Unfortunately, de Blasio’s effort to explain anti-Semitism as merely right-wing does not make him unique. As anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head, liberals have gone out of their way to categorize it in a way that fits neatly with their partisan interests.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose campaign has provided a safe haven to anti-Semites of the Left, argued that the spike in anti-Semitic attacks nationwide was “a result of a dangerous political ideology that targets Jews and anyone who does not fit a narrow vision of a whites-only America.”
One of Sanders’s prized endorsements came from Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has brought anti-Semitic conspiracies about all-powerful Jewish puppet masters to the halls of Congress. She has claimed that Israel “hypnotized the world,” that congressional support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins,” and that her critics “push for allegiance to a foreign country.”
Yet Omar’s communications director, Jeremy Slevin, had the temerity to rant on Twitter, “Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force.”
If ever there were a reason to kill off the myth that hatred of Jews is an exclusively right-wing phenomenon, it would be the deadly attacks on Jews in the New York area during the holiday season. On Dec. 10, a shooting at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey, killed three. One of the assailants turned out to be a member of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, a revelation that awkwardly forced Rep. Rashida Tlaib to delete a condolence tweet that claimed “white supremacy kills.” On Dec. 28, an African American male invaded the home of a rabbi during a Hanukkah celebration, slashing five with a machete.
From college campuses, to the streets of New York, to the ugly corners of the internet, to the poison coming from the U.K. Labour Party, to the inferno of hatred sweeping through Europe, the targeting of Jews is not confined to any one political group. There are right-wing anti-Semites for sure, but anti-Semitism is also a burgeoning problem on the Left. What’s more, the pure hatred of Jews is often not identified with any ideology at all. It is, as scholars have pointed out for years, a virus that mutates and adapts according to the time and place.
The trope that anti-Semitism is a right-wing phenomenon also made politicians such as de Blasio and Omar appear as if they were living in a parallel universe. A passing awareness of the violent Jew-hatred in Europe explodes the myth. “The identity of the German synagogue attacker may have sounded familiar to American Jews, who have endured multiple attacks by far-right extremists over the past year,” reported the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in October after an armed man tried to break into a synagogue in Halle. “But the suspect’s identity was more surprising for Jews in Western Europe.”
Why? “The murder of two people in Halle on Yom Kippur was the first lethal anti-Semitic assault in decades in that region by a far-right extremist. Most of the terrorist attacks against Jews there over the past 30 years have been carried out by radical Muslims.”
In Toms River, the Orthodox areas see vehicles from the police department on patrols, affording them an extra level of protection as they spend their days in prayer and celebration. In Jackson, Reina and Nixon focused on denying permits for Jews who sought to build sukkot, the small huts Jews put on their porches or in their yards for a week during the holiday of that name.
Sadly, the Toms River approach seems to be more the exception than the rule.
The same sort of denial of a Jew’s right to live wherever he or she might choose played itself out in other New Jersey towns such as Mahwah, where the town council passed two ordinances that one resident characterized as intended to “keep the Hasidic Jewish people from moving into Mahwah.” The state attorney general agreed. Mahwah eventually repealed those ordinances as part of a settlement that also included an agreement to notify the attorney general’s office before passing any further ordinances of that sort over the next four years and to release a public statement that it would enforce laws in a “non-discriminatory manner.”
It also continues to play out in upstate New York towns such as Chester, where Attorney General Tish James just filed suit against the town for what she called a “campaign to deny housing to members of the Jewish community” by “blocking the construction of homes [solely] to prevent a religious group from living” there. At issue is a 117-acre piece of property the town already had granted permits for — before it learned that Hasidic Jews bought the property from the original owner.
That would not do. Former town supervisor Alexander Jamieson said at a May 2018 public meeting that officials are “doing what we can to alleviate 432 Hasidic houses in the town of Chester,” a sentiment echoed by the current supervisor, Robert Valentine, at the same meeting. So, they have been denying the building permits, unapologetic about their intent, with Valentine even telling the New York Times in July that “if there was any way we could choose who could live there, we would do it. But we can’t.”
The concept of the shtetl is a throwback to old Europe. So are special laws designed to restrict where Jews can live and what they can build. Let’s hope America’s flirtation with heading down Europe’s path ends there.
Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi is the most wanted woman in the world, with a $5 million bounty for information that leads to her arrest or conviction.
Tamimi is accused by U.S. officials of conspiring to use--and using--a weapon of mass destruction, and masterminding a brazen Hamas terrorist attack that killed 15 – including eight children and two Americans, one of whom was pregnant.
Despite being on the run from American authorities, Tamimi has been hiding in plain sight for years-- under the eye of one of the United States' longest and closest allies in the Middle East: Jordan.
This image provided by the FBI is the most wanted poster for Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, a Jordanian woman charged in connection with a 2001 bombing of a Jerusalem pizza restaurant that killed 15 people and injured dozens of others. The case against Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi was filed under seal in 2013 but announced publicly by the Justice Department on March 14, 2017. (FBI via AP) (The Associated Press)
Despite requests from Washington, the Kingdom has been publicly steadfast in its refusal to extradite Tamimi, who at just 20 years old masterminded the suicide bombing on the Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem three weeks before planes struck the U.S on Sept. 11, 2001.
The attack claimed the lives of two Americans, 15-year-old Malki Roth, and Shoshana Yehudit Greenbaum, who was five months pregnant with her first child at the time. In addition to the two murdered Americans and the unborn infant, four more U.S. nationals were among the some 122 injured. At least one of the victims remains in a vegetative state.
For Roth's parents, the fight for some semblance of justice has already been a long one – and the bumpy road stretches on.
Shai Glick, the founder of Btsalmo,
is a really good guy who is working hard for human rights. He’s not just
working hard for the people of Israel, but for the wider world Jewish
community. Yet Glick also believes that his work benefits humanity in general,
as more Muslims are killed by extremists than any other people today. Fighting
against incitement to terror helps these Muslims as much as it helps the Jews.
I decided that someone should
tell the world about Shai Glick and the important almost unknown work of
Btsalmo. But in the end, I decided to let Shai do the talking himself. In long
form. Because I believe in giving a person a platform to say everything he
wants to say about himself. Everything he wants to say to the world.
