University ‘fully aware of the situation,’ did nothing to protect students from harassment

Two Jewish students at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz say they were booted from a support group for sexual assault victims and harassed by members of the group due to their Jewish identity, according to a complaint filed with the Education Department.

One of the victims, student Cassandra Blotner, says members of the support group threatened to spit on her in public for proudly being Jewish, while others called her a “dumb bitch” who supports “mass genocide” due to her support for Israel. The complaint alleges the university was “fully aware of the situation,” yet did nothing to protect the students from the anti-Semitic hate campaign.

“These students have been thrice victimized: first, by sexual predators; second, by the anti-Zionist leaders of a support group who expelled the students, including one of its founders, from the organization; and third, by the University which failed to hold accountable those who had discriminated against the students and failed to satisfactorily address the hostile climate on campus for Jewish survivors of sexual assault,” the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law, an advocacy group that helped file the complaint, said in a statement issued on Thursday.

The complaint is another sign that anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist forces on U.S. college campuses are fueling an unsafe environment for Jewish and pro-Israel students. The Education Department is already investigating the University of Southern California for fomenting “a hostile environment of anti-Semitism” and many other schools have experienced a significant rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes. Jewish and pro-Israel students say they are routinely targeted based solely on their support for the Jewish state.

At SUNY, the trouble first began in December of last year. Blotner posted a message on her personal Instagram account: “Jews are an ethnic group who come from Israel. This is proven by genealogical, historical and archeological evidence. Israel is not a ‘colonial’ state and Israelis aren’t ‘settlers.’ You cannot colonize the land your ancestors are from.”

The message allegedly angered fellow members of the New Paltz Accountability group (NPA), which Blotner and another student founded to help combat sexual assault. Members of the group allegedly “denounced the post and demanded Blotner defend her views, arguing her personal post ‘concerns the organization as a whole,’” according to the complaint and other information provided by the Brandeis Center.

While Blotner offered to meet with the group and explain her views, “NPA leaders refused the offer to meet and told her that Zionists were not welcome in NPA,” according to the complaint.

As “the only Jew of the group … it seems that I am being held accountable for the actions of a foreign government (which is something that I am not and is anti-Semitic),” Blotner said in comments to the Brandeis Center. “I am worried for the future of the group and other survivors who come seeking support. Will they too be made to feel this way due to misperceptions of shared posts, lack of cultural/religious understandings, or general difference of opinions?”

Blotner’s original post was also shared by another support group member, Ofek Preis, who is a Jewish-Israeli student. Soon after, Preis was allegedly banned from the group’s lists and barred access to its online portal. The support group also made clear to Preis that it “was only open to those who reject Zionism,” according to the Brandeis Center’s complaint.

Both Preis and Blotner were then subjected to anti-Semitic harassment and bullying online by the group’s members.

The support group “went on to publish numerous statements doubling down on its stance that Zionists are not welcome,” according to the complaint. The group extended “its exclusionary and discriminatory stance to all Jewish Zionist and Israeli sexual assault survivors at SUNY New Paltz,” and promoted “the anti-Semitic narrative that Zionism is a form of racism and white-supremacy.”

Some members posted threatening messages online, saying they would spit on Blotner. Another allegedly called Blotner a “dumb bitch” who supports “mass genocide.”

Blotner and Preis both contacted SUNY with fears about their safety, but the schools did not take any action, according to the complaint.

“The university declined Blotner’s request for a security escort to accompany her to class and advised her not to attend,” according to the Brandeis Center. “Unable to attend class safely, Blotner left campus to be with her family. The hostile anti-Semitic atmosphere for Jewish Zionist sexual assault survivors brewing on campus after [the support group’s] posts caused Preis … to feel so anxious about her safety she was also unable to attend class.”

Denise Katz-Prober, Brandeis Center’s director of legal initiatives, said in a statement that the situation parallels those on other college campuses, where Jewish and pro-Israel students are increasingly concerned about their safety.

“Students are being marginalized and excluded from campus activities on the basis of their Jewish identity, which in some cases is deeply connected to Israel,” she said. “At the same time, Israeli students are being targeted by anti-Zionist hatred that invokes classic anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish power and control.”

“When Jewish students, like Ms. Blotner and Ms. Preis, are cast out of social justice spaces and campus activities because they express pride in their ethnic or national identity, that is a form of unlawful discrimination, not political speech,” Katz-Prober said. “This case is not about the awful things that were said to these women. Rather, it is about the awful things that were done to them.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Sarah Muscroft condemned Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli citizens

The United Nations disciplined and removed a top official from her post after she publicly admonished Palestinian terror groups for a spate of rocket attacks on Israeli citizens, a U.N. official confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday.

Sarah Muscroft, who served as the head of the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), was forced to apologize after an Aug. 8 tweet in which she condemned the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror organization for its “indiscriminate rocket fire” into Israel. Following pushback from pro-Palestinian activists who accused her of being overly deferential to Israel, Muscroft called her original missive “ill informed” and then deleted her Twitter account altogether. A U.N. official confirmed that Muscroft was removed from her post as a result of the tweets and will be reassigned elsewhere in the agency.

Israeli officials and U.N. watchdog groups say the situation is proof of the international organization’s systemic bias against Israel, revealing how the United Nations silences critics of Palestinian terrorism. While U.N. officials routinely criticize Israel and characterize it as an “apartheid state,” they have done little to hold the Palestinians accountable for deadly terror attacks, including one earlier this week in Jerusalem that injured eight people, including Americans.

Muscroft originally took to Twitter last week to praise a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad following days of violent terror strikes that injured Israelis and Americans. “Such indiscriminate rocket fire of Islamic jihad provoking Israeli retaliation is condemned,” Muscroft wrote, according to archived copies of her original tweets.

Her message prompted a flurry of angry responses from pro-Palestinian advocates and even U.N. officials who said that Muscroft wrongly blamed Palestinian Islamic Jihad for initiating the violent conflict. Following this pressure, Muscroft apologized and deleted her Twitter account. A U.N. spokesman confirmed to the Free Beacon that Muscroft will “be assigned a new role” as punishment.

“The staff member in question will be assigned to a new role,” OCHA spokesman in Geneva Jens Laerke told the Free Beacon. “OCHA has been present in the occupied Palestinian territory for the past 20 years, working to help meet humanitarian needs, guided by the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality, and humanity. Over two million people in the occupied Palestinian territory need assistance—they remain our only focus and priority.”

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations, in an Aug. 14 letter to Secretary-General António Guterres lodged a formal complaint over the matter, according to a copy of that letter obtained by the Free Beacon.

“Israel is disturbed to see that Palestinian outrage over tweets would so quickly devolve into ending the ability of a senior U.N. staffer to keep her job, and to express herself,” Erdan wrote, noting that Israel has not always agreed with Muscroft’s views about the conflict. “This represents a clear surrender of the U.N. to threats and intimidation, and poses a very problematic norm.”

By punishing Muscroft, the United Nations is giving the Palestinians an “unwritten veto” over the international organization’s statements, which “stands in clear contradiction with the basic principles of objectivity and neutrality that the U.N. claims to hold,” Erdan wrote. “In the best case, this is a recipe for misguided self-censorship by U.N. officials. In the worst case, it is a prescription for U.N. officials to exclusively emphasize the Palestinian narrative, even if this falls in contradiction with facts on the ground.”

A similar situation unfolded last year when U.N. official Matthew Schmale said in an interview that Israel undertook serious efforts to avoid civilian casualties during its May 2021 operation in the Gaza Strip that targeted Hamas. Palestinian activists attacked Schmale for his comments, and the United Nations recalled him from his post.

“Somehow,” Erdan wrote in his letter, “it’s always open season to criticize Israel, with no repercussions; but if a U.N. staffer dares to speak against Palestinian terrorism, there is immediate backlash in fear of reprisal.”

The situation with Muscroft comes just weeks after a U.N. official who leads what critics say is a one-sided probe into alleged Israeli war crimes said that social media platforms are controlled by a “Jewish lobby”—comments that were widely condemned as anti-Semitic. That official, Miloon Kothari, did not face disciplinary repercussions for the comment and was defended by his superiors, who said pro-Israel forces were trying to discredit the investigation into Israel.

Arsen Ostrovsky, a human rights attorney and the CEO of the International Legal Forum, said the episode with Muscroft is “a shameful act of cowardice and hypocrisy from the U.N.”

“Instead of supporting Muscroft, the U.N. effectively threw her under the bus, by capitulating to the terrorists and the anti-Israel activists, by forcing her to make an apology and then reassigning her to a new role,” Ostrovsky told the Free Beacon. “The U.N., who are supposed to be impartial, never call out or reprimand their people when they criticize and attack Israel, yet they only do so when an official has the basic courage and decency to speak the truth and challenge the lies of Islamic Jihad and Hamas.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

WARNING: Disturbing content. Viewer discretion is advised.

The Oxford English dictionary defines meme as “a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users.” Depending on how rotten your brain is from prolonged exposure to social media, you may or may not be aware that we are in the midst of a “meme war” that will ultimately determine the fate of American democracy.

One of the most significant new developments in this raging conflict is the emergence of the “Dark Brandon” meme, which portrays Joe Biden as a laser-eyed Machiavellian overlord skilled in the art of four-dimensional political chess. It also seeks to expropriate the “Brandon” moniker from Biden’s critics, who embraced the phrase “Let’s Go, Brandon!” in 2021 after a filthy NASCAR journalist falsely claimed that fans at Talladega were chanting in support of winning driver Brandon Brown. (Fact Check: They were chanting, “F— Joe Biden!”)

In any event, the Washington Free Beacon has exclusively obtained a number of avant-garde “Dark Brandon” memes created with the help of cutting edge artificial intelligence technology. Bear in mind: The mainstream media does not want you, the American people, to see these humorous images. Enjoy!

Source: The Washington Free Beacon

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley was appointed by former President Donald Trump in 2019 and remains in office under Joe Biden.

In a recently published excerpt from her forthcoming book, “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” New Yorker writer Susan Glasser recounts Milley’s service during the Trump administration.

Glasser portrays Milley as a dedicated military officer with a strong set of values who loathed his unstable and temperamental boss. But despite his commander in chief’s “fits of rage, late-night Twitter storms” and “abrupt dismissals,” Milley was determined not to resign for the good of his country. So altruistic.

There was that one time, however, when Milley was so utterly humiliated by Trump that he spent days in his Pentagon office, writing and rewriting a letter of resignation.

The occasion came during the June 2020 George Floyd riots. Members of Black Lives Matter had tried, but fortunately failed, to burn down St. John’s Church in Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Square. Trump, accompanied by several advisers and Cabinet members, famously walked to the church and was photographed as he held up a Bible. Milley was among that group.

The legacy media claimed that a crowd of BLM protesters had been “violently” cleared from Lafayette Square by the U.S. Park Police for the sole purpose of this photo-op. One year later, the inspector general of the Interior Department released a report stating that the USPP had cleared the park to allow fencing to be installed “in response to destruction of property and injury to officers.”

In her new book, of course, Glasser tells readers, “Most of the demonstrations had been peaceful, but there were also eruptions of looting, street violence, and arson, including a small fire in St. John’s Church, across from the White House.”

Anyway, because members of the military are expected to remain apolitical and he had participated in a “political event,” Milley was filled with remorse.

During a pre-recorded commencement address to the graduating class of the National Defense University, Milley apologized. He said, “I should never have been there.”

“As senior leaders, everything you do will be closely watched, and I am not immune, as many of you saw the result of that photograph of me at Lafayette Square last week,” he told the graduates.

“I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics. As a commissioned, uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.”

Upon additional reflection, Milley penned his letter of resignation, which is included in Glasser’s excerpt.

It is a boastful, four-paragraph letter written by a disgruntled subordinate with little sense of self-awareness. He tells the president he’s done some “deep soul-searching” and “can no longer faithfully support and execute your orders.”

Woke Gen. Milley Quietly Revises Wildly Incorrect Prediction He Gave Congress in February

“It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country,” he begins. “I believe that you have made a concerted effort over time to politicize the United States military. I thought that I could change that. I’ve come to the realization that I cannot, and I need to step aside and let someone else try to do that.”

Milley continues, “You are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people — and we are trying to protect the American people. I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people.

“The American people trust their military and they trust us to protect them against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and our military will do just that. We will not turn our back on the American people.”

“I swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States and embodied within that Constitution is the idea that says that all men and women are created equal,” Milley writes. He expands upon his own acceptance of all people no matter their race, religion or sexual orientation, then moves on to his patriotism. The implication is, of course, that Trump is racist, bigoted and doesn’t love America.

“Lastly it is my deeply held belief that you’re ruining the international order, and causing significant damage to our country overseas, that was fought for so hard by the Greatest Generation that they instituted in 1945. Between 1914 and 1945, 150 million people were slaughtered in the conduct of war. They were slaughtered because of tyrannies and dictatorships.

“That generation, like every generation, has fought against that, has fought against fascism, has fought against Nazism, has fought against extremism. It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order.

“You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that. It is with deep regret that I hereby submit my letter of resignation.”

Is he calling Trump a fascist? A Nazi? Sounds like it. If Milley thinks Trump damaged America’s reputation, we have to wonder how he feels about Biden’s blunders.

Unfortunately, he never submitted the letter to Trump.

Glasser writes, “Milley had finally come to a decision. He would not quit. ‘F*** that s***,’ he told his staff. ‘I’ll just fight him.’ The challenge, as he saw it, was to stop Trump from doing any more damage.”

Trump would have been better off if this coward had resigned. Among other allegations, Milley reportedly told his Chinese counterpart he would alert him if Trump were to plan any surprise attacks.

“Gen. Milley needs to be called in TODAY and asked under polygraph what he said to China.”

Sen. @RandPaul tells me why he believes Milley’s alleged actions could have “caused an accidental war.” pic.twitter.com/81YadLJbbv

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) September 15, 2021

I would remind Milley of a certain oath he took a long time ago. He solemnly swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same.

The BLM riots in the summer of 2020 were not peaceful. They were responsible for over $1 billion in property damage. They caused injury and even deaths. It’s one thing to oppose racism and quite another to excuse crime in our cities.

Either you’re for the rule of law and against terrorism, or you’re not.

Standing up for the rule of law and against terrorism isn’t politics, Gen. Milley. It’s your job.

Heather Lang steps down after allegations that Morningstar subsidiary blacklists companies that do business in Israel

A senior executive at the ratings giant Sustainalytics—who spent years working at an anti-Israel advocacy group—announced last week that she is stepping down amid scrutiny of the company’s reliance on sources that critics say lead to bias and discrimination against Israeli companies.

Heather Lang, a onetime official at the anti-Israel activist organization B’Tselem, announced last week her departure as a senior vice president at Sustainalytics, a subsidiary of the corporate-ratings giant Morningstar, after 18 years at the company.

“Tomorrow is my last day at Sustainalytics after an incredible 18-year journey!” wrote Lang in a social media post last week. “It’s been an absolute privilege to work with such wonderful colleagues and friends.”

The news comes as Sustainalytics—one of the major ratings agencies that score companies based on their environmental, social, and governance practices—has faced allegations that its scoring system is biased against Israel and that it downgrades companies that help the Jewish state’s national security operations. Prior to joining Sustainalytics, Lang worked at B’Tselem, a self-described human rights group that asserts that “Israel’s regime of apartheid and occupation is inextricably bound up in human rights violations,” according to its website. NGO Monitor, a watchdog group that monitors Middle East organizations, describes B’Tselem as “part of a network of NGOs that promote artificial and manufactured definitions of apartheid to extend the ongoing campaigns that seek to delegitimize and demonize Israel.”

Morningstar enlisted law firm White & Case to conduct an internal investigation into potential anti-Israel bias at Sustainalytics. This came after the Illinois Investment Policy Board, a state commission, launched a probe into whether the company was in violation of Illinois laws against anti-Israel boycotts.

Lang’s presence at Sustainalytics raises questions about the neutrality of its executives, a week after the Missouri attorney general launched an investigation into allegations of anti-Israel bias at the ratings giant.

Lang did not indicate that her departure is related to the investigation or allegations of bias. But Israel advocates said the company should be cautious about anti-Israel activism among its leadership.

“If Morningstar is serious about rooting out anti-Israel bias in their ranks, it would behoove them to ensure no more of their officers have a history of demonizing the Jewish state,” a former Israeli government official told the Washington Free Beacon.

Sustainalytics referred a request for comment to Morningstar. Morningstar declined to comment on Lang’s departure, telling the Free Beacon that the company “does not support the anti-Israel BDS movement. Matters related to an individual’s employment are confidential.”

According to an online biography of Lang, posted by a conference at which she spoke, she previously worked as a “corporate social responsibility consultant and spent several years living in Israel, working for leading human rights watchdog organization B’Tselem.”

While at B’Tselem, Lang was the editor of the group’s 1999 Human Rights Report, which accused Israel of various humanitarian abuses, including blocking water from Palestinians and discriminatory deportations.

Lang’s prior work for B’Tselem was not mentioned in the White & Case probe.

According to the White & Case investigation, Sustainalytics has relied on research from Who Profits, a group that supports boycott campaigns against Israel.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Former President Donald Trump has warned Americans to brace for something “a lot worse than a recession” while blaming the Biden administration’s poor stewardship of the economy for soaring inflation and denouncing the tax hikes in the latest Democrat spending bill.

Trump made the remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas on Saturday, where the former president raised the alarm on the state of the union.

“Our country is being shot. It’s being destroyed,” Trump told attendees, while touting his administration’s record on the economy and national security.

Trump spoke of “creating the most secure border in American history, record tax and regulation cuts, $1.87 gasoline, no inflation, low interest rates, record growth in real wages, record growth in our economy.”

Soaring Inflation, Recession

During Trump’s tenure, the highest the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation gauge came in at was 2.9 percent in July 2018, while in his final month in office, January 2021, inflation clocked in at 1.4 percent.

Under Biden, inflation has climbed steadily, soaring 9.1 percent year-over-year in June 2022, a figure not seen in more than 40 years.

In his speech, Trump drew a contrast with the economy under Joe Biden, blaming the president for the highest inflation in decades that Trump estimates is costing American families as much as $7,000 a year.

“After the pandemic, we handed the radical Democrats the fastest economic recovery ever recorded, the history of our country, ever recorded,” Trump continued. “They’ve turned that into two straight quarters of negative economic growth, also known, despite their protestation to the contrary, as a recession.”

Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth are a common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession, although recessions in the United States are officially declared by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) using a broader definition than the two-quarter rule.

Despite a number of economists arguing that the United States is in a recession based on the two-consecutive-quarters rule, the Biden administration insists that the economy isn’t in a recession, citing NBER’s consideration of a broader range of indicators.

A key argument against recession made by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and others in the Biden administration is that the U.S. labor market remains tight, with unemployment at 3.5 percent and, at 10.7 million, the number of job openings remaining well above the 6 million or so people classified as unemployed.

Worse Than Recession

In his CPAC speech, Trump then issued an ominous warning that, absent a course correction, the recession could spiral into something even worse.

“Just hope that the recession doesn’t turn into a depression, because the way they’re doing things, it could be a lot worse than a recession,” Trump said, echoing similar remarks he made at a rally in Arizona at the end of July, where he warned that “we’re going to have a serious problem” unless political change takes place.

“We got to get this act in order, we have to get this country going, or we’re going to have a serious problem,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona, warning that “we’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession. We’ll have a depression.”

During his appearance at CPAC, Trump issued a call for urgent action at the polls in the upcoming midterms.

“The future of our country is at stake. We don’t have time to wait years and years. We won’t have a country left. What I used to say about Venezuela is true. We have to save the economy, defeat the Biden, Pelosi, Schumer tax hike, which is happening right now tonight,” Trump continued, referring to the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” that cleared the Senate not long after his speech.

Senators passed the sweeping bill, estimated at $740 billion, in a 51–50 vote on Aug. 7, with the package next going to the House for consideration.

During the deliberations, Senate Democrats rejected an amendment offered by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) that sought to ban any of the $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from being used to target Americans making less than $400,000 per year.

“My colleagues claim this massive funding boost will allow the IRS to go after millionaires, billionaires and so-called rich ‘tax cheats,’ but the reality is a significant portion raised from their IRS funding bloat would come from taxpayers with income below $400,000,” Crapo said in a statement.

Crapo’s amendment was rejected on a party-line vote, with the Democrat bill including softer language that features a non-binding statement of intention not to squeeze more revenue from America’s middle class.

Tax Hikes

According to an analysis by Americans for Tax Reform, a U.S. advocacy group, the spending bill includes a number of tax hikes on American households and businesses.

This includes a $6.5 billion natural gas tax that ATR says will increase household energy bills, a $12 billion crude oil tax that will end up being passed on to drivers in the form of higher gas prices, and a $52 billion income tax hike on mid-sized and family businesses.

In a separate analysis, ATR said that the Democrat bill’s changes to the book tax threaten small businesses.

Elaborating on that theme, economist and author Antonio Graceffo wrote in an op-ed for The Epoch Times that the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” would drive up prices for American households.

“Nearly half of these new taxes will be paid by manufacturers, creating disincentives to produce. Diminished industrial output will drive up the cost of goods and reduce the variety and quantity of goods available on store shelves,” Graceffo wrote.

“Beyond the manufacturing sector, the act increases taxes on businesses in general, which, combined with higher interest rates will decrease new investment and hamper job creation. Ultimately, these increased costs will be passed on to customers,” he added.

‘We Have to Win’

During his CPAC speech, Trump revealed what he sees as the key to bringing the country and its economy back on track.

“We have to win an earth-shattering victory in 2022. We have to do it, coming up in November,” Trump said.

“This election needs to be a national referendum on the horrendous catastrophes the radical Democrats have inflicted on our country,” he continued.

“The Republican party needs to campaign on a clear pledge that, if they are given power, they’re going to fight with everything they have to shut down the border, stop the crime wave, beat inflation, and hold the Biden administration accountable. They have to hold it accountable. Job number one for the next Congress,” Trump said.

The national midterm election takes place on Nov. 8, with 34 Senate seats and all 435 House seats up for grabs.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

After Andy Levin’s loss in Michigan, ‘Squad’ acolyte Nina Turner says ‘AIPAC bought another seat’

For the second time in a year, anti-Israel Democrats found themselves on the losing end of a bitter primary battle and rushed to blame the Jews.

On Tuesday night, pro-Israel Rep. Haley Stevens cruised to a 20-point win over fellow Michigan Democratic representative Andy Levin, who has championed legislation to restrict military aid to the Jewish state, argued that anti-Semitism is not an issue on the left, and aligned himself with his party’s most radical, anti-Semitic members. As a result, pro-Israel group AIPAC spent to boost Stevens and oppose Levin through one of its newly formed political action committees, the United Democracy Project—prompting Levin’s far-left allies to blame the so-called Israel lobby following the congressman’s defeat.

“Squad” acolyte and twice-failed congressional candidate Nina Turner, for example, quickly said, “AIPAC bought another seat.” Turner herself blamed her 2021 congressional loss on “evil money” after pro-Israel Democrats backed her primary opponent. Liberal anti-Israel group J Street also denounced AIPAC’s “aggressive outside spending,” which it called “harmful and unwelcome.” J Street’s statement did not mention its own outside spending in the race—the group dropped more than $700,000 to oppose Stevens.

AIPAC, of course, was not the only outside group that backed Stevens in the race. Pro-abortion giant EMILY’s List endorsed Stevens over Levin and spent more than $3 million to support the congresswoman through its own PAC, Women Vote!

