ISRAEL Comments turned off

I witnessed Israel choosing life as it fights against a ‘death cult’ By Douglas Murray

Posted By on May 11th, 2024

https://nypost.com/2024/05/08/opinion/i-witnessed-israel-choosing-life-as-it-fights-against-a-death-cult/

Adapted from Douglas Murray‘s speech Monday as The Post columnist accepted the Manhattan Institute’s Alexander Hamilton Award.

“I want to dedicate my acceptance of this award to the people of Israel who in the face of death, choose life.”

I’ve never seen as much of the best and the worst of humankind as I have in the past six months in Israel and Gaza.

I was here in New York on the 7th of October, and on the 8th, I went down to Times Square.

And there were these men and women, waving signs, celebrating the massacre.

They were holding these signs in Times Square, “by any means necessary.”

At a time when we already knew what those means included.

I thought I had to get to Israel as soon as I could, that we were going to see a kind of Holocaust denialism in real time, and therefore I should see with my own eyes everything that had happened.

In Israel, I joined the pathologists in the morgues of Tel Aviv as they were trying to identify the dead.

An unbelievable task, which they do with extraordinary delicacy and religiosity.

I had the great opportunity to witness firsthand Israel’s response, because unlike some countries today, Israel doesn’t just sit back with equanimity when it’s attacked.

Some of the world would like it to do so.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Wars for Survival-Sydney Williams

Posted By on May 11th, 2024

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Israel and Ukraine are fighting wars for survival. Neither wants more land or to impose their values on their neighbors. They are fighting to maintain their independence and to keep their way of life. Iran and its proxies have said they want to annihilate Israel, not shrink its borders. Putin has not gone that far with Ukraine, but the analogy of a camel getting its nose under the tent applies. To the extent that Israel and Ukraine are our allies we have a duty to support them in their existential wars.

Israel is not a colonialist power. Over three quarters of a century it has created a thriving democracy on land from which their ancestors came. Today they combat forces that want to drive them from their land. Former Iranian president Rafsanjani called Israel “a one-bomb state,” that one nuclear weapon could erase Jewish civilization. Palestinians speak of the “River to the Sea,” effectively extinguishing the state of Israel. Israelis fight for their survival. If Rafah is not taken Hamas, a political party elected by Palestinians to govern Gaza, will survive, and threats to Israel will persist.

Ukraine was once part of the Russian empire and later part of the Soviet Union. In 1991 the nation drafted a declaration of independence, which received overwhelming support in a public referendum, and it was recognized as an independent state that year. It now fights to keep its independence. Yet Putin has said that Ukraine is an “aberration that doesn’t really exist.” He considers it a province of Russia and a country whose language should be obliterated. Should we help them? If we do not, does anyone think Putin will stop with Ukraine?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is This Biden’s ‘Supermarket Scanner’ Moment?

Posted By on May 11th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/05/10/is-this-bidens-supermarket-scanner-moment/

“They have the money to spend.” — President Joe Biden

Those of us who’ve been around a while remember when the press made an epic deal out of President George H.W. Bush’s apparent amazement at an ordinary grocery store checkout scanner. It turns out the story was a complete media fabrication, but it fed the narrative that Bush was hopelessly out of touch, and it helped cost him his reelection.

This week, Joe Biden actually did do something that shows he is perhaps the most clueless president in American history.

In a softball interview this week, CNN’s Erin Burnett let Biden carry on — uninterrupted — with his usual litany of lies.

That he created 15 million jobs (there’ve been less than 6 million net new jobs under Biden – about equal to Trump’s over the same period).
That Trump told people to inject bleach (a claim repeatedly debunked by fact-checkers).
That a million people died from COVID on Trump’s watch (fewer than 470,000 had died when Biden took office; more than 720,000 have died since).
That “we have got 1,000 billionaires in America. You know what their average federal tax is? Eight-point-three percent” (a completely made-up number that we wrote about here).
That “when I started this administration, people were saying there’s going to be a collapse of the economy” (nobody but Biden was saying that).

