A Tale of Two Revolutions thumbnail

A Tale of Two Revolutions

By Jerry Newcombe, D. Min.

Another July 4th is now behind us, but another July 14th (Bastille Day, the initial act of the French Revolution) lies ahead of us.

Superficially, the two “revolutions”—those of the Americans and the French, which occurred just over a decade apart—may seem like two sides of the same coin. But they are not.

The conflicts were very different in their foundations and very different in their effects. And God is at the heart of that. In the simplest of terms: The American Revolution was pro-God. The French Revolution was anti-God.

Ronald Reagan articulated it so well: “Here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights. We the people declared that government is created by the people for their own convenience. Government has no power except those voluntarily granted to it by we the people.”

Then he added, “There have been revolutions before and since ours, revolutions that simply exchanged one set of rulers for another. Ours was a philosophical revolution that changed the very concept of government.”

In 1775, the American Revolution began. On July 4, 1776, the United States of America declared independence from Britain, while at the same time, declaring dependence upon God. They mention God four times in the Declaration of Independence. Above all, they note that He is the source of our rights. In 1787, America wrote up its Constitution, which the framers signed “in the year of our Lord.” The Constitution went into effect in 1789.

On July 14, 1789, France began its revolution, with the storming of the Bastille prison in Paris.

The newly invented guillotine was rigorously put to use, as the French revolutionaries beheaded thousands of Frenchmen, who were nobles or churchmen or otherwise deemed as counter-revolutionary. They beheaded the king (an act known as regicide) and the queen. Soon the revolutionaries began consuming their own ranks. Eventually, Maximilien Robespierre, the quintessential French revolutionary, was beheaded himself.

The French Revolution declared war on Christ and the Church, which in France was mostly Roman Catholic. They desecrated many of the churches—including Notre Dame itself. They forbade the mass, but instead lifted a half-naked actress onto the altar of that famous cathedral. They renamed Notre Dame, Ground Zero in the city of Paris, as “the Temple to the Goddess Reason.” And they worshiped her.

In order to declare further independence from Christian influence, they eliminated the seven-day week with its Jewish Sabbath (generally on Saturdays) and the Lord’s Day (always on Sunday, to remember the day Jesus rose from the dead).

Instead, the French changed the week to 10 days, thus jettisoning any Judeo-Christian influence. Furthermore, they changed the counting of the years, from 1791 to Year One of the (French) Republic.

When people say that the founding fathers meant nothing by dating the Constitution “in the year of our Lord,” we should remember that the French not too long after explicitly rejected “the year of our Lord.”

About a dozen years later, Napoleon (whose rise to power ended the revolution) abolished the bulk of these anti-Christian actions.

While the United States, with its Judeo-Christian foundation, grew and flourished, what happened in France? Not only did blood flow in the streets, not only was virtually any Christian expression disallowed, but the government eroded under revolutionary fervor.

A quick Google search on how many governments France has had since their revolution yields this result: “Since 1789 and the French Revolution, France has had 14 constitutions, including 5 republics. General de Gaulle put the current constitution in place in 1958.”

For my series of Providence Forum films on America’s Judeo-Christian roots, I had the privilege of interviewing Dennis Prager. He said, “The American Revolution and French Revolution is the [current] battle in the United States. Which revolution will prevail? Now, they loathed the idea of God in the French Revolution; the secular republic was the ideal.  In America, they believed in secular government—but in a God-based society, because rights come from God in America.”

But tragically, as Dr. Os Guinness, a great Christian writer and thinker, told us in the same series: “The French view has virtually swept the world. Chinese communism, the fruit of 1789.  Russian Marxism, the fruit of 1789.  You know, much of so-called liberal democracy in Europe, the leftwing progressivism, [is] the fruit of 1789.  Most of the American intellectuals, 1789.  And that’s why they have very deficient views of freedom. And the tragedy of America, it’s the one country whose political order was decisively shaped by the Bible and by the Reformation, and yet, it’s rejecting the distinctiveness of its roots.”

Ideas have consequences. And as John Stonestreet of the Colson Center likes to add: “Bad ideas have victims.”

©2024. Jerry Newcombe, D. Min. All rights reserved.

Gallant: 60% of Hamas gunmen killed or wounded, Gaza situation assessment and more… thumbnail

Gallant: 60% of Hamas gunmen killed or wounded, Gaza situation assessment and more…

By NEWSRAEL Telling the Israeli Story

The defense minister also said that the IDF has dismantled most of the terror group’s 24 battalions.

Israeli forces have killed or wounded 60% of Hamas’s combatants since the war in Gaza began on Oct. 7, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Wednesday.

Speaking at the Knesset in Jerusalem, Gallant also revealed that the IDF had broken up a majority of the Al-Qassam Brigades’ 24 battalions entrenched across the coastal enclave. (The Al-Qassam Brigades is Hamas’s so-called “military” wing.)

“The action of the IDF that has so far led to the elimination of over 14,000 terrorists and the collapse of the military frameworks of Hamas is, in fact, the testimony of what I am saying—everything will be done in accordance with the law and in accordance with the operational need,” Gallant said.

Israel’s air force began pounding Hamas targets immediately after the terrorist group led the bloody invasion of the northwestern Negev on Oct. 7, killing, wounding and kidnapping thousands, while committing widespread atrocities. IDF ground troops entered Gaza on Oct. 27 and are continuing operational activities across the territory.

The goals as set forth by the War Cabinet at the start of the war and which remain in place are to dismantle Hamas as a military and governing entity in Gaza, return the hostages and ensure that Gaza can never again threaten Israel.

The Chief of Staff in Gaza held a situation assessment

The Chief of Staff in Gaza: We apply military pressure in various forms, the common denominator is determination.

The Chief of Staff, Major General Herzi Halevi yesterday (Tuesday) held a situation assessment in the central corridor of the Gaza Strip with the commander of the 99th Division, Lieutenant Colonel Barak Hiram, the commander of the 3rd Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Gil Werner and other commanders.

“What is the common denominator between the different places – the common denominator is determination, the common denominator is really in a very high-quality way that these things are done and in the end, we also go on missions to destroy as much infrastructure as possible, kill as many Hamas operatives as possible, kill as many commanders as possible. In the end, it lowers the capabilities of Hamas.”

Company D destroys tunnel in Shejaiya

“There is not one square kilometer in Gaza without terror infrastructure.”

Soldiers of Company D of the Alexandroni engineer battalion in action in the Shejaiya neighborhood.

EDITORS NOTE: These Newsrael columns are republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Chicago Mosque Class For Children: Your Number One Goal In Life Is To Die As A Muslim And Go To Paradise thumbnail

Chicago Mosque Class For Children: Your Number One Goal In Life Is To Die As A Muslim And Go To Paradise

By Middle East Media Research Institute

Colorado Imam Karim Abuzaid taught a children’s class at Chicago’s Darul Quran Mosque on June 30, 2024, in which he instilled into the children that their number one goal in life is to die as a Muslim and go to Paradise. He also instructed the boys in the class not to look at the girls while they were delivering their answers. Video of the class was streamed live on Karim Abuzaid’s YouTube channel.

Karim Abuzaid: “What would be your number one goal in this life? What do you want to achieve out of this life?

[…]

“One goal – what do you want from this life? Okay, we said no collective answers, raise your hand and I’ll pick you. I am going to pick the sisters sometimes, but I expect you not to look at the sisters, and if a sister speaks, you are not going to look at her, right? Because you are supposed to lower your gaze, right?

[…]

“What is your number one goal in this life?”

Children: “To go to Paradise!”

[…]

Abuzaid: “What does it take to get to Paradise? Here is the answer – to die as a…”

Children: “Muslim!”

Abuzaid: “…Muslim.

[…]

“Now, I am going to ask the question, and I want you to answer collectively. What does it take to get to Paradise?”

Children: “To die as a Muslim.”

Abuzaid: “By Allah, Sheik Faysal, is that people who want to die as Muslims? Come on, say it like you mean it, man. I want to die as a Muslim, man.”

Children: “To die as a Muslim!”

Abuzaid: “No, no, no, the second one, I want to die as a Muslim.”

Children: “I want to die as a Muslim!”

Abuzaid: “I want to die as a Muslim. I want to die as a Muslim. Why do I want to die as a Muslim? Why? Why? Why? Because I want to go to Paradise. I want to go there and live forever. I want to eat and drink without having to go to the bathroom.”

Source: Online Platforms – “Karim Abuzaid on YouTube”

RELATED ARTICLE: Detroit Imam Imran Salha: The Presidential Debate Between Dumb And Dumber Demonstrated That The Last Hope For America Is Islam; We Are The Masters And The Teachers; You Are Ignorant, And I Am Knowledgeable – Please Step Aside; We Will Bring Shari’a Law And Spices To The White Man’s Unseasoned Chicken; Oh Allah, Annihilate The Zionist Aggressors, Make Us Rejoice With Victory And Conquest Soon

EDITORS NOTE: This MEMRI video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

IDF BATTLE VIDEOS: IDF Ends Nur al-Shams Operation and More… thumbnail

IDF BATTLE VIDEOS: IDF Ends Nur al-Shams Operation and More…

By NEWSRAEL Telling the Israeli Story

IDF BATTLE VIDEO: IDF ends Nur al-Shams operation

At the end of 15 hours of operation; IDF and Police Border forces destroyed dozens of explosives that were buried under civilian infrastructure in Nur al-Shams in the Menashe Brigade.

In an extensive engineering operation conducted in Nur al-Shams, the units, under the intelligence guidance of IDF Intelligence and the Shin Bet, destroyed dozens of explosives planted in traffic routes with the aim of harming our forces and putting the residents living in the area at risk.

In addition, as part of the operation, the fighters destroyed two “war rooms” used for local terrorist organizations, arrested a wanted terrorist and destroyed a vehicle in which several explosive charges were stored.

Also, during the night, the IDF, Shin Bet and Border Police forces arrested 15 wanted terrorists throughout Judea and Samaria and confiscated weapons.

The wanted terrorists who were arrested and the means of warfare that were confiscated were transferred to the security forces for further treatment, there were no casualties to our forces.

