Diane’s Deep State Denial - Lloyd Billingsley

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by Lloyd Billingsley

Where is the interest in Sen. Feinstein’s longtime romance with Communist China?

“This was not a politically-motivated investigation,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein in the Judiciary Committee Hearing on Wednesday, “there is no deep state.”

As the hearing revealed, there is indeed a deep state, a cabal of high-level DOJ and FBI players, and they had acted against candidate and President Trump with illegal surveillance and forged evidence to bogus FISA warrants. Based on the hearing and recent IG report, the deep state had good cause to target ranking member Feinstein her own self.

The San Francisco Democrat was one of the loudest voices for the charge that candidate and President Trump was a Russian asset and puppet of Vladimir Putin. As that hoax unfolded, it emerged that Feinstein had a Communist Chinese spy as her driver for almost 20 years. This spy also served as a gofer in Feinstein’s San Francisco office and even attended Chinese consulate functions for the senator.

This was not a fake charge, as with Trump advisor Carter Page, framed by a corrupt FBI lawyer as the IG revealed.  The longtime Chinese spy was an actual reality but the role of FISA in his discovery remains obscure. The spy had been in place for three election cycles but Sen. Feinstein never faced high-volume charges of channeling foreign influence in American elections.

Communist China received favored trade status largely due to Feinstein, who played down China’s human rights violations by comparing Tiananmen Square with Kent State. In 1999, Feinstein spearheaded efforts to bring China into the World Trade Organization, which removed annual review of the regime’s record on human rights and weapons proliferation.

“I’ve been coming to China for 31 years, so I’m not a newcomer,” Feinstein told James Areddy of the Wall Street Journal during a visit to Shanghai in 2006. In Beijing “we spent time with Zhu Rongji, the former premier who was a mayor of Shanghai” and “a good friend.” Feinstein and Senators Kay Hagen and Mark Udall met with Wu Bangguo, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, and as it turned out, the Chinese had a problem with $6.4 billion in arms sales to Taiwan.

“I believe that’s a mistake on our part,” Feinstein said. Areddy asked her about Tiananmen Square, then turning 21. “I think that was a great setback for China in the view of the world,” Feinstein said. “It was just the PLA (People’s Liberation Army)” and China “learned lessons from it.” Still, Feinstein admitted, “we did not discuss it.”

In 2014, on the 25th anniversary of the massacre, Feinstein issued a statement recalling “perhaps even thousands” of demonstrators killed. “I know of no other country that has made as much economic and industrial progress in the last 25 years than China,” Feinstein wrote. “But what this anniversary reminds us is that progress still must be made in the areas of human rights, rule of law and governance.”

The San Francisco Democrat did not chart any actual progress the Communist regime had made on those fronts, and on the 30th anniversary of Tiananmen this year, no official statement appeared from the senator. As Rosemarie Ho noted in The Nation, Democrats in general and Feinstein in particular have been rather quiet about the democratic protesters in Hong Kong. Like all leading Democrats, Feinstein reserves her wrath for President Trump.

It was Feinstein who scripted the hearing for Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and cast the ludicrous Christine Blasey Ford in the leading role. So Feinstein has a lot in common with Howard Metzenbaum, who spearheaded the smear on Clarence Thomas in 1991. In reality, Feinstein may be worse.

In 2017 Feinstein told Appeal Court nominee Barrett, “the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s a concern.” As Justice on Trial co-author Carrie Severino observed, the “dogma” was Barrett’s Catholic faith, and “Feinstein’s not-so-subtle suggestion was that an observant Catholic could not also be a fair and impartial judge.”

In the hearings for Barrett and Joan Larsen, both on Trump’s original list for the Supreme Court, Feinstein said the backdrop was “neo-Nazis and white supremacists” in Charlottesville. “These are ideologies that people across the world died in a war fighting to defeat Nazism,” and just in case anybody wondered, “there isn’t any good in Nazism.” Feinstein was not a newcomer to this theme.

In 1992, the year Feinstein gained election to the Senate, the FBI was investigating Idaho man Randy Weaver on weapons charges. Weaver’s wife Vicky was not under arrest or wanted for any crime, but FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi shot the woman dead as she held her infant daughter. Democrats Herb Kohl and Patrick Leahy showed sympathy with the Weaver family. Feinstein took a hard line, asking Randy Weaver if his children wore Nazi arm bands and shouted Nazi slogans at neighbors.

So for San Francisco Democrat Feinstein, the targets of the attack were Nazis, not the government sniper who fired the deadly shot. This was the action of a deep state that Feinstein now claims does not exist, and which has raised few if any concerns about her longtime support for China’s Communist regime.

When it comes to President Trump, ordinary Americans, and conservative judges, the bigotry lives loudly within Sen. Dianne Feinstein. If anybody believed that the San Francisco Democrat, 86, is worse than Nancy Pelosi it would be hard to blame them.

Lloyd Billingsley

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/dianes-deep-state-denial-lloyd-billingsley/

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What’s Worse: 'Terrorist Groups' or 'Terrorist Nations'? - Raymond Ibrahim

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by Raymond Ibrahim

The ugly truth about the Pensacola murderer’s Saudi homeland.

One of the most meaningless statements made by CNN concerning the recent Pensacola naval air station shooting—where Ahmed Muhammad Alshamrani, a Saudi man, killed three people and injured eight—was to say “It does not appear Alshamrani had ties to terrorist groups, two sources told CNN. He had been training at the Florida base for two years, according to a spokesman for the assistant to the defense secretary.”

The fact is, just being born and bred in Saudi Arabia, as Alshamrani was, is enough to inculcate “terrorism”—that is, hate for and possibly violence against non-Muslims—into the hearts and minds of its inhabitants. One need not also have actual “ties to terrorist groups.”

Osama bin Laden, also born and raised in Saudi Arabia, is a perfect example. He was not eventually evicted for screaming bloody jihad or hate for infidels—both mainstream aspects of Saudi teaching—but for publicly accusing the Saudi crown of not practicing the jihad it preached.