But then Burnett, to her credit, asked about inflation.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

What You Aren’t Hearing About Marijuana’s Health Effects Bertha Madras, a leading expert on weed, outlines the science linking it to psychiatric disorders, permanent brain damage, and other serious harms.y Allysia Finley

Posted By on May 11th, 2024

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-you-arent-reading-about-marijuana-permanent-brain-damage-biden-schedule-iii-9660395e?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Young people who smoked marijuana in the 1960s were seen as part of the counterculture. Now the cannabis culture is mainstream. A 2022 survey sponsored by the National Institutes of Health found that 28.8% of Americans age 19 to 30 had used marijuana in the preceding 30 days—more than three times as many as smoked cigarettes. Among those 35 to 50, 17.3% had used weed in the previous month, versus 12.2% for cigarettes.

While marijuana use remains a federal crime, 24 states have legalized it and another 14 permit it for medical purposes. Last week media outlets reported that the Biden administration is moving to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous Schedule III drug—on par with anabolic steroids and Tylenol with codeine—which would provide tax benefits and a financial boon to the pot industry.

Bertha Madras thinks this would be a colossal mistake. Ms. Madras, 81, is a psychobiology professor at Harvard Medical School and one of the foremost experts on marijuana. “It’s a political decision, not a scientific one,” she says. “And it’s a tragic one.” In 2024, that is a countercultural view.

Ms. Madras has spent 60 years studying drugs, starting with LSD when she was a graduate student at Allan Memorial Institute of Psychiatry, an affiliate of Montreal’s McGill University, in the 1960s. “I was interested in psychoactive drugs because I thought they could not only give us some insight into how the brain works, but also on how the brain undergoes dysfunction and disease states,” she says.

In 2015 the World Health Organization asked her to do a detailed review of cannabis and its medical uses. The 41-page report documented scant evidence of marijuana’s medicinal benefits and reams of research on its harms, from cognitive impairment and psychosis to car accidents.

She continued to study marijuana, including at the addiction neurobiology lab she directs at Mass General Brigham McLean Hospital. In a phone interview this week, she walked me through the scientific literature on marijuana, which runs counter to much of what Americans hear in the media.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Defending Freedom: A Tribute to the Warriors of Israel by Nils A. Haug

Posted By on May 10th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20625/warriors-of-israel-defending-freedom

These assaults are not only aimed at Israel and its inhabitants but, ultimately, at the West.

Adversaries of the West — whether religious fundamentalists or authoritarian states such as China, Russia, and Iran and its allies — appear intent upon imposing a new totalitarian world order. To do so, they seek destruction of the two main countries standing in their way: United States of America and Israel, the global champions of democracy, freedom, Western values, and human rights.

Regrettably, with freedom often comes the need to protect it, at times by force, from those who would take it away. Sometimes, this requires measures open to criticism by those who may have a different goal….

“Therefore, having judged that to be happy means to be free, and to be free means to be brave, we do not shy away from the risks of war.” — Pericles, funeral oration, 432 BCE.

Israel… is fighting for the values of civilization opposing terrorist barbarism so that the rest of us in the West will not have to. We should be sending whatever they need to end the terrorism, not withholding precision-guided weapons — especially, as we sanctimoniously claim, if we do not want to harm civilians.

“I have faith in the Jewish people. Let Israel be given a chance, let hatred and danger be removed from her horizons, and there will be peace in and around the Holy Land.” – Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, December 10, 1986.

As people of peace, the warriors and all citizens of Israel long for such a time with all their hearts, but first there are battles to be won.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Real Reason Hamas and Egypt Oppose Israel’s Control of Rafah, the Only Border Out of Gaza by Bassam Tawil *****

Posted By on May 9th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20624/israel-gaza-egypt-border-rafah

Hamas and Egypt were quick to issue statements denouncing the capture of the Rafah border crossing, claiming that the move would “threaten” the lives of the Palestinians and hinder the entry of humanitarian and relief aid into the Gaza Strip.

The Egyptians and Hamas have good reason to be angry with the presence of the IDF at the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing. For several years, Palestinians who wanted to exit the Gaza Strip via the terminal have alleged that they had to bribe Hamas and officials. Hamas and Egypt are now afraid of losing the Palestinian milk-cow.

“It is our right to travel without bribes and without corruption. We are living under a [Hamas] dictatorship.” Abu Amr was later arrested by Hamas security officers, who confiscated her mobile phone and ordered her to delete the Facebook post. — Noha Abu Amr, Palestinian journalist, 24.ae, January 24, 2024

[A] Palestinian man in the US [said] he paid $9,000 to get his wife and children on the list. On the day of travel, he was told his children’s names were not listed and he would have to pay an extra $3,000. He said the brokers were “trying to trade in the blood of Gazans”.

