BIDEN IS MAD BECAUSE NETANYAHU IS TELLING THE TRUTH

Republican senators accuse Biden admin of slow-rolling Israel aid

“I am willing to absorb personal attacks if that is what it takes for Israel to get the arms and ammunition it needs in its war for survival,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

 

By Andrew Bernard

 

JNS

Jun 20, 2024

 

 

Sen. Bill Hagerty

 

A pair of Republican senators have accused the Biden administration of slow-rolling military aid to Israel, as the public spat between the allies over arms sales continues to escalate.

“The White House is mad because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is telling the truth,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) wrote on Wednesday.

Hagerty noted that the Biden administration “has refused to send Congress formal notifications to finalize a host of arms sales to Israel,” including F-15s, smart bomb kits and munitions even after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee “informally cleared these sales.”

“The norm is for the executive branch to submit formal notifications to Congress roughly 48 to 72 hours after committees informally cleared proposed arms sales,” Hagerty added. “But the Biden administration is violating this norm amid Israel’s multi-front war.”

 

The White House is holding up delivery of fifty F-15 fighter jets to Israel.

 

Netanyahu released a video on social media on Tuesday saying that “in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel.”

The White House has insisted that it only paused a single shipment of 2,000-pound bombs over concerns that they could cause civilian casualties. It has been said that all other arms sales and military aid to Israel are flowing normally.

“We genuinely do not know what he’s talking about,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday. “We just don’t.”

John Kirby, the White House national security communications advisor, repeated to reporters at a briefing on Thursday that the White House does not understand what Netanyahu is saying.

“It was perplexing to say the least, certainly disappointing, especially given that no other country is doing more to help Israel defend itself against the threat by Hamas and, quite frankly, other threats that they’re facing in the region, than the United States,” Kirby said.

“It was vexing and disappointing to us as much as it was incorrect, so difficult to know exactly what was on his mind,” Kirby added.

Although Kirby announced that Washington is prioritizing surface-to-air missile sales to Ukraine above other countries, he told reporters on Thursday that Israel would be unaffected by the move.

Following an Axios report on Tuesday that Biden canceled a meeting with Netanyahu scheduled for the latter’s upcoming trip to Washington in July, Kirby was asked during the call with reporters on Thursday whether the two would meet. Kirby said he had nothing to say about the president’s schedule.

 

  

National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby holds a daily briefing on March 5, 2024 at the White House alongside Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary. 

 

‘Sleight-of-hand’

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote to U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday accusing him and his administration of engaging in “sleight-of-hand” in response to the White House’s insistence that only one arms delivery to Israel has been paused.

The senator repeated Hagerty’s charge that Washington is slow-rolling the munitions.

 

Sen. Tom Cotton

 

“As you are aware, the Arms Export Control Act requires the administration to notify Congress before sending weapons to a foreign country,” Cotton wrote. “Your administration has manipulated this requirement by withholding this formal notification to Congress of approved weapons sales, including F-15s, tactical vehicles, 120-mm mortars, 120-mm tank rounds, joint direct attack munitions and small diameter bombs.”

“Your administration can then claim that the weapons are ‘in process’ while never delivering them,” he wrote. “You’re playing politics with the nation’s honor and our ally’s security.” 

“Worse still, your administration lacks the honesty to communicate its true policy to the American people, instead preferring to hide behind weasel words and bureaucratic process,” he added.

JNS sought comment from the National Security Council of the White House about the allegations that the administration had taken more than 72 hours to deliver formal notification to Congress of Israeli munitions deliveries after their approval by the relevant House and Senate committees.

Netanyahu said on Thursday that he understands the potential cost of his statements.

“I am willing to absorb personal attacks if that is what it takes for Israel to get the arms and ammunition it needs in its war for survival,” the Israeli prime minister said.

AN OPERATIONAL POWER GRID IS CRITICAL TO ISRAEL

Electric shocks

Should Israelis panic about a potential Hezbollah attack on the national power grid? The IEC and energy ministry say no, but Oct. 7 took its toll on trust. 

 

By Ruthie Blum

 

JNS

Jun 21, 2024

 

 

The Israel Electric Corporation power station in Hadera,

 

At a conference on Thursday in Sderot, the CEO of Noga-Israel Independent System Operator—a state-owned company that manages the quality and flow of electricity—warned that the country isn’t prepared for an enemy attack from Lebanon on the Jewish state’s power grid.

“The bottom line,” Shaul Goldstein said to the audience at the Institute for National Security Studies event, “is that after 72 hours [of an outage], it’s impossible to live in Israel.”

He went on, “People don’t understand how much our lives here depend on electricity. You check all our infrastructures—optical fibers and ports—and I won’t get into sensitive issues, but we’re not in good shape. We’re not ready for a real war. We live in a fantasy world, in my opinion.”

He then explained how such a scenario could easily unfold.

“If [Hezbollah chief Hassan] Nasrallah wants to take down Israel’s power grid, all he needs to do is call the person in charge of Beirut’s power system, which looks exactly like Israel’s,” he said. “He doesn’t even need a [camera] drone; he can call a second-year electrical-engineering student and ask where the most critical points in Israel are. Everything is on the internet. I won’t say it here, but anyone who goes on the internet can find it.”

The last part of the remark was peculiar for three reasons. First, if the info is easily located the web, Nasrallah doesn’t need to bother phoning an electrical-engineering student—not even a first-year one.

Second, to follow up the revelation by announcing that he “won’t say it here”—when he did just that—is like whisper-yelling a secret for all to hear. It was a puerile rhetorical device that rendered the rest of his arguments questionable.

Third, though Nasrallah’s goons may not require more than a Google search to pinpoint strategic targets, highlighting this fact in the context of an admonition that Israel won’t be able to function during a lengthy power outage was feckless, particularly with both Israel and Hezbollah gearing up for more than the current mini-war of attrition. Indeed, why not simply extend an invitation to Nasrallah to strike before Israelis have a chance to stock up on generators for their bomb shelters?

