https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/21/opinion/israel-iran-raisi-death.html
The danger to Israel from moves at the ICC, or from campus protests, boycott and divestment efforts or various kinds of arms embargoes, are minimal.
Contrary to some opinions, Israelis are not “settler-colonialists.” Jews believe they are originally from the Land of Israel because they are.
And Zionism, far from being a colonialist project, is the oldest anticolonialism struggle in history, starting during the Roman era, if not the Babylonian Captivity before it.
The idea that Israeli Jews should return, like the Algerian French, to the lands of their forebears misses the point. The Israelis have nowhere else to go, a fact underscored by the waves of hatred now engulfing Jewish diasporic communities.
They will not return to the lands of Russian pogroms, or Arab massacres, or the Holocaust.
The more pressure is exerted on Israel to relent in the face of its enemies, the more Zionism it will generate.
Nothing so crystallizes Jewish identity as the daily reminders of bigotry.
Jews have the right to rule themselves as a sovereign state in their original homeland.
https://eagleforum.org/psr/1998/june98/psrjune98.html
Now we know why the Democrats were so vicious in their attacks on Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) and Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN). Theirs were the committees that were closing in on the China connection, the scandal that can bring down the Clinton presidency, the scandal that has made Congressmen start to utter the T word (treason). A series of front-page news stories in the New York Times (May 15, 16, 17) essentially vindicated Thompson’s charge that the Chinese Communist Government tried to influence the 1996 U.S. election with campaign contributions.
Bill Clinton’s friend and ubiquitous Democratic fundraiser Johnny Chung told Federal investigators that he funneled nearly $100,000 from the Communist Chinese military to the Democratic campaign in the summer of 1996. The money was handed to Chung by the daughter of the top commander of China’s People’s Liberation Army, General Liu Huaqing, who was also one of the top five members of the Chinese Communist Party’s ruling Politburo.
Chung’s liaisons with the Clinton Administration were so cozy that he was able to arrange for the daughter, who goes by the name of Lt. Col. Liu Chaoying, to get a speedy visa and come to America to be photographed with Clinton on July 22, 1996. She is what is called a “princeling,” one of the privileged offspring of China’s ruling elite. In addition to her title as Lieutenant Colonel in the People’s Liberation Army, she is a senior manager and vice president for China Aerospace International Holdings, which is the Hong Kong arm of China Aerospace Corporation, a state-owned jewel in China’s military-industrial complex, with interests in satellite technology, rocket launches, and missiles.
Johnny Chung told Federal investigators that Col. Liu actually gave him $300,000, which she said originated with China’s military’s intelligence arm, and told him to use the money for Democratic campaign contributions. He apparently kept $200,000 for his “businesses.” Soon after the picture-taking fundraiser, Col. Liu had Chung open a California branch of Marswell Investing, another of her Hong Kong enterprises, whose chief “business” was parking Chinese money in the United States. She also invested $300,000 in Chung’s facsimile business. Chung was quite a hustler; he visited Clinton’s White House 49 times.
https://issuesinsights.com/2024/05/24/whats-the-dems-plan-b-if-lawfare-doesnt-stop-trump-we-have-some-ideas/
Next Tuesday both sides will present their closing arguments in the People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump, a case that exists for one reason only: to stop Trump from ever occupying the White House again.
But what if this doesn’t work? What if there’s a hung jury or, worse yet, an acquittal? What if none of the 88 trumped-up felony charges results in a conviction and voters actually have a chance to elect Trump, should they prefer him over the decrepit failure known as Joe Biden?
What is the Democrats’ Plan B?
They must have one. Democrats are nothing if not always prepared. And they’ve already made it clear that they will do anything to stop Trump. Anything. That is, except run on the issues.
It looks increasingly likely that they will need a plan. Democrats bent and twisted the law into impossible shapes to rack up those felony charges against a political opponent. Now the seams are showing.
After Michael Cohen’s disastrous turn on the stand in the “hush money” trial undermined the bedrock of this case, even CNN is hedging its bets in the outcome.
