An astonishing Munk debate in Toronto, Matt Taibbi and Douglas Murray’s landslide, Malcolm Gladwell and Michelle Goldberg’s mendacity – and five reasons why trust in the mainstream media is so low

LEANOUT
Weekend reads: ‘We don’t deserve to be trusted’
Tara Henley
December 3, 2022

The stakes were high from the moment opening arguments were made at the Munk debate on the media in Toronto on Wednesday, and only escalated from there. The riveting event — staged by a Canadian charitable foundation and skillfully moderated by Rudyard Griffiths — brought together four prominent international journalists to debate a resolution: “Don’t trust mainstream media.” Independent investigative reporter Matt Taibbi and Spectator editor Douglas Murray faced off against mainstream media luminaries Malcolm Gladwell, a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, and Michelle Goldberg, a columnist for The New York Times. As it happens, the exact tendencies that make the mainstream media “fundamentally untrustworthy”— as Matt Taibbi memorably put it — were on full display at the debate. READ MORE

Watch the debate here.

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One of ten ways to destroy America: “Redefine crime as one rich man’s crime, another poor man’s necessity”

DAILY JOURNAL
If you really wanted to destroy the US, then…
Victor Davis Hanson
December 3, 2022

First, you would surrender our prior energy independence. Reduce new gas and oil leases on federal lands to the lowest levels of any president in history. Cut back production at precisely the time the world is emerging from a two-year lockdown with pent-up consumer demand. Make war on coal and nuclear power. Drain the strategic petroleum reserve to make the pain for consumers more bearable for midterm election advantage. Cancel the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil and gas field. Block pipelines like the Keystone oil pipeline and the Constitution natural gas line. READ MORE

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US-Israel drill, one of the largest Israel Air Force drills in years, will include long-range flights such as those that Israeli pilots might need to make in order to reach Iran

JPOST
Israel, US to hold air drill simulating striking Iran nuclear program
Anna Ahronheim
November 28, 2022

The Israel Air Force this week will hold one of its largest drills in years with the United States Air Force simulating offensive strikes against Iran’s nuclear program. The drill will take place from Tuesday until Thursday over the Mediterranean Sea and Israel. It will include long-range flights such as those that Israeli pilots might need to make in order to reach the Islamic Republic. The exercise will include refuelers as well as fighter jets from both forces. READ MORE

JPOST Iran publishes list of ‘sensitive’ sites in Israel to strike in future war Media outlets close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have published a list of “sensitive” sites that could be targeted in a future war. The reports listed a number of buildings and sites in Israel in what was clearly intended as a threat. Iran’s list of “sensitive” sites includes the Knesset, government buildings, warehouses, facilities and institutions.

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United Nations to commemorate Palestinian Nakba next year after 90-30 vote with 47 abstentions

I24NEWS
UN resolution calls Israel’s founding a ‘catastrophe’
Josh Marks
December 1, 2022

The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday passed a resolution to mark the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948 as a “catastrophe.” Palestinians consider the establishment of Israel and its existence to this day as the “Nakba” (catastrophe in Arabic) and the world body decided to acknowledge the Palestinian version of events with the resolution, which was adopted by a vote of 90-30 with 47 abstentions. The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and most European Union countries including Germany voted against the anti-Israel resolution. Israel’s Abraham Accords ally the United Arab Emirates was one of the co-sponsors of the resolution. READ MORE

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Likud tells its right-wing allies it will not support amending Right of Return to bar citizenship for grandchildren of Jews

ARUTZ SHEVA
Likud refusing to back changes to Right of Return
November 30, 2022

The Likud has informed its right-wing allies that it will not support a proposed amendment to the Right of Return, Reshet Bet reported Wednesday morning. Following the November 1st general election, all of the Likud’s future coalition partners called for the removal of the “grandfather clause” in the Law of Return. Added to the Law of Return in 1970, the amendment enables non-Jews with at least one Jewish grandparent – or non-Jews who are married to Jews – to seek Israeli citizenship.  Earlier this month, a Likud official told Channel 13 News that this is a demand that could incite the wrath of the Jewish communities in the Diaspora, in particular in the United States and the countries of the former Soviet Union, where many potential immigrants have no connection whatsoever with Judaism other than a single Jewish grandparent. READ MORE

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UN pretends to not know about Hamas terror tunnels being constructed beneath their UNRWA schools

TIMES OF ISRAEL
UNRWA condemns subterranean opening found beneath Gaza school
Luke Tress
December 1, 2022

