Category Archives: Freedom of Peaceable Assembly

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Do you need the government to manage you? Apparently Wrongthink™ is a serious problem, and conservatives need to be watched

We reported, last Friday, on Catherine Herridge’s report of the Biden Administration’s efforts to label those who disagreed with COVID-19 vaccine mandates as “Domestic Violent Extremists”:

The Biden Administration labeled Americans who opposed the COVID-19 vaccination and mask mandates as “Domestic Violent Extremists,” or DVEs, according to newly declassified intelligence records obtained by Public @shellenberger @galexybrane and Catherine Herridge Reports. The designation created an “articulable purpose” for FBI or other government agents to open an “assessment” of individuals, which is often the first step toward a formal investigation, said a former FBI agent.

The report, which the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has declassified, claims that “anti government or anti authority violent extremists,” specifically militias, “characterize COVID-19 vaccination and mask mandates as evidence of government overreach.” A sweeping range of COVID narratives, the report states, “have resonated” with DVEs “motivated by QAnon.”

The FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) coauthored the December 13, 2021 intelligence product whose title reads, “DVEs and Foreign Analogues May React Violently to COVID-19 Mitigation Mandates.”

The report cites criticism of mandates as “prominent narratives” related to violent extremism. These narratives “include the belief that COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe, especially for children, are part of a government or global conspiracy to deprive individuals of their civil liberties and livelihoods, or are designed to start a new social or political order.

We also pointed to earlier stories to surveil “Radical Traditionalist Catholics” as potentially “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists”. Yet, despite exposure of such, our good friends on the left have no sense of shame at all, and want to continue to regulate your beliefs. Todays left aren’t even trying to be subtle about it: they want to put legal controls on people with whom they disagree.

Tom Elliot tweeted a video of MSNBC hostess Jen Psaki Mecher, previously a high-level campaign staffer for Barack Hussein Obama, and then in both the Obama and Biden White House Communications Offices, interviewing former Director of the FBI James Comey;

MSNBC’s @jrpsaki: “(In the law enforcement sense), do you think there are laws that should be put in place that would help better manage [MAGA Republicans], that aren’t in place now?”

@Comey: “… (There are cultural impediments to doing this e: 15px;”>@Comey: “… (There are cultural impediments to doing this work.) Let’s say you work in the FBI. You know that one of the two political parties is, let me put it nicely, white supremacist-adjacent, at a minimum. And so why would you want to throw your career on that side of the line & be summoned to Capitol Hill to be asked, ‘Why are you pursuing these innocent groups?’”

And there’s more: the denizens of Bluesky, the Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — clone for liberals, waxed wroth that the Patriot Front held a rally outside the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, marching downtown carrying flags and chanting. Lefties on Twitter did the same.

The story in The Kansas City Star noted that no arrests were made, no parade permit was required, and everything that was done in the march was apparently completely legal, but it also included denunciations by the local government officials. It was, as far as anyone can tell, peaceful and orderly, far moreso than the #BlackLivesMatter rioters following the deaths of such icons of civilization like the fentanyl-and-methamphetamine-addled, previously convicted violent felon George Floyd and young punk Michael Brown. The Patriot Front burned no buildings and assaulted no one, exercising their Freedom of Speech and of Peaceable Assembly in exactly the manner the Framers of the First Amendment would have approved.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch naturally celebrated the marches in support of Mr Floyd, while the newspaper itself promoted the city’s homosexual and transgender “Pride March and Festival:”

While the Philly Pride 365 March and Festival officially take place Sunday, June 1, the entire weekend offers opportunities to celebrate LGBTQ joy, honor queer history, and connect with others through music, drag, food, and dance.

Philadelphia is among the most LGBTQ-friendly cities in the country, with one of the largest queer populations in any major metro area. It’s home to some of the nation’s oldest LGBTQ publications and ranks as one of the safest places for LGBTQ people to live and work, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Remember: the Inky fired forced Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski to resign over his headline “Buildings Matter, Too” used — though later changed — in an article on the loss of historic architecture in the riots over the death of Mr Floyd in Minneapolis. I guess that’s not nearly as serious as the Patriot Front marching peaceably.