The case has already failed to live up to its billing as political kryptonite. A Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that a mere 16% say they’re following the trial closely. Cable news ratings are down. New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg whined about how, “when people were asked how the trial made them feel, the most common response was ‘bored’.”
Of course, none of that will matter to the jury, which could very well render a guilty verdict. But even Goldberg admits that this won’t necessarily stop Trump, given that he’s unlikely to be sent to prison before his appeals are heard.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-bill-clinton-lost-china-human-rights-trade-847f637c?mod=opinion_lead_pos7
Thirty years ago Sunday, Bill Clinton lost China. On May 26, 1994, Mr. Clinton delinked human rights from China’s most-favored-nation trade status.
In 1992 Gov. Clinton promised “an America that will not coddle tyrants, from Baghdad to Beijing.” After taking office in 1993, he issued an executive order that demanded human-rights improvements as a condition for continued MFN status. It called for “releasing and providing an acceptable accounting for Chinese citizens imprisoned or detained for the non-violent expression of their political and religious beliefs, including such expression of beliefs in connection with the Democracy Wall and Tiananmen Square movements.” None of that happened.
In January 1994, midway through the executive order’s review period, I went to China armed with a letter signed by more than 100 members of Congress pledging to stand with Mr. Clinton. Virtually every Chinese official told me that the fix was in. Trade would be delinked from human rights. I didn’t believe them. On returning, I told Secretary of State Warren Christopher: “They think you’re bluffing!”
They were right. Mr. Clinton abandoned the executive order, signaling to China that the U.S. cared only for trade and profit. I argued that Mr. Clinton was turning his back on the oppressed in China and that the Communist Party couldn’t be trusted. The party got rich and militarily powerful. The Chinese people, Americans and the world are paying the price.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/inflation-reduction-act-climate-justice-alliance-taxpayer-dollars-epa-palestine-4c345171?mod=opinion_lead_pos1
The Biden Administration is showering far and wide more than $1 trillion in climate largesse from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Still, who could have thought that taxpayer funds would flow to a left-wing group that thinks “climate justice” involves everything from freeing Palestine to dismantling capitalism?
That’s the discovery made by West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito’s office. Democrats appropriated $3 billion in the IRA to the Environmental Protection Agency for “environmental justice” grants, including $600 million for a “national grantmaker” program. In December the EPA awarded $50 million to Climate Justice Alliance, a network of nearly 90 affiliates, which plans to use the money to “resource community-based organizations (CBOs) to address past, current, and future environmental health and justice challenges.”
What else does Climate Justice Alliance do? Last November it helped to coordinate a “March on Washington,” where protesters waved the banner “Free Palestine Is a Climate Justice Issue.” Other slogans included “Our Government Funds Palestinian Genocide” and “Only Socialist Revolution Can Stop World War III.”
The group’s website includes a “Free Palestine” section, with a video that uses “an anti-colonial framework to show how Climate Justice and the liberation of Palestine are connected.” It doesn’t disappoint. “Climate change did not begin with the burning of fossil fuels,” the narrator says. “It began with settler colonialism, imperialism and extractivism.” He asks viewers “to demand that we cut military funding to Israel and begin the process of demilitarization, so that we can all be free.”
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20659/south-africa-putin-marxist-cadres-and
[I]n 2023, the ANC, on behalf of the South African government, brought charges of genocide against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This case seems to be another fatuous endeavour by the ANC for prominence….
[T]he ANC has effectively “turned its back on Western values, and expressed its support for countries and organisations that subscribe to terror as a measure and method of governance.”
Warren Goldstein, Chief Rabbi of South Africa, citizen.co.za, November 15, 2023
[E]verything Western, regarded as colonialist or imperialist, must be destroyed and recreated according to atheist, socialist, dogma… in pursuit of a revolutionary version of pseudo-egalitarian social justice.
The historic ties of these African countries to the totalitarian countries of Russia, Cuba, and China and to revolutionary movements such as Hamas are as strong as ever.
Through BRICS and other forums aligned with anti-Western actors, these African countries oppose the West with impunity and reject any pretence of joining the West’s sphere of nations with their liberal democratic traditions.