IDF BATTLE VIDEO: Hezbollah terrorists detected and hit

After identifying the source of the shooting, the IDF attacked a building where two Hezbollah terrorists suspected of carrying out the shooting at Meshgav were identified earlier today.

Earlier today, a number of launches were detected from Rav a-Taltin area in Lebanon to the Mashgab area, the air defense fighters successfully intercepted most of the launches.

Shortly after the launches, the forces of Division 91 identified two terrorists entering a military structure of the Hezbollah terrorist organization in the area of ​​the source of the shooting, Air Force fighter jets attacked the structure containing the terrorists.

IDF BATTLE VIDEO: Yahalom fighters destroyed tunnels in Shejaiya

The combat teams of the 7th Paratrooper Brigade and the Yahalom Unit have been fighting for over a week above ground and underground in the Shejaiya area under the command of Division 98.

The forces of the division conducted face-to-face battles with terrorist squads, eliminated more than 150 terrorists, destroyed terrorist infrastructure and encountered trapped buildings and destroyed charges.

In addition, the forces located dozens of weapons and intelligence documents that the terrorists left behind.

The forces located, with intelligence guidance and an engineering effort, tunnel shafts and significant underground routes that were destroyed. In the divisional activity, six offensive tunnels with a length of about six kilometers were located and destroyed. The forces continue to explore and destroy the signs in the area.

In exploring the tunnels, the fighters of the Yahalom (who specialize in explosives and underground fighting) unit located underground tunnels that make up a branching tunnel system, in some of which the terrorists’ living and command rooms were located, in one of the tunnels weapons and intelligence documents were located.

EDITORS NOTE: These Newsrael/IDF videos are republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Sharp jump in number of Ultra-Orthodox joining Israeli national service thumbnail

Sharp jump in number of Ultra-Orthodox joining Israeli national service

By NEWSRAEL Telling the Israeli Story

While encouraging, the 65% increase over last year does not address the basic need for thousands more soldiers. 

There has been a significant increase in the number of haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) joining the national civil service over the past year, Ma’ariv revealed in a report Tuesday.

There has been a 65% increase between July 2023 and June 2024 over the previous 12-month period.

In real numbers, this meant 811 men signed up for the voluntary program that is an official substitute for military service, versus 492 in the previous similar period.

The jump was especially noticeable in the security service track, where people work in such places as the police, security services, emergency rescue services and terror-victim identification units. The number more than doubled, from 134 to 279 volunteers.

This is 34.4% of the total new recruits, in a track that in 2022 was made up of only 20% ultra-Orthodox, according to the Knesset Research and Information Center.

In all, said the report, some 1,500 haredim are currently serving in the various fields offered by the authority.

This could be an encouraging sign considering that in 2022, there were just over 1,200 haredim enrolled in the national service program in either the security service track or a social service track that includes the internal security, health, welfare and education sectors.

On the other hand, a quick look at the history of haredi national service reveals that there were times when haredi involvement was much higher.

Twelve years ago, for example, the Civil Service Commission reported that there were 3,885 ultra-Orthodox young men in its ranks.

Whatever the numbers are, critics point out that the overwhelming need today is for thousands more men to serve in the military, not the civilian sphere.

It is generally acknowledged that the IDF needs to be beefed up with several more brigades in order to protect the country at a time when there is an ongoing war with Hamas in the south, a potential full-out war with Hezbollah in the north, and constant threats coming from Iranian terror proxies in both the near abroad (Syria, possibly Jordan) and overseas (Yemeni Houthis).

It also does not solve the issue ruled upon by Israel’s Supreme Court, that haredim must be drafted into the IDF due to the laws against discrimination, as the secular and national-religious sectors of society are currently unfairly bearing the bulk of the burden of military service.

EDITORS NOTE: This World Israel News column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Are Publishing Giants Pulling Back from Pushing LGBT Material? thumbnail

Are Publishing Giants Pulling Back from Pushing LGBT Material?

By Family Research Council

In June, Scholastic, the world’s largest children’s book publishing company, put their push for LGBT ideology front and center when they released their 2024 guide to their “Read with Pride” initiative. As reported by The Washington Stand, the guide was to be a “resource” for “supporting LGBTQIA+ youth” by promoting books with radical ideological themes, including transgenderism and taking relationships “to the next level” with sexual intercourse. It also had a glossary of definitions for LGBT terminology such as “agender,” “allocishet,” and “genderfluid.” And yet, despite their unapologetic stance on this agenda, recent developments have caused some to wonder if the company has begun to pull back.

In addition to Scholastic, Pearson, the world’s largest academic publisher, has also prominently promoted LGBT material. But as The Washington Times reported last week, both publishing giants seem to “have distanced themselves from a push to replace biological sex with gender identity in K-12 classroom discussions.” This came after The Heritage Foundation’s Senior Research Fellow in Education Policy Jonathan Butcher exposed Scholastic’s promotion of LGBT ideology to “small children.” As The Washington Times added, Scholastic’s controversial guide “vanished” from their “website at the end of June without explanation, leaving only the ‘Read with Pride’ page” — the section containing the book recommendations.

Scholastic spokeswoman Anne Sparkman insisted the “Read with Pride Guide was a resource for adults available for Pride Month and is not a textbook for students.” However, those who saw the guide while it was still available online have pointed out that it specifically emphasized it had information and recommended materials geared toward “educators, caregivers, and advocates” and children as young as pre-school.

Similarly, Pearson’s editorial guidelines on “genderism” and “antiracism” were also exposed by Butcher last year, which they removed shortly after. According to Butcher, “The pushback on these ideas is strong and the publishers don’t know how to defend them when reporters, policy analysts or parents question what they are doing.” Considering this, he finds it unsurprising that they’re slowly removing some of their most controversial content. And as Sheri Few, founder and president of U.S. Parents Involved in Education, emphasized, “Not everyone is going along with this illusion that there are more than two sexes, both of which are biologically determined.”

In comment to TWS, Joseph Backholm, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement, added to Butcher and Few’s sentiments: “We’ve seen a lot of evidence the public is pushing back against the Sexual Revolution.” As he explained, “The public was convinced to go along with it on the basis of ‘tolerance,’” but as time goes on, it’s become increasingly clear this is “a movement that aggressively recruits children.”

According to Backholm, “The public didn’t want it then and doesn’t want it now,” which could likely “be part of the reason we are seeing modest retreats in cases like” Scholastic and Pearson. Ultimately, “They’ve reached further than the public is willing to tolerate.” But even amid what seems to be a drawback from these leftist publishers, Backholm noted that “it might be one step back before they take two steps forward.”

“Of course,” he continued, “it’s good they’re being less aggressive, but … the Sexual Revolution has made most of its progress by behaving in ways that are shocking, retreating slightly, and then doing the same or worse in the near future when the public is no longer shocked.” Given this pattern, Backholm explained that “if we’re really going to solve the problem of grooming kids, we’re going to have to start actively pursuing what is good rather than focusing on how much evil we’re willing to tolerate.”

Backholm noted “human history teaches us” that enough exposure to something — even something harmful — can cause that practice to become normalized. For instance, “If we see children’s books grooming kids enough, it ceases to be shocking so we cease to resist.” However, he added, “if our standard is creating an environment that is good for children,” then “we won’t get used to things that harm them” — even if a large portion of society has allowed it to become commonplace.

“We must resist evil,” Backholm concluded, “but more than that, we must pursue what is good. If we are actively pursuing what is good, we’ll never get used to what is evil.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

A Catholic Crash Course in American Politics thumbnail

A Catholic Crash Course in American Politics

By The Catholic Thing

Auguste Meyrat: One of the many benefits of Christian belief is the ability to transcend partisanship and seek solutions that respect the dignity and value of all people.

Last year, Pope Francis complained that the American Catholic Church has become too political. Instead of preaching the true faith, he claimed, certain clergy will use their spiritual authority to tell congregations how to vote and even weaponize the sacraments to pressure politicians into adopting certain policies.

If only that were true. In reality, most priests today avoid politics, leaving most Catholics to decide public questions for themselves. This has led to a broad political divide among today’s Catholics, resulting in numerous clashes between progressives and conservatives in recent years.

In all likelihood, many of these political differences could be reconciled and many public scandals avoided if Catholics were better informed. They could find common ground with their brothers and sisters in Christ, vote for policies and politicians that follow Church teachings, and support initiatives that improve the material and spiritual well-being of all Americans.

To this end, Catholic Vote, an organization devoted to educating Catholics on today’s political issues, has published For God, Country, and Sanity: How Catholics Can Save America, a collection of essays addressing some of the controversies facing voters this election year. It has something for every reader, and better still, it’s relatively short (180 pages). Overall, it’s exactly the kind of book that Catholics should read if they hope to save the nation before it descends into terminal decline.

In the introduction, Catholic Vote’s president, Brian Burch, lays out the stakes: “Some elections are huge turning points. 2024 is one of them.” This is because crime, poverty, drug abuse, illegal migration, suicide, and inflation have skyrocketed in the past few years while birthrates, church attendance, and institutional trust have plummeted. Burch makes it clear that this might be the last opportunity for American Catholics and their allies to make their voices heard and vote for change.

Two profound essays from First Things veterans Rusty Reno and Matthew Schmitz follow, which analyze today’s political landscape.

Reno argues that both political parties have been stuck in the 20th century, subscribing to “an ‘open society’ and ‘open economy’ consensus.” This approach made sense when confronting racial segregationists and communist dictatorships, but it is now undermining the very structures and ideas that enabled Americans to thrive: “our country suffers from the disintegration of moral, social, and political institutions, and the sound economic basis for middle-class prosperity has eroded.” Politicians and their constituents should finally abandon the old consensus, says Reno, and adopt a “politics of solidarity” that emphasizes “stability, order, and a sense of ‘home’ to the American people.”

In “How Gay Marriage Changed America,” Matthew Schmitz explains how today’s gender ideology, religious intolerance, political polarization, and radicalization are the direct consequences of Obergefell v. Hodges which legalized same-sex “marriage” in 2015. According to Schmitz, this was because “Gay marriage was the first great triumph of cancel culture,” giving an ongoing advantage to leftist activists willing to play dirty. Opponents of gay marriage didn’t lose the argument so much as they were “silenced, fired, or forced out of important institutions.”