So here is where I let Shai
step in to give you a bit of background information about himself, followed by
our written question and answer session (with translation help from Sheri Oz of
Israel Diaries):
My name is Shai Glick and I am 32 years old from Beit Shemesh, married
to an amazing woman who supports me in all I do even though I can sometimes be
very irritating, always singing and talking or just issuing public
clarifications.
I am also the father of three children.
Shai Glick of Btsalmo
I was born in Jerusalem to a Haredi family that always was open to help
and host people. I always knew that I needed to protect my people and while I was studying in the American branch of the Mir Yeshiva, imediately following my
wedding, I was drafted into the army and I served in the 8200 Intelligence
Unit.
During my army service I gained expertise in classified intelligence
and truly became familiar with the intelligence situation. During Operation Protective
Edge, I was assigned to intelligence. While in the IDF's underground command
center (the “Bor”) in the Kirya, I was exposed to the fact that there was a hospital
in Gaza (Shifa) from which missiles were launched at us. At the same time, we
were forbidden from responding to the launching site because there were
patients there and I understood that we are the most ethical army in the world,
even more than was necessary.
Our goal at Btsalmo is very, very simple.
Human rights – but true human
rights.
The right for Israeli citizens to live without terrorism.
The right of the Jews to live without antisemitism and boycotts which are,
in fact, Jew-hatred under the guise of freedom of expression – not hatred of
Israelis but hatred of Jews.
The right to live. Our organization helps each and every human being in
every possible domain with emphasis on the fight against incitement, boycotts, and
terrorism.
It’s unacceptable that every time terrorists are arrested, there are
those who speak of their rights while nobody talks about the rights of their
victims. It is insanity, pure and simple.
There are dozens of organizations that speak about the rights of
terrorists and condemn those who challenge those rights (The Public Committee
against Torture in Israel, Hamoked, Amnesty, The Association for Civil Rights
in Israel, Adalah, and more). This is not only true in Israel but around the
globe. Everyone is constantly talking about the rights of terrorists and of
Muslim religious leaders who incite terror. Who is talking about our right not
to be hurt by them? About your right to walk in the street without being
stabbed in the back?
Nobody!
***
Varda Epstein: You have a lot of famous people in your family. Tell us
about your grandfather, your father, uncles. Anything you like about your
family, as far back as you’d like to go. (We’re listening.)
Shai Glick: I was born to a
family with a good heart and with helpfulness in our blood and as I wrote
above, we never ate alone. To this day, I remember breaking the Yom Kippur
fast, everyone returning home hungry, but my mother waited for guests to arrive
and only then did we begin to eat.
The guests were homeless.
Everyone came to us.
This family tradition began
with my great-grandfather, Shlomo Zalman Glick, who always worked for charity
and when he immigrated to Israel he immediately set up a charitable
organization that exists to this day.
My beloved grandfather, Professor Shimon Glick,
always believed in helping others and made the change from being the high
status department director in the United States to living in a “hole” in Beer
Sheva, with the main focus of developing the Negev and helping people.
To this day, my grandfather has
been awarded dozens of prizes for his work. My grandfather has held dozens of
roles, among them, Dean of the Medical School in Beer Sheva and the
introduction of an important dimension to the faculty – the human dimension. It
was not only important to be a quality professional, but to be a good person,
too.
And exactly because of this, my
grandfather fought with all his strength against terrorist hunger strikes and took
charge of this fight on behalf of the government. While most doctors were in
favor of letting terrorists engage in hunger strikes, my grandfather was not. He
understood that their hunger strikes could cause their deaths and lead to
outbreaks of violence. He called for force feeding these terrorists because he
truly understood the meaning of human rights.
By the way, my grandfather
believed in preserving and saving lives and did not agree to such hunger strikes
for any reason because hunger strikes are the opposite of supporting the preservation
and saving of lives.
My father was the rabbi in an
American yeshiva in the Neve Yaakov neighborhood of Jerusalem, and for the
students of his yeshiva, our home was always their home.
Human rights was our way of
life.
One of my uncles, Dr
Yitzchak Glick, is a doctor whose life’s work was saving thousands of lives
every day and his center serves as a hospital for everyone regardless of
ethnicity or origin. He founded a mini-hospital in Efrat that has provided
medical services for tens of thousands of Jews and Palestinian Arabs in the
region.
My uncle is a doctor and a kind
of mukhtar to the entire region. He
delivered the babies of hundreds of Palestinian women and travels freely in all
the villages in the area. To me, that is true peace and co-existence.
Another uncle is Yehudah Glick, who works
day and night to connect people to each other and to bring peace and shed
light. Thank God, more and more people understand that the Temple Mount is a
focus for peace and not terror, thanks to this uncle. At the beginning he was
thought to be crazy, but today everyone understands that he is the one who is
right and spoke wisely the whole time.
My uncle, Yehudah Glick, who
never hurt a fly, was shot and seriously wounded by an Arab he had never met
who had come to him for the express purpose of hurting a Jew. This is the
result of incitement.
A moment before the incident,
the terrorist told my uncle he was sorry, but that he had harmed Al Aqsa (the
mosque on the Temple Mount). Then he shot him.
This terrorist was fed
incitement the same as the murderer of Dafna Meir of Otniel. A 15-year-old
adolescent saw an anti-Israel television program and immediately set out to find
and stab her. During his interrogation, the terrorist admitted that he already
regretted what he had done and confessed that he had been overwhelmed by the
propaganda he saw on his television screen.
The same was true of the four
15-year-olds who threw rocks and murdered Alexander Leibovitz in Armon Hanatziv
during Rosh Hashana. In their interrogation, they admitted that they had just
emerged from a lecture in Um el Fahm given by the inciteful sheikh Raed Salah.
The sheikh had filled them with the passionate belief that they had to protect
the Al Aqsa Mosque from Jewish vandals. Right after the lecture they went out
and murdered Leibovitz. They also expressed remorse for this but it was, of
course, too late.