While Levin did not mention AIPAC by name in his concession statement, the Democrat did attack what he called a “largely Republican-funded campaign set on defeating the movement I represent no matter where I ran.” In response, AIPAC said it was “proud” to have “helped pro-Israel Democrats prevail over detractors of the Jewish state” and accused its critics of hypocrisy.

“A double standard is applied to us when it comes to money in politics,” the group’s spokesman, Marshall Wittmann, told the Washington Free Beacon. “Those who criticize our involvement often hypocritically support the use of the same tools against pro-Israel candidates.”

Levin, who served as president of a progressive Detroit synagogue, has aligned himself with the Democratic Party’s loudest anti-Semitic voices.

In the past year, he’s repeatedly defended Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) from accusations of anti-Semitism. Tlaib has accused Jewish supporters of Israel of holding dual loyalties and in May collaborated with a pro-Hamas activist who urged Palestinians to attack Israel. Omar, meanwhile, has argued that U.S. support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins baby,” a reference to $100 bills that prompted swift condemnation from many prominent Democrats.

Despite those examples of anti-Semitism among his closest allies, Levin has argued that left-wing anti-Semitism is merely “part of a larger machinery to stoke fear and division.”

“I don’t really [think left-wing anti-Semitism is an issue],” Levin told Jewish Insider in March 2021.

Stevens’s victory over Levin marks the latest House primary win for pro-Israel Democrats. In 2021, pro-Israel Democrat Shontel Brown defeated Turner in Ohio’s 11th Congressional District and thanked her “Jewish brothers and sisters” in her victory speech. Roughly one year later, in May, Brown again defeated Turner, who failed to airbrush her anti-Israel past after she expressed “solidarity” with far-left groups that accuse Israel of apartheid.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Vera Sharav was only 3 years old when her world collapsed.

She and her family were chased out of Romania and herded into a concentration camp in Ukraine during World War II, where they were left to wait, and starve.

“The cloud of death was always there,” Sharav told The Epoch Times.

Weekly, a list determined who would be sent where; whether it be a death or slave labor camp, she said.

While at the camp, she said her father died of typhus when she was 5, which had been widespread throughout the camps because of the cold and malnutrition.

After three years at the camp, she was rescued in 1944, she said.

“My mother got wind that a few orphans would be transported out of the camp, so she lied and said I was an orphan to save my life, and that’s how I wound up leaving,” Sharav said.

This began what she called her odyssey as a child without parents, left to her own intuition and keen critical assessment of others’ intentions.

“I had to assess who I could trust to take care of me,” she said.

While on a train to the Port of Constanta, Romania, where there were three boats awaiting to take groups of people to Palestine, she befriended a family. However, upon arrival, she found herself assigned a boat with other orphan children that would separate her from the family with whom she felt she could trust. So she rebelled.

“No matter what, I could not be convinced to get on that boat,” she said. “Miraculously, in the end, they gave in to me.”

Seasick, she fell asleep that night, only to wake up to find that the boat with the orphans had been torpedoed by who she said she found out decades later to have been the Russians.

Though she carried guilt for having survived, she was grateful she resisted because that resistance kept her alive, she said.

“I do not obey authority, and it saved my life.”

Weaponized Medicine

These memories returned in 2020 during the web of COVID-19 restrictions that spun out of control with the help of media propaganda, she said.

“So now, when people are obeying authority mindlessly, giving up their rights to make decisions about their own lives and what goes into their own bodies, I think back to that time,” she said.

Today, Sharav is a medical activist and founder of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, a network of lay people and professionals who work to uphold humanitarian values and ethical standards established in the Hippocratic Oath, the Nuremberg Code, and the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights.

Most recently, she’s joined with Scott Schara, co-founder of Our Amazing Grace’s Light Shines On, Inc.

Both Sharav and Schara discussed with The Epoch Times what they saw as parallels between the National Socialist regime in Germany and the current medical directives being carried out in the United States through government funding.

Since the death of his 19-year-old daughter Grace in a hospital in 2021, after having been injected with a combination of drugs that he found out later was part of a federal hospital protocol, Schara called what was happening “genocide.” He has been crusading to tell his daughter’s story and network with others who have had a similar experience while bringing attention to the protocols that he believes amounted to the murder of his daughter, who had Down syndrome.

Under the Nazi regime, Sharav said, medicine was weaponized, as it has been today.

Though the Jews were the primary target, she said, the first medically murdered victims were disabled German infants and children under the age of 3.

This later expanded the operation—titled T4 for the street address of the program’s central office in Berlin—to the disabled of all ages, including the mentally ill and senior citizens, Sharav said.

“The Nazis called them worthless eaters,” she said. “T4 was a concerted effort to be rid of what their propaganda called the ‘economic burden.’”

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Schara pointed to a 2021 Medicare Trustee’s Report, which evaluates the cost of keeping the elderly and disabled federally funded.

“Thirty-nine percent of that federal budget goes to those two groups right now, which is $2.2 trillion a year,” Schara said.

On page 11 of the report (pdf), there is a call for “substantial changes” to address financial challenges.

“The sooner solutions are enacted, the more flexible and gradual they can be,” the report states.

For Schara, the implication, while not overtly stated, suggests a call for eugenics that was supported by academic elites early in U.S. history, and later adopted by Nazi Germany.

Ten years after he took power, Adolph Hitler launched his genocide program that had been introduced in incremental steps with the help of propaganda portraying the regime as heroes, Sharav said.

“What happened to Grace, and what happened to many disabled and elderly in Western Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States in March and April of 2020 was medical murder,” Sharav said.

‘Built on a Lie’

Genocide isn’t new to the United States, Sharav said, as it was Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Oliver Wendell Holmes who voted in favor of the 8-1 majority opinion in the 1921 case Buck v. Bell, which upheld the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924 and the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck, who was alleged to be mentally defective.

Holmes said it would be better to prevent the mentally disabled from being born than to allow them to “sap the strength of the state” or “let them starve for their imbecility.”

“The principle that sustains compulsory vaccinations is broad enough to cover cutting Fallopian tubes,” the justice wrote in his opinion. “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Carrie Buck, however, was never actually mentally disabled, Sharav said.

“Arguments for eugenics are always built on a lie,” Sharav said. “But it’s an ideology that continues to poison public health policies.” And he blames this type of thinking for the medical decisions that ultimately contributed to Grace’s death.

‘The Banality of Evil’

As he continues to try to wrap his mind around what happened to his daughter, Schara says he gained some insight from the writings of Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt and her concept of the “banality of evil.”

“It opened up a whole different view of the world for me,” Schara said.

Sharav’s experience made her familiar with the concept. The banality of evil is the normalization of mass murder by making it a bureaucratic routine that is handed down as orders through the chain of command to the person who pulls the switch, gives the injection, or turns on the gas, she said.

“No one called it murder,” Sharav said. “The Nazis were very adept at propaganda and language. The Jews were called ‘spreaders of disease,’ not unlike the epithets thrown at those who didn’t take the jab.”

Throughout 2021, the spread of COVID-19 was blamed on “the pandemic of the unvaccinated,” a phrase that was used by Joe Biden and governors such as North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper.

“The whole language of it is dehumanizing,” Sharav said.

‘A Slippery Slope’

Schara applies the concept to the fact that 67 percent of Down syndrome children are aborted in the United States, he said.

“Doctors encourage the mother to get an amnio (amniocentesis) test, and if the test shows Down syndrome or another disability that would complicate the parent’s life, he encourages an abortion,” Schara said.

What Sharav said she’s seen in an unholy union when medicine gets into bed with the government.

“The Hippocratic Oath goes out the window,” she said.

The pledge to “do no harm” got replaced with allegiance to “the greater good,” Sharav said.

The question then remains, who has the authority to decide what’s best for the greater good, Sharav challenged.

What supports the greater good is having respect for the individual, Sharav said, and to pursue policies that advocate for the many over the individual is to open the door to medical practices that will cause harm.

“Look at what Big Pharma is doing now to children, aggressively pursuing them to be jabbed when they aren’t at risk at all from COVID-19,” she said.

It’s a slippery slope that—with the help of advanced technology—society is sliding down rapidly compared to the snail’s pace that it took for Hitler to implement his “Final Solution,” Schara said.

“We’re headed there exceptionally fast,” Schara said. “Today, the ‘Final Solution’ is the reduction of the entire human population under the ‘Sustainable Agenda’ of Agenda 2030.”

Unlike the physical camps that required ink tattoos for identification and guards to manage the prisoners, the new prisons are digital, Sharav said, managed remotely by surveillance through smartphones and cities.

“With smart technology, you can manage billions all at once,” she said. “It’s chilling.”

It’s hard for many to fathom that an elite few would conspire to cause widespread harm, Sharav said.

“People will say, ‘They made a mistake; it was an accident.’ But no, the elite, just like the Nazis, have this arrogance in which they believe they are superior and therefore entitled to rule the rest of us because they think we are inferior,” Sharav said.

Control vs. Faith

Schara said his concern is with an elite ruling class that is godless, believing only in what is measurable and controllable.

He emphasizes his faith in God as a powerful weapon to combat the dark agendas that have escalated beyond the comprehension of the average person, working 60 hours a week just to make ends meet.

“We should not fall trap to the false light that Satan will eventually ride in on to steal more souls. God’s true light protects those who believe,” he said.

“We the People” can reclaim sovereignty by learning to trust in intuition, experience, and the ability to assess lies from truth, Sharav said.

“Stop watching mainstream media,” Sharav said. “They’re all reading from the same script. They have bombarded people with fearmongering, which is exactly the same thing that the Nazis did. That’s how they controlled the population: through fear.”

For Sharav, the mission that has been laid at the feet of people throughout the world is the same as it was for her as a child: “Resist. Wake up. Stop obeying.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Morningstar research arm may downgrade companies for working in disputed areas of Israel

A financial services giant builds its ratings around the premise that any entity operating in “occupied Palestinian territories” is connected to human rights violations—a standard that one foreign policy analyst says is a key pillar of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which tries to gin up an economic boycott of the Jewish state.

The research arm of Morningstar Inc., a firm that advises investors and rates companies based in part on their social ethics, may designate a company as participating in human rights violations just for working in an area it calls the “occupied Palestinian territories,” according to Richard Goldberg, a former U.S. national security official and Middle East expert who published an independent analysis on the matter for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.

Sustainalytics, the research arm, in its guidance documents says its “position is that in occupied territories where human rights are being systematically violated, any business activity in that region is connected to the violations in some direct or indirect way,” according to a review of Morningstar’s methods conducted by the law firm White & Case. This standard is also applied to other areas immersed in conflict, such as Yemen, the Western Sahara, Tibet, and the South China Sea.

Goldberg, who independently analyzed the White & Case report, said the reliance on this standard for the “occupied Palestinian territories” results in companies being downgraded just for performing work in a disputed area of Israel. He says these standards ultimately promote divestment from Israel, as companies seek to distance themselves to avoid a negative rating from the company. Ratings produced by firms like Morningstar serve as a primary guide for investors and can greatly impact a company’s appeal.

Morningstar is already battling charges that Sustainalytics unfairly downgrades companies working with Israel’s security and anti-terrorism sectors. Critics like Goldberg say the ratings system unfairly targets Israel’s partners and ultimately bolsters the BDS movement, which wages economic warfare on the Jewish state and its allies. White & Case’s review of the company’s practices found some instances of bias in certain products. It recommended multiple reforms that Morningstar says it is undertaking to make its ratings products fairer to Israel. This includes altering the language in some of its ratings products and canceling others.

Sustainalytics classifies the “occupied Palestinian territories” as the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights—areas that remain disputed.

“We’re now getting to the deepest root of the BDS activity inside Morningstar,” Goldberg said. “Every downgrade of an Israeli-connected company starts with a BDS campaign assumption that Jews have no right to live in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. If you’re a Jewish business operating near the holiest site for Jews in the world, you’re an assumed human rights violator according to Morningstar.”

“Just like the BDS campaign,” Goldberg said, “Morningstar’s premise is that companies that legitimize a Jewish presence in these areas must be investigated and harassed.”

A Morningstar spokesman would not answer specific questions about the ratings practices but told the Washington Free Beacon that the company “does not support the anti-Israel BDS movement.” The spokesman said the company is working with Jewish advocacy groups, including the Jewish Federations of North America, to address concerns of bias and implement the reforms included in the White & Case report.

Sustainalytics relies on research produced by nonprofit groups that critics view as anti-Israel. This includes Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which describe Israel as an occupying force and apartheid state. Sustainalytics also has a relationship with a group called WhoProfits, which the watchdog group NGO Monitor has flagged as “a leader” in the BDS movement.

“Sustainalytics has the system rigged against Israel-connected companies from beginning to end,” said Goldberg. “You start with false anti-Israel assumptions and double standards that trigger unfair investigations, validate BDS claims with pro-BDS sources of information, and the unsurprising output is an unfair negative rating of Israel-connected companies.”

Pro-Israel organizations like the Jewish Federations, an umbrella group representing pro-Israel activities across the United States, say Morningstar’s ratings are more biased than the company acknowledges.

The White & Case report “makes clear that built-in bias against Israel infects Sustainalytics’s methodology and sources, and thus, its other [ethical] ratings products,” the Jewish group wrote in a recent letter sent to Morningstar’s top executives. “Morningstar should take the opportunity to cleanse its products of all anti-Israel bias and set an example of fairness and reliability for all companies providing [ethical] ratings, which represent one-third of dollars managed globally.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

With an expected GOP takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives following November’s midterm elections, Republicans in the chamber are poised to launch a slew of investigations aimed at dialing up the pressure on the Biden administration over a range of issues—from border security to Hunter Biden to the origins of the pandemic.

Domestic concerns faced by everyday Americans—most notably a historic inflation rate—will be key priorities, according to Chair of the House Republican Conference Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.).

House Republicans will take the administration to task on alleged “policy failures that have created an inflation crisis, energy crisis, border crisis, and crime crisis impacting every American family,” Stefanik told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

Big Tech’s censorship of conservative voices will also be scrutinized, she added.

On the foreign policy front, the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in the United States and abroad, and U.S. strategy toward Iran are set to come under focus.

Republicans are already laying the groundwork to take on “an aggressive oversight role” next year by issuing preservation notices and document requests so a potential GOP majority “will be ready to hold the Biden administration accountable from day one,” a House GOP leadership aide told The Epoch Times in an email.

Oversight Committee

Many of the inquiries are expected to be spearheaded by the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Reform, the chamber’s main investigative panel that has broad authority to scrutinize various facets of the administration.

The committee’s ranking member James Comer (R-Ky.), who is poised to take the chair should the Republicans flip the House, foreshadowed an ambitious agenda by a GOP-led panel.

“[W]e will return the House Oversight and Reform Committee to its core mission of rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in the federal government and holding the Executive Branch accountable,” Comer told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

Another committee member Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) had a clear message for the Biden administration via email to The Epoch Times: “Their days of corruption, fraud, and abuse will no longer be met with blind eyes.”

Hunter Biden

Chief among a GOP-led House Oversight Committee’s priorities is an investigation into Hunter Biden and his foreign business dealings.

For more than two years, the president’s son has been at the center of growing controversy over his overseas business activities, including in Ukraine, Russia, and China, conducted while Biden was vice president in the Obama administration.

Hunter is currently the subject of a federal investigation being run out of Delaware and, according to a recent CNN report citing unnamed sources, it is “nearing a critical juncture.”

Hunter has previously denied wrongdoing, and the elder Biden has maintained that he has never discussed Hunter’s business activities with his son.

The president’s son’s extensive financial dealings with foreign individuals and businesses, raise concerns about conflicts of interests, illegal lobbying, and whether his ties influenced U.S. foreign policy during the Obama administration, critics say.

Republicans have honed in on Hunter’s work for Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, while his father was the Obama administration’s point-man on Ukraine, and Hunter’s dealings with several Chinese companies and businessmen with links to the Chinese Communist Party.

“We will continue to conduct oversight of Hunter Biden and the Biden Family’s pattern of peddling access to the highest levels of government to enrich themselves,” Comer said.

“They have racked up over 150 suspicious activity reports for their foreign business deals, which is a national security threat,” the lawmaker said, referring to a CBS report saying that U.S. banks had flagged more than 150 financial transactions involving Hunter or the president’s brother, James, for further review by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Some of the transactions involved large wire transfers, the report said.

“We need to know if resident Biden benefited financially from these deals and if he is beholden to the interests of foreign adversaries,” Comer said.

COVID-19 Origins

The ranking member highlighted that the committee would continue to investigate the origins of COVID-19, focusing on the possibility that the pandemic was the result of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China.

“Growing evidence shows COVID-19 likely originated from the Wuhan Lab and the Communist Party of China covered it up,” Comer said.

An array of circumstantial evidence has prompted some officials and scientists to point to the WIV as the most likely source of the pandemic. These include the WIV’s gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses, reports that staff members became sick with symptoms consistent with both seasonal flu and COVID-19 in the fall of 2019, before the Chinese regime acknowledged the outbreak, and that a WIV public database of 22,000 samples and viral sequences was taken offline in September 2019 before the onset of the pandemic.

The Chinese regime’s persistent refusal to allow outside access to the lab and its data has made it nearly impossible to fully investigate the lab leak theory.

Domestically, the potential role of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in aiding WIV’s activities has been viewed with particular alarm by Republicans, who are looking to intensify the inquiry. The NIH has previously funded WIV via New York-based health nonprofit EcoHealth, including one grant that amounted to what experts have described as gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.

“We will seek to hold U.S. government officials accountable for any wrongdoing, and ensure Americans’ tax dollars aren’t being used on risky research at unsecure labs,” Comer said.

Other Key Priorities

The ongoing struggle by the administration to control the flow of illegal immigration at the U.S.–Mexico border is set to become another focal point for Republicans serving on the House Oversight Committee, and other panels.

“We will also continue our oversight of Biden’s border crisis that has led to historic illegal immigration, a surge of deadly drugs pouring across the border, and mismanagement of taxpayer dollars,” Comer said.

With a GOP-led House Energy and Commerce Committee, Biden’s energy policies amid a deepening global squeeze on oil and gas are expected to come under close scrutiny.

“We will build on our robust oversight over how the administration is censoring conservative speech, shutting down American energy and increasing gas prices, abusing its public health emergency powers, [and] colluding with political allies like teacher’s unions,” a spokesperson for Energy and Commerce Republicans told The Epoch Times in an email.

Meanwhile, a Republican-led House Financial Services Committee would focus on probing regulatory agencies’ alleged efforts to impose a “far-left agenda” on the U.S. financial system, as well as the Biden administration’s implementation of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package known as the American Rescue Plan, said Laura Peavey, communications director for the House Financial Services GOP, in an email to The Epoch Times.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Rep. Sanford Bishop considered joining Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic organization

A Democratic congressman running in a competitive House race once praised Nation of Islam leader and infamous anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan as “impressive” and said he considered joining Farrakhan’s organization.

Rep. Sanford Bishop (Ga.), who has served in Congress since 1993, made the comments during a 2005 interview series with the former leader of the NAACP, the Jewish Journal reported this week.

Bishop said he met Farrakhan after graduating from college, while the two were attending an event at Morehouse College in 1968.

“Of course, I had the opportunity for the first time to be acquainted with a man known as Minister Louis Farrakhan, who was so impressive that night that people stopped in mid-stride,” said Bishop during the interview. “I was just so taken by his message and his manner that I rushed out to the mosque the next day to hear him.”

The interview could be an obstacle for Bishop in his closely contested race against Republican challenger and Air Force officer Chris West. Bishop’s remarks drew criticism from Jewish leaders who noted Farrakhan’s history of anti-Semitic and anti-American rhetoric.

Bishop said he considered joining the Nation of Islam, a group led by Farrakhan that mixes black nationalist ideology with some elements of the Muslim religion. The organization also promotes anti-Semitic, anti-white, and anti-gay conspiracy theories. Bishop said his father opposed the idea and encouraged him to “pause” and reconsider it.

“I had so much exposure, so many influences, and of course when I even mentioned the possibility of joining the Nation, my father, he had a real time with that,” he said.

Bishop, who was raised Christian, said he didn’t end up joining the group and went on to learn about different religions, including Judaism.

The Jewish Journal noted that Bishop declined to denounce Farrakhan when asked by the Daily Caller in 2018.

Bishop told the Jewish Journal that he “denounce[s] anti-Semitism just as I denounce all forms of racism.” The congressman added that he has “been a strong supporter of the State of Israel” and has “the support of the Georgia Jewish community.”

Farrakhan has been dubbed the “most popular anti-Semite in America” by the Anti-Defamation League. Farrakhan preaches that “Satanic Jews” have “infected the whole world with poison and deceit.”

“To my Jewish friends, I shouldn’t use the word ‘friends’ so lightly, you have been a great and master deceiver, but God is going to pull the covers all off of you,” said Farrakhan in one 2017 speech.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told the Jewish Journal that Bishop’s praise for Farrakhan seems consistent with some of the congressman’s policy positions.

Bishop, who supported the Iran nuclear deal, appears to have “no concerns about a regime that crushes human rights, religious freedoms of its own citizens, executes gays, threatens nuclear Holocaust against [the] Jewish state, and continues to support and deploy terrorist assets from Iraq to South America,” Cooper said. “No surprise then he would have no problem with Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism and anti-American rhetoric.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Navi Pillay is standing by Miloon Kothari after anti-Semitic comments

The United Nations official in charge of an investigation into Israel is standing by a colleague who came under fire this week for claiming social media platforms are controlled by a “Jewish lobby.”

Navi Pillay, chairwoman of the U.N. investigation into alleged Israeli human rights crimes, says her colleague, Miloon Kothari, is being unfairly accused of anti-Semitism after he stated in an interview this week that social media are controlled by an all-powerful “Jewish lobby” that throws around “a lot of money.”

Pillay defended the remarks, saying in a letter sent Thursday to the president of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which helms the Israel investigation, that Kothari was “deliberately misquoted.” A copy of the letter, which was written after the UNHRC’s president raised concerns about the comments, was provided to the Washington Free Beacon by U.N. officials.

Kothari was “deliberately misquoted to imply that ‘social media’ was controlled by the Jewish lobby,” Pillay says in the letter, though she does not specify how Kothari was misquoted. Pillay also said that those critical of Kothari’s comments are attempting to discredit the U.N. investigation into Israel, which has been dogged by accusations it is biased and fueled by animosity toward the Jewish state.

“The commission takes great exception to personal attacks against individual commissioners appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Such attacks have been continuously directed against all three commissioners throughout our tenure, and it is to this that Commissioner Kothari was making reference,” Pillay wrote.

Kothari in an interview with the anti-Zionist website Mondoweiss said the “Jewish lobby” is behind social media efforts attempting to discredit the ongoing probe into Israel.

“We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by whether it’s the Jewish lobby or it’s the specific [nonprofit groups],” Kothari said. “A lot of money is being thrown into trying to discredit us.”

Kothari also questioned Israel’s membership in the United Nations.

“I would go as far as to raise the question of why [Israel is] even a member of the United Nations,” he said. “The Israeli government does not respect its own obligations as a U.N. member state. They, in fact, consistently, either directly or through the United States, try to undermine U.N. mechanisms.”

Kothari’s comments were labeled anti-Semitic by pro-Israel groups, the Free Beacon reported on Wednesday.

Pillay in her letter launched attacks on the Israeli government for its refusal to cooperate with the investigation, which Israel is boycotting due to concerns the commission is trying to demonize the Jewish state.

“The commission continues to highlight the refusal of Israel to cooperate with the Commission of Inquiry as well as abide by its international obligations to end the occupation and fulfill the right of Palestinians to self-determination,” Pillay wrote.

