Crime is crime; why should we care about the motive?

I have asked this question before: why is it somehow worse if someone beats you up because he hates you for being a member of some accredited victim group than if he beats you up because he wants to steal your wallet? From Robert Stacy McCain:

Detroit Police Say Anti-Semitism Not Motive in Synagogue Leader’s Murder

by Robert Stacy McCain | October 24, 2023

Very important update on the case:

Detroit police said investigators have looked into several people of interest in the killing of Samantha Woll, the president of a Detroit synagogue. Woll was found stabbed to death outside her home on Saturday morning.

In a press conference on Monday, Detroit Police Chief James White declined to unveil the connection between Woll and the people of interest, declaring a prime suspect cannot be named at the time.

“We have to be very, very cautious as to what information we share,” White said. “There are very intricate details about this case that, if revealed, could really damage what we’re trying to accomplish. There are facts that are known only to our suspect.” Continue reading

Fired because they were just plain stupid

Would anybody, anywhere, claim that it’s wrong to fire people, or rescind job offers, if the people who lost out on those jobs has publicly posted, “I hate [insert plural slang term for Negroes here]”?

Citi fires banker over ‘revolting’ Israel remark: ‘No wonder why Hitler wanted to get rid of all of them’

By Shannon Thaler | Thursday, October 19, 2023 | 4:20 MP EDT Continue reading

Money talks University presidents are learning the hard way: promoting anti-Semitism costs schools deep-pockets donors

As we previously reported, on Friday the 13th, Marc Rowan, University of Pennsylvania alumnus, Wharton school of business graduate and CEO of Apollo Global Management based in New York, called on UPenn alumni and supporters to “close their checkbooks” until President Liz Magill and Chairman Scott L. Bok step down, saying that under their leadership, the college had embraced anti-Semitism. The linked article from The Philadelphia Inquirer noted that all four of the protesting trustees were Jewish.

And now there’s this:

Penn president said university ‘should have moved faster’ in opposing Palestine Writes speakers with a history of antisemitism

Liz Magill’s comments came within days of a trustee’s resignation over Penn’s handling of the event and after several heavyweight donors withdrew funding support.

by Susan Snyder | Sunday, October 15, 2023 | 2:53 PM EDT | updated: 6:12 PM EDT

The University of Pennsylvania “should have moved faster” to share its position strongly against some speakers with a history of antisemitism appearing at the Palestine Writes festival held on campus last month, the school’s president said in a statement to the campus community Sunday.

Liz Magill’s email comes one day after major donor Jon Huntsman Jr., former governor of Utah and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, China, and Singapore, said his family’s foundation would halt donations to Penn, which he said has “become deeply adrift in ways that make it almost unrecognizable,” according to the Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper, which obtained and published his email to Magill. Continue reading

AOC reveals the anti-Semitism of the Squadristi

What is the “Iron Dome“?

Iron Dome (Hebrewכִּפַּת בַּרְזֶל‎, romanizedKippat Barzel) is a mobile all-weather air defense system developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries. The system is designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets and artillery shells fired from distances of 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) to 70 kilometres (43 mi) away and whose trajectory would take them to an Israeli populated area.

Iron Dome was declared operational and initially deployed on 27 March 2011 near Beersheba. On 7 April 2011, the system successfully intercepted a BM-21 Grad launched from Gaza for the first time. On 10 March 2012, The Jerusalem Post reported that the system shot down 90% of rockets launched from Gaza that would have landed in populated areas. In late 2012 Israel said that it hoped to increase the range of Iron Dome’s interceptions, from a maximum of 70 kilometres (43 mi) to 250 kilometres (160 mi) and make it more versatile so that it could intercept rockets coming from two directions simultaneously.

In November 2012, official statements indicated that it had intercepted over 400 rockets. By late October 2014, the Iron Dome systems had intercepted over 1,200 rockets.

In addition to their land-based deployment, it was reported in 2017 that Iron Dome batteries would in future be deployed at sea on Sa’ar 6-class corvettes, to protect off-shore gas platforms in conjunction with Israel’s Barak 8 missile system.

Simply put, the Kippat Barzel is a system which does not have an offensive capacity; it is entirely defensive. So, why would the Squadristi[1]The group of ‘progressives’ elected to the House of Representatives in 2018 called themselves the ‘Squad.’ Squadristi, or Squadrista in the singular form, is one of the … Continue reading be so opposed to the system?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez apologizes after tearful ‘present’ vote on Israel Iron Dome funding bill

Adela Suliman | Saturday, September 25, 2021

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) penned a lengthy and emotional open letter apologizing to her constituents on Friday for effectively abstaining in a vote over funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, which overwhelmingly passed in the House a day earlier.

