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June 2021

Biden administration turns to UNRWA in its rush to rebuild Gaza David Isaac

https://www.jns.org/the-biden-administration-turns-to-unrwa-in-its-rush-to-rebuild-g

“UNRWA is a very problematic organization. It is fully controlled by Hamas. Hamas uses the facilities of UNRWA for weapons storage and to launch rockets. All of the local employees of UNRWA are Hamas people. Nobody’s allowed to work in UNRWA without the permission of Hamas,” said Kobi Michael, senior researcher at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies.

Following the recent war between Israel and Hamas, the Biden administration has put an emphasis on rebuilding the Gaza Strip, promising the terror group won’t benefit. Some experts say Washington’s approach will fail to bear fruit.

Rebuilding Gaza was the first agenda item U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken mentioned when he met Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid in Rome on Sunday. It’s a recurring theme for Blinken, who brought up reconstruction of Gaza at every stop during his two-day visit to the Middle East in late May, days after the last bombs fell in “Operation Guardian of the Walls.” He stressed that rebuilding Gaza must be done in such a way that Hamas, which runs the coastal enclave, won’t redirect the aid to its military effort.

Blinken was echoing President Joe Biden, who shortly before a May 21 ceasefire said the U.S. would seek to quickly rebuild Gaza “in a manner that does not permit Hamas to simply restock its military arsenal.”

The administration is funneling money to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In April, it had announced it was restoring $150 million to the U.N. agency. Following the Gaza conflict, Blinken said the U.S. would inject almost $33 million for “UNRWA’s emergency humanitarian appeal,” again ensuring “Hamas does not benefit from these reconstruction efforts.”

Asaf Romirowsky, executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, who has studied UNRWA for two decades, said, “UNRWA is a case study of the client hijacking the service provider because the majority of UNRWA employees are Palestinians.” (UNRWA employs 28,000 Palestinian staff members, according to its website.)

Biden’s Baking an Orwellian Upside-Down Cake of Taxes and Entitlements By Lawrence Kudlow KUDLOW,

https://www.nysun.com/national/bidens-baking-an-orwellian-upside-down-cake/91557/

It’s bad enough that President Biden and the Democratic congressional leaders essentially double-crossed the GOP bipartisan infrastructure package including the democrats who participated, And it’s really bad that Speaker Pelosi & Co. are holding the infrastructure package hostage, to a tsunami of tax hikes and massive entitlement increases all of which will do great damage to the economy.

Now, though, President Biden is now comparing his multi-trillion dollar boatload of new entitlements to tax cuts. It’s an Orwellian upside-down-cake. Here’s what the President said:

“I think it’s time to give ordinary people a tax break … Why is this not a tax break for working folks when the stuff we give to the super wealthy are called tax breaks? Look, major action on clean energy, housing, caregiving, on child and paid leave, universal pre-k, free community college. The human infrastructure is intertwined with our physical infrastructure.”

Huh? They’re not tax cuts. They’re spending. Permanent spending. Remember what the great Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman said. “Keep your eye on one thing and one thing only: how much government is spending, because that’s the true tax …”

And Mr. Biden wants government cash payments without any work qualifications or other employment incentives. They are middle class entitlements.

If you have a moment take a look at today’s Wall Street Journal editorial: “It’s the Entitlements, Stupid.” Then if you have a moment more, read the op-ed piece from my old friend and Reagan budget office colleague John Cogan entitled “Biden’s plan for an entitlement society.”

Cut Off the Blood Supply to China’s Communist Party: End Trade by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17512/end-china-trade

The real problem for Beijing is that consumption, the only sustainable part of the Chinese economy, looks far softer than officially reported, something evident from the widely followed China Beige Book survey. Spending will not fully recover until the coronavirus pandemic passes, and that is unlikely to happen soon due to China’s barely effective vaccines.

In any event, Washington must begin enforcing laws, especially those banning the importation of products made with forced or slave labor.

Japan’s Uniqlo is not the only brand that has been implicated. Nike and Apple have, through subcontractors, apparently used such labor. Enforcement has been hampered by, among other things, lack of personnel and a failure of political will.

The larger goal has to be an ending of trade relations with China. “Because the threat posed by China to the United States results from its hostile system and includes economic, technological, and military dimensions, only systemic, not piecemeal, responses can possibly protect critical U.S. interests,” Washington, D.C.-based trade expert Alan Tonelson tells Gatestone. “Sanctions against individuals or companies will inevitably produce only pinprick effects, and even these are easily nullified with shell game corporate renamings and personnel changes.”