“Commissioner Kothari’s comments reflect the commission’s disappointment with the continued lack of cooperation and address the issue that as a member of the United Nations, Israel is under an obligation to abide by the international legal framework, as well as independent bodies set up by the United Nations,” Pillay wrote.

Pillay also defended Commissioner Christopher Sidoti, who came under fire in recent weeks for comments that Israeli officials called anti-Semitic.

A U.N. Human Rights Council spokesman told the Free Beacon that it has a zero-tolerance policy on anti-Semitism.

“The Human Rights Council takes a vigilant stance against anti-Semitism, including any comments or actions seen as stigmatizing the Jewish people,” the official said. “The council has a long track record speaking out against all forms of discrimination and racism and vehemently condemns such abhorrent acts.”

U.S. officials at the United Nations, including Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Deborah Lipstadt, said on Thursday that Kothari’s comments represent a “persistent venom” that has “poisoned” the international body.

“Anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias are a persistent venom that for far too long has poisoned international discourse and polluted international organizations, including the United Nations,” Lipstadt said in a joint statement with Michèle Taylor, the U.S. permanent representative to the U.N. Human Rights Council.  “The United States condemns it unequivocally.”

Kothari’s comments, Lipstadt and Taylor said, echo “age-old anti-Semitic tropes” and are “outrageous, inappropriate, and corrosive.”

Anne Bayefsky, president of Human Rights Voices and director of Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, which combats anti-Semitism, said Pillay’s letter demonstrates the entire Israel commission is biased.

“The letter of Navi Pillay defending the clearly outrageous anti-Semitic remarks of her colleague on the U.N. Human Rights Council inquiry makes one thing abundantly clear: The problem isn’t just Kothari,” Bayefsky said. “The problem is the inquiry itself and all three of its members starting with Pillay herself. The very reason that Pillay, Kothari, and Chris Sidoti were chosen for the job was because they are all well-known wildly anti-Israel militants. Their appointments were totally at odds with U.N. requirements of impartiality and objectivity.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Miloon Kothari is part of a commission to investigate alleged Israeli crimes

A United Nations official investigating alleged Israeli crimes said in an interview that social media platforms are controlled by an all-powerful “Jewish lobby.”

Miloon Kothari, a member of a U.N. Commission of Inquiry that is leading what critics say is a biased investigation against Israel, made the comments during an interview this week with Mondoweiss, an anti-Zionist blog that has been dogged by accusations it amplifies anti-Semitic hatred of Israel and Jews.

“We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by whether it’s the Jewish lobby or it’s the specific [nonprofit groups],” Kothari said. “A lot of money is being thrown into trying to discredit us.”

Pro-Israel organizations say the investigation into Israel is biased due to its broad mandate and open-ended nature and that Kothari’s comments are another sign the investigation will be unfair to Israel. The commission is tasked with identifying the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It already has concluded in one report that “Israel has no intention of ending the occupation”—language that critics of the probe say reveals the inquiry’s implicit bias against the Jewish state.

“There really is no way to avoid describing this outburst by Mr. Kothari as anything but a grotesque display of anti-Semitism,” Anne Bayefsky, president of Human Rights Voices and director of Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, which combats anti-Semitism, told the Washington Free Beacon. “The legitimacy of this U.N inquiry is shot. It is an ‘inquiry’ supposedly about ‘systematic discrimination’ whose purpose and practice is to engage in systematic discrimination—against the Jewish state and Jews.”

Arsen Ostrovsky, a human rights attorney and CEO of the pro-Israel International Legal Forum, said the comments mark “a despicable new low, even for the U.N. Kothari’s accusations, which are replete with age-old antisemitic tropes and unhinged Jew hatred, only underscore the gross illegitimacy and bias of this one-sided Commission of Inquiry assault on Israel.”

Ostrovsky’s legal group issued an independent report in May highlighting what it said is prevalent anti-Israel bias in the U.N. investigation of Israel.

Kothari in the interview indicated that he views Israel as an apartheid state but said that term is “not sufficient” to characterize the whole situation.

“We don’t think it’s sufficient to capture the enormity of what has happened in the area,” Kothari said when asked about the subject. The commission “will get to the apartheid question, at some point in the future, because we will be looking at discrimination in general, from the River to the Sea.” The term “from the river to the sea” is often employed by Palestinian leaders who believe Israel has no right to exist and that a Palestinian nation should extend through all parts of the modern-day Jewish state.

Israel’s claim on disputed areas has “been illegal from the beginning,” according to Kothari, who also said Israel does not deserve to be a member of the United Nations.

“I would go as far as to raise the question of why [Israel is] even a member of the United Nations,” he said. “The Israeli government does not respect its own obligations as a U.N. member state. They, in fact, consistently, either directly or through the United States, try to undermine U.N. mechanisms.”

The U.N. commission on which Kothari serves was established in the wake of Israel’s 2021 war with Palestinian terror groups, including Hamas. The inquiry was ordered by the U.N. Human Rights Council, a hotbed for anti-Israel activity. The Trump administration pulled the United States out of the council as a result of this bias, but resident Joe Biden rejoined soon after taking office. The Israel commission, which the Biden administration helps to fund, is scheduled in the next several months to report its finding to the organization’s General Assembly.

Kothari disclosed that members of the Israeli inquiry are planning travel to the United States so that they can rally support for their cause with members of Congress. They also are hoping to persuade the Biden administration to drop its opposition to the probe.

Bayefsky, who has been closely tracking the commission’s investigation, said it is unprecedented for members of a U.N. probe to lobby U.S. lawmakers on the issue.

“It needs to be asked who authorized this visit, and in light of this outrageous statement, such authorization needs to be immediately rescinded,” she said. “The official mandate of this U.N. inquiry does not include becoming congressional lobbyists. No member of a U.N. country-specific inquiry on official business can waltz into the United States without permission.”

In light of Kothari’s comment, Bayefsky said, “The right thing to do is to defund and disband a mission that brings the U.N. and its top human rights body into deep disrepute.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

A New York man was released from jail without bail hours after he tried to stab Rep. Lee Zeldin (R., N.Y.), a foregone conclusion because of a bail reform law passed in 2019.

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office in Rochester, N.Y., charged David Jakubonis with attempted second-degree assault and released him before his trial, according to a Thursday press release. Jakubonis, an Iraq war veteran who was inebriated, used a small weapon with two sharp prongs to assault Zeldin, telling the representative, “You’re done,” when he swung at him during a campaign speech for veterans in Perinton.

His words as he tried to stab me a few hours ago were “you’re done”, but several attendees, including @EspositoforNY, quickly jumped into action & tackled the guy.

Law enforcement was on the scene within minutes.

The attacker will likely be instantly released under NY’s laws. pic.twitter.com/wZEyIyrjFe

— Lee Zeldin (@leezeldin) July 22, 2022

“After being charged with a felony for last night’s attack, the man who tried to stab me was instantly released back onto the street due to New York’s insane cashless bail law,” Zeldin told the Washington Free Beacon. “Too many people throughout our state have suffered violent attacks and even death, as a result of criminals who were allowed to walk free because of soft-on-crime bail policy. We must repeal cashless bail in New York!”

Attempted assault is a felony in New York, but criminal justice reform legislation passed in 2019 bars judges from setting bail because the charge is “nonviolent,” the New York Times reported. Zeldin predicted his assailant would be released shortly after the incident due to state law.

In another case in June, a New York City offender stabbed two Subway passengers the day after he was released from jail for brandishing a knife at police.

The attack comes as elected officials face increased threats of violence in the United States. In 2017, a far-left gunman shot up a practice for the Congressional Baseball Game in Washington, D.C., nearly killing House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (La.). A left-wing group threatened this year’s upcoming game, warning of “serious consequences” if it doesn’t get its way.

Zeldin is running to unseat New York Democratic governor Kathy Hochul in November. Members of Zeldin’s campaign staff restrained Jakubonis until law enforcement officers arrived and took the assailant into custody. The congressman was uninjured.

Along with other U.S. states, New York saw crime rise over the past two years. Zeldin’s assault took place on the outskirts of the city of Rochester, which set an all-time record for homicides in 2021. The FBI reported the United States in 2020 had its largest ever annual homicide increase, up 30 percent from 2019.

Zeldin is one of two Jewish Republicans in Congress. The Empire State had a record number of assaults against Jews in 2021, as anti-Semitic incidents have reached an all-time high nationwide, the Anti-Defamation League reported in April.

Update 6:46 p.m.: This piece has been updated with a comment from Rep. Zeldin.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

But whatever you do, don’t boycott-divest-sanction Palestine [US Patriot]

The Palestinian government is complicit in “rampant, wide-spread, and systematic torture of Palestinian nationals” and Israelis, according to a landmark legal complaint filed this week with the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The International Legal Forum (ILF), an advocacy group representing more than 3,500 lawyers and civil society activists across the globe, is pressing the ICC to investigate the Palestinian Authority for war crimes in the first ever case of this nature presented to the court, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The organization is demanding that the ICC launch “an immediate investigation and prosecution of Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership for allegations of torture.” The documents outline instances of the Palestinian government engaging in “violent beatings, arbitrary detention, solitary confinement, cruel and inhumane prison conditions, harassment, forced confessions, and summary executions.”

The case comes just a week after resident Joe Biden made his first trip to the Middle East and announced another $316 million in U.S. taxpayer funding for the PA and organizations that work with it, bringing the total amount of American aid to around $1 billion. The Trump administration froze this money over concerns that the Palestinian government spends international aid dollars on terror groups and imprisoned terrorists.

“It is noteworthy that resident Biden has just returned from the Middle East, where he touted millions of dollars in increased funding to the Palestinians,” Arsen Ostrovsky, the ILF’s chairman and CEO, told the Free Beacon. “One has to ask the question, then, are U.S. tax payer dollars also going toward underwriting torture practices carried out by the Palestinian Authority?”

While the Palestinian government has long pressed the ICC and other U.N. organizations to investigate alleged Israeli human rights abuses, the ILF’s complaint marks one of the first times a pro-Israel organization has attempted to force international legal authorities to investigate the PA.

The complaint exposes how the Palestinian Authority and its security apparatus “systematically and intentionally” engage in wide-spread “violence and torture against Palestinian nationals in the West Bank, including against human rights activists, journalists, political opponents, dissidents, women, minors, members of LGBTQ community, social media critics, and purported ‘collaborators’ with Israel.”

These acts of torture, the group says in its legal filing, “routinely occur with the full knowledge of and under the express authority and/or directions of the PA.”

This includes targeting Palestinian human rights activists and those critical of the PA government.

Nizar Banat, a 43-year-old Palestinian reformist, in June 2021 was attacked in his home by the PA’s security services—one of several similar attacks on critics that the ILF says amount to a breach of international norms.

“Over 25 PA security services officers entered Banat’s home, subdued him with pepper spray, and then viciously assaulted him before his wife and children, including by beating him with iron bars and wooden batons,” according to the complaint. “The PA security services then dragged Mr. Banat from his home, stripped him of his clothes, and dragged him away into a waiting vehicle, where he subsequently died in their custody.”

The legal filing also accuses Hamas, the terrorist group that runs the Gaza Strip, of torture. This includes war crimes charges for Hamas’s repeated rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and cities.

Hamas is holding on to the bodies of murdered Israeli soldiers, which also constitutes a war crime, according to the ILF’s complaint.

“It is our contention that the above criteria [are] sufficiently met, so as to commence an immediate investigation against [PA president Mahmoud] Abbas and [PA prime minister Mohammed] Shtayyeh, for the crime of torture, pursuant to the Rome Statute,” the group writes in the filing.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The Biden administration is poised to give Iran “more than a hundred billion dollars” in cash windfalls if it signs a new nuclear deal, according to former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who also hinted to a group of pro-Israel activists on Monday that she will run for president in 2024.

With negotiations over a revamped nuclear deal ongoing, Haley warned an audience of pro-Israel activists that the Biden administration is preparing to unload billions of dollars to Tehran—money that “will fund terrorist attacks on Israel and America.”

Biden has “made clear that he’ll do almost anything to get the ayatollahs to sign on the dotted line,” Haley said in a speech before the Christians United for Israel organization during its annual gathering in Washington, D.C. “And do you know who Biden allowed our lead negotiator on the Iran deal to be? Russia.” An advanced transcript of her remarks was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Haley said that with Moscow’s help, the Biden administration is laying the groundwork for Iran to obtain “missiles and nukes to destroy both Israel and America.”

Haley’s speech, which focused heavily on Israel and the threats posed by both Iran and Russia, comes amid speculation that she will throw her hat into the ring for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination—rumors that she appeared to confirm in her speech. It also laid the groundwork for a foreign policy approach that would refocus America on countering Iran and its growing alliance with Russia.

“Anything Joe Biden signs [with Iran] will all but guarantee that Iran gets the bomb. No deal is better than a bad deal,” she said. “And if this president signs any sort of deal, I’ll make you a promise. … The next president will shred it—on her first day in office.”

In addition to advocating for increased U.S. military aid to Israel to help it confront Iran, Haley discussed the war in Ukraine and blamed the Biden administration’s failures in Afghanistan for fueling Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

“If America hadn’t failed so miserably in Afghanistan, there never would have been a war in Ukraine,” she said. “Putin saw the strongest country in history leave Bagram Air Force Base in the middle of the night—without even telling our allies who stood shoulder to shoulder with us for decades.”

The bungled U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is why “Putin made his move. It’s the price we pay for American weakness. And now countless Ukrainians are paying for our mistake with their lives,” Haley said.

Other world dictators learned a similar lesson when the United States ran out of Afghanistan, according to Haley.

“Putin wasn’t the only one who saw a green light in Afghanistan. So did Kim Jong Un in North Korea. So did Xi Jinping in Communist China,”
she said. “And last but not least, our surrender in Afghanistan was the gift that keeps on giving for Iran. When Kabul fell, the ayatollahs celebrated.”

Haley also criticized Biden’s recent trip to the Middle East, including Israel, where he announced a $300 million cash infusion to the Palestinian government. The Free Beacon exclusively reported last week that a large portion of this cash is funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA, which has a history of inciting violence against Jews.

“The money has no conditions, no strings, nothing. The Palestinians can keep stoking hatred of Israel,” Haley said of the renewed funding. “They can keep paying the families of terrorists, which encourages more suicide bombings. Basically, the Palestinians can use America’s money to attack America’s ally. It’s a disgrace.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The financial services firm facing accusations that it promotes Israel boycotts relies on research produced by “a leader” in the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) and other anti-Israel sources, according to an analyst tracking the situation.

The research arm of Morningstar Inc., a firm that advises investors, relies on research produced by a pro-BDS organization called Who Profits, which is known to push Israel boycotts, according to Richard Goldberg, a former U.S. national security official and Middle East expert who recently published an independent analysis on the matter for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.

Morningstar is already fighting charges that its research arm, Sustainalytics, downgrades companies that help Israel combat terrorism, thereby bolstering the BDS movement’s drive to economically damage the Jewish state. Sustainalytics employees who were interviewed as part of an investigation into anti-Israel bias at the firm indicated they have a close relationship with and rely on research produced by Who Profits, which has been cited by a watchdog organization as one of the leading pro-BDS nonprofit groups. The findings related to Who Profits raise new questions about how deeply Sustainalytics relies on organizations with direct ties to the BDS movement.

“Morningstar’s ratings system uniquely relies on a group that’s at the forefront of the BDS movement to blacklist Israel-connected companies,” said Goldberg.

Who Profits “maintains a public database of businesses that are often targeted in international BDS campaigns,” according to NGO Monitor, a watchdog group that monitors pro-BDS outfits. The reliance on Who Profits and other anti-Israel groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, is raising questions about Morningstar’s commitment to rooting out anti-Israel bias in its ratings products, Goldberg said.

Who Profits “is a leader in BDS efforts against Israeli and foreign companies,” according to NGO Monitor, and was founded “in response to the Palestinian call for boycott[s]” against Israel. The organization is dedicated to “exposing the commercial involvement of Israeli and international corporations in the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian and Syrian lands,” according to information published on its own website.

Goldberg analyzed evidence presented in a 134-page review of Morningstar’s methods conducted by the law firm White & Case that cleared Morningstar of any wrongdoing.

Sustainalytics employees interviewed as part of the White & Case report indicated that Who Profits “was used primarily for background information, and was consistently balanced against other sources.” Others said the relationship is deeper, with Sustainalytics “research analysts often rely[ing] upon Who Profits for what they view as unique, boots on-the-ground research regarding corporate involvement in the region, in part because Who Profits is one of the few organizations that actually operates on the ground in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict areas.”

The White & Case report also found that “communications between Sustainalytics employees and representatives of Who Profits suggest that the relationship between the entities is close, relative to Sustainalytics’ relationships with other organizations.”

Sustainalytics ratings products also rely on information produced by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which have faced accusations of anti-Israel bias and of unfairly labeling Israel as an apartheid state.

The Washington Free Beacon previously reported on concerns that Sustainalytics may place a company on its investment “watchlist” for the “supply of arms” to Israel or other nations involved in conflicts. By downgrading companies that supply the Israel Defense Forces, for instance, Sustainalytics could be relying on metrics that negatively impact Israel more than others.

Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor’s founder, said the BDS movement is increasingly trying to manipulate firms that conduct corporate responsibility ratings, known in the industry as CSR ratings.

“As the NGOs leading the BDS movement increasingly try to manipulate CSR firms into advancing their agenda, these firms must be vigilant in vetting these sources,” Steinberg said. “Corporate due diligence is vital to ensure that ratings under the facade of human rights are not based on false claims by ideological activists and organizations.”

A Morningstar spokesman would not address questions related to Sustainalytics’s reliance on Who Profits, but said the company does not in any way endorse or support the BDS movement. Morningstar also said in recent months that it is discontinuing certain services that were found to unfairly target Israel and adjusting others to remove instances of anti-Israel bias.

As Morningstar attempts to distance itself from the BDS movement, a group of leading Jewish organizations raised concerns the reforms do not go far enough. The Jewish Federations of North America, an umbrella organization that represents top Jewish groups across the country, says Sustainalytics’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings unfairly target Israel. ESG ratings examine a company based on its social values and tend to unfairly target Israel as a result of its conflict with the Palestinians.

The White & Case report “makes clear that built-in bias against Israel infects Sustainalytics’ methodology and sources, and thus, its other ESG ratings products,” the Jewish group wrote in a letter sent to Morningstar’s top executives. “This bias is not only unfair and harmful to Israeli companies and those doing business in and with Israel, but such bias also threatens to tarnish the ESG ratings framework itself.”

“Morningstar should take the opportunity to cleanse its products of all anti-Israel bias and set an example of fairness and reliability for all companies providing ESG ratings, which represent one-third of dollars managed globally,” the organization said, echoing concerns from others in the pro-Israel advocacy world.

FDD’s Goldberg maintains that the biased metrics employed by Sustainalytics could amount to support for the BDS movement and trigger state and federal anti-BDS laws.

“We now have a mountain of evidence that Morningstar’s ESG subsidiary is engaged in a boycott of Israel through its sources and methods,” Goldberg said. “It’s time for states and Congress to intervene.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Yuh-Line Niou poses for photo with Jewish foods after she endorsed BDS movement

A New York House candidate under fire for endorsing the anti-Israel boycott movement attempted damage control by posing for a photo surrounded by Jewish foods on Thursday.

Democratic candidate Yuh-Line Niou retweeted, and then later deleted, a snap of her holding a loaf of Challah bread while sitting next to bottles of Israeli Coca-Cola, an Israeli-made SodaStream, and stacks of Jewish prayer books.

Niou praised the bread effusively in a Twitter post, saying it was the “[b]est challah I’ve had in a long long time.”

“Heated in the oven just a bit to make it like fresh. Double butter is right!!!” she wrote. “Best challah I’ve had in a long long time. I couldn’t even put into words how perfect the inside was. Perfect crust. Soft with just a little density. Miriam also put some toppings on. Dreams.”

Political leaders and members of the Jewish community objected to the photo and described it as an attempt by Niou to “challah-wash” her anti-Israel position. The post came just days after Niou expressed support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which seeks to wage economic and political warfare on Israel.

“Here I am spending hours upon hours fighting Anti-Semitism, Anti-Semites, and BDS. While our ‘leadership’ is busy promoting them. Shame!” wrote New York City councilwoman Inna Vernikov.

“Well that picture is ridiculous. It looks like a grotesque parody of an anti-Semite demonstrating her love of the Jews. It’s like ‘jewwashing,’” said Seth Barron, managing editor of the American Mind.

Niou did not respond to a request for comment.

The photo was originally posted by the government affairs director for Agudath Israel of America, a leading umbrella group for Haredi Orthodox Jews, who said he met with Niou to urge her to reconsider her position on BDS.

Niou’s support for the BDS movement drew sharp criticism from the pro-Israel community and political leaders in her own party.

“I believe in the right to protest as a fundamental tenet of western democracy, so I do support BDS,” she told Jewish Insider in an email.

Niou’s position was slammed by her House opponent and former mayor Bill de Blasio, who called the BDS movement “unacceptable,” and by New York Democratic Party chairman Jay Jacobs, who said it was “offensive” and “shows a lack of understanding of the region.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on July 13 said he’d favor former President Donald Trump over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis if both run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

“I like Ron DeSantis, but I know what I’m getting with Trump. The good and the bad and everything in between,” Graham said on Fox News.

“Trump sounds pretty good to me right now,” he added.

No candidates have formally announced bids for the next presidential race but Trump, 76, has repeatedly hinted he will be running for a third time, but will not make an announcement until after the upcoming midterm elections.

Trump won the 2016 election and lost the 2020 election. In both races, he earned the Republican nomination.

DeSantis, 43, a former U.S. congressman who is up for reelection this year, has said he’s focused on Florida, but some Republicans hope he’ll launch a presidential campaign.

Trump supporters like Graham point to his accomplishments during his one term, including securing deals in the Middle East, cutting down on illegal immigration, and getting a slew of originalist judges on federal courts.

Many DeSantis supporters say Trump’s actions leading up to, on, and after Jan. 6 showed he shouldn’t be president again. Some take issue with Trump’s continued promotion of COVID-19 vaccines and other stances. A number still support Trump but would prefer DeSantis over him.

Graham said little about DeSantis while comparing Trump to resident Joe Biden, 79, who took office in January 2021 and who has said he will run for a second term despite questions about his fitness.

Graham knocked Biden for the surge in illegal immigration that has occurred during his administration, joking that California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a rumored Democrat presidential candidate, “may be the only guy” Biden “is willing to deport.”

“Compare Biden to Trump when it comes to the mid-East. Biden’s begging the Iranians to get back in a deal that’s terrible for the Israelis and the Arabs. Biden is going to go to East Jerusalem to undercut the Trump policy of making Jerusalem the undivided capital of Israel. I’ve never seen a president tour the mid-East in a more weakened condition than resident Biden, and I say that with sadness,” Graham said. “Trump looks pretty damn good to me when you look at the issues we’re facing as a nation and as a world.”

Biden, meanwhile, while in Israel, was asked about potentially facing Trump again in 2024.

“I’m not predicting it, but I would not be disappointed,” he told Israeli broadcaster N12.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Resident Joe Biden is losing support from some of his biggest backers.

Bill Kristol, who founded and edited the neoconservative magazine The Weekly Standard, became a fierce critic of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign and led the NeverTrump movement.

In 2018, Kristol co-founded The Bulwark, whose coverage is largely centered around criticism of Trump.

Two years later, he endorsed Biden in the Democratic primary, calling it a “simple choice,” and in the general election.