The rush to dispute Goldstein’s claims was furious. Israel Electric Corporation CEO Meir Spigler, for example, chided him for his “irresponsibility and insufficient knowledge” of the subject matter with which he should be far more familiar, given his role.

Energy and Infrastructure Minister Eli Cohen took to the airwaves—and social media—to reassure the public not to panic.

“We have gas rigs; we have reserves of diesel fuel [and] coal; we also generate electricity from renewable energy,” he said. “It’s important to emphasize that our reserves of energy sources are scattered in confidential and protected places.”

Furthermore, he added, “There are many other steps we have taken, which can’t be detailed, to ensure a regular supply of energy, making the chance of a lengthy power-outage scenario very low.”

Finally, Cohen issued a threat: “It’s important for me to make it clear to our enemies that if there’s a power outage in Israel for hours, there’ll be one in Lebanon for months.”

Likely shocked and embarrassed by the outcry, Goldstein apologized for his “irresponsible statements.” It appears that he was sorry for sharing his concerns so publicly, yet not for having harbored them.

Most of us Israelis have no clue about the national power grid. We’re thus incapable of calculating the parameters of an energy emergency. Nor does our hysteria over such things usually last beyond the latest news cycle.

Still, one thing that’s been emblazoned in our consciousness since Oct. 7 is skepticism when it comes to assurances from authorities that they’ve got a potentially perilous situation under control.

12-YEAR-OLD FRENCH GIRL IS VICTIM OF JEW HATRED

Hundreds rally in Paris after rape of Jewish girl

“The government is on your side,” said France's justice minister, declaring: “To attack a Jew is to attack the Republic and France.” 

 

JNS

Jun 20, 2024

 

"Twelve years old and already a victim of antisemitic hate," the placard reads at the protest in the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville ("City Hall Square") in Paris, June 19, 2024.

 

Hundreds of people gathered in Paris on Wednesday to demonstrate against Jew-hatred in the wake of the antisemitic rape of a 12-year-old girl that shocked the country over the weekend, local media reported.

The rally in the French capital was organized by Collectif Nous Vivrons (“We Will Live Collective”), which was founded following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in Israel and the ensuing wave of antisemitism in Europe.

“This antisemitic rape is a continuation of a climate hostile to Jews, fueled in particular by irresponsible political declarations,” the NGO said ahead of the protest at city hall, which was called at short notice.

Participants included representatives from Jewish organizations in Paris and nationwide, as well as current and former government officials, most notably Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti.

“The government is on your side,” stated Dupond-Moretti in his speech, declaring: “To attack a Jew is to attack the Republic and France.”

Attendees also held signs reading, “Raped at 12 because she was Jewish” and “Antisemitism is not residual,” according to French media reports.

A protest in Lyon, France’s third-largest city, drew approximately a hundred people. Activists held signs reading, “Jew raped, Republic in danger,” as well as banners that blamed the far-left La France Insoumise Party for the rise in Jew-hatred, and sang the country’s national anthem.

Saturday’s rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in a Paris suburb has drawn condemnation from across France’s political spectrum amid a heated campaign ahead of snap parliamentary elections later this month.

Three minors were arrested for their part in the assault, during which they allegedly forced the girl to perform vaginal, anal and oral sex, called her a “dirty Jew” and threatened to kill her if she told anyone.

France is home to the largest Muslim population in Europe and has seen a surge in antisemitic acts since the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Antisemitic acts have tripled in the first months of 2024 compared to the same period last year, France 24 reported, citing official numbers.

At a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron “spoke solemnly and seriously about the scourge of antisemitism” and called for “dialogue” on racism and hatred of Jews to stop “hateful speech with serious consequences” from “infiltrating” schools.

WHEN PRISON POPULATIONS ARE REDUCED, CRIME INCREASES

'Correctional supervision' decreased 23% since 2012: Is there a crime connection?

 

 

 by: Leonard Sipes 

 

Law Enforcement Today

Jun 20, 2024

 

 

 

Empty prison cells

 

Is there a connection between prison populations, correctional supervision and crime?  Based on the best available evidence from the US Department of Justice, it seems plausible.

The total adult community supervision population has decreased 23% since 2012.

For the 15th straight year, the adult correctional supervision rate declined in 2022.

The continued decline in persons on parole contributed to the lowest rate of adults on community supervision in 36 years.

The incarceration rate, 700 per 100,000 adult U.S. residents, increased in 2022 (up from 680 per 100,000 in 2021 and 660 per 100,000 in 2020). But overall prison and jail numbers are down considerably since 2012.

While the incarceration rate increased in 2022 for the second consecutive year, it was still lower at year-end than the prepandemic rate.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the US Department of Justice using the National Crime Victimization Survey, violent crime increased 44 percent in their last official report released in 2023.

This would be the largest increase in violence in the nation’s history.

According to crimes reported to law enforcement (the vast majority are not) compiled by the FBI for 2023 in a preliminary report, violent crime decreased by 3.1 percent for metropolitan areas where the vast majority of Americans live. In metropolitan areas, robberies and vehicle thefts increased. The exceptions are homicides and rapes which decreased considerably and according to analyst Jeff Asher, homicides continue to decrease in 2024.

For 2022, the FBI offers 12 categories of crimes (13 including hate crimes). Four categories decreased, six categories increased and one (burglary) was flat. Hate crimes increased.

For 2021, per the FBI, homicides increased considerably between 2019 and 2021 (nearly 30 percent in 2020 and 4.3 percent in 2021). Rapes also increased in 2021.

A summation? Homicides are falling because they rose 50 percent from 2019-2022 in cities per the Major Cities Chiefs Association, referred to as a regression to the mean.

Pundits are stating that violent crime is falling considerably. Using 2021-2023 data from the US Department of Justice, the National Crime Victimization shows a huge increase in violence while reported crimes (the vast majority are not) show inconsistency. 

