After 2023, surely no one will deny that Western civilisation is under threat from without and within

Posted on December 29, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

SPIKED ONLINE
The unholy alliance between wokeism and barbarism
Brendan O’Neill
December 29, 2023

My favourite story about Spinoza concerns the time he lost his cool. A philosopher, a Jew and history’s finest defender of Enlightenment, Spinoza was normally a picture of quiet reason. But when he heard about the lynching of Johan and Cornelis de Witt he became gripped by an uncommon fury. The de Witt brothers were key political figures in the Dutch Republic, the enlightened new nation in which Spinoza enjoyed such great liberty to think and write. On 20 August 1672, at The Hague, they were set upon by a ferocious mob that held them responsible for the invasion of the republic by a French-English alliance. They were murdered, mutilated and clumps of their flesh were eaten. READ MORE

JNS Jonathan Tobin: There’s no middle ground in the fight against DEI antisemitism Allegations that the battle against campus antisemitism at Harvard was “hijacked” by right-wingers or racists are false. Advocates of woke ideology are the real racists. Critical to understanding this controversy or even the justified concerns about the post-Oct. 7 surge in antisemitism is the way leftist ideologies like intersectionality, critical race theory (CRT) and the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) have played in all of this. The obsession with race above and beyond every other possible consideration pushed morally corrupt figures like [Harvard’s Claudine] Gay to a position of pre-eminence in academia.

POLITICO Harvard agitators turn their ire toward Penny Pritzker The leadership turmoil engulfing Harvard University is putting a major Democratic Party figure on the defensive. Penny Pritzker, a former Obama Cabinet official, current Biden appointee and longtime Democratic megadonor, on Wednesday rejected calls to step down from her role at the top of Harvard’s most powerful governing board. It comes a day after the resignation of university president Claudine Gay…The announcement comes after Bill Ackman, a hedge fund manager and outspoken critic of Harvard’s handling of claims of antisemitism, called on Pritzker, the former U.S. Commerce secretary, to resign over the handling of Gay’s hiring and ultimate exit from the Ivy League school.

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Flight crew complained that passengers who switched seats made them uncomfortable

Posted on December 29, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

FORWARD
Passengers accuse JetBlue of antisemitism after Orthodox Jews ordered off plane
Beth Harpaz
January 2, 2024

Three Orthodox passengers were ordered off a New Year’s Eve red-eye flight from California to New York after they changed seats. “My inflight crew tells me they do not want to have you on their plane,” the JetBlue pilot can be heard telling the passengers in an audio recording of the incident supplied to The Lakewood Scoop. “I have to support them.”…The kerfuffle began when a visibly Jewish elderly man took what he apparently thought was a vacant seat on a red-eye from Palm Springs to John F. Kennedy Airport. A flight attendant asked if that was his assigned seat, and when he said no, she told him he couldn’t sit there…One of two Orthodox women seated elsewhere on the plane who were traveling with him then intervened, explaining that he couldn’t occupy his assigned seat because of “religious purposes,” presumably because it was next to a woman. READ MORE

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“This past Christmas Eve, the New York Times went to a place I’d never imagine: It published an essay by Gaza City’s mayor, an appointee of Hamas. You know, the world-renowned terrorist group”

Posted on December 29, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

FUTURE OF JEWISH
The Day the New York Times Died
Joshua Hoffman
December 28, 2023

…Publishing the views of a democratically elected politician [Senator Tom Cotton, 2020, provoking an apology from NYT management] went too far for the Times and its readers, but platforming Gaza City’s mayor, who was appointed by an atrocious terror organization, is perfectly fine…“Times readers are being served a very restricted range of views, some of them presented as straight news by a publication that still holds itself out as independent of any politics,” according to James Bennet, a former editor at the Times. “The paper leads its readers further into the trap of thinking that what they are reading is independent and impartial — and this misleads them about their country’s center of political and cultural gravity. Throughout the Israel-Hamas war, the New York Times has continued to give Hamas a dangerous platform, which the newspaper defends as important to shed more light, not less, on the most extreme corners of the world. But less light is what readers get. READ MORE