On Wednesday, however, Kristol argued that Biden should announce he won’t run for re-election.

He said on Twitter that a retirement announcement by Biden would bolster the Democrats’ chances in the 2022 midterm elections and lead to a Democratic victory in the 2024 presidential race.

Straightforward from here:

1. Biden announces not running again.

2. 2022 focus turns to R extremism, Ds do well in Nov.

3. Inflation subsides, Ukraine defeats Russia, Biden is successful 1-term president.

4. Younger moderate D defeats Trump or Trumpist in ’24.

Pourquoi pas?

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) July 13, 2022

As the president’s popularity drops further and further amid historic inflation and other crises, even liberals are increasingly giving him the cold shoulder.

A recent New York Times/Siena College poll indicated that 64 percent of Democratic voters want someone else than the incumbent as their nominee for president in 2024.

Biden snapped at a reporter who asked him about the poll at a White House event Tuesday.

“Read the polls, jack! You guys are all the same,” he said.

“What’s your message to Democrats who don’t want you to run again?”

BIDEN: “Read the polls! Read the polls, Jack! You guys are all the same.” pic.twitter.com/e0G3Sfufwm

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 12, 2022

Related:

Conservative Anti-Trump Magazine The Weekly Standard Announces Closure

If Biden were to run for re-election in 2024, he’d start his second term at the age of 82, smashing presidential age records.

Democrats have quietly circulated concerns about his age and unpopularity.

Kristol repeated his desire for Biden to eschew a 2024 re-election campaign in a subsequent tweet.

A lively (I thought!) podcast with @SykesCharlie.

We discuss just how (predictably) dangerous Trump proved to be, and the failure of Republicans and conservatives to come to grips with this.

Bonus: I make the case for Biden announcing he’s one and done.https://t.co/Ux5LubuqpN

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) July 13, 2022

At the now-defunct Weekly Standard, the neoconservative ideologue became a crucial proponent of President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The invasion has since become regarded as one of the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history.

Kristol reinvented himself by aligning with progressive Democrats as a Trump critic after the 2016 GOP primary, establishing himself as a mainstay on liberal cable channels such as CNN and MSNBC.

Even after the Biden administration injected $150 million into the organization, the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees continues to incite violence against Jews, and armed militants use its facilities, according to a non-public State Department report obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The State Department cited the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)—which has a history of promoting violence against Jews and allowing its sites to be used by Hamas terrorists to store weapons and recruit children—with hundreds of infractions over the last year involving “armed incursions,” “the use of weapons in or near facilities,” and the construction of at least two tunnels under its schools that enabled terrorists to move weapons and personnel, according to an unclassified version of a congressional report.

Of the $150 million in taxpayer funding that went to UNRWA, which was meant to help the organization implement reforms and crack down on anti-Israel bias, $9.8 million was meant to bolster its security apparatus, yet the organization “identified 1,142 unique issues at 556 installations during the inspections” throughout 2021, according to the report. Although multiple safeguards are reportedly in place to stop UNRWA facilities from being used by militants, at least “298 security and conflict-related incidents with neutrality implications occurred in 2021 and resulted in multiple injuries and damage to UNRWA property.”

Shortly after taking office in 2021, the Biden administration resumed $150 million in U.S. funding to UNRWA, which serves as the primary educational and aid organization to Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. Millions of dollars in U.S. funding were pushed through over the objection of Republican lawmakers, who cited UNRWA’s promotion of anti-Israel materials in its schools and connections to terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. The State Department report illustrates that these concerns are well-founded.

While these infractions breach funding guidelines set by the United States, the State Department determined that UNRWA lives up to its commitments to implement organization-wide reforms. A State Department spokesman declined to explain to the Free Beacon how the administration reached this determination after uncovering hundreds of what they call “violations of UNRWA’s neutrality policies.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who has pushed to cut U.S. funding to UNRWA, told the Free Beacon the Biden administration is turning a blind eye to UNRWA’s bad behavior.

“UNRWA is a hopelessly anti-Semitic and terrorist-enabling organization,” Cruz said. “The Biden administration rejoined the organization anyway and promised to reform it. Now the numbers are in, and it is absolutely undeniable that they failed.”

“Of course,” Cruz said, “they’re trying to deny the failure and continue funding UNRWA anyway, because they are committed to undermining Israel and elevating its enemies. It is well past time for the United States to withdraw its support from this broken organization.”

UNRWA officials have said for years that they do not receive enough funding. The United States is its top funder. The Trump administration pulled U.S. funding from the organization due to its use of anti-Israel teaching materials and ties to terrorist organizations.

UNRWA facilities have been used by Hamas to store weapons and recruit children who attend school there. Teaching materials, including textbooks and curricula, are often full of anti-Israel bias and promote the Jewish state’s destruction.

These issues are prevalent even with the new tranche of U.S. funding, according to the State Department report.

“Inspections uncovered violations of UNRWA’s neutrality policies,” the report concluded. “These included inappropriate slogans, graffiti, or other imagery inside or outside of UNRWA facilities.”

Nearly 300 security-related incidents took place, including, “armed incursions,” though the report does not name the offenders.

This “included armed incursions and incidents,” as well as the “unauthorized use of UNRWA installations, such as armed, non-UNRWA personnel attempting to distribute supplies to civilians on UNRWA grounds.” The report also identified “the use of weapons in or near facilities.”

Two UNRWA schools also were found to contain underground tunnels, a tactic used by Hamas and other terrorist groups to transport weapons and soldiers. UNRWA facilities often serve as a base for these groups because they know Israeli forces will not target schools in their military operations.

Officials “found a cavity or tunnel under two of its schools in Gaza following airstrikes during the May 2021 violence” between Israel and Hamas, according to the report. Both sites “were filled with cement after their discovery.”

In at least 16 instances, UNRWA staff or personnel were accused of neutrality violations. In 10 of these cases “UNRWA staff incited violence on social media,” leading the organization to take “disciplinary measures” in early 2022.

“Of the remaining six allegations,” the report notes, “three concern public statements, one concerned a post on social media, one case was related to outside activities, and one case alleged a staff member conducted military service while also employed by UNRWA. These cases remain under investigation.”

A State Department spokesman would not discuss the report’s findings, saying, “as a general matter, we do not comment on communications with Congress.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Neveen Ayesh wants to ‘set Israel on fire’

Rep. Cori Bush (D., Mo.) spent years cultivating a relationship with a pro-Palestinian activist who once tweeted that she wants to “set Israel on fire with my own hands & watch it burn to ashes along with every Israeli in it.”

Bush, a member of the far-left “Squad” of lawmakers known for their anti-Israel attitudes, has been working alongside anti-Israel activist Neveen Ayesh since at least 2017, according to information published by Canary Mission, a watchdog group that tracks anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activists online. While Bush has publicly condemned attacks on the Jewish community, her relationship with Ayesh and other anti-Israel activists is drawing accusations that these statements are empty rhetoric.

Ayesh, who has been active in several leading anti-Israel groups, including American Muslims for Palestine, organized a 2020 fundraiser for Bush that featured Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), one of Congress’s most vocal opponents of the Jewish state, and Linda Sarsour, an activist who has repeatedly used anti-Semitic rhetoric. An invitation for the fundraiser, titled “Muslims for Cori,” is accessible on the ActBlue website, an online donation portal used by Democrats.

The relationship between Ayesh and Bush is raising fresh questions about the congresswoman’s support for anti-Israel causes and willingness to partner with individuals who have expressed hatred toward Jewish people.

“Neveen Ayesh has shown support for terror organizations, wants to kill every Israeli, and called being Jewish a crime worthy of the rope,” a Canary Mission spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon. “Her anti-Semitism is publicly known information. It was even discussed on the floor of the Missouri House of Representatives. However, Cori Bush had no problem benefiting from a fundraiser organized by Ayesh and enjoys a long-standing relationship with her.”

Bush, the watchdog group said, must provide her constituents with “an explanation.” A Bush spokesman did not respond to a Free Beacon request for comment on the 2020 fundraiser and the congresswoman’s relationship with Ayesh. Bush and Ayesh were pictured together as recently as 2020 and as early as 2017 during a trip to the Middle East.

Ayesh in February defended Hamas, comparing the group’s armed resistance against Israel to Ukraine’s war against “their oppressors” in Russia. People “somehow have an issue with Palestinians doing the same,” she tweeted.

Ayesh has lambasted Israel on social media and wished death upon its citizens, posts that were made before she formed an alliance with Bush. Many of the most controversial tweets have since been deleted but remain archived online, with original screenshots, by Canary Mission.

“I want to set Israel on fire with my own hands & watch it burn to ashes along with every Israeli in it,” Ayesh tweeted in February 2014.

“Once again I want to personally set Israel & all the Israelis in it on fire & watch them burn to ashes. Burn you bastards #IHateYou,” she wrote one month later.

“I hope I will be alive to witness the death of Israel,” another March 2014 tweet says.

“I tried befriending a Jew once. Worst idea ever,” she stated in September 2013.

In August 2011, Ayesh tweeted that “being a Jew” is a crime “worthy of the rope” and several days later wrote, “Jews #WorstThingInTheWorld.”

Ayesh also has expressed a willingness to join Hamas, the U.S.-designated terror group that has killed Americans and Israelis.

“I should join al-Qassam,” Ayesh tweeted in August 2014 alongside a photo of armed Hamas militants. “Be the first female to join their group lololol #IdLoveToThough.”

Ayesh also has compared Israel to the Nazis, writing in February 2017 that it looks like Israeli Jews “miss nazism considering they nostalgically replicate&apply its values&model unless theres something I dont get w/ Zionism.”

The 2020 fundraiser with Bush was held just months after members of the Missouri State House of Representatives publicly chastised Ayesh following her testimony in favor of a bill to economically boycott Israel. Ayesh supported the bill and said the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which she supports, is peaceful. Lawmakers and experts have condemned the BDS movement and other anti-Israel campaigns as fueling anti-Jewish hatred, which has reached record levels in America, particularly on college campuses, where BDS is popular.

Ayesh said during the hearing that she studied in the United States “with Jewish people, befriend[ed] them, and some of them are the closest people to me today”—though her tweets paint a different picture.

Following her testimony in favor of the anti-Israel legislation, lawmakers read Ayesh’s anti-Semitic tweets publicly and condemned her rhetoric.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The Jewish Democratic Council of America tries to rewrite history on Wittes’s opposition to the historic Abraham Accords

Resident Joe Biden is headed to the Middle East this week for the first time as president, in part to advance the historic peace agreements the Trump administration helped secure between Israel and many of its neighbors. 

It’s bad timing for one of his nominees, Dr. Tamara Cofman Wittes, who spent the Trump years as a Twitter warrior trashing the Abraham Accords and —well, now it’s awkward. 

We assume that’s why, according to our Alana Goodman, the Jewish Democratic Council of America is rushing in to shore up Wittes’s street cred with a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from “leaders in foreign policy, national security, and the Jewish community” attesting to her stellar support for the Abraham Accords: “As Dr. Wittes said during her hearing,” Jewish Democratic Council CEO Halie Soifer writes in the letter, “the Abraham Accords ‘offer a foundation for regional cooperation between Arab states and Israel, on shared issues like energy, water, and health.’” 

It would be hard to come up with a sleazier, more dishonest, more lawyerly case for Wittes’s nomination. 

Wittes may have regurgitated platitudes at her confirmation hearing intended to assure lawmakers of her support for the Abraham Accords that are now Biden administration policy, but one has to think she was more honest when she wasn’t gunning for votes. That’s when she slammed the peace agreements as a “new Naksa”—that is, a setback or catastrophe—for the Palestinian people, called the normalization agreements between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Israel a step “in the wrong direction,” and took to her podcast to mock their significance: “For your average Israeli, what is most exciting about this is that instead of having to fly to Istanbul to get to Southeast Asia, they can fly through Abu Dhabi and Dubai, it is much faster,” she sneered. 

Consider those remarks in light of the rest of the letter, which describes Wittes as an “open-minded and principled” woman who “always finds time to listen to alternative views and give them full consideration.” 

Mmmhmm. 

Wittes’s post-hoc explanation for her tweets—that she “was skeptical that other Arab states would join” the Abraham Accords—makes no sense and is plainly refuted by the record. Bias and ignorance are the best case explanation for her position then. At least as plausible is that Wittes had in mind Qatari opposition to the Abraham Accords: The repressive Gulf monarchy was at the time funding her perch at the Brookings Institution, and Wittes had no compunction about lavishing praise on her benefactors.

That a supposed Middle East expert was upstaged and discredited by the political novices in the Trump administration is embarrassing but not disqualifying. Her dishonesty during her Senate testimony should be.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

‘We’re playing this for my brother Louis and his brothers.’

A British boy band recently dedicated its live performance of a terrible song to one of the most virulent anti-Semites in American history, a Washington Free Beacon analysis has determined.

“We’re playing this for my brother Louis and his brothers,” Coldplay frontman Chris Martin said while introducing the song “A Sky Full of Stars” during the band’s May 29 concert at Soldier Field in Chicago. “There’s so many people in here today who help other people, and so we’re playing this for them.”

Martin is the ex-husband of vagina-centric pseudoscience entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow, who starred in numerous films distributed by Harvey Weinstein’s production company. He is also a hippie liberal with a tendency to spout political nonsense such as, “No one is wrong. It is just a question of when people engage. Like with the climate crisis.”

There is ample evidence that indicates the “brother Louis” Martin referenced at his Chicago concert is Louis Farrakhan, the notorious Nation of Islam leader who has described Jews as “termites” and Adolf Hitler as a “very great man.”

• Martin does not have a biological brother named Louis.

• The Nation of Islam is headquartered in Chicago, where Farrakhan owns a $1.1 million home.

• Martin and Farrakhan appear to have posed for a photo together before Coldplay’s concert in Chicago on August 17, 2017.

• Farrakhan recently recounted the time when Martin visited his home “with some Jewish friends” because “he wanted to hear me play the violin.”

The Nation of Islam leader discussed his meeting with Martin during a March 2020 speech, according to the anti-Semite watchdog MEMRI. “Do you know the musicians called Coldplay?” Farrakhan asked his followers. “The leader of Coldplay is Chris Martin. He came to my home, wanted to hear me play the violin. You don’t come to my home and I’m entertaining you. When you come into my home it’s like coming to God in a mosque. You come to be taught.”

The crowd gathered at the Mosque Maryam in Chicago applauded vigorously upon hearing Farrakhan’s assessment of what it is like to visit him at his home. The anti-Semite continued his story about the Coldplay frontman, which did not appear to have a salient point beyond noting the fact that Martin has a private jet and hangs out with Jews. It may have something to do with how a young Farrakhan was taught to “become God enough to challenge Satan and defeat him.” In any event, he does not appear to hold a very high opinion of the singer, and probably would not consider him as a brother.

“Look, Chris Martin flew on his own jet, or he had his own plane, and he brought a few Jewish friends of his,” Farrakhan said. “Now they’re going to scope me out. Sitting in my living room, asking me questions. See when you ask me a question, I immediately consult the God. Wait, wait, wait. You asked me a question. I’m listening, by the time you finish your question, God has given me the answer. But He’s also let me know your motive for asking the question.”

Farrakhan’s long history of anti-Semitism has not dissuaded liberal politicians and activists from associating with the notorious bigot. The left-wing Women’s March organization was embroiled in scandal after a number of its leaders were found to have ties to Farrakhan. Minnesota attorney general and former congressman Keith Ellison was a Nation of Islam member and met with Farrakhan several times while serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. His former colleague, Rep. Danny Davis (D., Ill.), has described Farrakhan as an “outstanding human being.”

The Nation of Islam leader, who once led chants of “Death to America” during a rally in Iran, has attacked Jewish leaders in the United States for representing the “synagogue of Satan” and “[wrapping their] tentacles around the U.S. government and … deceiving and sending this nation to hell.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Taylor Silverman is grateful for all the anti-Semitic Instagram comments.

The 27-year-old amateur skateboarder made waves earlier this year when she spoke out against biological men participating in women’s sports. A self-described Zionist who is rarely photographed without a Star of David necklace, Silverman wasn’t surprised that online backlash quickly turned anti-Semitic. But she’s a little surprised by how much of it came from her friends.

“If I hadn’t spoken up, I would still be friends with people who are blatantly, and proudly, anti-Semitic,” Silverman tells the Washington Free Beacon. “I’m grateful I did, because it showed which of my old friends are anti-Semitic pieces of trash.”

The friendly fire was only part of the backlash Silverman faced for speaking publicly about her experience competing against transgender athletes. It wasn’t a political protest. Silverman had been skating for a decade, and only just began to feel that the skateboarding community was making space for women. But as soon as the community began to take shape, she felt it come under attack.

“The first time I lost to a trans man, I thought people would recognize it was unfair and speak out. The second time, I thought, ‘Someone has got to do something about this!’ The third time, I realized: I am somebody. And so, I spoke up.”

In a May 11 Instagram post, Silverman recounted losing first place in the 2021 Red Bull Cornerstone Contest to Lillian Gallagher, only the latest instance where she had gone up against transgender competitors.

“I am sick of being bullied into silence,” Silverman wrote in the post, which also included a screenshot of a concerned email she sent to Red Bull. “A biological man with a clear advantage won the women’s division,” Silverman wrote to Red Bull sports marketing manager Erich Drummer. “This took away the opportunity that was meant for women to place and earn money.”

Red Bull never responded to her email. But the trolls did.

“This argument is transphobic as fuck and shows what type of person you are,” one commenter wrote. “Hopefully you give up on life soon since you’re bad at everything,” added another.

Soon, the hateful comments began popping up on Silverman’s other posts.

“Taylor the type of girl to rat someone out at the camps just to get some extra bread,” reads one comment on a photo of Silverman at the Dead Sea, an apparent reference to the Holocaust. “It’s chill I can say this too I’m an actual Jew not some token ass white girl,” the commenter added.

Silverman’s Instagram feed is an object lesson in what happens to those who take the unpopular position on hot-button issues. The comments beneath her photos are a minefield of the left’s choice insults: “transphobe” and “TERF,” “colonist” and “Free Palestine!” As Silverman sees it, most of the vitriol comes from the same place.

“It’s anti-Semitism and misogyny disguised as some kind of social justice,” she says. “They’re just going with the latest trendy word to get away with hateful shit.”

Silverman is no stranger to being attacked for her faith. The anti-Semitism she faced in the classroom was one of the things that motivated her to complete high school at home. During the pandemic, she left her skating team after teammates sent her videos of Hitler and told her Jews “deserved” anti-Semitism. Going solo meant losing out on free gear and help with travel and competition expenses. But that hasn’t slowed her down one bit.

In fact, Silverman travels so much these days that she never knows what to say when people ask her where she lives. But whenever she can, she gets back to her hometown of Kalamazoo, Mich. It was there, as a newly minted, 16-year-old homeschool kid who missed playing sports, that Silverman first picked up a skateboard. It’s where she learned to ollie, and where she entered her first skating competition.

It’s also where she learned firsthand that the skating community isn’t always the safest place for young women. As a novice, Silverman says she “was treated horrifically” by male skaters and “faced everything from bullying to sexual assault at the skatepark.” When she first started entering local competitions, they often didn’t have separate contests for women. It was only after she started winning, and traveling to bigger events around the country, that she began to meet and befriend other female skaters.

“It was exciting to me when there were women’s divisions, and girls were showing up,” Silverman says, recalling the excitement she felt at the chance to “meet and hang out with women who were passionate about the same things as me.”

It was a desire to protect this community that led Silverman to speak out—and landed her in the middle of one the most controversial issues of the day. The NCAA came under fire for its decision to let male-to-female transgender athletes participate in women’s sports after University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas—who swam in the men’s division until 2019—began competing as a woman. In recent months, the International Rugby League and the International Swimming Federation have barred transgender athletes from participating in women’s events.

In many ways, skateboarding is more gender-blind than other sports where transgender athletes have become a flashpoint. It’s one of Silverman’s favorite things about the sport. Anyone from anywhere can pick up a board and go, no matter their race, age, or gender. But, as Silverman is quick to point out, that doesn’t change the fact that transgender athletes have a competitive advantage.

She points to studies that show male-to-female transgender athletes remain faster and stronger than their peers even after undergoing hormone therapy. And she can rattle off the physical differences that give male skaters a competitive advantage: They have higher centers of gravity, denser bones, and carry less body fat than women.

But while Silverman is certainly concerned with how gender affects competitive fairness, her fight isn’t about titles or prize money. It’s about empowering young girls.

“Skateboarding has been male dominated for so long, it’s intimidating for girls,” Silverman says. Women’s divisions offer aspiring female skaters a chance to practice their skills away from the “pretty misogynistic” skateboarding culture. If girls feel like there’s no place for them in the skating community, Silverman says, they simply won’t show up.

Her fight could soon take on greater urgency. In June, the Biden administration proposed changes to Title IX that would allow students to participate in school events based on their assumed gender identity, rather than biological sex. Critics of the proposal say that the changes cut against the core of Title IX, which was meant to boost women’s equality.

Like many critics of these rule changes, Silverman is particularly frustrated with female athletes who are pushing to upend women’s sports in the name of progress.

“The people who are advocating for this, I don’t think women’s feelings or safety is on their radar at all. I don’t think they care about us at all,” she told the Free Beacon. “The women who advocate for this, I think they’ve lost touch with any kind of feminism, and it’ll come back to bite them in the ass one day. Hopefully they realize they’re giving up their own rights, and their daughters’ rights.”

Even though this issue is making waves in Washington, Silverman doesn’t see herself as a partisan warrior. “This isn’t a political issue,” she says. “It’s a commonsense issue.”

Silverman makes it abundantly clear that she doesn’t see her position as “anti-trans” but as “pro-woman.” She doesn’t care if skate competitions have open divisions where people of all genders can compete against each other, nor would she mind if there were dedicated divisions for transgender skaters. She doesn’t relish the fight—she just wants a solution.

Though she admits it’s been an “overwhelming” month of media exposure and online harassment, Silverman has no trouble seeing the good in her experience. Marveling that she’s spent the past month “touring around the country fighting for women,” she sounds like she just won the lottery. Whether she’s talking about the inspiring people she’s met or recounting tales of online harassment, her optimism never seems to waver.

It’s not the demeanor you’d expect from someone who’s been tossed into the fray. But to Silverman, it’s the only way to stay sane.

“A really good way to cope with the craziness we’re going through,” she says, reflecting on our present moment, “is to laugh.”

Source: The Washington Free Beacon

‘Jacksonian Zion’

Strength is the foundation of the Jacksonian affinity for Israel. Jacksonians admire strength. They can be romantic retrospectively about past heroes and they admire courage against the odds and last stands. But they prefer winners to the “beautiful losers” favored by more sentimental observers of international politics. Israel’s triumph in the Six-Day War while the United States was struggling in the quagmires of Vietnam first drew the attention of Jacksonian America to the Jewish state. The refusal of the Arabs to make peace afterward, and the adoption of terrorist tactics by some Palestinians, heightened what Jacksonians saw as a contrast between a strong and upstanding nation and, again from their particular and partial point of view, what they saw as its cowardly, incompetent, and treacherous opponents.

It is not just Israeli strength that appeals to Jacksonian America. It is Israel’s approach to power. This can be hard for people not raised in a Jacksonian milieu to understand: some of the very things that make Israel most unpopular around the world actually make Jacksonians respect Israel more.

Jacksonian beliefs about war, for example, mesh well with some of Israel’s more controversial policies. When Hamas or Islamic Jihad fighters send a few rockets from Gaza into Israel, and Israel occasionally retaliates with its air force and tanks, much of the world is appalled by what it sees as a “disproportionate” Israeli response. Overreacting to a provocation is, many feel, as bad as launching the original attack. This is not how many Israelis feel, and American Jacksonians agree.