Shai Glick at a coexistence event
Varda Epstein: Elder of Ziyon wrote about a recent achievement of
Btsalmo that impacted Israel’s official high school curriculum for cinema.
Can you tell us about that, please?
Shai Glick: It was the case in
which I was exposed to the fact that whoever dreams about the destruction of
Israel in fact teaches this idea, or more accurately, their terrorist propaganda
films are taught in school. For me, the most important battle in our generation
is the battle against terrorism.
Terror does not begin with the
terrorist but with an atmosphere that leads to murder. Therefore, anyone who
fans the flames, in my opinion, is the cause of death and terrorism and murder
and must be arrested and put away for life. Certainly we should not teach our
youth about him, or teach students about his writings or films.
What I did is simple. I turned
to the Minister of Education and made him aware of all the writings of that
Palestinian that call for our extermination. And he immediately removed the
film from the list of educational films to be shown in schools.
I acted in a similar fashion
regarding the play about the terrorist Walid Daka who viciously murdered the
soldier Moshe Tamam. The play was called “A Parallel Time” and it was to be
performed at Al-Midan in Haifa. The play appeared on the list of cultural
activities for Israeli children and exposed them to the violent murderer who, under
direct orders, killed an Israeli soldier who had been bound and restrained.
This is a war crime.
I did the same regarding a play
called “The Admission” that was supposed to be performed in Jaffa. I contacted
the Minister of Education, Naftali Bennett. The play argues that Israel is
guilty of the false “Nakba” the Arab word for “Disaster,” which they use to
describe the founding of the State of Israel. Both these plays were removed
from the list of cultural events for school pupils.
I actually succeeded in closing
Al-Midan Theatre entirely. The place disappeared into the trash bin of history.
Jaffa Theatre, unfortunately, is still open in spite of the fact that it serves
as a stage for incitement to terror and the boycotting of the Jewish State. The
theatre participated in the past in the international Apartheid Week events of
the BDS movement and continually hosts events calling for a boycott in
conjunction with organizations such as Amnesty International, the Women’s
Coalition for Peace, and more.
Demonstrating for the cancellation of the screening of the film, Born in Deir Yassin. The film argues that a massacre was carried out against women and children by Etzel and Lehi soldiers. Because of the pressure Btsalmo brought to bear, the film received no prize and was not entered in the Oscars.
Varda Epstein: Haaretz accuses you of “silencing
the left,” and the truth is, they make you sound a bissel meshuga, a little
crazy. Is shutting down a poetry reading by Dareen Tatour, for instance,
shutting down free speech? Do you regret the article? How would you respond, if
you could? (Here’s your chance!)
Shai Glick: As I have already
said, incitement and antisemitism are the biggest danger in the world and they
hide, today, in a variety of disguises, for example, in films and programs,
poems, Facebook, and on YouTube. For that reason, I fight them.
The battlefield today is not
within the boundaries we have known in the past, but hidden in plain sight on YouTube
and in films. The incitement we find there causes murder, and it is against
that, which I fight.
I am proud to censor calls for
murder that are framed within poetry, art and culture. In the end, they call
for murder, period. In the past few years I have caused dozens of events to be
cancelled, events that incite against Israeli soldiers and Israeli citizens. I
have had festivals cancelled. I have caused the closure of a variety of venues.
And I have made sure that many people will be investigated and imprisoned for
incitement and I am proud of that. In my opinion, this is lifesaving. (A
partial list of closures I am responsible for includes the Barbur Art Gallery, the
Negev Co-Existence Forum, the Acco Festival, Al-Midan Theatre, along with many
performances and terror-supporting events.)
Varda Epstein: Btsalmo has been working on pushing forward the
demolition of the homes of Rina Shnerb’s murderers. Doesn’t the IDF order the
demolition of a terrorist’s house automatically in the case of murder? I know
the terrorists’ families always appeal and the courts delay, but usually it
goes through, right? (Of course, they let the families take out the fixtures
and stuff first and then they only fill a single room—the terrorist’s
bedroom—with cement. Then the PA rebuilds. Right? I mean, is it even a
deterrent, such demolitions??)
Shai Glick: Terrorists do not
wake up one morning to commit murder. There is an entire system behind them
that causes them to do so. A large part of this system includes the family
members who encourage and support terror along with the sheikhs and other
religious leaders.
It is not a secret that many
would be terrorists are apprehensive about what will happen to their families
after a terror event. When they know that their families will be evicted from
their homes, their homes destroyed, and that they will only suffer, the terror
attack can often be prevented and lives saved.
Therefore, in spite of the fact
that, unfortunately, in the terrorist’s house there are infants who are not
guilty of the acts of their fathers, the terrorist’s environment must be
destroyed in order to prevent all payment connected with the attack and all
potential glorification of the terrorist by the presence of a mourning tent to
which masses of people can come, something that can inspire other young people
to follow in the footsteps of the terrorist.
There is a reason why
terrorists fight to have their houses remain standing.
To this day, there have been
hundreds of cases that, because of this fear, the terrorists did not carry out
an attack or family members turned the potential terrorist in to the Israeli
army before the attack, thus saving lives.
The demolition of a terrorist’s
home prevents terror attacks and therefore the equation is simple: demolition
of the house equals human rights.
I believe in human rights and
because of that I understand that we must totally destroy and punish the
terrorist in order that all of us may live! The terrorists must be afraid and
deterred and that is the only consideration, the only equation.
Shai in front of the Kfar Saba courthouse where he sued Breaking the Silence for libel
Varda Epstein: Tell us about the Israeli
flag-flying issue with the Beit HaGefen Arab-Jewish Center in Haifa. What
did Btsalmo do there? Should we be forcing unpatriotic people to be patriotic?
Or is this about something else?
Shai Glick: We must remember
one simple thing: those who are hurt most in the world by terror are not the
Jews and not the Christians but the Muslims. It is simply insane how many
Muslims are murdered. The killing has reached the millions in Syria, Yemen, Libya,
Nigeria, Iran, Gaza and dozens of other places. Most Muslims are against terror
but they have no power to change the situation. Anyone who voices opposition is
killed. And unfortunately, most of the human rights organization silence the moderate
Muslims. At Btsalmo, we work to strengthen the moderates and understand that
victory will only be achieved when the moderates gain the upper hand over the
extremists. We are working to integrate the moderates within Israeli society.
