Thursday, June 2, 2022

Liberating our Jerusalem - Daniel Greenfield

 

​ by Daniel Greenfield

Confronting the forgotten history of Muslim occupation of Israel.

 


When Jordan's Arab Legion seized half of Jerusalem, ethnically cleansed its Jewish population and annexed the city-- the only entity to recognize the annexation was the United Kingdom which had provided the officers and the training that made the conquest possible. Officers like Colonel Bill Newman, Major Geoffrey Lockett and Major Bob Slade, under Glubb Pasha, better known as General John Bagot Glubb, whose son later converted to Islam, invaded Jerusalem and used the Muslim forces under their command to make the partition and ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem possible.

The Jews living in the free half of Jerusalem continued to be killed by Jordanian Muslim snipers. The victims of those years of Muslim occupation included Yaffa Binyamin, a 14-year-old girl sitting on the balcony of her own house and a Christian carpenter working on the Notre Dame Convent.

Under Muslim occupation, while Muslim snipers were  murdering their children, the Jewish residents living under fire couldn't so much as put in an outhouse without being reported to the UN for illegal construction. In one case a UN observer organization held four meetings to discuss an outhouse for local residents before condemning Israel for illegal construction.

It did not however condemn Jordan when one of its soldiers opened fire on a train wounding a Jewish teenage girl.

Not very much has changed.

The hysterical condemnations of “illegal construction” did not end when the Muslim occupation did. The great outhouse of the United Nations and the smaller outhouses of the foreign ministries of countries whose leaders tremble whenever Muslims grow agitated over a cartoon or a YouTube video fill the air with the vilest of substances whenever a Jewish family moves into a home in Jerusalem.

It would be inconceivable for the international community to denounce an ethnically cleansed group which survived attempted genocide for moving back into its own city. It is, however, standard policy at the State Department and the Foreign Office to denounce Jews living in those parts of Jerusalem that had been ethnically cleansed by Muslims, as "settlers" living in "settlements," and accuse them of being an "obstruction to peace."

Peace being the state of affairs that sets in when an ethnic cleansing goes unchallenged.

What we are talking about here is not peace, but ethnic cleansing. In 1948, the Jews were ethnically cleansed from Jerusalem to Islamize the city. Their synagogues were blown up by the Muslim occupiers. Their tombstones were used to line the roads traveled by the racist Muslim settlers. In 1948, the Jews were ethnically cleansed from Jerusalem to Islamize the city. Whether they were Zionists or anti-Zionists did not matter. They were not Muslims. That was all that counted.

“For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter,” Abdullah el-Talal, a commander of the Muslim invaders, had boasted. “Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews' return here impossible.” In his memoirs he wrote, “I knew that the Jewish Quarter was densely populated with Jews who caused their fighters a good deal of interference and difficulty…. Only four days after our entry into Jerusalem the Jewish Quarter had become their graveyard. Death and destruction reigned over it.”

Every politician who denounces Jews building houses in Jerusalem, but not Muslims doing the same thing is endorsing Abdullah’s genocidal vision and all the terrorism that goes with it.

In 1920, racist Muslim settler mobs in Jerusalem had chanted "Mohammed's religion was born with the sword", “Death to the Jews” and “the government is with us” as Muslim policemen under British colonial rule had joined with them in the rape and murder of the indigenous Jewish population.

Too many governments are still with those who wave the sword of Mohammed and cry death to the Jews. They encourage them, defend their agenda and issue weak rebukes when blood is spilled in the name of Islamization in Jerusalem, as it is in Kobani by ISIS and a thousand other places. Those who endorse the Islamization of Jerusalem cannot escape responsibilities for the crimes of the Islamizers.

Describing Jewish homes in Jerusalem, one of the world's oldest cities, a city that all three religions in the region associate with Jews and Jewish history, as "settlements" is a triumph of distorted language that Orwell would have to tip his hat to. How does one have "settlements" in a city older than London or Washington D.C.?

To understand that, you would have to ask London and Washington D.C. where the diplomats insist that one more round of Israeli compromises will bring peace.

They say that there are three religions in Jerusalem, but there are actually four. The fourth religion is the true Religion of Peace, the one that insists that there will be peace when the Jews have been expelled from Judea and Samaria, driven out of their homes in Jerusalem, and made into wanderers and beggars once again. Oddly enough, this religion's name isn't even Islam-- it's diplomacy.

Diplomacy says that the 1948 borders set by Arab countries invading Israel should be the final borders and that, when Israel reunified a sundered city in 1967, it was an act of aggression, while, when seven Arab armies invaded Israel in 1948, it was a legitimate way to set permanent boundaries. When Jordan ethnically cleansed East Jerusalem, it set a standard that Israelis are obligated to follow to this day by staying out of East Jerusalem. To violate that ethnic cleansing endangers peace.

When Muslims move into a Jewish town, there's no clamor. When Muslim countries fund Muslim housing in Israel, there are no angry statements. Muslim housing in Jerusalem or anywhere in Israel is not a problem. Only Jewish housing is.

The issue is not Israel. If it were, then Arabs with Israeli citizenship would also be condemned. It's only the Jews who are the problem.

The entire Peace Process is really a prolonged solution to the latest phase of the Jewish Problem. The problem, as stated by so many diplomats, is that there are Jews living in places that Muslims want. There were Jews living in Gaza before 1948, but they were driven out, they came back, and then they were driven out again by their own government in compliance with international demands. Now only Hamas lives in Gaza and it's as peaceful and pleasant without the Jews as Nazi Germany.

But there are still Jews in the West Bank and they have to be gotten rid of. Once enough Jews have been expelled, there will be peace. That's not a paragraph from Mein Kampf, it's not some lunatic sermon from Palestinian Authority television-- it is the consensus of the international community. This consensus states that the only reason there still isn't peace is because enough Jews haven't been expelled from their homes. The ethnic cleansing for peace hasn't gone far enough.

There will be peace when all the Jews are gone. That much is certainly undeniable. Just look at Gaza or Egypt or Iraq or Afghanistan, which has a grand total of two Jews, both of them in their seventies. Or Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Syria where peace reigns now that the Jews are gone. Some might say that violence seems to increase proportionally with the number of Muslims, but we all know that would be Islamophobic. On the other hand suggesting that violence increases with the number of Jews living on land that Muslims want, that's just diplomacy. A common sense fact that everyone who is anyone in foreign policy knows to be true.

How will we know when the Muslims have gotten all the land that they want? When the violence stops. Everyone knows that agreements mean nothing. No matter how many pieces of paper are signed, the bombs and rockets still keep bursting. The only way to reach an agreement is by groping blindly in the dark, handing over parcel after parcel of land, until the explosions stop or the Muslims fulfill their original goal of pushing the Jews into the sea.

That's the wonderful thing about diplomacy if you're a diplomat and the terrible thing about it if you are anyone else without a secure way out of the country when diplomacy fails. And diplomacy in the region always fails. Camp David and every single agreement Israel has signed with Muslim countries aren't worth the paper they're written on. The only peace treaty that counts is the one made by tanks and rifles. It's the one made by Israeli planes in Egyptian skies and Israeli soldiers walking the border. It's the one made by Jewish farmers and ranchers, tending their sheep and their fields, with rifles strung over their backs. The only peace that's worth anything is the peace of the soldiers and settlers.

In 1966, Jerusalem was a city sundered in two, divided by barbed wire and the bullets of Muslim snipers. Diplomacy did not reunite it. Israel pursued diplomacy nearly to its bitter end until it understood that it had no choice at all but to fight. Israel did not swoop into the fight, its leaders did their best to avoid the conflict, asking the international community to intervene and stop Egypt from going to war. Read back the headlines for the last five years on Israel and Iran, and you will get a sense of the courage and determination of the Israeli leaders of the day.