For Jacksonian America, the most logical and appropriate response to a terrorist attack is a massive response that breaks the will and the ability of the enemy to resume hostilities. While one should try to avoid civilian casualties if possible, the original aggressor bears all the guilt for all the deaths caused in the ensuing conflict. When American Jacksonians see Israelis launching massive attacks on Gaza and talking about trying to break Hamas in response to rocket attacks, the Jacksonians support the effort and wish Israel well. Far from agreeing with European and other critics of Israel’s response, Jacksonians wish that more of the NATO allies shared what they see as the refreshingly honest and realistic approach to war that the Israelis have. They believe that if more countries had the courage and determination of the Israelis, there would be many fewer terrorists and the world would have more peace.

Jacksonians see no problems with the controversial American prison for captured enemy combatants established at Guantánamo during the Bush administration. Similarly, they are comfortable with Israeli actions on the West Bank that many find unacceptable. Jacksonians tend to support strong and even harsh measures against terrorists, and they think the job of American presidents is to protect the American people regardless of what squeamish human rights lawyers think about the methods employed. While Israel’s actual policies are often more restrained than Jacksonians would like, and its military is far more concerned about legality than the average American Jacksonian would be in a similar situation, nevertheless Israel’s clear determination to defend its people and its military resonates deeply with Jacksonian ideas about how a country should defend itself.

A strong U.S.-Israel alliance appeals to most Jacksonians in part because they like Israel and admire its approach to world politics, but Jacksonians instinctively think in “America First” terms and their support for an alliance ultimately depends on their views of whether they think an alliance with Israel is good for the United States. Where Wilsonians look for common values in choosing allies, Jacksonians look for allies with similar interests, and by interests Jacksonians mean primarily enemies. Believing as they do that fear is the most important factor in international relations, Jacksonians look for allies who can help the United States overcome the enemies it fears. Believing as they do that nations do not act altruistically, Jacksonians look for countries who fear the same enemies that the United States fears and, ideally, fear them more than we do. That fear, and their eagerness to win American help against their enemies, will keep allies helpful and loyal. Jacksonians also look for evidence that an ally or potential ally is committed to its own security. They do not think it is America’s place to provide free guarantees to foreign countries that refuse to invest in their own defense. America’s help should go to those who are prepared to earn it.

From this standpoint, Israel appears to be an exemplary ally. The United States and Israel share so many enemies that anti-U.S. signs can often be found at anti-Israel rallies and that those most prominently associated with the cry of “Death to America!” will often also be found shouting “Death to Israel!”

Ever since the oil embargos and the seizure of American diplomatic hostages during the Iranian Revolution, Jacksonian America has mostly seen the Muslim Middle East as dominated by the hatred of America and everything it stands for. The wars in the Gulf, the long-standing hostility of the Iranian regime, and the attacks of 9/11 further strengthened this impression.

The rise of the threat of Middle East terrorism has made Israel’s position seem even more sympathetic to Jacksonians. To Jacksonians deeply concerned about what they believe to be serious and long-term threats from the Middle East, Israel looks like a good ally to have, if only because Israel’s geographical position and relations with militant Islam put it even more firmly in the crosshairs than the United States. Israel needs American help in what is ultimately a war of survival, and so Americans can count on Israel being there through thick and thin. Rather than wanting to distance themselves from Israel in the hope that this will deflect the terrorists’ wrath from the United States, Jacksonians see Israel’s regional unpopularity as an asset because it ensures that Israel is fully committed to the common cause. Beyond that, Jacksonians do not believe that it is either prudent or wise to let fear of your enemies make you abandon your friends. This, in their view, is cowardly and dishonorable behavior that signals weakness and invites attack.

Israel’s enemies have always, despite their best efforts, been Israel’s most helpful friends. It may not be rational in the sense that non-Jacksonians understand the meaning of the word, but every time a violent mob burns American and Israeli flags side by side in the Islamic world, every time a United Nations office issues what to Jacksonian ears sounds like a grotesquely one-sided condemnation of Israel for behaving exactly as Jacksonians under enemy fire would behave, every time a suicide bomber kills innocent people out of a twisted and fanatical belief, every time a village of Christians flees their ancestral homes in terror, American Jacksonians become less interested in the case against the Jewish state and more eager to deepen our alliance with it.

Finally, Israel holds up its end of the bargain when it comes to defending itself. While rich countries like Germany reject any and all American requests to pay an appropriate share of NATO’s costs, Israel invests in excellent military forces and is not afraid to use them. In 2020, Israel spent 5.6 percent of its GDP on defense, compared to 2.2 percent in Britain, 2.1 percent in France, 1.4 percent in Germany, and 3.7 percent in the United States. For many Jacksonians, Israel is a better, more trustworthy, and more useful ally than most of the NATO countries. While both Germany and Japan have had major American bases on their soil since World War II, the American military presence in Israel is minimal. Israel does more, many Jacksonians feel, and asks less, than many of the American allies that coast on American security guarantees while criticizing both Israel and the United States nonstop.

The alliance with Israel, far from looking like a strategic liability to Jacksonians, looks like a source of strength and prestige. One advantage, in the Jacksonian mind, is the signal Israel’s success sends about the wisdom of alliances with America. Israel is a small country that (until recent oil and gas discoveries changed the picture somewhat) had few natural resources and a much smaller population than many of its enemies. Criticized by Europe, ostracized by the Muslim world, Israel has only one true friend in the world—and look at how well Israel is doing. It is prosperous, extremely well armed and well integrated into global financial markets. The message to other countries: there is only one country in the world whose friendship you need. If the United States is your ally, even if everyone else turns against you, life will go well. Jacksonians believe that this perception around the world will help keep America safe.

Similarly, ever since the United States became Israel’s principal arms supplier during the Cold War, Israel’s wars and confrontations with its neighbors have served to showcase the superiority of American technology and weapons. When Israel’s American-supplied arsenal overmasters its rivals in conventional warfare, governments all over the world get two messages. First, you want to have the kind of relationship with the Americans in which you can buy their top-shelf hardware, and second, you do not want the Americans so annoyed with you that they sell the really powerful gear to your opponents.

Finally, Jacksonians have come to see Israel as a kind of symbolic surrogate of the United States. Their view of Israeli Jews—as a Chosen People with a unique message, embattled in a hostile world by the enemies of God, united against hostile outsiders in an unbreakable unity of kith and kin—applies the ideas that Bible-reading Protestant Christians in the British Isles and the American colonies once held about the ancient Hebrews to the Jews of today. It is easy for scholars and skeptics to take issue with this vision, but its roots are deeply implanted in American culture.

As Israel has gone from strength to strength it has become a kind of talisman for many American Jacksonians. Recent generations have seen Jacksonian America undergo a series of shocks and challenges. The civil rights movement undermined long-held ideas about the nature of American society and forced Jacksonians to confront some of its historical demons. A culture and belief system shaped in a rural, ethnically homogeneous America had to adapt to life in multiethnic suburbs. Feminism and the gay rights movement forced Jacksonians to take another look at the relationship of their traditional social values and assumptions to the individualism that Jacksonian culture cherishes. As Jacksonian America struggles to make its peace with a host of new forces and new ideas, signs of continuity with the past are welcome. The modern Israeli success story appears to vindicate both Jacksonian principles and biblical religion; there is a balm in Gilead that soothes the wounded soul.

Walter Russell Mead is James Clark Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College, Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship at Hudson Institute, and the Global View columnist at the Wall Street Journal. This essay is adapted from his new book, The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People, which will be published by Knopf on July 5.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Think tank report finds systemic anti-Israel bias in corporate ratings

A prominent financial services firm promotes divestment from companies that help the Israeli government combat Palestinian suicide bombers, according to an independent investigation conducted by a Washington, D.C. think tank.

Morningstar Inc., a financial research firm that advises investors, is accused in a new report from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) of downgrading companies that help Israel combat terrorism, including those that work on the country’s security barrier built to stop Palestinian suicide bombers from attacking cities. Ratings produced by Morningstar and similar research firms act as a primary guide for investors and can greatly impact how a company is valued.

The author of the FDD report told the Washington Free Beacon that Morningstar’s practices comprise a key pillar of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement—which wages economic warfare on Israel—and could force states with anti-BDS laws to cut ties with Morningstar. FDD concluded that Morningstar’s ratings are “driven by a quantifiable bias against Israel” and that the company “risks running afoul of numerous state statutes” meant to curb support for the BDS movement. 

The focus on Morningstar stems from its 2020 acquisition of Sustainalytics, a research firm that rates companies based on their social values. Following Morningstar’s acquisition of Sustainalytics, watchdog groups including NGO Monitor and JLens accused Morningstar of allowing its research arm to promote the BDS movement through ratings that negatively impact companies working with Israel. These claims prompted the Illinois Investment Policy Board to initiate an investigation into the company’s practices. They are also fueling calls for at least 34 other states with similar anti-BDS laws to cut ties with Morningstar.

Faced with concerns from its own shareholders, Morningstar insisted in March 2021 that it was not unfairly targeting companies that work with Israel. But the Illinois investigation into its actions prompted the company to hire an outside law firm, White & Case, to conduct an investigation into Sustainalytics’s business practices. That report was published earlier this month and touted by Morningstar as proof it does not discriminate against the Jewish state.

“This investigation concludes that Morningstar’s Sustainalytics products do not recommend or encourage divestment,” the report reads.”

While White & Case unearthed an enormous amount of information about how Sustainalytics builds ratings that could negatively impact Israel, it ultimately concluded there was no evidence of systemic bias against the Jewish state within the company.

Outside analysts disagree. Sustainalytics routinely employs biased methods to investigate and downgrade firms doing business with Israel and its security sector, according to a follow-up analysis published by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Evidence included in the White & Case report indicates these “ratings and reports [are] driven by a quantifiable bias against Israel” and effectively promote BDS, according to FDD’s research.

The White & Case investigation “demonstrates conclusively that Sustainalytics’s processes and products … are infected by systemic bias against Israel,” FDD senior adviser Richard Goldberg, a former Trump administration official, wrote in the June 17 policy brief.

“Sustainalytics may engage directly with companies to try to dissuade them from doing business in and with Israel,” according to FDD’s analysis. “To the extent that Sustainalytics encourages companies to cease doing business in Israel to improve their [social values] ratings—which is precisely what would happen, according to the methodology set forth in the Report—these interactions may amount to boycotts of Israel under numerous state anti-boycott laws.”

Sustainalytics also sells investors a product called the Global Standards Screening, which essentially rates companies based on their association “with violations of international norms and standards”—an esoteric metric that critics say is intentionally skewed against Israel.

“Sustainalytics employees acknowledged” that their clients use these ratings as a de facto “‘do not invest list,” according to the White & Case report. Experts tout this as evidence that Sustainalytics knowingly downgrades certain companies in order to drive divestment from Israel.

Among activities that would put a company on the blacklist: surveillance or security supporting the security barrier Israel built during the Second Intifada to stop suicide bombers from infiltrating Israeli cities and killing civilians.

FDD’s Goldberg maintains that the metrics used by Morningstar are intentionally written to impact any company that works with Israel’s security sector.

“Morningstar is staking out a corporate policy to drive divestment from companies that help Israel stop suicide bombers from blowing up children in restaurants,” Goldberg, who helped draft the Illinois anti-BDS law, told the Free Beacon. “Morningstar is complicit in classic BDS campaign tactics. There’s little doubt state anti-BDS laws apply to Morningstar.”

A Morningstar spokeswoman in comments to the Free Beacon acknowledged that the White & Case report “identifies limited areas of bias that are outliers over the span of our work.”

The company said these limited findings of bias “do not live up to Morningstar’s standards” and that the company will alter its methodologies to reduce instances of anti-Israel bias.

The spokeswoman also noted that the Illinois Investment Policy Board did not sanction the company after a June 21 meeting about whether Morningstar’s policies violate the state’s anti-BDS laws. During that meeting, a motion put forward to clear Morningstar of wrongdoing failed. But after discussing the need to continue monitoring to see if further changes are made, the Illinois board voted not to blacklist Morningstar.

Arsen Ostrovsky, international law expert and CEO of The International Legal Forum, an organization that combats BDS, said Morningstar “has essentially been engaging in BDS practices and economic warfare” via its ratings system. “By actively seeking to discourage investments in companies that work on Israel’s security barrier, they are effectively giving tacit support to Palestinian terrorism, by falsely claiming it is contrary to international law and undermining Israel’s inalienable right to self-defense.”

Jay Tcath, executive vice president at the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago, which works to combat BDS and was involved in pressing Morningstar to implement reforms, said his organization will continue to raise concerns about any investment rating criteria that unfairly target Israel.

A rating guide “that would ‘flag’ and harm the rating of a company like Illinois-based Motorola because it provides camera surveillance technology to what is mistakenly and provocatively referred to Israel’s ‘wall’ is an example of the type of on-going concerns—over terminology, sources, etc.—that we will continue to raise,” Tcath told the Free Beacon.

Morningstar also has offered to meet with Goldberg to discuss his findings and said it is committed to keeping the Illinois investment board apprised of any reforms it makes.

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/how-financial-giant-morningstar-blacklists-companies-that-help-israel-stop-terrorism/

Pro-BDS Christian movement accused of stoking anti-Semitic hatred

An organization representing Presbyterian churches across America is poised to pass an anti-Israel resolution that opponents say endangers the Jewish community and will contribute to anti-Semitic violence.

The Presbyterian Church of the United States of America, an umbrella group representing churches across the country, is considering a resolution that accuses Israel of “apartheid” and likens the Jewish state’s treatment of Palestinians to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. The resolution falsely accuses Israel of stealing Palestinian water supplies “for Jewish-only settlements” and “denying the right to freedom of residence to Palestinians.” It also says Israel is “dividing the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the Palestinians.”

The vote on this resolution—which both Christian and Jewish opponents say is anti-Semitic—is set to take place on Tuesday at the Presbyterian Church’s general assembly gathering, which brings together Presbyterian leaders from across the country.

The Philos Action League, a Christian community group that works with Jewish allies to combat anti-Semitism and the spread of hatred within the Christian community, is urging Presbyterian Church group members to reject the measure, saying it will contribute to the rising tide of anti-Semitism in the United States.

The anti-Israel resolution “fuels hate” against Jews and pro-Israel activists by falsely making “the only Jewish place for self-determination” out to be “evil and in likeness to Nazi Germany,” according to a copy of a Philos Action League letter sent to the group’s leadership and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The league delivered copies of the letter in-person to at least 11 Presbyterian churches and is running advertisements in Louisville—where the general assembly conference will be held this week—that call on church members to reject the anti-Israel measure.

The Presbyterian Church is no stranger to anti-Israel controversy. The organization has long backed the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and called on BDS supporters to isolate Israel for waging a so-called apartheid against the Palestinians. While the church’s rhetoric has been condemned as anti-Semitic before, the Philos Action League and its backers say its latest campaign could fuel violence against Jews.

The latest resolution “promotes claims of individuals who have a record of making anti-Semitic statements” and “erases Jewish experiences and witness,” the letter states. “Basic human rights are being stripped away from Jewish life in the U.S. and beyond with the constant threat of violence, intimidation, and discrimination. Unfortunately, Christianity has a history of bias against the Jewish people.”

The resolution invokes the Holocaust as justification for boycotting Israel. The church claims it is wrong for members to “silence their criticism of Israel’s polices because of the history of the Nazi Holocaust and the failure of many Christians to speak out at the time.”

“Christians too vowed that never again would they be silent if a government passed laws establishing and maintaining the domination by one ethnic group over another ethnic group through systematic separation, oppression, and denial of basic human rights,” the resolution states, using language typically reserved for the Holocaust. “Silence in the face of evil was wrong then, and it is wrong now.”

Such language leads to real-world violence, according to Philos and its allies.

“There is an epidemic of hate plaguing our community, and the Christian community has sat by watching it happen and has done very little for too long,” Philos states in its letter, which is backed by the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement, the Israel Center for Jewish-Christian Relations, and other faith groups.

https://freebeacon.com/culture/presbyterian-church-group-under-fire-for-likening-israel-to-nazi-germany/

A Democratic Boston city councilor is under fire for informing her constituents that they are “letting the Zionists SHAKE YOU DOWN,” rhetoric that a watchdog group says is grossly anti-Semitic.

“Ya’ll are letting the Zionists SHAKE YOU DOWN,” Boston city councilor Kendra Lara tweeted on Thursday, referencing a court decision this week that upheld a law targeting the anti-Semitic campaign to boycott Israel. She later deleted the tweet.

Lara—a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and an ally of “Squad” member Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.) who took the far-left congresswoman’s “policy pledge”—quickly came under fire for the tweet, with one user of the social media site saying her language is identical to that used by “neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers.”

“Oh I get it! The use of the phrasing was lost on me but I have been told now, thank you!” she tweeted in response.

Later that day, she clarified that she was talking about a federal court’s ruling this week to uphold an Arkansas law that bars the state government from contracting with an entity that supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which wages economic warfare on Israel. Then she issued copious apologies, saying that reinforcing “anti-Semitic tropes about the Jewish people” was not her intent and that she “should have known better.” She then deleted her original tweet.

Lara is one of many far-left activists to condemn the anti-BDS court decision. The decision is seen as a bellwether for other anti-BDS laws that are being challenged by anti-Israel forces across America.

Lara’s comments are a thinly veiled shot at American Jews, according to Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a watchdog group that combats anti-Semitism.

“Will the city councilor be held accountable for her slur by her peers, by the media, by the voters, for this screed?” Cooper said in comments to the Washington Free Beacon. “Why would a local politician in Boston get worked up over an Arkansas court upholding anti-BDS laws—an important tool to fight back against anti-Semitic BDS? Maybe because she hates ‘Zionists’—read Jews.”

Lara has repeatedly used this type of rhetoric in the past.

When Ben & Jerry’s pulled out of Israel as part of its support for the BDS movement, Lara mocked pro-Israel advocates who launched their own boycott of the company.

“Zionists: *Googles how to ethnically cleanse ice cream company*,” she tweeted in July 2021. The tweet is a reference to unfounded accusations by anti-Israel activists that Israel is engaged in the genocide of Palestinians. These types of remarks are widely considered anti-Semitic.

“Oh, the blue check mark Zionists have found me. *Mutes tweet*,” Lara tweeted after her initial missive drew pushback.

Cooper said that Lara’s rhetoric embodies “two of the most distressing aspects of anti-Semitism today in America”—”violent Jew-hatred” and the “increasing of open, blatant Jew-hatred in the mainstream of our society.”

There is “little or no accountability or consequences” for targeting Jewish people in this way, Cooper said, adding that “anti-Semitic hate crimes”—which are rising at steep rates—”don’t happen in a vacuum.”

Neither Lara nor Pressley responded by press time to a Free Beacon request for comment.

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/boston-city-councilor-goes-on-anti-semitic-rant-after-bds-loses-in-court/

An Arkansas law that bars state contractors from engaging in Israel boycotts was upheld Wednesday by a U.S. appeals court, dealing a major setback to supporters of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Arkansas’s anti-BDS law—which bars state contractors from waging economic warfare on Israel—”does not violate the First Amendment,” the court concluded, rejecting arguments from activists that banning state contractors from engaging in Israel boycotts violates their free speech rights.

BDS supporters across America have tried to frame the debate as a free speech issue. The Arkansas decision sets a precedent that these arguments are bunk because economic boycotts are not speech and provides legal standing to other states that have also passed anti-BDS measures into law. Israel’s enemies will now have a much harder time fighting against this type of state legislation.

The Arkansas law, like many others across the nation, prohibits any entity that contracts with the state from engaging in Israel boycotts. The state was first sued over the law in 2017 by the Arkansas Times, which claimed the statute is unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment by restricting protected speech.

“The district court dismissed the suit, holding that economic boycotts do not implicate the First Amendment because they are neither speech nor expressive conduct,” according to the ruling. The appeals court affirmed the district court’s finding.

Pro-Israel organizations and legal advocates who worked to ensure the anti-BDS law was upheld praised the court’s decision.

“Progressive groups have used bogus constitutional arguments as prerexts to protect the discriminatory treatment of primarily Jewish groups. Embarrassed to publicly defend BDS itself, they have claimed to oppose such laws out of legal scruple. Today that pretext has been removed, and Congress can move forward with confidence to pass federal anti-BDS legislation,” said Professor Eugene Kontorovich, who has helped draft many state anti-BDS laws and participated in the 8th Circuit litigation.

“The court’s conclusion should put to bed any arguments put forth by bigots who won’t simply settle for demonizing and boycotting Israel but want the state to aid and abet that appalling endeavor,” added Sandra Parker, an attorney and chair of the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) action fund.

BDS activists across the nation have begun using the courts to try to shoot down state laws that bar Israel boycotts. Legal challenges in Georgia, Arizona, Kansas, and Texas have been working their way through the court system.

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/anti-semites-lose-federal-court-upholds-arkansas-anti-bds-law/

Elizabeth Frawley Bagley decried ‘the influence of the Jewish lobby’ and its ‘major money’

The Biden administration’s nominee to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Brazil spoke at length about the influence of Jewish money in politics, claiming the “Jewish lobby” exerts undue influence over the Democratic Party with its “major money.”

Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, a longtime diplomat and Democratic Party insider, is scheduled on Thursday to have her nomination advanced to the full Senate by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But Bagley’s comments about Jewish money in politics—tropes long considered anti-Semitic in nature—are raising red flags among Democratic and Republican members of the committee, senior congressional sources told the Washington Free Beacon.

Bagley, in a 1998 interview, a full copy of which was obtained by the Free Beacon, bemoaned “the influence of the Jewish lobby because there is major money involved.” She went on to claim “the Democrats always tend to go with the Jewish constituency on Israel and say stupid things, like moving the capital to Jerusalem always comes up.” Support for these Israel-related issues are due to “the Jewish factor, it’s money.” The interview was conducted by a historian at the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training for an oral history project.

Senate sources involved in the confirmation process said Bagley’s comments should disqualify her from the ambassador’s role and told the Free Beacon that both Democrats and Republicans on the Senate committee have privately expressed concerns about these remarks.

“Under a normal administration this kind of vicious anti-Semitism would be disqualifying. You couldn’t get hired as an intern,” said one senior congressional Republican staffer, who was not authorized to speak on record about the concerns related to Bagley. “It speaks volumes that the Biden administration was confident enough to nominate Bagley and send her to the Senate for confirmation. They know that Democrats are going to fall into line.”

Bagley opened up about the “Jewish lobby” and its impact on Democratic Party politics in the 1998 interview. She was asked about “the Israeli influence” on the Clinton administration, where Bagley served as the ambassador to Portugal.

“There is always the influence of the Jewish lobby because there is major money involved,” Bagley said. “But, I don’t remember any major issues coming out on that, besides the usual ‘make Jerusalem the capital of Israel,’ which is always an issue in the campaign.”

Democrats, she said, “always tend to go with the Jewish constituency on Israel and say stupid things, like moving the capital to Jerusalem always comes up. Things that we shouldn’t even touch.”

“Jewish Democrats,” she continued, “were going to give their money to Clinton anyway and Jews are mostly Democrats on social issues.”

The “Jewish factor” is not about the raw number of electors who care about these issues, Bagley said, “it’s money.”

When questioned about these remarks during a May 18 confirmation hearing with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bagley claimed they were the result of a “free-flowing discussion” with the interviewer.

