False hysteria over Israeli democracy  

Progressive critics, take note: the US system at its core is not a pure democracy at all, but a constitutional republic. Op-ed.

Nov 17, 2022, 7:25 AM (GMT+2)

 

Knesset buildingOrel Cohen/FLASH90

Before the dust settled and all votes were counted, the American liberal establishment began lamenting the death of Israeli democracy as Benyamin Netanyahu was poised to form the next government with a commanding number of Knesset seats and a potentially stable coalition.

The last time I checked, that’s how the Israeli electoral system works. But political progressives have conflated the term “democracy” with its antithesis – an agenda promoting censorship, thought control, viewpoint discrimination, woke intolerance, and hatred of Israel and the west. What they are peddling is not democratic at all, but a dictatorial stew that degrades personal rights and discourages dissent. And in so doing they are abetted by a mainstream media that engages in political activism and preys on its audience’s ignorance of constitutional and democratic values.

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November 18, 2022 | 3:10 pm | Comments »

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Time Israel untied America’s apron strings  

T. Belman. Good for Melanie,  She said what needed to be said.

“The real question may not be whether Israel can survive without support from the United States, but whether the United States itself can survive at all.”

Deep changes in American society are becoming a strategic security risk

By Melanie Phillips,  JNS NOV 18

Can Israel break its dependency on the United States?

The question has always been widely dismissed as unthinkable. But recent events are prompting it to be raised with increasing urgency.

The administration of US President Joe Biden has been far from friendly towards Israel. Despite continuing to fund its defence needs and support it against the relentless malice of the UN, the Bidenites’ reckless appeasement of the Iranian regime has increased the Islamic republic’s capacity to attack Israel. At the same time, the US has repeatedly pressured Jerusalem to make dangerous concessions to the Palestinian Arabs.

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November 18, 2022 | 2:43 pm | Comments »

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A Narrow Government with Ben Gvir and Smotrich Threatens US-Israel Ties  

T. Belman. The problem, according to the authors, is that Smotrich and Ben Gvir “incite against the Arabs”. I am dumbfounded. The truth is that the Arabs are inciting against the Jews and Israel. The US obviously want Israel to cave to the Arab demands. Because we refuse to capitulate, they say, we don’t have shared values. They threaten all kinds of dire consequences, should we exhibit different values. To the contrary, if we were to share their woke values and agree to appease the Arabs, it would be the end of us. We are entitled to embrace our own values even if the US doesn’t want us to. Shared values are not at the core of our relationship. Our relationship is based on mutual interests. Why the US supports the Palestinian cause at our expense has always puzzled me. It cannot be that she wants to benefit the Palestinians. It must be that they want to weaken us.

by Dennis RossDavid Makovsky, WASH INSTITUTE   2.11.22

Appointing senior ministers who incite against Arabs would undermine the shared values that buttress the bilateral relationship while giving fuel to Israel’s critics in Washington.

Following Israel’s fifth election in less than four years, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, is poised to return to that office again. Even if divided, the country has clearly moved to the right. The “government of change,” which lasted a year included the left, center, right, and an Arab party for the first time, but it was undone not by its ideological diversity but by violence. Polls showed that in March 2022 a majority of Israeli Jews believed it was a good thing that an Arab party was in the government. (WE NOW KNOW BETTER.)  That view changed dramatically with Palestinian acts of terror against Israelis during Ramadan—and the right wing’s claim that the government was limited in its response because it depended on an Arab party.

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November 18, 2022 | 1:51 pm | 14 Comments »

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Lake Issues 1st Major Update in Arizona Since Hobbs Declared Victory  

By Zachary Stieber, EPOCH TIMES

Arizona Republican candidate Kari Lake said on Nov. 17 that she’s still fighting in the state governor’s race, in her first major update since Democrat Katie Hobbs declared victory.

“I wanted to reach out to you to let you know that I am still in this fight with you,” Lake, a former television anchor, said in a video statement.

Lake said concerns raised by her campaign about Hobbs, the Arizona secretary of state, overseeing the election and electronic voting equipment turned out to be legitimate. As an example, she pointed to how tabulators across Maricopa County weren’t working properly on Election Day.

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November 18, 2022 | 12:35 pm | 3 Comments »

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Staying or leaving: A matter of life and death  

Can we learn from Freud about why Jews overstay our welcome or believe that if assimilated enough we will be spared antisemitism? Op-ed.