We don’t see people like Mrs Mecher or Mr Comey talking about a need to “better manage” the people rallying for something that is as controversial as the normalization of homosexuality and transgenderism, yet the left are simply aghast that the Patriot Front are allowed to march in support of their beliefs. From the results, wouldn’t it make more sense to “better manage” the Black Lives Matter marchers and activists, because they’re the ones who riot? But that’s not what the left would ever want.

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Apparently I am a “Domestic Violent Extremist”, or so Joe Biden and his minions would have classified me

Did you know that I’m a “Domestic Violent Extremist”? I didn’t know I was, but that’s apparently how the Biden Administration would have classified me, if they knew who a small fry like me was. Continue reading →

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Harvard admits to anti-Semitism on campus The real question: what will the University do about it?

When I don’t have a good photo for an article, perhaps just a picture of my morning coffee being made will suffice!

We noted, just three weeks ago, how Harvard University, the oldest and most prestigious institution of higher learning in our great nation, rather than at least negotiate with the Trump Administration over policies to end blatant anti-Semitism on campus, was choosing to double-down on discrimination instead.

Harvard is, of course, a private school, so the government cannot order it to comply, but as a private institution the government is not obligated to fund it, either. But that doesn’t mean that the university doesn’t have to address its problems. From The Atlantic:

Harvard Begins to Confront Its Anti-Semitism Problem

Continue reading →

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The Patriot Front March for Life The left wax apoplectic!

My Twitter feed was filled with images of the Patriot Front marching at Fridays March for Life in Washington, DC. Much of it was condemnatory, and a lot of conservatives were repeating the meme that these were “Feds,” by which they meant federal law enforcement officers, rather than real civilians. I can see, at least in appearance, why people might conclude that. Robert Stacy McCain addressed that issue in “Is the ‘Patriot Front’ a Fed PsyOp?” He cited the very liberal Southern Poverty Law Center, a group which hates all things conservative, normal, and moral, telling us:

Like other hate and extremist groups, the need to recruit and grow their members makes PF a target for antifascist activists who attempt to infiltrate white nationalist groups to expose and disrupt their activities. Since 2018, antifascist activists have infiltrated PF at least five times, which has led to journalist and activist networks obtaining thousands of documents, including internal chat logs, audio and video recordings, and photographs. The laxed operational security measures of PF that are responsible for these infiltrations led to the identification of more than 130 current and former members since 2019.

Continue reading →

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When family members play heroes of the Soviet Union

Pavel Trofimovich Morozov (Па́вел Трофи́мович Моро́зов) was a supposed hero of the Soviet Union:

In 1932, at the age of 13, Morozov reported his father to the political police (GPU). Supposedly, Morozov’s father, Trofim, the chairman of the Gerasimovka Village Soviet, had been “forging documents and selling them to the bandits and enemies of the Soviet State” (as the sentence read). Trofim Morozov was sentenced to ten years in a labour camp, where his sentence was changed to death, which was fulfilled. However, Pavlik’s family did not take kindly to his reporting his father and on 3 September of that year, his uncle, grandfather, grandmother, and a cousin murdered him, along with his younger brother. All of them except the uncle were rounded up by the GPU and sentenced to “the highest measure of social defense” – execution by a firing squad.

Thousands of telegrams from all over the Soviet Union urged the judge to show no mercy for Pavlik’s killers. The Soviet government declared Pavlik Morozov a glorious martyr who had been murdered by reactionaries. Statues of him were built, and numerous schools and youth groups were named in his honour. An opera and numerous songs were written about him. The Gerasimovka school that Morozov attended, became a shrine, and children from all over the Soviet Union went on school excursions to visit it.

The entire story may have been a fabrication by the Soviet Communist Party under Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, yet another of the typical propaganda stories. Who, after all, could imagine a 13-year-old denouncing his own father to the police? Continue reading →

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Waging war against Israel, from the safety of Morningside Heights

That our oh-so-noble leftists will lie through their scummy teeth whenever they think it to their advantage is of no surprise to anyone who pays attention. That The New York Times would report on it actually is at least slightly surprising.

