Tuesday, October 24, 2023

One of Israel's richest men and his wife stepped down from a Harvard board, saying their faith in the school's leadership had been 'broken' over its response to the Hamas attacks

 Israeli Billionaire Quits Harvard Board Over Response to Hamas Attacks (businessinsider.com)


"An Israeli billionaire businessman and his wife stepped down from their positions on a Harvard University board over the school's response to the Hamas terror attacks on Israel.

"Idan Ofer, who owns Quantum Pacific Group, is the world's 81st-richest person, with a net worth of $19.9 billion, per estimates by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

"He's the second-richest person from Israel, per Bloomberg's estimates, behind his brother Eyal Ofer, who is worth around $21.4 billion. Bloomberg's Billionaires Index lists Eyal Ofer as being from Monaco, though he was born in Israel.

"Idan Ofer and his wife, Batia Ofer, sat on the executive board of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. They funded a fellowship for Israeli and Palestinian students to study at the school and a building named after them opened on campus in 2017.

"But the Ofers are now no longer listed as members of the board on the school's website. They also withdrew a multi-million dollar donation that they planned to make, Hebrew-language news site The Marker reported." . . .

The Nazis are winning -Don Surber, Substack   Palestinian terrorists gang raping, beheading and burning Jews alive shocked many people in the world into finally supporting Israel.

"But socialists and Muslims continue to let their hatred for Jews shine through. The National Post in Canada was appalled by Justin Castreau’s pasty face response to the rallies supporting gang rape, beheading and burning people alive.

"The Post’s Tristin Hopper wrote, “In sharp contrast to the Freedom Convoy demonstrations last year, many of these pro-Hamas rallies are occurring without so much as an official condemnation from local authorities. Notable exceptions to this came from Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, who called a pro-Palestinian rally deplorable, and Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim, who denounced rallies that celebrate terrorism.”

"We are in a sad world where newspapers have to praise people who state the obvious: terrorism is evil. Welcome to the 21st century.

"But what does one expect when students are taught about Hiroshima and Nagasaki but not about Pearl Harbor? What do we expect when the liberals brand any Republican president Hitler and his supporters Nazis, watering down their evil to just being a political disagreement? What do we expect when the UN panics about a climate genocide, as if Jews died in tanning beds and not ovens?

"Time and socialists have made the unacceptable acceptable again." . . .

Democratic Leaders Won’t Defend Israel Critics Tlaib and Bush

 The Intercept   The only Palestinian (US citizen) member of Congress is under attack from her Democratic colleagues after she issued a statement that condemned a “heartbreaking cycle of violence” in Israel and Palestine and called for an end to the Israeli occupation. 

" 'Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., released the statement on Sunday, the day after Hamas bulldozed through the barbed-wire fence that separates Gaza from Israeli territory and massacred civilians, including attendees at a music festival. Israel responded by bombing Gazan villages and a refugee camp, and on Monday ordered a complete siege of the Gaza Strip.

“ 'I grieve the Palestinian and Israeli lives lost yesterday, today, and every day,” Tlaib said in her statement, going on to say that the end of Israel’s occupation of Palestine would create a just future for everyone.

“ 'The failure to recognize the violent reality of living under siege, occupation, and apartheid makes no one safer,” she said. “We cannot ignore the humanity in each other. As long as our country provides billions in unconditional funding to support the apartheid government, this heartbreaking cycle of violence will continue.” . . .

Trump questions how Jews or ‘anybody who loves Israel’ can vote for Democrats (msn.com)    "Progressives are facing backlash over their initial responses to the attacks on Israel by Hamas militants, revealing the degree to which they’re at odds with others in the Democratic caucus over the issue.

"Members of the Squad such as Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) took heat from fellow Democrats this week over statements criticized for being too tepid in the wake of the violent attacks against Israeli civilians." . . . 

Lindsey Graham in Tel Aviv Meltdown: Tells Newsmax 'Get Out of Here'

Not the Lindsey Graham of the Kavanaugh defense:

"But I came here with Democrats and Republicans to let everyone in the world know: Don't judge every Democrat by the Squad, and don't judge every Republican by some of the things you hear," he said. 

 Newsmax.com    "Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., went into meltdown mode with Newsmax's Israel correspondent, Daniel Cohen, during a Sunday press conference in Tel Aviv.

At the conference Cohen asked the senators why there was not a stronger condemnation, especially of those on the left like Democrat Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who have failed to condemn Hamas' attacks.

Cohen told the senators that Tlaib's "tweet is still up condemning Israel for a hospital attack we know was a lie."