Is There A Correlation Between Correctional Populations And Crime? 

Correlations do not mean causation and there’s no way to prove that increases or decreases in the correctional population have an impact on crime.

However, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the US Department of Justice, 82 percent of those released from state prisons over ten years were arrested once again and 61 percent were returned to prison. They had 4.2 million arrests before incarceration. Forty-two percent had 5 to 10 previous incarcerations.

The US Sentencing Commission offers data stating that longer incarcerations for violent offenders reduced new crimes.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics states that 43 percent of state probationers were rearrested for a felony over three years.

Thus it’s plausible that there is a connection between correctional populations and crime per multiple federal research projects. While the incarceration rate increased in 2022 for the second consecutive year, it was still lower at year-end than the prepandemic rate.

Bureau Of Justice Statistics

An estimated 5,407,300 persons were under the supervision of adult correctional systems in the United States at year-end 2022, and 3,668,800 of those were under community supervision, according to Correctional Populations in the United States, 2022 – Statistical Tables and Probation and Parole in the United States, 2022, two reports released today by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The adult correctional system is responsible for all correctional supervision in the United States, including both persons incarcerated in prisons and jails and persons supervised in the community on probation and parole.

About 1 in 48 adult U.S. residents (2%) were under some form of correctional supervision at the end of 2022.

More than two-thirds of persons under correctional supervision were supervised in the community on probation or parole (3,668,800), while almost one-third (1,827,600) were incarcerated in state or federal prisons or local jails.

The total adult correctional supervision population decreased about 1% from year-end 2021 to year-end 2022, while the incarcerated population increased 3%. The total adult community supervision population has decreased 23% since 2012.

For the 15th straight year, the adult correctional supervision rate declined in 2022, from a peak of 3,210 under supervision per 100,000 adult U.S. residents in 2007 to 2,060 per 100,000 in 2022.

The incarceration rate, 700 per 100,000 adult U.S. residents, increased in 2022 (up from 680 per 100,000 in 2021 and 660 per 100,000 in 2020).

While the incarceration rate increased in 2022 for the second consecutive year, it was still lower at year-end than the prepandemic rate.

In 2022, the number of persons under community supervision in the United States decreased 1%, from 3,705,500 on January 1 to 3,668,800 on December 31.

The probation population remained relatively stable (from 2,981,500 to 2,990,900; remaining under 3 million for the second consecutive year), while the number of persons on parole fell from 745,300 to 698,800 (down 6.2%) during 2022.

The parole population decreased in 36 states and the District of Columbia during 2022. The 2022 decrease in parole population followed a 7.1% decline in 2021, the two largest decreases since BJS began collecting probation and parole information on a yearly basis in 1980.

The continued decline in persons on parole contributed to the lowest rate of adults on community supervision in 36 years.

In 2022, the rate of individuals under community supervision fell to 1,401 per 100,000 adult U.S. residents, the lowest recorded rate since 1986 (1,358 per 100,000).

The parole rate declined from 309 to 267 per 100,000 adult U.S. residents, while the probation rate increased slightly from 1,140 to 1,142 per 100,000. Entries to probation increased 10.7%, from 1,419,300 in 2021 to 1,571,500 in 2022.

These reports, related documents and additional information about BJS’s statistical publications and programs are available on the BJS website at bjs.ojp.gov.

Conclusions

The debate over correctional populations and their impact on crime will forever be hotly contested. However, based on the best available research, it’s more than possible to suggest the possibility that lower rates of correctional supervision and incarceration play a role in increasing violence and overall crime.

There were about 954,000 fewer persons on probation in 2022 than in 2012.

There were 1,570,000 people in prison in 2012. There were 1,230,000 people in prison in 2022. There has been a steady and continuous decline in the prison population. It’s the same for jails. While the incarceration rate increased in 2022 for the second consecutive year, it was still lower at year-end than the prepandemic rate.

A connection between rates of incarceration and community supervision and violence seems plausible based on the best available evidence from the US Department of Justice.  

Originally written for Crime in America. Republished with permission.

A VALID EXCUSE FOR MISSING YOUR GRADUATION

By Bob Walsh

Ahliana Dickey was in an abusive relationship with 21-year-old Trevor Bady. 

 

Ahlina Dickey just turned 15 as few weeks ago and was all set to graduate from middle school in Lowell, Mass last week.  She didn't show.

She was found dead in her bedroom with a bunch of shell casings around her body.  

Her 21-year old boyfriend, Trevor Bady, of Tweksbury, is under arrest.

DRUNKEN JUDGE ASSAULTS COP IN ATLANTA

By Bob Walsh

 

Judge Christina Peterson at home

 

Christina Peterson is a judge in Douglas County, Georgia.  In the wee hours of this morning she slugged a cop in the Red Martinia Restaurt and and Lounge on Peach Tree St. in Atlanta.

An off-duty Atlanta cop who was working at the bar noticed a woman crying in the bar.  When he approached her to inquire as to whether or not she was OK Judge Peterson slugged him.  It is now known what relationship, if any, exists between the judge and the crying woman.

The judge was thrown in the bucket over night and charged with simple battery on a peace officer and being drunk and stupid.  (I just made up that second part.)

She was released after she sobered up.  She did not show up for work today.

Just as a point of interest, who goes out and gets shit-faced on Wednesday night when you are supposed to be to work on Thursday morning?  I guess judges do.

NOT SURPRISING BUT IRRITATING

By Bob Walsh

 

The California Supreme Court by a unanimous vote threw the Taxpayer Protection Act off the November ballot today.  If passed into law it is likely it would have had some effect at reigning in the rapacious behavior of our legislature.

I was not wildly surprised but I admit to being irritated and disappointed.  What SHOULD happen is that the voters, some of who are actual tax payers, should vote to throw the bums out.  It is, however, hard to vote against Santa Claus and the people who are working hard to keep your father, your brother and your cousin out of prison, or get them out if they are there already.  