“The language you used in regard to the Jewish community, Israel’s influence on our election, and Jewish money have me concerned,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D., Md.) said during the hearing. “The choice of words was fit into the traditional tropes of anti-Semitism.”

“I regret that you would think that it was a problem,” Bagley told Cardin. “I certainly didn’t mean anything by it. It was a poor choice of words, but it was something that the interviewer had asked me, prompted by something about politics.”

Bagley added that she is “very sorry about that choice of words.”

Cardin noted that as a career diplomat, Bagley should be trained to more carefully choose her words.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), the committee’s chairman, also expressed alarm over Bagley’s remarks.

“Is it a suggestion that one group of Americans don’t have the right to engage in the political process as others do?” Menendez asked. “Words, especially for those who are going to be ambassadors of the United States to other countries are incredibly important, probably more significant than maybe in our individual daily lives.”

Bagley told Menendez she holds no animosity toward Jewish people or the pro-Israel community.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/the-jewish-factor-its-money-biden-ambassador-pick-under-fire-for-anti-semitic-tirade/

In a stirring and spot-on campaign email, Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis declares war on the Far Left calling it a “Radical Vigilante Woke Mob.”

While I’ve seen my share of them over the years and sent out a few myself, campaign fundraising emails are notorious for appealing to the hard-core base of both parties.  

So, most of them are taken with a grain of salt by political observers.

However, the email I just received from the DeSantis re-election campaign really hit home. It accurately defined and summarized the aggressive domestic threat posed by the extreme Left to our nation’s very core:

Our country is currently facing a great threat. A new enemy has emerged from the shadows that seeks to destroy and intimidate their way to a transformed state, and country, that you and I would hardly recognize.

This enemy is the radical vigilante woke mob that will steamroll anything and anyone in their way. Their blatant attacks on the American way of life are clear and intensifying: stifling dissent, public shaming, rampant violence, and a perverted version of history.

A group that will, literally, tear down monuments and buildings but — perhaps in an even more sinister way — tear down the American spirit itself. They go after the family unit, parental rights, traditional moral values, the church, and fact-based education.

Over the past few years, we’ve watched horrified as this group has attempted to brainwash our children into thinking we live in an evil, racist, irredeemable country.

We listened to them deny science and data to exert political theater all the while trampling over personal liberties enshrined in the Constitution.

We saw them take to the streets for an entire summer like outlaws burning, looting, and destroying everything in sight while being told they were “mostly peaceful” and “passionate.”

DeSantis omitted the LGBTQ brainwashing of our young children and the collusion of major woke companies like Disney in doing so, but he has been at the forefront of battling both these evils in Florida.

The DeSantis campaign continues, noting something that impacted me directly on the huge social media platform LinkedIn: “We watched Big Tech moguls in Silicon Valley be the arbiters of truth – deciding who gets to speak and who gets silenced through the digital public square.”

And of course, the last piece of the massive leftist effort: “We listened to the legacy media muffle legitimately verifiable news stories that didn’t align with their preferred narrative, only to watch the truth trickle out months later at a more politically expedient time.”

Referring to himself as the “Governor of the Free State of Florida,” DeSantis then goes on to make his pitch for how he will fight this grave threat to America, at least in Florida, with “faith, with reason, and with freedom.”

And of course, he asks for our financial support.

In my view, this email accurately and effectively summarizes the threat we face from the extreme Left in America today. DeSantis is on the front lines of this battle in Florida, but he also seems to be preparing to take the fight nationally as well.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

https://www.americanliberty.news/politics/florida-governor-goes-to-war-against-radical-vigilante-woke-mob/pcrespo/2022/06/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ae01&seyid=7766

Columnist Naomi Wolf, author of “The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and the War Against the Human,” asserts that after two years of pandemic policies, people in free societies are behaving more like those in authoritarian societies.

Wolf maintains that America is now less free, and becoming almost unrecognizable.

“A handful of bad actors” including the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Big Tech, and the World Economic Forum (WEF) used the pandemic to “exploit the crisis in such a way as to reengineer our free democratic open societies, especially in the West, especially in the United States, into a post-free society, a post-humane society,” said Wolf during a recent interview on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”

Related Coverage

‘We Don’t Have America Anymore’—Dr. Naomi Wolf on CCP-Style Technocratic Authoritarianism in the US

The Biden administration in April extended the 2-year-old coronavirus public health emergency for another 90 days.

Wolf said, based on history, the ongoing lockdowns and extension of the public health emergency indicate society is in the last phase of a tyrannical takeover, because with emergency powers, laws protecting liberty can be suspended.

According to Wolf, there are 10 steps every tyrannical government has followed. We are now at step 10, said Wolf. Some of the other steps include demonizing whistleblowers and critics, calling dissent “treason,” “espionage,” or “subversion,” and controlling the media narrative.

During the last two years of lockdowns and mandates, Big Tech and the elites have profited while the average Americans have seen the American Dream slowly “closing” on them, she said.

“And so often, when a democracy is dying, or a regime is turning the screws on freedoms to create an established new form of tyranny, it happens intentionally in a very incremental way,” said Wolf. “And you really see this from 1930 to 1933 in Germany.”

She said humanity is witnessing the formation of a two-tier society of the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated, in which people who would never discriminate against others based on categories of race and sex are now discriminating against the unvaccinated.

“Suddenly, they’re happily embracing a discrimination society in which some people are cast as clean and valuable members of society and other people are ostracized and marginalized and ‘othered’ and described as sort of dirty and causing infection to others,” said Wolf.

She argues that big tech companies had an active role in creating these perceptions and in “shaping legislation and certainly in presenting the drama of COVID and lockdowns to us, and then the vaccine rollout, in such a way as to change human behavior and to change human society,” said Wolf.

Wolf cited the emails between Dr. Anthony Fauci and Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussing Facebook’s role in getting the right public health “messages out” during the lockdowns.

People had no choice but to rely on tech platforms while they were locked down, and Big Tech used that to manipulate the public, said Wolf.

“What I do trace in the book is how there was a vast profit that tech companies made by suppressing human assembly, by helping to message that it was unsafe or unlawful to gather in person,” she said. “And when you understand that big tech companies are competing with human beings gathering in human spaces, you understand why there was a vested interest in suppressing human assembly.”

Wolf thinks big tech companies will not stop at just harvesting data on the computer, but that they want to dominate peoples’ bodily autonomy with vaccine passports.

“What these companies want more than anything is to leave the parameters of your computer and to colonize other currently non-colonized spaces, notably the human body,” said Wolf.

This would give these companies and governments the ability to switch off peoples’ access to commerce, travel, and other goods and services if they did not comply with a particular mandate, Wolf added.

Some forms of digital tracking and surveilling are already here in the United States, she said.

“You’re now expected to swipe these QR codes just to see the menu, or just to get in. And the QR code uploads your data to a central database,” she said, adding that she’s seen the software “that maps the relationships of everyone sitting at that table, and then builds databases and networks of relationships.”

Wolf said that on a scale of one to 10 on the Chinese social credit system, the United States is currently at a three.

“There’s a change that’s happened in American cities in the last two years,” she said.

Because most people around the world, particularly in U.S. cities, use digital apps to travel, do banking, and shop, a digital social credit system similar to China’s is imminent, she said.

Our data is being harvested and used by the “global technocratic elite” to control human behavior, said Wolf.

“We’ve assumed that the worst it can be is data are harvested from us with everything that we choose to do using our free will as human beings,” said Wolf.

“But what I’ve seen is that digital technology has its own logic, and it isn’t restricted by what human beings want to do. So once digital platforms and their oligarchical masters can figure out how to change people’s behavior to suit technology, there’s nothing, moral or ethical, that will keep them from changing people’s behavior to suit their technology, and to suit their business plans,” she added.

The pandemic has revealed how this type of digital control is playing out, because humans, before the prevalence of digital technology, did not choose to “socially distance” to fight pandemics, said Wolf.

“The dream of our digital overlords is for technology to tell humans what to do, and that’s exactly where we’re at,” said Wolf.

While some people might label her a conspiracy theorist, her opinions are based on a long career as a journalist, political consultant, and now tech CEO, Wolf said. Furthermore, she has witnessed firsthand the powerful elites making historical decisions under the radar, she said.

Wolf was well acquainted with this group of powerful people until recently when she was ejected from their circles for writing oppositional pieces on lockdowns.

“But it’s really true that the global technocratic elite have more in common with each other than they do with their fellow Germans or Americans or Russians or Chinese, and they now are able to align above the level of nation-states,” she said.

For example, one of the WEF’s goals is to make nation-level decision-making less and less important, and the World Health Organization’s goal is to make public health decisions on a global scale, bypassing countries’ own authorities via the pandemic treaty, said Wolf.

“These technocratic elites really do believe that they can order the world better than you and I and that they have the right to,” she said. “That’s really scary.”

Little by little, humanity’s tolerance for cruelty and authoritarianism has grown.

“The war wasn’t just on us as a political entity, the war was on American culture, and is on American culture,” she said. “And they’ve succeeded largely, unless we wake up, because we were a kind, decent, inclusive culture that respected other people’s boundaries and freedoms. … And now a CCP-style cruelty is something that we tolerate.”

What people believe is largely determined by the news they consume, said Wolf, and many people only watch news outlets that give a skewed picture of pandemic treatments and policies, largely funded by wealthy people like Bill Gates.

“I do trace in ‘The Bodies of Others’ how millions of dollars flowed and are flowing from entities like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the BBC and the Guardian and NPR and other formerly very credible, objective news outlets.”

Because most people get slanted news coverage, the country is more divided and many people on the left refuse to consider any other narrative or look at primary source documents, because they believe only government sources are giving them “scientific” information, said Wolf.

This skewed messaging has been able to convince people that the mandates and lockdowns are more American and important than liberty or critical thinking.

Wolf said the most brilliant aspect of the pandemic messaging was that it was framed altruistically.

“You know, ‘You’ve got to exclude those people for the good of the community,’ or ‘You’ve got to mask yourself and your child to save your child,’” said Wolf. “This really brilliantly upended American culture because it cast freedom as selfish.”

Now that those in power have effectively conditioned people to be fearful and submissive, they can keep reinstituting emergency powers, she argued.

“That’s what emergency law means,” she said. “They can do whatever they want, basically. It’s a weaponization of boards of health, it’s a weaponization of the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and the [Department of Health and Human Services].”

Wolf said although the situation is dire, people can do something to push back against this tyranny by being informed about what is really going on in the country, assembling in groups, and getting involved politically on the local level.

As it stands now, “I will say that each side is being fed narratives and stereotypes about the other that would persuade each side that the other is absolutely insane and dangerous, dangerously insane,” said Wolf.

“I get that conservatives think, ‘liberals don’t know what a woman is.’ That is not actually literally true, and liberals think ‘conservatives all want to torch our democratic processes, storm the Capitol, and are misogynist, racist thugs who are trigger happy,” said Wolf.

The last two years have conditioned people to fear each other and so the conversations that would have normally occurred when people gathered are not happening and keeping the country divided, said Wolf. She said she will gladly talk to people on the right.

“People I love think I’m doing something wrong in even talking to conservatives and libertarians. That’s very dangerous. The left, especially, has decided that you’re morally complicit if you have a conversation across the aisle,” Wolf said. “That is censorship, that is cancel culture, that’s un-American, that is an importation from Communism.”

She urges people to remember what makes America unique and a beacon to other nations: to remember we are the great experiment where neighbors talked to each other, listened, and didn’t “rat” each other out if they did not agree with each other, Wolf said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/we-dont-have-america-anymore-author-naomi-wolf_4545628.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-21-3&utm_medium=email&est=Ti3V30R3w%2F2JuDx47eYvzpeLpt8HYqj3OhnaBBsqKEGiN5KT8OMKfPTbD%2FFjf51nfw%3D%3D

Cleveland’s 2019 police officer of the year is under investigation for a series of anti-Semitic social media posts that include praise for Adolf Hitler and the Hamas terrorist organization.

Ismail Quran is under investigation by the Cleveland police internal affairs unit for posting “inappropriate social media content,” a department spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon on Monday.

Quran has posted several anti-Semitic messages on social media, including a “salute to Hitler the great” and messages threatening violence against Jewish people, according to tweets provided by Canary Mission, a watchdog group that tracks anti-Semitic activity online.

The controversy surrounding Quran comes amid a nationwide spike in anti-Semitic hate crimes that Jewish community groups have deemed a pressing emergency. The presence of anti-Semitic individuals on the nation’s police forces is stoking concerns that these crimes are going unaddressed and pushed to the back-burner as more high-profile race-related crimes dominate the headlines.

The Cleveland police department hired Quran in 2018, several years after most of the public tweets were issued. Quran was presented with a belated 2019 officer of the year award in November 2021, more than a year after Canary Mission first exposed many of Quran’s anti-Semitic posts. At the award ceremony, the department said “Officer Ismail Quran has truly embodied the community policing philosophy for the Cleveland Division of Police.” The Cleveland police department is facing allegations it tried to sweep the controversy under the rug and ignore Quran’s bigotry. The officer is “assigned to administrative duties” while the investigation is underway.

“We initially released Ismail Quran’s profile in January 2019. His large number of anti-Semitic posts were severe and all posted after Quran had completed his first Police Officer Physical Agility Exam,” Canary Mission said in a statement. “We were already concerned that the Cleveland Police Department employed an officer with a record of anti-Semitic hate speech. However, we are shocked and dismayed that the Cleveland Police Department honored Quran later that same year.”

Canary Mission described Quran as a “dangerous anti-Semite” who should not be allowed to conduct police work.

When asked for comment on Quran’s posts, a Cleveland police spokesman informed the Free Beacon that the officer is under investigation, though it is unclear what the repercussions could be.

“The City of Cleveland, Division of Police was made aware of a matter involving a Cleveland Police Officer and inappropriate social media content,” the department said. “The matter has been referred to the Cleveland Division of Police Internal Affairs Unit and the City of Cleveland’s Ethics Officer for thorough investigation.”

The department “insists that officers provide the highest levels of professionalism and respect to all citizens. Discrimination of any kind will not be tolerated,” the spokesman said, adding that the “officer was hired by the Division of Police in 2018 and is currently assigned to administrative duties.”

Quran’s tweets promote violence against Jewish people, praise Hitler, and traffic in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

In October 2015, he stated, “Lol bum ass Jew tried to intimidate me. … Don’t try that shit with me.”

“The Jewish lobby,” he wrote in August 2014, runs “the USA.”

Quran claimed in an August 2014 tweet that the Hamas terror group, which routinely kills Jewish civilians in terror attacks, is merely “defending their land.”

In a July 2014 tweet, Quran wrote, “Fuck that Jew” in response to a message wishing an Israeli basketball player good luck. Quran’s tweet included a picture captioned, “LET ME SALUTE TO HITLER THE GREAT. He said ‘I would have killed all the Jews of the world, but I kept some to show the world why I killed them.’”

Other tweets threaten violence, such as one from 2012 where Quran wrote: “I’ll beat the hell out of you like I do Nadiah the Jew lol.”

Quran also has declared that “Jews run the world”—an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory—and that “ISIS = Israeli Secret Intelligence Unit.”

Most of these posts were active as of June 2022, though many were deleted when reports about Quran’s rhetoric began to emerge. Canary Mission has documented all of them on its website.

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/cleveland-officer-of-the-year-under-investigation-for-anti-semitic-pro-hitler-tweets/

Israel forged a major economic pact with Arkansas on Tuesday to share research and technology, especially for agriculture, broadening a trade relationship between the two worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Though his state contains one of the smallest Jewish populations in the nation, Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson (R.) celebrated the trade agreement for bringing closer ties with Israel, which he called “a critical ally.” Trade between the two was valued at more than $100 million last year, and both have enjoyed agricultural and scientific research grants worth more than $400,000 since the start of their partnership. In 2017, Hutchinson passed a law prohibiting Arkansas from working with companies that support the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. He told the Washington Free Beacon their new memorandum of understanding reflects Arkansas’s ongoing “friendship” with the Jewish state.

“This is a mutually beneficial partnership between two leaders in innovation,” Hutchinson said. “The agreement builds on the momentum we have created for the past eight years to develop a tech-based workforce that can meet the needs of a 21st century economy. In addition, this agreement allows us to strengthen our relationship with a critical ally to the United States.”

Israel has become a world leader in agricultural technology, investing heavily over the years in its high-tech sector, which now accounts for 15 percent of its GDP. Though more than half of its land area is desert and it lacks water resources, the Jewish state has learned to produce some of the highest yields of agricultural products, including cow milk and tomatoes, of any nation in the world. The success has made others take note in an effort to boost their own agricultural industries. Agriculture is Arkansas’s largest industry, adding around $16 billion to the state’s economy annually.

Israel and Arkansas have enjoyed an economic partnership for the past 40 years that has added billions to the U.S. economy, according to a 2019 review of one agricultural grant program between the nations.

“Israel is a country that has almost no water resources needed for agriculture and no traditional automotive industry, yet, with a uniquely successful technological innovation ecosystem, we have created booming agro-tech and smart mobility sectors that include hundreds of companies and startups that are among the leading in their respective fields worldwide,” said Dr. Ami Appelbaum, a chairman of the board of the Israel Innovation Authority who attended the signing event. “It’s a collaboration between similar states that have very similar challenges, as the governor mentioned: agriculture, medical, and of course, the autonomous transportation.”

“It’s going to make a big difference in the future of mobility and how quickly we can improve our supply chains,” Hutchinson said.

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/arkansas-forges-major-economic-pact-with-israel/

Qatar quashes free speech. Tamara Cofman Wittes praised it as a “global gathering place for dialogue.” 

Resident Joe Biden’s nominee for a top role at the U.S. Agency for International Development has a long history of praising Qatar, the oppressive Gulf state with a shoddy human rights record that includes restrictions on free expression and the criminalization of same-sex sexual conduct. 

Tamara Cofman Wittes is slated to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, where the panel will consider her nomination to be an assistant administrator of USAID. If confirmed, she would be responsible for distributing billions of American aid dollars throughout the Middle East. 

As a Middle East policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she worked first from 2003 to 2009 and then from 2012 until earlier this month, Wittes lavished praise on Qatar, a repressive nation that discriminates against gays, lesbians, and transgender individuals. Wittes described Qatar’s capital city Doha as a “global gathering place for dialogue” and amplified Qatari leaders’ claims that they support human rights and oppose “extremists who exploit religion to incite violence.”

The Brookings Institution was at the time raking in millions from Qatar—its “Doha Center,” renamed after the organization came under scrutiny for the partnership, had a controversial 14-year run. Wittes’s confirmation hearing comes as the Brookings Institution faces renewed scrutiny over its foreign financial ties. The think tank’s president, retired general John Allen, resigned on Sunday amid news that he is under federal investigation for his alleged role in illegally lobbying for Qatar.

While the Brookings Institution took money from several foreign governments over the past decade, Qatar appears to be its most significant foreign donor, pouring at least $22 million into the think tank between 2013 and 2021, according to congressional financial disclosures and the organization’s annual donor reports.

Wittes’s record, laid out in her writing and prolific tweets that are now shielded from public view, also includes criticism of U.S.-brokered deals normalizing relations between Israel and Arab governments and of Israel’s pushback on activists calling for an economic boycott of the Jewish State. It may be an obstacle as she looks to win Republican support ahead of her confirmation hearing. It is unclear, for example, how Republican lawmakers will respond to her amplification of a tweet suggesting that Trump supporters should be subject to the same process of “denazification” that sought to rid Germany and Austria of Nazi ideology after World War II. 

Congressional Republicans voiced concern about her criticism of the Abraham Accords, an agreement that normalized ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, among others. 

“Wittes was one of the most bitter opponents of the Abraham Accords. She trashed everyone involved, including and especially Israel,” a senior Republican congressional aide told the Washington Free Beacon. 

Wittes quoted articles decrying the deal as misogynistic, a “new Naksa”—referring to the Palestinian word for “setback”—and as a “triumph for authoritarianism.”

“If I were an Arab leader weighing ties with Israel, I would have 2 things in mind,” Wittes wrote on Twitter in September 2020. “1) A promise from [Trump adviser Jared] Kushner now isn’t worth much. Why not wait until after Nov elections? 2) Bibi’s backtracked on his commitments to UAE; his promises aren’t worth much either. Let’s wait & see.”

Wittes argued that the several Gulf states taking steps toward normalization with Israel were engaged in a “betrayal of Palestinian interests” and the agreement would make it more difficult to extract Israeli concessions in return for a peace deal with the Palestinians.

“This is not Middle East peace. It’s certainly not Middle East peace when there are horrific civil wars going on in the region,” Wittes said of the accords. “That’s where I think it’s been oversold.”

She went so far as to blame Gulf states that joined the Abraham Accords with Israel for the May 2021 war between Hamas and Israel.  

“The risk now is that Arab states that normalised with Israel bought this mess and now have to live with it,” she told the Independent.

Notwithstanding her extensive writing and tweeting on the subject, Wittes told the Washington Free Beacon days before her confirmation hearing that she supports the Abraham Accords. 

“I have never expressed ‘strong opposition to the Abraham Accords,’” Wittes said. “I support the Accords and the profound transformation they have wrought.”

“When the Accords were announced in September 2020, I told the New York Times that ‘Abu Dhabi and Jerusalem each had their own good reasons for finding a way to open the door to formal relations,’” Wittes said.

She also noted that her last column for the Brookings Institution said that the Accords “strengthened the pro-American coalition in the region and created opportunities for Arab states and Israel to pursue mutually advantageous security, economic, and social projects.” 

The Abraham Accords also happened to draw opposition from Qatar, whose funding for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood has put it at odds with both the Jewish state and the United Arab Emirates.

Wittes also highlighted claims that the Qatari government — which has been accused of widespread human rights violations, including jailing protesters and maintaining abusive workplace conditions for migrant workers – supports human rights and tolerance.

“Qatar deputy PM says Islam, like West, embraces human rights because they’re to benefit of all, esp non-Muslim minorities in Muslim World,” Wittes wrote in 2013.

“Doha’s become global gathering place for dialogue!” she wrote in one 2012 post, adding that Brookings “has partnered w/ Qatar many years.” 

The Brookings Institution said Qatar’s donations in 2020 and 2021 were the final payments from a prior fundraising pledge. “Qatar will not be listed as a financial supporter in the 2022 annual report,” a Brookings Institution spokeswoman told the Free Beacon.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/in-biden-aid-nominee-repressive-gulf-monarchy-found-enthusiastic-ally/

The Biden administration elevated diplomatic relations with the Palestinian government, in what diplomats warn is the first step to walking back the United States’ historic recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The State Department confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon that a new Office of Palestinian Affairs will be established in Jerusalem and act independently of the U.S. ambassador to Israel’s office there. The formation of a separate diplomatic office bolsters U.S. relations with the Palestinian government and could violate the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which mandated that a single U.S. embassy be established in the holy city.

The State Department also confirmed that it is working to go even further—opening an official Palestinian consulate in Jerusalem wholly independent of the U.S. embassy in Israel. Attempts to establish this diplomatic facility have been stymied by Israel’s opposition to the move, and the recent formation of the Palestinian Affairs office is viewed as a temporary workaround. That would set the stage for Jerusalem to once again be viewed by the United States as divided between Israeli and Palestinian territories.

Former U.S. diplomats who spoke to the Free Beacon about the move said the Biden administration is trying to undermine former president Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which eliminated a formal distinction between West and East Jerusalem. By establishing an office dedicated to the Palestinian government in the city, the administration is reopening the possibility of allowing that government to assume control of portions of the city.