At that point, Graham, who held the podium with nine U.S. senators standing behind him, blew his gasket.

"We are here together, not to talk about the problems at home, which are many," an angry Graham said, pointing his finger at Cohen.

"I've got my own view of what to say — you're not going to screw this up," Graham continued.

When Cohen interjected he was asking a "fair question," Graham again raised his voice.

"You're not going to screw this up," he said.

"The senator then pointed to security and yelled for them to remove Cohen." . . .

Monday, October 23, 2023

Hamas’s attack and the left’s support aren’t about Israel; they’re about the Jews

  Andrea Widburg   "Most of the Muslim world has joined hands with most of the leftist world to make a single argument: Israel is a colonialist occupier that must be routed from the Muslim Arabs’ native land. To the extent Hamas launched an incursion into Israel, it was a necessary act to end imperialism. Many of us (me included) fight back with history showing that Jews are the indigenous people and Muslims the colonialists. That’s a pointless argument because the colonialist claim is just a cover: Islam and leftism are grounded in hatred for Jews, which plays out in the pointed savagery of the attack and open calls for Jewish deaths across the West. It’s not about Israel; it’s about the Jews. It’s always been about eradicating Jews.

"Muslims are obligated to obey Mohamed's dictates. One of those, which he came up with after the Jews rejected his attempt to control them, boils down to “Kill the Jews.”

"This is not theory, it’s fact. Last week, the Palestinian Authority (which is supposed to be “moderate” compared to Hamas) had its Ministry of Religious Affairs post guidelines for upcoming sermons. The sermon selected? The one in which Mohamed mandates that all Jews must be slaughtered. The mandate came 2,400 years after Jews became residents of the land, and over 1,300 years before modern Israel’s creation. This is what that preaching sounds like:

 Hamas Terrorists Call Mother of Kidnapped Daughters to Mock Her Following 'Massacre' at Music Festival (radaronline.com)


God's Promises for the World and for Israel  "When we talk about the promises of God, we have to acknowledge an important fact. Before any of His promises can be applied to the Body of Messiah, God’s promises were first given to His people Israel. And it is impressive how often God stresses the fact that His promises are eternal and last forever. 

"The whole story of salvation centers around the history of Israel, her creation, redemption and restoration. God’s might and power is evident in His everlasting promise to Israel (first laid out in Genesis 12:1-3). There, the Lord promises He will make Abram into a great nation and will bless him. 

"Later on, in Deuteronomy 30:3-5, God promises to Israel a specific land   – you guessed it! From that moment on, we know it as The Promised Land of Israel. The Lord said He would bring his people to the land He chose, and He would make their descendants prosperous." ... 

 2 Timothy 3:15 - 17:  15 "From infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.…

American Jews must demand more from our progressive allies

 MSNBC Imagine MSNBC posting an article supporting Israel! Or anything I do not find contemptible. TD

Jews are finding their voice and demanding that the left take its own antisemitism more seriously.


If the Oct. 7 massacre — and the reaction to it — has shown us anything, it is that we are alone, but as long as we have our voices, we will not be defeated

. . ."But like many American Jews, I also felt betrayed. Rather than a full-throated condemnation of the slaughter in Israel, far too many supposedly progressive allies held their powder. They provided “context” or argued both sides were to blame and offered a host of “yes, but” responses: 

'Yes, what Hamas did was bad, but Israel brought it on itself.'

'Yes, murdering babies is awful, but Israel has been doing the same for years.'

'Yes, violence is wrong, but what option did the Palestinians have?'

"These are charges reminiscent of the age-old antisemitic trope that Jews are responsible for their own suffering.

"Others placed all the “responsibility” on Israel, while some particularly depraved souls actually celebrated the massacre, posting pictures of paragliders with Palestinian flags as if Hamas’ barbarism was not only justified but a cause for celebration.

" 'But my palpable feelings of abandonment and isolation are hardly unique these days. American Jews are angry. They feel abandoned and discarded, their suffering again ignored. But many are now finding their voice and demanding that the political left (where most Jews feel at home) finally start taking antisemitism seriously.

"American Jews have the unique privilege of living in perhaps the most tolerant country in the history of the Jewish Diaspora. The United States has never witnessed the pervasive and institutional antisemitism and recurrent pogroms that defined Jewish life in Europe and the Arab world for centuries." . . .

