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November 2021

The Palestinian Jihad against Jews by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17958/palestinian-jihad-jews

If Palestinian leaders believe that Jews are not entitled to their holiest site, the Temple Mount, and that Jerusalem belongs only to Muslims and Christians, how can they talk about establishing a Palestinian state that would exist in peace and security next to Israel?

Western donors seem not to understand that the refusal by Palestinian leaders to recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people remains a major obstacle to peace and the “two-state solution.”

“We categorically reject the Jewish state,” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has stated on more than one occasion. “We will not backtrack on this matter.”

On the eve of the meeting of the donor countries, PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh reminded Palestinians that there is no such thing as Jewish history in Jerusalem…. “Jerusalem has Canaanite, Roman, Islamic, and Christian antiquities, and no one else has any traces in it.”

This is the same Shtayyeh who days earlier told foreign journalists in Ramallah that the Palestinians have no problem with Jews.

Perhaps Shtayyeh thought that his remarks in Arabic during the PA cabinet meeting would not be translated or noticed by non-Arabic speakers.

On the same day the Western donors were meeting in Norway, the PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement saying that the Palestinians oppose visits to the Temple Mount by Jewish students.

The Norwegian foreign minister and the donor countries should have taken note of what Palestinian leaders are telling their people and the rest of the Arabs and Muslims about Israel and Jewish history. Had they paid attention to the words of the Palestinian leaders, they would have realized why it is impossible to achieve peace between the Palestinians and Israel at a time when the PA is openly saying that Jews have no right to live in their own homeland.

Western donors might wish to consider this Judenrein type of Palestinian anti-Semitism and incitement against Israel and Jews the next time they open their wallets to the PA.

As representatives of donor countries were meeting in Norway on November 17 to discuss providing financial aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA), Palestinian leaders were busy doing what they have perfected: denying Jewish history and inciting their people against Israel.

Denial of Jewish history and the delegitimization of Israel have long been an integral and major part of the rhetoric of Palestinian leaders and the Palestinian narrative. In the world of the Palestinians, Jews have no history in Jerusalem; they have never lived there, and the Jewish Temples never existed.

Suspect in Waukesha Christmas Parade Attack Identified By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/21/suspect-in-waukesha-christmas-parade-attack-identified/

A black male with a lengthy criminal rap sheet is in police custody in Waukesha, Wisconsin,  after an SUV plowed into Christmas parade on Sunday, resulting in multiple fatalities, and more than 20 people injured.

At least eleven adults and twelve children were transported to six area hospitals following the horrific vehicular attack.

According to Sandra Peterson, the communication director for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee,  a Catholic priest, multiple parishioners and Waukesha Catholic school children, were among the injured.

“Please join us in prayer for all those involved, their families, and those who are traumatized from witnessing the horrible scene,” Peterson said in a statement.

The suspect, Darrell E. Brooks, 39, is a registered sex offender, who was arrested several weeks ago for multiple felonies and misdemeanors, including domestic abuse, resisting or obstructing an officer, jumping bail, disorderly conduct, and battery, according to Wisconsin Circuit Court records.

The New Blue Confederacy  How did the New North become the Old South, and the New South the Old North? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/21/the-new-blue-confederacy/

Why are progressive regions of the country—especially in the old major liberal cities (e.g., Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle)—institutionalizing de facto racial quotas through “proportional representation” based on “disparate impact”? Why are they promoting ethnic and racial chauvinism, such as allowing college students to select the race of their own roommates, calibrating graduation ceremonies by skin color and tribe, segregating campus “safe spaces” by race, and banning literature that does not meet commissariat diktats?

Why are they turning into one-party political fiefdoms separating the rich and poor, increasingly resembling feudal societies as members of the middle class flee or disappear? What does it mean that they are becoming more and more intolerant in their cancel culture, and quasi-religious intolerance of dissent, on issues from climate change and abortion-on-demand to critical race theory and wokeness?

Isn’t it strange that there are entire states and regions wholly reliant on the money and power of “one-crop” Big Tech monopolies? And why, in the 21st century no less, are Democratic-controlled counties, cities, and entire states nullifying federal law?