Nine years later, the same cancellers now make up the radical Left, using the same tactics to pressure moderate liberals into increasingly extreme positions.

Other essays in the volume cover more specific issues: wokeness, feminism, environmentalism, education, immigration, the deep state, and abortion. Each does the important work of setting the record straight about where the Church stands on these issues. In short, the Church is always on the side of life, true happiness, and the common good – even as the Church’s reasoning is nuanced, appreciating the complexities of these subjects.

Two personal accounts that stand out: “Arrested by the FBI” by Mark Houck; and “Catholic in the FBI: How the Feds Weaponized Against the Church” by Kyle Seraphin. Both essays illustrate how the FBI and the DOJ are being mobilized against political opponents. Houck was a pro-life activist and father of seven whose house was invaded by FBI agents at dawn. Despite cooperating and posing no threat to anyone, FBI agents roughly took him into custody and threatened him with years in jail for a minor altercation he had with an abortion worker years earlier. Although he won his case and is now running for Congress, many others are currently languishing in jail for the crime of peacefully opposing abortion.

A former FBI agent, Seraphin describes how the agency has begun to surveil, harass, and intimidate law-abiding Americans. During his time as an agent, Seraphin first objected to taking the COVID-19 vaccine, citing religious exceptions, and later blew the whistle on the FBI targeting parents at school board meetings, pro-life activists, and “radical traditionalist Catholics.” For speaking out, he was suspended indefinitely without pay while the FBI continues these operations.

Two essays conclude with recommendations about how to help bring faithful Catholics to political engagement – beyond mere voting. In “Fake News: How to Navigate the Media,” Daily Signal reporter Mary Margaret Olohan offers ways for Catholics to read the news without falling prey to propaganda. And in the final essay, “So You Want to Be a Catholic Activist,” Peter Wolfgang gives practical guidance on how to actually fight the good fight – which includes reading Catholic commentary from The Catholic Thing, Crisis Magazine, and First Things – three publications I happen to write for.

Although the book is far from comprehensive – I would have appreciated more input on the economy and culture – it manages to cover many crucial issues.

More importantly, each argument proceeds from a faith-centered perspective, not a partisan one. And this is as it should be. One of the many benefits of Christian belief is the ability to transcend partisanship and seek solutions that respect the dignity and value of all people. This is difficult in any age, but particularly the current one.

As the essays of For God, Country, and Sanity show, it’s still possible – indeed necessary – for all Americans, especially Catholics, to try.

You may also enjoy:

Hadley Arkes On the Moral Alchemy of the Political Party

George J. Marlin Rustbelt Catholics Voters Put Trump over the Top

AUTHOR

Auguste Meyrat

Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds an MA in Humanities and an MEd in Educational Leadership. He is the senior editor of The Everyman and has written essays for The Federalist, The American Thinker, and The American Conservative as well as the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2024 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

With 161 Dead, Biden Welcomes Islamic New Year of ‘Peace’ thumbnail

With 161 Dead, Biden Welcomes Islamic New Year of ‘Peace’

By Jihad Watch

“Jill and I wish a Happy Islamic New Year to all families who celebrate.”

“Jill and I wish a Happy Islamic New Year to all families who celebrate. May the arrival of the 1446 Hijri New Year bring you love, peace, and prosperity,” Joe Biden tweeted.

If there’s anything that a new Islamic year is least likely to usher in, it’s “peace.”

As The Religion of Peace reports, the June 29 through July 5 week already marked 28 attacks, 161 deaths, 162 injuries, and 6 suicide blasts in 11 countries.

In June, there were 63 attacks, 562 were killed and 559 wounded.

Islam, we are repeatedly told, means peace. But peace in Islam means submission. And the only way to achieve submission is through conquest. When Muslims kill non-Muslims, they’re fighting for peace. And the Koran tells them that only when all non-Muslims are conquered, enslaved or converted will there be peace.

Islamists devoutly wish for peace and that’s why Jihadists killed over 500 people in June. How many people will die in the Islamic new year? As many as it takes in Islam’s thousand-year genocidal quest for peace.

Peaceful massacres are constantly either breaking out or on the verge of breaking out.

French intelligence agents have arrested would-be ISIS suicide bombers after they thwarted two terror plots targeting the Paris Olympics.

I’m not sure how much more peace we can take.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘No Future for Jews’: Pro-Hamas Far Left Shocking Win in France Election, Violent Riots Ensue Celebrating Le Pen’s Loss

The Complicity of Those ‘Innocent Civilians’ In Gaza

Canada: Islamic State jihadi who returned to Canada is charged with terrorism offenses

To be more ‘diverse and inclusive,’ KFC Canada drops pork and makes all chicken halal

Bidenites Continue to Flout Taylor Force Act — But Are Under New Pressure to Comply

Communists and Islamists Take France

‘Don’t be fooled’ by Iran’s ‘bogus election of a puppet president’

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Antisemitism Of The Sánchez Government Does Not Reflect The Reality Of Spain thumbnail

The Antisemitism Of The Sánchez Government Does Not Reflect The Reality Of Spain

By Middle East Media Research Institute

MEMRI Daily Brief No. 617

Spain is not an antisemitic country, but our government has embraced the most radical antisemitic positions as a political strategy. Taking a stand in favor of Hamas’ demands is not defending the Palestinians – it is defending their submission to a terrorist group. Taking a stand in favor of Hamas is also taking a stand against the Arabs in the region who want peace and freedom. It is shameful that the government of Spain uses the term “genocide” to talk about the legitimate defense of Israel against the attacks of a terrorist group that demands the annihilation of the state of Israel. That is the meaning of the phrase “from the river to the sea,” which is repeated with childish ignorance by some young Spaniards.

The First Genocide, In Which The Population Is Increasing

Genocide? It must be the most incompetent genocide in history. In 1948, 156,000 Arabs lived in Israel.[1] At the end of 2020, the number of Arab citizens of Israel was 1,595,300, constituting some 17.2% of the total population.[2] Furthermore, in 2022, the U.S. government estimated the total Palestinian population at 3 million in the West Bank and 2 million in the Gaza Strip.[3] According to 2023 data, Gaza has an annual population growth rate of 1.99%,[4] while the West Bank has a population growth rate of 2.07%.[5] Hence, this would be the first genocide in which the population is increasing instead of decreasing.

Moreover, during the current war in Gaza, in order to minimize civilian casualties, the IDF made phone calls and sent text messages to the residents of buildings designated for attack.[6] Giving warnings of an attack in advance, helping to evacuate civilians, and providing aid is the opposite of a genocide.

What Is A Proportionate Response To A Massacre?

Some governments paternalistically accuse Israel of a “disproportionate” response to the October 7 attacks. Yet, what is a proportionate response to murder, rape, and burning babies? Did governments ever demand a “proportionate response” from the Allies in World War II against Nazi Germany or from Ukraine against Putin’s Russia? What is the proportionate response to the daily incessant missile attacks on Israeli territory? What should Israel have done? To rape, torture, kidnap, and murder innocents in the exact numbers that Hamas did?

The high number of casualties is the result, first and foremost, of the fact that Hamas uses civilians as human shields and hides terrorists and weapons in hospitals and schools.

If the members of the Spanish government and their political allies believe the figures of dead women and children provided by Hamas, they should ask themselves several things. Whose fault is it for keeping, supposedly, thousands of children and women in a war zone where an attack has been announced? It is worth noting that the Geneva Convention prohibits the use of civilian centers for military activity. Using civilian facilities to launch attacks is a war crime.

Nevertheless, Hamas political bureau member Mousa Abu Marzouk said in an October 27, 2023 interview that aired on Russia Today TV that the tunnels in Gaza were built to protect Hamas fighters from airstrikes, and not civilians.[7] In an October 26, 2023 address, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh also said: “The blood of the women, children and elderly […] we are the ones who need this blood, so it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit, so it awakens with us resolve.”[8] Most recently, Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar exalted the deaths of Palestinians as a way to help increase pressure on Israel.[9]

Double Standards

It is shameful that the Spanish government repeats, as if they were valid, the death tolls released by the Hamas Ministry of Health, and does not take into consideration tolls provided by independent entities or even by the UN, which revised down the casualty figures.[10] Could you imagine the diplomatic conflict that would have been generated if the “torture” figures that the Basque nationalist political party Batasuna invented had been accepted in Spain’s war against the ETA?

Spreading false figures provided by a terrorist organization should be embarrassing in a country like Spain that has fought for decades so that the disinformation provided by the ETA and Batasuna would not be accepted by foreign media.

No Israeli Blockade

Gaza also lives off Israel. In 2021, Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories announced that from January 31, 2021 to February 6, 2021, 2,116 trucks had entered to Gaza from the Kerem Shalom crossing, carrying 61,858 tons of goods and equipment and 3,229,601 liters of fuel and diesel. Furthermore, the activity of the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration in the first half of 2023 focused on bringing money into Gaza, in a sum exceeding 110 million shekels, increasing the number of workers from the Gaza Strip in Israel (the quota increased to 18,500 workers), streamlining the acceptance procedure for medical treatment in Israel, operating shuttle buses to transport patients from the Erez crossing to hospitals in Israel, establishing an oncology clinic in a hospital in Gaza, and more.[11]

If anyone is blockading Gaza and wants nothing to do with Hamas, it is clearly Egypt, which, along with many other Arab countries such as Jordan, is unwilling to take in Palestinian refugees from Gaza. It is no coincidence that Egypt built a large wall along the border with Gaza, as the El-Sisi regime doesn’t want to import terrorism and doesn’t want to strengthen the fundamentalist ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood in the country.

Queers For Palestine

When we hear pro-Hamas slogans at an LGTBQ or feminist protest, one cannot stop thinking about the fact that Gaza, under the dictatorship of Hamas, a terrorist organization that has refused to hold elections since 2006, executes homosexuals and oppresses women and children. As Bill Maher said, can you tell me where there is a gay bar in Gaza? Israel has freedom and Pride celebrations, but in Gaza, if you are gay, you get killed. Show up in Gaza with a Queers For Palestine banner and see what happens.