When Israel went to war, its leaders did not want to liberate Jerusalem, they wanted Jordan to stay out of the war. Even when Jordan entered the war, they did not want to liberate the city. Divine Providence and Muslim hostility forced them to liberate Jerusalem and forced them to keep it. Now some of them would like to give it back, another sacrifice to the bloody deity of diplomacy whose altar flows with blood and burnt sacrifices.

As we remember Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day, it is important to remember that the city is united and free because diplomacy failed. The greatest triumph of the modern state happened only because diplomacy proved hopeless and useless in deterring Muslim genocidal ambitions. Had Israel succumbed to international pressure and had Nasser been as subtle as Sadat, then the Six-Day War would have looked like the Yom Kippur War fought with 1948 borders-- and Israel very likely would not exist today.

Even as Jews remember the great triumph of Yom Yerushalayim, the ethnic cleansers and their accomplices are busy searching for ways to drive Jews out of Jerusalem, out of towns, villages and cities. This isn't about the Muslim residents of Jerusalem, who have repeatedly asserted that they want to remain part of Israel. It's not about peace, which did not come from any previous round of concessions, and will not come from this one either. It's about solving the Jewish problem.

As long as Jews allow themselves to be defined as the problem, there will be plenty of those offering solutions. And the solutions invariably involve doing something about the Jews. It only stands to reason that if Jews are the problem, then moving them or getting rid of them is the solution. There is less friction in defining Jews as the problem, than in defining Muslims as the problem. The numbers alone mean that is so.

Yom Yerushalayim is a reminder of what the real problem is and what the real solution is. Muslim occupation of Israel is the problem. The Islamization of Jerusalem is the problem. Muslim violence in support of the Muslim occupation of Israel and of everywhere else is the problem. Israel is the solution. Only when we liberate ourselves from the lies, when we stop believing that we are the problem and recognize that we are the solution. Only then will the liberation that began in 1967 be complete.

Only then will we have liberated our Jerusalem. The Jerusalem of the soul. It is incumbent on all of us to liberate that little Jerusalem within. The holy city that lives in all of us. To clean the dross off its golden gates, wash the filth from its stones and expel the invaders gnawing away at our hearts until we look proudly upon a shining city. Then to help others liberate their own Jerusalems. Only then will we truly be free.

 [Editor: This is an excellent article, but does not mention the original Muslim invasion and occupation of Jerusalem in the early 7th century.]


Daniel Greenfield

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/liberating-our-jerusalem-daniel-greenfield/

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The alternative universe of Palestinian ‘sovereignty’ - Douglas Altabef

 

​ by Douglas Altabef

Hat tip: Dr. Jean-Charles Bensoussan 

The Palestinians push a false reality that the rest of the world buys into, and then insists Israel buy into it as well.

 

There are alternative narratives and then there are alternative universes. The first might employ fabricated ideas and “facts,” but the latter is a complete departure from anything like reality.

Welcome to the alternative universe of Palestinian “sovereignty.”

There have been many stories on the recent Jerusalem Day festivities, in particular the unprecedented number of Jews who ascended the Temple Mount and, of course, the annual Flag March, which, despite grave forebodings and threats from the likes of Hamas, took place with a minimum of confrontation and an abundance of joyful celebration.

It is no surprise that Palestinian Authority officials were not impressed by the show of support and love for Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem.

It is extraordinary, however, that they also asserted that the Palestinian people “have proven today that sovereignty in Jerusalem is Palestinian sovereignty despite all the practices of the occupation and the racist settlers.”

What can this possibly mean? Granted, the statement was made by the P.A.’s “governor of Jerusalem,” who has one of the cushiest jobs in the world, given that he doesn’t have to do anything except make non-existent trains run on time. It should be a surprise that he had time to warn against attempts to “Judaize Jerusalem.”

Of course, other officials opined in a similar fashion. P.A. Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh provided the memorable insight: “Jerusalem has been and will remain through the years and forever the capital of the state of Palestine” and “attempts to change its features and impose illusory sovereignty on it will not succeed.”

If someone said such things in New York, they would have been straitjacketed and carted off to Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital.

Why are these statements important, even a cause for concern, given that they are divorced from reality?

I would suggest that it is precisely because they are so delusional. They serve to open even wider the Pandora’s Box of “whatever I say is real is, in fact, real.”

This is dangerous because the P.A. and Hamas do a masterful job of pushing the narrative that they are a benighted, oppressed people of eternal victims torn from their ancestral roots by heartless “settlers” who make Vladimir Putin look cuddly.

And large swaths of the world, who know nothing other than that the “victims” are always in the right and Jews always up to no good, believe them.

Left unchallenged and unchecked, a great number of people worldwide could accept the P.A.’s delusional view of the situation as the normative context of the conflict. These people can then influence their own governments to oppose Israel and support various Palestinian governmental entities.

The real concern, then, is that a great many people are unwilling to learn, discern, analyze and evaluate our situation. It is much easier to just believe what the “underdog” has to say.

Realistically, though, what can come of such a delusional mindset?

H.L. Mencken, the cynical 20th century American journalist and commentator, once famously said, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” I would suggest that no one is about to go broke overestimating the willingness of the Palestinians to depict an alternative universe in which their control of Jerusalem is blocked and thwarted by settler thugs.

We have heard rumors, for example, that the EU plans to construct a contiguous belt of structures that will link eastern Jerusalem (which includes the Old City) with Palestinian-controlled areas. Part of the reason for this is likely that the EU has adopted the Palestinians’ delusional claims. The Europeans believe that they will build on what is already “Palestine”—or, at least, ought to be “Palestine.”

It is difficult for rational people to understand true irrationality, so I suspect that the Israeli leadership laughs off the sheer lunacy of the Palestinian vision. But there is a method to the Palestinians’ madness, which is to formulate a false reality that the rest of the world buys into, and then insists Israel buy into it as well.

One of the challenges of true sovereignty is to do whatever it takes in order to protect that sovereignty. Israeli leaders will have to learn how to expose the delusions of the Palestinians and disabuse the world of their fantasies.

We have no choice but to enter their alternative universe and bring it back to reality.


Douglas Altabef is the Chairman of the Board of Im Tirtzu, Israel’s largest grassroots Zionist organization, and a director of both the Israel Independence Fund and B’yadenu. He can be reached at dougaltabef@gmail.com.

 

Source: https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-alternative-universe-of-palestinian-sovereignty/

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Hassan Nasrallah, the Miles Gloriosus, Boasts of His Victories - Hugh Fitzgerald

 

​ by Hugh Fitzgerald

Struggling to stay relevant -- via Islamic supremacist bravado.

 


The Nasrallah speech was full of the usual bluster about how great Hezbollah’s “martyrs and fighters” are and how Israel’s withdrawal was Lebanon’s greatest success. If this was its great success, then there isn’t much to show for it because Lebanon is struggling financially and the country’s voters are no longer backing Hezbollah. Nasrallah, however, needs to stay relevant. He knows that young people no longer identify with him or his aging movement.

How can Nasrallah stay relevant?

In his relatively short speech, Nasrallah claimed that Israel’s withdrawal in 2000 ended its dream of “greater Israel” and that Palestinians now have “hope again for liberation of their land.”

Israel does not now have, and never has harbored, a dream of a “Greater Israel.” So Nasrallah will be happy to claim credit for having ended what never was. This charge about Israelis wanting to create an enlarged nation “from the Nile to the Euphrates” is a figment of the Muslim Arabs who project onto Israel their own dreams of a vast Islamic empire. It’s the product of vivid oriental imaginations.

