In a recent interview, U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar claims she has “moved past” the controversy her previous use of antisemitic slurs caused. Not so fast…She now claims her “expression of those things was hurtful to people” and that “has really broken my heart.” Yet, in the same interview, she invokes the same antisemitic trope: that Jewish money wields untold power and influence over American politics, and specifically over President Trump. This time, there was no clever allusion to “the Benjamins;” she made the slur outright. READ MORE
CITY JOURNAL Darkness Falls
by Heather MacDonald
May 31, 2020
…This pandemic of civil violence is more widespread than anything seen during the Black Lives Matter movement of the Obama years, and it will likely have an even deadlier toll on law enforcement officers than the targeted assassinations we saw from 2014 onward. It’s worse this time because the country has absorbed another five years of academically inspired racial victimology. From Ta-Nehisi Coates to the New York Times’s 1619 project, the constant narrative about America’s endemic white supremacy and its deliberate destruction of the “black body” has been thoroughly injected into the political bloodstream.READ MORE
…In a May 14 letter addressed to Conference of Presidents chair Arthur Stark, HIAS issued a formal complaint against ZOA and CAMERA for alleged violations of civil discourse. HIAS’s complaint stems from opposition by ZOA, CAMERA and other Conference members to the nomination of Lob, the former chair of HIAS, as the next chair of the organization… The complaint by HIAS alleges that “ZOA and CAMERA have gone well beyond any acceptable boundaries of speech and behavior in a manner that adversely impacts the safety and security of HIAS’ staff, volunteers, lay leaders and partners.” READ MORE
…It is refreshing to see someone who has been involved in Oslo admit that Netanyahu, doing everything people like Miller have warned would be disastrous, has actually brought Israel closer to peace than all the world’s diplomats combined.All three reasons for this that Miller brings are valid, although I don’t agree that the third is the major reason. Israel was cultivating these relationships before anyone dreamed Trump would become president. There is a fourth reason, though, that is hugely important and unreported: Israel’s strength [which] has become overwhelming – not only militarily but also economically, technologically, politically and even in entertainment and on social media. READ MORE
…Mandelblit’s aggressive interference in the elections – first by announcing his intention to indict Netanyahu at the height of the April 2019 election campaign, then by holding a prejudicial pre-indictment hearing of the premier ahead of the Sept. 17 second election, and finally by announcing his indictment of Netanyahu while he was standing next to President Donald Trump in the White House weeks before the third election in March, were not merely stunning abuses of power. They were a testament to the urgent need to remove unelected, unaccountable prosecutors from politics. READ MORE
Amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, a silver lining is that researchers from diverse cultural backgrounds are coming together to work on the response — as Jewish-American Jonathan Gootenberg and Palestinian-American Omar Abudayyeh can attest. Gootenberg and Abudayyeh both work at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They are collaborating with the Broad Institute-based laboratory of MIT neuroscience professor Feng Zhang, which released a protocol of an at-home coronavirus test on May 8. READ MORE
U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman believes that too many Diaspora Jews are “illiterate” about Judaism, which he says is the “greatest threat of all” to the continuity of Jewish life outside of Israel. The ambassador made the comment during Haaretz’s Judaism, Israel and Diaspora conference held virtually on Wednesday. “The Jewish state, while not without issues, is growing: both religious and secular institutions are thriving, basic Jewish education is available to all and there is little risk of assimilation,” he said. “The same cannot be said for the Diaspora,” Friedman said at the conference…READ MORE
As violent protests rage in Minneapolis following the death of a man in police custody, the founder of a leading anti-Israel group lashed out at a Democratic ally who issued a call for calm. Yonah Lieberman, the founder of IfNotNow, a virulently anti-Israel group aligned with far-left Democrats, took aim at Rep. Betty McCollum (D., Minn.) after she issued an appeal for the protesters to end their violent siege of Minneapolis…”Betty is a progressive champion on so many issues, but really gets it wrong here, siding with multi-billion dollar corporations over the people of color that elected her,” Lieberman said. READ MORE
…Israel’s relationship with Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf states has improved dramatically in the recent past, irrespective of the Palestinian issue. Because of this new warmth, the US does not have to choose between strategic cooperation with Jerusalem versus Riyadh. US-Israel and US-Arab relations complement one another, and that synergy works to Washington’s benefit. On the economic front, critical components of leading American high-tech products are invented and designed in Israel, making the American companies that manufacture those products more competitive and profitable. Cisco, Intel, Motorola, Applied Materials, and HP are just a few examples. READ MORE
…In a previous essay, I have written about Israel’s moral right to annex Judea and Samaria. I want to now turn to the actual morality of annexation of Judea and Samaria as it relates to the so-called creation of a future Palestinian state. Annexation as it applies to Judea and Samaria is simply a preposterous term. Israel cannot annex land that is indigenously the land of the Jews that was repeatedly stolen from them over millennia. It properly re-captured those lands in a 1967 offensive war against it. The term is a non-concept here—a true misnomer. Nevertheless, for the sake of expediency we will use it since it has traction in the political world. The ethical upshot of annexation is two-fold. READ MORE
ArchitectGuy on Israel 