Monday, March 18, 2024 

USA military no longer has presence in Niger

Andrea Widburg points to the latest chilling situation on the globe, where the USA military has been banished from Niger, a country overrun with Islam:
Nobody in America thinks about Niger in Africa, but Niger matters in the war against radical Islam and in the world’s balance of power. Now, though, we must think about Niger because it appears that Biden’s foreign policy incompetence, combined with America’s general weakness, has led to the new military junta kicking America out of a forward base that allowed it to attack radical Islam in the region and a country that’s one of the world’s biggest uranium suppliers.

Because Niger isn’t on anyone’s radar, here’s a bit of background:

Niger, a former French colony, is a landlocked nation in northwestern Africa. It’s home to multiple ethnic groups, but they’re bound together by one thing: Islam, which accounts for over 99% of the population. Despite being one of the world’s poorest countries, it’s also home to some of the world’s largest uranium deposits, making it a very important country.

It’s not just uranium that makes Niger an important country. For a long time, Niger has cooperated with the American military, allowing it to have outposts there. These outposts enabled the U.S. to keep an eye on and attack violent Islamist groups in North Africa. They also served as a counterbalance to Russia, which is desperate to gain influence there (as, seemingly, is China).

As with almost all African countries, Niger has had an endless modern history of tyranny and poverty. The latest tyranny cycle occurred last July when a military junta overthrew a democratically elected president (and I’m sure that election was as honest as 2020’s in America). The current leader is Abdourahamane Tchiani (aka Omar Tchiani), who supported the losing president in that election.

According to an analysis shortly after the coup, it’s probable that the State Department’s inattention and the Biden administration’s ineptitude contributed to the coup’s success. Given the many coups sweeping the region, it wasn’t hard to guess that more were in the works. An administration with its eye on the ball wouldn’t have been as surprised as Biden and his team were. The same essay has a long list of flabby Africa policies in the White House that kept it from knowing what was happening and responding appropriately.
So there we have yet another sad situation, where the Religion of Peace is dominant in a foreign country, and nothing was ever done to get the residents to abandon adherence to Islam. And that failure will end up becoming very costly in the long run.

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Netanyahu's rebuttal to Schumer

Israel's prime minister has spoken out against the disgraceful Democrat senator Charles Schumer:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) this week after Schumer tried to meddle in Israel’s elections last week.

Netanyahu made the remarks during a Sunday interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” in response to Schumer calling for Netanyahu’s ouster.

“I think what he said is totally inappropriate,”
Netanyahu said. “It’s inappropriate for to go to a sister democracy and try to replace the elected leadership there. That’s something that Israel, the Israeli public does on its own, and we’re not a banana republic.”

“I think the only government that we should be working on to bring down now is the terrorist tyranny in Gaza, the Hamas tyranny that murdered over 1,000 Israelis, including some dozens of Americans, and is holding Americans and Israelis hostage. That’s what we should be focused on,”
he continued. “And as far as what Senator Schumer said, the majority of Israelis support our governments; 82 percent of Americans support Israel, instead of Hamas. But the majority of Israelis support the policies that we’re leading, go into Rafah, destroy the remaining Hamas terrorist battalions, make sure that we don’t put into Gaza, instead of Hamas, the Palestinian Authority that educates their children towards terrorism and the annihilation of Israel.”
Even if Schumer's ostensibly apologized, the damage has regrettably been done, and it's no simple feat repairing it. The best Schumer can do now is resign from a position he doesn't deserve.

Since we're on the subject, Dr. Michael Sarel says employing palestinian workers hurts Israeli economy, and even worse, safety:
Since the Six-Day War and up until October 7, Palestinian workers from Judea and Samaria were permitted to work in Israel, primarily in the construction industry. Their number often changed, usually rising when the security situation stabilized, and falling (sometimes extremely sharply) in times of hostilities or security-related tensions due to terrorism concerns. In the third quarter of 2023 (right before the war), the number of Palestinian workers holding a work permit reached a peak of 127,000. Similarly, in the third quarter of 2000 (right before the Palestinian terror wave beginning on September 30, 2000) the number of workers permitted to work in Israel hit new peaks. In addition to the workers holding permits, many Palestinians with no such permit (known as shabakhim – illegal residents) also worked on Israeli construction sites, often staying overnight in Israel, and working elsewhere as well. In the past decade, the percentage of workers without a permit out of all Palestinian workers from Judea and Samaria working in Israel was estimated to be between 22%-43%, and this percentage was extremely volatile as well.