Be this man!  (Vee ZEL) Elie Wiesel, Auschwitz Survivor and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Dies at 87 - The New York Times (nytimes.com)  . . ."But by the sheer force of his personality and his gift for the haunting phrase, Mr. Wiesel, who had been liberated from Buchenwald as a 16-year-old with the indelible tattoo A-7713 on his arm, gradually exhumed the Holocaust from the burial ground of the history books.

"It was this speaking out against forgetfulness and violence that the Nobel committee recognized when it awarded him the peace prize in 1986.

“ 'Wiesel is a messenger to mankind,” the Nobel citation said. “His message is one of peace, atonement and human dignity. His belief that the forces fighting evil in the world can be victorious is a hard-won belief.' ”...

Elie Wiesel at Auschwitz




You go, Girl! Squad of female IDF combat troops eliminated nearly 100 Hamas terrorists

 - Defense News - The Jerusalem Post

Lt.-Col. Or Ben Yehuda, Caracal Battalion, praises her troops' bravery against Hamas, silencing doubts about female combat soldiers with their training, heroism, and life-saving actions.


"Only a few have had the chance to witness the extraordinary actions of the Caracal Battalion during their battle against Hamas terrorists.


"Lt.-Col. Or Ben-Yehuda, the commander of this unit, now recounts her experiences in the southern Gaza Strip, where her battalion eliminated approximately 100 terrorists. She also has a clear message for those who question the capabilities of female fighters in the Caracal (Desert Lynx) and Tank Battalion.

"As the assault on the Gaza border area began, Ben-Yehuda swiftly moved from the battalion headquarters in Nahal Raviv to a post on the Egyptian border with armored personnel carriers. Rockets were raining down, and warnings arrived regarding potential terrorist infiltration in the Shlomit and Bnei Netzer towns.

"In the midst of this chaos, she received a message from Lt.-Col. Yonatan Tzur, the commander of the Nahal Brigade's patrol battalion, who was later tragically killed in an encounter with terrorists. He reported an infiltration near Sufa and Nirim, saying, "There are several terrorists there... They're heavily armed!' " . . .


The Rise in Israeli Women Entering IDF Combat Units

Another Nail In the Global Warming Coffin

Most of this is not new. The fact that the Earth’s climate has changed many times over the millennia for reasons that are not understood, and that the Earth’s climate history is replete with periods that were warmer than what we are experiencing now, has long been known. What is noteworthy, I think, is that a government agency is willing to say out loud what skeptics have been saying for years. 


  Power Line (powerlineblog.com)   "Statistics Norway, the government agency that produces official statistics for that country, released a report last month titled “To what extent are temperature levels changing due to greenhouse gas emissions?” The report concludes:

[T]he results imply that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be sufficiently strong to cause systematic changes in the pattern of the temperature fluctuations. In other words, our analysis indicates that with the current level of knowledge, it seems impossible to determine how much of the temperature increase is due to emissions of CO2.

"The report looks at the last 400,000+ years of Earth’s climate history:

The preceding four interglacial periods are seen at about 125,000, 280,000, 325,000 and 415,000 years before now, with much longer glacial periods in between. All four previous interglacial periods are seen to be warmer than the present. The typical length of a glacial period is about 100,000 years, while an interglacial period typically lasts for about 10-15,000 years. The present inter-glacial period has now lasted about 11,600 years.

 "So sometime relatively soon, the Earth is going to start getting really, really cold. This accompanying chart shows that history, based on ice cores:

"Most of this is not new. The fact that the Earth’s climate has changed many times over the millennia for reasons that are not understood, and that the Earth’s climate history is replete with periods that were warmer than what we are experiencing now, has long been known. What is noteworthy, I think, is that a government agency is willing to say out loud what skeptics have been saying for years."

Americans’ Trust In The Media Hits All-Time Low In Latest I&I/TIPP Poll

  Issues & Insights

"Do the major media outlets in the U.S., online, on-air or in print, care whether their audience trusts them or not? It certainly doesn’t seem to be the case today. Americans’ trust in the U.S. media has plunged to its lowest levels ever, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll data show.

"Both big, mainstream “traditional” media outlets and mid-sized “alternative” media outlets continue to suffer from declining revenues as their audience and readership numbers shrink. The October I&I/TIPP Poll shows that a loss in underlying trust is a key cause of media industry decline.

"The poll was taken Sept. 27-29 from among 1,378 adults around the country and has a margin of error of 2.7 percentage points.

"Each month, I&I/TIPP asks two questions:

"First, “Generally speaking, how much trust do you have in the traditional or established news media (Example: Washington Post, New York Times, NPR, CBS News, etc.) to report the news accurately and fairly?”