Ironically, were members of movements such as “Gays for Palestine” and “Queers for Palestine” to live in Gaza, they would probably need to seek asylum in Israel. In February 2024, amid the current Gaza war, an Israeli court decided that Palestinian LGBTQ individuals may do so. Tel Aviv District Court Judge Michal Agmon Gonen ruled that “Palestinians threatened due to their sexual orientation can apply for asylum.”[12]

Many protestors say that they are not antisemitic, only anti-Zionist – as if that were a justification. And what is Zionism? Zionism is the fight and defense of an independent Jewish state, and comes from Zion, a hill in the city of Jerusalem. It is surely then antisemitism to demand that a democracy like Israel – which offers freedom of speech and freedom of religion for all, as stated in the 1948 Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel – justify its defense of its right to exist, while accepting all the lies spread by Hamas’ terrorist dictatorship.

The Spanish Government Recognizes Palestine

It is shameful that the Spanish government has announced its recognition of the nonexistent Palestinian state, when no agreement conditions have been given for such a state. Hamas has neither renounced its goal of annihilating and destroying the State of Israel nor demonstrated its will for a peace agreement. Furthermore, Hamas and its ally Hizbullah continue to attack Israel. At this stage, recognition of a Palestinian state is remuneration for terrorism. Calling it an essential step for peace is nonsense.

Arabs have rejected the sharing of the land with Jews five times, in 2008, 2000, 1967, 1947 and 1936. As long as Palestinian leaders continue to stand by the slogan “from the river to the sea” – meaning the destruction of Israel – it is not possible to believe that they will accept a two-state solution.

It is laughable that Spain’s second Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Diaz said that the “river to the sea” slogan endorses the two-state solution. This is simply a way of whitewashing Hamas, which considers Palestine to comprise the entire territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, with no rights for the Jewish people. This appears clearly in the Hamas Charter – a religious,  antisemitic document calling for uncompromising war against Jews until Judgement Day and rejects ceding even an inch of the land of Palestine.[13]

The recognition of a Palestinian state without a qualified majority in the Spanish parliament, and without an agreement that Hamas should end its terrorist policies and relinquish its goal to eliminate Israel, is antisemitic and rewards terrorism.

From The River To The Sea – Free Of Hamas

Yes, the Spanish government and its political allies are antisemitic. Spain itself is not. When the Spanish government takes sides with a terrorist dictatorship that murders homosexuals, oppresses women, and attacks the only democracy in the Middle East, it means that the Sanchez government is allying itself with the enemies of the West and of liberal democracies in furtherance of its own political interests.

Defending Israel and fighting Hamas mean defending freedom – especially for the Palestinians, who are being intimidated and held hostage by an Islamist dictatorship. Hence, in order for Muslims, Jews, and Christians to live in freedom, we need from the river to the sea to be free of Hamas.

AUTHOR

DR. DANIEL LACALLE

Dr. Daniel Lacalle is a member of MEMRI Board of Advisors. He is a renowned Spanish economist, author, and commentator on political and economic world affairs.

Sources:

[1] Jewishvirtuallibrary.org/israeli-arab-statistics

[2] En.idi.org.il/articles/38540, March 17, 2022.

[3] State.gov/reports/2022-report-on-international-religious-freedom/israel-west-bank-and-gaza/west-bank
-and-gaza/#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20government%20estimates%20the,Gaza%20Strip%20(midyear%202022).

[4] Cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/gaza-strip/

[5] Cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/west-bank/

[6] Bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67327079, November 8, 2023.

[7] See MEMRI TV Clip No. 10585, Hamas Official Mousa Abu Marzouk: The Tunnels In Gaza Were Built To Protect Hamas Fighters, Not Civilians; Protecting Gaza Civilians Is The Responsibility Of The U.N. And Israel, October 27, 2023.

[8] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 10911, Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh: We Need The Blood Of Women, Children, And The Elderly Of Gaza – So It Awakens Our Revolutionary Spirit, October 27, 2023.

[9] Wsj.com/world/middle-east/gaza-chiefs-brutal-calculation-civilian-bloodshed-will-help-hamas-626720e7, June 10, 2024.

[10] Bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-69014893, May 16, 2024.

[11] Facebook.com/COGAT.ARABIC/videos/272993988794892/?extid=CL-UNK-UNK-UNK-AN_
GK0T-GK1C&ref=sharing&mibextid=Nif5oz, August 15, 2023.

[12] Haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-02-07/ty-article/.premium/foreign-ministry-boasts-lgbtq-palestinian-asylum-ruling-
interior-minister-seeks-reversal/0000018d-83fb-dfd5-adff-dbfbc7a00000, February 7, 2024; Jpost.com/israel-news/article-785171, February 5, 2024.

[13] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 10897, The Hamas Charter – The Ideology Behind The Massacre, October 23, 2023.

EDITORS NOTE: This MEMRI column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Biblical Roots of American Law and Why It’s Necessary to Return to Them thumbnail

The Biblical Roots of American Law and Why It’s Necessary to Return to Them

By Family Research Council

America is at a crisis point. While it’s easy to dismiss presidential candidates brashly proclaiming November to be the most important election in the nation’s history as mere votemongering, their words may have a kernel of truth at their center. At present, America is facing something of an identity crisis: the principles and truths upon which the nation was founded have been largely shouldered out of the public square, leaving a sort of vacuum which demands to be filled.

The question before the nation now is whether to restore those principles and truths to their rightful place or attempt to retroactively replace the country’s foundation, which will likely result in chaos and will certainly result in the creation and proliferation of an entity radically different to the United States which has stood for nearly 250 years.

American Founding Father and the nation’s first vice president John Adams famously declared, “Our [C]onstitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” This truth seems to have been largely forgotten and even inverted today. To read frequent disappointing judicial opinions and listen to the lectures and arguments of legislators, one might think that the Constitution was rather made to tame or shape an otherwise moral and religious people.

Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin expressed this point of view when he chided a fellow state legislator for supporting the biblical definition of marriage. Raskin quipped, “Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.”

Yet America’s founding principles are rooted in that Bible and in centuries of Christian theology, philosophy, and morality. It is not so much, as Raskin implied, that the Bible and the Constitution are mutually exclusive doctrines, but rather that the Bible itself upholds the Constitution. An attempt to use the Constitution to suppress the Bible is the proverbial attempt to saw off a tree branch that the man with the saw is sitting upon at that very moment.

Who devised the idea of community and society if not God — the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — who is Society itself? The very first thing in the created world that God named “not good” was solitude, an absence of community and society (Genesis 2:18). Who devised the idea of law, of right and wrong, if not God, who gave to Moses the Ten Commandments and who, through the prophets and finally in the Person of Christ, declared unequivocally what was right and what was wrong? Who devised the idea of government if not God, the King of Kings and Prince of Peace? And who determined that man was fit to rule if not God, who made man in His image and likeness, who gave to him free will, who granted him dominion over all other creatures?

The very tenets which the American Constitution is founded upon were established by God Himself and are in fact rooted in the teachings and truths enumerated in the Bible. Without those teachings and truths, chaos alone would reign. How could society possibly be defined — much less defended and bettered — by its own self? On what authority could a society or a portion of a society claim to enact and enforce law, to govern, or to give or deny others a say in law and government?

Without God and the truths He established in the Bible, there would be no authority. What man may claim to rule or argue that his notion of right and wrong is more right than another man’s if the highest authority he might cite is just his own self? All arguments would become circular then, resolved only by violence, by brute force. The only truth which could be relied upon, as C.S. Lewis so brilliantly explained in “The Abolition of Man,” would be fickle feelings and irrational appetites.

But those very tenets which the American Constitution was founded upon have been crowded out, silenced, and labeled second-rate. The Jamie Raskins of the world insist that a man’s sacred duty is not to uphold a sacred and divinely-ordained moral code, but a legal document written by demonstrably flawed and imperfect men nearly three centuries ago. Turning again to the wisdom of Lewis, we can see, “Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.” Today, men are forbidden to honor the sacred scriptures, and so they honor instead an ever-expanding legal document which, cut off from the Word of God, is rapidly becoming poisonous.

This is not to disparage the Constitution, of course. The men who wrote it were learned and sincere, and many of them were wise. They were largely brought up on the classics, studying both the good ideas and the bad of the past several thousand years, but careful not to confuse the former for the latter or vice versa. Most prudently of all, they based their notions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on the truth and morality which Christianity has lovingly preserved for some 2,000 years. The document they wrote, the Constitution, was a good one, but not a divinely-inspired one.

In fact, without the Bible and the truths it safeguards and passes down from generation to generation, the Constitution could not have been written and the American experiment never tried. It was the Christian understanding of the imago Dei which emboldened the Framers to declare that man might participate in government. It was the Christian notion of human dignity which enabled the Framers to rule that your vote counts the same as mine. And it was the example of Christ crucified which encouraged these men to not merely write down their ideas but to fight and, in many cases, die for them. A man would not go to war for the sake of a poem he has written, nor would he die for an ingenious work of fiction. It is the biblical truths upon which the Constitution is based which inspired the Founding Fathers to fight and die, in the hopes of preserving and safeguarding these truths for future generations of Americans.

But now the saw is nearly through the branch, and America is hanging precariously by a thread. The demonic anti-sacrament of abortion, the worship of the chief of the seven deadly sins in Pride Month, the diabolical practices of transgenderism are all clear and sure signs that a ghastly new religion has arisen from Hell to challenge Christianity and supplant it as the basis of Western civilization. If the American Constitution remains rooted — or is rather re-rooted — in Christianity, America will survive, prosper, and thrive. If not — if the cult of leftism has its way — if sin and degeneracy, butchery and debauchery are worshipped and idolized — if the word of man is placed on a par with or higher than the Word of God — then America, and indeed the whole of Western civilization with it, will be plunged into the abyss.

In its place will be erected a soulless facsimile, devoid of life, devoid of virtue, devoid even of the knowledge of virtue or the acknowledgement of the difference between virtue and vice. It will bear the same name, it will have many of the same buildings, the same domed Capitol, the same White House, the same Statue of Liberty, but it will be a radically different entity. The America of the past 250 years will have died, and something else entirely will have taken its dead skin and put it on like a suit, like a costume.