The fight to have the Israeli
flag flying over Bet Hagefen, an Arab cultural center in Haifa, is based on the
simple assertion that the Arabs are part of Israel. Yes, they are part of
Israel and we must integrate them and give them the strength to fight the
global war against extremism in the world. Because that is the truth: the
extremists are not acting in the name of religion but in the name of murder and
insanity. They kill their wives and sisters in the context of family honor or
whatever they feel at the moment. They are murderers and not religious people.
Period.
Lecturing on human right for members of the Film and Television Council
Varda Epstein: Tell us about the Heba
Yazbak case. Where are you on that?
Shai Glick: Heba Yazbak is an
excellent example of an antisemite in disguise and false human rights. She is a
member of the Knesset but in actuality she supports terror, for example the
brutal killing of women, children and infants. She does not care about simple
people but about killers. And therefore she has to be in prison and not in the
Knesset.
Btsalmo represents the families
of the victims of the murderer Samir Kuntar, the Hezbollah terrorist who
committed a vicious act of murder years ago. Yazbak supports this very murderer
and glorifies him. Yes, the same killer of women and children.
And we approached the Attorney
General and the Elections Committee in order to have Yazbak’s candidacy
cancelled and to have her investigated for criminal charges involving her
support of terror. We hope that just as right-wing
candidates were denied the right to run because of things they have said that
were far less inflammatory than what she has said, that these bodies will deem
Yazbak unsuitable to run in the next elections.
We have not yet received an
official response but we know that the topic is under discussion at the highest
levels and we believe that we will be successful.
Varda Epstein: Btsalmo was working on getting an anti-Israel activist banned
from speaking at the site of a former concentration camp. Tell us about that.
Also, can you tell us why this is something we need to fight?
Shai Glick: As I have said, the
world today is full of disguises. One such disguise is “freedom of expression.”
In the name of freedom of expression, Hitler would have had a free hand to
incite and call for the Final Solution and to put on exhibitions together with Goebbels,
his Propaganda Minister and he would have been protected in the name of freedom
of expression in arts and culture. For that reason, I understand that we must
fight boycotts, antisemitism, and hate because that is just like incitement to
murder and therefore I fight it in every place where it raises its head, in
every exhibit of antisemitism and boycott around the world, because that is
what will cause the next Holocaust. That is today’s battle and we must
understand it and raise the resources needed to fight.
Shai with Tuvia Tenenbom
Varda Epstein: What’s next for Shai Glick?
Shai Glick: My dream is to be like
the New Israel Fund, but totally opposite. To found a national and
international legal unit that will protect the rights of Jews everywhere, in
Israel and the entire world, and that will give strength to moderate Arabs and
encourage initiatives on their part and that will raise the voice of human
rights around the world.
Unfortunately, that is
extremely expensive and would require enormous resources. All the organizations
operating opposite to the way Btsalmo anticipates operating, have hundreds of
funders and governments, such as the European Union, Norway, Switzerland,
Germany and more. There is no government that supports true human rights as
Btsalmo understands them and far fewer sources of funding. But I believe that
we will succeed and in another ten years the term “human rights” will mean
human rights for all people but not for terrorists.
I will make a difference in
this world. From Israel will emerge the understanding that human rights is the
fight against terror!
That will be a global
revolution.
Shai Glick of Btsalmo
UPDATE: Within 12 hours of the publication of this interview, the Jewish Press announced that a Knesset committee had banned Heba Yazbak from running as a candidate in Israel's upcoming election. Another human rights victory for Shai Glick and Btsalmo, who represented Ron Keren, brother of terror victim Danny Haran in the battle to disqualify Yazbak's candidacy.
***
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Ma'an reports that Mahmoud Abbas refused a phone call from President Trump today and refused to accept a message from him.
Ramallah News called this snub "a heavy blow to Trump."
As always, the bizarre idea of "honor" causes people to be stupid. And if you were to find a single reason why Palestinians will never accept peace with Israel under any circumstances, it is because of "honor:" the shame of the traditionally weak, dhimmi Jews in a position of power in the center of the Arab world cannot be tolerated.
Peace plans allow Israel to exist.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
The thing about peace between Israel and the Palestinians, however, is that the devil isn’t in the details; it’s in the broad strokes. Israeli leaders have long wanted peace while their Palestinian counterparts want to destroy Israel. Trump announced the framework at the White House today alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both men spoke in hopeful terms about opportunity, peace, prosperity, and warm relations among allies.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, on the other hand, has called for a “day of rage.”
Which gets to the heart of the matter. Palestinian leaders will take a day of rage over a decade of peace every time. And it’s their very refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist and to negotiate in good faith that’s doomed the long-suffering Palestinian people. Palestinian officials have refused to meet with Americans since Trump announced the opening of the American Embassy in Jerusalem in 2017.
For decades, such self-defeating obstinacy found support among other Arab leaders in the region. This kept the Israel-Palestinian issue at the center of any discussion about Middle East stability. But that has unofficially come to an end. With Iran’s increased aggression against its Sunni neighbors—and Barack Obama’s mistaken effort to strengthen the Islamic Republic—Saudi Arabia and other Sunni kingdoms have formed an unspoken alliance with Israel against Tehran. They have more pressing concerns than Mahmoud Abbas’s latest tantrum. And without the undying support of the Saudis and other critical allies, the Palestinians have lost much of their leverage.
This is in part why the U.S. felt no pressure to wait on Palestinian input before rolling out its framework. And it’s also why, if Palestinian leaders once again fail to seize the opportunity before them, everyone will get along just fine except the Palestinian people.
Moreover, the Trump plan ends the failed paradigm where the future of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) is held hostage indefinitely to Palestinian intransigence.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has already made clear that the U.S. does not regard the Jewish settlements as illegal. Now Israel will finally be able to regularize their status, immediately – a historic victory for Jewish rights to their heartland.