Anglo-American nations blissfully ignore Africa’s strong connection to despotic regimes and persist in their simplistic approach towards these countries by showering them with financial incentives and arranging unproductive conferences…. African countries gladly accept the offered funds while remaining aligned to totalitarian regimes. Financial enticements by the West for the purposes of gaining favour are made in vain: these leaders remain, at their core, Marxist revolutionaries imposing extreme socialist policies on their populace, unfortunately leading to the demise of hitherto prosperous and productive economies.
Until a positive regime change occurs, no improvement in the lives of the average citizen can be expected. The people get poorer by the day. ….The dim prospects of the poor, which led to the protest and resulted in millions of dollars in damage to the economy, have not improved.
South Africa which is fast approaching a failed state. A 2023 Harvard Kennedy Business School study describes the cause as “collapsing state capacity and spatial exclusion” — which translates as state inefficiency and the exclusion of whites from certain aspects of the economy. The same can be said of Zimbabwe (very much a failed state), Namibia, and others…. Consequently, skilled workers continue to depart the country in droves.
This is the complex world of southern African politics, whose leaders present lip service the Western ideals of democracy while accepting generous global hand-outs – usually offered, unfortunately, with no demands for accountability.
In South Africa, the most “important benefactor of the African National Congress’s (ANC) since independence in 1994, providing military support for years, was the former Soviet Union. Despite exhibiting a veneer of democracy, the ANC and their associates, remain fervently Communist-Socialist, adopt Marxist-Leninist socialist dogma as their political worldview and hold Russian President Vladimir Putin in high regard.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/opinion/darfur-sudan-genocide.html
First they killed the adults.
“Then they piled up the children and shot them,” a witness told Human Rights Watch. “They threw their bodies into the river.”
That’s a scene from a humanitarian crisis happening now in Sudan that has been overshadowed by Gaza and Ukraine and may be about to get far worse. It’s a conflict, by some accounts a genocide, unfolding particularly in the Darfur region there.
You may remember Darfur: It was the site of a genocide two decades ago. Those atrocities galvanized a vast response, led by protesters across the United States. Barack Obama and Joe Biden, then senators, were among those who called for action, and they were joined by tens of thousands of high school and college students, plus activists from churches, synagogues and mosques working together.
While hundreds of thousands were slaughtered in Darfur at that time, the campaign also probably saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of others. Other countries imposed sanctions and an arms embargo, peacekeeping forces were established by the African Union and the United Nations, and the Sudanese leader who commanded the genocide was eventually ousted.
Yet today the slaughter in Darfur is resuming — and the international response is not. Most Western nations and African ones alike have been fairly indifferent.
“The inaction pales in comparison to the situation 20 years ago, when global leaders felt morally and legally obliged to act on Darfur,”
Some of the same Arab forces responsible for the genocide in the 2000s are picking up where they left off. They are massacring, torturing, raping and mutilating members of non-Arab ethnic groups — the same victims as before — while burning or bulldozing their villages, survivors say.
There’s a racist element: Arab militias mock their victims as “slaves” and taunt them with racial epithets — the non-Arabs are often darker skinned. The militias seem to be trying to systematically eliminate non-Arab tribes from the area.
“In The End of Everything, Hanson tells compelling and harrowing stories of how civilizations perished. He helps us consider contemporary affairs in light of that history, think about the unthinkable, and recognize the urgency of trying to prevent our own demise.” — H. R. McMaster, author of Battlegrounds
War can settle disputes, topple tyrants, and bend the trajectory of civilization—sometimes to the breaking point. From Troy to Hiroshima, moments when war has ended in utter annihilation have reverberated through the centuries, signaling the end of political systems, cultures, and epochs. Though much has changed over the millennia, human nature remains the same. Modern societies are not immune from the horror of a war of extinction.