Pro-Palestinian Group at Columbia Now Backs ‘Armed Resistance’ by Hamas

Columbia University Apartheid Divest has withdrawn an apology it made last spring for a member who said “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”

by Sharon Otterman | Wednesday, October 9, 2024

The pro-Palestinian group that sparked the student encampment movement at Columbia University in response to the Israel-Hamas war is becoming more hard-line in its rhetoric, openly supporting militant groups fighting Israel and rescinding an apology it made after one of its members said the school was lucky he wasn’t out killing Zionists.

The ‘student’ in question is Khymani James, who, according to NBC News “uses he/she/they pronouns,” thus proving that he’s mentally ill and an idiot, was barred from Columbia’s campus on Friday, April 26th, and is now suing Columbia over his dismissal. Apparently Mr James open support of “militant groups fighting Israel” means fighting Israel in Morningside Heights, and not actually picking up a rifle and heading to Gaza to face the Israel Defense Force in real life.

“We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance,” the group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, said in its statement revoking the apology.

The group marked the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by distributing a newspaper with a headline that used Hamas’s name for it: “One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood, Revolution Until Victory,” it read, over a picture of Hamas fighters breaching the security fence to Israel. And the group posted an essay calling the attack a “moral, military and political victory” and quoting Ismail Haniyeh, the assassinated former political leader of Hamas.

“The Palestinian resistance is moving their struggle to a new phase of escalation and it is our duty to meet them there,” the group wrote on Oct. 7 on Telegram. “It is our duty to fight for our freedom!”

Also see: William Teach, “Unhinged Jew Hating Group At Columbia U Rescinds Apology For Anti-Semite Comrade

“Apparently, to judge by their support of Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and their statement that they “support liberation by any means necessary” means that they support the rapes, murders, and kidnappings perpetrated by the attackers.

Reporter Sharon Otterman’s article noted the problems the university’s leadership have with statements made under our First Amendment protections, but which can also create a “hostile environment for Jewish students.”

Laughably, Mr James, in his lawsuit against Columbia, as reported by the Columbia Spectator, is claiming that he is the one being victimized by a ‘hostile environment’:

“The environment at Columbia, which has been rendered hostile for James, is sufficiently severe, pervasive, persistent, and offensive such that it deprives James of equal access to the opportunities and benefits that Columbia provides to other students,” the lawsuit reads.

The lawsuit states that after James began sharing “anti-war and anti-genocide political beliefs” on their personal Instagram account, they (sic) became the target of “racist, homophobic, and physically threatening messages,” including ones that called James slurs. These messages distracted James from their (sic) schoolwork and caused them (sic) to feel “uncomfortable, anxious, and unsafe,” according to the lawsuit.

Laughing out loud! At least the Times wasn’t silly enough to use Mr James’ preferred pronouns, but the Spectator, produced by the foremost School of Journalism in the country, was. 🙂

I have to ask, are Mr James and his attorney claiming that he has “anti-war . . . political beliefs” at the same time he and his supporters are calling for war against Israel, and are actively supporting the war Hamas started against Israel? But, I can answer my own question: for the anti-Semitic left, violence in advance of their cause is perfectly acceptable; they are simply “anti-war” when it comes to other people and other people’s defense.

There have been several stories about Americans, primarily combat veterans, who have left the United States and gone to Ukraine, to fight against the Russians, and at least a few of them have been killed in action. Hey, they were vets, knew the dangers, and chose to brave them anyway!

And there have been many stories about Americans and Europeans, primarily Jews, who have gone to Israel to fight with the Israel Defense Force. Some are dual citizens, and the anti-Semitic left have been calling for them not to be allowed to return to their European countries, saying that they are “war criminals.”

But pro-‘Palestinian’ Europeans and Americans? I can’t say that none have gone to Gaza to join the fight, but if any have, there haven’t been enough of them to have merited any story that I have seen in the credentialed media about it.