A return to the nation’s roots, to the Word of God, to an understanding of goodness and not virtue as defined by God — not by man! — is an urgent necessity if the nation is to live.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Pro-Abortion Groups Ramp Up Spending ahead of Elections – But So Do Pro-Life Groups

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Poll: GOP Voters Seek Strong Party Platform on Life, Family, Religious Freedom thumbnail

Poll: GOP Voters Seek Strong Party Platform on Life, Family, Religious Freedom

By Family Research Council

As Republicans converge upon Milwaukee, Wisconsin next week to work out their party platform as part of the lead-up to the GOP’s national convention, it’s clear that the big question for delegates will be the issues. In recent days, some party officials have hinted at “paring down” the GOP platform, causing many to wonder which issues will be left on the table.

A new poll released today shows that the issues of life, the family, and religious liberty are still at the forefront of GOP voters’ minds. The survey, conducted by WPA Opinion Research, showed continued concern about these issues, which have been core to the Republican platforms for decades.

WPA put this question to 1,000 likely voters: “Leading up to 2024 the Republican Party Platform has included strong positions on unborn human life, strengthening the family, and religious freedom. Would these issues impact your vote this fall a lot, just some, not too much, or not at all?”

The poll found 62% of Republican voters said that the party platform positions on these issues would impact their vote (37% said it would impact it “a lot,” and 25% said it would impact it “just some”).

On the issue of life, the survey showed that 66% of GOP voters think that Republicans should keep (32%) or strengthen (34%) the party’s current platform position on the protection of unborn life. The 2016 Republican Platform contains a substantial statement on the life issue, including calling for a constitutional amendment protecting unborn life, and both federal and state protections for the unborn.

Regarding the issue of families and religious freedom, GOP voters likewise were not backing down. Of the likely Republican voters, 74% said that the party should either keep the current positions (23%) or adopt a stronger position (51%).

The polling was commissioned by FRC Action, which earlier this week launched its Platform Integrity Project to influence the platform committee to keep or strengthen its conservative planks. FRC Action Chairman Tony Perkins, who will also be serving as a delegate from Louisiana to the Republican Platform Committee, made these comments about the polling:

“This survey demonstrates a bold, clearly articulated platform that continues to embrace life, promotes the family, and defends religious freedom matters to voters.

“The platform not only gives insight to voters, it gives direction to Republican elected officials. According to research by Dr. Lee Payne, the parties follow their platforms. Between 1980 and 2004, Republican lawmakers followed their platform 82 percent of the time.

“As Ronald Reagan noted, ‘There are cynics who say that a party platform is something that no one bothers to read, and it doesn’t very often amount to much.’ But he said ‘a banner of bold unmistakable colors with no pale pastels’ would reveal the difference between Republicans and the other party.

“America is in an unprecedented place of moral and cultural confusion and is in dire need of leadership and moral clarity. The Republican Party must once again communicate a clear and hopeful contrast between the parties by painting a message for voters on the foundational issues — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — not in pale pastels but in bright, bold colors.”

The Republican Platform Committee will begin meeting Monday, July 8 in Milwaukee.

AUTHOR

Jared Bridges

Jared Bridges is editor-in-chief of The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Pro-Abortion Groups Ramp Up Spending ahead of Elections – But So Do Pro-Life Groups

EDITOS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

On Christian Nationalism thumbnail

On Christian Nationalism

By The Catholic Thing

David Carlin: American Catholics don’t have a choice of whether or not to be Christian nationalists.  We are condemned to be Christian nationalists.  Our only choice is between (a) being a good and wise Christian nationalist and (b) being a bad and foolish Christian nationalist.

I have a confession to make: I am a Christian nationalist.

Or to put this in terms I am more comfortable with: I am a patriotic American who finds theoretical justification for his patriotism in his Christianity – or to be more precise, in his preferred version of Christianity, the Catholic faith.

Being a Christian nationalist, I am, in the eyes of my “progressive” fellow Americans, guilty of a double sin.  (I’m not sure “sin” is the right word in this context, at least not if sin is understood to be an offense against God, since the average progressive either doesn’t believe in God or believes only barely.)

My first sin is the sin of nationalism.  From a progressive point of view, nationalism is always a bad thing, since the spirit of nationalism has been the cause of immense human suffering.  For it was this spirit that was the predominant cause of World War I and World War II, the two most destructive and most homicidal wars in the history of the human race.

Since the end of WWII, all wise persons – says the progressive narrative – have understood that the spirit of nationalism must be replaced by a cosmopolitan spirit.  We must learn to think of ourselves, not so much as citizens of this or that particular nation, but as citizens of the world.  In Europe, the great cockpit of almost limitless war, nations must be replaced with a United States of Europe, toward which ultimate goals, the Common Market and the European Union, have been only intermediate steps.

The trouble with this critique of nationalism is that it fails to make the classic Aristotelian distinctions among (a) a good thing and (b) its excess and (c) its deficiency.  If we were to ask Aristotle how much aspirin we should take for a headache, he would reply: “Take just the right amount, not too much and not too little.”  And if we were to ask him how nationalistic we should be, he’d answer: “If you have too little nationalism, your nation will fall apart.  If you have too much, your nation will become a bully to its neighbors.  Seek the golden mean of nationalism.”

The second sin committed by Christian nationalists, again according to the progressive perspective, is that by blending Christianity with nationalism we corrupt Christianity, the essence of which is love of one’s fellow human beings, regardless of race, religion, nationality, gender, economic status, sexual orientation, etc.

This “true” spirit of Christianity bears a striking resemblance to the spirit of cosmopolitanism.  By contrast, say the critics, Christian nationalism encourages an attitude of “my country right or wrong” – a decidedly un-Christian (and un-cosmopolitan) attitude.  What’s more, in blending Christianity and nationalism, the nationalistic element of the blend will almost always overwhelm the Christian element.

Let us once again don our Aristotelian thinking caps.  In any combination of Christianity and American nationalism, there’s always the risk that the nationalistic element of the combination will be too great and the Christian element too little, and this may well produce un-Christian national policies.  Likewise, there is the risk that the Christian element will be too great and the nationalistic element too little, and this will lead to a kind of theocracy at home and a naiveté in foreign affairs.  We must seek the golden mean, the “just right” mix of Christianity and nationalism.

“However,” it will be objected, “this is hard.”  To which objection Aristotle replied long ago: “It’s hard to hit the target, very easy to miss it.”  But he didn’t think that difficulty was a good reason for not aiming at the target.  We may also remember what another philosopher, Spinoza, once said: “All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”

If you are both a Christian and an American nationalist, it will be psychologically impossible not to combine the two, not to be a Christian nationalist.  Maybe you’ll be a good Christian nationalist or maybe a bad one, but in any case, it will be impossible for you to refrain from blending your religion and your nationalism.

By contrast, it’s quite possible to put your Christian convictions and feelings on the shelf while working on a mathematical problem.  When it comes to mathematics, there is no difference between a Christian mathematician and an atheistic mathematician.  But if you are trying to solve a problem in politics, there will generally be a difference – often a very big difference – between atheistic and Christian political thinkers.

In theory (or rather, in imagination) a Christian thinking about politics can put his Christian beliefs and sentiments on the shelf while attempting to solve a political problem – like a Christian mathematician.  But in practice it’s impossible – at least if the Christian in question is the least bit serious about his religion.

The same is true of atheists who think about political issues.  Many an atheistic political thinker will say, “I am not an atheistic political thinker.  I am a political thinker who just happens to be an atheist.  When I try to solve a political problem, I don’t look for an atheistic solution.  I just look for a good solution – good for all Americans regardless of their religious or philosophical persuasions.  Like a good scientist or mathematician, I try to do my thinking in a metaphysically neutral way.”

But this is self-deception.  Your metaphysical worldview, whether Christian or atheist or something else, cannot be prevented from seeping into your political thought.  The mind of a human being is not constructed that way.  It is not made of hermetically sealed compartments in which the contents of one compartment will never “bleed” into adjoining compartments.  The human mind is composed of hundreds of leaky compartments.

American Catholics don’t have a choice of whether or not to be Christian nationalists.  We are condemned to be Christian nationalists.  Our only choice is between (a) being a good and wise Christian nationalist and (b) being a bad and foolish Christian nationalist.

David Carlin

David Carlin is a retired professor of sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island, and the author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America, Three Sexual Revolutions: Catholic, Protestant, Atheist, and most recently Atheistic Humanism, the Democratic Party, and the Catholic Church.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2024 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

EXCLUSIVE: Conservative Women’s Group Launches ‘She Prays She Votes’ Bus Tour Ahead of 2024 Election thumbnail

EXCLUSIVE: Conservative Women’s Group Launches ‘She Prays She Votes’ Bus Tour Ahead of 2024 Election

By The Daily Signal

With only four months until the 2024 presidential election, Concerned Women for America is launching a bus tour through 12 states calling on U.S. women to pray for the nation and vote on Nov. 5.

“We recognize the impact of a woman who prays for her country, her community, and her family,” Penny Nance, CEO and president of Concerned Women for America, said in a press release Monday.

When prayer is combined “with political activism, it is a powerful force,” Nance added.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

The “She Prays She Votes” bus tour kicks off Monday at the U.S. Capitol before beginning the drive to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention July 15 – 18.

The big pink bus will make tour stops in battleground states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. In church parking lots and event halls, Concerned Women for America, in partnership with Patriot Mobile, will host rallies encouraging conservative Christian women to serve as poll workers or poll watchers on election day, and seek the face of God for the future of the country.

“This year, the stakes could not be higher, and CWA is doing everything in its power to motivate and activate Christians across the country to get to the polls and vote for men and women who champion their values,” Nance said.

“Unfortunately, Americans have learned the hard lesson over the last three and half years that elections have consequences,” she said. “The policies of the Biden administration and their amen corner in Congress have disrupted our economic security, our national security, and the security and safety of our families.”

Nance warns that the sitting president and “elites in Washington would rather shut Christians out of the political process, raiding their homes, spying on their activities, and calling them extremists,” likely referring to incidents such as the Biden administration’s arrests of pro-life Americans such as Mark Houck and Paul Vaughn.