He then warned Israel not to tamper with al-Aqsa mosque. Shouting about the “danger” to al-Aqsa is one of the key grifts [sic] of Nasrallah and his friends: using imaginary religious threats to encourage extremism and populism.

Israel will not “tamper with Al-Aqsa Mosque.” Again Nasrallah warns Israel not to do what it never had any intention of doing. And Nasrallah will again claim credit for having stopped Israel from carrying out its non-existent nefarious plan to seize Al-Aqsa and turn it into a synagogue.

How did Iranian media cover the speech?

Iranian media didn’t seem to take the speech seriously, but a bit of it was published.

Hassan Nasrallah can’t “get no respect,” not even from the media in Iran, that paid so little attention to his speech, publishing only bits of it. It is likely that the government instructed the media not to give much coverage to their Lebanese proxy at a time of widespread protests across Iran about the economic situation. The government doesn’t want to remind people of Hezbollah, that most expensive proxy of Iran, that has been the recipient of billions of dollars that the impoverished Iranian people increasingly demand be kept at home. In some of the protests they now shout against further Iranian aid to proxies abroad, and demand that money be spent “only on Iran.”

Any action against al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in the region will lead to a big explosion in the region and will have unpleasant results,” the Hezbollah leader said.

This is a quite unnecessary threat, which is why Nasrallah made it. He knows that the Israelis have no intention of “taking action” against Al-Aqsa Mosque or the Dome of the Rock. By threatening the Jewish state in this manner, he can then take credit for stopping what was never going to happen in the first place.

Overall, the speech was to be expected as part of the usual cycle of speeches that Nasrallah gives several times a year.

Why this is different ?

The brevity of the speech and the fact Hezbollah and its allies performed badly in the recent elections, illustrates how the terrorist group will have to struggle to stay relevant in the coming years.

The recent parliamentary election was a debacle for Hezbollah, and for its closest ally, the Shi’a Amal Party. The Free Patriotic Movement of President Michel Aoun, a Maronite who has been Hezbollah’s loyal supporter, lost several seats, while the Lebanese Forces Party of Samir Geagea, the new head of Lebanese Christians, won more seats than Aoun’s party lost. Overall, Hezbollah’s allies lost ten seats, which has ended its dominance in Parliament. Geagea, seen as the new head of the Lebanese Christians, is a relentless enemy of Hezbollah, determined to decrease its power; he is intent on seeing Hassan Nasrallah spent as a political force.

Hezbollah is at the nadir of its popularity. It is blamed, quite correctly, for the “Beirut blast” of Aug 4, 2020, when 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrates that the terror group had stored carelessly in Hangar #12 at the Port of Beirut exploded. The blast left 220 dead, 6,500 wounded, and caused $15 billion in damages. Since then Hezbollah has tried to scare off Lebanese officials from investigating the blast. But they have now run up against an investigative magistrate, Tarek Bitar, who apparently can’t be frightened by Hezbollah, and is determinedly completing his investigation, which will undoubtedly identify Hezbollah as responsible for the Beirut catastrophe.

Hezbollah is also blamed for its part in causing the economic catastrophe in Lebanon, the worst economic collapse of the last 150 years. In the last two years, the Lebanese currency has lost 95% of its value. More than 80% of the Lebanese now live in poverty. Much of this is blamed on the “permanent elite” of politicians who rotate among various cabinet posts. Hezbollah makes sure its allies remain in office, no matter how corrupt or incompetent they may be. Thus President Michel Aoun, widely known for his corruption – he has amassed a fortune of $80 million – and for his mismanagement, stays in power because Hezbollah supports him, and he, in turn, does Hassan Nasrallah’s bidding.

Hezbollah is not only responsible for the $15 billion in property damage caused by the Beirut blast, but also for the billions of dollars in damages to Lebanese infrastructure caused by the war with Israel that Hezbollah dragged Lebanon into in 2006 – a war the Lebanese did not want. And they worry about Hezbollah starting another war with Israel, this time using much of its gigantic arsenal of 150,000 rockets and missiles, which in turn would lead to Israel inflicting devastating damage on Lebanon, in its effort to find and destroy Hezbollah’s vast stockpiles of weapons.

Hezbollah has seen its annual support from Iran reduced from a high of $800 million to this year’s estimated $550 million. Iran’s economic woes are immediately felt by Hezbollah that sees its aid steadily diminished. And of course, just as the general Lebanese population is mired in poverty, so, too, are many Hezbollah operatives, whose salaries have been cut, and who suffer from the same extraordinary devaluation of the Lebanese currency as do other Lebanese. Some members of Hezbollah are known to have quit the terror group because of their low salaries. There is nothing Nasrallah can do to rectify this financially intolerable situation.

Nasrallah can keep up his bluster as the miles gloriosus, or braggart warrior, boasting of his supposed role in ending the “Greater Israel” dream (a non-existent threat), and of preventing Israel from interfering with Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock (another baseless worry). No one outside Hezbollah believes him. While Nasrallah threatens Israel with these hollow displays of bravado, he knows that a repeat of the 2006 war with the IDF would be devastating to Lebanon, and likely lead to a popular revolt against the group that keeps dragging Lebanon into wars that the Lebanese do not want.

 

Hugh Fitzgerald

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/hassan-nasrallah-miles-gloriosus-boasts-his-hugh-fitzgerald/

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Jerusalem isn't unified until the Temple Mount is ours - opinion - Douglas Altabef

 

​ by Douglas Altabef 

Hat tip: Dr. Jean-Charles Bensoussan

What ensued has been one of the greatest failures and embarrassments of the state of Israel: the willing severance of the connection of the Jewish people from its holiest site.

 ISRAELI FLAGS flap in the wind on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the Dome of the Rock and Temple Mount. (photo credit: OLIVER FITOUSSI/FLASH90)
ISRAELI FLAGS flap in the wind on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the Dome of the Rock and Temple Mount.
(photo credit: OLIVER FITOUSSI/FLASH90)

For centuries, indeed millennia, our ancestors have reaffirmed the centrality of Jerusalem to their understanding of what it means to be both in a covenantal relationship with God and to be part of the Jewish People.

It says in Psalm 137:5, “If I forget thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.” It is said at our happiest moments and is an affirmation intended to make sure that all joy must be tempered with the awareness that, while we privately rejoice, the source of our greatest rejoicing, both public and private, has been taken from us.

“If I forget thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.”

Psalms 137:5

When we promise not to forget Jerusalem, what is it that we conjure up in our minds and hearts? What is it that we associationally capture in order to never forget Jerusalem?

While we might have idealized visions of what the place might have looked like, we also have extensive descriptions of how the heart of the city appeared. That heart, that crown, was the Temple, of course. It was resplendent, magnificent and beckoning, yet also aloof.

If, as we learn, the nations of the world flocked to Jerusalem, it was not to visit the existing rendition of the Mahaneh Yehuda shuk (outdoor market). It was to be awestruck and moved by the presence of God’s abode on Earth: The Temple.

THE SECOND Temple, model in the Israel Museum, 2008. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)THE SECOND Temple, model in the Israel Museum, 2008. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The Temple was the epitome of the magnificence of Jerusalem and Jerusalem as a place was indistinguishable from the Temple that crowned it. Today, we have been blessed to once again be part of the life of the city that we have sworn eternal association with. We can marvel at its old walls and we can explore, with head-shaking wonder, the newly unearthed tunnels and passages that link us to Davidic times.

