“Liberals advocate for immigration policies that are creating a humanitarian disaster, yet show their partisanship by not protesting measures they denounced when Trump was in office”

Posted on March 4, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
Why do Jewish groups no longer care about ‘kids in cages’?
by Jonathan Tobin
March 4, 2021

If there was one cause that united all critics of former President Donald Trump during the past four years, it was their horror and outrage about “kids in cages.” In the view of most liberal groups, the detention of minor illegal immigrants in temporary facilities near the southern border was an intolerable human-rights offense. They saw it as proof of the depravity of Trump’s administration and its determination to halt the flow of illegal immigrants…But as a new surge of illegals has started to pour over the border in anticipation of what they hope will be an end to enforcement of laws against illegal immigration, those who were screaming about the injustice of “kids in cages” must answer an important question. If the detention of minors in makeshift prisons was a crime under Trump, why are they indifferent to it when it is happening now under President Joe Biden? READ MORE

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“The pandemic also brought to the forefront things we have known existed and have tolerated for years: media bias, the decline of academic freedom on campuses, the heavy hand of Big Tech, and—now more obviously than ever—the politicization of science”

Posted on March 4, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

IMPRIMIS
Science, Politics, and COVID: Will Truth Prevail?
by Scott W. Atlas, MD
February 2021

The COVID pandemic has been a tragedy, no doubt. But it has exposed profound issues in America that threaten the principles of freedom and order that we Americans often take for granted. First, I have been shocked at the unprecedented exertion of power by the government since last March—issuing unilateral decrees, ordering the closure of businesses, churches, and schools, restricting personal movement, mandating behavior, and suspending indefinitely basic freedoms. Second, I was and remain stunned—almost frightened—at the acquiescence of the American people to such destructive, arbitrary, and wholly unscientific rules, restrictions, and mandates. READ MORE

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“Judges say converts through non-Orthodox denominations in Israel must be considered Jews for citizenship purposes; chief rabbis fume”

Posted on February 28, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
Court rules: Recognize Reform, Conservative conversions done in Israel for citizenship
by Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jeremy Sharon
March 1, 2021

An expanded nine justice panel of the High Court of Justice ruled on Monday to recognize conversions by the Reform and Masorti (Conservative) movements in Israel for the purposes of citizenship, ending a 15-year legal saga. Eight of the nine justices agreed with all aspects of the landmark ruling, while Justice Noam Sohlberg preferred to delay applying it for 12 months from the swearing in of a new government. The decision set off a firestorm of criticism from Orthodox political parties who vowed to pass legislation to overturn the ruling and threatened not to enter any coalition without promises to do so, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party also denounced the ruling. READ MORE

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Professor #EugeneKontorovich: “The decision has no basis in law or precedent; rather, the ICC has become just another anti-Israel international organization”

Posted on February 28, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
ICC opens war-crimes probe; Netanyahu blasts it as ‘anti-Semitic’ and ‘hypocritical’
by Sean Savage
March 3, 2021

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague announced on Wednesday her intention to open an investigation into war crimes allegedly committed by Israelis and Palestinians since 2014. The announcement was strongly denounced by Israel, but welcomed by the Palestinian Authority, which had requested the probe…“The investigation will cover crimes within the jurisdiction of the court that are alleged to have been committed in the situation since 13 June 2014, the date to which reference is made in the referral of the situation to my office,” said Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in a statement…By choosing June 13, 2014, as the start date for the investigation, it will not look into the murder of three Israeli Jewish teenagers—Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaar and Naftali Frenkel—that happened the day before. READ MORE

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“These congresswomen represent a growing segment of the US population, as well as legislators and staffers, who are estranged from the 400-year-old historical, cultural, moral and civic foundations of the US-Israel kinship”

Posted on February 28, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

THE ETTINGER REPORT
Congress – Israel’s Most Systematic Ally
by Yoram Ettinger
March 2nd, 2021

…The 17 House Representatives, who supported the anti-Israel BDS, included Congresswomen Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Betty McCollum (D-MN). The former is the new chairperson of the most critical Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, which overseas foreign aid and international commercial cooperation. The latter is the chairperson of the equally critical Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, which oversees the defense budget, including global defense cooperation.  These two prominent Congresswomen have been among Israel’s roughest critics on Capitol Hill. In 2021, they represent an expanding minority among American voters, in general, and on Capitol Hill, in particular, constituting a major challenge for American and Israeli allies of the highly productive US-Israel collaboration. READ MORE