In The End of Everything, military historian Victor Davis Hanson narrates a series of sieges and sackings that span the age of antiquity to the conquest of the New World to show how societies descend into barbarism and obliteration. In the stories of Thebes, Carthage, Constantinople, and Tenochtitlan, he depicts war’s drama, violence, and folly. Highlighting the naivete that plagued the vanquished and the wrath that justified mass slaughter, Hanson delivers a sobering call to contemporary readers to heed the lessons of obliteration lest we blunder into catastrophe once again.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/22/rewarding-fascism/
So now we know what it takes to become a state: the murder of Jews. Rape, kill and kidnap Jews and seven months later, the leaders of Ireland, Spain and Norway will recognise your statehood. That’s the lesson of today’s coordinated spectacle of virtue-signalling in Dublin, Madrid and Oslo: pogroms work. The butchery of civilians gets results. Fascism has its rewards. This is ‘diplomacy’ at its most dangerous.
Of course, Irish taoiseach Simon Harris, Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez and Norwegian PM Jonas Gahr Støre are presenting their pious recognition of Palestine as a stab for peace. This is about helping to ‘create a peaceful future’, said Harris. They’re either delusional or they’re engaging in doublespeak. For the true impact of their imperious intervention will be to exacerbate hostilities. Hamas will feel emboldened. It now knows that a wonderful gift awaits it if it keeps battering Israel: a state of its own. In dangling this dream before Hamas, the three PMs have all but green-lighted its terrorism.
Rarely has virtue-signalling felt so reckless. The PMs are so keen to broadcast their correct-think to the world that they appear not to have given one thought to what the consequences might be of three European nations butting in to a bloody war. Their blindness to everything but their own righteousness was best summed up in the figure of Simon Harris. There he was on the steps of Government Buildings in Dublin sermonising about how this is ‘the right thing to do’ – translation: ‘aren’t I wonderful?’ – without so much as a flicker of concern for the global impact of rewarding an act of apocalyptic violence.
That really is what is happening here. Harris and the others were careful to condemn Hamas’s 7 October pogrom, of course. Harris called it a ‘barbaric massacre’. And yet the fact is that today’s announcements, this vain granting of legitimacy to a Palestinian state, would not be happening had it not been for 7 October. Indeed, Harris expressly linked his recognition of Palestine with the ‘appalling’ and ‘unconscionable’ war in Gaza. Yes, a war started by Hamas. On 7 October. With its carnival of anti-Semitic barbarism, the likes of which the world had not seen since the Holocaust. And there you have it. Want a state? Start a war. Kill some Jews. Job done.
Whatever subjective spin the three PMs put on their heedless act of global virtue-signalling, the objective consequence is the legitimation of Hamas. Indeed, Hamas has warmly welcomed their recognition of Palestine, describing it as ‘an important step towards affirming our right to our land’. I’m not into guilt by association, but seriously – when an army of anti-Semites starts singing your praises, you’ve messed up. Badly.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/ireland-spain-norway-recognize-palestinian-state-israel-recalls-ambassadors/?utm_source=recirc-
Israel is recalling its ambassadors from Ireland, Spain, and Norway after the three European nations announced that they would formally recognize a Palestinian state.
Ireland, Spain, and Norway announced on Wednesday they will be formally recognizing a Palestinian state beginning next Monday, and each nation called for a cease-fire to end the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
“I am sending a clear message today: Israel will not be complacent against those who undermine its sovereignty and endanger its security,” Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz said upon its decision to recall the ambassadors.
The countries’ ambassadors in Israel will be subject to “reprimand talks” where they will be shown footage of the atrocities Hamas committed against innocent civilians on October 7.
“Recognizing a Palestinian state will lead to more terrorism, instability in the region and jeopardize any prospects for peace,” the Israel foreign ministry said on X. “Don’t be a pawn in the hands of Hamas.”
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas celebrated the decision from Ireland, Spain, and Norway to recognize a Palestinian state, although the leaders of each country distanced themselves from Hamas.
“This is an investment in the only solution that can bring lasting peace in the Middle East,” Norwegian prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre said, referring to a two-state solution.
“We hope that our recognition and our reasons contribute to other western countries to follow this path, because the more we are, the more strength we will have to impose a ceasefire, to achieve the release of the hostages held by Hamas, to relaunch the political process that can lead to a peace agreement,” Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez said to Spain’s lower legislative chamber.