But, alas, that which made Jerusalem the great city is no more, and even worse, we are hard-pressed to even visit the site of its crown. Today, those who respectfully wish to visit the Temple Mount, the enormous Herodian creation on which the Temple was built, will undergo a process of humiliation and debasement for their loyalty.

Ironically, while we triumphed miraculously some 55 years ago against an array of genocidal enemies and recaptured the Old City of Jerusalem, we almost immediately surrendered our greatest prize: the unfettered control of the Temple Mount. What ensued has been one of the greatest failures and embarrassments of the state of Israel: the willing severance of the connection of the Jewish people from its holiest site.

INSTEAD OF our maintaining control of the site and thereby guaranteeing equal and fair access to all those who would visit and pray there, consistent with the dictates of their faiths, Israel handed control and functional sovereignty over the mount to the Jordanians, the same people who systematically destroyed all vestiges of Jewish worship in the Old City of Jerusalem during their hateful control of the area from 1948 until 1967.

True to form, the Jordanian Wakf created dhimmi-like (second class citizen) rules and protocols for Jews that the rest of the world was quick to enshrine as a status quo. No Jewish prayer, no prayer books nor articles of worship. Humiliating entry procedures, made all the more galling because they have been administered by Israeli police, featuring only one entry gate, accessed by the most rickety pedestrian bridge in all of Israel, and only for very limited times during certain days.

It is nothing short of surreal to have experienced an uplifting and ennobling encounter with the Kotel, the Western Wall (of the Temple Mount compound), only to be brought down to earth and then some, by trying to ascend to the mount. That’s the bad news.

Here’s the compensating silver lining.

It is the Jewish people who are leading the way back to the Temple Mount. It is because of our resolve, our true remembering to never forget the essence of Jerusalem that, slowly but surely the connection between us and our sacred home is being re-established.

Thanks to dedicated organizations and intrepid individuals willing to challenge absurd and bizarre protocols by being arrested and charged with heinous crimes such as uttering the Shema prayer, we are delivering a clarion call to return. Ironically, the very humiliation of the current regime has not only made a visit to the Temple Mount that much more unforgettable, but also has strengthened the resolve of Jews, religious and secular, to not only remember, but also to return. And to return in dignity.

Jerusalem cannot be said to be truly re-unified until the connection between the Jewish people and the Temple Mount is made manifest and seamless. Only when the Temple Mount is truly b’yadenu (in our hands) will we be able to say that not only have we never forgotten Jerusalem; not only have we kept true to it, but most importantly, we will have done our part to restore the Jerusalem that has been at the center of our faith and our peoplehood for 3,000 years.


Douglas Altabef is a director of B’yadenu, which advocates for Jewish rights on the Temple Mount. He is also chairman of the board of Im Tirtzu and a director of the Israel Independence Fund. He can be reached at dougaltabef@gmail.com

Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-708108

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5 new questions about Russia collusion probe emerging from Sussman trial - Natalia Mittelstadt

 

​ by Natalia Mittelstadt

Questions about the Steele dossier may be answered in the October trial of Igor Danchenko, while new revelations from Congress show the FBI had a unique relationship with the Clinton campaign's main law firm.

While the trial of 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann concluded with his acquittal, Special Counsel John Durham's prosecution team succeeded in revealing new evidence about how the false Trump-Russia collusion narrative got foisted upon the FBI and the nation.

And with each revelation came new questions.

Sussmann was found not guilty on Tuesday of lying to the FBI, a charge brought against him by Durham's probe, which is examining the origins of the investigation into the Trump-Russia collusion allegations.

Durham alleged Sussmann had lied in his meeting with then-FBI General Counsel James Baker by saying that he was not representing any clients in relaying a since-debunked allegation of a secret communications channel between the Russian Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization. According to Durham, Sussmann was at the time representing two clients from his Perkins Coie law firm, the Clinton campaign and then-Neustar tech firm executive Rodney Joffe.

Sussmann claimed he told the truth, and the jury sided with him.

Trump Media & Technology Group CEO Devin Nunes, the former House Intelligence Committee chairman who helped unravel the Russia collusion narrative, told "Just the News, Not Noise" TV show cohosts John Solomon and Amanda Head on Wednesday that he's "not that concerned about" Sussmann's acquittal, nor did it surprise him.

Given that the trial took place in Washington, D.C. where Clinton received 90% of the vote in 2016, Nunes said, "Durham had to know that he was rolling the dice with, really, a 1-out-of-30 chance that he was going to get a conviction here."

However, the prosecution raised some important new questions regarding the Trump-Russia collusion investigation throughout the trial. And those questions were augmented by a new revelation Wednesday by congressional investigators.

Question 1: What was the relationship between Perkins Coie and the FBI? 

Nunes mentioned that some of his former colleagues in Congress have learned of "some type of strange relationship" between Sussmann's former law firm, Perkins Coie, and the FBI.

In early May, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) wrote a letter to Perkins Coie inquiring about "a Secure Work Environment" installed by the Justice Department at the law firm's D.C. office.

Last Wednesday, Perkins Coie responded to the congressmen's letter, confirming such a relationship existed between the law firm and the FBI dating to 2012. 

"The Secure Work Environment was given final accreditation by the Physical Security Unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ('FBI') on March 26, 2012," the law firm wrote the congressmen. "The Secure Work Environment began operation on that date and has been in continuous operation since then."

According to the law firm's letter, Sussmann had access to the Secure Work Environment until July 2021.

While "Perkins Coie maintains and has access to the Secure Work Environment" and "is responsible to the FBI for maintaining the Secure Work Environment pursuant to FBI standards and requirements," the bureau itself "was responsible for initially accrediting the Secure Work Environment, and periodically performs inspections to ensure that the Secure Work Environment is operating in accordance with the requisite standards."

Jordan and Gaetz want to know more, including what the secure work environment was used for and whether the firm's lawyers or clients worked as confidential human sources for the FBI.

Question 2: What is still unknown about the Steele dossier?

Nunes noted that the October trial of Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst who was the primary source for the Christopher Steele dossier, is the next important component of Durham's probe. Former MI6 agent Steele was paid by the Clinton campaign's opposition research firm to dig up dirt on Russia, and he took that information to the FBI, much like Sussmann did his allegations about Alfa Bank.

Durham has charged Danchenko with repeatedly lying to the FBI during the Russia collusion investigation. The FBI terminated its relationship with Steele because he leaked to the news media early in the investigation and concluded that much of Steele's dossier alleging Russia collusion was either false, uncorroborated or useless internet rumor.

Kevin Brock, the FBI's former intelligence chief, told Just the News that one revelation from the Sussmann trial that needs further explanation is the fact that Sussmann's Alfa Bank allegations and several of Steele's dossier memos were delivered to the FBI on the exact same day.

"What kind of got lost in this trial, is the fact that there appeared to be a concerted strategy by the campaign to release disinformation about Alfa Bank and disinformation about the Steele dossier on the same day, September 19 2016," Brock said. "This is not an accident.

"This appears to me to be a strategic move to to release this information, to try to get it into the press, to be able to tell the press that the FBI was looking at these allegations, so that six weeks out from the national election, the American people would be led to believe that there was something to be concerned about regarding Donald Trump." 

Question 3: Who else in the FBI is under investigation by the Durham probe?

During the trial, it was revealed that one of the prosecution's witnesses, FBI agent Curtis Heide, is currently under investigation by the special counsel for not turning over exculpatory evidence related to Russia case.

FBI agent Ryan Gaynor, also a witness for the prosecution, was originally a witness in Durham's investigation prior to the trial. During the course of the probe, Gaynor became a subject of Durham's investigation, but his status returned to witness after he remembered that there was a "close-hold" placed on Sussmann's identity by senior FBI leadership, preventing him from telling the investigating agents who the source of the email server data was.