“I want to be clear on this, our goal is not to hold China back,” said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a June 25 interview with Anne Claire Coudray of TF1. “It is not to establish a policy against China.”

Really? The Chinese regime spread a disease that has at last count killed 604,000 Americans; last year it urged the violent overthrow of the American government; it is killing tens of thousands of Americans annually with fentanyl and related opioids; and it steals half a trillion dollars of American intellectual property every 12 months. It has even declared a “people’s war” on America.

Majority of Voters Reject Teaching Children That America Is ‘Structurally Racist’: Harvard Poll By GQ Pan

https://www.theepochtimes.com/majority-of-voters-reject-teaching-children-that-

About two-thirds of Americans believe that children should not be taught in school the claim that the United States is a “structurally racist” nation dominated by white supremacy, a new poll revealed.

The findings were published last week as part of an online survey (pdf) conducted by the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and The Harris Poll between June 15 and 17, among 2,006 registered voters. The survey asked participants whether they “believe that kids in elementary school should be taught that America is structurally racist and is dominated by white supremacy.”

In response, 61 percent of participants answered children “should not be taught this,” while the remaining 39 percent said children “should be taught that America is structurally racist.”

When it came to another question regarding the teaching of the First Amendment in schools, an overwhelming 81 percent of participants said elementary school students should learn about the First Amendment and the importance of free speech, compared to 19 percent who said they should not.

The results of the survey echoed those of an online poll conducted by Economist and YouGov poll between June 13 and 15, among 1,500 adult U.S. citizens. Participants were asked if they had “a good idea of what critical race theory (CRT) is,” to which 54 percent responded “yes,” 23 percent said “no,” and 23 percent said they are “not sure.”

Those who said they knew about CRT were then asked whether they have a “favorable or unfavorable” opinion of it. Of these participants, 58 percent said they at least have a “somewhat unfavorable” view of CRT, while 38 percent say they are in favor of the Marxism-rooted ideology, which deems the foundations of the American system to be inherently and irredeemably racist.

The False Claim That ‘Muslims Are Being Lynched in India’ And how and why the truth is being kept from you. Ashlyn Davis

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/false-claim-muslims-are-being-lynched-india-ashlyn-davis/

We received an interesting reply to one of our articles yesterday. When we reported about the Muslim preacher Mohammad Umar Gautam, who has been arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terror Squad for running a religious conversion outlet, one Twitter user claimed, “They are already lynching Muslims on streets with impunity, don’t make their situation worse.” 

We found it incongruous that in a country where a Muslim preacher, supported by politicians and industrialists, openly holds congregations to convert non-Muslims to Islam, Muslims are being lynched on the streets, and that, too, with impunity. But we believe in giving a fair chance to all claims and so did some research, and this is what we found.

In 2017, a Muslim man, Pehlu Khan, was attacked under the suspicion of cow theft, and succumbed to his injuries. The incident got immediate judicial attention; the accused were detained by the police and then-Home Minister Rajnath Singh assured justice. Crimes cannot be obliterated from a country of over 1.3 billion. But to contend that the crime against the Muslim was committed with impunity is a shameless stretch of the truth in order to claim eternal victimhood.

This is the dear and treasured victimhood status that many Muslims have been unremittingly exploiting throughout Narendra Modi’s tenure as Prime Minister. Nurturing their deep-seated hatred for Hindus, they have now prefixed their favorite hyperbolic claim, “lynched for being a Muslim” with “forced to chant Jai Shree Ram,” in order to satiate their occasional cravings for affronting Hindu sentiments.

We have previously detailed how, earlier this month, the Muslim intelligentsia, comprising Muslim media personalities, politicians and political influencers, distorted the Muslim-on-Muslim violence in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad into an assault on a Muslim by Hindu extremists. This venomous cabal has mastered the art of coming up with false and deceptive claims of “hate crimes” every time a Muslim is victimized, regardless of the faith of his offender or the cause of the attack. Hinduphobic media houses and assorted websites have repeatedly latched onto such stories, ensuring they reach every corner of the world, but have done nothing to negate the impact of the misinformation after investigations revealed these to be warped narratives and that no hate crime was involved.

