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April 2016

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 07, 2016 6 Comments
We have been documenting a clear shift in tactics by anti-Israel campus activists, led by Students for Justice in Palestine joined by other groups. The shift is towards disruption of Israeli and pro-Israeli speakers on campus in order to create a hostile campus environment. We have reported on several such recent disruptions, including at UC-Davis, University of Chicago, University of Minnesota Law School, UT-Austin, Kings College (London), U. Windsor, University of South Florida, and anLGBTQ Shabbat Event in Chicago. Even events that are not disrupted are protested, such as the appearance of actor Michael Douglas and human rights hero Natan Sharansky at Brown University. It happened again yesterday at San Francisco State University, where anti-Israel activists have co-opted student protests over proposed budget cuts. International Business Times reports:

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on April 07, 2016 3 Comments
On Tuesday, German police in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia arrested a Syrian man charged with serious war crimes after arriving from Syria. The former militia commander is suspected of pillaging, plundering and committing brutalities against civilian in the city of Aleppo, Syria. The initial reports have not confirmed if the suspect entered Germany using a false identity or posing as a refugee. In 2015, Germany took in more than a million migrants. The actual figures are believed to be much higher. Just this week, the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung reported that according to Interior Ministry's estimates some 500,000 unregistered migrants were roaming across Germany.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 07, 2016 10 Comments
I would like to introduce you to California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who is running for the U.S. Senate and hoping to take the seat occupied by Barbara "Don't Call Me Ma'am" Boxer. I would like to say that Harris, who is both the likely nominee and ultimate November victor, will be an improvement over the pugnacious pixie. But I can't.

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 07, 2016 18 Comments
Can you tell what's racist about the image above? Allow me to explain. You see the black girl is nothing more than an arm rest for the white girl. That's the latest outrage from the left. The photo was part of an ad for the Gap but they've pulled it and apologized. Ace of Spades says it's "Because They're Weak and Stupid and Have Been Scared By People Who Are Even Weaker and Stupider" and he's right. USA Today reports:
Gap apologizes for racially insensitive ad Clothing retailer Gap apologized on Tuesday after receiving criticism that an ad for the company’s children’s clothing line was racially insensitive.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 06, 2016 19 Comments
A Toronto-based Black Lives Matter organizer, Yusra Khogali, tweeted about killing, "men and white folks," in February before deleting the tweet and locking her account. According to Newstalk 1010:
Many are now calling for a police investigation, calling the tweet 'hate speech'. There's been no comment from Ali yet, but NEWSTALK 1010 has contacted Black Lives Matter and we've yet to hear a response. Believe it or not, the tweet had five 'likes' before it was removed. Shortly after, Ali locked down her twitter account. But there was even one response that said "praying for ya... to destroy them."

Posted by Miriam Elman on April 06, 2016 6 Comments
In a post last December we highlighted the history of Israel’s prisoner exchanges with various Palestinian armed factions. As we noted:
For the past three decades, Israel has been forced to exchange scores of incarcerated terrorists for a mere handful of its POWs. In the majority of these lopsided prisoner swaps the Israeli soldiers had already been killed and came home in body bags. And in many cases the freed terrorists have gone on to perpetrate further terror attacks”.
Israeli soldiers, either dead or alive, have proven to be valuable bargaining chips. So basically, as we discussed, Palestinian terror organizations have been running a prisoner-exchange extortion racket. Now it looks like Israel may again be forced to pay a steep price for several of its civilians too. On Friday, Hamas publicly claimed for the first time that it was holding two Israeli men in captivity.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 06, 2016 42 Comments
On April 1, Bernie Sanders sat down for an interview with the NY Daily News editorial board. It was terrible. So terrible, The Washington Post said it was, "pretty close to a disaster." Sanders was unable to answer basic questions about several of his campaign policy centerpieces. Most notably, Sanders struggled to explain how he would break up banks.
Daily News: Okay. Well, let’s assume that you’re correct on that point. How do you go about doing [breaking up the banks]?

Posted by Jake Goldberg on April 06, 2016 4 Comments
Our generation is enduring a crisis, yet very few of us are actually aware of its existence. On April 4, 2011, the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education (OCR) released what has come to be known as the “Dear Colleague” letter (DCL). As a preface, Title IX is a federal statute that forbids discrimination on the basis of sex, and OCR is an office within the Department of Education that is tasked with enforcing Title IX on federally funded colleges and universities. Therefore, this bureaucratic office holds authority over the vast majority of college student’s schools. A violation of OCR policy could result in the loss of federal funds that are vital for any school’s operations, so OCR often issues guidance to colleges and universities on how to maintain compliance. DCL is one such issuance of guidance. So where is the crisis?