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When it comes to Iran, the historical record carries some important lessons for today

Posted on February 28, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

AMERICAN PURPOSE
Lessons from the Past
by Michael Mandelbaum
March 1, 2021

…Whatever Biden decides to do, the decision will necessarily form part of a broader policy toward the Islamic Republic. To be effective, that policy must take into account the nature of the Iranian regime and the history of its relations with the United States. For this purpose, a broader historical perspective is required, and a new book provides a most useful one. The Last Shah: America, Iran, and the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty by Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, concerns the monarch whom the clergy who now rule Iran overthrew in 1979. From the book emerge some important enduring features of the regime, and of Iranian-American relations, that bear on the current effort to thwart the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions. READ MORE

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“As Secretary of State, Shultz was the friend and protector of Soviet Jews, and particularly the Jewish Refuseniks sentenced to monstrous, long terms in the gulag”

Posted on February 28, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

JUF NEWS
Reflections on the passing of George Shultz
by Dr Steven B. Nasatir
March 2021

On Feb. 6, the world learned that former Secretary of State George P. Shultz had passed away at age 100. Shultz was a U.S. Marine, MIT Ph.D. and former head of the Business School at the University of Chicago. He went on to serve his country as Labor Secretary, Treasury Secretary, and Director of Office of Management and Budget under President Richard Nixon. He then spent six years as President Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State. His career was extraordinarily distinguished, and had an extraordinary impact on not just America’s Jews, but Jews worldwide. READ MORE

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“Beyond condemning the House of Saud for its role in the Khashoggi affair, Washington’s broader approach to the Kingdom needs to be carefully calibrated to reflect a number of new realities”

Posted on February 28, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

THE NATIONAL INTEREST
Joe Biden’s Pressure On Saudi Arabia Has High Stakes
by Ilan Berman
March 1, 2021

Last week, the White House decided to publicly release a long-suppressed intelligence report pinning the blame on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, for the 2018 death of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. On the heels of the disclosure, the U.S. Treasury Department leveled new sanctions against a slew of high-ranking individuals linked to the grisly killing (though, notably, not against the crown prince). That it did is hardly a surprise. The idea that Riyadh should pay some sort of a cost for Khashoggi’s brutal demise is hardly a controversial one. Indeed, such a move has been advocated for years on both sides of the U.S. political aisle. What comes next, however, is likely to prove decisive.  READ MORE

HARVARD GAZETTE Karen Elliott House: Biden may regret releasing report on Khashoggi murder Biden seems to want to humiliate the crown prince anew by releasing the report at Congress’ insistence. Democrat activists in Congress who despise the abrasive crown prince in large part because he was close to Donald Trump will undoubtedly push President Biden to take more punishing actions against the crown prince and Saudi Arabia than merely releasing old news blaming him for Jamal Khashoggi’s murder.

NEWSWEEK Jonathan Tobin: Despite Khashoggi’s Murder, America Must Still Choose: Saudis or Iran? Kicking the Saudis to the curb and even sanctioning MBS, the country’s de facto leader, is inextricably tied to the question of what to do about Iran—a nation that is likely an even worse human rights offender and is assuredly a much more aggressive Islamist nation that poses a threat to the rest of the Middle East, with or without the nuclear weapons it seeks.

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“The idea that Americans have a right to question officials who formulate US foreign policy is, under Ben Rhodes’ mindset, simply absurd”

Posted on February 28, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

ALGEMEINER
Has Ben Rhodes Made the Descent Into Antisemitism?
by Dexter Van Zile
March 3, 2021

Ben Rhodes, the former national security aide to President Obama — who once boasted that he used non-governmental groups and the media to create an “echo chamber” to garner support for the Iran nuclear deal — can’t stand people looking over the government’s shoulder when it formulates policy regarding issues of importance to them. Rhodes made his contempt for democratic accountability perfectly clear in a recent interview with Peter Beinart, a well-know Israel hater and a fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. During the interview, which allowed Rhodes to promote his forthcoming book, “After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made,” he complained about the interest that American Jews and Christians have exhibited in their concern for foreign policy in the Middle East. READ MORE

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“This Land is Your Land” in Yiddish

Posted on February 28, 2021 by ArchitectGuy

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