The volatility in the number of Palestinian workers and the dependence of the construction industry's regular operation on the arrival of such workers present an extremely harmful combination. Construction industry entrepreneurs and contractors got accustomed to getting cheap labor whenever the security situation was calm, a privilege practically nonexistent in other Israeli industries, and completely nonexistent in construction industries in many other developed countries. Whenever conditions change and security closures are implemented due to terror attacks or war, entrepreneurs and contractors demand government assistance, on the grounds that their industry has been critically hit, construction sites stand empty, and it is the government's (i.e. the public's) responsibility to find a solution. Even with government assistance, the timeframe for housing construction is lengthened and the supply of housing units can be diminished, driving up prices. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs and contractors avoid massive capital investments or the adoption of new technologies that facilitate less labor-intensive construction methods (as is the case in many developed countries). Even when virtually no Palestinian workers arrive (such as in the months of war following October 7), construction entrepreneurs and contractors continue to avoid doing so, since they estimate that the government will cave to their pressure within a short while, reverse their policy position and restore permission for the mass entry of Palestinian workers.

The construction industry has a few good alternatives to Palestinian labor, aside from capital investment and technological innovation. These include Israeli labor (mainly low-education young Arab adults, whose alternative is usually unemployment or joining criminal gangs); bringing in foreign construction companies to carry out major projects (so long as they do so by tender, meeting commonly accepted Israeli legal criteria, and commit to handling the import and employment of their workers and to ensuring their exit from the country at the end of the project as the condition for payment); and bringing in foreign workers under bilateral agreements with other states. The latter should entail taxes and substantial employment fees (much higher than they are today) to compensate the rest of the Israeli public for the economic-social-national harms created by bringing in foreign workers, as well as strict monitoring of which states bilateral agreements are signed with in order to minimize the risk of foreign workers settling in Israel.
It would do well for anybody who cares and has the money to found construction companies that don't rely on such cheap labor that risks bringing about terrorist infiltrators to provide alternatives to those who are risking everyone's safety. And businesses who care should do their best to avoid hiring construction companies employing Muslims from Judea/Samaria/Gaza, who could end up spying for jihadist movements. Public safety cannot be jeopardized anymore.

Update: also of vital concern is that Schumer's "rabbi" is a J-Street propagandist who opposes the war against Hamas.

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Sunday, March 17, 2024 

Government approves memorial day for October 7, 2023

The Israeli government unanimously approved a rememberence day for October 7, 2023, when the Hamas committed their horrifying bloodbath and sexual violence last year:
The government unanimously approved a National Day of Remembrance to be held every year on the 24th of the Jewish month of Tishrei, to commemorate the October 7th massacre and the Sword of Iron War.

On the first anniversary, a ceremony will be held also on the secular date – October 7th, 2024.

The National Day of Remembrance will be marked annually with two state ceremonies: a ceremony at 11:00 a.m. in memory of those killed in the war, and a ceremony at 1:00 p.m. in memory of the civilians murdered in hostilities.

This year, in light of the fact that the 24th of Tishrei falls on Saturday, the ceremonies will take place on Sunday, the 25th of Tishrei, and so forth every year that the 24th of Tishrei falls on Shabbat (Saturday).
Those who voted in favor did the right thing. It's terrible, of course, that the horrifying incident had to happen, and now one more antisemitic tragedy's been scarred into history. But that's exactly why it's vital to remember these horrible incidents in order to try and prevent more from happening in the future.

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Saturday, March 16, 2024 

Israeli actress condemns anti-Israel display at Oscars

Actress Noa Tishby wrote a condemnation of the bigoted performers and directors now dominating the Academy Awards, which has been very irrelevant as a form of art for some time now:
Israeli producer and actress Noa Tishby, recognized as a prominent pro-Israel voice in the U.S. media, took to social media to criticize a gesture of support for the Palestinians made by Hollywood stars at the Academy Awards' Oscar ceremony on Sunday night. Tishby criticized these stars, many who were nominated for and also won Oscar statuettes, for promoting what she called a one-sided agenda regarding the war against the terrorist organization Hamas in Gaza.

"Tonight’s Oscars was a subtle and overt display of Jew-hatred,"
Tishby asserted.

Several Hollywood celebrities, including Billie Eilish, her brother Finneas, Mark Ruffalo, Ava DuVernay, Ramy Youssef, and Quannah Chasinghorse, wore red pins distributed by the group Artists4Ceasefire. Youssef explained that the pin represents "justice for the Palestinian people," and added: "This is a universal message of 'just stop killing children.'"

Tishby noted the absence of yellow pins, representing the hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7. "And that’s the point: if you’re calling for a ceasefire without calling for the release of the hostages, you are promoting Hamas’s agenda by questioning Israel's right to self-defense," Tishby said in an X post.

