Joel B. Pollak - Page 299

Speaker of the House John Boehner announced Wednesday morning that he would invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint meeting of Congress on Feb. 11. “In this time of challenge, I am asking the Prime Minister to address Congress on the grave threats radical Islam and Iran pose to our security and way of life,” Boehner said in a press statement. The timing suits Netanyahu perfectly, as it comes five weeks before Israelis will go to the polls on March 17.

In his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday evening, President Barack Obama touted his foreign policy successes–but failed to mention Yemen, where Shia militias overthrew the government earlier in the day, and where Americans anxiously anticipated evacuation from the embassy and the country.

The Iraq War may have been a serious mistake. Regardless, we cannot dwell on that mistake so obsessively that we fail to act–as we did in the 1930s–to stop a new threat.

On the one-year anniversary of the start of talks with Iran, and as President Barack Obama prepares to give his State of the Union address, Russia has signed a military deal with Iran. The agreement covers “includes expanded counter-terrorism cooperation, exchanges of military personnel for training purposes and an understanding for each country’s navy to more frequently use the other’s ports,” the AP reports.

In the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, the moment when the momentum shifted decisively against Hillary Clinton was when the New York Senator embroiled herself in a controversy over whether President Lyndon Baines Johnson or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. deserved

If the Court does uphold same-sex marriage as a constitutional right, it will mark a stunning transformation of marriage in less than seven years. In 2008, voters in California, easily one of the most liberal states, passed Proposition 8, which made traditional marriage the only form of marriage recognized in the state, overturning an earlier ruling by the state’s courts. Rather than make their case again to the voters, gay marriage advocates took to the courts, dominated by liberal judges.

Obama claimed: “What was remarkable was that when I came into office, the world was divided around this issue. Iran was united. Through some very strong diplomatic work, we united the world and isolated Iran.” Obama also claimed: “The agreement has held and negotiations have been serious. We have not lost ground. Iran has not accelerated its program during the time these negotiations have taken place.” All of those claims, however, are false–and dangerously so.

On Tuesday, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls addressed the National Assembly and gave the most stirring speech on antisemitism since Chaim Herzog literally tore up the “Zionism is racism” resolution at the UN General Assembly in 1975. Valls reiterated his recent argument that

A Palestinian journalist has penned an open letter to French President François Hollande, protesting the fact that France invited Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to participate in last Sunday’s march in Paris against terror and in memory of the slain journalists of Charlie Hebdo. “Abbas is personally responsible for punishing Palestinian journalists who dare to criticize him or express their views in public,” the letter declares.

en. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the darling of the American left, has endorsed California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who announced her bid for retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer’s seat earlier this week. Warren is the left’s new rising star, pitching old-style liberalism to a base eager to transcend the frustrations of the Obama presidency.

As the western powers prepare for the latest round of never-ending talks with Iran over the fate of its nuclear program, the Tehran regime is reportedly overseeing the construction of a nuclear plant in Syria, as well as the building of new missile sites. Both moves underscore the contempt that Iran has for UN Security Council resolutions and for the nuclear talks themselves, and suggest that President Barack Obama’s quest for a deal at any price has only encouraged Iran to behave more aggressively.

It is common for White House spokespeople to spin the facts–to find the interpretation that best flatters the president. It is rare, but not unheard of, for White House spokespeople to lie about facts that are not yet fully known to the public. It is extraordinary for White House spokespeople to lie about facts that everyone already knows. Yet that is exactly what Josh Earnest did on Tuesday, when trying to explain why the Obama administration strains to avoid mentioning radical Islam.

A Canadian newspaper has a new answer to the thorny editorial question of whether to reprint controversial cartoons of Muhammad, such as those that appear in France’s Charlie Hebdo: invite readers to “connect the dots” and draw Muhammad themselves.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have secured his re-election in March with a strong display on the world stage at last weekend’s anti-terror march in Paris. Though his critics on the left accused Bibi of exploiting the tragedy, and said that he drew attention to himself, Netanyahu bolstered his image as a world leader, and a steady hand in turbulent times. With the Obama administration absent from the march, he also–once again–struck a contrast in Israel’s favor.

On Sunday, at the Grand Synagogue in Paris, some of the loudest applause at a memorial for four Jews killed by Islamic terrorists in a kosher supermarket came when one of the speakers reminded President François Hollande that there is no difference between “Death to the Jews!” and “Death to Israel!” For years, the French elite has pretended it can tolerate the latter without encouraging the former. That attitude is what allowed French antisemitism to flourish like an evil weed.

After sitting out the “#HandsUpDontShoot” and “#BlackLivesMatter” demonstrations, Obama and Holder were not going to be caught on camera attending a “#JeSuisCharlie” rally in Paris, no matter how many other world leaders were going to be there in solidarity with the French people, with the Jewish people, or with freedom of expression in general.

Five people were reportedly shot in the wee hours of Sunday morning near a Chris Brown concert in San Jose, California. The rapper tweeted that he was unharmed, and all five victims are expected to survive.