"Second, “Generally speaking, how much trust do you have in the alternative news media (Example: New York Post, Washington Times, NewsMax, The Daily Caller, RealClearPolitics, etc.) to report the news accurately and fairly?”

"There is no good news to report to the media. Both the traditional media group and the alternative media group hit new all-time lows this month, as readers, viewers and listeners became increasingly disgruntled by what they consider to be biased and inaccurate reporting.

"For the major media, 63% of those responding said they either had “little trust” (29%) or “no trust at all” (34%). Just 30% said they had either “a lot of trust” (8%) or “quite a bit of trust” (22%). Just 6% said they were “not sure.' ” . . .

CNN and MSNBC's left-wing bias has only gotten worse | Washington Examiner

Eyeless in Gaza; How the U.S. blinded Israeli intelligence gathering efforts on Hamas and other Palestinian groups inside Lebanon

A building hit by a Hamas rocket attack in south Tel Aviv, Oct. 8, 2023

 Eyeless in Gaza - Tablet Magazine   "It will be a while before we’re able to piece together a more complete picture of how Israel, despite its vaunted intelligence-gathering capabilities, was blindsided by the massive Hamas terrorist onslaught on Oct. 7, which led to the biggest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. After the current Israeli operation in Gaza concludes, there will be inquiries, official and unofficial, in Israel and beyond, about what contributed to this intelligence failure. Where was Israel blinded, and how?

"A key focal point for these inquiries will be Lebanon. Immediately following the Oct. 7 massacre, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing Hamas and Hezbollah sources, that the terrorist attack was planned by the Iranians and Hezbollah in Lebanon, where the Iranians had set up a joint operations room, the existence of which Hezbollah media had previously disclosed in 2021. The New York Times corroborated the Journal’s story a few days later, adding that training for the attack, including on paragliders which were used to slaughter Israelis and tourists at a music festival, also took place in Lebanon.

"So how did Israel find itself blind and deaf in Lebanon? Why was it that, with all this activity taking place in Lebanon over several months, Israel was not able to pick up meaningful intelligence on a lethal adversary? To answer these questions, we must turn to the current security environment in Lebanon, which in turn shaped and constrained Israel’s intelligence gathering capabilities.

"Since Israel’s last major war in Lebanon in 2006, the tiny county has come under American sponsorship, even as it remained under Iranian suzerainty via its local regent, Hezbollah. This U.S.-Iranian condominium, solidified during Barack Obama’s two terms in office, is being topped off by the construction of a brand-new, $1 billion U.S. Embassy in Beirut—a symbol of the U.S.’s commitment to underwriting the country’s existing Hezbollah-led order." . . .

Hamas’ War on Israel - Everything You Need to Know; Tablet Magazine

Hamas does not recognize the right of Israel to exist and has waged what it calls a war of resistance since its inception. Its tactics over the years have evolved from the recruitment and deployment of suicide bombers to launching barrages of rockets and missiles. But Hamas had never before launched a military operation of this magnitude into Israel.

Photographic & video evidence of massacres against innocent Israeli civilians by Hamas terrorists

 


In Israel:

"We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence," the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine said in a joint statement posted on social media.

A Colossal Failure by Our Academic Institutions | Opinion (newsweek.com)   "Last week, as more details of the brutality and barbaric cruelty perpetrated against Israeli civilians by Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists were coming to light, University of Michigan President Santa J. Ono joined a select club of campus leaders: those willing to publicly condemn the atrocities and stand with their devastated and traumatized Jewish students.
"As University of Florida's President Ben Sasse later remarked, it "shouldn't be hard" to denounce crimes against humanity.
"But apparently it was." . . .


"Yazmeen Deyhimi’s journey from a young ADL ‘No Place for Hate’ intern to Hamas campaigner to apologizing on social media is a study in the profound political confusion of the campus woke."


Does Iran realize its own growing danger?

We are talking about Iran v. Joe Biden, aren't we? 

For the first time in decades, there is no nation that can restrain Israel from destroying Iran’s pawn Hamas — not after it butchered 1,400 Jewish citizens while radical Palestinians in Gaza keep celebrating the slaughter and promising more such savage mass murdering.
Victor Davis Hanson  "Iran understandably believes it is riding quite high.

It is flush with cash. It hints it almost has the bomb — and might use it soon.

The Iranians are bragging about their new tyrannical allies like Russia and China.