CAMERA BLOG CAMERA’s Alex Safian appears on Mark Levin’s Life, Liberty and Levin CAMERA’s Alex Safian joined Mark Levin on his top-rated FoxNews program Life, Liberty and Levin to discuss the abysmal media coverage of Israel’s war against Hamas, which was triggered by the terrorist organization’s horrific massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7. Distorted, biased and inaccurate reporting by the New York Times, CNN and MSNBC was the major focus of the segment (11/12/23) – watch it here:

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Sergeant First Class (res.) Joseph Gitarts wrote in a letter his parents received after his death: ‘I lived a good and interesting life, I wasn’t afraid of death; I made this choice myself and followed it through to the end; I fell with honor for the sake of my people, I have no regrets’

Posted on December 29, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

YNET
‘I gave it all, I have no regrets’: The letter a fallen IDF soldier left for his parents
Adam Kutub
December 26, 2023

“I could have chosen not to come here and hide. But that goes against everything I believe in and value – and the person I consider myself to be. Therefore, I had no choice, and I would do the same thing if I could choose again.” This is what Sergeant First Class (res.) Joseph Gitarts, 25, from Tel Aviv, who was killed in Gaza on Monday, wrote to his parents. The sealed letter that Gitarts wrote before he was called to the reserves to fight in Gaza, anticipating the tragic scenario that has now unfolded, began with an attempt to console his parents. “Dear Mom and Dad, I love you very much. Everything is as it should be. I chose this path myself. I’ve lived a good and interesting life. Nevertheless, I have never been afraid of death. I made this choice myself and followed it through to the end. I fell with honor for the sake of my people. I have no regrets.” READ MORE

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Support Israel Economy: Buy From Israeli Shops

Posted on December 29, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

Amid the economic challenges brought on by the ongoing war in Israel since October 7th, 2023, small businesses are facing unprecedented struggles. In response, we’ve launched a pro-bono initiative to support these local shops. Within just two weeks, over 500 Israeli shops have already joined our list, and every day more are joining – and it’s 100% free to do so! We offer supporters of Israel worldwide the opportunity to connect directly with these businesses, providing quality merchandise and a chance for people globally to contribute to Israel’s economic resilience during these challenging times. Let’s make a positive impact together – your shopping helps Israelis rebuild their economy. Am Yisrael Chai! Shop goopss !

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Soldiers who killed Israeli hostages to remain in Gaza

Posted on December 28, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

JPOST
IDF takes no action against soldiers who killed Gaza hostages
Yonah Jeremy Bob
December 28, 2023

The IDF announced on Thursday that it will not take any current action against soldiers who mistakenly killed three Israeli hostages on December 15 who were waving a white flag, screamed “help” in Hebrew, and were bare from the waist up. The three, named Yotam Chaim, Samer Talalka, and Alon Shamriz, were all taken hostage during Hamas’s October 7 massacre against southern Israeli communities. In publishing the results of its final probe into the issue, the IDF said that despite the soldiers clearly violating the rules of engagement – by firing on persons who presented no immediate danger and were waving a white flag – the enormous complexity of the circumstances led to no immediate punishment. READ MORE

MIRYAM INSTITUTE Benjamin Anthony: A Conversation with Iris Chaim, Mother of Yotam Chaim, Z”L Yotam was cynically and falsely designated a ‘technical combatant’ by Hamas and was thus among those Israeli hostages deemed least likely to be released by the terror organization in any hostage deal.