If this seems exaggerated, consider some facts about our “good friend and ally,”™ Saudi Arabia. It has actually published online a fatwa, an Islamic-sanctioned opinion—in Arabic only—entitled, “Duty to Hate Jews, Polytheists, and Other Infidels” (my translation here). It comes from the fatwa wing of the government, meaning it has the full weight of the Saudi crown behind it. According to this governmentally-supported fatwa, all Muslims must “oppose and hate whomever Allah commands us to oppose and hate, including the Jews, the Christians, and other mushrikin [polytheists], until they believe in Allah alone and abide by his laws, which he sent down to his Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings upon him” (see Koran 60:4).

Unsurprisingly, not a single non-Muslim building of worship is allowed in Saudi Arabia; its highest Islamic authority decreed that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.” Whenever Christians are suspected of secretly meeting in a house for worship—or as one Saudi official once complained, “plotting to celebrate Christmas”—they are arrested and punished. Any cross or other non-Muslim symbol found is confiscated and destroyed. Anyone caught trying to smuggle Bibles or any other “publications that have prejudice to any other religious belief other than Islam” can be executed.

Such sponsored hate has thoroughly permeated Saudi society. A Colombian soccer-player “was arrested by the Saudi moral police after customers in a Riyadh shopping mall expressed outrage over the sports player’s religious tattoos, which included the face of Jesus of Nazareth on his arm.” A Romanian player kissed the tattoo of a cross he had on his arm after scoring a goal, causing public outrage.

It all starts with the Saudi education system, which indoctrinates Muslim children into believing that “the Apes are the people of the Sabbath, the Jews; and the Swine are the infidels of the communion of Jesus, the Christians.” “As early as first grade,” Human Rights Watch reports, “students in Saudi schools are being taught hatred toward all those perceived to be of a different faith or school of thought… The lessons in hate are reinforced with each following year.” Nor have any of Saudi Arabia’s promises for educational reform been fulfilled. According to a December 2018 report,

Saudi Arabia had previously pledged to remove all incitement content from its textbooks by 2008 and the government continues to allege that this issue has long since been resolved. However, other reports say otherwise. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom issued a study this past March which says that the curriculum contains incitement content which had been thought removed. Examples of this content include demeaning non-Muslims and encouraging jihad against them. The execution of apostates is prescribed and children are encouraged not to associate with non-Muslims. Saudi Arabia not only continues to use these textbooks domestically, but exports them to other parts of the Middle East.

Indeed, Saudi-sponsored hate literature is found in mosques and Islamic centers all across the U.S.

Little wonder that one of 35 Christian Ethiopians who were arrested and abused in prison for almost a year—simply for holding a private house prayer—said after he was released: “They [Saudis] are full of hatred towards non-Muslims.” Or to quote novelist Hani Naqshabandi, “Our religious institutions do not give us room to exercise free thought…. They [Saudi institutions] said that the Christian is an infidel, a denizen of hell, an enemy to Allah and Islam. So we said, ‘Allah’s curse on them…. Christians [here] are in need of protection.”

Again, bear in mind that all of this hate is official Saudi policy, enforced by the heads of state themselves—not the aberrant beliefs of some random “terrorist group.”

In light of this, is it surprising to find that a Saudi, in this case, a second lieutenant in the Royal Saudi Air Force, has committed an act of terrorism against Americans—that is, the infidels he was taught to hate from birth—even though he has no formal “ties to terrorist organizations,” as CNN observed? Is it surprising that ten other Saudis were arrested in connection and more are on the run?

Is it, for that matter, surprising to recall that 15 of the 19 suicide hijackers of 9/11 were Saudis—and some of them, including Mohamad Atta, had also learned to fly in the U.S., ironically, also in Florida?

There is, however, some good news, that is, some common sense made manifest: the “Navy has grounded more than 300 Saudi nationals training to be pilots after the shooting rampage last week at Pensacola Naval Air Station.”

Is that because they all have possible ties to various and individual terrorist groups? Or is it because—and are U.S. authorities actually appreciating what it means that—they have ties to Saudi Arabia?


Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/whats-worse-terrorist-groups-or-terrorist-nations-raymond-ibrahim/

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Congressmen Want US Islamist Organizations Investigated for Terror Financing - Cathy Hinners

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by Cathy Hinners

The State Department could start by looking into ICNA and its supporters in Tennessee.

Kudos to a trio of Congressmen, including Tennessee Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, for requesting that the State Department investigate the “innocuous sounding organization Helping Hands for Relief and Development (HHRD) and their ‘sister organization,’ the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)” for “promoting extremist ideology and terror finance”:

While they sell themselves as innocuous Muslim civil society organizations, they are, in fact, arms of one of the most radical networks in the world.

Fleischmann has good reasons to pursue this inquiry since individuals intimately tied to both ICNA and HHRD are active in Tennessee.

House Resolution 160, which preceded the Congressmen’s letter, claims HHRD and ICNA are domestic affiliates of Jamaat-e-Islami.

Jamaat-e-Islami is a jihadi South Asian Sunni revivalist movement dedicated to Islamic revolution, extremist Sunni Muslim ideology, and the establishment of a global caliphate.

The House Resolution also states that ICNA is "openly affiliated with Jamaat-e-Islami,” and shares leadership with them, while HHRD collaborates with a Pakistani terrorist network.

Noted in the Congressmen’s November 1st letter, Iranian-born Middle East and Islamic world expert Vali Nasr “names ICNA as one of the most important branches of Jammat-e-Islami in the world” and “has received over ten million dollars in [U.S.] government grants.” An investigation is warranted, the Congressmen say, because “significant evidence” shows that HHRD and ICNA are “directly involved in terror finance.”