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When the Jew haters tell you who they are, believe them! "Students for Justice in Palestine" could have protested at Israeli consulate, but chose to protest at Jewish center

This poor site, along with literally hundreds of others, has covered the pro-‘Palestinian, really pro-Hamas ‘demonstrations’ on our college campuses last spring. I did note, with some pleasure, that at least at my alma mater, the University of Kentucky, the protests were carried out the way the First Amendment, which guarantees to all of us both the freedom of speech and the right of peaceable assembly, contemplated, peaceably.

Sadly, many of the pro-savages demonstrations at other schools were not entirely peaceable. But I did gloat report on those demonstrations fading away when school was out for the summer.

Well, it’s a new school year — though October seems like this article is a bit late — and the Usual Suspects have been up to their old tricks. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Temple suspends pro-Palestinian student group; Muslim advocates call to investigate police over alleged hijab removal during campus protest

CAIR is calling for an investigation after Temple University’s handling of a protest, where they say a Philadelphia police officer allegedly removed a Muslim protester’s hijab.

by Max Marin and Robert Moran | Wednesday, October 2, 2024 | 2:02 PM EDT | Updated: 6:37 PM EDT

Temple University has temporarily banned Students for Justice in Palestine from operating on campus, the latest in a wave of suspensions against pro-Palestinian student groups amid sustained protests against the war in Gaza.

The move comes after police detained four SJP members, including a Temple student, during a demonstration that interrupted an on-campus career fair last week.

So, the “Students for Justice in Palestine” demonstration was not peaceable in nature, but interrupted a meeting to help more sensible students at Temple who were looking to begin their professional careers after graduation. You know, the sensible thing to do after spending a boatload of money for a university education.

Muslim community leaders are calling for an investigation into the university’s handling of that protest after a Philadelphia police officer allegedly removed a Muslim protester’s hijab and detained the woman without access to her religious head covering.

If that happened, and I will never believe claims by “Muslim community leaders” without outside corroboration, it would have been because the woman was resisting arrest.

While Temple did not cite that specific incident, a university spokesperson said in a statement that the interim suspension stemmed from “recent conduct,” and the student activist group is now forbidden from holding on-campus activities, including “meetings, social and philanthropic events.” The suspension was first reported by the Temple News.

The spokesperson pointed to the university’s on-campus demonstration guidelines that are “in place to ensure the safety and well-being of community members while also encouraging and preserving freedom of expression.” . . . .

This is not the group’s first brush with university leaders. Temple president Richard Englert denounced an SJP-led demonstration in August after protesters chanted outside a Jewish student center on campus.

In a statement, Englert threatened disciplinary action against students who participated in the rally, which he described as a form of “intimidation and harassment.” The pro-Palestinian student group pushed back against Englert’s comments, arguing in a post on social media that the president “distorted our message to serve the false narrative that Temple SJP is a threat to Temple.”

No, I suppose that the pro-barbarian students wouldn’t see accosting Jewish students outside of a known Jewish student gathering place as “intimidation and harassment,” but the Jews on campus certainly would have, and did:

Temple University says it is investigating a student pro-Palestinian demonstration held outside a Jewish center on campus

“Targeting a group of individuals because of their Jewish identity is not acceptable and intimidation and harassment tactics like those seen today will not be tolerated,” Temple’s president said.

by Robert Moran | Thursday, August 29, 2024 | 10:40 PM EDT

Temple University said it is investigating for possible disciplinary action a pro-Palestinian march by students and nonstudents who demonstrated outside a Jewish center on campus Thursday.

The protest march began at the Charles Library, said Temple University president Richard Englert in a statement, then some demonstrators went to the Rosen Center, which is the home at Temple of Hillel, an international organization for Jewish students.

“While there, the demonstrators used megaphones to chant directly at the occupants within the building,” Englert said.

Emphasis mine. Using megaphones to chant directly at the people in the Hillel Center, the majority of who could be assumed to be Jewish, would constitute targeted ethnic and religious harassment.

“We are deeply saddened and concerned by these events,” Englert said. “Targeting a group of individuals because of their Jewish identity is not acceptable and intimidation and harassment tactics like those seen today will not be tolerated.”