“The only way to stop these attacks on Christians is to get involved, securing their vote on Election Day, Nov. 5,” Nance said.

Founded in 1979, Concerned Women for America is the largest public policy women’s organization in the U.S.

The 2024 prelection tour marks the fifth bus tour the conservative Christian nonprofit has undertaken and aims to be its largest yet.

In 2012, Concerned Women for America launched its first bus tour to pray for the coming election and encourage women to practice their right to vote.

The nonprofit launched similar tours in 2018 and 2020 to support and pray for now Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett during their Senate confirmation hearings.

Photo 1: Concerned Women for America

Photo 2: Concerned Women for America

During the midterm elections in 2022, Concerned Women for America again loaded up a large bus and called on U.S. women to vote and pray for the nation’s future.

Related Posts:

Trump Vows: I Will Rip Up, Throw Away WHO Pandemic Agreement

This Election Is Trump’s to Lose

CNN Sets Itself on Fire Before Hosting First Presidential Debate

AUTHOR

Virginia Allen

Virginia Allen is a senior news producer for The Daily Signal and host of “The Daily Signal Podcast” and “Problematic Women.” Send an email to Virginia. Virginia on X: @Virginia_Allen5/

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Debate Takeaways For Israel thumbnail

Debate Takeaways For Israel

By Center For Security Policy

There was nothing remotely surprising about U.S. President Joe Biden’s performance at the presidential debate in Atlanta on Thursday night. The doddering, muttering, angry and seemingly confused man staring emptily, with mouth agape who stood on the CNN debate stage was the same man who has shown up before the cameras nearly every day since Biden was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 2021.

The Democratic commentators on CNN and the other Democratic Party-aligned media could have pretended that there was nothing off about Biden’s performance. They have been doing that for the past three-and-a-half years. The question is why they chose to respond to the debate by unanimously panning his performance. Why did every single CNN commentator insist that Biden cannot continue as the Democratic candidate for president?

The second question is: What does this mean for Israel?

On the first question, it has been clear from the outset that American voters like neither former President Donald Trump nor Biden. The race has always hinged on who it’s about. Would it be a referendum on Trump or Biden? If it is a referendum on Biden, then Trump wins and vice-versa. Trump was leading going into the debate because until Thursday night, Biden’s efforts to make the race a referendum on Trump had come up short.

The commentators’ immediate condemnation of the president’s performance and the widespread reports of “panic” among the Democratic Party leadership from the first moments of the debate made clear that the party’s leadership decided that the race was indeed a referendum on Biden. If he is the candidate on the ballot in November, then Trump will be the next president.

Since the Democrats don’t want that, having made the race a referendum on Biden, the only move left is for Biden to be forced to step aside and for someone else to be selected as the party’s nominee at the Democratic convention in Chicago in late August.

Whether Biden’s replacement is former first lady Michelle Obama, California Gov. Gavin Newsom or Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, the nominee will immediately become the hands-down favorite to win in November. Untainted by the president’s baggage as an incumbent, his replacement will be able to make the race a referendum on Trump, and he or she will win.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Caroline Glick

Caroline B. Glick is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy. She is a senior columnist at Israel Hayom and the author of The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, (Crown Forum, 2014). From 1994 to 1996, she served as a core member of Israel’s negotiating team with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

RELATED ARTICLES:

The White House is TERRIFIED of the upcoming Netanyahu speech in Congress

ROOKE: The Party Running On Saving Democracy Wants To Rig Their Election

Biden Tells Dem Governors He’s Fine Except For His ‘Brain’

Years Of Media Misdirection Over Biden Mental State Are Unraveling Before Our Eyes

WaPo Editorial Board Writes Bizarre Biden Withdrawal Speech

EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Independence Day Message to the American People thumbnail

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Independence Day Message to the American People

By Dr. Rich Swier

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted the following Independence Day message to the America people on X:

On this Fourth of July, I want to thank the American people for being true to their birthright, the Spirit of 1776, and wish them a happy and blessed Independence Day.

Through thick and thin, for the past nine months, Israel has deeply appreciated vital American support.

In these times of national crisis, as the people of Israel fight a seven-front war for our national survival against Iran and its terror proxies, it is heartening to know that far from standing alone, we have the support of the greatest democracy the world has ever known.

Character is revealed in times of crisis. In the face of Hamas’s savagery on October 7, the people of Israel connected to the deepest foundations of our national being. As one, we rose to fight our enemies with the heroism, determination, and resilience that characterized our heroes from the days of Joshua and the Maccabees, passed down across time to the warriors of the modern State of Israel.

America stands with Israel because Americans are similarly moved by the legacy of their forefathers. At their base, Israel and America are guided by the same twin insights. Freedom is the most precious gift humanity will ever know. And freedom isn’t free. You have to be willing to fight for it.

Israelis saw on October 7 what it would mean if we ever lost our freedom. We understood this is not a war of choice but a war for survival.

Americans saw the atrocities of October 7, and they understood the stakes as well, not just for Israel but for the free world as a whole. Israel, a peace-loving democracy and America’s closest ally in the Middle East, was invaded by an army of jihadists bent on annihilation and subjugation. The same forces attacked America on September 11. Standing with Israel came naturally and immediately for Americans. They understood that for this march of murder and tyranny to end, Israel must win this war.

Tyrannical ayatollahs that rule Iran stand at the apex of the axis of jihad, murder, and war. They and their henchmen view Israel and the United States as their mortal enemies.

The outcome of this war is not in question. Israel will remain true to our ancient and modern legacy.

We will win this war. We are strengthened with the sure knowledge that as we move forward toward victory we will be supported by our great friend, the United States of America.

©2024. Dr. Rich Swier, All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Can Israel afford to stand up to America?

Muslims Burn American Flags in NYC on Independence Day thumbnail

Muslims Burn American Flags in NYC on Independence Day

By Conservative Commandos Radio Show

AUN-TV published the following column.  Please read and share it.

WATCH! Muslims Burn American Flags in NYC on Independence Day

By Dana Allen • AUN-TV

DEVELOPING STORY: Hundreds of Muslims and anti-Jewish protesters stormed Washington Square in New York City. The mob burned multiple American flags. There were dozens of Palestinian flags on display.

This is happening on Independence Day, America’s freedom celebration.

At least one young American, who was wearing Old Glory as a cape, was physically assaulted. It’s time to round up every Muslim protester and their allies and ship them back to Gaza.

We have graciously allowed these savages into our nation. In return, they burn our flag.

©2024. and AUN-TV. All rights reserved.

NEW REPORT: “How K-12 Students Are Being Used to ‘Globalize the Intifada'” thumbnail

NEW REPORT: “How K-12 Students Are Being Used to ‘Globalize the Intifada'”

By Canary Mission

When the California State Board of Education decided to include an ethnic studies program for the state’s K-12 public school students in 2018, it formed a committee to write the curriculum.

However, the committee came up with classes that were so antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-white and anti-American that, by 2020, the board of education vetoed the ugly content.

The state eventually approved a modified version of the curriculum in March 2021 but also allowed each school district to draft its own curriculum if it desired.

These organizations have found ways to push their antisemitic, anti-American agenda into America’s K-12 schools.

A course titled: “An Introduction to the Middle East for Third Graders” that accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and promotes the right of return (a Palestinian talking point discredited as a means to eliminate Israel).

A course titled: “Stolen Land” that teaches the “subject of separation walls in Palestine and along the US-Mexico border” and encourages students to engage in anti-American and anti-Israel political activism, including participation in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Resources for Learning More About the War on Gaza, which include the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USPCR)’s Together We Rise: Palestine as a Model of Resistance, Noura Erakat’s article in Jadaliyya justifying the October 7 massacre, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and anti-Israel activist Mohammed El-Kurd. Other resources include the anti-Israel books P is for Palestine by Golbarg Bassi and They Called Me A Lioness: A Palestinian Girl’s Fight For Freedom by Ahed Tamimi.

A Lesson Outline utilizing Osama Bin Laden’s 2004 speeches

An article promoting PFLP terrorist Ghassan Kanafani

Shoman and Sokolower also provide hands-on “teach-ins” to train teachers in their ideology.

COALITION FOR LIBERATED ETHNIC STUDIES

In the fall of 2021, building on the success of LES in California, Sokolower founded a nationwide organization called Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies (CLES). The organization’s purpose is “drawing together Ethnic Studies K-12 teachers, teacher educators, youth and community activists from across the country to organize, support each other’s local struggles, and build power.”

In November 2023, LES and CLES co-produced a Critical Media Literacy Rooted in Ethnic Studies Curriculum Toolkit for teachers and students, which includes links to lesson plans and additional resources for teachers.
The toolkit includes resources such as the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USPCR) “action toolkits,” which link to campaigns calling for BDS and an arms boycott against Israel, and a Stop Gaza Genocide toolkit, which calls on activists to join a “Summer of Resistance.”

Both LES and CLES host antisemitic lesson plans and guides on how to present the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7 and the events that followed. Israel is demonized as being a purveyor of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.”

Both groups clearly intend to mold young minds into this insidious mindset and create political activists like those on the streets of America today.

The LES curriculum begins by endorsing political “resistance,” stating, “System changes occur when people unite, mobilize and organize in coordinated resistance to disrupt and dismantle inequitable systems.”
As of December 2023, 18 school districts and the Minnesota Department of Education have been documented as having contracts with LES/CLES or having worked with members of CLES.

LES and CLES also promote materials from another anti-Israel, antisemitic curriculum called Teaching While Muslim, an organization co-founded by Nagla Bedir and Luma Hasan, both of whom are connected to the New Jersey public school system. Bedir, who reportedly has ties to the Islamist organization Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), is currently a high school social studies teacher in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Hasan, a former high school teacher, is a “curriculum specialist” in the New Jersey Attorney General’s office with the Division on Civil Rights. Teaching While Muslim is also affiliated with the New Jersey branch of the antisemitic, anti-Israel organization American Muslims for Palestine (AMP).