Tishby further commented on Hamas's brutal attack on Israel on the morning of October 7.

"It was Hamas who barbarically attacked Israel, breaking the cease-fire on October 7th. Since then, Hamas has consistently rejected numerous cease-fire proposals. Hamas is not interested in a cease-fire, it is interested in murdering Jews and sacrificing Palestinians. If these artists cared so much about a cease-fire, they’d be applying pressure on Hamas rather than attacking Israel,"
she said.

She concluded her post by suggesting that the actions of these celebrities could be interpreted as "at its mildest, this is subconscious antisemitism; at its worst, deliberate attacks against Jews."
Easily the worst thing about director Jonathan Glazer is that he's the product of what's doubtless a whole cottage industry dedicated to turning out self-hating Jews, and his ethnic background is likely one of the reasons why nobody challenged him within the ceremony proper. Even so, the presence of only so many anti-Israelists at the Oscars certainly speaks volumes, in contrast to the time when Vanessa Redgrave pulled similar acts in the late 1970s, and was rebutted by writer Paddy Chayevsky. Today, regrettably, there's almost nobody like him left, and the Oscars themselves ceased to be relevant in the past decade. This whole scene Glazer led to also demonstrates why.

Update: here's more on what the executive producer of the film, Danny Cohen, had to say following the repulsive speech by Glazer, which took place without the producers' approval (via Breitbart):
Speaking in response on the Unholy podcast hosted by Yonit Levi of Israel’s Channel 12 News and Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian, Cohen, former Director Of BBC TV, said he believed it was important to note Glazer’s speech “upset a lot of people.”

“A lot of people feel upset and angry about it. And I understand that anger frankly,”
Cohen said.

“A lot of people in the Jewish community who contacted me felt it was a remarkable and very important film. And tells the story of the Holocaust and forms an important piece of Holocaust education. And I think they’ve been upset by the sense they feel that has been mixed up with what’s going on now. Whether that was Jonathan’s intention or not.”

Cohen added: “I just fundamentally disagree with Jonathan on this. The war and the continuation of the war is the responsibility of Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization, which continues to hold and abuse the hostages, which doesn’t use its tunnels to protect the innocent civilians of Gaza but uses it to hide themselves and allow Palestinians to die. I think the war is tragic and awful, and the loss of civilian life is awful, but I blame Hamas for that.”

When Freedland and Levi asked Cohen whether Glazer had informed him of his plans for the speech, he said no. The speech had been crafted, he understood, by Glazer and his longtime producer, James Wilson. Glazer and Wilson have yet to speak publicly about the discussion surrounding the speech.

Cohen concluded by saying The Zone Of Interest was one of the “most remarkable films in decades.” But he believed Glazer’s speech had become a “huge distraction” that overshadowed an “extraordinary triumph of filmmaking.”
Obviously, not many are going to want to view it now, as Glazer's speech casts a whole cloud over the production, and even if one can separate art from artist, it's still very embarrassing. And what are the chances we'll be seeing movies focused on the issue of Islamic terrorism coming from Hollywood? Next to nothing. Similarly, even pro-Israeli movies have been banned from development in an industry that's far too focused on commoditization.

Update 2: while we're on the topic, it's to be hoped Cohen's aware that even the PLO has long been involved in evils similar to the Hamas.

Update 3: Lazlo Nemes, the director of Son of Saul, also feels Glazer should've kept quiet.

Update 4: documentarian Richard Trank explains why Glazer's speech was so repulsive, and so does James Inverne.

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Catholic diocese in Italy demonstrates how dhimmitude to Islam remains a serious problem

Robert Spencer describes the sad case of a Catholic representative who's kowtowing to Islam:
Another Ramadan is upon us, and as is always the case, the eager-to-be-fooled infidels are out in force. A Catholic diocese in Italy has just called upon priests and laypeople to seek out opportunities to participate in Ramadan observances, as a gesture of goodwill toward Muslims. When will Muslim leaders tell Muslims to participate in Christian worship to show friendship with Christians? Don’t hold your breath.

The Catholic Herald reported Friday that the Italian diocese of Bergamo is “instructing its priests to participate in Islamic rituals, citing Pope Francis’ directives on interreligious dialogue.” Diocesan officials issued a directive “urging priests to seek out opportunities for interreligious dialogue during the ‘holy month’ of Ramadan by inviting the faithful to join in praying with Muslims and joining in the Iftar ritual meal.”