This was clearly a protest against Jews in general, not just Israeli policy, as the “Students for Justice in Palestine” have conflated the two. Not all Jews are Israelis, and at an American college 5,774 miles away from Israel, it’s virtually certain that most of the Jews on campus at Temple are not from Israel.

There is an Israeli consulate in Philadelphia, at 1880 John F. Kennedy Blvd, which is just 2.6 miles away from the Hillel Center, at 1441 West Norris Street, pretty much of a straight march down Broad Street, though, admittedly, marching that way takes you partly into the Philadelphia Badlands. If the SJP wanted to protest Israeli government policies specifically, they could have been protesting outside the consulate; instead they were harassing people they knew to be Jooooos.

Temple’s actions won’t stop the SJP from existing; all it does is ban them as a student organization and deny them use of Temple’s facilities.

Our First Amendment was written by civilized men, with civilized behavior in mind; they cited “the right of the people peaceably to assemble”. It does not protect some right to harass others, or gather in mobs, or riot.

But the pro-‘Palestinian’ people in this country, and around the world, are not truly civilized men. They might think that they are, but they are supporting the barbarism of Hamas, they are supporting the antithesis of the Western civilization, the benefits of which they enjoy.  The “Students for Justice in Palestine” have a right to exist, and to protest peacefully; it’s only when the break the code of civilization that they become subject to arrest.

The one thing they do not have is any right to the respect of decent people, and for them, I have none. When the anti-Semites tell you who they really are, you should believe them!

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In the end, hiding from your enemies just doesn’t work The way to fight anti-Semitism is not to let the anti-Semites win!

In February of 1896, long before the Nazis, just a couple of months before Adolf Hitler’s 7th birthday, Theoror Herzl’s Der Judenstaat, The Jewish State, was published in Leipzig and Vienna by M. Breitenstein’s Verlags-Buchhandlung. Mr Herzl saw the persecution Jews were facing in Europe, where they had lived ever since their expulsion from the Holy Land by the Romans beginning in 70 AD. Jews, he believed, needed to live apart from the mostly Christian populations of Europe.

But even living apart, while in Europe, didn’t prove particularly safe. While the Jüdischer Wohnbezirk in Warschau, the Warsaw ghetto, was not formally established until November of 1940 by the Nazi occupation authorities, it contained those heavily Jewish neighborhoods which existed before the outbreak of World War II in Europe.

Now there’s this, from The Wall Street Journal:

Maybe It’s Time for Jewish Self-Segregation

The self-protective impulse is a healthy response to a wave of antisemitism.

By Joseph Epstein | Thursday, September 19, 2024 | 5:33 PM EDT

The recent and rampant rise in antisemitism is, to put it gently, disheartening. One finds it everywhere, much of it passing under the flag of anti-Zionism, criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and presumably sympathy for the Palestinians. Saddest of all is that antisemitism has cropped up so exuberantly among students in our elite universities. Apart from decrying it, calling it out for what it is, what are Jews to do to protect themselves from this recurring nightmare? Perhaps a jaunt down memory lane will help.

For those who don’t have my too-expensive subscription to the Journal, the OpEd can be accessed for free here.

I was 5 when I was first aware not only that I was Jewish but that being Jewish had consequences. My father asked me what I had learned in school one day, and I told him the poem “Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe,” which I began to recite. When I came to the n-word—before “tiger” had been substituted as a more appropriate alternative—my father angrily stopped me and told me I was never to use the word again, especially since our people, like the Negroes (as they were called then), had been long persecuted and called all sorts of terrible names.

A few years later, returning with my father from a Bing Crosby movie, “Going My Way,” I asked if we might have a Christmas tree. “No,” he said. Why not? “Because you are Jewish.” Case closed. Not long after that, my mother pointed out various Chicago neighborhoods and suburbs—Sauganash, Kenilworth—that were “restricted,” which meant no Jews allowed. Not only did being Jewish carry responsibilities; it also apparently meant being despised, at least in certain quarters.