The UN agency for Palestinians said on Wednesday that it had discovered a “man-made cavity” underneath a school in Gaza, calling the excavation a breach of law and a threat to children and staff. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA, said in a statement that it had “recently identified a man-made cavity underneath the grounds of an UNRWA school in Gaza.” “The agency protested strongly to the relevant authorities in Gaza to express outrage and condemnation of the presence of such a structure underneath one of its installations,” the statement said…Israel has long pushed for UNRWA’s closure, arguing that it helps perpetuate the conflict with the Palestinians since it confers refugee status upon descendants of those originally displaced around the time of Israel’s War of Independence, unlike other refugee groups around the world. READ MORE

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“Students and faculty have wrapped themselves in the colors of the far-left and Islamist fascism, both defined by their hatred of Israel and Jews”

JNS
Genocidal antisemitism is conquering American campuses
Kenneth Levin
November 30, 2022

…It is noteworthy, in this context, that a chief promoter of anti-Israel propaganda, Muslim Brotherhood-linked Qatar, is also the largest foreign donor to American universities, providing over a billion dollars from 2011-2017. This largesse is not a coincidence. A primary objective is to promote the anti-Israel agenda on campus and “persuade” faculty to disseminate anti-Israel slanders on campus and beyond. That academia is the main institutional purveyor of Israel-hatred and antisemitism in America should not be surprising. Students and faculty have been receptive to revolutionary and extremist ideologies for a very long time. They have been more than happy to clothe themselves in communist red or fascist brown according to the current fashion. Today, they wrap themselves in a combination of the two: the colors of the far-left and Islamist fascism. Both of these ideologies are defined by their hatred of Israel and Jews. READ MORE

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The FBI announced that it will be investigating the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh but was silent when an American was injured in a bombing.

JPOST
The FBI should investigate the attack on US citizen in Jerusalem bombing
Stephen M. Flatow
November 27, 2022

The Biden administration’s Justice Department recently announced that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the accidental death of an Arab-American journalist in Israel. So why isn’t it investigating this week’s intentional attempted murder of a Jewish American citizen in Israel? Shireen Abu Akleh, a reporter for the Qatari media agency Al Jazeera, was accidentally shot and killed while covering a shooting attack by Palestinian Arab terrorists against Israeli soldiers in Jenin last May. The incident has already been thoroughly investigated by the Israeli government, journalists, and so-called human rights organizations. None of the inquiries could determine who actually fired the fatal bullets, nor could they find evidence that the shooting was intentional. READ MORE

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Best explanation of why CRT and ethnic studies are antisemitic

AMERICANS FOR PEACE AND TOLERANCE
Legal Scholar Suzanna Sherry: CRT and DEI Inherently Racist and Anti-Jewish
November 22, 2022

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) are extremely important human rights ideals, and educational programming is an essential element in the effort to achieve them. On campus and in the workplace, there has been a dramatic and pervasive rise in DEI personnel and programming. At the same time that ever-increasing resources are devoted to DEI, however, there has been an unprecedented explosion in virulent Jew-hatred. DEI, and its parent ideology, critical race theory (CRT), uphold the racist and Marxist libel that Jews are blessed with an inordinate level of “white privilege,” and, because the Jewish state “oppresses” Palestinians, Jews are guilty of racist atrocities against non-white people. This presentation by Vanderbilt legal scholar Suzanna Sherry explains that the ideas behind DEI and CRT are inherently racist — thus anti-Jewish — and “we have to get rid of them.” READ MORE

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“Britain is changing into a multicultural state. The bonds of society that keep everyone together are fraying fast”

MELANIE PHILLIPS SUBSTACK
An altered state: There is no such thing as a multicultural society
Melanie Phillips
November 30, 2022

A society only exists where its inhabitants regard themselves as bound together by a culture composed of language, religion, law, literature, traditions, customs and so on expressed through civic and political ideals embedded in the historic development of that culture. Different ethnicities can sign up to the norms established by that culture, even if they are newcomers who didn’t share in its development. But there has to be an identifiable overarching culture to which they can sign up. Multiculturalism, by contrast, means that no one culture defines a nation which is composed instead of a babel of cultures. Moreover, multiculturalism holds that the indigenous culture cannot declare its values superior to any other. So it cannot lay down cultural norms which everyone is expected to share. Multiculturalism therefore destroys society as a body of people with a shared collective national vision. READ MORE

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