Candidate quality? How about voter quality?

By Matthew Boose, AM GREATNESS  12.11.22

Like the Democrats after 2016, Republicans are bewildered by the results of the midterm elections and are busy searching for a scapegoat. The establishment blames Donald Trump, while MAGA blames Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Others, echoing Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” remark, are inclined to fault the ignorance of the electorate. This “blame the voter” narrative may have a taste of sour grapes, but it makes a good deal of sense. Poll after poll shows that Americans share the pessimism of the Republican base. If voters don’t like the way things are heading, why did they reward the people running the show?

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T. Belman. Harel agrees with me.

“If Netanyahu gives Smotrich and Co. what they seek, it will likely happen because he believes he has no other choice. To remove the criminal threat hanging over his head in a Jerusalem courtroom, Netanyahu desperately needs the support of the Haredim and the far-right to complete a few rapid legislative moves. The chance of any security stability will be sacrificed in favor of the constitutional revolution.“

Except that I happen to believe the pair will enhance security stability rather than impair it.

Within a few months Netanyahu may find himself and his new government facing a grave security crisis in the territories, alongside a severe strain in relations with the U.S. and the European Union

By Amos Harel, HAARETZ   15.11.22

The string of reports publicized over the past week is intended to gradually make the unbelievable seem normal. Ministerial appointments which until the election may have seemed delusional – Itamar Ben-Gvir to the Public Security Ministry, Bezalel Smotrich to the Defense Ministry – have undergone a quick process of legitimization through a calculated series of media leaks. The appointment of a convicted felon, Ben-Gvir, as the ministerial overseer of all police activity, hardly raises an eyebrow anymore. The political pundits are too busy with the nitty gritty of the horse trading underway, between the prime minister-in-waiting, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his prospective coalition partners.

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T. Belman. Pure speculation. Singer offers no evidence in support of his speculation. Algiers is totally against the Abraham Accords. It has a border dispute with Morocco who also joined the Abraham Accords to the chagrin of Algiers. Morocco also did not attend. Nor has King Abdullah embraced the Plan.

They did not show up at the Arab League Summit recently. Does that mean they reject the Arab Peace Initiative for their own? Op-ed.

By David Singer, INN

Dry Bones- Is Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine plan still alive?Y. Kirschen

Non-participation by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and Prime Minister – Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS) – and Jordan’s King Abdullah at the 31st Summit of the Arab League held in Algiers on 1 and 2 November – even via Zoom – was highly significant – signalling that the Saudi-based plan to merge Jordan, Gaza and part of the ‘West Bank’ into one territorial entity to be called the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine (HKoP solution) still remains a viable solution to replace the failed 20 years-old two-state solution proposed by the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative (API) – endorsed yet again in Algiers.

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BY ROBERT SPENCER, JIHAD WATCH

The State Department says it will not comply with a government watchdog’s investigation into how more than $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds was spent in Afghanistan since the Taliban terror group retook control of the country.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a government watchdog established in 2008 to perform oversight on America’s $146 billion reconstruction project in the war-torn country, announced that for the first time in its history, the State and Treasury Departments will not comply with its investigations.

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The academic roots of today’s social upheavals.

by Bruce Bawer, FPM

Disney, which brought you Bambi and the Little Mermaid, creates a female Muslim superhero named “Ms. Marvel” and a robot who asks a transgender man for advice on female sanitary product. Larry Elder, a black GOP candidate for governor of California, is smeared by the Los Angeles Times as “the black face of white supremacy” for preaching a message essentially identical to that of Martin Luther King, Jr. When an 80-year-old woman complains to her local YMCA about a biological male lurking in the women’s locker room, she’s banned for being a transphobe. The Hachette publishing group cancels the memoirs of our most acclaimed living movie director because of discredited, decades-old molestation charges. The Biden Administration sets down strict vaccination rules for those entering the country with legitimate visas, but exempts people crossing the southern border illegally.

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REVOLVER

President Trump is still battling to expose possible voter fraud in the 2020 election and secure a second term.

As Revolver has repeatedly pointed out, Republican state legislators should be rallying behind the president, and pledging to appoint a pro-Trump slate of electors to the Electoral College if they are not adequately convinced the 2020 vote was fair and free of fraud.

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IMRA.

Is the recent UN General Assembly vote to have the Hague prosecute Israel for de facto annexing Judea and Samaria behind Binyamin Netanyahu’s
announcement to Likud Party leaders that he will appoint a member of the Likud to be minister of defense?

On previous occasions that Israel faced proceedings in the Hague Mr. Netanyahu opted to impose building freezes and suspend activity against
illegal Palestinian construction in Area C.

Israel, the United States, Canada and Australia were among those nations who opposed the move.