This directive was the handiwork of Fr. Massimo Rizzi, who is the director of the diocese’s Office for Interreligious Dialogue. Fr. Rizzi is such a hip, up-to-date, Church-of-what’s-happening-now type of priest that he even went so far as to give this letter the date 23 Sha’ban 1445. He wasn’t trying to fool anyone into thinking that the directive had been written nearly six hundred years ago; the date he gave was that of last Monday according to the Islamic calendar.
Even if one doesn't agree with everything in the Hindu/Buddhist/Shinto religions, it's bewildering how "interreligious" conversations don't seem to extend to any of them. Why don't those 3 aforementioned faiths count for such dialogues? Or, why aren't they considered better partners in the same? All that aside, this is definitely awful what's going on, and it will eventually bring down the western world. This is also why one can't be shocked if formerly faithful Christians have become disillusioned. The question then is, why don't even advocates of Judaism try to persuade the disillusioned to try out that instead, along with religions like the 3 aforementioned? Seriously, I think it's about time somebody in Judaism considered whether it might give Europeans new hope, and a better way of being able to manage their lives.

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Schools in Virginia allow opt-out from Holocaust lessons

The school board of Fairfax County, Virginia, is doing something terrible they won't do with LGBT ideology:
Virginia’s largest school district will let students skip a presentation from a Holocaust survivor, saying the diverse district includes students with “different experiences.”

“We understand that all students have different experiences. If you prefer to opt your child out from participating in this presentation, please email your child’s history teacher and they will be provided an alternate assignment. Please email your child’s history teacher with any questions that you may have,” a letter from Cooper Middle School said.

The letter referred to a scheduled presentation from a Holocaust survivor to seventh-graders, according to Adele Scalia, a mother of one of those middle schoolers.

[...] Scalia said on social media that she is drawing “less charitable (but more likely) conclusions.” The Left has been pressured by Islamic extremists to demonize Israel following Hamas’ terrorist attacks on the Jewish nation on October 7, and liberals have used the same language of “colonization” and “oppression” that they apply to whites in the U.S. to Israelis.

“If the email had said ‘We understand that some students are very sensitive and Mrs. X’s stories my be disturbing and traumatizing to them…’ I would have given them the benefit of the doubt. But it didn’t,” Scalia wrote.

Fairfax County contains a hotbed of Muslim extremism. A mosque there, attended by several 9/11 hijackers as well as the Fort Hood terrorist, was presided over by the father of Abrar Omeish, who until this year was a member of the Fairfax County school board. Omeish voted against an FCPS resolution offering a moment of silence for victims of 9/11 and another for victims of October’s Hamas attacks on Israel, said the decisive World War II victor at Iwo Jima was “unfortunate,” and gave a graduation speech encouraging students to “remember your jihad” and reject capitalism.
This definitely says quite a bit, right down to how the manager of a mosque is allowed on the school board, and even desecrated the memory of 9-11 victims. This also makes clear the sad path the USA is regrettably headed on if something isn't done to put a stop to this indoctrination.
The opt-out of the Holocaust lesson in FCPS, whose school board is entirely Democrat, is a reversal from the Left’s position on opt-outs on topics like transgenderism and anti-racism, which typically holds that hard truths are often uncomfortable, that it is the role of a school to instill certain values, and that on some issues, there are not two sides, but only good and evil.

[...] With some people claiming that the Holocaust did not even occur, the lesson is one of the last chances to hear from someone who survived it first-hand, as survivors are perishing of old age.

Prior to the election of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a video promoted by Virginia’s state Department of Education, then presided over by Democrat Atif Qarni, sought to dampen the emotional resonance of 9/11, advising teachers not to call it “terrorism” and to focus on “anti-Muslim racism” while making sure not “to reproduce what’s understood as American exceptionalism.”
This is the most terrible part about Virgina, how, Youngkin's election notwithstanding, there remains a considerable amount of far-left influence, and now it's resulted in a truly awful situation. It's clear Virginia has a serious problem with misogyny, anti-Semitism, and the Religion of Peace is really going to make things awful soon enough. Maybe most grating about the whole matter is that, if LGBT ideology is cleared away from schools in Fairfax, it'll only be due to Muslim influence, not because Judeo-Christians, Hinduists and Buddhists ask for it to stop. That's one of the worst things about "protected class" statuses.

Update: and since Israel is also a connected subject here, it should be noted that Joe Biden appears to have supported Charles Schumer's repellent speech attacking Israel, during a meeting with Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar. Very sad too.

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Friday, March 15, 2024 

How Bezalel Smotrich will prevent PLO from receiving immunity to lawsuits over their terrorist funding

Finance minister Smotrich intends to keep the PLO from having immunity to lawsuits, and also combat Israeli banks who allow any deals with them that can enable terror funding. His steps are also a reaction to Joe Biden going after far less troubling Israelis with sanctions:
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is threatening to paralyze the Palestinian Authority's economy in response to the Biden administration's actions against Israeli residents and outposts in Judea and Samaria.