We might not get the government we deserve, but we sure as hell get the government we tolerate.

FUN AND GAMES IN OAKLAND

By Bob Walsh

 

 

Just after sun-up today the FBI hit four houses in Oakland all of which are associated with the current and probably about to be recalled Mayor,  One was believed to be her personal residence.  Another belongs to a major recycle operator in the area who has had legal troubles of late.  

The feebs hauled away boxes and boxes of stuff.  No local cops in attendance.  Neither the feds nor the mayor are talking.

THE SAME OBAMA PLAYBOOK BEING RUN AGAIN

Biden outraged Netanyahu mentioned his blocking aid to Israel

The goal of this scam is to abandon Israel and convince liberal American Jews to blame Israel for the breach. 

 

By Daniel Greenfield

 

JNS

Jun 20, 2024

 

 

Biden is following in Obama's anti-Israel footsteps 

Act 1. The stage is set. The key players are Barack Obama, who wants to manufacture a break with Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, looking to navigate a hostile administration, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden.

During Biden’s visit to Israel, the Obama administration stages a scandal, claiming that it was deliberately insulted because the local Jerusalem municipality routed some housing that the administration belatedly opposed through an approvals process.

Hillary Clinton spends an hour (and later brags about) yelling at Netanyahu over the phone. Biden refuses to come down for an hour to an event and a glass trophy being awarded to him ends up being broken.

The media plays up an invented scandal while spreading the narrative that it was Netanyahu who was creating a crisis.

Act 2. Dramatis Personae: Joe Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu and Barak Ravid, the Axios-employed propagandist acting as a point man for the Biden administration’s influence operation to remove Netanyahu and stop the war on Hamas while preventing any action against Iran.

Here’s how it plays out.

Biden publicly blocks previously approved military aid to Israel, and slow-walks other aid. Netanyahu mentions this in a video. The Biden administration fumes and cancels a meeting on Iran. Ravid writes all of this up with lots of “anonymous sources” from the administration and the Israeli left.

The second act is even more absurd than the first, because Biden was touting his “extreme pressure” on Israel in a recent video.

But when Netanyahu mentions it, it’s a “scandal” and an “insult.”

Cue the media narrative campaign.

Barak Ravid/Axios: “Scoop: White House cancels meeting, scolds Netanyahu in protest over video.”

Barak Ravid/Axios: “White House baffled by Netanyahu’s claim Biden is withholding weapons.”

Baffled!

Barak Ravid/Axios: “Scoop: U.S. put a hold on an ammunition shipment to Israel.”

All of this is a scam. The goal is to abandon Israel and convince liberal American Jews to blame Israel for the breach.

It’s the same Obama playbook being run again.

MASS STARVATION BULLSHIT

The Gaza famine that wasn’t is being used against Israel

The United Nations, the Biden administration and the media continue to assert that Palestinians are enduring mass starvation even after proof emerges that the claim is propaganda. 

 

By Jonathan S. Tobin

 

JNS

Jun 19, 2024

 

Palestinians shop for fruit and vegetables at a market in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Jan. 13, 2024.

 

Part of the accepted narrative about the war in the Gaza Strip is that the Palestinians there are enduring abject hunger. In May, the head of the U.N. World Food Program claimed that there was a “full-blown famine” in northern Gaza. Reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post in recent months have routinely noted that Palestinians are starving. Indeed, the notion that there was a genuine shortage of food in Gaza motivated President Joe Biden to order the U.S. Armed Forces to construct a floating pier and anchor it alongside the Gazan shoreline to facilitate the flow of vital supplies to those in need. On the strength of these allegations, the International Criminal Court has requested warrants for the arrest of both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, largely because of the claim that they are committing war crimes by deliberately starving the Palestinians.

But what if there is no famine?

As it turns out, the U.N.’s own Famine Review Committee admitted in a report that the claims about not enough food being sent into Gaza were untrue. What’s more, this allegation, which is at the heart of the equally widespread big lie that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians, is a matter of sleight of hand bookkeeping. It seems to be largely based on the fact that the number of trucks that are delivering supplies, which flow into Gaza from Israel to feed the Palestinians every day, were being undercounted with private-sector food trucks not being counted as well as other deliveries. A pertinent fact that should also be pointed out is that before Oct. 7, daily supplies of food, fuel and other material were trucked into Gaza from Israel, which gives the lie to the much-cited accusation that the Jewish state blockaded the Strip. Egypt, however, has continued to close off its border to it.

With a few exceptions, the truth about the current situation isn’t being widely reported. In Commentary, Seth Mandel wrote about the findings of the U.N. report and various analyses that pointed to the faulty data being used to justify claims of a Gaza famine. And in The Jerusalem Post, Seth Frantzman cited the work of two Columbia University professors who analyzed the data and debunked the conventional wisdom about Israel starving the Palestinians.

 

 Palestinians shop for fruit and vegetables at a market in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Jan. 13, 2024. 

 

The food flows into Gaza

All these studies show that if there are food distribution problems in Gaza—and, obviously, an area that is the setting for an ongoing military conflict set off by Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel is going to experience disruptions—it is not due to a shortage of food. The amount of items being shipped into Gaza from Israel is, as these studies show, clearly sufficient to feed the people of Gaza.

To note the truth about the famine that isn’t happening should also be placed in the context of an event that is happening. Israel’s efforts to keep aid flowing into the Strip are unprecedented in the history of armed conflict. It is a given that warring powers are not responsible for feeding their enemies, especially people under the control of hostile combatants, as is true for Palestinians who live in Rafah, where the last active Hamas military units are still in control. That is, of course, countries other than the Jewish state.