[T]he company [Hala Consulting and Tourism Services] owned by an influential Egyptian businessman and ally of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi] is estimated to have made a minimum of $118 million from desperate Palestinians trying to leave the Gaza Strip. “By the end of this year, if the April average continues, the company may earn well over half a billion dollars from the so-called VIP list of people Hala is transferring across the Gaza-Egypt border. ” — Middle East Eye, May 1, 2024.

An international charity [that does not want to be named] with extensive experience in providing emergency aid in wars…is also being forced to pay $5,000 per truck to a company linked to Egypt’s General Intelligence Service (GIS) to get aid into the Gaza Strip. — Middle East Eye, January 30, 2024.

The Palestinians actually owe Israel a huge debt of gratitude for finally driving Hamas out of the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing.

Egypt and Hamas are, it seems, indifferent to the pain endured by the Palestinians they are effectively imprisoning. All that matters to them is making more money off anyone desperate to leave the Gaza Strip.

On May 6, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) captured the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, drawing condemnations from the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group and Egypt.

The IDF said it had “intelligence that terrorists were using the border crossing for terror purposes.” A day earlier, Hamas terrorists fired rockets from near the Rafah terminal toward the Kerem Shalom area (near the Israel-Gaza border), killing four Israeli soldiers and wounding several others.

In response to the Israeli military operation, Hamas and Egypt were quick to issue statements denouncing the capture of the Rafah border crossing, claiming that the move would “threaten” the lives of the Palestinians and hinder the entry of humanitarian and relief aid into the Gaza Strip.

“Egypt condemns in the strongest terms the Israeli military operations in the Palestinian city of Rafah, and the resulting Israeli control over the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing,” read a statement by the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

How to Deal With Campus Mayhem Caused by Pro-Hamas Mobs Enforcement, appeasement, or equivocation? by Joseph Klein 1

Posted By on May 9th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-to-deal-with-campus-mayhem-caused-by-pro-hamas-mobs/

“This is the secret of propaganda:” the Nazis’ chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels explained. “Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it.” He also emphasized that “Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.”

Goebbels would have been so proud of the pro-Hamas agitators immersed in anti-Semitic propaganda who have turned many campuses across the country into sites of pogroms against Jewish students who support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

Left-wing faculty members’ indoctrination of their students have specified the targets of hate, which include the Jewish state of Israel and the Jews around the world who support Israel’s right to exist in its present form. For years, left-wing professors have been indoctrinating their students to believe that Western political and economic systems are oppressive, corrupt, colonialist, and hopelessly racist, which are deserving of destruction by whatever means necessary. The seeds of neo-Marxism that have been planted over time have sprouted into the demonstrations of anti-Semitic hate tinged with violence that we are witnessing today on the nation’s campuses.

The anti-Semitic mobs have inflicted collective punishment on entire college and university communities. The mobs have infringed on the rights and endangered the safety of students, faculty, and staff who do not share the mobs’ fanatical ideas and methods. All students, faculty, and staff should be able to go about their normal business, free of obstruction, harassment, and physical intimidation. But the pro-Hamas mobs have not let that happen. Moreover, the mobs’ disruptions have caused classes to be called off or moved online and graduations to be cancelled.

School administrators have taken different approaches to dealing with the resulting chaos on their campuses, which fall roughly into three categories. At one end of the spectrum are the more enlightened college and university administrations that have taken effective action to put a quick end to the mayhem. Take, for example, the University of Florida where the administration refused to coddle the mob of protesters.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

When the Only Problem Was Climate Change After the Cold War, the West took a vacation from history. Now it’s urgent that we get back to work. By Bjorn Lomborg

Posted By on May 9th, 2024

https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-the-only-problem-was-climate-change-00cc3ff9?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Rich countries, global institutions and the private-jet set haven’t always been obsessed with climate change. Their preoccupation began in the early 1990s, at the end of the Cold War. That wasn’t a coincidence. The Soviet Union fell, communism was vanquished, and peace prevailed among major powers. As Francis Fukuyama brashly claimed, history had ended. All that remained was fixing climate change.

Proponents of climate action advocated ending reliance on the fossil fuels that had powered two centuries of astonishing growth. These activists conceded that this would cost hundreds of trillions of dollars but insisted that massive renewable-energy growth was in the pipeline. This would be the last great push to a glorious future.