Israel Hayom has learned that Smotrich is refusing to renew signing a document that provides the PA immunity from lawsuits filed involving Israel's Discount Bank and Bank Hapoalim, which have financial ties with Palestinian entities.

Without this protection, the Israeli banks are expected to cut ties with Palestinian banks out of fear of being exposed to lawsuits for transferring funds to terror groups. Since the Palestinian Authority's economy relies on ties with Israel, this would mean an immediate freeze on economic activity in the PA.

Smotrich's threat comes in response to the sanctions imposed by the US on seven Israeli settlers, which has resulted in banks freezing their accounts.

The US has strict laws against money laundering used for terror, and a special authority conducts international campaigns against bodies that provide financial assistance to terror groups. Since the Palestinian Authority and its financial institutions are suspected by the US of being involved in terror, the US itself avoids direct contact with them to avoid violating the law. However, politically, the existence of the PA is very important to the administration for stability purposes in the region, so it has refrained from taking legal action against it.

Discount Bank and Bank Hapoalim have been asking the governments for years to cut ties with the Palestinian Authority due to the fear of being sued. To accommodate them, Israel has established a government correspondence company back in 2018. However, this company has also sought to sever ties with the PA and therefore has not been able to replace the Israeli banks in transacting with the PA.
The challenging query is why do any business with them at all? The bank managements should be able to decide about severing all ties with the PLO, and this way overdue. Good on Smotrich if he does what's possible to reverse this situation.

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The Trojan pier

Daniel Greenfield warns the pier Biden's bunch is building at Gaza, supposedly to help deliver aid to Muslims who could otherwise be ingrates, could serve as a Trojan horse that undermines Israel
Six Americans are still being held hostage by Hamas, and Biden has sent no troops to help them, but at the State of the Union address, he promised to send troops to build a pier for Gaza.

The estimated over 1,000 troops will spend as long as 2 months laboring to build a floating pier in a war zone under potential attack to help transfer aid to the Hamas supporters living in Gaza.

Nothing about this plan makes sense.

The media has taken to falsely claiming that the Arab Muslims occupying parts of Gaza are starving
. Vice President Kamala Harris attacked Israel, claiming that she had “seen reports of families eating leaves or animal feed.” Social media videos however show the locals gorging themselves on shawarma and other foods in preparation for the Islamic period of Ramadan.

But if the Biden administration really believed that Gazans were starving right now, what would be the purpose of spending two months building a pier to deliver aid? A program with a two month lead time will not help people who are starving right now. It would be a grim joke.

And the pier plan only gets stranger from there.

According to the administration, there will be no ‘boots on the ground’ constructing the pier and according to a Pentagon spokesman, “it will not be U.S. military personnel that are transporting the aid off of the causeway into Gaza.” So who has the trucks and capability to actually do it?

The United States will build a pier for smaller ships to transfer to a temporary causeway. According to the spokesman, the administration is “coordinating with other nations to assist with operating the causeway and distributing aid into Gaza.”

Who are those nations? They’re clearly not Israel or the United States. While the Pentagon spokesman mentions Israel as a partner nation, the Israelis are already able to deliver aid.

The Pentagon spokesman mentioned the UN and nameless “ally and partner nations”.

“Why not just use those existing ports and have Israel look at what’s going through and bring it in? It seems like this is a lot of work for 60 days out when there are people starving, frankly,” a reporter asked.

And the spokesman responded with a confusing word salad because he had no good answer.

The actual answer is that the Biden administration does not actually believe that the Arab Muslim occupiers in Gaza are starving, let alone starving to death, otherwise it would be doing more than air dropping 11,000 meals and promising to have meal delivery running in 60 days.

The temporary pier setup is about bypassing Israel to provide long term access to Gaza.

While administration officials describe the pier as “temporary”, a senior official also admitted that “we look forward to the port transitioning to a commercially operated facility over time.”

That means it’s not actually meant to be temporary, but a permanent port for the terrorists.
Even former USA ambassador David Friedman says what Biden's doing undermines Israel's efforts to rescue the remaining hostages, one more reason why this "project" is severely dangerous, and even wastes tons of USA taxpayers' money for the sake of a pathetic direction that does nothing to help even the Arab inhabitants of Gaza. It's an utter disgrace, and all the while, corrupt politicians even lie about the situation on the ground, making things far worse.

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Thursday, March 14, 2024 

Democrat senator Charles Schumer crossed a line

Schumer's long been a very pretentious leftist politician, but this time, he really made a disgrace of himself by attacking Benjamin Netanyahu, and undermining the war against Islamic terrorism as a result:
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer gave a speech on "a pathway to peace and achieving a two-state solution" today (Thursday).