“Opening a diplomatic office to the Palestinians in Jerusalem after the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, making it clear Jerusalem is part of Israel, has the same disastrous consequences as opening a formal consulate,” David Milstein, who served as special assistant to former U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman, told the Free Beacon. “This decision is a blatant effort to begin to unravel the implementation of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 and circumvent Israel’s clear opposition to a formal consulate, especially since the Biden administration admits this step is part of its plan to still open a consulate.”

The purpose behind this move “is to walk back the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, erode Israel’s sovereignty over its capital city, and signal support for dividing Jerusalem. It is outrageous and shameful,” Milstein said. “Members of Congress should use every tool at their disposal to block implementation of this decision.”

A State Department spokesman, speaking only on background, confirmed the creation of the new Palestinian office and said U.S. diplomats in the region are pressing the Israeli government to allow the full reopening of the Palestinian consulate. The Israeli government opposes this move.

The Palestinian affairs office “operates under the auspices of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, and reports on substantive matters directly to the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau in the State Department,” the spokesman said, confirming reports that the ambassador to Israel will no longer be consulted on issues handled by this office.

The Biden administration remains “committed to re-opening our consulate in Jerusalem,” the spokesman confirmed. “We continue to believe it is an important way for our country to engage with and provide support to the Palestinian people.”

Jason Greenblatt, former White House envoy to the Middle East and author of the book In the Path of Abraham, described the decision as a concession to the Palestinian government, which incites terrorism against Israel and pays salaries to convicted militants.

“Even more troubling is the reversal of the chain of command established by the Trump administration,” Greenblatt told the Free Beacon. “It is extremely bad practice for reporting on Palestinian affairs to go directly to the State Department without being run through the U.S. ambassador to Israel. So many of the issues they are responsible for are intertwined, and so much can be missed, misconstrued, or manipulated when the chain of command is disrupted.”

Greenblatt said his time in the White House showed him that separating this mission aided a “broken system” that appeased Palestinian leadership while harming U.S.-Israeli relations. “By trying to appease the Palestinian leadership with this empty gesture, we hurt our critical ally Israel and we hurt the United States—we hurt our national security, our diplomatic efforts and we waste precious U.S. taxpayer money,” he said.

Arsen Ostrovsky, and Israeli human rights attorney who serves as chair and CEO of International Legal Forum, an advocacy group, said the creation of this office marks  “a transparent attempt by the Biden Administration to go round the back door, with a de-facto consulate in clear attempt to water down the Trump Administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.” It also signals that the Biden administration is challenging Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem.

Republican foreign policy leaders also pushed back on the move.

Sen. Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the State Department is circumventing the Israeli government in order to create “an unofficial U.S. consulate” to the Palestinians, in violation of the law.

“I unequivocally oppose this plan for what appears to be a new unofficial U.S. diplomatic mission in Israel’s capital,” Hagerty said. “This plan is inconsistent with the full and faithful implementation of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 and suggests that the administration is once again trying to undermine America’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s eternal and undivided capital.”

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R., N.Y.), a House Foreign Affairs Committee member, said the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act was specifically created to prevent this situation.

“Palestinian Authority leadership has made it abundantly clear that their push for this action is for the purpose of dividing Jerusalem,” Zeldin said. “The United States unilaterally making this concession to the Palestinian Authority in exchange for no concessions in return has been proven to be a failed policy time and again.”

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/biden-admin-takes-major-step-to-roll-back-trumps-jerusalem-embassy-move/

(DHG) — The liberals are back at it again… it seems like cancelling Dr. Seuss was not enough!

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As soon as conservatives got wind that the site was being “cancelled”, demand skyrocketed.

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Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas created a Muslim community outreach position after meeting with an Arab-American activist who has cheered violence against Israel and praised the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas.

Mayorkas met on March 18 with Arab American News publisher Osama Siblani, who has called Hamas and Hezbollah “freedom fighters,” and other activists in Dearborn, Mich., over their concerns with racial profiling by the Department of Homeland Security. Siblani, who urged Arabs last month to fight Israel with “stones” and “guns,” has lobbied DHS for years to appoint a liaison between the agency and Michigan’s robust Arab community. He praised Mayorkas after he announced the position on March 30.

“We were told to keep complaining,” Siblani told his newspaper. “Mayorkas told us this time ‘we will do something about it’ and he did.”

The meeting emerges as Mayorkas faces scrutiny for a series of policy blunders. Republicans have called for Mayorkas’s impeachment over his handling of a historic surge of illegal immigrants at the southern border. Republicans have also blasted him for forming a Disinformation Governance Board led by a Democratic activist who pushed disinformation about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment about Mayokas’s meeting with Siblani and the other Arab-American leaders. Siblani’s inflammatory remarks were well documented before his sessions with Mayorkas.

The Anti-Defamation League has noted Siblani’s praise for Hamas and Hezbollah as “freedom fighters.” He cheered when the the Iran-backed Hezbollah “delivered on its threat” to bomb Israel in September 2019. He reportedly praised Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, as the most “honorable man in the world.”

Siblani has referred to Israel as “occupied Palestine” and claimed the “pro-Israeli lobby” owns Washington, D.C. Last year, he urged a boycott of a restaurant whose owner posted “Long Live Israel” on Facebook. His anti-Israel remarks last month were at a rally alongside Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), the Washington Free Beacon reported. Siblani praised the fedayeen, or Islamic militants, fighting against Israel.

Siblani’s anti-Israel, pro-terrorist views have not curtailed his access to the Biden administration and Democratic lawmakers. The Biden White House invited Siblani to take part in a virtual meeting last year to discuss Middle East tensions. Siblani later bragged at a rally in Dearborn that he refused during the White House event “to apologize for Hamas firing rockets at Israel.”

Siblani met with Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer (D.) last month at Arab American News offices in Dearborn. The publisher praised her for appointing several Arab-American community leaders to government posts, but criticized her for visiting Israel in 2019. Siblani claimed Whitmer accepted his invitation to visit Lebanon in exchange.

Siblani has an especially close relationship with Sen. Gary Peters (D., Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Peters organized the community meeting with Mayorkas in March, and another event for Siblani and federal officials in Washington, D.C., in 2019. Peters, who leads the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, spoke at the Arab American News offices on Sept. 18, 2020, at an event for the Arab American Political Action Committee. The participants quizzed Peters over his views on the Middle East and issues like terror watchlists before ultimately endorsing him for reelection. Siblani gave $250 to Peters’s campaign on Oct. 31, 2020. The Arab American Political Action Committee, which Siblani founded, gave $2,000 to Peters on Oct. 4, 2020.

On Nov. 18, 2020, Peters called on the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether the Transportation Security Administration had engaged in racial discrimination at airports and checkpoints.

Peters’s office did not respond to comment requests.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/hamas-loving-israel-hating-newspaper-publisher-successfully-lobbies-biden-admin/

Friend,

Our country is currently facing a great threat. A new enemy has emerged from the shadows that seeks to destroy and intimidate their way to a transformed state, and country, that you and I would hardly recognize.

This enemy is the radical vigilante woke mob that will steamroll anything and anyone in their way. Their blatant attacks on the American way of life are clear and intensifying: stifling dissent, public shaming, rampant violence, and a perverted version of history.

A group that will, literally, tear down monuments and buildings but — perhaps in an even more sinister way — tear down the American spirit itself. They go after the family unit, parental rights, traditional moral values, the church, and fact-based education.

Over the past few years, we’ve watched horrified as this group has attempted to brainwash our children into thinking we live in an evil, racist, irredeemable country.

We listened to them deny science and data to exert political theater all the while trampling over personal liberties enshrined in the Constitution.

We saw them take to the streets for an entire summer like outlaws burning, looting, and destroying everything in sight while being told they were “mostly peaceful” and “passionate.”

We watched Big Tech moguls in Silicon Valley be the arbiters of truth – deciding who gets to speak and who gets silenced through the digital public square.

We listened to the legacy media muffle legitimately verifiable news stories that didn’t align with their preferred narrative, only to watch the truth trickle out months later at a more politically expedient time.

Well, friend, the time for listening and watching from the sidelines is over.

This enemy has taken over media, educational institutions, corporate boards, professional sports, foundations, and professional institutions. They have left no corner of our lives untouched. But all hope is not lost.

We The People still have a say. We know the truth, you and I, about America and the country she is and can be. We must fight to defeat these false pretenses and predetermined narratives.

I am choosing to counter this enemy with faith, with reason, and with freedom. As Governor of the Free State of Florida, I have chosen to lead with a vision that builds America up rather than tears it down.

Together we can ensure that our children are raised to know they live in the greatest state in the nation, the greatest country in the world and that they have an opportunity to continue making them even greater.

If you’ve been waiting for the right time to get off the sidelines and fight for the rights you know were given to man by God Himself – the time is NOW.

If you’re with me, friend, chip in any amount to help me defeat this enemy. I can’t do it without you. I promise you; I will never stop fighting.

Sincerely,

Ron DeSantis

Paid by Ron DeSantis, Republican, for Governor.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) spoke at a rally this month with a pro-Hamas newspaper publisher who urged Palestinians to attack Israel.

Tlaib shared the stage with Osama Siblani, the publisher of the Dearborn-based Arab American News, at the second annual Metro Detroit March for Jerusalem Palestine on May 15. Siblani, whose newspaper cosponsored the event, urged Arabs in Michigan and elsewhere to “fight within [their] means” against Israel, whether it be with “stones,” “guns,” or “their hands.” He sang the praises of the “fedayeen”—Islamic militants—for “striking [Israel] with knives and with their bare hands.”

In her speech, Tlaib railed against what she called the “apartheid” Israeli government and urged Arab Americans to run for office in order to advance the Palestinian cause in Washington, D.C.

Tlaib has emerged as one of the most vocal anti-Israel activists in Congress and is a strong backer of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which aims to inflict economic harm on Israel. Tlaib has accused Jewish supporters of Israel of holding dual loyalties, a term widely considered anti-Semitic in nature.

Siblani has an extensive history praising the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas. He told the Washington Post in 2003 that he viewed Hamas and Hezbollah as “freedom fighters” rather than terrorists. He told the Chicago Tribune in 2006 he would “be willing to go to jail” if the FBI decided to round up supporters of Hezbollah. Tlaib’s campaign has accepted $1,250 in contributions from Siblani since 2018, including $500 on March 13, according to Federal Election Commission records. Tlaib’s campaign spent $1,025 in 2020 on ads in Siblani’s paper, which has a history of publishing anti-Semitic content.

The Michigan rally featured other controversial speakers, including Rabbi Dovid Weiss. The anti-Zionist activist has attended Holocaust denial events with former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Weiss gave a gift to the head of Hezbollah at an event in Beirut in 2018.

The Michigan rally was held to commemorate “the Nakba,” a Palestinian phrase for Israel’s founding that loosely translates to “the catastrophe.” Tlaib and other House members affiliated with “the Squad” introduced a resolution a day after the rally calling for the U.S. government to recognize “Nakba Day.” Jewish lawmakers and pro-Israel groups called the resolution anti-Semitic.

“This resolution is just the latest in a long line of anti-Semitic, anti-Israel statements, policies and actions by the most radical voices in the Democratic Party,” Rep. Lee Zeldin (R., N.Y.), who is Jewish, said in a statement. “This group on the far-left never misses an opportunity to dangerously promote anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiments and agendas.”

The Coalition for Jewish Values, an advocacy group representing more than 2,000 rabbis, said Tlaib’s promotion of the Nakba resolution is an “indelible stain on Congress.”

“Every Member of Congress, especially those who are Jewish, has a moral obligation to repudiate this hateful resolution,” Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld, the group’s president, said in a statement, adding that “the real catastrophe is that we have reached the point that this was introduced.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition described the Nakba Day resolution as “another attempt by the most radical leftists in Congress to delegitimize our ally Israel and to promote anti-Israel and frankly anti-Semitic efforts to destroy the only democracy in the Middle East.”

During Nakba Day demonstrations in Ramallah and other Palestinian territories, speakers advocated for Israel’s destruction and committed themselves to conducting terrorism operations against the Jewish state.

Tlaib came under fire in August 2021 when she claimed that wealthy pro-Israel forces are “behind the curtain” controlling U.S. policy. The statement was widely condemned as an anti-Semitic dog whistle by groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the Conference of Presidents, which represents major Jewish-American advocacy organizations.

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/meet-rashida-tlaibs-favorite-anti-israel-publisher/

Primary challenger Greg Raths says the ‘Jewish community’ uses ‘money’ to ‘control a lot of’ politicians

California’s upcoming primary elections could deliver Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) an unlikely foreign policy ally—Republican Greg Raths, who last week said the “Jewish community” uses money to “control” U.S. politicians. 

Raths’s anti-Semitic rant came during a May 20 Orange County Islamic Foundation candidate forum, which saw the Republican claim that U.S. support for Israel is bought and paid for by the “Jewish community.” Raths, who is running against Republican congresswoman Young Kim in California’s 40th Congressional District, also called to “rein in” U.S. foreign aid to Israel, a position he said he is able to support because he hasn’t taken “one dime” from Jewish sources.

“That’s the problem. Israeli PAC in Washington, they got money and they control a lot of these politicians. And the other side, the Palestinians, they don’t have the clout. So these politicians go where the money is, unfortunately,” Raths said. “The Jewish community is very well organized in the United States and they control a lot of politicians. That’s why the foreign aid is so large going to Israel. … The Jewish community has never given me one dime, so I’m not beholden to them at all.”

Raths’s comments echo those of Omar, who in 2019 said U.S. support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins baby,” a reference to $100 bills bearing Benjamin Franklin’s face. The far-left congresswoman’s remark prompted swift condemnation from many of her Democratic colleagues—former New York representative Max Rose, for example, said Omar invoked “hurtful stereotypes and caricatures of Jewish people to dismiss those who support Israel.” Republican Jewish Coalition national political director Sam Markstein similarly rebuked Raths, calling his remarks “blatantly anti-Semitic.”

“Both Mr. Raths and Ilhan Omar now share the distinct dishonor of suggesting that Jewish Americans buy political influence—a well-known, age-old anti-Semitic stereotype,” Markstein told the Washington Free Beacon. “It is disgusting, appalling, and has absolutely no place in the GOP.”

Raths did not respond to a request for comment. His decision to appear at the candidate forum is a curious one for a Republican congressional hopeful. The Orange County Islamic Foundation’s leader, Sheikh Tarik Ata, has called Israel a “Nazi-like, apartheid, racist, aggressive, tyrannical, vicious, child-killing Zionist entity.” Raths’s campaign site says the California Republican will “support Israel.”

In addition to his call to reduce U.S. aid to Israel, Raths also endorsed sending American aid dollars to the Palestinian Authority, a policy the Biden administration resumed in 2021. During that year, the United States sent the Palestinian Authority more than $360 million even as it funnels hundreds of millions to terrorists and their families. The Trump administration terminated U.S. aid to the Palestinians over those terror payments, which are part of the Palestinian Authority’s “pay-to-slay” program.

“If we help one country, we should help the other, because each country needs to protect itself,” Raths said of Israel and the Palestinian Authority at last week’s forum.

Raths’s campaign against Kim is not his first congressional run. The Republican lost to Rep. Katie Porter (D., Calif.) by 7 points in 2020 after he failed to advance from two primary elections in Porter’s district in 2014 and 2016. Raths has raised $136,000 to Kim’s $4.8 million.

Raths’s full remarks at the Orange County Islamic Foundation forum can be viewed below:

https://freebeacon.com/elections/california-republican-goes-full-ilhan-omar-in-anti-semitic-rant/

State Department fueling ‘new anti-Semitism,’ lawmakers say

Senate Republican foreign policy leaders are demanding the Biden administration pull nearly $1 million in taxpayer funding for groups to investigate alleged human rights abuses in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip—an effort that the senators say is fueling a “new anti-Semitism.”

The State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) announced in March it will pay nonprofit groups up to $987,654 to “strengthen accountability and human rights in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza,” according to a grant notice first posted online in February. Groups angling for the grant money are instructed to investigate alleged crimes inside and outside of Israel to “collect, archive, and maintain human rights documentation to support justice and accountability and civil society-led advocacy efforts, which may include documentation of legal or security sector violations and housing, land, and property rights.”

The grant was seized upon by Israel’s defenders on Capitol Hill as a prime example of the Biden administration’s efforts to undermine the Jewish state and strengthen the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which wages economic warfare on Israel. Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and 11 other Republican lawmakers are calling on the Biden administration to cancel the grant program and live up to its repeated pledges to combat the BDS movement.

“As a policy matter, it is wholly unacceptable for the State Department to fund NGOs to delegitimize and isolate Israel,” the lawmakers write, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The State Department, the lawmakers allege, is using taxpayer dollars to promote a “new anti-Semitism” that is “driven by a global network of anti-Israel nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and human rights groups.”

Senior Republicans on Capitol Hill who spoke to the Free Beacon say the grant is part of a larger effort by Biden administration officials to mainstream the BDS movement and undermine the U.S.-Israel alliance, even as terror attacks on the Jewish state spike. The State Department has already come under scrutiny from the GOP and pro-Israel groups for hiring several people who worked in the anti-Israel community and promoted the BDS movement.

The State Department also is facing an outside investigation from a legal watchdog group, which ordered the administration in March to turn over all documents and internal communications related to its decision to approve the nearly $1 million in funding, as the Free Beacon first reported.

Cruz, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Free Beacon that, despite its past rhetoric, the Biden administration is helping to foment anti-Israel scandals.

“The Biden administration spends enormous time and resources looking for excuses to criticize Israel, on everything from counterterrorism to international diplomacy,” Cruz said. “Now they’re spending $1 million in taxpayer money to manufacture even more excuses, and in the process funding the international campaign to delegitimize and wage economic warfare against Israel. The State Department should rescind this grant.”

Cruz and his colleagues, including Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.), Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.), and Joni Ernst (R., Iowa), say the NGO grant clashes with the Biden administration’s rhetorical commitments to fight anti-Semitism and the delegitimization of Israel.

In February, for instance, Secretary of State Antony Blinken penned a letter to the American Zionist Movement in which he committed to combating “efforts to delegitimize Israel” and to “counter[ing] attempts to isolate Israel in the international community.” President Joe Biden also has said that he rejects the BDS movement and would use his position in the White House to combat it.

The GOP lawmakers are challenging the administration’s commitment to Israel, saying the grant will help feed a network of “anti-Israel nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and human rights groups” that see it as their mission to topple the Western support for the Jewish state.

During the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, which famously devolved into an anti-Israel hate fest that the United States ultimately boycotted, many of the same NGOs poised to cash-in on the Biden administration’s grant money signed onto a declaration calling Israel “a racist, apartheid state” that commits “crimes against humanity.”

“The declaration has served as the basis for anti-Semitic campaigns by NGOs calling for economic warfare and rationalizing actual warfare against Israeli Jews,” the senators write. “For decades these NGOs and campaigns have been significantly funded by European governments and the European Union. The United States has traditionally condemned such campaigns.”

But the State Department’s grant, which is designed to solicit reports of alleged Israeli crimes, indicates the Biden administration is aligned with the anti-Israel NGO community. The grant also was posted just months after the Biden administration rejoined the United Nations Human Rights Council, which has historically targeted Israel and was boycotted by the Trump administration for its anti-Semitic bias.

“The similarities in rhetoric, logic, and implication between the State Department notice and the NGO Forum Declaration are striking and disturbing,” the lawmakers say.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/senators-demand-biden-pull-taxpayer-funding-for-anti-israel-initiative/

The Palestinian Authority allocates hundreds of millions of dollars to terrorists and their families even as the Biden administration pumps U.S. taxpayer funds into the Palestinian government, according to a non-public State Department report issued to Congress and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The report, published on May 10, details how the Palestinian government runs afoul of a U.S. law that bars it from receiving American aid dollars until these terror payments, known as the “pay-to-slay program,” are stopped. The PA in 2019, the most recent reporting period available, allocated over $150 million to convicted terrorists. Another $191 million was paid to the families of terrorists who were “martyred” while conducting attacks against Israelis and Americans. There is no sign these payments will end, with Palestinian leaders voicing support on the international stage for the program.

“The PA has not terminated payments for acts of terrorism against Israeli and U.S. citizens to any individual, after being fairly tried, who has been imprisoned for such acts of terrorism and to any individual who died committing such acts of terrorism, including to a family member of such individuals,” the State Department concluded. The PA makes these payments in cash as part of an effort to obfuscate its actions and stop the international community from holding it accountable for awarding terrorists and their families, according to the State Department’s findings.

The report comes as the Biden administration pushes to increase U.S. aid dollars to the PA, which were terminated during the Trump administration as a result of the “pay-to-slay” program. More than $360 million in U.S. funding was given to the PA in 2021, potentially in violation of a bipartisan law known as the Taylor Force Act, which prohibits the American government from giving the Palestinians aid as long as they pay terrorists. The Biden administration maintains that the aid programs do not violate the law, though it is unclear what safeguards have been put on the funding to ensure it is not used to pay terrorists and their families. The State Department confirmed that no “economic support funds” were withheld as a result of restrictions in the Taylor Force Act.

“The Biden administration is strongly opposed to the prisoner payment system and has consistently engaged the Palestinian Authority to end this practice,” a State Department spokesman told the Free Beacon. The U.S. Agency for International Development’s “assistance in the West Bank and Gaza is implemented consistent with U.S. law.”

Republicans in Congress disagree with this assessment. Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), for example, says the Biden administration cannot guarantee that the PA is not using U.S. funds as part of its terror financing program. Since the PA moved to a cash system, it is even harder to track which tranches of money are being used to fund “pay to slay.”

“The Biden administration is ideologically committed to elevating the Palestinian government and pouring money into Palestinian territories,” Cruz told the Free Beacon. “They’ve been doing this while they clearly knew that the same Palestinian government was inciting terrorism and using fungible money to reward terrorism against Israelis and Americans. It’s disgraceful and unacceptable.”

The PA “now makes the payments in cash and known recipients are unable to deposit the funds in bank accounts in the West Bank and Gaza” due to Israeli laws that bar financial institutions from supporting the program, according to the State Department’s findings.

Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh endorse the “pay-to-slay” program and say they will not give in to the international community’s pressure to end it. Both officials “reaffirmed the PA’s commitment to continuing the payments for prisoners, including those convicted of acts of terrorism,” according to the report.

In March 2021, for instance, Shtayyeh “publicly pledged his commitment to continue financial allowances to Palestinian prisoners and ‘martyrs’ even if Israel continues to deduct these amounts from the PA’s tax revenues,” the report notes.

Abbas in a September speech before the United Nations pledged his support to terrorists and their families: “Why should we have to clarify and justify providing assistance to families of prisoners and ‘martyrs,’ who are the victims of the occupation and its oppressive policies? We cannot abandon our people and we will continue striving to free all our prisoners.”

The State Department also concluded that the Palestinian government still teaches violence to its children as part of official school curriculums. While portions of this agenda have been reformed, “some incitement to and glorification of violence or terrorism still exist in school textbooks.” Efforts to reform the PA do not include plans to reduce incitement against Israel.

The State Department told lawmakers in its latest report that the administration “at all levels … continues to privately engage the PA to end this abhorrent practice.”

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/how-the-palestinians-pay-terrorists-as-biden-pumps-millions-of-aid-dollars-into-their-government/

Former First Lady Melania Trump gave her first interview since leaving the White House, providing a hint that her husband may be seeking another term in office and saying “it’s sad to see” the state of the country under the current administration.

“I think we achieved a lot in four years of the Trump administration,” Melania told Fox News in a Sunday interview, adding that “never say never” when asked about whether she could be again living inside the White House.