By TOVAH LAZAROFF, LAHAV HARKOV, JPOST    Nov 12/22

Palestinians clash with Israeli security forces during a protest in the village of Beit Dajan, near the West Bank city of Nablus, on June 3, 2022 (photo credit: NASSER ISHTAYEH/FLASH90)

The UN General Assembly voted 98-17 to seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the illegality of Israel’s “occupation” of Palestinian territories on the grounds that it can be considered de-facto annexation.

The resolution specifically asked the ICJ for an opinion on the status of Jerusalem, which is one of the most volatile and contentious points of discord between Israelis and Palestinians.

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T. Belman. Aside from a few smears that I have marked in red, this is a fair NYT  article, including the title. It goes so far as to say

“Religious Zionism’s supporters hope the alliance will use its leverage to strengthen their idea of a Jewish state by, among other things, promoting conservative family values, preserving the sanctity of the Sabbath and applying Jewish sovereignty in parts of the West Bank,”

I am sure this resonates with many people all over the world.

The extreme wing of the nationalist religious community has prevailed. At the same time, religious Zionists are increasingly part of the Israeli mainstream.

By Isabel Kershner, NY Times, ,  11/13/2022,  

HEBRON, West Bank — The Jewish settlement in the city of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, where a few hundred Orthodox Jews live amid some 200,000 Palestinians, has long been seen as a bastion of the far-right settler movement — on the fringes of Israeli society.

But after the Israeli election this month, an alliance of far-right parties, led by the Religious Zionism party reflecting the views of radical settlers, became the third-largest political force in Israel. The alliance, which also included the ultranationalist Jewish Power party, garnered more than 88 percent of the votes from the settlers in Hebron.

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The United States, our great friend and ally, continues to cross every line in compromising Israel’s independence.

By Yehudit Katsover & Nadia Matar, INN  Nov 13, 2022, 8:52 PM (GMT+2)

Yehudit Katsover and Nadia MatarIsrael National News

The United States, our great friend and ally, continues to cross every line in compromising Israel’s independence.

After it blatantly interfered in our election campaign, it became clear that despite priding itself as being the greatest democracy in the world, the American administration has found it difficult to internalize and accept the democratic choice of the people of Israel.

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T. Belman.  I think he was referring to Smotrich’s party only. Ben Gvir wants wants Min of Public Security so that he can control the police and rules of engagement. By extension, he would be responsible to deal with Arab violence including on the Temple Mount.

Ending Palestinian construction and agriculture and legalizing unauthorized outposts are just two of the parties goals, en route to the big prize – annexation

By Hagar Shezaf, HAARETZ

Israel Border PoliceCredit: Nati Rom

Nine settlers will serve in the new Knesset, six of them because of the unprecedented electoral achievement of the Religious Zionism party. The party’s leaders, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, live in settlements deep in the West Bank: Kedumim and Kiryat Arba, respectively.

The fact that the issue of Israeli policy in the West Bank has a starring role in its platform thus comes as no surprise. “Settlement and sovereignty,” it’s called there, and it is expected to be at the center of the party’s negotiations to join a new governing coalition.

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By Ted Belman

Preliminary negotiations for forming the government are not promising. Bibi is already looking for ways to shunt Smotrich and Ben Gvir to the side so they won’t have any serious power.

Smotrich and Ben Gvir agreed to negotiate as a block forcing Netanyahu to take them both or reject them both. Since they have 14 seats out of a 64 total for the right wing block theoretically he could reject them both and take Gantz’s 12 seats ending up with a 62 seat majority. Gantz has continually said that he will not join a coalition government if Bibi is the Prime Minister.  We’ll see if Bibi makes him an offer and if he sticks to his word.

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T. Belman. We keep reading of all kinds of illegality.  I keep looking for an article which explains whether of not we have legal recourse or for an article that reports on lawsuits underway.

Or are Republicans just screwed?

By Jordan Conradson, GATEWAY
Published November 12, 2022 at 5:47pm

Maricopa County election day tabulation errors caused uncounted ballots to be mixed in with already counted ballots, leaving no way of knowing if all the legal votes were counted or not.

The Gateway Pundit received more confirmation of this at a Maricopa County election protest earlier today.

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By Shurat HaDin

The Palestinians are frustrated with their delayed efforts to have Israel indicted for war crimes in the International Court of Justice (ICC) in The Hague. So  their new strategy is to turn to different UN bodies to try and put pressure on ICC to prosecute the Jewish State and force its hand.

This week the UN’s decolonization committee in New York adopted a draft resolution submitted by the Palestinians requesting an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. The Palestinian proposal calls on the ICJ  to  “urgently weigh in on Israel’s prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory”. It labels Israel’s pro-ported illegal conduct a violation of  the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. The UN General Assembly votes against Israel in New  York

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By Daniel Greenfield, FPM, 13 Nov

“Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together,” Barney Frank once said. The sleazy former congressman was echoing Rousseau’s idea of the General Will.