In his remarks, Schumer called for the holding of new elections in Israel, saying that "Netanyahu has lost his way." He further called the Israeli Prime Minister an "obstacle to peace."

According to Schumer, Netanyahu is one of four obstacles to peace, the others being Hamas, "radical Israelis," and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Schumer's criticism of Netanyahu centered on the prime minister's "outright" rejection of the idea of the creation of a Palestinian state in the aftermath of October 7. All Israeli polls show that a clear majority of Israelis are also against the idea of a Palestinian state.
Schumer obviously ignored and vehemently refuses to acknowledge any polls or surveys on what the Israeli public thinks. He already destroyed his credibility by siding with SJWs who believe a man claiming he's a woman can force his way into actual women's bathrooms. Now, he's continuing to demonstrate how repellent he really is, and even employing moral equivalence, as though it solves anything, which is not so at all. As pretentious as Mitch McConnell is too, he did have the audacity to speak against Schumer's loathsome rant:
Senator Mitch McConnell responded to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer' speech calling for new elections in Israel, saying: "It is grotesque and hypocritical for Americans who hyperventilate about interference in our own democracy” to call for the Israeli leader's removal. The primary “obstacles to peace” in Israel’s region are genocidal terrorists and corrupt PA leaders who repeatedly reject peace deals. Foreign observers who cannot keep this straight ought to refrain from interfering in the democracy of a sovereign ally. [...]

Israel's ambassador to the US, Mike Herzog, replied to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and also condemned him saying: "Israel is a sovereign democracy. It is counterproductive, even more so in a situation where Israel is at war with Hamas, a terrorist organization, to address the internal politics of a democracy. This goes against our common goals," Herzog said.
It's about time Schumer follow in McConnell's footsteps and resign from Congress, as the latter is said to be doing soon. Such virtue-signaling is not doing any good, and no sane women should support Schumer either. He's likely also doing it to provide additional backing to Joe Biden for the sanctions they're imposing upon Israeli victims, while simultaneously, anti-Israel movements in the USA and elsewhere face no consequences for their repellent behavior. All Schumer's doing is obscuring vital issues, and that's one of the worst things about how leftists operate.

Update: making matters worse is that Biden officals are meeting with Muslim leaders in Illinois, without any consideration of the antisemitism that's running rampant in that area.

Update 2: many USA rabbis have condemned Schumer for his reprehensible speech.

Update 3: the New York Post editorial addresses the scandal, and notes:
Israel is confronting an existential threat — terrorists who on Oct. 7 pulled off the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, and forthrightly promise to do it again as soon as they can, and to keep doing it until Israel is gone.

But President Biden is finding that this makes it hard to solidify his base as he heads into a tough re-election fight — though outright betraying Israel would only make his plight worse.

So our president has taken to dropping hints about how Netanyahu’s the problem, and now Schumer’s moved to cover his flank.
In other words, Schumer's acting at the behest of his higher echelons. Either way, he's an utter disgrace, and needs to retire from politics altogether.

Update 4: now Schumer's trying to walk back his previous atrocity:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Thursday sought to clarify his remarks against the Israeli government which caused a firestorm.

“The US cannot dictate the outcome of an election. That is for the Israeli public to decide,” he wrote in a post on social media.

As a democracy, Israel has the right to choose its own leaders. But the important thing is that Israelis are given a choice. There needs to be a fresh debate about the future,” he added.
So now he finally acknowledges that much of the public democratically elected Netanyahu to begin with. But there's still so much wrong with Schumer's conduct that it makes little difference at this point. He's still a very reprehensible leftist. And what might he mean by "fresh debate"? Something tells me he's not being altruistic with that comment.

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Hamas fakes casualty figures

Something that was entirely expected:
The Hamas terrorist organization is disseminating fictitious figures for casualties in the current war in Gaza. That’s the conclusion of a deep dive into the data published in Tablet magazine in a March 7 report titled “How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers.”

“The numbers are not real. That much is obvious to anyone who understands how naturally occurring numbers work. The casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters,” writes Abraham Wyner, a professor of statistics and data science at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and the report’s author.
It's all part of taqqiya (deception), meant to serve Islam's repulsive goals against unbelievers. This is nothing new at all. Islamofascists use this kind of repellent tactic even against non-Jews. It's utterly offensive.