VIEW INFOGRAPHIK ON TEACHING WHILE MUSLIM

Teaching While Muslim offers workshops, resources, and lesson plans and promotes the BDS movement. One course, for example, is comprised of art lessons for kindergarteners. Another is a class on Zionism that says students should “develop an awareness of its colonial nature.”

The site offers a “Nakba” curriculum that “delivers the history and ongoing realities of the Nakba and its impact on Palestinian lives.” (Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” is a term used by anti-Zionists for the founding of the State of Israel.)

CRAFTING ACTIVISTS

Teaching While Muslim also promotes the curriculum suggested by Teach Palestine. It proposes a Teach Palestine Week and offers a calendar with activities and videos for middle and high school teachers that promote BDS and anti-Israel protests led by high school students, including going to college campuses to support the encampments.

The site also displays a “Free Palestine” banner at the top and offers a guide for schools and teachers “supporting student activists” in walkouts and boycotts.

In January 2024, the superintendent of schools in Holmdel, New Jersey, apologized to staff and community for directing teachers during Muslim Heritage Month to the Teaching While Muslim website, which he termed “biased and antisemitic.”

As of December 2023, 18 school districts and the Minnesota Department of Education have been documented as having contracts with LES or CLES or having worked with members of CLES.

Through teacher training events, anti-Israel organizations and K-12 “teacher-activists,” LES and CLES have promoted anti-Israel lesson plans and model curricula to schools in Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey and Oakland and through the Portland teachers’ union website, as well.

PHILADELPHIA

On January 13, 2024, the Racial Justice Organizing Committee (RJOC) held a “Teach-In for Palestine” for over two dozen K-12 teachers and education professionals. Philadelphia public school teachers Hannah Gann and Keziah Ridgeway, a member of RJOC, helped run the event, which was promoted by the virulently anti-Israel Philly Palestine Coalition.

VIEW HANNAH GAIN PILLY PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER INFOGRAPHIC

RJOC is comprised of teachers, activists and community members from Philadelphia. The group provides “Educator Lesson Plans” and lists as a resource the Teach Palestine Project. It also demands that Pennsylvania implement an ethnic studies curriculum in the K-12 grades.

In November 2023, a month after the massacre by Hamas of 1,200 Israelis, the group issued a solidarity statement with “Palestine” for “racial justice and collective liberation,” blaming the conflict on white supremacy and colonialism.

Also in Philadelphia, a group of public school teachers created anti-Israel group Philly Educators for Palestine (PEFP). The group proceeded to issue six demands to the Philly school district, including condemning the “ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.” It also accused Israel of conducting a campaign of “land theft.”

By May 2024, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights had launched an investigation into the Philly school district after parents filed a complaint alleging antisemitism in Philly’s public schools.

NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY

On February 3, 2024, NYC Educators for Palestine and Teaching While Muslim conducted a “curriculum share” for close to 80 educators from New York City and New Jersey. The educators were schooled in how to teach about the “Israeli occupation” and “genocide” and how to develop lessons that incorporate “the cause.”

VIEW RABAB ABDULHADI SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR INFOGRAPHIC

A featured speaker of the event was Rabab Abdulhadi, a professor at San Francisco State University and rabid antisemite. Abdulhadi, a co-founder of the anti-Israel Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, is infamously known for trying to bring PFLP terrorist Leila Khaled to speak to her students.

The “curriculum share” also discussed how to describe Hamas and its followers who invaded Israel on October 7 and massacred, raped, tortured and kidnapped Israelis.

Educators were told to “explore what the definition of terrorism is” and ask students, “Who gets to decide the definition? Who gets to apply it and use it?”

The Instagram post promoting the event promised: “Every teacher who attends the curriculum share WILL LEAVE WITH A COLLECTION OF LESSONS they can use with their students!!!”

“Classroom-ready resources” were provided by The Progressive Classroom Project, which says it draws content from Al Jazeera. Promotional materials also advertised that teachers would learn how to “get around censorship.”

MINNESOTA ETHNIC STUDIES CURRICULUM

In January 2024, the Minnesota Department of Education formally adopted an antisemitic, anti-Israel ethnic studies curriculum slated to go into effect in March 2026.

Through social studies classes, Minnesota public schools will teach students about the Palestinian fight for “liberation” against the oppressive “colonizer” Israel, according to documents obtained by a think tank in the state.

Critics have pointed out that Minnesota’s Department of Education “added this highly politicized ‘fifth strand’ — unauthorized by statute — to the four content areas named in law: history, government and citizenship, geography and economics.”

According to non-public documents obtained by the Center of the American Experiment, a Minnesota-based think tank, Minnesota’s Department of Education “ignored its own paid expert reviewers, and knowingly crafted academic standards that violate multiple statutory requirements.”

According to The Washington Free Beacon, “Three out of four [of the paid] reviewers criticized the standards, with one of the reviewers reportedly describing them as ‘among the worst in the nation.’ The reviewers also found that the standards were imbued with ‘pervasive leftward bias,’ divisive ideology and were unteachable in the classroom.”

Minnesota’s ethnic studies curriculum stresses student political activism – namely, “disrupting,” “dismantling,” “transforming” and “resisting” American institutions, including police departments and the justice system.

Unsurprisingly, the organizations responsible for writing the curriculum are members of CLES. They include Education for Liberation Minnesota and the Minnesota Ethnic Studies Coalition, established in 2019 to bring “liberated” ethnic studies to Minnesota.
Both organizations campaigned to rewrite social studies standards and successfully pushed the ethnic studies requirement through the Minnesota legislature. Embedded in the state’s 2023 omnibus legislation, Minnesota now mandates that every academic subject and grade may be infused with ethnic studies ideology.

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

On December 6, 2023, K-12 teachers across the Oakland Unified School District conducted a “From Oakland to Gaza” teach-in during the school day, using resources from Teach Palestine and Teaching While Muslim.

The teach-in allegedly instructed elementary school students that a “free Palestine means the annihilation of Jews.”

The teach-in was comprised of a collection of curricular resources, a virtual panel of Palestine activists and guest speakers from the Oakland community invited to speak in person in classrooms.

Included in the lesson plans was an activity for children that instructed them to “draw the Zionist bully.” Resources included the book, “P Is for Palestine: A Palestine Alphabet Book,” which includes an entry that reads: “I is for Intifada.”

Following the teach-in, at least 30 Jewish families transferred their children out of the school district. In January 2024, a complaint was filed against the district, alleging “that the District discriminated against students on the basis of national origin (shared Jewish ancestry) when District teachers held a teach-in on Palestine during the school day…”

PORTLAND, OREGON

In May 2024, the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT), the largest union of educators in the state of Oregon, published on their website a manual titled: “Palestine Teaching Resources for Educators.”

The manual was a collection of lessons, reading lists, toolkits, videos, films, mental health resources and more for K-12 educators in Portland public schools.

The resource was compiled by Oregon Educators for Palestine and offered as a companion piece to the manual “Know Your Rights! Teaching & Organizing for Palestine within Portland Public Schools,” which PAT created with Oregon Educators for Palestine.

Both documents included resources linked to the Teach Palestine and Teaching While Muslim websites. PAT had previously worked with Teach Palestine. In October 2021, the Teach Palestine founders gave a session in an October 2021 event co-sponsored by PAT, the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice Conference titled, “Rethinking Our Classrooms, Organizing for Better Schools.”

On May 28, 2024, PAT co-hosted a “Know Your Rights” advocacy workshop. Oregon Live reported that “organizers encouraged teachers to display Palestinian flags in their classrooms, wear T-shirts emblazoned with a pro-Palestinian message highly offensive to Jewish communities and lead lessons on Gaza that critics say are misleading and antisemitic.”

On June 4, 2024, amid heavy criticism, PAT pulled the lesson plans from their website. The association originally left the manual, “Know Your Rights! Teaching & Organizing for Palestine within Portland Public Schools,” on the site, but later “temporarily removed” it “with a plan to repost an “updated guide” at a later date.

HOW CALIFORNIA REFORMED ITS ANTISEMITIC ETHNIC STUDIES PROGRAM

In 2020, after much public outcry, the first California Ethnic Studies model curriculum was rejected for being anti-white, anti-American and anti-Israel. The state proceeded to approve a non-mandatory modified version of the curriculum in March 2021.

The 2021 revised version included a discussion on antisemitism and two lessons on Jewish Americans. It does not mention the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The 2021 curriculum also includes lessons on Sikh-, Armenian-, Arab- and Jewish-American communities. Unlike the original version, the revised version’s glossary does not include terms like “resistance” and “colonialism.”

The modified curriculum is also called “constructive” ethnic studies versus “liberated” ethnic studies. In addition, school districts are free to use the state’s curriculum, draft their own or hire consultants to draft a curriculum for them.

According to a Feb. 15, 2024 New York Times article, Liz Sanders, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Education, “noted that while local school districts have control over their curriculums, state guidelines are clear: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a recommended topic for discussion in world history courses, but not in ethnic studies.”
By the 2025-26 academic year, all California public schools are required to teach at least one semester of ethnic studies in grades 9-12. Beginning with the class of 2030, California high school students will be required to pass an ethnic studies class to graduate.

NATIONWIDE ETHNIC STUDIES CURRICULA REQUIREMENT

As of 2024, ethnic studies courses have been authorized or required in seven states: Indiana, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, Washington, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

EDITORS NOTE: This Canary Mission Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

RARE IDF BATTLE VIDEO: Face-to-Face Elimination of Terrorists thumbnail

RARE IDF BATTLE VIDEO: Face-to-Face Elimination of Terrorists

By NEWSRAEL Telling the Israeli Story

Elimination of terrorists this week: The “wolf unit” and the Elite “Paratrooper Patrol” in Shejaiya.

Documentation with a helmet-cam during “face-to-face” battles with terrorists in Shejaiya in the Gaza Strip

WARNING: Several dead terrorists can be seen in the video.

IDF BATTLE VIDEOS: Body cameras and drones of Nahal troops

Fighting in crowded neighborhoods in Rafah and using houses for terrorist tunnels: Documentation from the body cameras and drones of the Nahal fighters.

The battle team of the Nahal Brigade continues to fight in the Rafah area, led by Division 162.