The editor of Weekly Blitz, a Bangladeshi paper, has exposed an equally concerning problem regarding Jamaat-e-Islami’s U.S. proxies ICNA and HHRD:

Despite its partnerships with terrorist organizations and its officials’ promotion of extremism, HHRD has long enjoyed non-Muslim support. HHRD reveals that its donors include the British government, the World Food Program, the World Health Organization, and prominent American corporations such as Microsoft, Cisco, PepsiCo, and Dell.

HHRD has been reported as using radical Islamists to raise money for the organization, including Siraj Wahhaj, a featured speaker at the November HHRD benefit dinner in Memphis.

Wahhaj, who converted to Islam under the leadership of the Nation of Islam leader and notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, is the founder of the Brooklyn Al-Taqwa mosque. At Al-Taqwa, he cultivated a close relationship with Omar Abdel Rahman, aka the “blind Sheikh” and spiritual leader of Osama bin Laden. The connections between Wahhaj and his mosque to Rahman landed Wahhaj on the unindicted co-conspirator list for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Wahhaj occasionally speaks in Tennessee mosques and to college Muslim Student Associations. In 2016, Wahhaj was the keynote speaker for a Tennessee American Muslim Advisory Council Knoxville event called “Stand Up For Justice: Advocating for Muslim Rights in Tennessee.” He is known for delivering messages which tie political power to his desire for a global caliphate.

If only Muslims were more clever politically, he told his New Jersey listeners, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate. ‘If we were united and strong, we'd elect our own emir [leader] and give allegiance to him. ... Take my word, if 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us.’”

Knoxville is also the home of Rafiq Mahdi, the Director of Community Development for ICNA Relief (USA), another Jammat-e-Islami domestic affiliate named in the House Resolution. Weekly Blitz reports that Jamaat-e-Islami is “now openly denouncing democracy and even preaching Caliphate.”

The contact phone number for Mahdi posted on ICNA’s website is for HHRD.

The ICNA Members Handbook makes clear that the organization’s overarching goal is establishing the global caliphate, or what Mahdi “envisions [as] an Islamic empire, a place where, if you don't follow Muslim rules, you are free -- to leave the country.”

Like Wahhaj, Rafiq Mahdi is a black American convert to Islam who also started his Muslim life with the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam. Before becoming the unofficial Imam of the Knoxville Muslim community, Mahdi led the Masjid Al-Iman in Florida. This “small fundamentalist mosque” gained national attention because it allegedly was the spiritual home of the “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla who had ties to al Qaeda and was convicted of planning a jihad attack in 2002.

That same year Madhi helped fundraise for the KindHearts Foundation which was dissolved under suspicion of raising money for Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Mahdi, however, claims that most Muslims do not see Hamas as a terrorist organization, and says he is not convinced that Osama Bin Laden was behind 9/11.

At last count, HHRD employs fifteen regional coordinators spread throughout the U.S. and hosts fundraising events in cities from coast to coast. The organization’s latest 990 form shows total revenue of over $52 million dollars.

ICNA maintains operations in sixty-eight locations spread throughout the country.

Two weeks ago, the Middle East Forum hosted a panel of experts on Capitol Hill, including Rep. Jim Banks (R-Indiana), sponsor of House Resolution 160, to address the threat posed by Jamaat-e-Islami’s network. Panelists emphasized the organization’s commitment to establishing a global Caliphate and the “continued calls for jihad expressed by senior Jamaati leaders.”

Abha Shankar of the Investigative Project on Terrorism noted that ICNA is more closely tied to Jamaat-e-Islami than was previously known:

‘Jamaat-e-Islami believes in Islamic revolution, with the ultimate goal of establishing a global Islamic superstate, ruled by sharia,’ Shankar explained. ‘This is exactly what is preached by ICNA at its conventions, at its events and in its publications.’

There should be no question about whether ICNA and HHRD are investigated and the emerging U.S. terror threat stopped.

Cathy Hinners is a decorated retired New York state police officer and was a participant in the Intel Liaison Division while she was active in an emerging Middle Eastern/ Muslim community. Based upon this experience, she developed a 3-day course on Middle Eastern Crime, Culture and Community which she has delivered to thousands of law enforcement officers across the country.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/congressmen-want-us-islamist-organizations-frontpagemagcom/

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Analysis: Can the Israeli Right get 61 seats without Liberman? - David Rosenberg

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by David Rosenberg

Can the Likud and its allies win an outright victory in Israel's 3rd election, or will the deadlock - or the Left - prevail?

Binyamin Netanyahu in Knesset with Moshe Kahlon, Yisrael Katz, and Gilad Erdan                                             Reuters

Before midnight Wednesday, the 22nd Knesset dissolved itself, sending Israel to its third election in eleven months.

Following two deadlocked Knessets and the longest caretaker government in Israel’s history, the question remains whether the new elections, slated for March 2nd, will end the stalemate between Right and Left – or deepen it further.

Recent polls released to the public show a stalemate, or, in one recent poll, a victory for the Left, with the left-Arab bloc reaching the 61 seats needed for a majority.

Against this backdrop, some on the Right have lamented that without Avidgor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party – a secular rightist faction which pulled away from the right-wing bloc and called for a national unity government sans haredim and ‘messianic settlers’ – the right-wing – religious bloc can no longer win elections on its own, and that some deal must eventually be brokered with the center-left Blue and White.

Is 61 Seats Achievable? 

In reality, however, a right-wing victory – that is, an outright victory with 61 seats, not including Yisrael Beytenu – isn’t all that farfetched.

The Israeli Right had a 61-seat majority without Yisrael Beytenu in the 20th Knesset, from 2015 to 2019, and would have netted a 62-seat majority in the April elections to the 21st Knesset had the New Right not come up 1,400 votes short of the electoral threshold.

In fact, in April, the Right, without Yisrael Beytenu, received a larger percentage of the vote (51.43%) than it did in 2015, when it received 51.33% of the vote.

But since not only the New Right, but also Zehut failed to cross the threshold, wasting a total of 256,629 votes, or the equivalent of between six and seven seats, the Likud and its allies were left one seat short of a majority, with just 60 seats.