There's also false accusations being made against Israelis to consider:
Far-left Israeli groups are increasingly spreading false accusations against Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria, causing severe harm to the Jewish state’s international standing, a representative of the Israel Police told lawmakers at the Knesset in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

[...] According to Mualem, most reports come from organizations on the “extreme left, anarchists, who are generally in Tel Aviv and call the 100 police emergency hotline to report violence by right-wing activists in the South Hebron Hills.”
Something tells me these creeps aren't even on the spot when they make their false complaints. That aside, making a false complaint is a felony in various countries, and those leftists who did that should be charged and even sued for the trouble they're causing.

And there's even the Hamas' indoctrinating against gender equality to ponder:
On International Women’s Day on March 8, a report found that textbooks used in the Palestinian education system label it an “injustice” to teach gender equality.

The March 2024 report, published by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), examined 13 textbooks and teacher guides that are currently in use and available publicly on online curriculum portals of the Palestinian Authority’s education ministry.

“It contradicts international treaties on gender equality that the P.A. itself has ratified,” Sheff added. “In particular, the emphasis on women’s participation in resistance activities as a warped form of gender equality sets a disturbing precedent.”

A 10th-grade teacher guide, for example, includes a video titled “equality between women and men is a biological lie.” A 12th-grade Islamic systems textbook instructs that women are not fit to lead nations, and God placed men “in charge” of women.
This completely contradicts and desecrates that civil rights is where men and women are equal, not physics. But interesting how followers of Islam are allowed to make any kind of case regarding biology, not Judeo-Christians, and not Buddhists/Hinduists/Shintoists either. What the Hamas/PLO have done is described in Judaism and the 10 Commandments as using God's name in vain. What the Religion of Peace has done in its influence will take ages to repair.

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Wednesday, March 13, 2024 

South Africa government threatens to arrest citizens who served in IDF

The deterioration of South Africa continues apace as they announce they'll arrest anybody who's served with Israel's army:
South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor announced this week during an African National Congress dialogue on South Africa’s solidarity with Palestine, that South African citizens who serve in the IDF will be arrested the moment they return to the country.

"I've already issued a statement alerting those who are South African and who are fighting alongside or in the Israeli Defense Force; we are ready - when you come home, we will arrest you," she declared to the crowd who met her statements with applause.
So a country that's not doing too well financially intends to ruin themselves further by basically declaring war on Israel for the sake of Hamas and other such evil Islamic entities. After this, I am so not interested in visiting as a tourist there. There's plenty of other places around Africa I'd love to visit. But when you have a government and society that's as obnoxious as South Africa's turning out to be, that's why they don't deserve our tourist money.

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China's just as absurdly naive about Islam as many western countries are

Robert Spencer addresses news that China's communists want to "Sinicize" the Religion of Peace, which doesn't sound all that different from what some European countries seem to believe they could do:
As the Chinese Communist Party is a totalitarian entity, it views any other authority or object of loyalty as a competitor that must be destroyed. That’s why the Chinese government has cracked down so brutally upon the Uighur Muslims, and now a leading ChiCom official has announced the end goal of that persecution: the “Sinicization” of Islam. The U.S., and the West in general, can learn a great deal from what the Chinese are doing: it’s a grand lesson in what not to do.

[...] Sinicization, in the case of Christianity, has involved rewriting parts of the Bible to remove or alter passages that might inspire readers to think critically about Communism, forcing Christians to celebrate as heroes Communists who betrayed the Church, and requiring Christian teachers to attend Communist indoctrination sessions.

Will similar measures, applied to Islam, defang the Religion of Peace and end the possibility of jihad terror in China? That’s what Chinese Communist leaders are banking on. But they’re being short-sighted.

What is likely to happen in China, given the lessons of history, is that the “Sinicization” of Islam will proceed, and initially it will appear to be a comprehensive success. Muslims in China will appear to be practicing an Islam with Chinese characteristics, and to have assimilated completely into Communist Chinese society.

The Communist victory celebrations, however, will be premature. When the Communist Party begins to weaken, suddenly and unexpectedly, traditional Islam will begin to reemerge. Eventually, the Chinese Communists will discover that despite all their efforts, Islam has not become “Sinicized” at all, but is still pretty much what it has always been.

[...] Even as late as the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Western “experts” were confidently predicting that Islamic societies would secularize and Westernize after the pattern of secular Turkey. Since then, however, everything has gone awry for the “experts,” although they still enjoy their tenured professorships and media adulation despite having been proven wrong about everything.