The question remains whether other FBI current and former employees are also under investigation.

Question 4: What was the FBI's and CIA's final analysis of the email server data?

While the FBI closed the Alfa Bank investigation in January 2017 and believed that the allegation was not supported by the evidence, the bureau was given information from the CIA following the agency's February 2017 meeting with Sussmann.

Former CIA officer Kevin P. testified during the trial that he had met with Sussmann, who gave him information regarding the Alfa Bank allegation. Kevin said he passed along the information to the FBI.

During Heide's cross-examination by the defense, it was mentioned that his former trainee, then-FBI agent Allison Sands, had interviewed cybersecurity company Mandiant again regarding the Alfa Bank allegation in April 2017.

Heide said that the investigation was incomplete because his team was unable to speak with the source of the allegation, the author of the white paper explaining the data for the allegation, or the person who brought the information to the FBI.

Question 5: What resources did Rodney Joffe use when he was a government contractor?

During the trial, Joffe's government contracts were mentioned but not the extent to which he had access to government resources while he researched the notion of Trump having a secret communications channel with the Kremlin.

Former FBI agent Tom Grasso testified during the trial that he had worked with Joffe on cyber crime investigations for the bureau, calling him a "private sector partner" and "friend." Joffe was also a confidential human source for the FBI at the time he supplied the bureau with the Alfa Bank allegation through Sussmann.

Nunes said there are questions remaining about what, if any, federal resources Joffe used to do the work and who in the government knew about it.

 

Natalia Mittelstadt

Source: https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/sussmann-verdict-questions-surrounding-russia-collusion

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Moral of Sussmann trial: Americans see lying as a DC norm, making punishment hard - John Solomon

 

​ by John Solomon

"There are bigger things that affect the nation than a possible lie to the FBI," jury forewoman declares after verdict.

 

Over the last four years, Special Counsel John Durham has built a compelling case, supported by evidence, that the entire Russia collusion narrative that gripped the country during Donald Trump's presidency was built on falsehoods.

An FBI lawyer, after all, has admitted he misled the FISA court by falsifying a document. Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic Party has paid a fine to federal election regulators for falsely disguising payments for Christopher Steele's dossier as legal work rather than opposition research.

Steele's primary source, Igor Danchenko, is charged with lying to the FBI. And before he was indicted, Danchenko told the FBI that Steele misrepresented some of his contributions to the dossier as intelligence when in fact they were based on "just talk" and "hearsay" and "conversation ... with friends over beers."

Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook testified Hillary Clinton personally approved releasing Russia dirt on Trump in 2016 even though they weren't sure it was true. 

And FBI supervisors who handled Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann's allegation of a secret Trump communications channel with the Kremlin misled their own agents, falsely claiming the evidence came from the Justice Department when instead it came from a private lawyer.

So when Durham asked a Washington, D.C. jury to convict Sussmann for an alleged lie, he again offered strong evidence.

Documents presented to jurors showed Sussmann texted the FBI's top lawyer he was bringing the allegations of the secret Alfa Bank communication channel to the bureau as a private citizen. But in fact he charged the work to the Clinton campaign.

And in later testimony to Congress, Sussmann gave a different story, claiming he did in fact approach the FBI on behalf of a client. One of the two statements could not be true, prosecutors argued.

In the end, it didn't matter. The case was made against a backdrop of so many prior falsehoods and a growing belief in America that lying has become a norm in politics in Washington.

The forewoman for the jury that acquitted Sussmann said as much in a brief statement to the news media Tuesday afternoon, suggesting it wasn't worth the jurors' time to convict someone for lying to the FBI.

"I don't think it should have been prosecuted," the jury forewomen said, according to an account in The Washington Times. "There are bigger things that affect the nation than a possible lie to the FBI."

Such sentiments were predicted in polling two years ago, just before Donald Trump was beaten by Joe Biden in an election where a lie — that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation — clearly impacted voters.

A Newsweek poll in late October 2020 found that a stunning 54% of Americans agreed with the statement that lying has become more acceptable in American politics. In other words, it is no big deal.

Kevin Brock, the FBI's retired intelligence chief who monitored the Sussmann trial closely, told Just the News that the evidence submitted by Durham during the trial that the FBI was lying to its own agents likely had a profound impact on the jurors.

"The Durham prosecution team introduced an FBI communication that indicated that the FBI itself was misleading the agents who were charged with conducting the Alfa Bank investigation by saying that the information came from Department of Justice and not a third party, namely, Michael Sussman," Brock told the "Just the News, Not Noise" television show Tuesday night.

"We can only read into that," Brock continued, "that there were efforts at FBI Headquarters to conceal that from the investigators so that they wouldn't ask the questions and maybe conduct a less complete investigation because they're thinking this information came from a political campaign.

"There's a hidden agenda there. So I think that that piece of information was certainly something that the jury took into consideration. If the FBI is going to be misleading in this regard, or at least individuals at FBI Headquarters can be misleading, then how can they convict Michael Sussmann?"

He added: "A finding of not guilty doesn't mean he didn't mislead the FBI. I think the evidence showed that there was some intent, some duplicitous attempt of intent there. But the jury had plenty of plenty of room to find him not guilty in this charge."

Brock said Durham appeared to use the trial to tell a larger story about how the Clinton campaign used the FBI to carry out a dirty trick.

"I don't think he is going to lose any sleep over the fact that Michael Sussman was acquitted," he said. "The trial afforded him an opportunity to paint a picture about an effort by the Clinton campaign to spread disinformation on two tracks: No. 1 the Alfa Bank narrative, and No. 2 the Steele dossier. And that was intentional."

Durham will get the chance to explore the problems with the Steele dossier in greater deal in October when Danchenko's trial begins.

In the meantime, the Sussmann verdict will give both sides ammunition for their echo chambers.

Sussmann himself crowed the verdict showed he had told the truth to the FBI and was wrongly prosecuted, a line Democrats will use to bludgeon Durham going forward. Sussmann's own lawyer, Sean Berkowitz, reviewed that argument in his close to the jury.

"Opposition research is not illegal," he argued. If it were, "the jails of Washington, D.C., would be teeming over," he added.

Conservatives, meanwhile, will see the verdict as further confirmation of a dual justice system that prosecuted former Trump National Security Advisor Mike Flynn for lying but allowed Sussmann and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to escape punishment despite allegations of lying.

 

John Solomon

Source: https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/moral-sussmann-trial-americans-see-lying-dc-norm-making

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GOP leader Kevin McCarthy challenges legitimacy of Jan. 6 panel, subpoena to him - John Solomon

 

​ by John Solomon

Defiant letter signals McCarthy intends to contest the subpoena to compel his testimony and documents, a move that could eventually land the matter in federal court

The lawyer for House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy launched a legal broadside Friday challenging the legitimacy of the Jan. 6 panel and its subpoena to his client.

Attorney Elliot S. Berke sent an 11-page letter to House Jan.6 Select Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., saying the subpoena sent to McCarthy and other GOP lawmakers is not enforceable because the panel was not formed in compliance with Congress' rules, in part because it has no ranking member.

“All valid and lawfully issued subpoenas must be respected and honored," Berke wrote. "Unfortunately, the words and actions of the Select Committee and its members have made it clear that it is not exercising a valid or lawful use of Congress’ subpoena power."

You can read the letter here:

In fact, the Select Committee is not even operating in compliance with the rules its own members voted to put in place," he added, using an argument first devised by attorney Tim Parlatore on behalf of former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik, a witness before the committee. In the end, Kerik struck a deal with the panel and cooperated voluntarily.

