication,” July 2023)
I discuss what I call humanitarian hoaxes in my 2020 release, The Book of Humanitarian Hoaxes: Killing America with ‘Kindness.’ A humanitarian hoax is the deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy. Hoax 23 in my book discusses “The Humanitarian Hoax of Multiple Realities”:
The leftist Culture War on America is attacking the ideological strivings and ideological moorings of ordered liberty by attacking its most basic requirement—consensus on what is real. My article “Birdman and the Reality Revolution” exposes the leftist attack strategy seeking to replace factual, objective reality with subjective multiple realities based on feelings. This is how it works.
How can a Woke West defeat radical Islam? Giulio Meotti
The answer is that it can’t. It is too obsessed with non-existent gender equity to even try. Op-ed.
Jan 15, 2024, 9:23 AM (GMT+2) – The Welfare State, the great pride of Western civilization, the latest achievement of democracy of a civilized, democratic and well-fed West, has ended. The Toronto Sun reports that Canadian government websites no longer talk about “women”, but about “menstruating employees.”
People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier thunders against Trudeau’s “gender-obsessed” government which is waging a systematic attack on masculinity and turning men “into non-binary, trans, gender-fluid, weak and effeminate sissies.”
They can’t really believe themselves. Instead, it’s another sign of what I called a “cultural apocalypse”. The West is seduced by it, attracted, we build it, we long for it, we are its disciples.
It would be easy to dismiss the story. But Canada has become a great theme park for woke ideology.
“This ideology shapes the elite and the future elite,” says the French Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. “Woke is the installation of hatred for the West in the heart of the West. Octavio Paz described how we have perverted the great critical tradition that has kept our societies in constant dialogue with themselves. We have perverted it by putting it at the service of hatred towards ourselves and our world. Catastrophe occurs when things follow their course, said Walter Benjamin.”
[Ed.:
Debunking Lies: 10 Reasons Why Israel Isn’t Committing Genocide [4:21] Hananya Naftali
Jan 9, 2024 – A CRUCIAL 101 Lesson for South Africa’s Government.
BREAKING: Israel on Trial in the Kangaroo Courtroom of the ICJ | The Caroline Glick Show [50:42] JNS TV
January 14, 2024 – Caroline Glick speaks with Professor of Law (Bar Ilan University, San Diego School of Law) Avi Bell on the inner workings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and what the accusation of genocide from South Africa is really about.
If you want an understanding of what this trial is and means for Israel’s future, you won’t want to miss this.
[Ed.:
Past Time to Undo Obama’s ‘Fundamental Transformation’ By Clarice Feldman
January 14, 2024 – In 2008 the media lapped up the master of Shuck and Jive, Barack Obama and his high-falutin’ promise:
Now, Mizzou, I just have two words for you tonight: five days. Five days. After decades of broken politics in Washington, and eight years of failed policies from George W. Bush, and 21 months of a campaign that’s taken us from the rocky coast of Maine to the sunshine of California, we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.
“In five days, you can turn the page on policies that put greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street. In five days, you can choose policies that invest in our middle class, and create new jobs, and grow this economy, so that everyone has a chance to succeed, not just the CEO, but the secretary and janitor, not just the factory owner, but the men and women on the factory floor.
In fact, what he instituted, endorsed, and placed the federal government’s many resources behind was the Marxist division of America into oppressed and oppressor groups — using race and sex as substitutes for workers and producers. The destruction of national unity, the downplaying of merit and equal opportunity (in pursuit of equal outcomes) and the deliberate favoring of our enemies over our allies is now manifest. Almost two decades later, we have seen how these policies have led to wars in the Middle East, the destruction of our educational systems, danger to our lives from poor management, and a substantially weakened military capability. From the personnel and policies that resulted in the wars in the Middle East to the appointment of the antisemitic Claudine Gay, I see Obama’s heavy hand.
Harvard
Penny Pritzker, senior fellow of Harvard Corporation (in effect, its Board of Trustees), was instrumental in both the election of Barack Obama and the selection of Claudine Gay as Harvard’s President.
