ISRAEL Comments turned off

Benjamin Netanyahu’s fatal flaw This failure of “Leadership 101” and to command loyalty from his most talented lieutenants may be his undoing. David Isaac

Posted By on March 24th, 2020

https://www.jns.org/opinion/benjamin-netanyahus-fatal-flaw/

It’s not often that a world leader’s greatest weakness is so nakedly displayed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t know how to bind political talent to him. To say he doesn’t command loyalty is putting it gently. He inspires vindictive rage in his former confidantes. The problem is that Netanyahu seems to know only one way to handle potential rivals—suppress them.

It’s a stark contrast to the other longest-serving Israeli prime minister: David Ben-Gurion. Throughout his decades-long leadership of Israel’s Labor movement, he was rarely challenged. In 1965, when he split from Mapai to form the Rafi Party, all the young Turks went with him, among them Moshe Dayan, Chaim Herzog, Teddy Kollek and Shimon Peres (who was not exactly known for steadfast loyalty).

Such an event couldn’t be imagined with Netanyahu, who sends young Turks scattering at great political cost. Two of them—Naftali Bennett, a former chief of staff to Netanyahu, and Moshe Feiglin, a former Likud Party Knesset member—cost him the first election last April, what would be the first of three consecutive elections in a year’s time. The two parties they founded failed to pass the electoral threshold, sending hundreds of thousands of right-wing votes into the trash. Had they passed the threshold, Netanyahu would have had his majority, sparing the country the following elections in September and earlier this month.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Ruthie Blum The diseased attitude of the ‘coronavirus rebels’

Posted By on March 24th, 2020

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-diseased-attitude-of-the-coronavirus-rebels/

The least that those backpackers could do after the “enormous effort and expense” that was spent on repatriating them was sign a quarantine declaration.

Dozens of the 1,100 Israeli backpackers airlifted from Peru a few days ago threw a hissy fit upon landing at Ben-Gurion International Airport. Though greeted graciously by ground crew, the exhausted 20-somethings, who had begged the government to rescue them from their treks in South America when they were unable to find flights back home before the coronavirus-necessitated border closures left them stranded, behaved like a bunch of entitled brats.

Peru, like practically every country in the world, was about to go on lockdown for an unspecified period. To get stuck in a foreign land—far away from one’s family and without fluency in the local language—is nothing to sneeze at, especially when every sneeze these days is interpreted as a symptom of COVID-19.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz promptly responded to the tearful pleas for help from the young travelers, who were encountering great difficulty in purchasing airline tickets due to a dearth of available seats and to the exorbitant fees now being charged for them.

In a mission of the sort that does the Jewish state proud, Katz dispatched four El Al 787 Dreamliners to Lima to pick up the distraught Israelis and return them safely to Tel Aviv—at no cost to them or their anxious parents, many of whom, by this point, had been fired from their jobs or put on unpaid leave, thanks to the shuttering of businesses.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

List: 74 actions taken by Trump to fight virus and bolster economy by Paul Bedard ****

Posted By on March 24th, 2020

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/list-74-actions-taken-by-trump-to-fight-virus-bolster-economy

In less than a week, the Trump administration has greatly expanded the actions it’s taken to fight the coronavirus and boost the economy, according to its latest tally of “response efforts.”

Last week, when Secrets first ran the list, it totaled 43. By Monday, it was at 74, with many more planned this week as the White House effort shifts to focus more on the economy and treatment of those infected.

While he continues to receive fire from some governors who want more, President Trump said he hopes for a win in the battle soon.

“For those worried and afraid, please know: As long as I am your president, you can feel confident that you have a leader who will always fight for you, and I will not stop until we win. This will be a great victory,” he said Sunday, adding, “This is going to be a victory. And it’s going to be a victory that, in my opinion, will happen much sooner than originally expected.”

Over the weekend, for example, he listed the supplies being sent to the hardest-hit states, put in place special rules at Veterans Administration hospitals, and dispatched two military hospital ships. He also told FEMA to get mobile hospitals to New York and California.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dems on a Death Trip as They Play Politics in a Pandemic Roger L. Simon

Posted By on March 24th, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/dems-on-a-death-trip-as-they-play-politics-in-a-pandemic_3282995.html

The Democrats are as addicted to politics, their version anyway, as a junkie in a homeless camp is to crack or meth.