Pro-Palestinian Jew-Hate in Europe A continent lacks the courage to take a stand. Joseph Puder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/pro-palestinian-anti-semitism-europe-joseph-puder/

Violent anti-Semitic eruptions in Europe following the outburst of hostilities between the Gaza-based Hamas terrorists and Israel have become common and repeated occurrences. The European governments have done little to prevent the largely Muslim and some local anti-Semites from initiating violence against European Jews. It is particularly true of the German government and its leader, Angela Merkel. Chancellor Merkel invited over a million migrants into Germany, mostly Muslims from the Middle East and Africa. Their inculcated hatred for Israel and Jews has resulted in the desecration of Jewish cemeteries, Holocaust memorials, and attacks on synagogues. To assuage Jewish concerns, Merkel and the German government pay lip-service to the unacceptability of anti-Semitism in Germany due to Germany’s role in perpetrating the Holocaust in which Six Million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany. In reality, few of the perpetrators are punished, and certainly not with long prison terms or deportation. 

The New York Times reported (May 19, 2021) that rocks were thrown at doors of a Synagogue in Bonn. Israeli flags were burned outside a synagogue in Munster. Pro-Palestinian rallies took place in Berlin, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, and Leipzig. “In Germany, where historical memory runs especially deep because of the Holocaust, pro-Palestinian rallies have been held in cities across the west of the country and in the capital, Berlin. Several have descended into violence, including anti-Semitic chants, calls for violence against Israel, desecration of memorials to Holocaust victims, and attacks on at least two synagogues.”

The German Interior Minister Horst Seehoffer threatened to crackdown on anti-Semitism at pro-Palestinian protests. He stated, “We will not tolerate the burning of Israeli flags on German soil and attacks on Jewish facilities.” He added, “Anyone who spreads anti-Semitic hatred will feel the full force of the law.” We have heard these immaterialized threats before, but then, political correctness appears to cause German officials to fold rather than deal forcibly with violent Muslims, many of them new migrants. European White Guilt, particularly toward Third World people, accompanied by the loss of national pride, and the will to defend its own traditional values, is allowing a violent minority to perpetuate anti-Semitic violence.

Something is Sinking, and It’s Not Just the Dead Sea Fake News and Jew-Hate in Europe and the Media by Naomi Linder Kahn

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17511/fake-news-jew-hate

The Palestinian Authority (PA) uses European funding to cultivate more and bigger tracts of Israeli state land every year, a well-known… loophole in the Ottoman Land Law (still in force in these territories) that grants rights to anyone who uses land for agricultural purposes for a period of several years, whether they own it or not.

[T]he question should be, how was this water allocation determined, and how are the actual water needs of this population determined? …. [H]ow much water does each Palestinian in this region need, and how many people are we talking about?

The PA invests untold millions of European taxpayer-funded “humanitarian aid” to initiate massive, unsustainable agricultural projects in desert areas under Israeli jurisdiction… to take control, physically, of ever-expanding swaths of territory. It goes to tremendous lengths to pad “population statistics” — allowing people born abroad who have never set foot in the Middle East to register as residents… failing to remove deceased persons from the rolls, and double-counting people who live in other areas.

The allocation of water to Palestinian residents under Israeli jurisdiction was determined in the framework of the Oslo Accords according to population size. Simply put, there would be no water crisis if Europe and the PA would not have orchestrated a large-scale migration of people…. for political purposes.

Israel provides approximately 70 million cubic meters (MCM) per year of water to the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) alone… even though the Water Agreement signed in the Oslo framework allocates a much smaller quantity of only 23.6 MCM/year…. If the PA so desired, the residents of the “village” of Kardala could easily be living in Bardala and enjoying sufficient water supplies.

Similarly, the housing needs of all Palestinians currently living in illegal structures on Israeli state land throughout Area C [under Israeli jurisdiction] could easily be met if the PA invested its resources in development and construction in [the Arab jurisdiction] areas A and B — where there is no threat of demolition, confiscation of equipment or materials, and no need for Israeli permits.

[O]ver 60% of land resources under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction remain available. Rather than using its resources to improve the lives of its people, the PA instead chooses to divert all its resources into illegal, politically motivated projects that are designed to wrest control of as much land as possible away from Israeli jurisdiction.

Agenda-driven journalism is not journalism. It is propaganda….

The recently-aired episode of ABC Australia’s “Foreign Correspondent” program, titled “The Sinking Sea,” presents visually stunning images that convey a sense of loss of a major geographic feature of the Middle Eastern landscape. The video documentary by Eric Tlozek, ABC’s outgoing Middle East correspondent, focuses on the demise of the Dead Sea caused by the diminished supply of its tributary waters.