Then, in September, curiously, the right-wing bloc plummeted from 60 seats to just 55, below the left-wing – Arab bloc’s 57 seats.

What Shattered the Right in the Last Election?

This was widely attributed to high turnout in the Arab sector. While that certainly was a factor, it simply does not explain what happened to the Right, and what created the political deadlock which gave neither side a clear advantage.

In fact, at least three factors were at play in the September election, creating the ‘perfect storm’ which weakened the Right, leaving the Likud and its allies far from a majority: high Arab turnout, low turnout on the Right, and alliances which minimized, rather than maximized the Right’s pool of possible voters.

First, Arab turnout was relatively high in the September election. The Joint Arab List party, which received 13 seats, becoming the third largest party, received 470,211 votes, or 10.6% of all ballots, with many more Arab voters backing left-wing parties like the Democratic Union, Labor, and Blue and White.

The Joint List’s showing in the September election was a bit of an anomaly, with the Joint List, or its constituent parties, typically netting about 8% to 9% of the votes.

Still, Arab turnout alone could not have empowered the Left and handicapped the Right.

The 2015 election also featured relatively high Arab turnout, with the Joint Arab List also netting 13 seats, and receiving actually a slightly higher percentage of the total vote, at 10.61%.

The Joint Arab List and its constituent parties

Nevertheless, the Right won a clear victory in that election, with 61 seats, not including Yisrael Beytenu’s six mandates.

The Right’s Vanishing Voters

A second factor was a relative decrease in turnout on the Right. While the overall turnout rate increased in the September election, rising from 68.5% to 69.8%, in right-wing strongholds it declined.

In Judea and Samaria, for instance, it declined by 1.6 points, from 78.4% turnout to 76.8%.
That absolute decline was exacerbated by the even greater relative decline caused by the fact that elsewhere (particularly in the Arab sector), voting rates went up.

The actual number of voters for the Likud and its likely allies – Shas, United Torah Judaism, Yamina, and Otzma – actually went down, so that the decline was not only relative, but absolute.

The Likud and its allies received 2,216,547 votes in April, but only 2,056,855 in September.

Right-wing vote totals 2015 to 2019

Bad Alliances

A third factor that hurt the Right was the migration of voters from the Likud and its allies to rival parties, typically either Blue and White or Yisrael Beytenu, which surged from five seats in April to eight in September. In terms of voters, Yisrael Beytenu went up by a whopping 79% from the April election to the September election, rising from 173,004 to 310,154 votes.

While some of Yisrael Beytenu’s new voters undoubtedly came from Blue and White, as pollster Shlomo Filber has claimed, many also came from the Right, switching from center-right factions like Kulanu and the New Right.

It was a phenomenon Filber also pointed to, noting that while the Likud and Kulanu merged prior to the September election, most of Kulanu’s voters didn’t follow.

As is shown by a Maagar Mohot poll conducted in September, on the eve of the election, voters who backed Kulanu in April mostly did not follow their party to the Likud after the two factions united.

Just 23% of voters who backed Kulanu in April said they planned to vote for the Likud, while 26% said they planned to vote Blue and While, with another 14% who said they planned to vote for Yisrael Beytenu, and eight percent who said they planned to vote for Labor-Gesher, with only 3% moving to the right-wing Yamina. Thus, according to the poll, nearly half of Kulanu’s two seats-worth of voters migrated to the center-left or Left, a further 14% to Yisrael Beytenu, and only a quarter staying in the right-wing bloc.

Even the New Right, which placed itself firmly in the right-wing bloc, lost voters to the center-left and to Yisrael Beytenu when it merged with the Jewish Home to form Yamina. Just two-thirds of its voters from April said they planned on voting for Yamina, while about a tenth of its voters moved to Yisrael Beytenu or Blue and White.

Fifteen percent of Zehut’s voters also said they planned to vote for Blue and White or Yisrael Beytenu, after Zehut dropped out of the race.

All in all, the right-wing – religious bloc likely lost about three seats-worth of votes to Blue and White and Yisrael Beytenu combined.

How the Right Can Win Again: Lessons for 2020

If the above is correct, what lessons can be gleamed for next year’s election?

First, one thing is clear: the Right does have the potential to win an outright victory without Yisrael Beytenu – it has done so in the recent past, and could have repeated that feat earlier this year had it not been for the New Right’s narrow loss.

Such losses on the Right by parties which fail to clear the electoral threshold - including not only the New Right and Zehut’s losses in April; but also Otzma Yehudit and its predecessor in September 2019, in 2013, and in 2006; and Yahad in 2015 – have made clear the importance of unity on the Right, to prevent factions from wasting votes in campaigns that cannot clear the 3.25% electoral threshold.

That is a crucial lesson, one whose importance should not be ignored.

But it also led to some clear mistakes in the formation of alliances intended to maximize the right-wing vote, while actually driving some voters away from the right-wing bloc.

The decision in December 2018 by Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked to bolt the Jewish Home and form a liberal-right party, later named the New Right, drew its fair share of criticism both for its timing and the way the split from their former political home was executed.

Yet the logic behind the split was actually fairly sound, even if implemented poorly.

The ‘Ideological Right’, that is, the parties to the right of the Likud, is made of up very different kinds of voters whose right-wing ideologies differ greatly.

Bennett and Shaked bolted the Jewish Home – National Union in large part because they felt the party’s Hardal (haredi-National Religious) wing had views on issues of religion and state which were incompatible with their own, and those of their voters. And they were correct.

The socially conservative hardal wing of the ideological Right has some things in common with liberal-right voters, like on issues of territory, security, and economic policy, but there are also major areas of disagreement.

While the base of the Jewish Home – National Union is almost entirely religious, the New Right was and is a party of both religious and secular voters; people whose political beliefs are rooted in classical liberalism and who favor right-wing policies on judicial reform and the future of Judea and Samaria, but who also support surrogacy for gay and lesbian couples and don’t necessary back efforts to maintain the religious status quo at the Western Wall.