Phyllis Chesler newCourtesy

Why didn’t Sigmund Freud leave Vienna any sooner? He, who pioneered and/or popularized the idea that humanity was ruled by a capacity for love (eros) and an equal capacity for aggression, cruelty, murder, even genocide (thanatos); he, who knew what had been happening to his Jewish colleagues in Germany and on his very own street in Vienna. Nevertheless, the great man delayed, denied, refused to depart his beloved Vienna, the city of his dreams – and of his pioneering dream interpretations.

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November 18, 2022 | 8:31 am | 2 Comments »

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Tierney Highlights  

TIERNEY NEWS

https://tierneyrealnewsnetwork.substack.com/p/they-stole-the-election-how-did-they?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Right now, Communist China is in Canada setting up police stations to intimidate residents and Xi trying to rig their elections, too.

In the mid-terms, Republicans won the popular vote by 5 MILLION votes and took back the House (which was historic actually) and Democrats stole the Senate in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania with laundered FTX money and ballot harvesting and voter fraud and everybody now knows it. The fake news continues to gaslight us
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November 17, 2022 | 7:08 pm | Comments »

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How Could John Fetterman Have Won?  

Every possible answer is bad in a different way.

It’s hardly even believable: the stuttering, sputtering John Fetterman, a stroke victim who only rarely manages to utter a complete sentence, coasted to victory in the Pennsylvania Senate race. Like Joe Biden, Fetterman is so clearly unfit for his new job that no sane person could possibly think otherwise; it boggles the mind to think that any Pennsylvania voter could have seen any of Fetterman’s incoherent ramblings over the last few weeks, both in his debate with Dr. Mehmet Oz and in his campaign rallies, and thought, “That’s the man I want representing Pennsylvania in the Senate.” But Fetterman will show up in the Senate in January — if someone can guide him to where it is — and all the explanations of why this ridiculous charade is set to happen are bad in different ways.

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November 17, 2022 | 3:03 pm | 1 Comment »

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Arizona’s numbers don’t add up  

By Dennis Lund, AM THINKER

The media and the Democrats want us to believe that Kari Lake, along with others, lost because the “Red Wave” did not exist, and that close association with President Trump was the kiss the of death for Republicans. Really?

Let’s take a closer look at the numbers to see what actually occurred in Arizona.
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November 17, 2022 | 2:36 pm | 6 Comments »

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Gunmen attacked a bazaar in southwest Iran this week, and there have also been armed clashes in Zahedan.  

Iran’s regime worried protests entering an ‘armed phase’ -analysis


Iranian woman protests at night, November 2022 (photo credit: 1500tasvir)

Iran is worried that several recent incidents in Iran point to a growing chance that the two-month-old protests are becoming increasingly violent.

From the regime’s point of view, violence is a problem when it spills over and when the protesters may have arms.

An article in Iranian pro-Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps media on Thursday indicated that the media narrative, spun from the top levels of government, will now focus on armed attacks by the protesters. Iran calls these groups “separatists,” a term it generally uses for Kurds, Baloch, Arabs and other minority groups in Iran.

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November 17, 2022 | 2:22 pm | Comments »

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Haredi MK: If Religious Zionism isn’t in – neither is UTJ – BINGO  

T. Belman. Great. Yesterday I published There is another option, not yet pursued and wrote:

“We know that Ben Gvir and Smotrich have agreed that either they are both in or they’re both out. That means its either Gantz or them.  Now if Ben Gvir and Smotrich convince either Shas or UTJ to join them in a common front, ball game over.  Bibi will be forced to go with them. I doubt he will  abandon the three parties and go with Lapid.”

“Netanyahu (Likud) on Wednesday evening set the coming Wednesday, November 23, as the deadline for forming the next government,”

Senior source in United Torah Judaism clarifies: If MK Smotrich isn’t in the coalition, neither are we; the victory belongs to the entire bloc.

Nov 17, 2022, 11:27 AM

 

Bezalel SmotrichPhoto by Yossi Aloni/Flash90

The Likud party’s negotiating team on Thursday will meet with the negotiating teams of the United Torah Judaism (UTJ), Shas, and Religious Zionism parties.

A senior source in UTJ’s Agudat Yisrael faction, who is involved in the coalition negotiations with the Likud, said he fully supports Religious Zionism chief MK Bezalel Smotrich.