In archetypical “states’ rights” fashion, blue-state “sanctuary cities” are as defiant of the federal government as the Old South was when it claimed immunity from federal jurisdiction—all the way from the nullification crisis of 1830-1833 to George Wallace in 1963 blocking the door at the University of Alabama.

Ask yourself: in the decades following the conclusion of the Civil War in April 1865, how might the reunited American public have answered the following hypothetical questions:

One-hundred-fifty-six years from now, in the year 2021, where in the United States will Americans most likely discriminate on the basis of race?

Where will citizens squabble over the racial percentages of ancestral bloodlines, and schools admit or reject students in part on the DNA of an applicant?

Where will free speech and expression become most endangered?

Where will states’ rights boosters deny federal officers the right to enforce federal law?

Where will the major cities be the most unsafe and the middle classes the most embattled? And from which regions of the country will people flee, and to which will they migrate?

Of course, in the century-and-a-half since the end of the Civil War, we have become in a certain sense a homogenizing country. Gender studies programs at, say, the University of Texas are not that much different from those at Yale. The same types of homeless are found in downtown Atlanta as well as in San Francisco.

Did Merrick Garland Commit Perjury? By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/11/did-merrick-garland-commit-perjury/

A ttorney General Merrick Garland has been shamefully disingenuous, with the public and Congress, regarding his mobilization of the FBI — under the guise of a nonexistent spate of violent attacks on public-school administrators — to harass and intimidate parents who are protesting against progressive indoctrination of their children. Garland’s October 4 memo on this subject was obviously the result of a Biden administration political gambit, in which the White House recruited progressive operatives of a school-board association to collaborate on a letter to the president, almost immediately after which Garland issued the memo that directed the FBI and U.S. attorneys’ offices to conduct investigations the federal government has no business conducting.

But did Garland go beyond the usual bobbing and weaving when confronted by Congress on the Biden administration’s threats? Did he commit perjury when he insisted that the government has not and would not employ anti-terrorism investigative measures against America’s parents?

Well, it depends on the meaning of “threat tag.”

In a letter to the attorney general on Tuesday, Congressman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican, recounts Garland’s congressional testimony to the effect that the Justice Department and the FBI were not — as Jordan put it — “using counterterrorism statutes and resources to target concerned parents at school board meetings.” Jordan then quotes Garland’s assertion that he could not “imagine any circumstance in which the Patriot Act would be used in the circumstances of parents complaining about their children, nor . . . a circumstance where they would be labeled domestic terrorists.”

By alluding to the Patriot Act here, the attorney general was referring to a set of investigative techniques that the FBI and Justice Department attorneys are permitted to use in counterterrorism investigations. Initially enacted 20 years ago, right after the 9/11 attacks, the Patriot Act empowers the FBI’s national-security agents to use many of the same tools that have long been available to the bureau’s criminal investigators — on analogous terms, which reflect that the principal task of the FBI’s National Security Branch (which used to be referred to as its Foreign Counterintelligence Division) is to safeguard the nation from the plots and machinations of terrorists and hostile foreign agents, not to investigate and prosecute criminal offenses.

China Loses Control of the Peng Shuai Narrative as the World Demands Answers: Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/11/21/china-loses-control-of-the-peng-shuai-narrative-as-the-world-demands-answers-n1535039

Peng Shuai, a world-class tennis player and Grand Slam doubles champion, is in the custody of the Chinese Communist government, and the world is demanding to know where she is.

Peng made serious and credible allegations of sexual assault against a high-ranking Chinese government official. The assault allegedly occurred three years ago. The online accusation was scrubbed, Peng was seized, and no one, except Communist lackeys in their state-controlled media, has seen or heard from her since she disappeared two weeks ago.

Nothing is guaranteed to make the Chinese Communists angrier than criticism of their policy of stifling internal dissent. Now, the entire world — not just the tennis community — has rallied to Peng’s cause.

The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) has promised to cancel all upcoming tournaments in China unless the Chinese show the world proof of life — and health. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is also mulling its options. China is scheduled to host the Winter Olympics this February and, while it’s extremely unlikely they would pull the event from Beijing, some kind of sanctions against Chinese athletes may be in the offing.