“Without Penny Pritzker, it is unlikely that Barack Obama ever would have been elected to the United States Senate or the presidency. When she first backed him during his 2004 Senate run, she was No. 152 on the Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans. He was a long-shot candidate who needed her support and imprimatur. Mr. Obama and Ms. Pritzker grew close, sometimes spending weekends with their families at her summer home.” (New York Times)
She chaired his 2008 finance team and aided in his re-election campaign. Pritzker also chaired the team that selected Gay as Harvard president. When Gay’s presidency was on the shoals after her disastrous congressional appearance, Obama lobbied the Corporation to retain her, but ultimately failed when the evidence of Gay’s professional lifetime of plagiarism was exposed and even Pritzker could no longer save her. Gay, like Obama, had achieved a highly prestigious role, not on merit, but on the very characteristics DEI weighed more heavily, and Harvard suffers and continues to suffer from the departure from the norm of earned merit as a criterion for advancement.
The Middle East
Antony Blinken, Biden’s Secretary of State, is an Obama holdover. Under Obama, he was deputy national security advisor and then deputy secretary of state. When he assumed his position under Biden, Trump had diplomatically isolated Iran, which was under international arms embargos. Biden adopted pro-Iran, pro-Qatar, and pro-Palestinian policies. These policies empowered our most dangerous Middle-Eastern enemies that finance Hamas, Hezb’allah, and the Houthis, all of which are fanatically anti-American and anti-Israeli. To take one example, immediately upon taking office, Biden reversed Trump’s designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization. Blinken’s explanation for the reversal was that designating the Houthis as a terrorist organization would cause famine in Yemen. In recent months, the Houthis, in violation of international laws, have fired upon and pirated ships passing through the Red Sea. This week, after countless provocations, the U.S., allied with the U.K., the Netherlands, and others, has been forced to attack Houthi assets to permit uninterrupted transit on the Red Sea. On Friday Biden said he considered the Houthis terrorists. Once again, the policies and personnel of Obama have created chaos and war in the Middle East.
Belief, belonging and immortality: true causes of Hamas terror Prof. Louis René Beres
Because they are primal, these crimes can never be fully controlled by reason, law or diplomacy. What then? Israel has no choice but to respond militarily. Opinion.
Jan 14, 2024, 7:47 AM (GMT+2) – To meaningfully understand what lies behind Iran-supported Hamas terrorism against Israel, we can learn more from the psychologists and anthropologists than the pundits and politicos. Inter-penetrating problems of religion, war and terror most deeply animate jihadist crimes. At their points of origin, such terror-violence expresses the result of mutually-reinforcing private needs and collective expectations.
Because they are primal, these crimes can never be fully controlled by reason, law or diplomacy.
What then? Informed explanations are finally in order.
US Jews for Hamas. Yes. Really. Jack Engelhard
They are brainwashed, like the Manchurian Candidate was, this for S70,000 a year college tuition. An embarrassment. Op-ed.
Jan 14, 2024, 2:50 PM (GMT+2) – So, it’s come to this. Some Jewish grads from our finest universities have learned nothing from our finest modern playwright, David Mamet.
Some time ago, with vigor, he announced, “Why I am no longer a Brain-Dead Liberal.” He found out that people were generally not good at heart.
Currently, a highly regarded Jewish professor at MIT quit his job because the place is run by brain-dead liberals. From Prof Karchmer, we get the inside scoop about being Jewish on campus, post Oct. 7, when Jews expected a touch of world sympathy, but instead, find themselves “a people who dwell alone.”
Instead of the world coming around to us, the world chose the cannibals, Hamas. Go figure.
Jewish students know the feeling. They are being hounded, ostracized, and even terrorized.
Those are the many.
But among the few are the deniers, the heretics, and the scorners, and whatever their number, they are an embarrassment to themselves, and to the rest of us.
They march piously as “Jews for Gaza” or “Jews for Justice and Peace,” as yesterday and even today, they block traffic on roads, bridges and tunnels, with no concern for the thousands of motorists left helpless en route to a job or a hospital. The apikorsim have a point to make. The rest of us be damned.
“My son the doctor?” Not always.