To leftists, the state was the central unifying principle and the thing that brought us together.>
But back when Frank said it, culture was still actually the thing we chose to do together. For three quarters of a century, our cultural industries had wielded mass media to craft a middlebrow common culture that erased the old distinctions between high and low, the opera and vaudeville, to bring us songs we could sing, jokes we could laugh at and stories that made us feel.

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Estimated 50% of Americans Now Question Vaccine Safety

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola  Nov 11/22

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• This week, we celebrate our 13th anniversary of Vaccine Awareness Week. Barbara Loe Fisher, cofounder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) summarizes some of the high and low points we’ve experienced over the past year
• I will match all donations made to the NVIC during this week, so it’s a great time to contribute, as each dollar you give will be doubled
• The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) has now logged over 1.4 million adverse events associated with the COVID-19 shots, including more than 30,000 deaths, half of which are from the United States. No other vaccine has ever caused as many injuries
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By Frank Friday, AM THINKER

I don’t know what others would define as a Red Wave, but whatever we got Tuesday night, I’ll take it.  As of this writing, the GOP is set to pick up the House of Representatives, giving chairman gavels to both Reps. James Comer and Jim Jordan, along with subpoena power.  It is going to be some kind of fun in the Capitol.  And if the remaining votes left to count in Arizona come from whom we think they come from, the GOP may not even need the likely win coming in the Georgia run-off to take the Senate.
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VERY GOOD NEWS ISRAEL 13/11/22

In the Book of Ecclesiastes, it states that there is nothing new under the sun. While that may be strictly true, Israeli innovations are certainly making good use of the sunshine to generate pollution-free energy and grow food to feed a hungry world.

This week’s positive Israel news includes using solar energy to produce hydrogen from water, generate water out of the atmosphere, power buildings using solar paint, and create zero-emissions Israeli factories. Israelis are designing solar power plants on the Moon, installing solar panels in farms, and creating solar water heaters that operate in cold climates.
Israelis are using the sun’s rays to grow micro-algae, create natural sugar substitutes, and boost crop yields. They even allow impoverished Lebanese farmers to harvest Israeli olives.
To maintain clear skies, Israeli technology reduces the fuel used by ships, creates “green” ink for printed circuits, cuts methane emissions from cattle, grows coral reefs, and converts CO2 into minerals for the glass industry.  It is therefore not surprising that the improved environment has attracted more rare, endangered species to the Israeli coast.

In the 13th Nov 22 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:
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T. Belman. Three cheers for Tobin. As Editor-in-Chief of the Jewish News Service, he takes a very bold position in debunking all the smears. I am surprised and heartened by it. It is important to note that the jns is not a typical voice of progressive Jewry. Instead it had boldly planted itself on the Right.

Instead of Excessive Apology

by Zev Jabotinsky, 1911  (translated from Russian by Boris Shusteff

We constantly and very loudly apologize… Instead of turning our backs to the accusers, as there is nothing to apologize for, and nobody to apologize to, we swear again and again that it is not our fault… Isn’t it long overdue to respond to all these and all future accusations, reproaches, suspicions, slanders and denunciations by simply folding our arms and loudly, clearly, coldly and calmly answer with the only argument that is understandable and accessible to this public: ‘Go to Hell!’?

The claim that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government will make life hard for Diaspora Jews ignores what motivates Zionism’s foes and other anti-Semites. Op-ed.

By Jonathan Tobin, INN

(JNS) As Benjamin Netanyahu begins forming the next Israeli government following his victory in the latest Knesset election, some on the left have begun a last-ditch effort to prevent him from forming a coalition with the parties that ran as his allies. Their argument is that anything must be done to keep the Religious Zionist Party and especially Itamar Ben-Gvir out of power.

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By Joe Hoft, GATEWAY

Did you ever wonder where all those billions of dollars were going in Ukraine?  Did you ever wonder why anyone was trusting the elites in US politics like the Bidens with billions in funds going to Ukraine?

Today it turns out that these were excellent questions.

We have information that the tens of billions of dollars going to Ukraine were actually laundered back to the US to corrupt Democrats and elites using FTX cryptocurrency.  Now the money is gone and FTX is bankrupt.

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‘If we’ll manage to get a quarter or half a million Arabic speakers out of the country, that will be enough,’ King said in an interview to an Israeli news outlet after he published a job offering in the name of a Jewish philanthropist exposing a plan to ‘encourage a non-Jewish immigration for work purposes’

Haaretz

Arieh King in a protest in Jerusalem earlier this year Credit: Olivier Fitoussi

Jerusalem Deputy Mayor and right-wing activist Arieh King is helping an anonymous Jewish philanthropist to launch a program to encourage the emigration of non-Jewish citizens outside of Israel, King announced on Facebook on Wednesday.

In an interview to HaMakom Independent Magazine following the post, King explained that “the idea is to encourage non-Jews to relocate outside the borders of our country.” The philanthropist who supports the current venture wishes to remain anonymous.

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