Under the circumstances, even the United States has acknowledged that few of the supplies that had entered Gaza via the floating pier had reached their intended recipients. The NGOs and so-called human-rights groups blame Israel for inspecting the trucks going into Gaza to try and stop them from being used for supplying Hamas with weapons and other war materials, the primary obstacle to the smooth flow of aid is the Palestinians themselves. But rather than admit that the entire affair has been a scandalous waste of time, money and resources—and illustrates the ill-advised and politically motivated nature of Biden’s decision to involve the United States in this fiasco—the administration continues to prevaricate about the problem. Washington prefers to chide Israel rather than say outright that the idea was a huge mistake.

As Mandel also pointed out, even the Times is burying information that undermines the famine claim inside other articles meant to buttress allegations against Israel. The newspaper wrote that there is no shortage of food in northern Gaza, the very place where it had previously asserted that famine was imminent.

Other reports point to not only the continued flow of aid from Jerusalem but also the fact that food markets are open even in areas in southern Gaza, where the fighting continues.

Hamas is stealing it

To point this out is not to deny that the situation there is extremely difficult. In wartime, food distribution networks are inevitably disrupted. But if Palestinians are suffering, then it’s nothing short of libelous to blame Israel for it. From the start of the war, armed Hamas operatives have hijacked most of the deliveries, meaning that the aid goes to the terrorists and not to the civilians they use as human shields. While media outlets often note that Hamas is accused of stealing the goods, they generally put that down only as an unsubstantiated accusation from Israel and its supporters. Given the admission that the aid that was delivered from the U.S. pier is not getting to Palestinian civilians, there is no other remotely plausible explanation for this failure other than the fact that armed Palestinians are preventing it from being handed out to their compatriots who may need it.

Adding to the problem is a new factor. In addition to Hamas itself commandeering aid shipments, gangs of smugglers—most of which are likely affiliated with the various terrorist movements—have also impeded the effort to feed Palestinians. As The Wall Street Journal reported, cigarette smuggling has become a major part of the reason why shortages exist, as criminals and aid workers who are their accomplices are using the trucks that are supposed to bring in food and fuel for transporting contraband tobacco.

 

  

Local and displaced Palestinians prepare and bake food in a traditional clay oven in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on May 17, 2024. 

 

Then why are so many media outlets, international organizations and the Biden administration still talking about starvation and putting the onus on a single entity for this largely fictional catastrophe?

The answer is obvious. In a war in which much of the world has accepted the canard that Israel is a “settler/colonial” and “apartheid” state against which just about any tactic employed by its enemies is justified, inflating the predicament of Palestinians in Gaza into a famine must be seen as the latest in a long list of falsehoods that have been flung at the Jewish state since Oct. 7.

This is a conflict in which some of the same outlets highlighting the dubious claims of a famine have been eager to discredit the truth about the reality of Hamas terrorism and, in particular, the atrocities, including sexual crimes, committed by Palestinians. Indeed, the members of the same anti-Israel media chorus have faithfully repeated every lie spread by the Hamas propaganda machine, including falsehoods about specific attacks and vastly inflated casualty figures for Palestinian civilians, almost all of whom are alleged to be women and children. So why should they be expected to be truthful about a famine for which little or no proof can be supplied if they were willing to lie about so much else?

As with every other falsehood put forward about Israel’s conduct of the war, the truth—even when belatedly admitted—doesn’t seem to matter. Those dedicated to the proposition that, at best, Israel and Hamas are morally equivalent will always move on to the next spurious charge without ever accounting for their previous misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.

That Israel is judged by double and triple standards applied to no other nation—let alone no other democracy at war—is nothing new.

A 21st-century blood libel

Yet the egregious nature of the Oct. 7 assault and atrocities, as well as the clear justification for Israel’s counter-offensive to eliminate the genocidal terrorist movement that carried out those crimes, seems to have impelled those who hate Israel and Jews to new depths of mendacious reporting. The intersectional left-wingers who are convinced that Israel is a nation of “white” villains victimizing Palestinian “people of color” who are inaccurately analogized to American victims of racial discrimination have no compunction about spreading these smears. The worse the actual behavior of the Palestinians, who are bent on the destruction of Israel and its people, the more it becomes imperative to flip the narrative and accuse Israel of genocide.

 

 Palestinians receive a hot meal prepared by volunteers in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on June 13, 2024.

 

Every death and all of the privations suffered by Palestinian Arabs since Oct. 7 is the responsibility of the Hamas terrorists who started this war and who take every opportunity to maximize the suffering of their own people to besmirch Israel’s image. That is not only the case for Gazans hurt or killed during the fighting but true for anyone prevented from receiving aid shipped into the Strip with Israel’s permission.

The mythical Gaza famine is just the latest instance of how the Palestinians are gaslighting the world as they deliberately spiral further into an abyss of unending conflict in which they themselves are the primary victims. Sober-minded Americans who by now ought to have learned better than to trust the corporate media on this and many other issues should not be influenced by this propaganda campaign, rooted in the age-old tropes of antisemitism in which the Jews are always accused of conspiring to harm others. Stripped of the emotionalism and partisan activism that colors so much of contemporary journalism, and especially the coverage of the Middle East, the claim that Israel is starving the Palestinians should be seen for what it is: a 21st-century blood libel.

THE MEDIA IS ONLY TOO EAGER TO SPREAD HAMAS LIES

The ‘Gaza famine’ myth

No facts can be allowed to disturb the blood libels against Israel. 

 

By Melanie Phillips

 

JNS

Jun 20, 2024

 

Humanitarian aid reaches Gaza via the temporary Trident Pier, June 11, 2024

 

It’s now quite clear that there are simply no facts at all—none—that will alter the fixed narrative of lies, distortions and blood libels with which the liberal internationalist order is demonizing and delegitimizing Israel.

The claim that Israel is starving the civilians of Gaza and causing an imminent famine has been pumped out incessantly since soon after the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war.

In February, the United Nations said that more than a quarter of Gaza’s 2.3 million people were “estimated to be facing catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation” and that, without action, widespread famine was “almost inevitable.”