Unlike earlier peace plans, the Trump peace plan is based on justice and realism at the same time. The mass expulsion of people from their homes has never been part of peace agreements with separatist groups, nor is it a decent thing to ask for.
Claims that the plan’s release was timed to impact either President Trump’s domestic difficulties or Netanyahu’s reelection are demonstrably false. Democrats have had Trump under investigation since his first days in office, and Israel has been in an unprecedented series of failed elections for a year, with no clear end in sight.
There is nothing specific about this timing of the release of the peace plan. It is no secret that the U.S. has been working on this plan since near the start of Trump’s term. The Trump administration had hoped to release it much earlier, but then the Israeli election drama kicked in.
Forced to choose between abandoning its efforts and pressing on, the Trump administration eventually chose the latter.
Finally, the Trump plan must be compared to prior diplomatic initiatives, all of which failed to deliver peace and instead mainstreamed Palestinian terrorism. Trump’s proposal is unlikely to do worse.
But to avoid falling into past mistakes, the Trump plan and its implementation must make clear that its contemplation of possible Palestinian statehood is not something Palestinian Authority President Abbas can bank on if he rejects everything else.
For this plan to be fundamentally different, Trump must make clear that Palestinian rejection of the plan means rejecting Palestinian statehood itself.
If Palestinians are unwilling to make needed compromises – as Netanyahu has already agreed to do – the Palestinians must get nothing.
For months, Tehran demonstrated a willingness to court risk, and a direct conflict with Iran appeared imminent. As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confessed last October, it was incumbent on the U.S. to “restore deterrence.” That was a serious warning. When a revisionist adversary is undeterred, it will test its freedom of action until it encounters an unacceptable level of resistance. Neither Iran nor the U.S wants a war. But by failing to calibrate its attacks, Iran could have easily miscalculated its way into one. It was incumbent on the administration to impose costs on Iran that would deter reckless acts of aggression against vital U.S. interests. Its decision to neutralize a terrorist commander soaked in American blood appears to have had the desired effect.
That is not to say that Iran’s provocations have abated. Sporadic rocket and mortar attacks from inside Iraq on U.S. positions, including Baghdad’s Green Zone, continue. But they are of the more sporadic than the assaults U.S. forces regularly endured last November and December. Foreign policy observers are correct to note that Iran is still likely to respond in unpredictable ways to the killing of Soleimani, which could take the form of asymmetric terrorist attacks on civilian targets far beyond the Middle East. That’s a worrisome prospect, but we have to remember that Iran has executed asymmetric attacks on soft targets since the Islamic Republic came into existence. If that is the form Iranian retaliation takes, it is a return to the status quo ante, and an indication that the Trump administration has made the regime more cautious.
Which leads us back to the American political media’s response to the news that Iran had, in fact, injured U.S. forces in its calibrated and telegraphed ballistic missile attack. Trump was accused not only of deceiving the public but also of callously downplaying the extent of the injuries U.S troops suffered. But what reaction would the nation’s tastemakers have preferred to see from the president? Histrionics? An ultimatum demanding satisfaction from Iran? A kinetic response against Iranian military and government targets? What strategic purpose would that have served other than to upend the president’s successful effort to deescalate the conflict?
For so many of the last administration’s devotees, the Trump administration’s approach to containing Iranian aggression is beyond comprehension. They do not seem to have ever considered that this is less an indictment of the president than a confession of their own insularity and strategic blindness. The worst-case scenarios these and other Trump critics imagined have thus far failed to materialize. That’s a relief to most Americans, but it’s a double-edged sword for the president’s most committed critics. The unavoidable implication that Trump and the hawks with whom he is surrounded were right about Iran is too much for them to stomach.
I was pretty busy on Twitter over the past 24 hours...Here are my most popular tweets on the "Deal of the Century." Many of them could be expanded into posts, but there are only so many hours in the day.
Palestinian leaders: "We Palestinians would rather stay in misery than have a chance to improve our lives - because we have principles!" Palestinian people: "Ummm...you guys live in mansions. We've been suffering for 71 years." Leaders: "Anyone who disagrees goes to prison!"
One thing's for sure: The #DealOfTheCentury would do more to help improve ordinary Palestinians' lives than the past fifty years of NGO and EU aid combined.
The fact that no "pro-Palestinian" activist is willing to even discuss it shows what hypocrites they are.
"Let's reward Palestinians for acting like spoiled brats when they rejected multiple peace plans that included everything we are complaining the Trump plan doesn't have." pic.twitter.com/17aT61jc7f
In other news, extremist right-wing hawk Benjamin Netanyahu offered large swaths of land from within Israel to become part of a potential Palestinian state, tripling the size of Gaza.
As was utterly predictable, a plan that would improve Palestinian lives immeasurably is rejected by fake "human rights" expert @KenRoth who (in only one world conflict) feels that "fairness" is a human right that trumps the right to live in peace, security and prosperity. https://t.co/LWVRHPpKQB
And exactly how does the Palestinian Authority, the violent dictatorship that shuts down any dissent, rewards terrorists and receives billions from the EU, have any legitimacy to speak on behalf of the Palestinians they oppress, @sarahleah1? https://t.co/QMB6f7jO9s
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The most striking thing about the Trump plan is that its goal is completely different than the goal of every previous plan.
Every other "peace" plan had a goal of two states, as if that would magically produce peace. Once two states was achieved, then the job was done. Terrorism, the Palestinian economy, overcrowding in Gaza - none of those were addressed. Day Two after the plan would be implemented was always essentially ignored.
Every other plan was written with the myth that two states is the solution itself, not a component. Because every other plan was written from the perspective that Palestinian leadership wants an independent state above all.
But they don't. History has shown that their desire has always been the ultimate destruction of Israel, which is why they rejected every previous plan that was an obstacle to that goal.
It is inconvenient, and politically incorrect, to point out that there is nothing that Mahmoud Abbas has ever done for "peace" that is inconsistent with Yasir Arafat's 1974 "stages" plan for the destruction of Israel. But that plan is the guiding principle of Palestinian politics, not an independent state. Insistence on "right of return" to Israel is the most obvious proof of that - what kind of nascent independent nation demands its people live in another country, let alone an enemy country that they tell the world is an apartheid state against its people?