Iran boasts of now being the self-proclaimed leader of jihad on behalf of all Muslims. It gloats that it is feeding the Russian war-machine by exporting its own drones.

Tehran proudly supplied and funded Hamas’s savage murdering of Jewish children in Israel.

It eggs on its other pawn Hezbollah to launch a reputed 100,000-Iranian-supplied missiles into Israel.

It constantly provokes the U.S. — mostly by veiled threats to unleash anti-American terrorists in the Middle East and perhaps inside America itself.

But above all, Iran is giddy over the appeasing Biden administration.

Biden resurrected the unhinged Obama administration plan of empowering a “Shiite crescent” — of Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah, including Hamas.

This American idea of a radical bloc would supposedly birth “creative tension” and thus on autopilot balance the dominance of our friends in Israel and the Gulf regimes with our new Iranian clients. Yet the logical result of such madness was the massacre we saw in Israel.

Biden put pro-Iranian envoy Robert Malley — now under FBI investigation — in charge of begging Iran to restart the disastrous Iran Deal.

The anemic Biden administration has reportedly replied only four times to some 83 Iranian attacks on Americans.

Biden lifted sanctions allowing Iran to garner tens of billions of dollars in new oil sales — to be routed to all of Israel’s terrorist enemies.

He sought to pay ransom to Iran to get back five American hostages — at a cost of $1.2 billion per captive and a green-light for Tehran to take more.

The Biden administration restored in aggregate $1 billion in aid to the West Bank and Gaza, despite the long history of radical Palestinian terrorism.

This mollification of Iran also led its appendages Hamas and Hezbollah to believe that if any of them started a war against Israel, then Iran would guarantee their victory, the U.S. would do nothing — and likely force Israel to do the same nothing.

Yet a delusional Iran still is not fully aware how its loud bragging about and support for its client Hamas’s barbaric killing of Jewish civilians have put it into an unprecedented dangerous predicament." . . .

Argus Hamilton's Rogue Report -

  Argus Hamilton (jewishworldreview.com)   " Senator Mitt Romney is publishing his autobiography titled Romney: A Reckoning Tuesday. He says in the book that Oprah approached him in 2020 and asked him to run with her on a national unity ticket for the White House. This would have been the first-ever pairing of a RINO and an elephant.

 Car and Driver says a lengthy UAW strike could result in an auto parts shortage and long waits for repairs. Last weekend my neighbor took her new car back to the dealership and asked the service bay to get rid of the awful noise her car was making. They replaced the Taylor Swift CD with Van Halen.

 Justin Timberlake threatened to sue Britney Spears if her forthcoming memoir The Woman in Me which comes out Tuesday claims that Justin got her pregnant back when they were teenagers. Brittney informed her fans Friday she will only read part of her audio book. The rest will be lip-synched.

 British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak flew to Tel Aviv to express support the day after President Biden's visit. So it's the U.S. and Britain defending the world once again. France just mobilized the French Army over one stabbing death and raised their terror threat level from Collaborate to Surrender.

 The Dallas Cowboys announced Monday that Dolly Parton will perform a halftime show during the team's annual Thanksgiving Day football game with Washington. She's been in the news a lot this week. Gasoline prices are so high in Los Angeles that Dolly Parton was seen carpooling with Jolene.

 Walgreen's pharmacists were reported Monday threatening a nationwide walkout over pay and working conditions. Compounding the possible shortage of service, Rite-Aid just declared bankruptcy. The good news is, the previously incarcerated deodorants, shampoos and razor blades are free to go now.

 The New York Post reports the Mideast strife is tearing apart the social fabric in New York and in L.A. Tonight I could get shot by the Jewish Defense League while I'm jogging through Beverly Hills for being a presumed Hamas supporter. A fan in Cambridge just sent me a Harvard sweatshirt.

 President Biden gave a televised address to the nation from the Oval Office Thursday to make his case for Congress to vote billions for Israeli defense and for relief supplies for innocent Palestinians. Meanwhile Hamas called for another Worldwide Day of Rage. Goats everywhere are sheltering in place.

 President Biden got high marks in his speech for laying out America's mission in the world but critics claimed he was soft on Iran. His coughing was also a distraction. Joe hasn't coughed that much since a kitchen fire in his house nearly burned down his subdivision and threatened his Corvette.

 President Biden told reporters the hospital explosion in Gaza was caused by a Hamas rocket that veered off course, then Joe said you need to learn to shoot straight. His remark was met with stunned silence. I learned the hard way as a boy in November 1963 you never joke about a tragedy for three days." . . .