Turkey has re-Islamized, and Western influences have receded drastically in Islamic societies
. Where Nasser joked about the impossibility of getting Egyptian women to wear hijab, now virtually all women wear the hijab.
So this is basically no different from what western "specialists" tried to do, and look how it turned out. China will only doom everything and everyone further with this kind of near-sightedness. All that aside, one can only wonder what plans they have in store for Kaifeng community members, and if they'll force them to rewrite the Judaist bible/Torah so they won't think critically of communism either. What's really sad is how PC has led to situations where nobody wants to encourage Islamic adherents to leave the Religion of Peace and try out other, more civilized religions instead. Maybe in the west, the problem is that antisemites can't bring themselves to encourage converting to Judaism instead, or even Hinduism/Buddhism/Shintoism. As a result, is it any wonder the failure to combat Islam's evils has been so enormous?

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Tuesday, March 12, 2024 

A self-hating Jew who has no business making films about the Holocaust

This has surely got to be an oxymoron, when a film director at the Oscar ceremony who's supposedly Jewish and made one about the Holocaust exploits his award win for assaulting Israel at the worst possible moment:
But the most talked-about Jewish moment of the night came courtesy of Jonathan Glazer, writer-director of the cerebral Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest,” who used his acceptance speech to comment on the Israel-Hamas war.

Standing alongside producers James Wilson and Len Blavatnik during his acceptance speech for best international feature, Glazer, who is Jewish and came to Israel on a five-month program when a student at London’s Jewish Free School, denounced Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, which he said had led to “dehumanization” that had affected both Israelis and Palestinians.

“Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It’s shaped all of our past and present,” Glazer said.

“Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza,” he added to applause and cheers.

“All the victims of this dehumanization. How do we resist?” he said, to more applause.

Glazer’s reference to Israel’s war in Gaza came after pro-Palestinian protesters snarled traffic around the Dolby Theatre as the Oscars kicked off.
Yet another showbiz creep originating from Britain who turns a blind eye to how the Hamas committed sexual violence on October 7, 2023. It goes without saying he doesn't deserve an Oscar, but as the applause at the now irrelevant ceremony makes clear, this is an ultra-leftist establishment that's doubtless desensitized to violence, to say nothing of racial bigotry and misogyny. Glazer's film can't be viewed now that he's practically tainted it. He's already received pushback from Holocaust survivors themselves:
Fifteen Holocaust survivors criticized film director Jonathan Glazer for his Oscar speech claiming that Israel had hijacked the Holocaust in service of the conflict, saying that he should be ashamed to have used Auschwitz to attack the Jewish State.

A survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and the only person of his 105 family members to survive, David Schaecter said that Glazer's comments were "factually inaccurate and morally indefensible."

"You chose to use the Holocaust to validate your personal opinion. You made a Holocaust movie and won an Oscar. And you are Jewish. Good for you. But it is disgraceful for you to presume to speak for the six million Jews, including one and a half million children, who were murdered solely because of their Jewish identity," said Schaecter, President of the Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA. "You should be ashamed of yourself for using Auschwitz to criticize Israel."

Israel as the refuge for Holocaust survivors

The 94-year-old said that it was disgraceful that Glazer saw fit to speak on behalf of Holocaust survivors, many of whom were offered no refuge in other countries and where there was "no Jewish nation to which we could flee."

"If the creation, existence, and survival of the State of Israel as a Jewish state equates to 'occupation' in your mind, then you obviously learned nothing from your movie," said Schaecter.
That's why realists can't attend or pay money to see Zone of Interest now.
Schaecter said that the current political landscape was the result of past Arab leaders who had rejected the existence of the State of Israel, and the current conflict was a result of Iran and its proxies trying to foil the peace with Israel sought by several Arab states. Iran's efforts were abetted by many who "through naiveté or malice, blame 'the occupation.'”

The Holocaust survivor said that the current situation in Israel had nothing to do with the Holocaust, a genocide that was also preceded hundreds of years by the Jewish people's presence and right to live in the territory.

Schaecter criticized Glazer's use of the Oscars stage to compare the October 7 Massacre to Israeli self-defense.
The apparent moral equivalence Glazer employed is deeply offensive. That he would have the gall to speak for people whom he doesn't represent any more than Steven Spielberg is also reprehensible. No doubt, there's plenty of scumbags like Glazer who've taken similar approaches when it comes to European victims of Islamic rape, and even victims of 9-11. These leftist ideologues, who otherwise refuse to acknowledge the existence of said victims of the Religion of Peace, have to be condemned, and it must be made clear they cannot speak for people they disrespect. After what Glazer did, we sadly cannot watch his movie either, and what're the chances it's filled with woke ideology? Don't be shocked if it is.

Update: it turns out that not only did Glazer do a terrible disfavor for victims of Islam, he didn't have the film producers' approval for his loathsome statements either. Len Blavatnik, the producer, does not share Glazer's repulsive ideologies. Hopefully, this'll be the last time the latter has anything to do with the former.

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