Berke's letter signals McCarthy intends to contest the subpoena to compel his testimony and documents, a move that could eventually land the matter in the federal courts. Several witnesses outside Congress have been found in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with the panel, and one, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, has been charged with criminal contempt.

Berke said part of his argument is that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's rules require a ranking member to be appointed in order for a committee to lawfully seated, and McCarthy was denied the right to do so as Minority Leader.

:"The Speaker has failed to act in accordance with the Rules of the United States House of Representatives (“Rules of the House” or “House Rules”) she put forth, and as a result, the Select Committee has operated both in composition and manner that deviates from the duly authorized Resolution that created it," he wrote.

"The Select Committee failed this mandate from the outset when Speaker Pelosi violated 232 years of continuous precedent by refusing to allow the minority party to select its representation on the committee."

 

John Solomon

Source: https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/gop-leader-kevin-mccarthy-challenges-legitimacy-jan-6

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Challenging SJP Chicago’s Lies and Toxic Radicalism - Richard L. Cravatts

 

​ by Richard L. Cravatts

The Freedom Center’s leaflets expose Jew-hatred.

 


In yet another revealing example of its hypocrisy and obtuseness when assessing the consequences of its own behavior, the University of Chicago’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) was again whining about being victimized by ideological opponents.

What was SJP’s complaint this time? In a letter to the editor in the university’s newspaper, The Chicago Maroon, SJP expressed its displeasure with the fact that on May 23rd, “the David Horowitz Freedom Center plastered more than 5,000 leaflets on and around campus demonizing Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students.”

Employing its tired tactic of whining that any effort by SJP’s critics is motivated by a desire to shut down any support of Palestinian self-determination, the letter preposterously suggested that the leaflets were posted on campus solely “in order to muzzle and disparage pro-Palestinian activism . . . .”

More absurdly, SJP claimed that the Horowitz Center's “work aims to censor and misrepresent our academic production and to create an environment of surveillance and fear surrounding scholarship about Palestine.”

One could make many claims about its role on the 200 or so campuses where SJP has chapters, but few would ever suggest that the toxic radicalism of the group—and the resulting effect it has on their respective campuses—amounts to “scholarship” or “academic production.” Perhaps SJP believes that by bringing perennially Jew-hating radicals like Rashid Khalidi to speak on the Chicago campus, one of the events included in the leaflet, they are promoting scholarship, but that is not the case.

When guest speakers accuse Israel of being the new incarnation of the Third Reich and when they malign and slander the Jewish state with accusations lacking any basis in fact or history, this is not, despite SJP’s contention, an example of “scholarship about Palestine”; rather, it is hatred disguised as debate about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

When Khalidi spoke, for example, according to the Horowitz leaflet, he “demonized Israel, accusing the Jewish state of ‘settler colonialism’ and ‘occupation,’ and claiming falsely that Israel attempts to terrify the Palestinians to achieve dominance rather than to ensure the nation's safety: ‘I don't think it's security [for Israel that] fully describes accurately what is at stake here. What is at stake is actually dominance and hegemony when Israeli soldiers are kicking down doors and scaring children in the night . . . .’”

What is most revealing in SJP’s baleful letter to the editor is its inability to see how its complaint about the corrosive effect of the leaflet on the University’s community mirrors exactly the effect SJP has had for a decade or more on the campuses that have experienced the hostility and aggression of their pro-Palestinian activism. The leaflets, SJP suggested in its letter. “go so far as to incite hostility and hate against and within our community. They inhibit our capacity to work and study, to commune, to feel safe.”

It is not clear what SJP means when they refer to “our community,” but that community clearly does not include U Chicago’s Jewish students, who, like Jewish students and other supporters of Israel at other campuses around the country, have been ideologically assaulted by SJP in an unrelenting campaign of lies, slanders, and distortions of history and fact, boycott resolutions, and accusations against Israel of racism and apartheid as part of SJP’s campaign to malign and destroy the Jewish state. The group clearly could not care less whether Jewish students have a “capacity to work and study, to commune, to feel safe.”

In fact, as has been documented by the AMCHA Initiative and others who track anti-Semitism on campuses, BDS activity on a campus—and especially when orchestrated by SJP or other anti-Israel groups—frequently creates a hostile climate for Jewish students and often manifests itself as raw anti-Semitism. As one AMCHA report noted, “the consideration of anti-Israel divestment resolutions in student government or by the student body was strongly linked to a surge in anti-Semitic activity,” and campuses that have an SJP chapter have witnessed a higher incidence of anti-Semitic speech and expression as a direct result of its radicalism and activism.

In November 2021, for example, as the leaflet outlined, “SJP at U. Chicago published an art zine titled ‘Cheers to Intifada.’ The zine promoted terrorism against Israel and contained violent imagery including a graphic of two lit Molotov cocktails raised in a toast . . .The zine was also rife with anti-Semitism including an image of a pig wearing a policeman's hat with a Jewish star on it. Poems in the publication promoted ancient blood libel tropes against Jews such as one describing a Jewish teenager who held Palestinians captive and had ‘animalistic lust yearning to rape bodies.’

SJP may consider this type of perverse, anti-Semitic, and genocidal propaganda to be “academic production” and “scholarship about Palestine,” but in a sane world, it represents a poisonous and hateful ideology in which fellow Jewish students are the enemies of good, are racists, support an apartheid state, deserve to be victims of an intifada which has as its objective to murder Jews wherever they are in the name of Palestinian self-determination. On no university campus, and certainly not at an institution with the reputation and quality as the University of Chicago, would this type of banal radicalism pass for scholarship, let alone acceptable academic discourse.

As they have on other campuses, SJP Chicago has also worked aggressively to promote BDS resolutions and to push a statement of solidarity for the Palestinian cause through its student government. “In June 2021,” the leaflet noted, “SJP published a lengthy statement calling on the College Council to ‘vote “NO” on the resolution to retract [the University Student Government's] statement of solidarity and support for Palestine.’ SJP's statement promoted Jew hatred and demonized Israel, calling campus supporters of the Jewish state ‘student body apartheid apologists,’ and denying Israel's self-determination by calling for the ‘abolition of a violent political state [of Israel].’”

In April, at the behest of SJP, The Chicago Maroon, retracted an op-ed written by two students, “We Must Condemn the SJP’s Online Anti-Semitism,” who questioned SJP’s tactics and ideology. 

On January 26th, as the op-ed by Melody Dias and Benjamin ZeBrack noted, SJP had posted on its Instagram page the shocking admonition, “DON’T TAKE SH*TTY ZIONIST CLASSES.” Students were asked to “Support the Palestinian movement for liberation by boycotting classes on Israel or those taught by Israeli fellows.” According to the SJP post, any students who enrolled in these classes would be “participating in a propaganda campaign that creates complicity in the continuation of Israel’s occupation of Palestine” and that, in its view, “Israeli-centered classes are designed to obscure Palestinian perspectives.”

Characteristic of their reaction to anyone who answers back to their corrosive activism, SJP was incensed that anyone had the gall to question their tactics and motives. Another post on the SJP Instagram account in response to the Dias-ZeBrack op-ed expressed the defective view often held by anti-Semites that “To frame this call as ‘anti-Jewish’ not only perpetuates the dangerous (and wholly false) conflation of Jewishness and Zionism, but also deliberately diverts attention from the ongoing ethnic cleansing that the israeli [sic] colony has been inflicting on Palestinian lands and peoples from its inception to the present.”

The widely-adopted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, as many know, stipulates that, in many instances, attacks on Zionism can be considered anti-Semitic, particularly when those attacks are attempts to deny Jewish self-determination or when Zionism is classified as a racist, oppressive endeavor, so despite SJP’s claim that the claim is both dangerous and wholly false, experts in these matters—and not biased, anti-Semitic ideologues—have determined that there is support for Dias and LeBrack’s views.

