Anti-Semitism in British Universities

From Professor Michael Curtis, at the New English Review:

The most troubling manifestation was a conference titled Legitimacy, Responsibility, Exceptionalism, to held in 2015 at Southampton University, that was intended to question the legal and moral right of the state of Israel to exist. The organizers were all well-known critics, even haters, of Israel, and advocates of boycott of Israel, as were almost all the expected participants.

The main organizers were Oren Ben-Dor (Southampton University law school) a constant anti-Israeli critic, and George Bisharat (U of California, Hastings School of Law) who favors a one state solution and compares Israel presence to a rapist. Ben Dor, former Israeli, has criticized the Israeli actions in Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza in winter 2009. He has supported boycotts of Israel, written about alleged “apartheid” of Israel, and the bias in the Israeli educational system. In a barely comprehensible article in 2012, Ben-Dor referred to ‘pathologies pertaining to Jewish thinking and being.”

Though 929 academics supported a petition for the conference to be held at Southampton, as the result of strong protests the University cancelled it on the grounds that it gave legitimacy to antisemitism. However, the conference with the same cast of characters is now to be held in March and April 2017 at University College, Cork, Ireland, part of the National University of Ireland.

The list of speakers, including die-hard critics of Israel speaks for itself. The presence as speakers of individuals such as Richard Falk, Ilan Pappe, Azmi Bishara, and Hatem Bazian suggests the objective of the conference. It is not to discuss the problems of the Middle East in any objective fashion. It is to emphasize the illegitimacy of the state of Israel. It is to link the alleged suffering of Palestinians to the foundation and nature of Israel, and in essence to argue for the nullification of Israel’ existence...

If you're on the left, you're not right.

The left's hatred of Israel is simply mind-boggling to me, but it's rife throughout the ideological space of leftists Britain, the U.S., and all over the world, as evidenced by the vote last week at the Security Council, which as 14 votes to delegitimize Israeli settlements, and one abstention (the U.S.).

Singer George Michael Dies of AIDS at 53

Here's the Santa Monica Observer, the only media outlet I found that accurately reported George Michael's death yesterday, "Singer George Michael Succumbs to HIV/AIDS at 53, at Home in England."

The Observer got so much traffic the server almost crashed.

Singer George Michael Succumbs to HIV/AIDS - Santa Monica Observer https://t.co/FTSL9H5Bmn pic.twitter.com/YXgbZcsVh9

— SM ObserverNewspaper (@SMObserved) December 25, 2016

Leftists were upset that people were even mentioning AIDS:

If you want to keep faith this Christmas, do not search 'George Michael AIDS' on Twitter. Outrageous claims/comments/judgements circulating.

— Leon Ward (@LeonjWard) December 25, 2016

Check out my mentions if you want to see how despicable people can be.

— Paul Kidd (@paulkidd) December 26, 2016

I blocked 200+ trolls, and I deleted the tweet that was energising them (life’s too short). Humanity is disappointing today.

— Paul Kidd (@paulkidd) December 26, 2016

If you speculate that #GeorgeMichael died of #HIV, you’re basing that on your own biases, not facts. You’re a garbage person.

— Paul Kidd (@paulkidd) December 26, 2016

There was one other rather honest piece about Michael's death, from Alison Boshoff, at Daily Mail, "ALISON BOSHOFF: How sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll took their toll on troubled genius George Michael":

Michael, who wrote and performed pop classics including Careless Whisper, Praying For Time and Faith, said himself that he suffered from two afflictions –'grief and self-abuse'.

He would smoke enormous amounts of marijuana – up to 25 joints a day at some points in his career.

He also struggled with depression, following the death of his lover Anselmo Feleppa from an HIV-related illness in 1993, and his mother, of cancer, in 1997.

His drug use included a dependency on sleeping pills and a dabble with designer drug GHB. In 2008, Michael was caught smoking crack cocaine in a public toilet.

He was in the habit of cruising for sex with strangers – an activity he declared he had started in his teens. He told friend Piers Morgan that he had up to 500 sexual partners in seven years – which works out, staggeringly, at one every five days.

Yet Michael had no apologies for his lifestyle. Life fast, die young:

I HAVE NEVER AND WILL NEVER APOLOGISE FOR MY SEX LIFE ! GAY SEX IS NATURAL, GAY SEX IS GOOD! NOT EVERYBODY DOES IT, BUT.....HA HA!

— George Michael (@GeorgeMichael) May 13, 2011

Britney Spears is 'Alive and Well'

Well, I'm glad.