The New Right’s neutral position on issues of religion and state offered the latter kind of voters a political home within the right-wing bloc. But when the party again ran with the Jewish Home and National Union in September, thousands of voters ditched the New Right for Yisrael Beytenu or Blue and White.

Rather than maximize the possible pool of voters, the New Right – Jewish Home alliance actually may have ended up doing more harm than good, while a third faction, Otzma Yehudit, may have been a better fit for the Jewish Home.

And a fourth faction, Zehut, which explicitly embraced classical liberalist positions on both economics and issues of religion and state, while bringing in both religious and secular candidates, seems to have been a far more natural partner for the New Right than the Jewish Home. Even the New Right’s postmortem analysis of the April election found its voter base overlapped heavily with Zehut’s, with Zehut eating heavily into the New Right’s support.

Along with the thousands of voters who left Zehut and the New Right for Blue and White and Yisrael Beytenu in the September election, one can only guess how many more stayed at home.

The Likud-Kulanu alliance should also serve as a cautionary tale.

The center-right Kulanu, founded by a former Likud MK, seemed like a perfect match for the Likud, and an easy way to cement the Likud’s position as the largest party in the Knesset.

Instead, about half of Kulanu voters left the right-wing bloc to Blue and White, Yisrael Beytenu, and Labor, leaving the Likud with Kulanu’s MKs – but without its voters.

In April, the Likud received 1,140,370 votes to Kulanu’s 152,756, for a total of 1,293,126. Yet on election day in September, the Likud-Kulanu alliance received just 1,113,617 votes – less than the Likud did on its own five months earlier.

Kulanu offered a centrist alternative to both the Likud and Blue and White and when forced to choose, about half of its voters rejected their options on the Right.

The hardest question to answer, however, is how to bring back apathetic right-wing voters who turned out in droves in 2015 and April of this year, only to stay home in September.

The Right lost 160,000 votes from April to September; and while some of that can be attributed to defecting voters, lower turnout on the Right is likely just as responsible.

In both 2015 and April of this year, the Likud managed to drive up turnout with election day messages warning of massive turnout in the Arab sector or in left-wing bastions, while voting in predominantly right-wing areas was at ‘record lows’. Twice that message worked, creating a sense of anxiety that brought out right-wing voters in droves.

But with a second election just five months later, the message which seemed so convincing in April of this year clearly failed to motivate voters again in September. Voters weren’t buying it. They remembered those same messages in April, warning of an electoral catastrophe in the making, only to see the Likud surging to the top as the results came in, and the Right clearly defeating the Left.


David Rosenberg

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/273123

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Obama or Trump: Who's the Real Russian Stooge? - Ari Lieberman

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by Ari Lieberman

A sobering -- and telling -- look at the historical record.

Democrats and their socialist allies have been quick to portray President Donald Trump as a tool of the Russians. Pejoratives like "Putin's puppet" and "Russian asset" are terms routinely employed by Trump's shrillest critics with banal regularity.

The Mueller Report, compiled by a team largely composed of Trump antagonists, conclusively established that neither Trump nor members of his campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election. That fact, established after wasting $32 million in taxpayer funds, has not stopped Democrats and their echo-chamber puppets in the establishment media, from regurgitating tired tropes and talking points steeped in Alice in Wonderland-like fantasy.

Democrats and elements within the leftist media have absurdly attempted to portray Trump’s efforts to establish good, working relations with Russia as an attempt to undermine the republic. However, no such criticism was ever leveled against Barack Obama when he attempted his farcical Russia re-set, which ended in disaster. It’s a tired double standard that Trump and his supporters have become accustomed to.

Despite cautious efforts to foster good relations, the Trump administration’s foreign and domestic policies have adversely impacted Russia and its imperialistic designs. In fact, even a cursory review of Trump's record on Russia reveals that he is anything but Russia's stooge and can more accurately be characterized as its worst nightmare. I’ve compiled a list of seven significant actions undertaken during the Trump administration, which unequivocally supports this assertion.

Energy: In September 2019 the United States exported more crude oil and petroleum products than it imported, marking the first time that the U.S. was a net petroleum exporter since monthly records were initiated in 1973. This startling development occurred under Trump’s watch. Trump reversed his predecessor’s deleterious energy policies, which were viewed by the energy industry as hostile. In fact, Obama, who nixed Dakota Access Pipeline and Keystone XL pipeline, banned offshore drilling in the Arctic and enacted harsh regulations on the fossil fuel industry, developed a reputation of being anti-energy. Instead of shoring up U.S. energy interests, Obama did everything he could to thwart the fossil fuel industry while providing taxpayer subsidies to failed solar energy companies like Solyndra. By contrast, U.S. fossil fuel development and production under Trump is now surging. This not only strengthens America’s national security, it harms Russian economic interests.

Ukraine: Despite the Democratic narrative, it was the Trump administration and not the Obama administration that provided lethal aid to the Ukrainian army to repel Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine. Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the Russian-backed proxy takeover of two provinces in eastern Ukraine was met by tepid action by the Obama administration. Ukraine had asked the United States for lethal military assistance, but that request was rebuffed by Obama. Trump reversed Obama’s pro-Russian policy and authorized the release of military assistance to Ukraine, which included delivery of highly effective Javelin anti-tank guided missiles.

Poland: Shortly after taking office, the Obama administration announced that it would be scrapping a missile defense agreement that the Bush administration had negotiated with Poland and the Czech Republic. By 2013, Obama had completely dismantled the concept of a Europe-based missile defense system, leaving the Poles and Czechs embittered. By contrast, the Kremlin was ecstatic. Putin had to concede nothing and received a windfall. In 2012, Obama was infamously caught on hot mic telling Russian president Dmitri Medvedev that he would have “more flexibility” to capitulate on missile defense after the November presidential election. In 2017, Trump partially reversed Obama’s Russia cave-in by signing a memorandum of understanding with Polish president Andrzej Duda in which the U.S. agreed to sell Poland Patriot missile defense systems. The MoU signals to both America’s friends and foes that America does not abandon allies.