Nevertheless, SJP demanded of the Maroon’s editors, “in response to these offenses,” the “Immediate deletion of the article,” a “public apology issued by the Maroon to SJP UChicago and to Palestinian students for the dissemination of misinformation and the disregard of journalistic integrity and factual reporting,” and, most ominously, “a public recommitment to ensuring that all columns and articles abide by expected standards of accuracy and truth, particularly those written by Zionist authors or on behalf of Zionist organizations.” [Emphasis added.] In other words, SJP requested a separate standard of exclusionary journalistic ethics and practice when Israel, Zionism, and Jews are involved.

Astoundingly, in response to SJP’s absurd demands, two feckless editors, Kelly Hui and Elizabeth Winkler, not only deleted the offending op-ed but published a craven, apologetic editorial of their own in which they dissected the op-ed for its perceived factual inaccuracies and justified their decision by claiming that it was the op-ed written by the pro-Israel supporters which could be the source of campus enmity, not the original action of SJP in calling for a boycott of courses about Israel.

“We condemn the pitting of Jewish and Palestinian students against one another,” they wrote, “and we deeply regret the extent to which the op-ed’s factual inaccuracies—which we should not have published—perpetuated such a harmful dynamic.” Of course, in addition to the editors’ outrageously inappropriate action in removing an opinion piece from The Chicago Maroon, written as a response to a campaign of demonization and delegitimization of Israel and Zionism by the chronically toxic activists of SJP, they compounded the offense by suggesting that sections of the op-ed contribute to “pitting of Jewish and Palestinian students against one another.” No, actually, it was SJP’s poisonous attacks on anything Zionist on campus and its initial call for “shitty” Zionist courses to be boycotted that pit pro-Israel students against pro-Palestinians, not op-eds that correct misinformation or defend Israel.

Only on university campuses where perceived victims can attack their alleged oppressors with any calumny, untruth, slander, and allegation they choose—without repercussions—could a group like Students for Justice in Palestine continue to operate with impunity, attacking Jewish students and other supporters of Israel with impunity and creating a hostile campus climate in their radical wake as it does.

But SJP at Chicago clearly does not fully understand the notion of academic free speech: that the same opportunity they have to spout their hateful rhetoric and promote their toxic ideology is also enjoyed by the group’s ideological opponents.

When pro-Israel students, guest speakers, events, courses, or even leaflets distributed around campus seek to expose SJP’s true nature—with facts and examples as opposed to lies and narratives—SJP may be inconvenienced by having to finally defend its views in a robust and equitable marketplace of ideas, not its own echo chamber where its lies are never challenged and its toxic Jew-hatred is never named for what it is.

 

Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., a Freedom Center Journalism Fellow in Academic Free Speech and President Emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, is the author of Jew-Hatred Rising: The Perversities of the Campus War Against Israel and Jews.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/challenging-sjp-chicagos-lies-and-toxic-radicalism-richard-l-cravatts/

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School Choice and Segregation: Fact and Fiction - Larry Sand

 

​ by Larry Sand

A new study shows that public schools are highly segregated, while polls reveal that educational freedom is more popular than ever.

 


According to a study released in mid-May by The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, “one in six students attend a school where over 90% of their peers were of the same race in the 2018-19 school year.” The publication of the report was timed to mark the 68th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision which ruled that state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional.

While this may be news to some, the results are hardly surprising. For varied reasons, people tend to live in areas populated by those similar in race and class. And to complete the picture, we have a ridiculous zip-code mandated education system, which, courtesy of the Big Government-Big Teacher Union duopoly, forces children to go to the public school that is closest to their home – no matter how awful it might be – throughout most of the country.

Then, on the educational freedom front, a RealClear Opinion Research poll in February revealed that 72% of the respondents support school choice, with just 18% opposed. The results don’t vary much by race, with 77% of Hispanics, 72% of Whites, 70% of Blacks, and 66% of Asians expressing support.

In March, the American Federation of Children released the findings of a survey which shows that 77% of those surveyed support education-savings accounts (ESAs), which allow parents to withdraw their children from public schools and receive a deposit of public funds into government-authorized savings accounts with restricted but multiple uses. Interestingly, the poll finds that 75% of Democrats support ESAs, as do 85% of Hispanic voters and 84% of Black voters.

And unsurprisingly, when any privatization measure shows promise, the teacher unionistas and their fellow travelers step up their deceitful propaganda campaign. Traditionally, their argument has revolved around money. The unions claim that “privatization siphons funds from public schools.” This is a terrible argument for so many reasons, but mostly because we should be funding students, not systems. The union’s other main talking point – used increasingly these days – is that school choice is racist.

The ever-quotable Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, insists, “Make no mistake: This use of privatization, coupled with disinvestment are only slightly more polite cousins of segregation.” (A question for Weingarten and other choice-haters: While you despise any public money going to a parent who wants to send their child to a private school, you praise Pell Grants. These federal dollars go to needy college students, and can be used to attend private colleges, including religious schools like Notre Dame and Brigham Young. But on the k-12 level, giving parents choices – vouchers, ESA’s, etc., especially if used at a religious school – is your worst nightmare. Why is the private option perfectly okay for college students, but not elementary and high schoolers?)

The rarely coherent teacher union mouthpiece Diane Ravitch blogged in early May that the “origins of school choice are well-known; resistance to the Brown decision.” She blathers on, referring to libertarian Milton Friedman as a “right-winger,” and asserts that “Republicans are dedicated to destroying public schools, and stealing their funding.” Then doubling up on her wackiness, she exits with, “My addendum: if they destroy our public schools, they will destroy public libraries, public lands, the right to vote and, in time, our democracy.”

The National Education Association, the biggest union in the country, is a pit-bull on the issue. It regularly slams any privatization measure. In an extended piece on their website, the union trots out all the usual bromides – including that choice will lead to resegregation.

Homeschooling is also in the crosshairs of the purveyors of the segregation myth. In May, MSNBC got into the act, sharing a tweet claiming that homeschooling is being driven by “the insidious racism of the American religious right.”  

And now for some facts.

Regarding the siphon argument, Martin Lueken, Director of Fiscal Policy and Analysis at EdChoice, researched the actual school choice participation rates and found that it “does not have a negative effect on public-school systems or their funding. In fact, research suggests that greater take-up in choice programs leads to better student outcomes for the vast majority of students choosing to remain in public schools. Looking at these facts, it seems clear that the claims of exodus and harm caused by choice programs are greatly exaggerated.”

Another analysis examined 11 choice programs across eight states and D.C. Of the 26 studies examining the effects of these programs on public school students, 24 reveal positive effects, one study shows no visible effect, and only one finds negative effects.

Concerning segregation, 10 empirical studies have examined private school choice programs, and nine find that the programs reduce it, while one shows no visible difference. Not one revealed that choice leads to any racial discrimination whatsoever.

Despite the ridiculous homeschooling assertion made by MSNBC, the number of Black homeschoolers jumped, from 3.3% to 16.1% in 2020. Thus, Black children are homeschooling in much greater numbers than their White counterparts.

The Milton Friedman allegation is miles beyond inaccurate. In fact, Friedman and likeminded souls began touting vouchers as a strategy to combat segregation. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, researcher Phillip Magness explains that Virginia’s segregationist hard-liners recognized the likely outcomes of school choice and began attacking it “as an existential threat to their white-supremacist order.”

So, now just who are really the racists? The ones who want to free Blacks to choose their schools? Or those who force them to go to their frequently failing zip-code mandated school?