“If that’s not resolved in a sensible way very soon, it may spin out of control,” one IOC member told Reuters on Friday “Whether that escalates to a cessation of the Olympic Games, I doubt it. But you never know.”

Clearly, China has lost control of the narrative about Peng and will have a very difficult time maintaining its story. And if this is the best they have, they’re going to need some help.

Couple Flogged Publicly for Extramarital Affair in Sharia-Compliant Indonesia Crowds gathered to watch with great enthusiasm. Ashlyn Davis

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/couple-flogged-publicly-extramarital-affair-sharia-ashlyn-davis/

A man and a woman in Indonesia’s Banda Aceh city, on Wednesday, November 10, were given 17 lashes publicly for having an extramarital affair, which is a moral offense as per Sharia, which is enforced in the city. The man and the woman were individually brought into the area, which is features a gallery with rows of seats arranged to accommodate an audience that can witness this punishment. The accused were made to bow and then taken to a red carpet for the execution of the punishment. The Algojo, a Sharia police officer designated to carry out corporal punishments, dressed from head to toe in a brown robe with a white stripe running across it, with just two holes for his eyes, chose from three canes provided to strike the offenders.

The audience in the gallery was recording the punishment session. The woman was covered in a while burqa and wore a face mask for Covid-19 protocols. However, she dropped on the floor after being struck a few times, and was attended by the policemen and women standing nearby. The man, on the other hand, stood straight looking at the audience during his turn.

Though flogging is not an accepted means of punishment in Indonesia, it is still practiced widely and routinely in the ultra-conservative province Aceh; Banda Aceh is the capital city of Aceh. The province had been suffering from a separatist insurgency for many years. To quell the political unrest, the central government of Indonesia in 2001 granted Aceh provincial status. It was during this time that Aceh adopted the Islamic law of Sharia as the governing law of the province. Sharia would be implemented for any “crime” for which there was no provision in the secular penal code, for actions that went against the rules of Islam.

Any moral offense, such as like homosexuality, gambling, drinking alcohol, closeness between people of the opposite gender if not related or married, or public display of affection is eligible to be tried under Sharia.

Though in 2018, the Aceh Provincial Government in Indonesia decided to cease public flogging and both men and women sentenced to flogging would receive their punishment within the four walls of a prison, flogging in full public view continues to be practiced, and people gather to witness this brutality with great enthusiasm as well.

The disappearance of Peng Shuai By Rajan Laad

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/the_disappearance_of_peng_shuai.html

On November 2,  Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai in a Weibo post alleged that former Vice-President Zhang Gaoli had sexually assaulted her when they were in a relationship. Weibo is China’s state-run social media platform. Peng Shuai, 35, has won two Grand Slam women’s doubles titles, the first was at Wimbledon in 2013 and the second at the Roland Garros tournament in 2001. Zhang, 75, served as China’s Vice-President between 2013 and 2018 and is supposed to be a close ally of Chinese President Xi.

Peng Shuai claimed the intermittent affair with Zhang continued for years and on occasions the sex was consensual. She also acknowledged that she had no audio or video proof to back up her claims.

The post was removed twenty minutes later. Shuai has not been seen in public since then.

On November 14, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Chairman and CEO Steve Simon said in a statement that they were still unable to establish contact with Shuai despite multiple attempts.

Fellow tennis players such as Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams also raised concerns.

Iran and Hezbollah in Colombia by Joseph M. Humire

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17957/colombia-iran-hezbollah

The long arm of Iranian terror reaches Colombia.

Some Colombian pundits and politicians… refer to Iran as a normal democratic nation looking to engage in trade and diplomacy… instead of as an Islamist revolutionary regime that uses terrorism as part of its foreign policy.

Crime and corruption are Iran and Hezbollah’s bread and butter… Look no further than Lebanon and its raging economic crisis to see how Hezbollah exacerbated crime and corruption to gain control over the government.

On May 2… a Spanish account of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei kicked off the disinformation campaign in Colombia with a tweet calling Soleimani a “martyr.” After that, within three weeks, the #Soleimani hashtag was used in Colombia more than 8,000 times, tying it to more popular hashtags…. to portray Soleimani as a figure that fought against injustice.

Part of the process of evaluating whether Iran and Hezbollah are enemies is to recognize how these actors operate around the world and then educate the public as to what they are doing in your country. In doing so, rather than creating an “enemy,” you are helping your country to be more aware of one of the largest threats worldwide to stability and peace.

In late June, Colombian authorities neutralized a possible Iranian-backed assassination plot in Bogota that could have killed two Israeli businessmen on Colombian territory. The plot, which began to unravel in April, involved an Iranian operative, Rahmat Asadi, who allegedly recruited two Colombian cutouts to carry out the operation.

Thankfully, the assassination plot was thwarted, but it shows that the long arm of Iranian terror reaches Colombia.

Israeli Tourist Couple Freed After 8 days of Illegal Detention by Turkey Another example of Turkish hostage diplomacy? Ari Lieberman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/israeli-tourist-couple-freed-after-8-days-illegal-ari-lieberman/

An Israeli couple, illegally detained for eight days by Turkish authorities on spurious charges of espionage and spying, was released yesterday and returned to Israel following intense back-channel diplomatic efforts to free them. Their detention highlights the extent to which Turkey, under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has descended into a moral abyss with arbitrary arrests and detention being the norm rather than an aberration. 

The saga involving the couple – Mordy and Natalie Oknin – began late last week when they were arrested by Turkish police ostensibly for taking photos of Erdogan’s Istanbul palace. Their guide was also arrested. The couple – both employees of the Israeli Egged bus company – claimed that they were unaware of the prohibition on taking photos but irrespective, the subject area, which is a common tourist attraction, had been photographed thousands of times in the past by thousands of tourists.

Cognizant of the minimal nature of the transgression, Turkish police were originally inclined to releasing the two and deporting them from the country. Even that action would have been draconian but what occurred next appeared to be taken from a chapter straight out of Orwell’s 1984. Turkish prosecutors, almost certainly acting on orders from higher political echelons, elected to charge the pair with “political and military espionage,” prompting the notoriously corrupt Turkish judiciary to extend their detention by at least 20 days.

At that stage, Israeli officials still hoped that the issue would be resolved swiftly because no high-level Turkish official publicly addressed the matter. Hopes were quickly dashed, however, when to Israel’s dismay, Turkey’s interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, called the Israelis spies. 

Frontpage Editor Jamie Glazov Permanently Suspended From Twitter Off to the Gulag for violating the Bolshevik One-Party Line.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/my-permanent-suspension-twitter-jamie-glazov/

Editors’ note: Below is Frontpage Editor Jamie Glazov’s explanation of his recent permanent suspension from Twitter:

On Thursday morning, Nov. 18, 2021, at 2:39am Pacific, Twitter informed me that my Twitter account had been permanently suspended. The reason they gave me was that I had violated Twitter’s “COVID-19 Misleading Information Policy.”

The offending article they cited that I had posted was Pfizer Confirms COVID-Vaccinated People Can ‘Shed’ Spike Proteins And Harm The Unvaccinated – from vaccinesafety.info. The article is factual and backed up by verified and credible sources. Twitter gave me zero information on what exactly is misleading in the article.

This permanent suspension is a culmination of a long history of Twitter punishing me for violating their leftist One-Party line. Just recently, for instance, on Oct. 25, 2021, Twitter informed me that they had locked me out of my account because I had violated their “rules against hateful conduct.”

My “hateful conduct” involved me entering the discussion over Twitter suspending Rep. Jim Banks’ Twitter account because he had called Dr. Rachel Levine, the transgender Assistant Health and Human Services Secretary, a “man.”

I tweeted the story with an honest question that was on my mind: Does it matter if Rachel has a penis or not? I honestly thought — and continue to think — that this is a legitimate question in the context of Rep. Banks’ punishment.

I was subsequently informed that I had to delete the Tweet in order to get my account back. I decided to delete it – so that I could return and continue to ask many similar questions.