In March, Biden administration officials told Benny Gantz—then a member of Israel’s war cabinet who was visiting Washington, D.C.—that the “food shortage crisis” impacting Palestinians in Gaza was “intolerable.”

At the end of that month, Janti Soeripto, president and chief executive of Save the Children US, declared that famine and starvation in Gaza were already happening.

In May, Director of the World Food Program Cindy McCain said that parts of Gaza were experiencing a “full-blown famine” that was rapidly spreading throughout the territory.

Also last month, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sought arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on the grounds that Israel was “causing starvation as a method of war including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies [and] deliberately targeting civilians in conflict.”

The world has brushed aside Israel’s repeated protests that there has been no shortage of food trucks arriving with aid for Gaza and that the problem lay instead with distribution because Hamas was stealing the supplies.

Instead, the liberal international establishment has repeatedly demanded that Israel immediately stop the war, thus inescapably surrendering to Hamas and forfeiting the military leverage required to free the remaining hostages.

Yet now, the famine claims have been debunked.

The Famine Review Committee (FRC) conducts investigations into world hunger on behalf of a partnership formed between governments, international organizations and NGOs.

In March, the committee reported that “famine is now projected and imminent” in northern Gaza and was expected to take hold before the end of May. Preventing such a famine, it stated, required “an immediate political decision for a ceasefire together with a significant and immediate increase in humanitarian and commercial access to the entire population of Gaza.”

In April, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), a food security monitoring initiative founded in 1985 by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) went even further by stating there was “reasonable evidence” that, since April, northern Gaza had been experiencing a famine and this would persist at least until the end of July.

But on June 4, the Famine Review Committee published a report in which it rejected the FEWS NET analysis as not “plausible” and said it could not endorse its famine projection.

The committee said there was a lack of reliable evidence about the number of trucks entering Gaza and the level of humanitarian assistance that was arriving and being distributed around its various areas.

In order to compensate for these gaps in the data, it said, FEWS NET had relied on “multiple layers of assumptions and inference” about food availability and access as well as nutritional status and mortality, and had made “deliberate choices over assumptions, without the necessary supporting evidence.”

Such assumptions, said the committee, had ignored or underestimated the value of both commercial sources of food and certain forms of humanitarian aid.

Although this didn’t alter the fact that Gaza was experiencing “extreme human suffering” and that urgent measures were needed to boost humanitarian supplies, the committee concluded that flows of aid and the availability of food had increased significantly in March and April and “that nearly 100 percent of daily kilocalorie requirements were available for the estimated population of 300,000 people in April, even using conservative calculations.”

In other words, the committee reversed its own dire predictions and damned the famine early warning network for excluding evidence that gave the lie to its anti-Israel narrative. The categorical declarations of imminent famine being caused by wicked, heartless, war-criminal Israel just weren’t true. 

It’s worth remembering that USAID, the parent body of FEWS NET, is run by Samantha Power, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Obama administration.

In 2002, Power suggested in a “thought experiment” that America might have to invade Israel to prevent an Israeli genocide against the Palestinians. She also suggested that the only people who might be alienated by this would be American Jews, who she said exercised tremendous political and financial power over America.

Other research has also exploded the “Gaza famine” claims. At Columbia University, two professors have said the evidence shows that sufficient amounts of food are being supplied to Gaza.

They told The Jerusalem Post that it was “a myth that Israel is responsible for famine in Gaza” and suggested that the International Criminal Court and U.N. had joined Hamas in blaming Israel for a “famine that never was, hoping to stop the war.”

Yet there are no signs that these rebuttals of the “Gaza famine” claim are having any effect on the Israel-bashing crowd. A few days ago, The New York Times was still referring to “starving civilians” and blaming deaths from malnutrition on “restrictions on aid and commercial goods entering Gaza.”

BBC News reported this week that “warnings of famine are looming once again in northern Gaza,” broadcasting distressing footage of infants said to be suffering from dehydration and malnutrition caused by restrictions on aid at the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border crossings.

Other than Fox News, it seems that no mainstream media outlet has reported the Famine Review Committee’s findings that the claim of famine in Gaza cannot be justified. Nor have the anti-Israel humanitarian organizations, although the World Health Organization’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has now subtly adjusted his rhetoric by talking about “famine-like conditions.”

Famine is not the only anti-Israel falsehood whose debunking has been ignored. The mainstream media and humanitarian crowd are still using the Hamas figure of 37,000-plus civilians killed in Gaza, despite the fact that the U.N. itself revised its own casualty totals sharply downwards after it emerged that some of the claimed deaths had been drawn from media sources and were fabricated.

Some outlets such as The New York Times, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Time magazine are still claiming that the International Court of Justice said the Palestinians in Gaza faced a “plausible risk of genocide” even though the court said no such thing. As the ICJ President Joan Donoghue herself said, the court decided “that the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide. … It didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”

While Israel continues to be defamed by blood libels about famine and its war of self-defense in Gaza, some five million are facing actual famine in Sudan where up to 150,000 have been killed and up to 10 million displaced. Some 25 million are estimated to need humanitarian assistance as a result of a 14-month-long civil war.

Yet this vast and catastrophic scale of human suffering is being almost totally ignored. On Fox News, Hadeel Oueis, editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab media outlet Jusoor, said: “Sudanese [people] are asking why the world turns a blind eye as the third-largest country in Africa is laid to waste while at the same time fixating on the smaller conflict in Gaza.”

Good question. The answer is as obvious as it is brutal: The world only cares about suffering humanity when it can blame the Jews. That malevolent prism shapes a fixed and murderous narrative about Israel and the Jewish people that no actual facts can be allowed to disturb.

THERE'S A NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN: PHILADELPHIA'S NEW MAYOR AND POLICE CHIEF ARE FIGHTING CRIME

Philly Fights Back

The new mayor and police chief are attacking crime and disorder, with encouraging early results.

 

By Thomas Hogan

 

City Journal 

Jun 13, 2024

 

New Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker (L) with Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel and his wife

For the past decade, Philadelphia has earned a reputation as a city marked by violent crime, open air drug markets, and feckless leadership. But a new mayor and chief of police have decided that enough is enough.

The Kensington neighborhood has been ground zero for the city’s broken crime policies. Drug dealers there have operated with impunity in what has been called “the East Coast’s largest open-air drug market.” Drug users, most coming from outside the city, have flocked to the area. Kensington’s addicts typically started by using heroin or prescription opioids, then graduated to fentanyl. More recently, they have been overdosing on “tranq,” the street name of xylazine, an animal tranquilizer that causes catastrophic damage to skin and muscle tissue, often resulting in amputations. All this drug activity has turned the area into a killing zone with one of the city’s highest homicide rates, even as Philadelphia itself has earned a dubious national distinction: its homicide rate rated as the worst among America’s ten largest cities in 2021.

Who were the leaders overseeing this disaster? Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney opted for every “progressive” policy on the menu, from reducing police funding to embracing sanctuary city status. The results were so startlingly bad, with crime spiking and residents fleeing, that Kenney infamously stated that he would be happy when he was no longer mayor. Kenney made his own situation worse by selecting Danielle Outlaw as Philadelphia police chief. Outlaw lacked experience leading a police department for a municipality as large and violent as the City of Brotherly Love. She failed on all fronts, resigning in 2023, just as Kenney’s term as mayor was expiring. Philadelphia’s district attorney throughout this time has been Larry Krasner, a “progressive” prosecutor best-known for feuding with the police and proudly not prosecuting crimes, even as the city set an all-time record for murders. Kenney and Outlaw are both out; only Krasner remains of this terrible troika.

In 2024, a new mayor and police chief took over. Mayor Cherelle Parker is a no-nonsense woman who grew up in the city. She ran as a moderate who prioritized re-establishing public safety. Once in office, Mayor Parker immediately declared a state of emergency based on crime, a step that Kenney had refused to take. She also chose Kevin Bethel as police chief. Bethel is an experienced and levelheaded police leader with deep ties to the city and a thorough understanding of the drivers of violence.

Mayor Parker and Chief Bethel have wasted no time in trying to regain control of the city. They immediately cracked down on the packs of illegal ATV and dirt-bike riders that terrorized all neighborhoods. They cleaned out the massive encampments of squatters that were making Kensington a crime magnet. And in their most recent move, they assigned the entire graduating class of the Philadelphia Police Academy—75 new police officers—to patrol in Kensington, stopping the open-air drug dealing and rampant drug use that drives violence. Essentially, the mayor and police chief are treating the entire area of Kensington as a crime “hot spot.” Crime hot spots are the roughly 5 percent of locations in any city associated with over 50 percent of the violent crime; it is one of the most carefully researched and replicated statistical findings in criminology, applicable to large cities around the world.

How will DA Krasner react? By now, he probably realizes he is in a fight for his political life. Voters across the country have seen what happens when prosecutors won’t prosecute, and they are not happy. Even the liberal voters of Portland, Oregon, kicked out District Attorney Mike Schmidt, fed up with the death and disorder that resulted from his non-prosecution policies. In San Francisco, voters recalled progressive DA Chesa Boudin. Across the Bay, Oakland’s chief prosecutor Pamela Price is now facing her own recall election. Los Angeles district attorney George Gascon looks to be on his last legs politically. Kim Gardner stepped down in St. Louis, and Kim Foxx announced that she would not run again in Chicago, as voters in both cities sent strong messages of dissatisfaction with the violence in their streets. Krasner has to be feeling the heat.

Early results in Philadelphia are encouraging. Crime rates have been declining as the new administration has rolled out its public safety program across the city. The mayor and the chief should be commended for seeing what needed to be done and having the courage to pursue it. Much work remains, but the city now has two top officials determined to change the disastrous path that Philadelphia was on.

The message to other cities is simple: if Philadelphia can pull itself out of its mess, so can you.

THE OBAMA-BIDEN APPEASEMENT POLICY AT WORK

Iran signals a major boost in nuclear program at key site

Hundreds of new centrifuges would triple Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity at a deeply buried underground nuclear facility.

 

By Joby Warrick

 

The Washington Post

Jun 19, 2024

 

 

Centrifuges at the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, Iran.

 

 

A major expansion underway inside Iran’s most heavily protected nuclear facility could soon triple the site’s production of enriched uranium and give Tehran new options for quickly assembling a nuclear arsenal if it chooses to, according to confidential documents and analysis by weapons experts.

Inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed new construction activity inside the Fordow enrichment plant, just days after Tehran formally notified the nuclear watchdog of plans for a substantial upgrade at the underground facility built inside a mountain in north-central Iran.

Iran also disclosed plans for expanding production at its main enrichment plant near the city of Natanz. Both moves are certain to escalate tensions with Western governments and spur fears that Tehran is moving briskly toward becoming a threshold nuclear power, capable of making nuclear bombs rapidly if its leaders decide to do so.

At Fordow alone, the expansion could allow Iran to accumulate several bombs’ worth of nuclear fuel every month, according to a technical analysis provided to The Washington Post. Though it is the smaller of Iran’s two uranium enrichment facilities, Fordow is regarded as particularly significant because its subterranean setting makes it nearly invulnerable to airstrikes.

It also is symbolically important because Fordow had ceased making enriched uranium entirely under the terms of the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear agreement. Iran resumed making the nuclear fuel there shortly after the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018.

Iran already possesses a stockpile of about 300 pounds of highly enriched uranium that could be further refined into weapons-grade fuel for nuclear bombs within weeks, or perhaps days, U.S. intelligence officials say. Iran also is believed to have accumulated most of the technical know-how for a simple nuclear device, although it would probably take another two years to build a nuclear warhead that could be fitted onto a missile, according to intelligence officials and weapons experts.