Ivy League University Teaches Class Claiming that Black Holes are Tied to Racism By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/28/ivy-league-university-teaches-class-claiming-that-black-holes-are-tied-to-racism/

Cornell University, one of the elite Ivy League schools, is introducing a new astronomy class that claims there are “connections between the cosmos and the idea of racial blackness,” according to the Daily Caller.

The class is called “Black Holes: Race and the Cosmos,” and will focus on the work of “theorists [who] use astronomy concepts like ‘black holes’ and ‘event horizons’ to interpret the history of race in creative ways.” At the same time, the class will address “artists and musicians [who] conjure blackness through cosmological themes and images.”

Despite its explicit focus on race, the class will still count towards Cornell students’ science requirement in their general education classes. According to the class’s official description on Cornell’s website, the course “will introduce students to the fundamentals of astronomy concepts through readings in Black Studies.”

The course’s introduction is the latest blow to the integrity and credibility of Cornell’s astronomy department. The university had previously announced that applicants for the astronomy graduate program will no longer have to submit their scores on the physics GRE, as minority students were more likely to get poorer grades on the exam than White students.

Did Cops Attack and Provoke Peaceful Protesters on January 6? Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/28/did-cops-attack-and-provoke-peaceful-protesters-on-january-6/

If the American people deserve the truth about an “attack on our democracy” then they deserve the truth about the way law enforcement handled the crowd on January 6. Release the tapes.

Joe Biden’s Justice Department is using every legal maneuver at its disposal to keep under wraps more than 14,000 hours of surveillance footage captured by the United States Capitol Police security system on January 6. Prosecutors insist the recordings are “highly sensitive” material; USCP’s general counsel warns that releasing the videos would provoke another “attack” on the Capitol complex.

But the trove of footage held by USCP isn’t the only video used as incriminating evidence in court proceedings, particularly hearings where prosecutors argue that a January 6 defendant should remain behind bars awaiting trial. The Justice Department also has footage recorded by body cameras worn by D.C. Metropolitan Police officers. (According to the USCP’s general counsel, Capitol police officers don’t wear body cameras. Interesting.)

Federal prosecutors routinely petition the court for pre-trial detention of January 6 defendants; judges have concurred in dozens of cases. Proof that the accused is a “danger” to society largely rests on cherry-picked video clips created by the government from video footage exclusively held by the government.

After news organizations complained their reporters could not see the clips during virtual court hearings, Beryl Howell, the chief judge of the D.C. District Court handling each one of the 500 or so Capitol breach cases, set up a way for journalists to access video evidence on a case-by-case basis.

The Justice Department now is using that ruling to perpetuate the idea that law enforcement officials were savagely attacked by bloodthirsty Trump “insurrectionists” on January 6. Earlier this month, the agency released a brief clip of a former New York City police officer angrily confronting a D.C. cop at around 2:30 p.m. on January 6. CNN, which obtained the clip, described the 56-second video as “horrifying.”

Thomas Webster, a decorated Marine and ex-NYPD officer with no criminal record, was arrested in February and charged with seven counts including assaulting the officer with a flag pole that was attached to his U.S. Marine Corps flag. (He did not hit the officer with the pole.) He’s been behind bars ever since.

Suck It, Liberals: Manhattan DA Isn’t Filing Charges Against Trump Matt Vespa

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/06/28/suck-it-liberals-manhattan-da-isnt-filing-charges-against-trump-n2591724

The media and the Democrats have attacked him so much, lobbed so many conspiracy theories, and propped up so many shoddy legal inquiries into Donald Trump and his entities that it’s hard to keep up. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance had been looking into the Trump Organization for months. The Left thought this would be it. The Left hoped this would be it, that Donald Trump would be charged over fraud allegations. Not the case. Don is still Teflon. Vance is not going to charge the former president and liberal America is going to lose it. Even out of office, Trump still owns the Left (via Politico):

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance has indicated he does not currently plan to charge the Trump Organization with crimes related to allegations of “hush money” payments and real estate value manipulations, according to a personal lawyer for Donald Trump.

Ronald Fischetti, a New York attorney who represents the former president, said on Monday that in a meeting last week, he asked Vance’s team for details on charges they were considering.

According to Fischetti, members of Vance’s team said they were considering bringing charges against the Trump Organization and its individual employees related to alleged failures to pay taxes on corporate benefits and perks. It has been widely reported that those perks included cars and apartments and appear to only involve a small number of executives.

“We asked, ‘Is there anything else?’” Fischetti told POLITICO. “They said, ‘No.’”

“It’s crazy that that’s all they had,” he added.