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April 2024

THE PERILS OF A BAD DEAL: RUTHIE BLUM

https://www.jns.org/the-perils-of-a-bad-deal/
Whenever I sit down to craft a piece on the “Bring Them Home Now” protests, a call I received at my office in 2009 haunts me into changing or tweaking topics. The person initiating the conversation that day introduced himself as the grandfather of Gilad Shalit.

No further clarification was required. By this point, the Israel Defense Forces soldier who’d been captured by Hamas terrorists nearly three years earlier had become a household name. So, too, had his family.

“How dare you?” Tzvi Shalit began, going on to berate me for jeopardizing the campaign for Gilad’s release. My latest column, he said, was not only insensitive; it was downright dangerous.

Stunned by his accusation and intimidated by his understandable pain, I stuttered a sympathetic response. Yet, neither my apology for having caused unintended offense, nor my explanation that the article in question was actually a critique of the media for stifling debate, did any good.

As far as he was concerned, I was siding with the enemy—not the organization holding his grandson in Gaza, mind you, but the then-caretaker government of outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

After his resignation over corruption charges, he was replaced by Tzipi Livni as head of Kadima in the party’s September 2008 primaries. Her inability to form a coalition in the following weeks spurred the February 2009 general election.

And though Kadima garnered a majority of Knesset seats, Livni still couldn’t form a government. Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu succeeded where she failed, and thus it was he who succeeded Olmert as prime minister.

Fetterman decries college campus ‘pup tents for Hamas’ BY Miranda Nazzaro

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4627216-fetterman-decries-college-campus-pup-tents-for-hamas/

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) ripped into the pro-Palestinian protests roiling college campuses, calling the encampment demonstrations “pup tents” for the militant group Hamas.

“Now, of course, it’s a great American value to protest, but I don’t believe living in a pup tent for Hamas is really helpful,” Fetterman said in an interview on NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday.”

Protests calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and a halt in U.S. military aid to Israel have persisted for more than a week at a swath of college campuses across the country. Some protesters — including those at Columbia University, where the recent wave of demonstrations began — set up encampments on campus in defiance of school administrators.

Several schools called in local and state police to disperse the protests and encampments, leading to the arrest and suspension of hundreds of students across the country.

“I will say this, that it’s very clear, there is a very germ of antisemitism in all of these protests. And then sometimes, it flares up and again,” Fetterman added.

He then pointed to a student protest leader at Columbia University who was heard in a recently resurfaced video from earlier this year saying “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and that people should “be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” Columbia banned the student last week.

A Speaker Is Born, a President Is Diminished, and a Senate Majority Leader Has Gone Into Hiding: Eric Levine

Last week the country witnessed the birth of a Speaker of the House, the continuing diminishment of a President, and the disappearance of a Senate Majority Leader.

 In the same week Mike Johnson stared down Marjorie Taylor Greene and her merry band of ignorant buffoons to pass the much needed and overdue foreign-aid package, he travelled to Columbia University in New York City — ground zero for the antisemitic protests exploding on our college campuses – to make two simple statements: Antisemitism is unacceptable and America stands with Israel. If only President Biden and Chuck Schumer had Johnson’s courage and moral clarity.

 While the Speaker was giving a lesson in leadership, President Biden continued to embarrass himself and diminish his Presidency by putting the politics of his reelection ahead of America’s national security interests and Chuck Schumer has gone into hiding. 

 The Biden campaign has determined that for him to win in November, the President must win both Michigan and the votes of a significant majority of 18- to 24-year-olds. There is no better example of this strategy than how he is dealing with the explosion of antisemitism on our nation’s college campuses.

Iran Mullahs Speeding Up Nuclear Weapons Program: Anyone Interested? by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20602/iran-speeding-up-nuclear-weapons

By backing, arming and training Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, Iran launched a proxy war against Israel, leveraging the conflict in part to divert attention from its nuclear ambitions.

The calculated move not only serves Iran’s immediate interests in destabilizing its adversaries – the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain and most of all the United States, which it would like to see out of the region, so Iran could presumably have the Middle East all to itself. The diversion of the Gaza war also aligns with its goal of eradicating Israel.

These barbaric perversions [by Hamas on October 7, 2023] underscore Iran’s leaders’ comfort, if not pleasure, in employing any means at hand to achieve their objectives. They most likely do not look at their devastation abroad as triggering instability, but, on the contrary, as a means to attaining its hegemony, after which there will be peace — for themselves, at least.

From Iran’s perspective, acquiring nuclear weapons is the easiest way to significantly complete its takeover of the region and “export the revolution”: “We shall export the revolution to the whole world. Until they cry, ‘there is no god but God [Allah]’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.”

Unfortunately, the plan poses an existential threat not just to regional stability, but to global security. Iran has been moving into Latin America, possibly to target the “Great Satan,” the United States.

In the midst of the Hamas-Israel conflict — while the world’s attention is fixed on the war Iran and Hamas began — Iran’s ruling mullahs have seized the opportunity to advance their nuclear program.