After several more paragraphs, in which Joseph Epstein, the author, describes his life growing up, and in college, in mostly Jewish enclaves, we get to the meat of the column:

No one saw the current wave of antisemitism coming. Who thought Hamas would find supporters at Harvard, Columbia, the University of California, Los Angeles, and elsewhere? The country had known of this virus before, but it came not from crowds of thousands but from prominent people. Henry Ford was openly antisemitic. No Jew in those days drove his cars. Father Charles Coughlin, on his radio show in the 1930s, attacked what he termed “international bankers.” But those were largely isolated, the present strain more widespread.

Is self-chosen segregation among Jews a good thing? In one sense, it feels like taking a step backward toward a less open society. Yet when the politics of a country swing too far in either direction, antisemitism is almost certain to come in its train. The swing today is unmistakably and strongly leftist, and self-segregation strikes me as the first step in combating the attacks on Jews that attend it.

I am not Jewish, and I live in an area with very few, if any Jews, so perhaps I just don’t understand, but this seems to me to be an advocacy of surrender, and not even an effective one. If American Jews self-segregate, into small, mostly Jewish communities, are they not simply gathering in a smaller and more confined target area for any violently antiSemitic ‘mostly peaceful protests’? We have already seen ‘protests’ at synagogues and Hillel Centers on campuses. Self-segregation, self-isolation doesn’t work when those who hate you still know where you congregate and live.

Israel is, of course, Mr Herzl’s dream, even if he never saw it; he died in 1904, at a very young 44 years of age, though he is now buried in Mt Herzl, on the west side of Jerusalem. But look at the situation today. Israel is the self-segregation of millions of Jews in the modern world, yet we see not just the Arabs — who can always be counted on for hate — but millions of people reared in Western civilization nations who don’t want the Jews to have even that small nation.

Self-segregation counts on the tolerance of others to allow your segregated communities, and we aren’t seeing much of that tolerance by the supporters of Hamas and the ‘Palestinians.’

In the end, hiding from your enemies just doesn’t work.

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Kamala Harris Emhoff’s campaign communications director tells us she “shares the goals” of the outside rabble

It was buried far down, as in the 15th paragraph of the article, before Michael Tyler, the campaign communications director for Kamala Harris Emhoff told us a truth he might regret. In an article in The Hill by Alex Gangitano entitled “How Harris wants to handle Gaza at the Democratic convention“, the author told readers that the Democratic National Convention isn’t spending much time on the Israel/Hamas war, because other issues are of greater importance to American voters, but far down, she gave us this:

When asked about the war protesters in Chicago this week, Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler argued that Harris is “somebody who understands the goals of the people who are showing up to demonstrate here and frankly who shares the goals.”

As the campaign’s communications director, one would assume that Mr Tyler understands the importance of words and choosing his words carefully, so when he tells everybody that Mrs Emhoff “shares the goals” of the pro-Hamas demonstrators, I believe him.

NBC News reported:

Tuesday night’s protest was organized by Behind Enemy Lines, a leftist group with militant leanings. Another group behind the protest was Samidoun, which Germany and Israel have banned over allegations that it has ties to terrorist groups. (The U.S. has not declared Samidoun a terrorist group.)

The hyperlinks in the quoted paragraph were not in the original, but added by me. These organizations seek to disrupt civilization itself in their advocacy of fighting for the ‘Palestinians’ and freeing ‘Palestinian’ terrorists in Israeli jails. As we have previously noted, one of the infamous prisoner exchanges, 1,027 ‘Palestinian’ prisoners exchanged for a single Israeli hostage, Corporal Gilad Shalit, was Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the October 7th massacre. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank reported that the demonstrations were smaller than anticipated, but he heard “clarion calls for the destruction of Israel: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. From the sea to the river, Palestine will live forever.”

Most of the credentialed media failed to publish images of the Hamas flags being waved, but at least Fox News managed to do it.

So, if Mrs Emhoff “shares the goals” of the outside demonstrators, it has to be asked: which of their goals does she share? Most called for the ‘liberation’ of Palestine, but as Mr Milbank noted, there were also chants supporting the elimination of Israel; that’s what “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” means! Those waving the Hamas flag are telling us that they support the kidnapping, rapes and murders that Hamas committed last October 7th; when the Democratic presidential nominee “shares the goals” of the protesters, does she support that as well?