The other "experts," to one degree or another, accepted official Palestinian lies of the "red lines" towards a state. And none of the Palestinian demands had the interests of their own people in mind.
After all, why would a leadership that has willingly used its own people as pawns and cannon fodder for 71 years suddenly care about their welfare?
Since Palestinian leaders who don't give a damn abut their own people listed "return" and Jerusalem and release of terrorist prisoners as their red lines, the "experts" happily went along with them and also ignored the actual Palestinian people's welfare. They accepted the false idea that a Palestinian state was the definition of peace when there is no evidence that real peace would follow a state.
The US plan, for the first time in history, is written from the perspective of what would be best for Palestinians, not for corrupt Palestinian leaders. And no one has ever done that before - not the Saudi plan, not the Quartet, not the Obama parameters, not Olmert, not Clinton.
Just a look at the Gaza portion of the map in the Trump plan shows this to be true. While previous plans mentioned a road between Gaza and the West Bank, this plan actually asks Israel to give up significant amounts of "pre-1967"land (in exchange for the Jordan Valley, an Israeli security demand) to help Gaza become viable rather than a powderkeg.
Gaza is too small to accommodate its two million people. This is not news. While some Israeli think-tanks have suggested that Egypt somehow be cajoled into giving up part of the Sinai to Palestinians, no other international peace plan even addressed this obvious issue - an issue that not only had the potential but the virtual guarantee that Day Two of "peace" would fail.
This plan, almost unbelievably, triples the size of Gaza at Israel's expense in order to provide Gaza's millions with space for living, agriculture and industry - as well as a corridor to the West Bank where many would undoubtedly prefer to be.
This plan does more for ordinary Gazans, by far, than any other previous plan.
And it also happens to do more for Palestinians in the West Bank as well.
Ultimately, peace is meant for the people, not the politicians. That simple fact has been ignored in the Middle East for decades because the Palestinian people have no say. Privately they can cheer something like this, but their very lives are in danger for speaking out publicly in support for it. Previous wanna-be peacemakers might have realized this basic fact but they never internalized it because they only negotiated with "leaders" who ignored the welfare of their own people.
It took non-professional outsiders to put together a plan that is better for Palestinians than the Palestinian leadership would ever accept. Because these outsiders have a "naive" view that peace actually means helping people, not corrupt and selfish politicians. And this plan actually has a path to a Palestinian state that is more realistic than any that came beforehand.
The almost unanimous rejection of the plan by so-called "peace" and "human rights" community shows, starkly, that they never had the best interests of the Palestinians in mind. It took some Orthodox Jewish Zionists to come up with a plan that does more to help Palestinians than the "peace"and "justice" crowd ever would.
Of course, Palestinian rejectionism, backed up by leftist groups that pretend to call for "peace" and "justice," guarantees that the Trump (really Kushner/Greenblatt) peace plan is a non-starter.
Congratulations to Mahmoud Abbas and his partners in the "peace" community for throwing away the single best chance to improve Palestinian lives that there will ever be. The only reason is that the plan is also good for Israel, and that one fact is what makes it completely unacceptable to them.
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Fayez Sayegh was an academic and propagandist who was born in Syria and whose family moved to Tiberias at a time that many Arabs moved to Palestine from Syria.
Sayegh wrote numerous anti-Israel books and pamphlets, especially after he founded the PLO Research Centre in Beirut in 1965, the official propaganda bureau of the PLO. He was also a member of the PLO Executive Committee. Later he taught at American universities.
Even though he was born in Syria, his "Palestinian" credentials are unquestioned.
I just found a short book that Sayegh wrote in 1956, entitled "The Arab Israeli Conflict." At the very beginning, he describes exactly what Palestine is - and isn't.
Until World War I, Palestine was essentially and inextricably a part of the Arab World. As a political entity, it had no existence of its own; it was an indistinguishable part of a larger Arab region, subject to Ottoman rule. As a community, its language and dialect, its culture and social structures, were identical with those of the surrounding Arab communities. The aspirations of its people were the same as those of neighboring Arab peoples: like other Arabs in adjacent lands, the Arabs of Palestine were yearning for freedom and struggling for independence from Ottoman rule, which for three centuries had been imposed on all Arabs. Palestine was thus thoroughly Arab, indistinguishable and inseparable from the neighboring Arab countries.
This master propagandist notes, honestly, that there has never been a distinctive Palestinian people, culture, political entity or culture.
Which means, of course, that they could have and should have integrated into the surrounding Arab world when many of them fled the fighting in 1948. They indeed expected that they would have; just as Sayegh would have expected to be able to return to his Syrian birthplace, most Palestinian Arabs who fled went to their or their parents' countries of origin.
They are still considered "refugees" because their Arab neighbors chose to treat them as pawns to hurt Israel instead of as brothers.
That policy persists today. And it is clearly perverted based on Sayegh's own words.
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The United Arab Emirates appreciates continued US efforts to reach a Palestine-Israel peace agreement. This plan is a serious initiative that addresses many issues raised over the years.
The only way to guarantee a lasting solution is to reach an agreement between all concerned parties. The UAE believes that Palestinians and Israelis can achieve lasting peace and genuine coexistence with the support of the international community. The plan announced today offers an important starting point for a return to negotiations within a US-led international framework.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has viewed the U.S. Administration's announcement of its peace plan titled: "Vision for Peace, Prosperity, and a Brighter Future". In light of the announcement, the Kingdom reiterates its support for all efforts aimed at reaching a just and comprehensive resolution to the Palestinian cause. Since the time of the Founder King Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al-Saud, and through the reign of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been at the forefront of the efforts in support of the brotherly Palestinian people, and in standing by their side in all international forums to attain their legitimate rights. Among these efforts was the presentation of the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002, which stressed, in clear terms, that a military solution to the conflict has not brought peace or security to any party, and the comprehensive and just peace is a strategic option. The kingdom appreciates the efforts of President Trump's Administration to develop a comprehensive peace plan between the Palestinian and the Israeli sides, and encourages the start of direct peace negotiations between the Palestinian and Israeli sides, under the auspices of the United States, and to resolve any disagreements with aspects of the plan through negotiations, in order to move forward the peace process to reach an agreement that achieves legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.