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Jewish, Politics | Tagged | 1 Comment

“What we see in Bethlehem today, this need to affirm that Jesus was not Jewish, is political”

Posted on December 26, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

ALGEMEINER
‘Jesus Would Be a Hostage in Gaza if He Was Alive Today,’ Says French Catholic Priest Who Pioneered Holocaust Research
Ben Cohen
December 26, 2023

The French Catholic priest who developed an international reputation for his pioneering research into the Nazi “Holocaust by bullets” in Ukraine has spoken out forcefully against the antisemitic attitudes coloring criticism of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. “I always say: if there were no Jews in Israel, few people would look out for the Palestinians,” Father Patrick Desbois told the French language service of Israeli broadcaster i24 on Tuesday. Desbois was particularly irked by repeated claims on social media over the Christmas holiday that Jesus himself would be persecuted by Israel were he still alive. “If he had lived in 1942, Jesus would have been deported to Auschwitz, and if he had been born today, he would be the target of missiles or be a hostage in Gaza,” Desbois remarked… READ MORE

The Gospel According to Berkeley

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If UNRWA were not there, Hamas would have been forced to fill the vacuum and, for example, build hospitals and schools and find solutions to economic hardship, including unemployment and poverty

Posted on December 26, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

GATESTONE
How UNWRA Grooms Terrorists
Bassam Tawil
December 26, 2023

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was originally a small agency mandated to provide basic humanitarian relief for Palestinians, including a vote for renewal every three years. Seventy-three years and four generations later, and with more than 30,000 employees and an annual budget of more than $1 billion, it has astonishingly become one of the largest UN agencies.…Palestinian textbooks produced by UNRWA contain “antisemitic, hateful, and violent passages,” according to IMPACT-se. Some of these passages in an Islamic education drill include labeling Jews as inherently treacherous. A poem included in the educational content glorifies the killing of Israelis, and portrays dying as martyrs by killing Israelis as a “hobby.” READ MORE

UN WATCH U.N. UNRWA: Obstacle to Peace UN Schools use Western taxpayers’ money to teach Palestinian children to hate Jews

Posted in Islam, Israel & Middle East, Jewish, Politics | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Alice Walker, author of “The Color Purple,” in the mid-2010s began promoting works by an antisemitic conspiracy theorist and authored an antisemitic poem of her own

Posted on December 25, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

JTA
As ‘Color Purple’ adaptation hits theaters, Alice Walker’s antisemitism returns to spotlight
Andrew Lapin
December 23, 2023

…But even as the reputation of “The Color Purple” has soared over the decades, Walker’s own has become more muddled — specifically for her difficult relationship to Judaism and her outright flirtations with antisemitism. Married to a prominent Jewish civil rights lawyer when she was younger, Walker in the mid-2010s began promoting works by an antisemitic conspiracy theorist and authored an antisemitic poem of her own. This combined with her longtime outspoken criticism of Israel has led some in the Jewish community to question her continued stature as a well-regarded figure of American letters and led to her being disinvited from a major book festival just last year. READ MORE

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Jewish, Politics | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Tailoring, matchmaking, jogging: Israelis are finding quirky and unusual ways to pitch in to aid those affected by the events of October 7 and the ongoing battle in Gaza

Posted on December 22, 2023 by ArchitectGuy

ISRAEL 21C
12 unusual ways Israelis are volunteering during the war
Abigail Klein Leichman
December 27, 2023

The Hamas attacks on October 7 unleashed a tsunami of death and destruction on the Israeli people. But it also unleashed a tsunami of volunteering. Several studies show that about half of Israeli citizens have been giving of their time since the war began, in addition to thousands of foreign volunteers. Preparing meals for soldiers and displaced families; filling in for high-tech workers on reserve duty; donating blood and breastmilk; and harvesting produce on severely shorthanded farms, are among the needs volunteers are stepping up to fill. Other volunteers are folding laundry at evacuee hotels, stocking supermarket shelves in the absence of regular workers; cleaning hospital rooms; babysitting for children of reserve soldiers; and giving haircuts and beauty treatments to evacuees. READ MORE

How you can volunteer in Israel during the war If you’re visiting Israel during the war, or living here, you can make a meaningful contribution with the gift of your time.

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