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November 17, 2022 | 1:37 pm | 1 Comment »

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Israel’s Occupation and the International Court of Justice: What Happens Next?  

T. Belman.  Any opinion given by the IJC will take years and will not be binding, yet it will fuel our defamers. Neither UNSC Res 242 nor the Oslo Accords, designated these lands as “Palestinian lands” nor did they promise a Palestinian state. The UN and Haaretz simply assumes that the Palestinians have a right to have their state on these lands. The Security Council by this resolution authorized Israel to remain in occupation until she had “secure and recognized boundaries”, so the occupation is not “illegal” as claimed.

After a UN panel voted to ask the ICJ to opine on Israel’s 55-year occupation of Palestinian territories, two legal scholars explain the ramifications of such a move and how Israel can respond

By Jonathan Shamir, HAARETZ

The International Court of Justice in the Hague. Credit: Mohammed Ballas / AP; Ingimage; Artwork by Anastasia Shub

A United Nations panel voted last week to request an opinion from the International Court of Justice on the legal consequences of Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of Palestinian territory” since 1967.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has long warned that Israeli intransigence to revive the moribund peace process would prompt him to seek redress via international channels, and the UN’s Special Political and Decolonization Committee is his latest battleground of choice.

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November 17, 2022 | 11:24 am | 3 Comments »

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Tom Friedman – mistaken or disingenuous?  

Amb. (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”   nov 16/22

On November 4, 2022, the New York Times’ Tom Friedman, who reflects the worldview of the State Department’s establishment, lamented that “The Israel we knew is gone.”

Should one rely on T.F.’s assessments concerning the Middle East?

*In September 1993, T.F. welcomed Arafat as a peace-seeking statesman.  He established (an immoral) moral equivalence between a role-model of terrorism, Arafat, and a role-model of counterterrorism, Prime Minister Rabin: “Two hands that had written the battle orders for so many young men, two fists that had been raised in anger at one another so many times in the past, locked together for a fleeting moment of reconciliation.”  T.F. was trapped by Arafat’s strategy of dissimulation (“Taqiyya”), highlighting Arafat’s peaceful English talk, ignoring Arafat’s violent Arabic talk, and playing down Arafat’s unprecedented terroristic walk since the 1993 Oslo Accord.
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November 17, 2022 | 8:39 am | 1 Comment »

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Report: Anti-Semitic Hate Crimes on U.S. College Campuses Skyrocket  

A ‘pervasive and relentless assault on Jewish identity’ is occurring daily

By Adam Kredo, FREE BEACON • November 16, 2022

A “pervasive and relentless assault on Jewish identity” is occurring daily at colleges across America, according to a new report from a watchdog group that found assaults on Jewish students and their identity doubled in the 2021 to 2022 academic year, particularly on campuses most popular with Jewish students.

There were 254 attacks on 63 different college campuses with large Jewish populations, with Harvard University, the University of Chicago, Tufts University, UCLA, and Rutgers University having the highest number of incidents, according to a report by the AMCHA Initiative, a Jewish advocacy group that says its findings expose an “insidious,” never-before-revealed campus trend.

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November 16, 2022 | 4:44 pm | 3 Comments »

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There is another option, not yet pursued.  

By Ted Belman

Rumors abound that Likud is in talks with both Yash Atid and National Union to form a national government. Both sides denied such talks are taking place.

Netanyahu said to tell Smotrich he won’t get defense job, because of US objections
Likud party cancels all planned meetings with Religious Zionism; Smotrich said ‘furious’ with prime-minister-designate and vowing not to relent on his demand for the position

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November 16, 2022 | 12:43 pm | 1 Comment »

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There isn’t a significant electorate in New York City that doesn’t hate America  

By

Back in 2016 and 2020 when some were predicting a Trump victory in New York, I was telling people that it was structurally impossible. This was no longer Giuliani’s New York City. The demographic changes were too profound to make that possible.

Lee Zeldin was a great candidate and his campaign may have helped Republicans take the House, but his numbers in New York City were always going to be deeply constrained by the completely toxic urban woke politics, which served as a dam, the way cities always do, for Republicans. Despite Orthodox Jews and Asians rallying to vote for him, he lost. And if you want to understand why, consider these ballot measures passing by Soviet election numbers.

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November 16, 2022 | 9:11 am | 10 Comments »

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