As Hamas Loses Its Grip, Gazans Speak Out against the Terrorist Sect Noah Rothman

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/as-hamas-loses-its-grip-gazans-speak-out-against-the-terrorist-sect/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=top-stories&utm_term=third

The unrest on America’s college campuses took a noticeable turn for the worse shortly after Iran entered the war that erupted with Hamas’s 10/7 massacre, and it got worse still after Israel retaliated in response to that 350-plus missile and drone attack on its territory. But even as the country’s most outspoken college students lean into their conclusion that the problem in the Gaza Strip is Israel, Gazans themselves are growing bolder in their condemnations of the terrorist sect that consigned them to this war.

“Palestinians in Gaza are increasingly willing to voice their anger against Hamas,” the Financial Times reported Thursday. Although “Hamas rules Gaza with a tight grip” and reliably visits retribution on the Gazans who speak out against its misrule, Palestinian civilians are increasingly “speaking out against the Islamist group.”

One Gazan who spoke with FT’s reporters criticized the terrorist outfit for failing to foresee the consequences Israel would mete out in response to the 10/7 massacre — or, if they did, to ignore them. “They [Hamas] should have restricted themselves to military targets,” he said. Another castigated Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. “I pray every day for God to punish the one who brought us to this situation,” that Palestinian civilian exclaimed. “I pray every day for the death of Sinwar.”

According to pollsters with the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, these sentiments may be indicative of broader trends in the opinion landscape.

Khalil Shikaki, director of the centre, said that support for Hamas fell by almost a quarter to 34 per cent, according to a poll taken during the first week of March. The movement also lost popularity in the West Bank, where support fell from 44 per cent to 35 per cent. “There is no doubt support for Hamas is declining in Gaza because more and more people feel it has some responsibility for the pain they are enduring,” said Shikaki.

And the liberty Palestinian civilians now feel to voice their hostility toward Hamas’s regime freely is almost certainly a direct result of Israel’s efforts to degrade and, ultimately, disperse the terrorist organization. “Critics have been emboldened because there’s no one now to fear,” said one Gaza analyst. One former resident of the Strip, a professor at the Gaza-based al-Azhar University, put it most succinctly: “People are no longer afraid.”

Heroic Doubling and Supporting Hamas Once again, young people who have nothing important or valuable in their lives and who believe in nothing substantive or enduring are demonstrating their desperate need for belonging and purpose. By Stephen Soukup

https://amgreatness.com/2024/04/27/heroic-doubling-and-supporting-hamas/

Psychologists who have studied violence in young men and especially young men’s willingness to forsake everything they know, everything they’ve been taught, and everything they might otherwise believe about right and wrong, say that there is a set of shared circumstances and “revelations” that link spree killers and self-radicalized terrorists.  Faced with the emptiness of their own lives, isolated from many of their contemporaries, and desperately in search of something substantive to give their lives meaning and purpose, young men—especially young men who find refuge on the internet and in social media—tend to create fantasy lives for themselves, alternate realities in which they not only find the meaning and purpose they crave but do so in heroic fashion.

For more than a decade now, the journalist and editor Robert Beckhusen has noted that the ties that bind spree shooters and self-radicalized terrorists are both numerous and consistent.  Young men confronted by the social and spiritual emptiness of their lives and society default to what is often called “heroic modeling” or “heroic doubling,” which is to say that they take on a symbolic cause and kill not just to slake their own bloodlust but to exact revenge for a whole class of people with whom they believe they find common cause.

Almost exactly ten years ago, just after the spree shooting in Isla Vista, California, Beckhusen interviewed Roger Griffin, a professor of Modern History at Oxford-Brookes University in the UK and the author of Terrorist’s Creed: Fanatical Violence and the Human Need for Meaning.  Griffin explained the phenomenon of “heroic doubling” as follows:

[I]n the mind of the killer, they’re not just killing someone as the sole purpose of the destruction. They’re killing someone symbolic of something more general, which is also meant to send a message to the survivors….

…what happens psychologically—the person has undergone a process whereby a rather confused, pained, ordinary self puts on a sort of mask, which turns them into an actor—or a protagonist—in a personal narrative drama. . . .

In his avatar double, he achieves the ability to run and fight.  I believe that’s a very powerful metaphor for what happens in the process of heroic doubling.  Because the person who’s previously felt impotent and had no agency . . . is made to feel potent and have agency returned to him by adopting this mission.  So in that moment, he becomes a heroic version, or avatar, of himself.

Although the parallels are hardly perfect, over the years, I’ve found this concept of heroic doubling to be a useful heuristic for assessing the otherwise seemingly pointless embrace by American young men—and, increasingly, young women—of foolish, intellectually abhorrent, and often violent ideologies and practices.

Left Imperialism: From Cardinal Richelieu to Klaus Schwab by Gary Gindler

Left Imperialism is an exercise in a novel field: ideology archaeology.

Is the United States Constitution conservative or liberal? Where does the conservative-liberal dichotomy originate? Are American conservatives related to British conservatives or not? Who are the anarchists―left-wingers or right-wingers?