Ocasio-Cortez, who could be seen weeping in the House after the vote, used her letter to criticize both the substance of the bill and what she described as the “reckless” and “rushed” process to pass it. She opposed the “unconditional aid to the Israeli government,” she added in her letter, but ultimately switched her vote from “no” to “present,” meaning a member takes no position in favor or against but records their presence.

The House voted for the measure 420 to 9.

However, Ocasio-Cortez’s decision to effectively abstain attracted ire from some liberal supporters.

“Normally I find AOC a person with moral values … This time though, as a few other times, I must say she should’ve stuck with other “Squad” members,” wrote one person on Twitter. Another said, “AOC primes people to believe she will never compromise, then does.” Meanwhile, an opinion piece accused her vote of being “a tactical mess” and a “worst-of-both-worlds solution,” and suggested that it indicated she could have higher political ambitions.

Describing her actions in her letter, Ocasio-Cortez wrote: “Yes, I wept. I wept at the complete lack of care for the human beings that are impacted by these decisions, I wept at an institution choosing a path of maximum volatility and minimum consideration for its own political convenience.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez glamour photo for her 2018 campaign.

There’s more at the original. You can also read it here, and avoid The Washington Post’s paywall.

How, I have to ask, was voting to support the system a “complete lack of care for the human beings that are impacted by these decisions”? The Kippat Barzel is designed to protect people, primarily innocent civilians, and, in this case, innocent Jewish civilians, from mortar, artillery and rocket fire launched by the Palestinian terrorists in Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Lebanon. What are we to conclude other than the lovely Miss Ocasio-Cortez wants the Palestinians to have a way to shoot rain death and destruction upon an innocent, civilian population?

Miss Ocasio-Cortez is the most infamous of the squadristi for one simple reason: she’s the only one who isn’t, to be blunt about it, ugly. They all share one characteristic: they’re all full-blown anti-Semites.[2]I first typed “raging anti-Semites,” but they make half-hearted attempts to hide it. Even with today’s #woke[3]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading credentialed media, looks matter, and pretty women matter most of all.

But anti-Semitism is ugly, bone-deep ugly, and that’s what the squadristi are. Miss Ocasio-Cortez’s pretty face can’t hide an ugly philosophy, an ugly soul. To be pro-Palestinian, as the squadristi are, is to be in favor of the destruction of Israel, and everybody knows it.

One could be opposed to providing offensive weaponry, that the Israelis could use to attack the Palestinians, and claim that they just want to save lives, but to be opposed to a shield to protect innocent Israeli citizens from being killed is to want innocent Israeli citizens to be killed, because killing innocent Israeli civilians is what Hamas and Hezbollah want to do.

Democratic tensions over Israel erupt again as House backs funds for Iron Dome system

By Donna Cassata | September 23, 2021 | 6:07 PM EDT

The House overwhelmingly approved $1 billion for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system Thursday after a blowup among Democrats as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) called the Mideast ally an “apartheid state” guilty of war crimes and Rep. Ted Deutch (Fla.) accused her of antisemitism.

The debate again exposed the political and religious fault lines in the party caucus over Israel, pitting members of the so-called Squad, some of them Muslim, against Israel’s longtime Jewish supporters.

Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress, said Palestinians are living under a “violent apartheid system” in opposing the money for the Iron Dome program.

“I will not support an effort to enable and support war crimes, human rights abuses and violence,” she said, calling the Israeli government an “apartheid regime.”

Mr Deutch is right, of course: Mrs Tlaib is an anti-Semite, and favors a ‘one-state’ solution for the Middle East, which is to say that she wants the Palestinians and Israelis to share one nation, hoping that the high birthrate of the Palestinians will allow them to eventually outnumber and outvote the Jews. Of course, I supported a one-state solution as well, but I favored the Israelis expelling all of the Arabs from the land, pushing them into Jordan and Syria, and annexing all of the territory they control, but, alas!, the time for that was 1967 and 1968, right after the Six Day War, and it would no longer work.

The tensions among Democrats over Israel flared earlier this week when leaders included the funding for the Iron Dome in a stopgap spending bill to keep the government funded into the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.

A handful of progressives threatened to vote against the bill, which would have sunk the spending package. House Democratic leaders pulled the missile defense funding and put it into the stand-alone bill passed Thursday.

Translation: the Democrats’ margin in the House is so small that the squadristi could have stopped the spending bill completely. What a shame that it wasn’t stopped!