It’s as if they mainlined Rahm Emanuel’s neo-Leninist apothegm—“You never let a serious crisis go to waste”—straight to their Vena Cavas and can’t get enough of it.

Now, that includes in a pandemic! What next? Nuclear war? Think of the possibilities! You could ask for almost anything—assuming there’s anybody left to ask.

But Rahm’s watchwords (echoed recently by Rep. James Clyburn), it’s safe to predict, will prove to be a curse to himself and his party rather than anything to live (or die) by.

When America’s most famously measured moderate—Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine—is angrily calling you out, you should know you’re in serious trouble!

MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: MOVIES IN A TIME OF PANDEMIC

Posted By on March 24th, 2020

In an abundance of caution and affection I am confined to “house arrest” by my family. Movies and TV shows and potato chips make everything tolerable.

A great old movie to watch during lockdown is “Two for the Road” with Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn….no gratuitous obscenity and nudity and a magnificent score by Henry Mancini.

Incidentally the screenwriter Frederic Raphael who has several screenplays and books to his credits, wrote a book that we read in our book club “A Jew Among Romans: The Life and Legacy of Flavius Josephus.

It is a remarkable undertaking, painfully researched and painfully read. See the movie!  rsk

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

War-Torn Syria Braces for Lockdown After First CCP Virus Case

Posted By on March 24th, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/war-torn-syria-braces-for-lockdown-after-first-ccp-virus-case_3282861.html

DAMASCUS—Syrians rushed to stock up on food and fuel March 23 amid fears that authorities would resort to even stricter measures after reporting the first CCP virus infection in the country, where the health care system has been decimated by nearly a decade of civil war.

The arrival of the global pandemic in Syria as well as the Gaza Strip has raised concerns it could run rampant in some of the most vulnerable areas in the Middle East. War-torn Libya and Yemen, which have yet to report any cases, are also a source of concern.

The worst outbreak in the Middle East is unfolding in Iran, where authorities reported another 127 deaths on March 23, bringing the total number of reported fatalities to 1,812 amid more than 23,000 confirmed cases. Iran has faced widespread criticism for not imposing stricter quarantine measures early on.

Lines formed outside grocery stores, banks, and gas stations across the Syrian capital, Damascus, as people braced for wider closures. The government has already closed restaurants, cafes, and other businesses, and has halted public transportation.

The city’s Hamidiyeh souk, a network of covered markets running through the Old City, was deserted after the government ordered all shops closed on March 22.

Authorities closed border crossings with Lebanon and Jordan, and Damascus International Airport was closed to commercial traffic after a final flight arrived from Moscow. State-run newspapers issued their last print edition and will only be available online.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey: Violence against Women Continues to Escalate by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on March 24th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15772/turkey-violence-against-women

Violence against women has become Turkey’s new normal.

In 2010 Turkey was shaken by the surfacing of alleged serial rapes…. including cases of adults raping minors and minors raping toddlers, killing one.

In 2014 Erdoğan said that “women should know their place,” and that “gender equality is against human nature”….

No doubt Turkey’s gender equality deficit bitterly shows that Islamist culture is much stickier than any Western-inspired legislation. Patriarchal cultural codes are deeply engraved throughout the society; unfortunately, it will take more than legislation to make them disappear.

It has become customary. As in previous years, on March 8, Turkish riot police brutally attacked demonstrators walking in central Istanbul to mark the International Women’s Day. A feminist march at midnight was dispersed by rubber bullets and scores of tear gas canisters shot by the police. All that Turkish women were asking for was equal treatment and protesting the growing “tradition” of women being murdered.

Ironically their grandmothers were luckier than some of their Western peers. The secular civil code of 1926, introduced as part of Atatürk’s reforms, gave Turkish women civil rights equal to that of men. The law meant that religious and polygamous marriages would not be officially recognized. It also gave women the right to initiate divorce. Shortly afterwards, in 1935, for the first time, Turkish women were allowed to vote in national elections: as a result, eighteen female candidates were elected to parliament – a decade or more earlier than women in Western countries such as France, Italy and Belgium. In 1935, only eight women served in the US Congress and nine in the British parliament.

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Coronavirus: Should the U.S. Lift Sanctions on Iran? by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on March 24th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15788/coronavirus-sanctions-iran

In a recent video, a masked man holding a Kalashnikov-style assault rifle warns that the attacks on Taji and Basmaya military camps were only the beginning of a much larger offensive. — Usbat al-Thayireen, or League of Revolutionaries, a new Shiite militia group, Newsweek, March 19, 2020.