“I like Washington, D.C. I know it operates completely different than any other city, but I really like it there. And I enjoyed living in the White House. To be first lady of the United States was my greatest honor. I think we achieved a lot in the four years of Trump administration. I enjoyed taking care of the White House. It was my home for a while. I understood it is people’s house. And it was, it was a privilege to live there,” she continued to say.

When asked by Fox host Pete Hegseth about former first ladies Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton appearing on the cover of Vogue, Melania, a former model, criticized the magazine. Melania appeared on the cover of Vogue in 2005 when she was photographed alongside former President Donald Trump in her wedding dress.

“They’re biased and they have likes and dislikes, and it’s so obvious. And I think American people and everyone sees it. It was their decision, and I have much more important things to do—and I did in the White House—than being on the cover of Vogue,” Melania told the broadcaster.

The former first lady, a native of Slovenia, weighed in on the state of the United States under the Biden administration.

“I think it’s sad to see what’s going on, if you really look deeply into it,” Melania said, adding: “I think a lot of people are struggling and suffering and what is going on around the world as well. So it’s very sad to see and I hope it changes fast,” Melania added.

Donald Trump has not definitively said whether he will run for reelection, although he has suggested in interviews that he might.

Last month, Trump, 75, told the Washington Post that his health could play a role in whether he decides to run or not. In 2024, Trump will turn 78, and should he run—and win—the presidency, he’ll be 82 when he departs. President Joe Biden is slated to turn 80 this November.

“You always have to talk about health. You look like you’re in good health, but tomorrow, you get a letter from a doctor saying come see me again,” he told the outlet in April. ‘That’s not good when they use the word ‘again,’” Trump added, saying he is currently in good health.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/sad-to-see-whats-going-on-melania-trump-gives-first-interview-since-leaving-white-house_4468110.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-05-15-4&utm_medium=email&est=GTLeLRU4gRxAcdUeKZ%2BdqIq2O0hQAhD266NgIAko1W9GdZpDQmSFzKDDolIUmPA7JQ%3D%3D

Several of the groups calling on advertisers to boycott Twitter—citing Elon Musk’s objectionable views—are at the forefront of the campaign to boycott Israel and are known for trafficking in anti-Semitic canards.

In the wake of Musk’s $44 billion purchase of the social media site, a coalition of far-left groups is urging Twitter’s advertisers to boycott the sale, claiming that Musk “intends to steamroll” restrictions on speech and “provide a megaphone to extremists who traffic in disinformation,” according to an open letter sent last week to Twitter’s advertisers, which reportedly include Disney, Coca-Cola, and Kraft.

Yet many of the groups involved in the anti-Musk campaign are known for trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes and promoting falsehoods about Israel, often on social media platforms like Twitter. They include Black Lives Matter, the Women’s March, Kairos, and Friends of the Earth—all of which are known for stoking Jew-hatred and leading the charge to boycott Israel. Musk last week questioned who is funding and organizing these groups, which he says want to “control your access to information.”

The Black Lives Matter movement, for instance, describes Israel as an “apartheid state” and supports efforts by the anti-Israel community to delegitimize the Jewish state.

“We are a movement committed to ending settler colonialism in all forms and will continue to advocate for Palestinian liberation (always have. And always will be),” the group tweeted in 2021, along with the hashtag “free Palestine.”

The official Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement’s Twitter account thanked Black Lives Matter for its support. “From Ferguson to Palestine, our struggles against racism, white supremacy, and for a just world are united!” BDS wrote in a follow-up tweet.

Patrisse Khan-Cullors, one of Black Lives Matter’s cofounders, in 2015 traveled to the Palestinian territories and declared in an interview, “This is an apartheid state. … We can’t deny that and if we do deny it we are a part of the Zionist violence.”

Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation think tank who studies the BLM movement, said the group’s anti-Israel agenda is at the heart of the movement.

“The heart of the West is Christianity, and Judaism is at the heart of Christianity,” Gonzales wrote in a 2021 analysis. “Christ was a practicing Jew, as were Mary, Joseph, and likely all the apostles, who worshipped at the Jewish temple along with Jesus. Anyone who truly wants to dismantle the West, to ‘problematize’ it in critical race theory lingo, will want to start there first.”

Another group joining the anti-Musk cause is the Women’s March, a far-left coalition of activists who oppose former president Donald Trump. The group has been dogged by charges of anti-Semitism since its inception.

Three Women’s March founders—Palestinian activist and BDS supporter Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, and Bob Bland—left the organization in 2019 due to their promotion of anti-Semitic tropes and aggressive advocacy against Israel, which was seen as undermining the group’s credibility and isolating Jewish members.

The New York Times reported in 2018 that the Women’s March was “roiled by accusations of anti-Semitism,” including efforts to remove Jewish members from prominent positions within the group. The Women’s March also formed an alliance with longtime anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam movement.

Sarsour, in particular, has trafficked in anti-Semitism. “Israel was built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everybody else,” she said during a 2019 speech. “How can you be against white supremacy in the United States of America and the idea of living in a supremacist state based on race and class, but then you support a state like Israel that is built on supremacy?”

Mallory is a Farrakhan devotee who reportedly said Jewish people are “the mother and father of apartheid.”

The Kairos organization, which also signed the anti-Musk letter, is one of the leading advocates for BDS, which wages economic warfare on Israel. The Canadian government has called the group’s advocacy anti-Semitic in nature.

Friends of the Earth is another member of the global BDS movement. The group is featured on BDS’s official website and supports Israel boycotts. Friends of the Earth has also accused the Jewish state without evidence of preventing Palestinians from accessing clean water.

Musk, these groups wrote in their open letter to Twitter advertisers, will “provide a megaphone to extremists who traffic in disinformation, hate, and harassment. Under the guise of ‘free speech,’ his vision will silence and endanger marginalized communities, and tear at the fraying fabric of democracy.” The organizations demand that Twitter’s advertisers force Musk to uphold the ban on Trump—whom Musk has pledged to reinstate—and aggressively police speech on the platform.

“As top advertisers on Twitter, your brand risks association with a platform amplifying hate, extremism, health misinformation, and conspiracy theorists,” the letter states. “Under Musk’s management, Twitter risks becoming a cesspool of misinformation, with your brand attached, polluting our information ecosystem in a time where trust in institutions and news media is already at an all-time low.”

https://freebeacon.com/culture/these-anti-semitic-activists-dont-want-elon-musk-to-bring-free-speech-to-twitter/

The Federal Election Commission recently voted 4-2 that ballot initiatives don’t count as elections defined by the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971. This decision opens the door for foreign nationals to potentially fund initiatives, referendums and recalls — a dangerous and perplexing decision.

There is, understandably, bi-partisan concern about the decision. It allows foreign nationals to fund signature collecting, qualify measures and financially support campaigns to amend or create statutory law. (And in some states, even amend its Constitution.) Imagine foreign nationals in China, Russia, or even Iran legally funding multiple ballot measures in battleground States in 2022 or 2024. And why? For their own financial gain and political agenda. 

I’ve spent my career running ballot measures in almost every state and several abroad. As someone who sees a lot of them – Indian and non-Indian gaming, tax increases, energy, healthcare reform, and more – an equally concerning threat is the impact on voter turnout. 

Anything that motivates turnout – even at the margins of an already historically active electorate – can have a massive impact on election results. It is a statistical fact that ballot initiatives and referenda, particularly controversial measures, can increase voter turnout by five to 10 percent. 

That’s what happened in Arizona last year. 

In 2020, Arizona’s proposition 207 to legalize the recreational use of marijuana drove more voter participation than Joe Biden and Donald Trump, as you see in the chart below. 

A closer look shows that Arizona flipped in favor of Biden on the coattails of recreational marijuana. If Prop. 207 was a “Presidential candidate” in Arizona it would have won by over 200,000 votes. The post-election analysis shows proposition 207 drove hundreds of thousands of young, Democratic voters who also cast votes for Joe Biden.

The Virginia Result Heralds The End of the ‘Obama Effect’.

Another concerning aspect is money – ballot measure committees can accept an unlimited amount.

Individuals, committees, associations and businesses are allowed to contribute as much as they want to support or oppose a ballot measure, as long as it’s disclosed on the campaign contribution/expenditure report, which most states require.

Thankfully, given the FEC ruling only applies to federal issues on individual state’s ballots, the states retain some authority and autonomy to help backstop the FEC’s decisions and mitigate the potential for Election Day manipulation by foreign actors.

Each state sets its own rules for ballot measures. That includes the process for qualifying a measure, the number of signatures required, what can and cannot be a subject on the ballot, the level of financing disclosures or transparency and more.

States must take a thoughtful look at this new FEC policy and how it might impact wider results on Election Day, particularly in Presidential election years. 

In all their various forms, ballot measures are an essential part of the direct democracy process. History has shown that direct democracy – although not perfect – has resulted in dramatic social and economic changes that legislative bodies didn’t have the courage to do themselves. But it is reserved for state and local citizens and not foreign nationals.  

If you go to work at one New York City school, a teacher said, it’s OK to wear a Black Lives Matter t-shirt — but don’t you dare wear a shirt that says “Proud Zionist” with the flag of Israel on it.

According to a report in Sunday’s New York Post, Jeffrey Levy — a teacher at MS 51 in the extremely woke neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn — says he was told by the school’s principal not to wear the shirt in school, even though Black Lives Matter and women’s rights shirts have been donned by other staff members.

In a discrimination complaint Levy filed, he said principal Neal Singh told him that students and staff at the school complained about the “Proud Zionist” shirt and a previous “Back the Blue” pro-police tee he wore.

“Singh told me that my t-shirt with an Israeli flag on it and the words ‘Proud Zionist’ were ‘politically explosive,’” read his complaint, which was filed Sept. 30 with the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity at the New York City’s Department of Education.

“He told me that Zionism involves the retaking of Palestinian land and is ‘offensive,’” the complaint added.

Cori Bush Peddles Sick Lie: If Rittenhouse Is Acquitted, White Supremacists ‘Can Shoot at Us’

The Department of Education told the Post they supported the principal’s decision to ban the “Proud Zionist” t-shirt.

NYC teacher: School banned my ‘Proud Zionist’ t-shirt but allows ‘BLM’ garb https://t.co/tffqHuApqz pic.twitter.com/YdYCj38s42

— New York Post (@nypost) November 15, 2021

“Schools are not public forums for advancing personal political views, and per Department of Education regulations, employees are prohibited from using schools for the purpose of political expression,” said Department of Education spokeswoman Katie O’Hanlon.

Is anti-Semitism a serious problem in NYC?

“This principal’s request followed complaints from students and staff and is consistent with policies around political neutrality in schools.”

There’s a question as to whether or not the shirts were in violation of city school regulations.

“School buildings are not public forums for purposes of community or political expression,” Chancellor’s Regulation D-130 reads.

“While on duty or in contact with students, school personnel may not wear buttons, pins, articles of clothing or any other items advocating a candidate, candidates, slate of candidates or political organization/committee.”

Levy argued “Proud Zionist” doesn’t violate that, given that it has nothing to do with political expression or advocating for a candidate — noting in his complaint Zionism is a religious movement in support of the creation and maintenance of the state of Israel.

Watch AOC’s Face as House Approves Funding for Iron Dome System

However, he highlighted in his complaint that, to the extent that it was political, there was a clear double standard at work at MS 51.

“Singh has permitted other staff to wear attire with ‘Black Lives Matter,’ ‘Feminism is the radical idea that women are people,’ ‘Feminist’ and [female Supreme Court justices] ‘O’Connor & Ginsburg & Sotomayor & Kagan,’” his complaint read.

“Singh’s definition of politically explosive attire appears limited to Jews only,” the teacher said.

“None of my attire, actions or beliefs endanger the emotional or physical safety of students or staff, which Singh accused me of … I have conducted myself professionally and have always respected the beliefs of all while doing my job neutrally and without bias … His attempt to threaten and intimidate me is anti-Semitic.”

Both Levy and the group Americans Against Antisemitism — headed by former state Assemblyman Dov Hikind — provided the Post with pictures of some of the shirts worn by other teachers; the Post’s article included one which said “Feminist.”

In a video for Americans Against Antisemitism, one which says “Black Lives Matter” can also be seen.

BREAKING: NYC Public School Teacher’s Job Threatened for Wearing Zionist T-shirt to School

Teachers there wear BLM and other political t-shirts, but only the Zionist was threatened!

I received no response to a letter of inquiry sent to @DOEChancellor https://t.co/asHVg4Q6f4 pic.twitter.com/6en9GMrlaf

— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) November 15, 2021

“How insulting. This is sick. This is pathetic. This is anti-Semitic,” Hikind told the Post regarding Levy’s treatment.

“You can’t say you’re a proud Jew and supportive of the people and the State of Israel?”

Hikind, who is a Democrat, said the city’s Department of Education was “representing the extreme left, the radical wing of the Democratic Party” by having different standards for “Proud Zionist” t-shirts than it did for “Black Lives Matter” T-shirts.

“There should be one standard for all. But this is what’s going on in our city,” Hikind said.

Indeed, this is one of the more unfortunate problems of the de Blasio years in New York City — with anti-Semitic hate crimes up and city hall taking an unusually strong interest in cracking down on Orthodox Jewish communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is only a complaint at the moment, but it’s certainly a complaint that’s entirely believable given the priorities of the city’s leadership.

What gets defined as “politically explosive” only runs one way for the woke, after all — and support for Israel, unfortunately, very much runs that way.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, anti-Israel activist and terrorist lawyer Huwaida Arraf has launched her campaign running for Congress as a Democrat in Michigan’s 10th District. Incumbent congresswoman, Rep. Lisa McClain (R.), told the Free Beacon that “Huwaida Arraf is a Bernie Sanders-style socialist who does not share the views of Michigan’s 10th Congressional District,” adding that “the last thing we need in Congress is another member of the Squad, and that’s exactly who she would align with if elected.”

Arraf has a long and proud history of coming to the aid of anti-Semitic terrorists, including those who have committed vicious acts of terrorism. She has repeatedly used her status as an American citizen to try to protect Palestinian terrorists. In the infamous 2010 Gaza flotilla, “which was aimed at forcing Israel to drop its blockade of goods to the terrorist-controlled Palestinian territory,” Arraf explained that her role was “to put herself forward as an American citizen to dissuade Israeli security from using force to block the ships,” which were loaded with weapons for Hamas, by repeatedly stating that she was aboard an “American flag vessel.” 

Biden Has Taken More ‘Personal Travel’ Days Than Any President in Decades – CNN

The Free Beacon notes that Arraf served on the legal team for Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh who planned a terrorist attack in Jerusalem in 1969 that killed two and injured several others. Arraf helped Odeh fight to maintain her U.S. citizenship, which she received after being released in a prisoner exchange in 1980, but Odeh was deported in 2017. Arraf also aided “armed terrorists who sieged a historic church in Bethlehem and murdered at least one civilian” in 2002. Eager to “shield” the terrorists from the Israeli military, Arraf had her group of “activists” enter the church, and brought the “holed-up” terrorists food and water. 

Arraf is the cofounder of the International Solidarity Movement, “which encourages anti-Israel activists to ‘direct action’ to force confrontations with Israeli forces.” According to the Free Beacon, Arraf justifies Palestinian terrorism, and wrote in a 2002 article, “Palestinian resistance must take on a variety of characteristics, both non-violent and violent.” 

In her tweet launching her campaign, Arraf references her history of being “beaten, shot at, imprisoned, and hijacked at sea standing up to injustice on the global stage,” and adds that she is not afraid to fight. She might not be afraid, but with that introduction and her record, Americans should be. 

Élites unmasked

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) was photographed officiating Ivy Getty’s lavish wedding in San Francisco last week. The photo explains everything you need to know about the Democratic Party. Nearly every important aspect of the party and its voter base is represented.

For example:

1) Millionaires and billionaires

Getty, the great-granddaughter of oil baron J. Paul Getty, is presumed to have inherited several billion dollars after her father, John Gilbert Getty, died in 2020. Her grandfather, Gordon Getty, has helped finance the careers of prominent California Democrats such as Willie Brown, Gavin Newsom, and Pelosi. Billionaires and their wealthy scions tend to be loyal backers of the Democratic Party, whose most generous supporters include George Soros, Walmart heiress Christy Walton, Apple heiress Laurene Powell Jobs, and the Pritzker family, heirs to the Hyatt hotel fortune. J.B. Pritzker was elected governor of Illinois in 2018, and the 2020 Democratic primary featured two billionaires, Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg.

2) Really old career politicians

The top three Democrats in the House of Representatives are octogenarians who have worked in politics almost their entire adult lives. Pelosi, 81, is a Democratic Party scion whose political career began in the early 1960s. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) is 82 and has worked in politics since 1962. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D., S.C.) is 81 and got his start in 1969. President Joe Biden, who will celebrate his 79th birthday later this month, is relatively young and inexperienced by comparison. He didn’t launch his political career until 1970.

3) White guys

The Democratic Party is dominated by college graduates, a demographic that comprises roughly a third of the adult population, and is disproportionately white. Getty’s random white dude husband wouldn’t have to try very hard to find success in the Democratic Party or its affiliate, the media industry, where mediocre white dudes continue to excel. In most cases, they do so while simultaneously denouncing the toxic influence of white men. Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Brian Stelter, Jeffrey Toobin, Andrew Cuomo, the Pod Save America bros, the bald weirdos at the Lincoln Project—the list goes on.

4) Celebrities

Mark Ronson opened for Earth, Wind & Fire, which played at the pre-wedding bash at The Palace of Fine Arts. Hollywood actress Anya-Taylor Joy, daughter of an investment banking tycoon, served as the maid of honor. Guests included pop star Olivia Rodrigo, assorted European royalty, and TikTok celebs, along with gender-bending performance artist Kiki Xtravaganza. As former president Barack Obama has gone out of his way to demonstrate, the ability to hang out with celebrities is one of the main reasons Democratic politicians run for higher office.

5) Anti-Semites

The bride’s dress was covered in shards of broken glass, which may or may not have been an homage to the anniversary of Kristallnacht. The bridal gown and the bridesmaid dresses were designed by British fashion icon John Galliano, who also attended the wedding as a guest. In 2011, he was convicted in a Paris court for making anti-Semitic remarks, which is illegal under French law. “I love Hitler,” Galliano reportedly told a group of Italian women at a café during Paris Fashion Week. “People like you would be dead today. Your mothers, your forefathers would all be f—ing gassed and f—ing dead.” In recent years, the Democratic Party has become a space for anti-Semites.

6) Selectively enforced rules

The wedding took place at San Francisco’s City Hall, which remains closed to the public due to COVID-19. Guests were asked to wear masks during the ceremony, but photos from the multi-day affair reveal that the California Department of Public Health’s recommendation regarding the use of masks indoors was largely ignored. Democratic politicians have routinely ignored such guidance, in some cases blatantly violating state and local mandates that might impede their ability to party with rich donors and celebrities.

There. That’s everything you need to know about the Democratic Party.

https://freebeacon.com/politics/democrats-explained/

Writing for RealClearPolitics, Professor Andrew E. Busch of Claremont McKenna College finds that “one reason for Americans’ increasing political discomfort—the feeling that politics has become a blood sport in which traditional protections and safety nets are no longer present—is that the nonpartisan insulation protecting the rule of law and consent of the governed has frayed. There is a broad pattern of offices that require political neutrality being converted into offices that are genuinely partisan in their operation.”

What, I wonder, was his first clue?

Understandably, Busch concentrates on the most recent examples of this creeping partisanship in places that are supposed to be non-partisan, since the Biden administration represents a quantum leap in the politicization of everything, but especially of the law.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, he writes, “has already used the Justice Department to advance his own party’s version of the stolen-election story by suing to stop state legislative efforts to enhance ballot security, then threatening to sic the FBI on parents who complain to their local school boards about left-wing political indoctrination in the classroom.”

By contrast, Busch praises the non-partisan spirit of former Attorney General William Barr for resigning rather than supporting President Trump’s demand for a thorough investigation of election irregularities.

But then he can’t help noticing the concerted legal efforts by Democratic Attorneys General in swing states last year to change voting laws in order to create those irregularities—and, with them, the opportunities for cheating.

You can see why Busch wants to be even-handed and pretend that the partisan takeover of supposedly non-partisan institutions is coming from both sides, but he can’t quite obscure the fact that the overwhelmingly majority of these efforts have been made—and successfully made, thanks to the compliant media—on behalf of Democrats.

There is nothing like a Republican equivalent, for example, of the partisan takeover of the FBI under James Comey. “The course of the Russia investigation,” writes Busch, “complete with the obvious biases of Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, implied that the bureau had picked sides.”

Implied? Can there be any doubt about which side these and others in the bureau were on? Or which side Robert Mueller and his team were on? If there were any doubt about it, it must have been dispelled by the recent revelations, and indictments, coming out of the John Durham investigation.

Busch might also have mentioned the disparity in federal law-enforcement’s treatment of the Capitol rioters of Jan. 6 as constituting an “insurrection” and its almost complete lack of interest in the hundreds of riots, the billions of dollars in property damage and the many deaths that took place around the country last summer.

You don’t have to be particularly good at spotting “implied” biases to tell that the difference between the two was that the first was in support of Donald Trump, the others opposed to him. And, violently, opposed to the police. But why would we expect the federal police, ostensibly there to uphold the rule of law, to care about that?

Also, as I pointed out last summer in these pages, General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the nation’s armed forces, traditionally our number one non-partisan institution, along with the judiciary, testified before Congress on behalf of the Democratic talking point by asserting on the basis of zero evidence that the Capitol riot was motivated by “white rage.”

Milley is also charged with weeding out of the services those identified by the extreme left as members of the “extremist right.”

But the perspicacious could have picked up hints of the erosion of the “nonpartisan insulation” of key institutions long before 2016.

The politicization of the judiciary, I would argue, began at least as far back as 1987 when a certain Joseph R. Biden, newly appointed chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, put the kibosh on President Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court for transparently political reasons.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who once said of his fellow judges that “we don’t work as Democrats or Republicans,” has gone to heroic lengths to keep up the pretense of non-partisanship in the judiciary, but then he is also the man who, apparently without irony, once called the U.S. Senate  “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

The politicization of the armed services began even earlier. As the late Colin Powell cheerfully put it in 2007, presumably with reference to his own military career, which started in the Vietnam era, “Anybody who becomes a senior officer had better have some political instincts or you’re going to get ground up. We are a political nation. It is not a dirty word.”

What he meant to say, perhaps, was that it is only a dirty word when applied to constitutionally non-political institutions. Like the military.

I understand that he was talking about the internal politics that are inevitable in any large organization, but in the military, whose most senior officers are appointed by civilian (and political) authority, those politics are always bound up with the other kind.

Under President George W. Bush we learned, at least if we were paying attention, of the politicization of the CIA, which regularly briefed the media (anonymously, of course) against their ostensible commander-in-chief.

Under President Barack Obama we learned, even if we weren’t paying much attention, of the politicization of the Department of Justice and the IRS.

And, as everyone now knows, under President Donald Trump we learned of the politicization not only of the FBI and (again) the Justice Department but also of the State Department. All three, while ostensibly serving the President, were actually undermining him.

It should not be necessary to point out that all of these encroachments of the political onto officially non-political territory have been in one direction and one direction only—leftwards. It’s as if there were some law of political inertia analogous to Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics: “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.”

Maybe this is what the progressives mean by saying that they are “on the right side of history,” If so, it means that the rest of us, who still treasure what we think is our right to be non-political, must be on the wrong side of history.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/americans-discomfort-non-political-offices-have-rushed-to-become-left-wing-partisans_4101401.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram