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August 2023

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Security group to IDF: Take tougher stand against refusal to serve David Isaac

By on August 17th, 2023

https://www.jns.org/israel-news/idf/23/8/14/310395/

An interview with Israel Defense and Security Forum CEO IDF Brig. Gen. (res.) Amir Avivi.

The issue of Israel Defense Force reservists refusing to serve for political reasons again made headlines on Sunday, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoning for an “urgent” meeting the heads of Israel’s security establishment for an overview of the military’s operational readiness.

The meeting was sparked by an earlier one on Friday led by Israeli Air Force commander Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar, who told a group of pilots and officers that the damage the country’s political turmoil is doing to military preparedness will grow “deeper and deeper as time goes by.”

Those refusing to serve are protesting against the government’s judicial reform effort. They say the plan will turn Israel into a dictatorship and that they are therefore justified in taking extreme measures, including breaking a long held, unspoken rule that politics and the military don’t mix.

Opponents say the current political situation is no excuse for overturning that understanding and that doing so undermines military cohesiveness. Once politics enters the army, they warn, there will be constant friction as there always will be some group unhappy about one or another government policy.

Some say the IDF has treated the refusal phenomenon with kid gloves and have allowed it to gain momentum by not speaking loudly enough against it.

The Israel Defense and Security Forum, a group comprising thousands of former security officers, has pulled together former chiefs-of-staff from both sides of the political spectrum to condemn refusals.

IDSF’s CEO and founder Brig. Gen. (res.) Amir Avivi recently spoke with JNS.

Q: What is your message to the IDF?

A: We have been talking extensively to the army and the chief of staff. Everybody agrees: This phenomenon in which people don’t volunteer, carry out insubordination, even to a certain extent mutiny—at the end of the day, it endangers Israel. It endangers our deterrence. It endangers our readiness.

We asked a simple question. These people who are doing all of this: Who are they? Are they tragic heroes? Or are they people who’ve lost sight of basic values and are undermining the army? And we’re saying to the army: The way you’re handling this, it seems that these people are being portrayed as tragic heroes.

We think that the army should have been crystal clear: Somebody who undermines the army’s deterrence, the cohesiveness of the army—a hero he is not.

I would have expected the chief of staff from day one to say this is something we’re not willing to accept. It’s politicizing the army. Anyone who politicizes the army is doing harm. It goes completely against our values. It’s terrible and it’s hurting us.

Q: Why does the army seem to have such a hard time saying that?

A: Take a real-world example. There’s an Air Force guy who’s 61 years old. He’s been volunteering for two decades at Air Force headquarters. He’s extremely experienced. He’s somebody who has been there since the age of 18. He announces he won’t volunteer anymore. What do you say to him? The army can’t say ‘you have no values.’”

Q: Couldn’t the army show compassion one-on-one and still condemn the phenomenon in public?

A: When I was a young platoon commander taking my first steps as a leader, the first thing I learned is the difference between what happens when you stand in front of the whole platoon and what happens when you stand before one soldier. Before the group, you have to be strong and tough and clear. Before an individual, you really need to be able to speak heart-to-heart and connect. So what you’re saying is true. You can do both. You can be empathetic and show appreciation on a personal level. But you must be emphatic in front of the whole unit, or the public. You must be very clear about values.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Can it happen here? The lessons of Europe’s red-green antisemitic surge Jonathan Tobin

By on August 17th, 2023

https://www.jns.org/antisemitism/european-antisemitism/23/8/16/311333/?_se=Y

America isn’t Europe. That’s the key thing to bear in mind when reading the Anti-Defamation League’s sobering report on “Antisemitism and Radical Anti-Israel Bias on the Political Left in Europe,” published last week.

Some parallels can be drawn between the way a bizarre and troubling red-green alliance between leftist elites and Muslim immigrants has mainstreamed antisemitism in Europe and the growing influence of the intersectional left in the United States with the same aims. Americans should be paying close attention to the rising tide of Jew-hatred on the other side of the Atlantic and seeking to learn from it. But it’s important to remember the big differences between the two situations. More than that, the ADL’s policy recommendations stemming from its research don’t adequately alert Americans to the forces that are working toward the same dismal surge in antisemitism.

The first thing to recognize about this subject is that antisemitism is not an integral part of the history or the official policies of the United States, unlike the nations of the Old World. Equally true, the majority of Americans are likelier to be philo-semitic and pro-Israel in numbers that are not to be found in Europe. Still, important lessons may be learned from the subject of the ADL report.

While nothing in the study is particularly new, it confirms the way political parties and activists have embraced anti-Zionism, and the way that has inevitably sparked a new wave of hatred for Jews on the continent. Focusing on the state of affairs in four countries—the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Spain—it provides a generally accurate and worrying evaluation of the predicament for Jews that resulted from the left’s adoption of the Palestinian cause that has enabled the legitimization of attitudes and action that undermines the Jewish community and spreads intolerance.

Anti-Zionism is antisemitism

While all of these countries are different, the parties of the left in each have shown themselves vulnerable to co-optation by anti-Israel ideologues. They dominate public discourse about Israel and help create an atmosphere in which Jewish activism is treated as inherently racist.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

A Climate For Absolute Power- The Democrats Are Using “Climate Crisis” as a Means to Establish Unfettered Power.

By on August 17th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/17/a-climate-for-absolute-power/

How do we know that Joe Biden has made a verbal blunder? His lips were moving. There are so many slip-ups and absurdities coming out of his mouth that it’s hard to keep up. But one recent gaffe stands out: The president said last week during an interview with the Weather Channel that he had already “practically speaking” declared a climate emergency.

He of course hasn’t, but should he or another president do so, they would in effect also be declaring themselves to be an American kaiser who could issue tyrannical edicts with absolute power. They would be able to autocratically “deploy around 130 different powers,” says Climate Depot’s Marc Morano.

Operating under emergency climate powers, a president could halt “the export of crude oil … phase out all exports and imports of fossil fuels entirely … stop issuing permits for offshore oil and gas wells under already existing leases and halt all drilling immediately … marshaling funding under the DPA to deploy clean energy – for example, rooftop solar installations on low-income housing,” according to Morano.

He, or she, could also implement lockdowns similar to those forced on us during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It’s a truly frightening proposition. Worse than one-party rule, it would be one-man rule.

Which means that the green-on-the-outside, red-on-the-inside radicals are giddy over the proposition even as they feel Biden’s rhetoric is running too far ahead of his actions.

“Activists say nothing short of an emergency declaration will address deadly heat – and the fossil fuel dependency driving it,” gushes Grist, the “Pravda version of the Whole Earth Catalog.” They would be happy to see Biden “divert billions of dollars from the military toward constructing renewable energy projects.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Inflation Reduction Act Flim-Flam Biden touts it, though it has killed jobs and spurred inflation. By Steven Law

By on August 17th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/inflation-reduction-act-bidenomics-ira-2024-president-cost-of-living-energy-jobs-unemployment-fossil-fuel-318d577f?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

It isn’t surprising that President Biden is marking the Inflation Reduction Act’s first anniversary by traveling the country trying to convince voters that the law is working and the economy is getting better. Good luck to him.

A recent CNN poll found Americans still consider the economy the most pressing issue facing the country. More than half of Americans think the economy is bad and getting worse, and only 37% approve of Mr. Biden’s handling of the economy. Just 30% approve of his handling of inflation.

That doesn’t augur well for the credibility of Democrats and the legislation Mr. Biden promised would “reduce inflation at the kitchen table” and kick-start new economic growth. Every Democrat in Congress supported the bill. It should doom them in 2024.

Republicans must aggressively articulate what is wrong with the legislation. The most obvious point: After a year, the legislation hasn’t reduced inflation. Food and consumer costs are increasing again. Rent is going up too. Even Mr. Biden conceded that the title is a misnomer, telling donors at a fundraiser, “I wish I hadn’t called it that.”

His administration has admitted the act could cost Americans their jobs. Brian Anderson, executive director of the administration’s interagency working group on energy communities, says the law will hit workers in the fossil-fuel industry especially hard.

The fossil-fuel industry supports nearly 100,000 jobs in West Virginia and more than 350,000 in Ohio, two states critical to control of the Senate. Yet Mr. Anderson told the New York Times, “We’re standing right at the cusp of potentially still leaving them behind again.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Florida’s Education Triumph The state has established new standards that emphasize traditional learning in schools. By Scott Yenor and Anna Miller

By on August 17th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/floridas-education-triumph-woke-schooling-teachers-unions-dues-textbooks-students-afc26028?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s antiwoke education agenda has drawn national attention, but equally important and far less noticed is how Mr. DeSantis advanced new educational standards. A pedagogical revolution is afoot in the Sunshine State, which could serve as a blueprint for states across the country.

Florida’s education reformers understand that antiwoke rhetoric alone is insufficient. A vision for education excellence must displace underperforming K-12 institutions. Florida has passed universal education savings accounts, which give families access to public per pupil funds for tuition to private or classical schools, school supplies and home-schooling aid.

So far, Florida has introduced new standards in English, language arts, math, social studies, civics and health education. The English standards, for instance, are knowledge-based, rather than skills-based. They center on the great books of Western civilization to impart contextual literacy rather than abstract, content-free reading strategies. This change will have positive effects in teacher training: If familiarity with the Western canon becomes a prerequisite for teaching, education schools will have to emphasize traditional learning.

The Florida Education Association, the state’s biggest union, opposes the new standards for not teaching students “uncomfortable truths” about racism. Anticipating the push-back, Mr. DeSantis sought to gain teachers’ confidence in his reforms by distinguishing between them and their union. His administration has fully implemented paycheck protection, requiring written consent from employees before union dues are deducted from their paychecks, and he has granted teachers unprecedented pay increases—salaries statewide now average about $50,000—to win support. Only 22 of the 67 countywide teacher unions won the 60% approval necessary to gain federal certification in 2023. The number of teacher-union members in Florida decreased by at least 4,500 through 2020-21, the fourth-highest loss in the nation.

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