Rebuilding the military: It is no secret that the U.S. military – which endured severe budget slashings under Obama – was compromised during the Obama years. U.S. overseas military obligations coupled with sequestrations put an enormous strain on the military and its ability to perform its mission. Military personnel did not have a favorable view of Obama, who saw climate change and not Russia as America’s main threat. A joint poll conducted by the Military Times and the Institute for Veterans and Military Families found that more than 50% of those polled maintained an unfavorable view of Obama while only 36% registered approval. But the toxic situation existing under Obama was reversed under Trump. The latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by Trump, ensures that the US. Military maintains its qualitative and quantitative edge over its adversaries, which include Russia and China. Equally important, morale among America’s military personnel has surged under Trump.

Syria: When Bashar Assad used poison gas against his own citizens in 2013, killing nearly 1,500 people including 400 children, Obama declared that such use of chemical weapons crossed all red lines and warranted a severe military response. Within a month, Obama reversed course and allowed Putin to orchestrate a scheme compelling Assad to give up his WMDs. Despite the deal, Assad was still able to retain some of his chemical weapons and the means of manufacturing them. Worse yet, Obama permitted Putin, as interlocutor, to gain a substantial foothold in Syria. Under Trump, Assad’s use of chemical weapons was met with an overwhelming U.S. military response signaling to both friend and foe that the U.S. would not tolerate the use of WMDs by rogue regimes. Trump also ensured that Putin did not extend his reach beyond the so-called de-confliction zone. In February 2018, a Syrian army column backed by Russian mercenaries from CHVK Wagner attempted to seize an oil refinery near the Syrian city of Deir Ezzor. They were stopped cold in their tracks by U.S. military personnel who called in air and artillery strikes. The entire enemy force was wiped out and the Russians lost and estimated 200 to 300 men. The action signaled to Russia that the U.S. would not tolerate violations of prior understandings.

INF Treaty:  Under Obama, the Russians flagrantly developed and deployed ground-based missiles with ranges of between 500 to 5,500 kilometers. Obama likely ignored the transgressions in a misguided effort to get the Russians on board with the JCPOA, colloquially known as the Iran deal. In 2019 the Trump administration formally withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) citing blatant Russian violations of the accord.

Venezuela: In 2009, Obama warmly greeted Venezuela’s authoritarian leader Hugo Chavez at the opening ceremony of the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. A smiling Nicholas Maduro, Chavez’s successor, was standing nearby and appeared amused by the encounter. Obama later defended his warm embrace of one of America’s top enemies by claiming that the U.S. must engage other countries through humanitarian gestures. During Obama’s tenure, Venezuela became a center for nefarious Russian, Chinese, Iranian and Hezbollah activity. Despite the presence of such pernicious actors right on America’s doorstep, Obama actively opposed sanctions against the Venezuelan regime even when there was wide bipartisan support for such measures. Russia maintains a large economic stake in Venezuela to the tune of over $15 billion. In an effort to prop up the regime and secure its investments, it dispatched troops to Venezuela several times this year. When Trump took office, he reversed the pusillanimous policies of his predecessor by immediately imposing sanctions on Venezuela and key Venezuelan officials. Trump continues to ratchet up the pressure against Venezuela by initiating a relentless economic and diplomatic offensive against its ruling junta. The Trump administration also sternly warned the Kremlin not to deploy military assets in the region referring to such deployments as a direct threat to international peace and security in the region. Thanks to Trump’s relentless pressure campaign, Maduro’s days are almost certainly numbered and when he inevitably falls, Moscow stands to lose a bundle.

During his tenure, Obama pandered to the Russians. He allowed them to violate missile treaties, gave them a twenty percent interest in America’s uranium mining capacity in the now infamous Uranium One deal, transferred sensitive technology to Russian companies that would later end up in the hands of the Russian military, dismantled missile defense shields in eastern Europe, eroded the U.S. military, prevented lethal aid from reaching Ukraine and stifled the fossil fuel industry. If the Democrats want to find a Russian stooge, they need look no further than Barack Obama.  

Ari Lieberman

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/democrats-call-trump-russian-asset-facts-say-ari-lieberman/

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Black Nationalist Hate Group Praised by Media Shot Up Kosher Market - Daniel Greenfield

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by Daniel Greenfield

The ultimate "cultural appropriation" and its lethal results

The New York Times called them "sidewalk ministers" who practice "tough love." The paper quoted Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center who described them as victims of racism and claimed that they were non-violent.

The Washington Post, in its own puff piece on the Black Hebrew Israelites, also falsely described them as non-violent, and concluded that, "Israelite street preaching in parts of D.C., Philadelphia and New York is commonplace, a familiar if odd accent to city life."

The odd accent to city life in Jersey City came amid a hail of bullets as two members of the racist black nationalist hate group opened fire in the JC Supermarket. Despite initial claims by the media and the authorities that the Jewish market had not been targeted, David Anderson and Francine Graham ignored passerby on Martin Luther King Dr, to get to the store and kill as many Jewish people as they could.

When the shooting had ended, Moshe Hersh Deutsch, a yeshiva student who was known for helping distribute food packages to the needy, Mrs Leah Mindel Ferencz, a mother of 3 who helped her husband run the grocery store, and Miguel Jason Rodriguez, the father of an 11-year-old daughter and a parishioner at an Assemblies of God church, were all dead.

Anderson, who left behind anti-Semitic and anti-police writings, had also killed Detective Joseph Seals, a father of 5, and wounded Officer Ray Sanchez and Officer Ferenella Fernandez.

The black nationalist terrorist had hated cops and Jews. He managed to kill both.