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 06, 2016 7 Comments
Hillary has had a rough primary stint, losing six of the last seven contests to the Democratic Socialist competition -- Bernie Sanders. USA Today reported:
In a victory speech from Wyoming — which holds a caucus on Saturday — Sanders claimed momentum and argued he is a stronger general election candidate than Clinton.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 06, 2016 3 Comments
California's primary is June 7th, and because of the ongoing election drama of both parties, voters in the Golden State are already very excited about their votes making a difference. So much so that the state's election officials are preparing for an election-day voting tsunami:
More than 600,000 Californians have registered to vote online or updated their registration in just the last three months, and county election agencies may be overwhelmed by the volume of people who show up, Secretary of State Alex Padilla warned Gov. Jerry Brown. Voter registration application cards are in high demand statewide, he wrote in a letter Monday to the governor. Padilla also wrote that "one campaign" alone recently requested 200,000 registration forms to sign up voters, although he did not specify which candidate's campaign made it. “Our data suggests a surge in voter participation in both the presidential primary election in June and the general election in November,” Padilla wrote in the letter.
Extreme interest in the presidential race is a factor. Current polls report that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have substantial leads in their respective contests. However, June is months away and polls for this election cycle have been...unreliable.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on April 06, 2016 9 Comments
The BBC aired footage of notorious MI6 traitor Kim Philby briefing agents of East Germany's Stasi secret police on Monday. Philby and his "Cambridge five" cohort of British double-agents working for Soviet bloc organizations eviscerated Britain's intelligence organs and stunned Britain between his recruitment in the 1930s and his flight to Moscow in the early 1960s. Recruited by the Soviets in the 1930s, Philby was nevertheless a decorated British intelligence officer and reputedly in line to be the next head of MI6 (Britain's CIA) by the late 1940s. Over the course of his career on behalf of the Soviets, he betrayed untold Western assets and intelligence missions in the East. Finally under suspicion in the early 1950s, Philby "exposed" two Soviet agents who had already been blown or would be imminently to clear his own name.  Despite that measure, Philby was forced to leave British intelligence in 1951.  Tasked with identifying the third member of the spy ring Philby had exposed, British Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan told the House of Commons in 1955, "I have no reason to conclude that Mr. Philby has at any time betrayed the interests of his country, or to identify him with the so-called 'Third Man', if indeed there was one."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 06, 2016 190 Comments
Remember when Ted Cruz (or Marco Rubio, or Jeb Bush, or any other Republican) lost a primary and accused his opponent of criminal election activity, and then hid from the media on election night? Neither do I. You get out there on election night, congratulate the other side and give a speech to rally for the next battle. Or at least you don't act like a two-year old brat who just had a half-finished candy bar taken away. Last night Donald Trump acted like the two-year old. For the first time in his adult life he was speechless and camera-shy after getting crushed in the Wisconsin primary. Wisconsin Republican Primary 2016 Results No graceful concession speeches there. Instead Trump issued a vitriolic, bizarre statement (emphasis added):

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 06, 2016 18 Comments
President Obama announced Tuesday that he's planning to bring a greater fight to the terror group ISIS, saying he plans to "scale-up" the fight. CNN reported:
Obama looks to scale up ISIS fight President Barack Obama said Tuesday that he was looking for ways to scale up the battle against militants in Iraq and Syria ahead of a White House meeting with top U.S. military brass. The planning session on combating the terror group was not expected to yield major shifts of strategy.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 06, 2016 4 Comments
On March 28, 2016, I gave a lecture at the University of Chicago Law School, When Does Anti-Israelism Turn Into Anti-Semitism. The lecture was sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Students and the Louis D. Brandeis Center, Inc. The video is embedded below and includes PowerPoint slides, which also are embedded below. After laying out the background on the rise of anti-Semitism tied to the gross demonization of Israel by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, I discussed the Sharansky 3-D Test, and the State Department guidelines, as to when anti-Zionism crosses into anti-Semitism. I then used various images as a Rorschach test. Here are a couple of the images (all the images are in the video and slide show). Slide - Carlos Latuff Octopus

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 05, 2016 9 Comments
The so-called Panama Papers story has been simmering since Sunday. Supposedly a massive document leak, the Panama Papers appear to implicate some of the most powerful people in the world. 300 journalists pored through more than 11 million pages of documents to get to the bottom of the story.
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