At CNN, "Britney Spears is 'alive and well' despite death hoax."

And at PuffHo, "Don’t Worry, Britney Spears Is ‘Alive And Well’."

Good morning! May you all have a blessed day 😊 pic.twitter.com/jJoIckBZET

— Britney Spears (@britneyspears) December 19, 2016

WaPo's Top 10 Books of 2016.

I'm loaded up on books to read at the moment, but I found some new offerings at this piece.

Especially interesting is Svetlana Alexievich's, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets.

Top 10 Books of 2016. https://t.co/9bGZqeQ0sG

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 25, 2016

How the Berlin Christmas Market Attack Changed Germany

At Der Spiegel, "Terror in Berlin: How the Attack Has Changed the Country":

In the hours of uncertainty following the attack on the Christmas market at Berlin's Breitscheidplatz square on the evening of Dec. 19, two methods of viewing the incident quickly became apparent. There was the reflexive, impetuous reaction and the reflective, circumspect approach.

The impetuous took to their computers almost before the truck driver had finished cutting his deadly swath through the Christmas market stalls. Regardless of what was really going on in Berlin, those occupying a certain niche on the web were certain: "Islam-terror" had reached Berlin and a "Merkel Mohammedan" had killed innocent people. Muslims, it was claimed, were dancing for joy in the streets of immigrant neighborhoods like Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg and Berlin-Neukölln. Dec. 19, 2016 was the "beginning of the end" of the Christian West, they said, symbolized by the Christmas tree that had been run over in front of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

In those minutes -- during which the impetuous transformed hunch into certainty and certainty into rage -- the circumspect were just beginning to comprehend what had just happened on Breitscheidplatz. They saw the dead and injured next to a truck, which had been turned into a murder weapon. They knew absolutely nothing for sure. They knew it would take several days for even the most urgent questions to be answered with certainty -- and weeks, if not months, to clear up the underlying questions. And there was time needed to mourn the dead.

"Pray?! Do Something!!" the impetuous tweeted. They aren't interested in facts. Emotions are enough.

Even before the attack, bridging the gap between the circumspect and the impetuous had become difficult. The sexual assaults committed by immigrants on New Year's Eve in Cologne, the attacks in Ansbach and Würzburg, the Islamist bomb-maker arrested in Chemnitz, and the rape-murder apparently committed by a refugee in Freiburg: These were the milestones of the divide. Now, everyone is certain who is to blame: the establishment political parties, the populists, the lying press, the scaremongers, the do-gooders and the right-wingers. The two sides of the divide no longer have much to say to each other.

The Berlin attack has now demonstrated just how little overlap there is between these two parallel worlds. When it became known, in the late evening of Dec. 19, that the police had arrested a suspect from Pakistan, the parallel worlds seemed to be reconciled for a moment. The impetuous had already known that only a Muslim refugee could be the killer. And now the circumspect had actually caught one. Finally, they expressed what had long been obvious to the other side: that we are in a "state of war" and that it is naïve to "always see only the good in people."

But then, during the course of the day on Tuesday, the authorities began to have doubts about their suspect, and in the afternoon they announced: "We have the wrong man." The impetuous were able to explain this away in seconds. The political-journalistic PC-cartel, they believed, simply wasn't willing to accept the truth.

According to one version that was bouncing around one corner of the Internet, some scapegoat would undoubtedly be found. A user on a right-wing website wrote: "There must be a radical right-winger somewhere that this can be pinned on." The fact that investigators quickly identified a man from Tunisia as the alleged attacker did not change the truth as perceived by the impetuous.

Such is reality in this not-particularly-festive Christmas season. In the conspiracy-theory-filled world occupied by one side of the gap, mistakes aren't mistakes but cynically calculated moves. Whereas attacks at other times and in other places -- New York, Paris, London -- brought people together, many people this time chose to view the Berlin attack from their own ideological trench...

Well, to reach for initial conclusions usually results in being upbraided by hoity-toity leftists mewling, "That's not who we are."

And then, it's always the "impetuous" ones who're proven correct.

No wonder the radical left is in retreat worldwide. Hopefully it's just the beginning of a decadal rout that marginalizes leftists for generations.

But keep reading.

Germany Reflects on Compassion in a Dangerous World

It's a tough call, but truly Germany's going to have to roll back some of its "welcoming" compassion.

Germans are so compassionate they're going to die for it.

At WSJ, "At Christmas, Germany Reflects on Compassion in a Dangerous World."