Left Imperialism offers the answers to these questions and many more, taking on a spectrum of ideologies from a brand-new evolutionary perspective. For example, the book traces the origin of many standard political terms―like “left-wing” and “right-wing”―from their inception to the present through all their perturbations. It also examines in distinctive detail political movements like Conservatism, Fascism, Liberalism, Marxism, Anarchism, and many more, from as far away as Cardinal Richelieu’s epoch through World War II and into the present.

The book’s narrative has one overriding theme: the evolution of freedom.

Left Imperialism presents a novel concept in political philosophy called the “individual-state paradigm,” which generalizes and extrapolates the Right-Left distinction.

Deroy Murdock: It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like 1938 “The environment at Columbia University is absolutely dreadful.”

https://spectator.org/its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-1938/

If Jews do not feel safe on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in New York City, in the United States of America, where can they feel safe?

NYC is home to some 1.3 million Jews, the most outside of Israel. Jewish men and women have thrived in The Big Apple for hundreds of years, enjoying religious freedom, prosperity, political power, and the affection and goodwill of millions of their gentile neighbors, colleagues, and loved ones.

Jewish culture is NYC culture. New Yorkers of all stripes schlep packages to the Post Office, kvetch when things go awry, and mock their friends when they act like putzes. Those of us who call NYC home need not be Jewish to speak and act this way. We live in New York. We pick it up.

However, things lately have been far from dancing the Horah.

Protests began after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre against Israel. The Iranian-sponsored terrorist group butchered some 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 240 hostages from Israel, America, and other nations. These demonstrations have devolved from opposition to Israel’s self-defense against these killers from the Gaza Strip, into support for Hamas, and now open hatred of Jews, per se.

At Columbia University, many pro-Hamas protesters are dressed in the black and white keffiyeh headdresses that are the Brownshirts of the Palestinazis. In recent days, they have waved Hamas flags, yelled Hamas slogans, and intimidated, threatened, and assaulted Jewish students, particularly those who wear yarmulkes and otherwise visually identify themselves as Jews.

VIDEO: MUST WATCH 2004 “COLUMBIA UNBECOMING”

In 2004: Jewish students described on film Arab professors at Columbia U harassing them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLzfegav40U

One-Tenth of One Percent by Judd Garrett

https://www.objectivityistheobjective.com/post/one-tenth-of-one-percent

College campuses across America, especially Columbia. Yale, NYU, USC, are being overrun by anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstrators. USC has even canceled its graduation ceremony due to security concerns relating to anti-Israel protests. These protesters are responding to Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack on Israel where 1,400 innocent Israeli civilians were targeted and murdered by Hamas terrorists, and somehow, these moral geniuses are protesting Israel. They are protesting the country that had their elderly shot in cold blood, their women brutally raped and murdered, and their babies beheaded. The country that suffered those atrocities is being vilified and protested. But this is what Islam does. It twists and vilifies the justified actions of their enemies to their own gain. So, Islamic terrorists attack Israel, Israel fights back, and Israel is painted as the bad guy.

The Muslims completely memory hole the fact that they drew first blood because in their mind, they can do whatever they want with impunity. No one’s speaking about all of the vicious murdering that the Islamic terrorists did. We’re supposed to forget about that, or ignore it, or write it off because those are just extremists, and they don’t represent all of Islam. But where are the Islamic leaders who are denouncing what happened on October 7 in the name of Islam? Why do they refuse to distance their religion from the terrorists? Where is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? Where is Kyrie Irving? Where is Barack Obama? They are imitating crickets. Every time there is an Islamic terrorist attack, the Muslims in America are not required to stand up and denounce the attack. Only the non-Muslims are warned about Islamophobia. We haven’t even processed the terrorist attack, and we’re being accused of Islamophobia because Muslims targeted another group of people because of their religion. Every white person in America has to denounce white supremacy over and over and over again. We have to denounce slavery that ended 160 years ago, but Muslims are never required to denounce Islamic terrorism that happened the day before. And they never do because many tacitly approve.

This is the way it always works with Islam. Between the 6th century AD and the 10th century AD, the Muslims invaded and took over all of Byzantine Christianity, sacking city after city, town after town, murdering and raping, and giving the people a choice – convert to Islam or die. The Muslims took over all the Holy Lands, and pushed into Southern France and Southern Italy, leaving a river of blood in their wake. We never hear about that, but when the Pope organizes the Crusades to take back the Holy Lands and southern Europe which had been stolen from the Western world by Muslims, the Crusaders are painted as the bad guys. Most of the ancient mosques in the Middle East used to be Christian churches that the Muslims turned into mosques after they conquered that city by force. They never mention all the murdering brutality that the Muslims did which created the need for the Crusaders. But the Crusaders are always framed as the bad guys and Islam is always portrayed as the innocent victims.

The Ottoman Empire is the only empire in the history of the world, that is never taken to task for the mass atrocities that they committed in building their empire.