Jewish Americans are the Democrats’ second most loyal voting demographic, but the non-Jewish Democrats pretty much hate their guts. Americans of Jewish descent need to realize that their real friends are conservatives, and stop voting for people who would gladly see the one Jewish nation in the world pushed into the sea.

References

References
1 The group of ‘progressives’ elected to the House of Representatives in 2018 called themselves the ‘Squad.’ Squadristi, or Squadrista in the singular form, is one of the Italian names given to Benito Mussolini’s Blackshirts, his paramilitary/thug force in fascist Italy. I think referring to the ‘Squad’ as Squadristi is completely appropriate.
2 I first typed “raging anti-Semites,” but they make half-hearted attempts to hide it.
3 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

Is it possible to support the Palestinians and not be anti-Semitic? Perhaps, but I've yet to see it done

I have said it before: it is philosophically possible to be opposed to Israeli foreign policy and not be anti-Semitic, but it is a trick I have never seen accomplished. But, let’s be honest: most of the pro-Palestinian agitators don’t even try anymore. Mia Khalifa, a Lebanese-born former porn actress tweeted:

You can see the actual tweet if you follow the link; what is presented here is a screen capture of it, because it’s very possible that the lovely Miss Khalifa will delete it.

Why? As the New York Post noted:

one of the bottles with Khalifa bore the date 1943 and contained champagne produced in Nazi-occupied France.

“Owning the Jewish state by proudly drinking wine from Vichy France,” one user wrote. “About right, yes.”

The Post noted that drinking that wine in Gaza is illegal.

Why do the left support the Palestinians, and the Arabs in general? The Advocate is a very leftist homosexual rights publication, but even they can’t stomach the idea of “Queers for Palestine”:

Queers for Palestine?

By James Kirchick | January 28, 2009 | 12:00 AM EST

Of all the slogans chanted and displayed at anti-Israel rallies over the past month, surely “Queers for Palestine” ranks as the most oxymoronic. It is the motto of the San Francisco–based Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT), a group advocating financial divestment from the Jewish State. QUIT contends that Zionism is racism, regularly demonstrates at gay pride marches, organizes with far-right Muslim organizations, and successfully lobbied the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission to boycott the 2006 World Pride Conference due to its location that year in Jerusalem.

Mr Kirchick, the author, used the wrong word: it isn’t “oxymoronic” but just plain moronic. Any liberal who supports the Palestinians is just plain stupid.

What makes QUIT oxymoronic is that their affinity for Palestine isn’t reciprocated. There may be queers for Palestine, but Palestine certainly isn’t for queers, either in the livable or empathetic sense. Like all Islamic polities, the Palestinian Authority systematically harasses gay people. Under the cloak of rooting out Israeli “collaborators,” P.A. officials extort, imprison, and torture gays. But Palestinian oppression of homosexuality isn’t merely a matter of state policy, it’s one firmly rooted in Palestinian society, where hatred of gays surpasses even that of Jews. Last October, a gay Palestinian man with an Israeli lover petitioned Israel’s high court of justice for asylum, claiming that his family threatened to kill him if he did not “reform.” He’s one of the few lucky Palestinians to be able to challenge his plight.

And that’s only in the relatively benign West Bank. The Gaza Strip, which has stagnated under the heel of Hamas’s Islamofascist rule since 2007, is an even more dangerous place for gays, “a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick,” in the words of a senior Hamas leader. As in Iran, Hamas’s patron and the chief sponsor of international terrorism, even the mere suspicion of homosexuality will get one killed in Gaza, being hurled from the roof of a tall building the method of choice.

Virtually none of the current political left’s opinions fare very well in the Muslim Middle East. Women’s rights? While the laws differ in the specifics, in no country in the Muslim Middle East do women have equal rights with men. Racial equality? Among the Arabs, blacks are considered inferior, and have far fewer rights. Freedom of religion? To varying degrees Islam is the official religion in these areas, and not only are adherents of other faiths, or of atheism, subject to discrimination, apostasy laws exist throughout the Muslim Middle East, and Muslims renouncing Islam, or anyone criticizing Islam, can be subject to criminal penalties, up to and including capital punishment.

Miss Khalifa? She’s an idiot. In a video, she complains about the difficulty of getting into a non-pornography workforce, but she’s wearing a suit jacket without a blouse, to show off deep cleavage. Now, she’s drinking wine from Vichy France, which was controlled by the Nazis, and proudly saying that her wine is older than the state of Israel. But if she is a particularly clueless advocate, she isn’t qualitatively different from the American and European left in their support of the Palestinians.