The media whitewash of the racist Black Israelites had come during the Covington Catholic case when the Washington Post, among other papers, had falsely blamed the pro-life students for a confrontation that actually began when members of the nationalist hate group had begun calling them, “crackers,” “faggots,” and “pedophiles.” An African-American pro-life student was called the ‘n-word’.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has her own history of racism and anti-Semitism, falsely claimed that the Covington Catholic students were “taunting 5 black men.”

The New York Times equivocated that members of the hate group “use blunt and sometimes offensive language, and gamely engage in arguments”. The typical “offensive language” and argumentative style of the Times’ second favorite racist hate group involves shouting racist and anti-Semitic slurs at people.

David Anderson, the Kosher supermarket shooter, had a whole YouTube playlist of such ugly incidents. In one video, a Black Israelite preacher shouts, “Satan is in you” at a Jewish man. “You stole our history. You are pretending to be us. The messiah, who is a black man, is going to kill you.”

Gamely indeed.

In another video, a Black Israelite preacher calls a Jewish teen a member of the “Synagogue of Satan”. “We want our book back and we want our land back,” the preacher demands. “Go back to Russia.”

You can see why Rep. Ilhan Omar might have felt called to defend the racist hate group.

“They move you all over the earth, but we know who you are. You are part of the Zionist deception. You go among the earth to spread Zionism, which is really Catholicism,” he rants. “Witchcraft and sorcery.”

Such statements may seem deranged, but they’re typical of the supremacist theology of the hate group.

Previous incidents involving the hate group have been even uglier with a video that doesn’t appear on Anderson’s playlist showcasing a Black Israelite preacher shouting, "The Holocaust is a damn joke! Heil Hitler!" A documentary shows another preacher standing on a prone white man and declaiming, "We're coming for you, white boys. Negroes are the real Jews. Get ready for war.”

It’s no wonder that Tom Metzger a KKK leader and the founder of the White Aryan Resistance, had described them, as "the black counterparts of us".

And yet, the New York Times concluded its whitewash of the hate group with a closing quote by Todd Boyd, a professor of race and culture at UCLA, which claimed that, "To many black people, Hebrew Israelites are a harmless part of their communities."

No doubt to many white people the KKK are a harmless part of their communities. Racist hate groups are the bigger problem for people who aren’t a member of their race.

"More alarming to many African Americans," the UCLA professor of race had argued, is "seeing a white guy in a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat."

The dead at the JC Supermarket would have liked to have seen a MAGA had instead of black coats.

The whitewash of the Black Israelite hate group was the work of John Eligon, a reporter hired by the New York Times to report on race, who had previously defended Rep. Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitism, and had injected black nationalist sympathies into his writing. The Washington Post’s whitewash of the hate group was the work of Sam Kestenbaum, a contributing editor at the radical leftist The Forward. The anti-Jewish paper has a long history of whitewashing and defending anti-Semitism by its political allies.

But the problem is much bigger than just the media’s whitewash of the Black Israelites.

The FBI’s warning about the threat of “black identity extremism” was met with a wave of attacks by the media.  A New York Times op-ed warned of "The F.B.I.’s Dangerous Crackdown on ‘Black Identity Extremists’" The Intercept, a notorious radical hate site funded by Franco-Persian eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar, joined in. "Why the FBI's "Black Identity Extremist" Classification Is Dangerous," Teen Vogue had argued. The Nation had warned of a "Coming War on 'Black Nationalists'".

Rep. Karen Bass, a militant anti-Israel Democrat, despite representing a partially Jewish district, attacked former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the FBI, and other officials over the BIE category.  This was after the murder of 4 Dallas police officers by Micah X. Johnson and Kori Ali Muhammad's targeted killing of three white men in Fresno.

“I don’t believe black identity extremists exist, and I believe the FBI should retract the document and send out a document throughout law enforcement saying that black identity extremists do not exist,” Bass had ranted.

This year, under pressure, the FBI jettisoned the BIE term. Just in time for the Kosher market shooting.

The FBI report helps police officers prepare for coming threats. By undermining the warnings about black nationalist violence, Rep. Bass, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and every media activist and politician who went to bat for black nationalist racists sabotaged police preparedness.

And they have blood on their hands.

The media is already embracing the familiar narrative about lone wolves and individual instability. That’s the same story we hear after acts of violence by members of a movement that it is politically allied with.

Hate groups, whether it’s the KKK or the Black Israelites, or campus hate groups like the Groypers or SJP, should be exposed with clear and honest facts about who they are and what they believe.

When political activists and media whitewashes cover up the truth for partisan reasons, people can die.

A father of five with a badge, a mother of three running a grocery store, a man working to support his daughter, another man delivering food packages, did not have to die. If the truth had been told about the Black Israelites, they might still be alive today. Instead the media lied and they are gone.

Truly standing up against racism and anti-Semitism means jettisoning partisan agendas for the truth.

Rep. Karen Bass, the New York Times, The Intercept, the ACLU, and others colluded to tie the hands of the FBI and local police because they see black nationalists like Anderson as allies in their cause.

After the attack, a representative from Americans Against Anti-Semitism, an organization which, unlike the ADL, actually opposes hate wherever it comes from, took a camera to record local reactions.

"I blame the Jews. We never had a shooting like this until they came," one resident bellows. “My children are stuck at school because of Jew shenanigans.”

"Four of y'all are dead right? That's great. If they was there, they got shot dead, that's great," a man says.

"Get the Jews out of Jersey City," someone else shouts.

There’s nothing extraordinary about this. It’s the everyday hate that we can’t talk about. The hate that the media is quick to cover up. If you want to understand why children are beaten on Brooklyn streets and why a Kosher supermarket was shot up, it’s because we aren’t allowed to talk about it.

Evil needs silence and complicity. The media and Democrat politicians are guilty of both.

The Ferencz family, Moishe and Leah, opened a small market on Martin Luther King Dr. They filled the narrow aisles with bread, juice, candy, milk, and the household staples you need when time is short.

They worked late hours.

And then, while Moishe was praying next door, the black nationalist bigots whom the New York Times, the Washington Post, Rep. Ilhan Omar, and Rep. Karen Bass had defended, killed her husband.

That is the story that the media won’t tell. But it must be told.


Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/black-nationalist-hate-group-praised-media-shot-daniel-greenfield/

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Trump Pushes Back Against Campus Anti-Semitism - Robert Spencer

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by Robert Spencer

Pro-Palestinian thuggery on campus finally gets a rebuke.

President Trump made history again on Wednesday, when he signed an executive order authorizing the Department of Education to act against anti-Semitism on American college and university campuses, and making it clear that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal money, “would apply to institutions that traffic in anti-Semitic hate,” that is, virtually every public institution of higher learning in America.

This executive order is long overdue. The Jerusalem Post reported that as far back as 2015, “more than 30 organizations, including Jewish fraternity AEPI, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Zionist Organization of America wrote to University of California regent Bruce D. Varner in July, requesting that substantive measures be taken to combat rising anti-Semitism on UC-affiliated campuses.”

The problem wasn’t restricted to the University of California, either, but nothing was done. And it is virtually inconceivable that Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or any presidential hopeful on the scene today would have signed the executive order that Trump signed Wednesday. Trump pointed out that earlier efforts to combat campus anti-Semitism “didn’t get it done,” and declared: “This year, there’s no roadblock.”

There have been roadblocks for years. Campus groups, most notably the notorious Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), have grown increasingly aggressive as the Left has intensified its embrace of opposition to Israel and open anti-Semitism. Jewish students and supporters of Israel on campuses have been shouted down, defamed, vilified, and physically menaced, with only a handful of groups, particularly the David Horowitz Freedom Center, providing any support for those students.

The Freedom Center has fought back, virtually alone, demanding that universities withdraw their support for pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic groups such as the SJP that spread Jew-hatred on campus for well over a decade. The Center provides students who support Israel with valuable intellectual resources and helping them to stand strong against the furious onslaught from Leftists and the Muslim Brotherhood juggernaut.

There are so many incidents illustrating that furious onslaught that they could fill an entire good-sized book. Nor have only students been targeted: in February 2010 at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, attempted to give a speech there on relations between the United States and Israel but was ultimately unable to do so: after Muslim students heckled and interrupted him repeatedly, he left the stage.

Before Oren appeared, the UCI Muslim Student Union (MSU) chapter had issued a statement that read, in part:

As people of conscience, we oppose Michael Oren’s invitation to our campus. Propagating murder is not a responsible expression of free speech. . . .

We strongly condemn the university for cosponsoring, and therefore, inadvertently supporting the ambassador of a state that is condemned by more UN Human Rights Council resolutions than all other countries in the world combined. . . .

The most important aspect of this statement was its claim that the university was “inadvertently supporting” Oren’s views just by cosponsoring the event. This was a complete rejection of the idea of the university as a place where all ideas can be discussed and accepted or rejected on their own merits. As far as the Muslim Student Union was concerned, giving someone a platform was tantamount to endorsing his views—so only those with acceptable opinions, that is, anti-Israel opinions, should be given a platform.

Applying that principle has turned universities into one-party states in which only one point of view is allowed. Trump’s executive order opens up the possibility that they might become institutions of higher learning again.

It will take a great deal of effort. At Temple University in August 2014, SJP members called Daniel Vessal, a Camera on Campus fellow and a member of the Jewish fraternity AEPi, “kike” and “baby killer,” and punched him in the face. Vessal explained that when he tried to engage SJP members in dialogue, but “people at the table were calling me a ‘baby killer’…And then this kid just rocks me in the face as hard as he can. My glasses flew off. After a two-second blur I had no clue what had happened. I couldn’t believe the kid actually hit me. When the police came over and were filing the report the kids at the table were screaming ‘You Zionist pig, you racist, that’s what you get.’” Police did not arrest the attacker.

In May 2016, Eliana Kopley, a sophomore at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), was trying to enter a screening of an Israeli documentary about the IDF called “Beneath the Helmet” when she was accosted by an angry mob screaming “Long live the Intifada!” and “F**k Israel!” The protesters prevented her from entering the building where the film was being shown, and even chased her into a nearby building, where they pounded on the doors and windows while continuing to scream their slogans. Police ultimately escorted Kopley into the screening. The UCI chapter of the SJP was thrilled with this thuggery, and praised the mob.

Likewise in a November 2015 rally organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Hunter College, a campus of the City University of New York (CUNY), protesters brandishing signs reading “Boycott Israel” and “Zionists out of CUNY” screamed at Jewish students: “Zionists go home!,” “Zionists out of CUNY!,” “Jews out of CUNY!,” “Get out of America!,” and “We should drag the Zionist down the street!” In February 2016 at Brooklyn College, a group of hard-Left students burst into a Faculty Council meeting and began chanting “Zionists off campus!” When a Jewish professor tried to get students to end their disruption of a Faculty Council meeting at Brooklyn College, they called him a “Zionist pig.”

The Muslim students’ behavior toward Oren and at Hunter College rapidly became the norm across U.S. campuses: it has become unsafe to be pro-Israel at an American university. As colleges grow more authoritarian in their Leftism, they have become increasingly inhospitable to students who oppose the Left’s pet causes.

But now President Trump has ensured that universities and colleges that actively allow anti-Semitic activity will face consequences. At the signing of the executive order, Alan Dershowitz said: “No more important event to turn universities away from being bastions of hatred and discrimination than this executive order being signed today. It is a game changer. It will go down in history as one of the most important events in 2,000 battle against anti-Semitism.”

For the sake of simple justice, and for the sake of the freedom of inquiry on college and university campuses, and for the sake of the truths that the Freedom Center has been fighting for all these years, all people of good will should hope that Dershowitz will be proven correct.


Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/trump-pushes-back-against-campus-anti-semitism-robert-spencer/

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