Surprise, if you thought Jews with Ph.Ds could not possibly be hoodlums. But there they are, flourishing as part of the general riff-raff.
They are, The Pampered Generation, and the cost to turn them into brainwashed zombies runs at about $70,000 per year at, say, Harvard.
Setting the Record Straight: Part XVI: The Western Addiction to Bad News about Jews By Alex Grobman PhD.
*Editor’s Note: This is the sixteenth installment in ‘Setting The Record Straight,’ the most recent series of articles from Jewish Press Online contributor, Alex Grobman, PhD
4 Shevat 5784 – January 14, 2024 – Arabs living in Israel have succeeded in convincing Westerners to believe that what they say in foreign languages is true, and disregard what they say in Arabic. [2] When Arab leaders are questioned about a belligerent statement against Israel addressed to the locals, they will “simply revise or retract ill-considered remarks by claiming that they have been mistranslated.” [3]
There is no excuse for journalists or anyone else to claim ignorance of the hatred being transmitted against Israel to the Arab masses by their political, religious, academic leaders and educators. Since public opinion influences public strategy, it is essential the media provide accurate information to all. Two primary sources for understanding the Middle East are the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) and the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). PMW monitors, translates, and analyzes Palestine Authority (PA)-controlled newspapers, TV shows, radio programs, social media sites, and schoolbooks to identify the messages the PA and other Palestinian leaders transmit to their people. MEMRI monitor and reports on news in the Middle East and South Asia through their media. [4].
Yet despite these and other reliable sources of news, the mainstream media seldom reports the incitements by Arabs, leaving their readers with a steady stream of accusations of the daily humiliation as a result of the alleged “Israeli occupation.” The refusal of the Israeli government to refrain, halt, or freeze construction in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (“settlements”), is viewed an impediment to a peaceful resolution of the conflict. As Sahar Tartak, Editor in Chief of The Yale Free Press wrote, it appears “The Left Is Incapable of Condemning Antisemitism.”[5]
Jonathan Pollard: Why did Israel become dependent on America? [20:29] Machon Shilo
[Ed.: Israel Should Not Trust America for its Safety]
South Africa’s Charge Against Israel is Attempt to Divert Attention Away From Its Own Miserable State BY HUGH FITZGERALD
JAN 13, 2024 4:00 PM – The whole business of taking Israel to the International Court of Justice on “genocide” charges gives Pretoria an excuse to strut its stuff on the world stage, in an attempt to divert people’s attention from the miserable state of the economy, the skyrocketing crime rate, and the corruption at the top, among the leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) who run what is a one-party state. At the center of the web of corruption sits President Cyril Ramaphosa, whose private fortune was estimated in 2018 at $450 million. Now, however, the Christians of South Africa are rallying in support of Israel: “South African Christian leaders oppose ICJ charge: Cannot keep silent,” by Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman, Jerusalem Post, January 10, 2024:
In addition, the letter said that the slogan “‘from the river to the sea’ means Israel must become Palestine and Jews must be destroyed. Aside from denying the Jews a right to a homeland in the aftermath of the Holocaust, where does this leave us Christians?
It’s good to remind South Africans what those slogans really mean. “From the river to the sea” may sound innocuous to some, but it has only one meaning: the entire area from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea must be transformed from a Jewish state into the twenty-third Arab state, that of Palestine, and all the Jews must be either expelled or killed.
The letter from the Christians raises another key point: what happens if Hamas and the other Palestinian terror groups were to succeed and take over all of Israel? Will the Christian holy sites now protected by the Jewish state continue to exist, free of harm, in a Muslim state? Not likely, given what happens to Christians and their churches in many parts of the Muslim world. Won’t Muslim persecution lead to the last Christians living in the Holy Land — now Muslim “Palestine” — leaving as well? And what of Christian churches? Will the Muslim Palestinians treat them better than Muslims have treated Chaldean and Assyrian churches in Iraq, or Coptic churches in Egypt o Maronite churches in Lebanon? What might happen to the Church of the Nativity, or the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, in a state peopled, and ruled, by Muslims?
Jonathan Pollard: Dismiss President of University of Haifa [13:34] Machon Shilo