As part of the last few weeks, the fighters have been carrying out intelligence-based scans and raiding terrorist targets in the region. In one of the searches carried out by the soldiers of the Nahal patrol, the soldiers located in a residence many weapons hidden in wardrobes, including: grenades, chargers, anti-tank launchers and missiles, cartridges and weapons.

In another scan made by a drone, a shaft was located under a children’s bed and in another room a passage was located in the wall created by Hamas terrorists in order to pass between residences in crowded neighborhoods.

The brigade’s fire complex destroyed terrorist infrastructure in the area, among them weapons warehouses, when after their attack secondary explosions were seen indicating a large amount of munitions.

EDITORS NOTE: This Newsrael News Desk column with videos is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

More Anti-Israel Bias at the New York Times thumbnail

More Anti-Israel Bias at the New York Times

By Jihad Watch

The New York Times displays every day in its reporting, in its columns, and in its editorials, its bias against Israel. Ira Stoll takes on some subtler examples of this, in the choice of pejorative adjectives and adverbs the Times deploys in describing Israel but refrains from using when describing Hamas. You can find his piece here: “Jewish Leader Slams New York Times for ‘Dreadful’ Bias as Paper Faults ‘Ferocious’ Israel, ‘Rabidly Partisan’ Adelson,” by Ira Stoll, Algemeiner, June 28, 2024:

For a telltale indicator of New York Times bias, keep an eye on the adjectives and adverbs.

Two recent front-page Times articles offer examples of this particular problem skewing the coverage.

A Times article purporting to show how Israelis “feel little sympathy” for Gazans suffering includes the line, “Michael Zigdon, who operates a small food shack in Netivot’s rundown market and had employed two men from Gaza until the attack, expressed little sympathy for Gazans, who have endured a ferocious Israeli military onslaught for the past eight months.”

The reporter notes that Zigdon had hired two workers from Gaza — hardly an indication of someone with “little sympathy” for the people of Gaza.  After the October 7 attack, he may have feared that the two Gazan workers he had been trying to help by giving them work at salaries many times greater than what they could earn in Gaza, had been providing Hamas with useful information as to possible targets inside Israel. All the employees from Gaza working in Israel were discharged on October 8.

The “ferocious” adjective gets hurled by the Times a second time in the same article, which goes on, in case any reader failed to absorb the point the first time, to say that “the death toll in Gaza has spiraled to at least 37,000 since Israel began its ferocious offensive.”

The Israeli self-defense operation gets described by the Times as “ferocious,” [“a ferocious Israeli military onslaught”] while the Hamas attack of Oct. 7 earns no such label. My Webster’s Second defines ferocious as “having or exhibiting ferocity, cruelty, savagery, etc.; violently cruel.” Ferocity is defined as coming from the Latin root ferus, meaning wild, “as the ferocity of barbarians.”

That qualifies as slander of Israel, opinion masquerading as New York Times news writing. If the Times news writers and editors want to accuse Israel of waging barbaric, savage, wild, violently cruel warfare against Gazans, they are welcome to make a factual case for that. I think they’d have a hard time of it, given all the evidence about the care that Israel has used to limit noncombatant casualties. But making the accusation in a backhanded, backdoor way by sprinkling tendentious adjectives into news articles is a kind of deception so subtle that a lot of Times readers might not even notice it.

Readers’ eyes skim over the words; they see the adjective “ferocious” twice and think nothing of it, but the word’s meaning has entered their minds nonetheless. Israel’s military onslaught is thus described, with the single adjective “ferocious,” as “having or exhibiting ferocity, cruelty, savagery, etc; violently cruel.”

What do you think? Has Israel’s onslaught in Gaza displayed “ferocity, cruelty, savagery”? No, it has not. Israel has made colossal efforts to minimize civilian casualties. To this end, by March it had dropped nine million leaflets, sent 16 million text messages, made 15 million robocalls and 100,000 personal calls, all to warn civilians to leave cities or areas or neighborhoods about to be targeted, and the same warnings were given to civilians living or working in buildings that contained Hamas operatives, weapons, and command-and-control centers. This is not “ferocity, cruelty, savagery.” In fact, British Colonel Richard Kemp has described the IDF as “the most moral army in the word,” and West Point Professor John Spencer has described the IDF in similar terms, writing that “in my long career studying and advising on urban warfare for the U.S. military, I’ve never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy’s civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings. In fact, by my analysis, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Perhaps the Times’ writers will keep that in mind before they next decide to describe the IDF’s war against Hamas as “ferocious.”

AUTHOR

HUGH FITZGERALD

RELATED ARTICLES:

Who’s Funding The Violent Anti-Israel Protests On American College Campuses?

NPR Interviews Member of Palestinian American Medical Association Without Identifying Him As Such

Dr. Adam Hamawy of the Palestinian American Medical Association Appears on NPR

Princeton: Muslima claims keffiyehs were confiscated at Princeton High School’s pro-Hamas encampment

Spain: Muslim migrants beat man to death after he stopped them from raping a 15-year-old girl

Palestinian Islamic Jihad fires rockets into Israel in response to ‘crimes of Zionist enemy against our people’

Louisiana: Imam prays ‘Oh Allah, annihilate the Jews and the Christians…Oh Allah, count them, kill them one by one’

Vandalizing LGBTQ Materials is a Crime Unless You Support Hamas

Serbia: Man converts to Islam, hits cop in the neck at Israeli embassy with bolt fired from crossbow

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Sexual Assaults on October 7 Omitted From the White House Fact Sheet thumbnail

The Sexual Assaults on October 7 Omitted From the White House Fact Sheet

By Jihad Watch

Recently the White House issued a Fact Sheet providing what was supposed to be a comprehensive list of sexual assaults carried out in “conflict zones” all over the world. This Fact Sheet did indeed include a great many places where mass rapes have occurred, including sexual assault victims in Ukraine, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Iraq, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria. But one place was unaccountably, and unacceptably, left out: Israel, where on October 7, 3,000 Hamas operatives from Gaza smashed through the border into the country’s south and proceeded to rape, torture, mutilate, and kill Israeli men, women, and children. A total of 1,200 Israelis were killed, and 260 were kidnapped and taken back to Gaza on the backs of pickup trucks, in cars, and slung over the shoulders of motorcyclists. The sexual assaults were sadistic in nature. Many consisted of mass rapes, followed by mutilation of the sexual organs of the victims, who only then were killed. In some cases, the breasts of women were sliced off and thrown about in a ghoulish game. Men, too, were subject to sexual assault and mutilation, including having their genitalia cut off. The Hamas perpetrators were having a high old time of it — what fun to rape, torture, and murder helpless Yahudim — and they proudly filmed their exploits, so as to be able to show their relatives and friends back in Gaza.

This horrifying assault became known at once all over the world. It certainly made a deep impression in Washington. Yet for reasons we do not know, when at the end of June, the U.S. government released its Fact Sheet on sexual assaults in conflict zones around the world, it left out any mention of the rapes, tortures, and murders of Israeli girls and women by Hamas.

More on this inexcusable lapsus can be found here: “White House Adds Oct. 7 Rape Victims to Fact Sheet on War Zone Sexual Violence After Backlash From Jewish Dems,” by Corey Walker, Algemeiner, June 28, 2024:

The White House has added references to the rampant sexual assault perpetrated by Hamas terrorists during their Oct. 7 onslaught across southern Israel to a fact sheet it recently released on sexual violence in conflict zones following widespread outcry for making no mention of the Israeli rape victims.

The Biden administration updated the fact sheet to include references to Hamas, the Oct. 7 massacre, and the Palestinian terrorist group’s Israeli victims after Jewish Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff (CA) and Dan Goldman (NY) sent a letter to US President Joe Biden criticizing the omission.

On Wednesday, Schiff and Goldman sent a letter to Biden sharing their “deepest concern” that the Israeli girls and women raped and otherwise sexually brutalized by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists were not mentioned in the initial version of the fact sheet. The original version mentioned sexual assault victims in Ukraine, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Iraq, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria….

After receiving the letter from the Jewish lawmakers, the White House swiftly updated the fact sheet to include detailed references of the sexual violence committed against Israeli women on Oct. 7. 

The new iteration of the fact sheet mentions the Oct. 7 sexual assaults in the first paragraph and outlines the various ways in which the administration has recognized them….

Congressmen Adam Schiff and Dan Goldman were right to express their astonishment, and deep dismay, at the original version of the Fact List: how could the Israeli victims of mass rape have been completely ignored by those who compiled that list? As soon as their letter was received, the White House, without explaining how such an omission could have occurred, quickly added to the Fact Sheet a reference to the mass rapes, tortures, mutilations, and murders of Israeli girls and women.

That could be the end of the matter. But should it? Many of us would like to know who was in charge of compiling that original Fact Sheet that was made public by the White House. Was the omission of the Israeli victims indeed an innocent oversight? That seems improbable. Was someone hoping to tamp down attention given to Israeli victims of rape — the way the UN Commission on the Status of Women took a long time to react to the stories of Hamas’ rapes and murders? A number of people on the White House staff are known for their deep antipathy toward the Jewish state. Among them is Tyler Cherry, who has been the Associate Communications Director at the White House for the past month, during which time the Fact Sheet was compiled. Did he have a hand in its compilation? Some congressman, or intrepid investigative journalist, should find out And if Tyler Cherry did compile the original Fact Sheet, leaving out the Israeli victims, then wouldn’t that be one more reason — there are several already — for firing him?

AUTHOR

HUGH FITZGERALD

RELATED ARTICLES:

Muslim U.S. House rep to speak at conference of Hamas-linked Islamic Society of North America

UK: Muslim World League top dog warns that calling Muslims antisemitic will make them carry out jihad massacres

Belgium: Pro-Hamas ‘peace activists’ tell Jewish woman ‘we are going to take off your head and your dog’s too’

Islamic Republic of Iran: Muslim converts to Christianity, is arrested, not charged, held in unknown location

Germany: Interior Minister expresses sympathy for Muslim migrant murderer, not his victim

French Jews Come to Their Senses and Vote for the National Rally

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

STAY INFORMED

Receive regular news, commentary, and analysis straight to your inbox.

POWERED BY

DrRichSwier.com | ThePricklyPear.org

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.