“The Islamic resistance of Usbat al-Thayireen vows to strike the occupation forces’ bases and [US] embassy in the coming days and will continue striking the occupation until it exits the country, and the matter will be taken further if the occupier does not leave. We say to the hypocrites who are collaborators at the evil embassy: Your days are numbered and you will face your fate very soon.” — Usbat al-Thayireen, or League of Revolutionaries, a new Shiite militia group, Newsweek, March 19, 2020.

The idea that the ruling mullahs of Iran and the top state sponsor of terrorism will use the extra revenues from the lifting of sanctions for humanitarian purposes is totally irrational. Easing sanctions will enable, embolden and empower the Iranian regime to damage the US and its allies’ national security interests still further and kill more Americans. The US President’s Iran policy of maximum pressure, which should probably be even more maximum, is headed in the right direction.

While the US administration is expanding its maximum pressure policy on Iran, some people, such as US Senator Bernie Sanders, are calling for immediate relief for the Iranian regime. “As a caring nation,” Sanders recently posted on Twitter, “we must lift any sanctions hurting Iran’s ability to address this crisis, including financial sanctions.”

Lifting sanctions on the aggressive regime of Iran would be an extremely wrong move.

What politicians such Sanders seem not to recognize is that the Islamic Republic prioritizes its military adventurism over its nation’s health crisis. In other words, Iran’s regime will almost certainly use the extra revenues to arm its militias across the region that attack the US and its allies’ forces, as it has a pattern of doing in the past.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Use the Defense Production Act The best way for those concerned about government overreach to get what they want is to see this crisis end quickly. And that means in part, putting the right tools in the hands of those who need them. by By Chris Buskirk

Posted By on March 24th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/23/use-the-defense-production-act/

President Trump last week invoked the Defense Production Act, a law enacted during the Korean War that allows the federal government to direct American industry to produce products required for the national defense. The president has since declined to use the rights given him under the DPA. He shouldn’t. It’s time to act.

While I appreciate governmental restraint and his hesitancy to use what Peter Navarro called, “the heavy hand of government” to direct private businesses, we are not currently in a period of limited government action.

Government has ordered something like a quarter of the country into lockdown, all “nonessential” businesses are closed in many states, travel is banned between the United States and more than 30 countries, the Congress is on the cusp of passing a $2 trillion emergency spending bill, and the Federal Reserve has committed to unlimited trillions of dollars of quantitative easing in the form of bond market purchases.

Yet, somehow speeding the production and acquisition of medical equipment has been deemed a bridge too far. This makes no sense.

At present there are shortages of critical equipment used by healthcare providers, including N95 respirators, surgical gowns, the ventilators required to keep critically ill COVID patients breathing, along with certain pharmaceuticals, including hydroxychloroquine. That drug has been used in apparently successful small trials in both France and the United States to treat coronavirus both alone and in combination with azithromycin.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Can Ron DeSantis Bring Some Sanity to Coronavirus Overreaction? by Julie Kelly

Posted By on March 24th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/23/can-ron-desantis-bring-some-sanity

No one is speaking for the tens of millions of terrified Americans suffering mostly in silence over fears they will be shamed as uncompassionate or ignorant. It’s time for a real leader to emerge at the state level. Maybe DeSantis will be the one.

Considering its demographics and daily influx of tourists from around the world, Florida should be ground zero for the spread of COVID-19.

The Sunshine State is home to the highest percentage of senior citizens in the country, and that doesn’t include snowbirds from the Midwest and East Coast who seek temporary refuge during the winter months. Given what we know about the higher risk for people over age 65, hospitals in the state should be overwhelmed with coronavirus patients.

Further, as college campuses emptied out in early March and students headed to “Where the Boys Are,” these virus-carrying hedonists should have infected thousands of elderly Floridians. Florida also is a favorite destination for international tourists: Two of the top four U.S. cities visited each year by foreigners—Miami and Orlando—are in Florida. As the virus spread across the globe in the first two months of 2020, it undoubtedly made its way to the state unbeknownst to health officials.

But unlike New York City and a few other hotspots in the country, there is no evidence of a widespread, lethal outbreak of coronavirus in Florida. As of Monday morning, 90 percent of Floridians tested were negative for COVID-19. Only 217 people have been hospitalized and 14 total have died. (About eight people per day commit suicide in Florida according to 2017 statistics.)