But Ma'an reports that the King of Saudi Arabia called up Mahmoud Abbas:
President Mahmoud Abbas received, on Tuesday evening, a phone call from the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. The King stressed to President Abbas that the kingdom's position will not change from the Palestinian issue in order to preserve the rights of the Palestinian people. He said: "Your issue is ours, and the issue of Arabs and Muslims, and we are with you." He called for the necessity of achieving a comprehensive and just peace, considering that peace is a strategic choice, leading to a final solution that achieves the national rights of the Palestinian people.
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The German ambassador to Israel deserves credit for acknowledging that she “feel[s] deep shame given the unspeakable crimes committed by Germans.” The German president also spoke movingly on Thursday about German responsibility for the Holocaust’s unspeakable crimes and the power of reconciliation, as well as acknowledging that antisemitism remains a German problem.
However, the government both German officials represent often fails to stand with Israel at the United Nations, refuses “to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital or to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.” Worst of all, Angela Merkel’s Germany has been loath to stop trading with Iran, which has never been coy about why they wish to become a nuclear power.
Times may change, but human nature doesn’t. Speaking up is hard, especially when it means standing alone. There’s a reason we typically revere the heroes of history who found the courage to chart their own course, including protecting those who were weaker or politically powerless.
In the case of the Holocaust and its obvious evil, it’s easy for anyone living today to insist they would’ve fought on the side of justice. But how many people flatter themselves?
Antisemitism has been resurgent in Europe since the turn of the century. It is also rising in the United States, where it has already turned deadly. The cost of condemning Jew hatred is lower now than it would have been in 1930s or 1940s Europe. Yet, even with those lower stakes, many people prefer to stay silent, abandoning their supposed friends and allies when their help — and their courage — is most needed.
If the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation is to be truly meaningful, we must show that we’ve all learned the lessons of the Holocaust. That includes a widespread willingness to condemn, quarantine, and fight antisemitism wherever we see it, whether right or left, at home or abroad. “Never again” cannot come with caveats.
Notably, while Germany, the instigator of the Holocaust, was represented at the event, no predominantly Arab countries attended. The Holocaust is apparently a calamity they do not mourn.
Forum ceremonies took place at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, a city at the center of so much controversy in 2017 when the United States belatedly recognized it as Israel’s capital. This memorial event went a long way toward cementing Jerusalem’s centrality to Jewish and Israeli life in the world’s consciousness, despite the fact that Palestinians and some UN agencies continue to deny any Jewish connection to the city whatsoever.
Above all, the attendance of so many dignitaries at this event underscores Israel’s huge and growing importance on the world stage. Israel represents not only the largest ingathering of a dispersed people in human history, but can boast of unparalleled social, cultural, diplomatic, economic, and military achievements in the past 70 years. Finally, it bespeaks the extraordinary resilience of the Jewish people in the face of one of the world’s greatest, most destructive tragedies.
As Jews, as supporters of Israel, as humans, we should surely make reflective observances to remember our millions of brethren murdered by a hateful fanatic — the worst antisemite in history. But we should also celebrate the accomplishment that is Israel.
When God promised the Jewish people the land of Israel, we could never have dared dream of the magnitude of the threats we would face as we traversed history. But we also could never have imagined the powerful, inspiring refuge — and light unto the nations — that Israel would become.
This miraculous achievement makes Israel worth praising, celebrating, and defending, with all our power and determination.
The founding of Israel was not a result of the Holocaust, nor was it “compensation” for the murder of six million Jews. Rather, Israel is the embodied statement of the Jewish people — and people of goodwill everywhere — that the hate that caused the Holocaust will never succeed again.
Today, a growing number of antisemites seek to continue that dismal work.
They downplay the scale of the killing, draw false equivalence with the contemporary world, even outright deny that what happened, happened.
We cannot let them gain a foothold. Because if we allow the likes of Buchenwald, Belsen and Babi Yar to become simply obscure names on a map, we not only betray the memory of those who died there.
We will, in airbrushing the Holocaust from history, succeed where the Nazis failed and offer succour to the thugs and bigots who are the modern-day bearers of that twisted ideology. So we must remember. But we must also act.
After all, speak to anyone who survived the Holocaust and they will tell you that it did not begin with the gas chambers or the pogroms. It began when antisemitic slogans were daubed on a Jewish shop window.
When a Jewish child was abused on a bus. And when ordinary, law-abiding people chose to turn away and do nothing.
So as we look ahead to Holocaust Memorial Day and to the 75th anniversary of liberation, let me make this promise to Jews right across Britain.
As long as I am prime minister, I will never allow this country to forget what happened 75 years ago. I will do all I can to see that we continue to learn the lessons of the past.
And the government I lead will stand with you and fight alongside you so that the darkest of nights is never again allowed to fall upon the Jews of the world.
A psychiatrist hired to evaluate Grafton Thomas, has declared that Thomas’ mental illness deems him incompetent to stand trial on federal hate crimes charges.
Thomas is accused of using a machete to attack Jews attending a Chanukah party at the home of Rabbi Rottenburg in the Forshay neighborhood of Monsey on Dec. 28.
According to Attorney Michael Sussman, “Mr. Thomas was not competent to stand trial” following an evaluation by Dr. Andrew Levin, who has asked a federal judge to hold what he termed a competency evaluation.
Apparently, Thomas's attack, which injured 6 Jews and put a man in the hospital in a coma with a fractured skull, was not done out of hate -- contrary to his Google search for "Zionist temples" -- but because he neglected to take his meds.
Also:
“He has no history of like violent acts and no convictions for any crime,” Sussman has said in a statement. “He has no known history of anti-Semitism and was raised in a home which embraced and respected all religions and races. He is not a member of any hate groups.”
In other words, his lawyer is also arguing for leniency on the basis of this being Thomas's first offense.
The lawyer also wants Levin's report and all related documents sealed in order to protect his client's privacy.