On Sunday, as world leaders gathered for an anti-terror rally in Paris, France, the Obama administration announced that it would convene a global “Summit on Countering Violent Extremism” on Feb. 18. The White House released a statement describing the summit agenda, which failed to mention Islam, radical Islam, or anything related to the actual ideology motivating the Paris attacks.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas joined the front rank of world leaders in Paris at a massive anti-terror rally on Sunday, separated by a few world leaders from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also led the march through the city streets. The gesture was intended to create a message of unity and peace, but it also had the effect of sanitizing Abbas’s ongoing support for terrorism against Israeli civilians.

As millions gather in Paris to protest against terrorism and for free speech and tolerance, the French consulate in San Francisco will host a solidarity rally on Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Civic Center Plaza. The rally will honor the victims at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a kosher supermarket, where Islamic radicals killed 12 and four, respectively, last week.

Attorney General Eric Holder will be representing the United States at Sunday afternoon’s rally against terrorism in Paris, France, according to news reports. President Barack Obama has no public events scheduled, and Secretary of State John Kerry is on a trip to India.

In the book, Dershowitz argues that the main reason terrorism continues is that it tends to be rewarded, even by the nations that fight it hardest. He cites France as an example of a “capitulating” nation–one that breaks international unity against terrorism by cutting deals with terrorist organizations in the hope that its own citizens will be left alone in the future.

Kuwaiti singer Ema Shah has condemned this week’s terror attack in Paris against the staff of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper, known for its controversial cartoons.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters on Friday in New York that the terror attacks in Paris, in which radical Muslims targeted a Jewish supermarket and a newspaper that had mocked Muhammad, were “criminality” that had nothing to do with religion.

Gloria Allred, the attorney representing several of the women who have accused comedian Bill Cosby of sexual assault, said Wednesday that Cosby should follow the example of Alan Dershowitz and waive all statute of limitations defenses if he truly believes

Attorney Alan Dershowitz continues his fight against Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell, the lawyers whose client, “Jane Doe #3,” has accused him of rape in a court case challenging the terms of a plea bargain between the federal government and Dershowitz’s former

By deflecting attention from the cartoons, Klein is actually trying to protect Western ideas about the state, the individual, and freedom. Yet he cannot bring himself to identify the threat to those ideas, because doing so would mean admitting that the multicultural project, to which the left is politically wedded, has failed.

I don’t much feel like re-posting the Muhammad cartoons for which Charlie Hebdo became famous. It’s not a matter of fear, or political correctness. A decade ago, I was living in the heart of the Muslim community in Cape Town, writing articles against fundamentalism and in defense of the U.S. and Israel even while I enjoyed breaking Ramadan fasts with friends and neighbors. I did so at some considerable risk to my personal safety. I was lucky to meet religious Muslims who wanted nothing to do with violence–and it is precisely because of those relationships that I choose not to offend, even while standing with Charlie Hebdo.

Hundreds of demonstrators poured into the streets across California in spontaneous protests against the Islamist attack on the offices of satirical newspaper “Charlie Hebdo” on Wednesday, which claimed the lives of 12 journalists, cartoonists, security personnel and police officers. The demonstrators expressed their solidarity with the newspaper, with the French people, with freedom of expression–and against radical Islam.

In chess, blunders are noted with a “?” and major blunders with a “??”. However, the decision by lawyers Bradley J. Edwards and Paul G. Cassell to sue Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz for defamation would deserve a third

You do not need to know–or even like–Dershowitz to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he is not guilty of the terrible crime of which he has accused in this tabloid scandal.

President Barack Obama has made it clear that a nuclear deal with Iran is one of his top priorities this year. Disarmament has, in fact, been the only constant in his foreign policy, not just since taking office in 2009 but since his college days at Columbia. Yet as negotiations have broken one deadline after another, America’s allies–especially Israel and Saudi Arabia–have become alarmed, fearing a weak deal that will leave Iran on the cusp of nuclear armament. Five key foreign policy blunders reinforced those fears.

The White House has hosted serial race-baiter Al Sharpton dozens of times, and has followed his cues in racially divisive controversies from the Trayvon Martin shooting to the ongoing “Black Lives Matter” protests, which have led to retaliatory violence against police across the nation. Moreover, President Barack Obama himself spent twenty years in the pews of the church of Jeremiah Wright in Chicago, enduring Wright’s racist sermons without comment or complaint, and contributing thousands of dollars to Wright’s fundraising efforts

Recalling his father’s inauguration as governor 56 years ago, Brown said that many of the same challenges still persist, including discrimination, education, and air pollution. “These problems–they never completely go away.”

The Obama administration might indeed allow a UN Security Council resolution on a Palestinian state to pass, provided some wording could be found that would accommodate the terms of Resolutions 242 and 338, which encourage a negotiated peace.

California Governor Jerry Brown is set to be sworn in for his fourth term at the state capitol today, and will combine the ceremony with his annual ‘State of the State’ address. The governor won re-election comfortably in November, and