Going forward, school choice should be branded as a civil rights issue. Lt. Col Allen West said it best in a recent opinion piece.

“We must reassert educational freedom and parental choice in America, this is the new civil rights battlefield. My very own parents made the decision about my early education realizing that a good quality education unlocks the doors to equality of opportunity. If we continue down this current path we lessen the opportunities for our children, but we increase the ability for others to determine their outcomes. If taxpayers, parents, are the ones funding public education, then they are the investors and have a definitive interest in their return on investment.”

Amen, brother West!

 

Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/school-choice-and-segregation-fact-and-fiction-larry-sand/

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Wednesday, June 1, 2022

Biden's Energy Inflation Is No Accident - Jerome Corsi

 

​ by Jerome Corsi

What we're witnessing is a backdoor route to implement the Green New Deal policy that Congress could not pass.

In a press conference last week following his meeting with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Japan, President Biden praised the escalating price of gasoline as a positive step toward realizing the Democratic Party’s dream of enacting the Green New Deal.

“[When] it comes to the gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it is over, we will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over,” Biden said. Biden followed these comments by giving lip service to the millions of Americans forced to spend an increasing percentage of their disposable income on putting gasoline in their vehicles.

According to a study recently by economist Dr. Edward Yardeni, American families are now paying what amounts to $5,000 per year to put gasoline in their automobiles, a painful increase from just $2,800 a year ago.

In late May, the average gallon of gasoline in the U.S. hit a record high of $4.59, about 51 percent more than a year ago. By contrast, the price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline on January 20, 2021, the day President Biden took the oath of office, was $2.38/gallon.

Californians are now paying $6.00 for a gallon of gas, a level the rest of the United States may soon experience. “With expectations of strong driving demand in the summer months, the U.S. retail price could surge another 37 percent by August, to a national average of $6.20/gallon,” predicts Natasha Kaneva, the head of commodities research at JP Morgan.

On May 27, 2022, the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) reported that the price of Brent crude oil (the world standard) had risen to $119.81/barrel. By comparison, the cost of Brent crude oil averaged $41.96/barrel in 2020, the last year of the Trump administration.

Natural gas prices in the United States have nearly tripled in the last year amid increasing supply fears. In late May, natural gas prices in the U.S. surpassed the $9.00 per million BTU (British Thermal Units), the highest price since the 2008 recession. “There’s almost no ceiling for natural gas,” Kent Bayazitoglu explained. “You can reduce your driving a lot easier than you can reduce your natural gas consumption.

At the end of May, more than a million households in New York City metropolitan area were 60 days in arrears on their energy bills, with an average of $1,427.71 in debt and shut-offs increasing. Middle-class Americans are experiencing the brunt of the current inflation spike. “For the middle class, a larger share of their budget goes toward gasoline,” explained Peter Mueser, a chancellor’s professor at the University of Missouri who studies labor economics.

“It’s time for Americans to get back to work and fill our great downtowns,” President Biden said in his 2021 State of the Union speech. But with the cost of gasoline rapidly edging toward $6.00/gallon, many Americans are questioning whether driving to work is worth the increased marginal impact rising gasoline costs have on their relatively fixed disposable income.

Image: Internet meme; origins unknown.

Biden’s statement in Japan refused to acknowledge that his administration bears a significant causal link to increased energy prices in the United States and worldwide. The Biden administration has made a series of decisions reversing Trump administration energy policies by shutting down the Keystone pipeline and canceling offshore oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska.

The Biden administration is developing into a sad repeat of the Carter administration’s economic policies, as evidenced by a redux of the 1979 stagflation that brought the type of double-digit inflation and stagnant economic growth we are again seeing today. Ethanol was the rage during Carter’s 1973 OPEC oil embargo crisis. With President Carter entirely onboard with the peak oil crowd, his administration championed ethanol as the way America would achieve energy independence. In sharp contrast, under President Trump’s strong support for hydrocarbon fuels, the United States defied all peak oil predictions, becoming a net exporter of oil and a world leader in oil and natural gas production.

On August 20, 2019, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the statistical agency of the U.S. Department of Energy, announced that the United States established new production records, with U.S. petroleum and natural gas production increasing in 2018 by 16 percent and 12 percent, respectively. The EIA further announced that the United States surpassed Russia in 2011 to become the world’s largest natural gas producer and surpassed Saudi Arabia in 2018 to become the world’s largest petroleum producer. The EIA report noted that the 2018 increase in the United States, which boomed under the Trump administration, constituted “one of the largest absolute petroleum and natural gas production increases from a single country in history.”

 

In his recently published 2022 book Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas – Not Less, energy expert Alan Epstein points out that the “secret sauce” behind the exceptional cost-effectiveness of fossil fuels is “generations of economic innovation and achievement specifically applied to the remarkable attributes of fossil fuels: natural storage, natural concentration, and natural abundance.” 1/

Suppose we had a battery the size of a flashlight battery that could store enough solar energy to light a city. If solar technology that powerful existed, the entire world would drop hydrocarbon fuels instantly to switch to these new, powerful solar batteries.

Suppose we had a wind energy storage device equally as powerful. Suppose ten wind turbines placed a few miles outside a metropolitan area could provide all the electricity that the city and suburbs needed for a week, whether or not the wind blew. Again, a mighty wind energy capacity would dislodge hydrocarbon fuels from their current position as the world’s preferred energy choice.

The physics of solar and wind power, however, limit their usefulness. The sun does not shine in the sky at night, and the equinox, two times each year, marks the point where a day lasts for twelve hours and night occurs for twelve hours in both the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres. As with every other component of Earth’s weather and climate systems, the wind is also variable.

Wind and solar devices capture no energy when the wind does not blow, and the sun does not shine. Current technology for generating and storing solar and wind energy is limited. Installing solar and wind energy collection devices requires enormous facilities that use up vast territory.

The cost of providing sufficient backup or storage to run a stable electric grid from wind or solar power could multiply the cost of generating electricity by a factor of five or more, given the problem of intermittency. Intermittency is an inherent problem of wind and solar power. The generation of wind and solar power energy fluctuates wildly between day and night because of seasonal variations and weather events. While wind and solar technologies are advancing, the ability to create a mighty wind or solar battery the size of a flashlight battery is nowhere on the horizon. Today, solar and wind power lack the scalability to provide reliably operating, utility-scale electricity generation able to supply energy 24/7 for large metropolitan areas globally.

While the Biden administration is determined to impose the Green New Deal on Americans through a series of executive decisions and regulatory actions aimed at constraining the supply of hydrocarbon fuels, the inescapable conclusion is that double-digit inflation that includes prohibitively escalating energy costs is political suicide. Jimmy Carter’s failure to end stagflation ushered in the era of Paul Volker and dramatically increased interest rates, setting the stage for the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

“Woke” Democrats controlling the White House and the House of Representatives are repeating Carter’s mistake. Biden in the White House and Pelosi in the House risk retaining political power in their blind determination to pursue a radically green ideology founded more on their anti-capitalist sentiments than on the complex empirical realities of energy physics and economics.

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1/ Alex Epstein, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas – Not Less (New York: Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2022), p. 198 (emphasis in original).

 

Since 2004, Jerome R. Corsi has published 25 books on economics, history, and politics, including two #1 New York Times bestsellers. In 1972, he received his Ph.D. from the Department of Government at Harvard University. He currently resides in New Jersey with his family. His next book, entitled The Truth About Energy, Global Warming, and Climate Change: Exposing Climate Lies in an Age of Disinformation, will be published on June 28, 2022.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/06/bidens_energy_inflation_is_no_accident.html

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