'Little Drummer Boy (Peace on Earth)'

Sweet Christmas music, via Blazing Cat Fur:

Kelly Brook 'Through the Keyhole' (BONUS CALENDAR PHOTOS)

At the Sun U.K., "KELLY Brook has admitted that she thinks she looks rough in the morning during an appearance on Through The Keyhole: The model, 37, is known for her gorgeous hourglass figure."

And at Egotastic!, "Kelly Brook Amazing 2017 Calendar."

She's still got the best body going. Hands down she's hot.

Merry Christmas!

My Calender is on Sale now!! @CalendarsUK Great Christmas Gift 😜🎅🏻🎄 pic.twitter.com/AOyq7TGOL0

— Kelly Brook (@IAMKELLYBROOK) December 16, 2016

Black Bear Boom in Three Rivers, California

Lots and lots of black bears are moseying into town, and some folks have used the occasion to ask whether to reintroduce grizzly bears to California.

I don't know if that's gonna work, although grizzlies are actually native to the Golden State. The state's "bear flag" features a California grizzly bear.

Interesting, in any case.

At LAT, "A black bear boom has a California town wondering how residents would get along with grizzlies."

Glenn Reynolds and Helen Smith (and Family) Wish You Merry Christmas!

At Instapundit, "MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE REYNOLDS-SMITH HOUSEHOLD!"

And see Glenn's very moving holiday essay, at USA Today, "Finding the good in my dad's final days."

Did Reince Priebus Just Compare Donald Trump to Jesus?

Professor Daniel Drezner about popped a vessel at this:

OMFG. https://t.co/XjJsaCc2o6 pic.twitter.com/Ng725lrY2m

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) December 25, 2016

Mollie Hemingway responds:

I get that not everybody is Christian but you should really know that Christians celebrate this good news at this time each and every year. https://t.co/CSsWMv4oI1

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 25, 2016

At the Bustle, "Did Reince Priebus Just Compare Donald Trump To Jesus? Probably Not, But It Sure Sounded Like It."

And at BuzzFeed. The "new king" is Jesus, not Donald Trump:

People are arguing about whether Republicans just compared Trump to Jesus https://t.co/cyknbSgPAo pic.twitter.com/Gq2M5nRDMY

— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) December 25, 2016

Baltimore Ravens QB Joe Flacco Bought Each of His Nine Offensive Lineman an Oculus Rift Virtual Reality System

That's a Merry Christmas!

At the Washington Post, "Some NFL players went all out with gifts for teammates."

Two-Hour Delivery with Amazon Prime

That's actually pretty impressive.

Normally I don't need my stuff shipped that fast, but if you're an Amazon Prime member, you can get your last-minute gift items delivered today.

Here's the Deal of the Day, Ninja Coffee Bar Brewer, Glass Carafe, Silver (Certified Refurbished).

I'll post some book links a little later.

I've got to take my son to work and head over to CostCo to buy food for our Christmas dinner, tri-rip roast and lobster (plus baked potato).

More later.

Obama, Trump, and the Turf War That Has Come to Define the Transition

It's been an unusual transition, at least for Donald Trump's tweeting, heh.

(But obviously much more than that. I don't ever recall an outgoing administration dissing the notion of concurrent "co-presidencies," but Ben Rhodes, Obama's Deputy National Security Advisor, did just that a few days ago.)

In any case, at the New York Times (via Memeorandum):

Obama and Trump have been polite. But they've become leaders of what amounts to dueling administrations. https://t.co/p7mniK63pU

— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 24, 2016

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump and President Obama have been unfailingly polite toward each other since the election. But with Mr. Trump staking out starkly different positions from Mr. Obama on Israel and other sensitive issues, and the president acting aggressively to protect his legacy, the two have become leaders of what amounts to dueling administrations.

The split widened on Friday when the Obama administration abstained from a United Nations Security Council vote that condemned Israel for Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and allowed the resolution to pass. A day earlier, Mr. Trump had publicly demanded that Mr. Obama veto the measure, even intervening with Egypt at the request of Israel to pressure the administration to shelve the effort.

“As to the U.N.,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter after the vote, “things will be different after Jan. 20.”

It was the latest in a rapid-fire series of Twitter posts and public statements over the last week in which Mr. Trump has weighed in on Israel, terrorism and nuclear proliferation — contradicting Mr. Obama and flouting the notion that the country can have only one president at a time.

