https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/sullivan-ben-shabbat-discuss-rocket-attacks-667897
Also on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned the "escalating
and indiscriminate rocket attacks by Hamas against Israel" who "has the
right to defend herself against this assault, which is designed to sow
terror and undermine prospects for peace."
https://www.jns.org/opinion/ignore-jonathan-pollards-terrible-advice/
The Pollards are convinced that his spying saved Israeli lives, and it’s possible he did. He’s also innocent of the charge that he indirectly betrayed U.S. agents in the Soviet Union. But the notion that he did no damage to the United States is simply untrue. His theft of the U.S. Radio and Signal Intelligence Manual cost American taxpayers billions of dollars. The sheer magnitude of the volume of material he stole gives the lie to his claims of merely helping Israel without hurting the country to which he had sworn loyalty. Also dubious is the notion, repeated more than once, that Israel would have known nothing about Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons without Pollard since it’s highly likely that the Mossad knew more about what was going on in Iraq than the CIA.
Omitted from the account is the fact that the life sentence imposed on Pollard by an unsympathetic judge—egged on by a U.S. security establishment ought for revenge—was largely his own doing. His jailhouse interview with Wolf Blitzer, then a correspondent for The Jerusalem Post, in which he justified his crime, allowed the prosecution to claim that he had violated the plea bargain that would have netted him a much lighter sentence.
Pollard clearly has an axe to grind against the organized American Jewish world, which was slow to embrace his cause. He depicts himself as a hero not only for helping Israel but by refusing to help anti-Semitic investigators pin crimes on other Jews. And yet, American Jewry had good reason for not embracing someone who was doing so much harm to the alliance they had nurtured. Nevertheless, American Jews and their organizations did take up Pollard’s cause once his disproportionate sentence (he received more severe punishment than anyone who had ever spied for a friendly nation), rather than his crime, became the issue. The idea that “no one in the Jewish community had an issue with the life sentence” is simply false.
The idea that Pollard would, as he told his interviewer, tell a young Jew working in U.S. intelligence to do as he did is astounding. He not only seems unaware of how his crime cast a pall over every loyal American Jew working to defend the world’s greatest democracy, but seems to think it doesn’t really matter.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/305917
Israeli Ambassador to the US Gilad Erdan slammed US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib over her claims Israel was "attacking" the Al Aqsa Mosque during Muslim riots in Jerusalem Monday.
"Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, maybe you should open your eyes to the whole picture? Islam’s 3rd holiest site is being used to stockpile Molotov cocktails and rocks that are being lobbed at the police and at Jewish worshippers praying at the Western Wall, below the Temple Mount," Erdan wrote on Twitter.
"Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have prayed freely at their holy sites, including in Jerusalem, over the month of Ramadan because Israel believes in freedom of religion and Israeli security forces work hard to enable all groups to pray in peace.
"In contrast, some so-called Muslim ‘worshipers’ are curtailing freedom of worship for thousands of Jews who want to celebrate Jerusalem Day, one of the most important days on our calendar marking the reunification of our sacred and holy city.
"Congresswoman, instead of calling for peace and calm, your tweets are the stoking tensions. Maybe you don't realize that your words encourage terror groups such as Hamas to fire rockets into civilian populations and carry out attacks against Jews," Erdan warned.
Ambassador Erdan was responding to a tweet in which Congresswoman Tlaib wrote: "Al-Aqsa is the 3rd holiest site in Islam, & people praying during the holiest days of the holy month of Ramadan have been beaten, gassed, shot, & killed by Israeli forces. They are denied medics & forced to use prayer mats as stretchers."
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/06/confederate-lost-cause-myth/618711/
It was then, in the late 1800s, that the myth of the Lost Cause began to take hold. The myth was an attempt to recast the Confederacy as something predicated on family and heritage rather than what it was: a traitorous effort to extend the bondage of millions of Black people. The myth asserts that the Civil War was fought by honorable men protecting their communities, and not about slavery at all.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/alabama-mississippi-mark-confederate-memorial-day-77318578
Confederate Memorial Day was made a state holiday in Alabama in 1901, the same year the state's Constitution, which was intended to guarantee white supremacy, was approved.
South Carolina chose May 10 because it is the day when Confederate
Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson died in 1863 after he was wounded by his
own troops and the day Union soldiers captured fleeing Confederate
President Jefferson Davis in Georgia in 1865.
https://apnews.com/article/arizona-election-recount-b38a9205c306796f914d62bbad601587
Despite their obvious partisan biases, the auditors insist they can be trusted because they’re running an independent and transparent operation. Yet they’re recruiting from right-wing groups. They tried to block media access. They fought in court to not disclose written procedures they’re using to count votes and keep ballots secure. They lost.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/arizona-recount-knocking-on-voters-doors_n_609720fbe4b0b37f8949efd0
The recount of 2.1 million votes of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, involves Cyber Ninjas, a company that has no experience with elections or ballots that was hired by the state’s Republican-held Senate. Company owner Doug Logan, a conspiracy theorist and disciple of the “Stop the Steal” lie that the presidential election was rigged, retweeted messages months ago that any vote audit in Arizona would inevitably unearth hundreds of thousands of extra votes for Donald Trump.
Trump has asked about the Arizona recount “multiple times a day,” The Washington Post has reported. He hinted to guests at Mar-A-Lago that votes that suddenly appear for him in the state could be his road back to the White House.
Pollard, who moved to Israel after his parole ended last December, was honored at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva’s annual Jerusalem Day gala, where the capital’s mayor, Moshe Lion, presented him with a certificate of appreciation for his efforts on behalf of the Jewish people.
“What we’re talking about is Amalek, pure and simple,” he said, equating the Biden administration and the Palestinian leadership with the biblical archenemy of the Israelites.
“Whether you murder a Jew directly… or whether you pin his arms behind his back like the identity Democrats of the same Biden administration — the death of the Jew is the same,” he continued, apparently accusing the American leadership of killing Jews.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ilhan-omar-israel-terrorism-hamas
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., accused Israel of "terrorism" following deadly air strikes in the Gaza Strip after Hamas reportedly launched seven rockets at Jerusalem.
"Israeli
air strikes killing civilians in Gaza is an act of terrorism.
Palestinians deserve protection. Unlike Israel, missile defense
programs, such as Iron Dome, don’t exist to protect Palestinian
civilians. It’s unconscionable to not condemn these attacks on the week
of Eid," Omar wrote on Twitter on Monday.
"We're very focused on the situation in Israel, West Bank, Gaza, very deeply concerned about the rocket attacks that we're seeing now, that they need to stop, they need to stop immediately," Blinken said ahead of meeting with Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi.
Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip fired a massive barrage of rockets at the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon at dawn on Tuesday, wounding six people and threatening to turn the city “into hell.”
In a statement July 8, Vindman cited "bullying, intimidation and retaliation" from the White House for his decision to retire, according to a statement from his lawyer David Pressman.
Because he did not receive an assignment as a colonel, he will retire at the lower rank of lieutenant colonel, according to the Army.
An Iraq war veteran and Purple Heart recipient, Vindman had seen his promotion to colonel delayed this summer, a hold-up that some viewed as retaliation for his impeachment testimony.
“Unlike the left, we embrace free thought and debate,” McCarthy said as he made the case for her ouster. He said lawmakers must represent their constituents “as they see fit, but our leadership team cannot afford to be distracted” from the party’s goals.
“Cancel culture is cancel culture, no matter how you look at it,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, told reporters Monday. “And unfortunately I think there are those that are trying to silence others in the party.”