How naive. Time hasn’t been kind to the idea that climate change was humanity’s last problem or that the planet would unite to solve it. A rapid global transition from fossil fuels is, and always has been, impossible. There are several reasons that make it so.

Many developing nations never shared the Western elite’s obsession with reducing emissions. Life for most people on earth is still a battle against poverty, hunger and disease. Corruption, lack of jobs and poor education hamper their futures. Tackling global temperatures a century out has never ranked high among the priorities of developing countries’ voters—and without their cooperation, the project is doomed.

Geopolitical changes since the 1990s have also limited climate ambitions. Russia, Iran and North Korea have emerged as a destructive and destabilizing axis opposed to global security. Despite their occasional claims to the contrary, none of these nations will support global climate-change-mitigation efforts. According to a McKinsey report, achieving the vaunted net-zero emissions target by 2050 would require Russia to adopt policies that cost more than a quarter of a trillion dollars a year—around three times as much as Moscow spent on its military last year. Don’t hold your breath.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Try a Little Honesty About Israel Here are ten of their most common untruths about October 7 and the war that followed. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on May 9th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/09/try-a-little-honesty-about-israel/

Scan news accounts of anti-Israel campus and street protestors. Read their demands and manifestos. Collate the confusion after October 7 from the Biden administration.

Here are ten of their most common untruths about October 7 and the war that followed.

“Progressive Hamas”: Gay and transgendered student protestors in America would be in mortal danger in Gaza under a fascistic Hamas that has banned homosexual acts and lifestyles. Anyone protesting publicly against Hamas or its allies would be arrested and severely punished.

Women are segregated in most Hamas-run educational institutions. Under the Hamas charter, women are valued mostly as child-bearers. By design, there are almost no women in high positions in business or in government under Hamas.

“Colonists and Settlers”: Students scream that Israelis are “settlers” and “colonists” and sometimes yell at Jewish students to “go back to Poland.”

But the Jewish presence in present-day Israel is deeply rooted in ancient tradition. Dating back at least three millennia, the concept of “Israel” as a distinct Jewish state, situated roughly in its current location, is ingrained in history.

By contrast, the much later Arab invasions of the Byzantine-controlled Levant and their arrival in Palestine occurred about 1800 years after the establishment of a Jewish Israel.

“Two-state Solution”: When student protestors scream “from the river to the sea,” that is not advocacy for a two-state solution. It is a call to eliminate the state of Israel—lying in between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea—and its 10 million Jewish and Arab citizens. The Hamas charter is a one-state/no-Israel agenda, which we saw attempted on October 7.

“Occupied Gaza”: Gaza was autonomous. The Israeli border is closed, but so is the Egyptian border. There have not been any Jews in Gaza for nearly two decades.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

An Advertisement for Anti-Americanism Pro-Hamas protesters show who they are. Rich Lowry

Posted By on May 9th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/05/an-advertisement-for-anti-americanism/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_

Most protesters, no matter how deep their disaffection from this country, at least try to hide their anti-Americanism.

That’s not true of the pro-Hamas agitators, who can’t be bothered. Such is their hatred of America — and its symbols, history, and heroes — that they casually engage in profoundly unpatriotic acts of desecration.

In New York City on Monday, on their way to disrupt the Met Gala, they vandalized a World War I memorial in Central Park and a statue of William Tecumseh Sherman at Grand Army Plaza. In Washington, D.C., they’ve vandalized and/or turned into clothes horses for Palestinian flags and garb statues of George Washington, Marquis de Lafayette, Benjamin Franklin, and Andrew Jackson.

En route to the Gala, the pro-Gaza mob stopped to climb and wave Palestinian flags on the memorial to the 107th Infantry and spray-paint graffiti — “Gaza,” “Free Palestine,” and “Let Gaza live.” If there were any doubt about the motive of this shabby act of vandalism, the agitators removed it by burning an American flag at the base of the memorial.

The soldiers of the 107th fought and sacrificed greatly in World War I. If the Central Park memorial, which depicts the soldiers charging into battle, isn’t famous or much noticed on any given day, it is still a significant act of memory that the protesters treated as an ashtray for their tawdry ideological obsessions.

Of course, it is doubtful that many of the protesters know much of anything about World War I, except perhaps that it took place sometime before World War II (assuming that they are aware of both conflicts).