That longstanding principle has largely collapsed since the victory by Mr. Trump, who campaigned on a strategy of breaking all the rules and has continued to speak in unmodulated tones.

“In some ways, Trump is neutering the Obama administration,” said Douglas G. Brinkley, a professor of history and a presidential historian at Rice University in Houston. “They’ve avoided personally attacking each other, but behind the scenes, they’re working to undermine each other, and I don’t know how the American people benefit from that.”

For its part, the Obama administration on Tuesday announced a permanent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling along wide areas of the Arctic and the Eastern Seaboard, invoking an obscure provision of a 1953 law, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, to claim that Mr. Trump had no power to reverse it.

White House officials asserted a similar privilege in their decision not to veto the Security Council resolution. Israel’s aggressive construction of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, they said, puts at risk a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr. Trump’s opposition to the measure, and the likelihood that his administration will reverse the position, played no part in the decision, they said.

“There’s one president at a time,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser. “There’s a principle here that the world understands who is speaking for the United States until January 20th, and who is speaking for the United States after January 20th.”

Ben Rhodes? What an idiot.

I saw the guy on cable news and he looked like a dork.  Just having to declare there's "only one president at a time" illustrates just how weak the outgoing administration is.

DLTDHYOTWO.

Israel's 'Illegal Settlements' Aren't Actually Illegal

That's the thing about the radical left and foaming far-left anti-Semites: they spew lies which then become treated as fact.

See David M. Phillips, at Commentary, "The Illegal-Settlements Myth":

The conviction that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal is now so commonly accepted, it hardly seems as though the matter is even open for discussion. But it is. Decades of argument about the issue have obscured the complex nature of the specific legal question about which a supposedly overwhelming verdict of guilty has been rendered against settlement policy. There can be no doubt that this avalanche of negative opinion has been deeply influenced by the settlements’ unpopularity around the world and even within Israel itself. Yet, while one may debate the wisdom of Israeli settlements, the idea that they are imprudent is quite different from branding them as illegal. Indeed, the analysis underlying the conclusion that the settlements violate international law depends entirely on an acceptance of the Palestinian narrative that the West Bank is “Arab” land. Followed to its logical conclusion—as some have done—this narrative precludes the legitimacy of Israel itself.

These arguments date back to the aftermath of the Six-Day War. When Israel went into battle in June 1967, its objective was clear: to remove the Arab military threat to its existence. Following its victory, the Jewish state faced a new challenge: what to do with the territorial fruits of that triumph. While many Israelis assumed that the overwhelming nature of their victory would shock the Arab world into coming to terms with their legitimacy and making peace, they would soon be disabused of this belief. At the end of August 1967, the heads of eight countries, including Egypt, Syria, and Jordan (all of which lost land as the result of their failed policy of confrontation with Israel), met at a summit in Khartoum, Sudan, and agreed to the three principles that were to guide the Arab world’s postwar stands: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel. Though many Israelis hoped to trade most if not all the conquered lands for peace, they would have no takers. This set the stage for decades of their nation’s control of these territories....

The question of the legal status of the West Bank, as well as Jerusalem, is not so easily resolved. To understand why this is the case, we must first revisit the history of the region in the 20th century.

Though routinely referred to nowadays as “Palestinian” land, at no point in history has Jerusalem or the West Bank been under Palestinian Arab sovereignty in any sense of the term. For several hundred years leading up to World War I, all of Israel, the Kingdom of Jordan, and the putative state of Palestine were merely provinces of the Ottoman Empire. After British-led Allied troops routed the Turks from the country in 1917-18, the League of Nations blessed Britain’s occupation with a document that gave the British conditional control granted under a mandate. It empowered Britain to facilitate the creation of a “Jewish National Home” while respecting the rights of the native Arab population. British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill later partitioned the mandate in 1922 and gave the East Bank of the Jordan to his country’s Hashemite Arab allies, who created the Kingdom of Jordan there under British tutelage.

Following World War II, the League of Nations’ successor, the United Nations, voted in November 1947 to partition the remaining portion of the land into Arab and Jewish states. While the Jews accepted partition, the Arabs did not, and after the British decamped in May 1948, Jordan joined with four other Arab countries to invade the fledgling Jewish state on the first day of its existence. Though Israel survived the onslaught, the fighting left the Jordanians in control of what would come to be known as the West Bank as well as approximately half of Jerusalem, including the Old City. Those Jewish communities in the West Bank that had existed prior to the Arab invasion were demolished, as was the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.