Sussman has not yet offered any suggestions on how to protect Jews from his client in the future should he get off without having to go to prison.
o In 2003, Sebastian Selam, was stabbed to death by a Muslim who said afterward: “Mother, I’m going to heaven. I killed a Jew!” The murderer, Adel Amastaibou, was found unfit to stand trial -- even though he had no previous history of mental illness.
o In 2015, a Muslim man, Farid Haddouche, was deemed unfit initially to stand trial for his stabbing attack of Jews in Marseille -- because of mental issues. He shouted about Allah during the attack. He had no history of mental illness. After protests by Jewish groups, Haddouche was sentenced to four years in jail.
o Sarah Halimi, a Jewish physician, was murdered in Paris in 2017 by Kobili Traore, a Muslim. A review by an independent panel of psychiatrists determined that Traore was generally mentally competent, but because not on the night of the murder, because he consumed cannabis. The judge in the case went so far as to order a third psychiatric examination -- independent of the defense attorney. More recently, in February 2018, the investigator finally admitted in writing that the attack was antisemitic. But by May 2019, Traore was still being considered unfit for trial.
But there is also a second excuse being used for denying the antisemitism behind attacks on Jews, though it is not as widely used. Yet.
This week a German regional court ruled that the 2014 firebombing of a synagogue in Wuppertal, a region just east of Düsseldorf, was an act of criminal arson, but not anti-Semitic. Instead, the court found it was a protest against Israel, even though the synagogue was obviously not in Israel and those who worship there are Jews, not Israelis. [emphasis added]
The decision upheld that of a lower court, which stated the perpetrators, a trio of Palestinian-born German residents, wanted to “call attention to the Gaza conflict” when they prepared and then lobbed Molotov cocktails at the synagogue one July night in 2014. No one was injured, but the attack caused €800 in damages. The men were ultimately given suspended sentences.
But this is not the first time that antisemitism has been excused on the basis of political protest.
After the National Socialists took power in 1933 and when the newly emerging Swiss front movement became more and more aggressive, the pressure on the Swiss Jews and the Jewish refugees living here increased. Through brochures and pamphlets, racist anti-Semitism, which had already incorporated traditional religious anti-Judaism at the end of the 19th century, reached ever broader sections of the population. The Swiss Association of Israeli Municipalities (SIG), which saw itself as a representative of Swiss Jewry, had to act: under the motto "Defense and Enlightenment", it tried to avert the increasing threat with legal and journalistic actions and to defend the principles of the rule of law and equal rights.
That "legal and journalistic" defense by Jews sounds similar to what we are attempting today -- just substitute "social media" for journalism.
The problem was the fear that being too aggressive would further fuel antisemitism. Besides, there was no legal tool specifically for combatting the distribution of antisemitic publications. But when the "National Front" distributed the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" at a rally in 1933, SIG filed a criminal complaint with the Israelite cultural community in Bern for violating a Bernese statute prohibiting the distribution of "immoral, obscene or brutalizing" texts.
The trial at the Bern district court was opened in the same year. The plaintiffs, who were represented, among others, by the lawyer Georges Brunschvig, did not primarily pursue the goal of convicting the accused frontists as quickly as possible; rather, they sought legal certification that the "protocols" were falsified. So the SIG went all out: it wanted to suppress anti-Semitism by depriving it of a "main weapon" and basis of legitimation - the popular "protocols". It first appeared in the German-speaking world in 1919 and soon reached a circulation of over 100,000 copies; In 1929 they appeared in the ninth edition in the party publishing house of Hitler's NSDAP and from 1934 were official teaching material at German schools. They were particularly widespread in the United States, where they were propagated by automobile manufacturer Henry Ford. By the early 1930s, they had been translated into sixteen languages.
The plaintiffs' strategy seemed to be working: their prominent witnesses (including several Russian historians), but above all the bipartisan opinion of the Bernese writer Carl Albert Loosli, let the courageous judge, who was not impressed by the Nazi expert brought in from Germany by the accused, 1935 come to the conclusion that the "protocols" are plagiarized and violate the law. The frontists were fined. The SIG and with it a democratic public - press representatives from all over the world had followed the process - welcomed the verdict.
In his May 24, 1935 column, The Week in Review, Milton Brown described the verdict as "a blow not only to the Nazis in Switzerland but to the entire anti-Jewish propaganda conducted by Nazis all over the world":
The verdict once and forever puts an end to the legend which was invented thirty years ago by the officials of the Czarist Secret Political Police, that the Jews have mapped a definite program to dominate the world. Although everyone knew the legend to be false, anti-Semites throughout the world did not hesitate from time to time to revive it.
...The verdict of the Berne court will go down in Jewish history as an important victory over bigotry and falsehood. The London Times, after an investigation, long since established the falsity of the notorious "Protocols". Now this falsity has been officially established in a court. The verdict will remain the best argument of the Jews against all those who have been trying to utilize the "Protocols" for their anti-semitic purposes
Of course, we know that is not how things worked out -- "The Protocols" is still going strong.
The victory was premature.
In fact, it backfired.
Back to the NZZ Online:
But neither the frontist press in Switzerland, the National Socialist press in Germany nor the accused were impressed. They appealed and were acquitted in second instance in 1937: the question, according to the Bern Higher Regional Court, as to whether the "minutes" were genuine or not, was irrelevant for the assessment of the facts. They are a "political weapon", not trash literature and therefore do not violate the law. They are unlikely to incentivize a crime. [emphasis added]
The immediate result of the acquittal was the opposite intent of bringing the case to the court to begin with:
the entire anti-Semitic and National Socialist press exploited the acquittal propagandistically, claiming that the authenticity of the "protocols" had now been proven...the attempt to legally refute the "authenticity" of the "protocols" paradoxically strengthened the aura that surrounds it today. In retrospect it seems almost tragic how some honest men tried to expose the "protocols" as "fakes" and welcomed the court ruling as a defense against anti-Semitism.
So here we are.
Reading about the measures being taken around the US to curtail the antisemitic BDS movement, we can only hope that those laws are more effective and -- more permanent.
But when we expect the law to be able to protect against Jew-hatred, I am reminded of the Charles Dickens book, Oliver Twist:
If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass — a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience.”
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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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