Iran says it has no plans to make nuclear weapons. But in a striking shift, leaders of the country’s nuclear energy program have begun asserting publicly that their scientists now possess all the components and skills for nuclear bombs and could build one quickly if so ordered. In the past two years, Fordow has begun stockpiling a kind of highly enriched uranium that is close to weapons-grade, with a purity far higher than the low-enriched fuel commonly used in nuclear power plants.

While Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium has been growing steadily since 2018, the planned expansion, if fully completed, would represent a leap in Iran’s capacity for producing the fissile fuel used in both nuclear power plants and — with additional refining — nuclear weapons.

In private messages to the IAEA early last week, Iran’s atomic energy organization said Fordow was being outfitted with nearly 1,400 new centrifuges, machines used to make enriched uranium, according to two European diplomats briefed on the reports. The new equipment, made in Iran and networked together in eight assemblies known as cascades, was to be installed within four weeks. A leaked draft of the Iranian plan was initially reported by Reuters.

The Biden administration reacted to Iran’s planned expansion with a warning.

“Iran aims to continue expanding its nuclear program in ways that have no credible peaceful purpose,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Thursday. “These planned actions further undermine Iran’s claims to the contrary. If Iran implements these plans, we will respond accordingly.”

While the IAEA has been aware of Iran’s plans to increase its production of enriched uranium, the size of the planned boost took many analysts by surprise. If fully executed, the expansion at Fordow would double the number of working centrifuges at the underground facility, within a compressed timeline of about a month. A proportionally smaller, but still substantial, increase is on track at Natanz.

According to diplomats with access to confidential IAEA documents, Iran’s expansion plan also calls for installing equipment that is far more capable that the machines that now make most of Iran’s enriched uranium. At Fordow, only newer-model machines, known as IR-6s, were to be installed, reports show, a substantial upgrade from the IR-1 centrifuges currently in use there.

The 1,400 advanced machines would increase Fordow’s capacity by 360 percent, according to a technical analysis provided to The Post by David Albright, a nuclear weapons expert and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington nonprofit.

Within a month after becoming fully operational, Fordow’s IR-6s could generate about 320 pounds of weapons-grade uranium, Albright said. Using conservative calculations, that’s enough for five nuclear bombs. In two months, the total stockpile could climb to nearly 500 pounds, Albright added.

“Iran would achieve a capability to breakout quickly, in a deeply buried facility, a capability it has never had before,” Albright wrote in an email.

Iran’s expansion plans for the Natanz plant call for adding thousands of centrifuge machines of a different type, known as the IR-2M. Albright calculated that Natanz’s overall production capacity would increase by 35 percent.

Since the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal, Iran has restricted IAEA inspectors’ ability to monitor the country’s production of advanced centrifuges. But agency inspectors in their visit to Fordow last Tuesday saw technicians beginning the installation of the IR-6 machines, according to a confidential summary shared with IAEA member states.

“It is totally credible,” Albright said of Iran’s expansion plans. “We have no idea what they’ve been doing with centrifuges. We’ll know their capability fully only after they’ve installed the machines.”

Iran chose to disclose its plans after IAEA member states approved a formal reprimand on June 5 criticizing Iran for its nuclear defiance. The IAEA Board of Governors resolution cited the “continued failure by Iran to provide the necessary, full and unambiguous co-operation” with the IAEA’s oversight teams. Iranian officials promptly fired back, with one adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowing in a social media post that Tehran “won’t bow to pressure.”

A spokesman for Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations said Tehran had strictly followed the rules for notifying the nuclear watchdog of its plans. The spokesman confirmed that the decision to do so was directly linked to the June 5 censure by IAEA members states.

“In this instance, in response to the Board of Governors’ unnecessary, unwise, and hasty resolution, Iran has officially communicated its decision to the IAEA,” the spokesman said in an email.

While the 2015 nuclear accord is still technically in effect, Iran has systematically flouted each of its major provisions in the years since the Trump administration walked away from the deal. The accord was negotiated during Barack Obama’s presidency by the United States and five other world powers, plus the European Union, and known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

The agreement was condemned by the Israeli government and panned by many members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, because of its perceived shortcomings — particularly its “sunset” provisions that allowed several key restrictions to expire in 2031, just 15 years after the pact went into effect. Yet, until 2018, Iran was seen to be largely complying with the accord, which sharply restricted its ability to make or stockpile enriched uranium in return for sanctions relief.

Iran has shown little interest in reviving or improving the accord since 2018. The Biden White House, after a flurry of activity to restart negotiations in the administration’s early months, has largely abandoned the project, focusing instead on a strategy of military strikes against Iran-backed militias combined with quiet diplomacy aimed at keeping Iran from crossing nuclear red lines.

Despite its increasingly provocative behavior, Iran for now appears unwilling to risk a U.S. or Israeli military strike by actually building and testing a nuclear weapon, U.S. analysts say.

“We do not see indications that Iran is currently undertaking the key activities that would be necessary to produce a testable nuclear device. And we don’t believe that the Supreme Leader has yet made a decision to resume the weaponization program that we judge Iran suspended or stopped at the end of 2003,” said a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the administration for discussing the matter. “That said, we remain deeply concerned with Iran’s nuclear activities and will continue to vigilantly monitor them.”

Tehran’s efforts to portray itself as a threshold nuclear power allows Iran a measure of ambiguity that suits Tehran’s purposes, said Robert Litwak, the author of several books on Iran’s nuclear weapons proliferation and a senior vice president at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington think tank.

“Iran’s nuclear program is both a deterrent and a bargaining chip,” Litwak said. While its planned expansion is more evidence of “pushing the bounds,” such moves simultaneously strengthen Tehran’s hand, should the regime decide that a return to the negotiating table serves its interests, he said.

“Iran’s nuclear intentions should be viewed through the prism of regime survival,” Litwak said. For now, at least, “Iran does not face an existential threat that would compel the regime to cross the line of overt weaponization.”