After the cease-fire that ended Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, Jordan annexed both the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But, as was the case when Israel annexed those same parts of the ancient city that it would win back 19 years later, the world largely ignored this attempt to legitimize Jordan’s presence. Only Jordan’s allies Britain and Pakistan recognized its claims of sovereignty. After King Hussein’s disastrous decision to ally himself with Egypt’s Nasser during the prelude to June 1967, Jordan was evicted from the lands it had won in 1948.

This left open the question of the sovereign authority over the West Bank...

Keep reading.

And be sure to watch that Danny Ayalon video above. It's so crystal clear it's ridiculous.

PREVIOUSLY: "Obama's 'Dangerous Parting Shot' on Israel."

Obama Administration Accused of 'Stabbing Israel in the Back'

Following-up, "Obama's 'Dangerous Parting Shot' on Israel."

More backlash against the evil Obama regime, at Free Beacon, "Obama Joins the Jackals."

Obama's 'Dangerous Parting Shot' on Israel

Following-up from yesterday, "Obama Administration Abstains as U.N. Votes to Condemn Israel Over Settlements (VIDEO)."

The left-wing Washington Post takes the hateful, anti-Israel Obama regime to task, "The Obama administration fires a dangerous parting shot":

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S decision to abstain on a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements reverses decades of practice by both Democratic and Republican presidents. The United States vetoed past resolutions on the grounds that they unreasonably singled out Jewish communities in occupied territories as an obstacle to Middle East peace, and that U.N. action was more likely to impede than advance negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

The measure, approved 14 to 0 by the Security Council Friday, is subject to the same criticism: It will encourage Palestinians to pursue more international sanctions against Israel rather than seriously consider the concessions necessary for statehood, and it will give a boost to the international boycott and divestment movement against the Jewish state, which has become a rallying cause for anti-Zionists. At the same time, it will almost certainly not stop Israeli construction in the West Bank, much less in East Jerusalem, where Jewish housing was also deemed by the resolution to be “a flagrant violation under international law.”

By abstaining, the administration did not explicitly support that position, which has not been U.S. policy since the Carter administration. In explaining the vote, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power pointed out that the council was sanctioning Israel even while failing to take action to stop a potential genocide in South Sudan or the slaughter in Aleppo, Syria. Yet in failing to veto the measure, the Obama administration set itself apart both from previous administrations and from the incoming presidency of Donald Trump, who spoke out strongly against the resolution...

The Obama's regime's just has hypocritical --- and just as evil --- as the United Nations.

But keep reading.

Tucker Carlson Eviscerates Far-Left Nutjob Lauren Duca (VIDEO)

Mediate has the headline, via Memeorandum, "Teen Vogue Writer Battles Tucker Carlson: 'You're Actually Being a Partisan Hack'."

And at Hot Air, "“You should stick to the thigh-high boots”: Tucker Carlson vs. Teen Vogue writer":

On this slow pre-holiday news day, kindly enjoy the celebrated cable-news food fight du jour. This interview was booked, I assume, in the belief that it’d be what I’ll call a “bop-bag segment,” in which the host brings on a guest who’s not as practiced as he is at political debate, especially on television, and ends up knocking him/her down repeatedly for the entertainment of the hometown fans. Duca came to play, though. I think Dave Weigel’s basically right that Carlson started goofing on “Teen Vogue” halfway through only because she wasn’t as much of a pushover in the first half as the audience might have liked. (The audio cuts out on Duca’s parting shot, in which she calls him a “sexist pig” for his crack about her sticking to writing about boots.) The give and take makes for good TV; Fox News should book her more often. If CNN can have a stable of dedicated spinners for Trump like Kayleigh McEnany and Jeffrey Lord, surely Fox can spare 10 minutes a day for an anti-Trumper like Duca to have slapfights with Eric Bolling and Sean Hannity...

Click through for the exit question.

Lauren Duca's a nutjob (and an airhead). Tucker takes her to task for tweeting "Eat Shit, @realDonadTrump" (now deleted) and Duca accuses him of being childish, pfft. (She also calls him a "sexist pig," but the audio cuts out at the end.)

Things Will Be Different at the United Nations

Following-up, "Obama Administration Abstains as U.N. Votes to Condemn Israel Over Settlements (VIDEO)."

Less than a month from now.

Things will be different.

As to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20th.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2016

Hailey Baldwin LOVE Advent 2016 (VIDEO)

I fell behind on my LOVE posting last night.

Here's Hailey Baldwin to catch up: