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House passes sweeping police overhaul after Floyd’s death

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., joined by House Democrats spaced for social distancing, speaks during a news conference on the House East Front Steps on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, June 25, 2020, ahead of the House vote on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

By LISA MASCARO (AP)

The House approved a far-reaching police overhaul from Democrats on Thursday, a vote heavy with emotion and symbolism as a divided Congress struggles to address the global outcry over the deaths of George Floyd and other Black Americans.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gathered with members of the Congressional Black Caucus on the Capitol steps, challenging opponents not to allow the deaths to have been in vain or the outpouring of public support for changes to go unmatched. But the collapse of a Senate Republican bill leaves final legislation in doubt.

“Exactly one month ago, George Floyd spoke his final words — ‘I can’t breathe’ — and changed the course of history,” Pelosi said.

She said the Senate faces a choice “to honor George Floyd’s life or to do nothing.”

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is perhaps the most ambitious set of proposed changes to police procedures and accountability in decades. Backed by the nation’s leading civil rights groups, it aims to match the moment of demonstrations that filled streets across the nation. It has almost zero chance of becoming law.

On the eve of the vote, President Donald Trump’s administration said he would veto the bill. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has also said it would not pass the Republican-held chamber.

After the GOP policing bill stalled this week, blocked by Democrats, Trump shrugged.

“If nothing happens with it, it’s one of those things,” Trump said. “We have different philosophies.”

Congress is now at a familiar impasse despite protests outside their door and polling that shows Americans overwhelmingly want changes after the deaths of FloydBreonna Taylor and others in interactions with law enforcement. The two parties are instead appealing to voters ahead of the fall election, which will determine control of the House, Senate and White House.

“We hear you. We see you. We are you,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., during the debate.

It has been a month since Floyd’s May 25 death sparked a global reckoning over police tactics and racial injustice. Since then, funeral services were held for Rayshard Brooks, a Black man shot and killed by police in Atlanta. Thursday is also what would have been the 18th birthday of Tamir Rice, a Black boy killed in Ohio in 2014.

Lawmakers who have been working from home during the COVID-19 crisis were summoned to the Capitol for an emotional, hours-long debate. Dozens voted by proxy under new pandemic rules.

During the day, several Democratic lawmakers read the names of those killed, shared experiences of racial bias and echoed support of Black Lives Matter activists.

Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said hundreds of thousands of people “in every state in the union” are marching in the streets to make sure Floyd “will not be just another Black man dead at the hands of the police.”

Republican lawmakers countered the bill goes too far and failed to include GOP input. “All lives matter,” said Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz. New York Rep. Pete King said it’s time to stand with law enforcement, the “men and women in blue.” House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy decried the “mob” of demonstrators.

At one point Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., stood up to say he just didn’t understand what was happening in the country — from Floyd’s death to the protests that followed. Several Black Democratic lawmakers rose to encourage him to pick up a U.S. history book or watch some of the many films now streaming about the Black experience in America.

Later, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., noting the legacy of Emmett Till, asked others to “walk in my shoes.”

In the stalemate over the policing overhaul, the parties are settled into their political zones, almost ensuring no legislation will become law. While there may be shared outrage over Floyd’s death, the lawmakers remain far apart on the broader debate over racial bias in policing and other institutions. The 236-181 House vote was largely on party lines. Three Republicans joined Democrats in favor of passage and no Democrats were opposed.

Both bills share common elements that could be grounds for a compromise. Central to both would be the creation of a national database of use-of-force incidents, which is viewed as a way to provide transparency on officers’ records if they transfer from one agency to another. The bills would restrict police chokeholds and set up new training procedures, including beefing up the use of body cameras.

The Democratic bill goes much further, mandating many of those changes, while also revising the federal statute for police misconduct and holding officers personally liable for damages in lawsuits. It also would halt the practice of sending military equipment to local law enforcement agencies.

Neither bill goes as far as some activists want with calls to defund the police and shift resources to other community services.

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican senator, who drafted the GOP package, said the bill is now “closer to the trash can than it’s ever been.”

“I’m frustrated,” he said on Fox News Channel.

Scott insisted he was open to amending his bill with changes proposed by Democrats. But Democrats doubted McConnell would allow a thorough debate, and instead blocked the GOP bill.

Senate Democrats believe Senate Republicans will face mounting public pressure to open negotiations and act. But ahead of the November election, that appears uncertain.

A Terrorist’s Ties to a Leading Black Lives Matter Group

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by Scott Walter (Capital Research)

Some conservatives have begun speculating the unrest in American cities—even as late as Monday night in Washington, DC, as “protestors” unsuccessfully worked to tear down a statue of Andrew Jackson and set up an autonomous zone across the street from the White House—may in part be an attempt to affect the upcoming presidential election, with the chaos and violence intended to make it as difficult as possible for Donald Trump to win a second term.

Lending credence to this idea is the fact that at least one board member of Thousand Currents—the group fiscally sponsoring the most organized part of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, who have been involved in most of the activity surrounding the current unrest—tried the same thing almost 40 years ago during Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign. And it landed her in federal prison for 16 years.

If there were any question whether Black Lives Matter has ideological ties to the Communist terrorists of the 1960s, the story of Susan Rosenberg  should put that issue to bed.

[Editor’s note: The webpage for Thousand Current’s board of directors was taken down within hours of this post’s publication. Fortunately, the board of directors webpage is archived here.]

Susan Rosenberg and Thousand Currents

Rosenberg, who started out as a member of the 1960s revolutionary group Weather Underground, graduated into even more violent, and arguably successful, forms of terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s—including bombings at an FBI field office in Staten Island, the Navy Yard Officers’ Club in Washington, DC, and even the U.S. Capitol building, where she damaged a representation of the greatest of the Democrat defenders of slavery, John C. Calhoun. She currently serves as Human and Prisoner Rights Advocate and a Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of Thousand Currents.

As my colleague Robert Stilson explains here, BLM Global Network Foundation has been a fiscally sponsored project of Thousand Currents, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, since 2016.  That means the BLM group, which runs the BlackLivesMatter.com website, does not have its own IRS tax-exempt status but is operating as a “project” of an organization that does. In the case of 501(c)(3) fiscally sponsored projects, this allows tax-deductible donations to be made to the project.

Marxist Connections

When “Black Lives Matter” is used to refer to an organization, it typically means the BLM Global Network Foundation that traces its beginnings to “three radical Black organizers — Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi.” Cullors recently went viral online when she admitted that she and others in the group were “trained Marxists.”

This leads to confusion when people express their support for “Black Lives,” because they may not realize this organization is ideologically tied—to the point of having Rosenberg on the board of the central group—with trained Marxists with a history of extremism and violence. In fact, Rosenberg was a member of the May 19th Communist Organization (M19). It was, according to this NY Post article from January 2020, “the nation’s only woman-run terror group,” as recounted by William Rosenau in his book Tonight We Bombed the U.S. Capitol.

According to the Post, M19 spent two years engaged in bombings in New York and Washington, DC, that were meant “to cast a cloud over what President Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign was promising: a sunny, prosperous ‘Morning in America.’ Reagan’s election in 1980 told the remnants of America’s radical left that the country had rejected their call to revolution.”

Middle-class and college-educated, M19’s members shared a disdain for their own whiteness. To prove they weren’t merely “mouthing revolution,” they allied with the Black Liberation Army to break cop-killer Joanne Chesimard (aka Assata Shakur) out of prison in 1979. Two years later they assisted in the notorious Brink’s robbery of 1981, which killed two Nyack police officers and a bank guard.

In an eerily familiar incident on November 7, 1983, they even managed to pose as tourists at the U.S. Capitol building, planting a duffel bag with a bomb under a bench outside the Senate chamber, and cratering a wall  and shattering chandeliers that ultimately damaged a portrait of 19th-century Sen. John C. Calhoun.

Rosenberg and another M19 member, Tim Blunk, were arrested in November 1984 in Cherry Hill, NJ, in front of a storage unit containing 740 pounds of unstable dynamite stolen from a Texas construction firm four years earlier. Rosenberg was also wanted in connection with the 1981 Brink’s robbery. She was never charged in those crimes.

After 16 years in prison, she was released in 2001 when President Bill Clinton commuted her sentence, an act that outraged even the left-leaning New York Times.

Rosenberg’s Revolutionary Ideology

National Review columnist and former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy described her trial this way in a 2008 column:

Rosenberg turned her New Jersey terrorism trial into a circus, posturing as a political prisoner. At her sentencing, she urged her supporters to continue their war against the United States. (“When we were first captured we said, we’re caught, we’re not defeated, long live the armed struggle. We’d like to take this moment to rededicate ourselves to our revolutionary principles, to our commitment to continue to fight for the defeat of U.S. imperialism.”) She expressed remorse about only one thing: she hadn’t had the courage to shoot it out with the police who’d apprehended her.

Rosenberg has written a book about her exploits in which she justifies her actions this way:

I pursued a path that seemed to me a logical step beyond legal protest: the use of political violence. Did that make me a terrorist? In my mind, then and now, the answer is no. I say this because no act in which I was involved ever had violence against persons as its object or consequence.

The “Protestors”

Would the “protestors” destroying statues say the same about their behavior over the last several weeks? It’s a fair bet they would. In fact, Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the factually erroneous New York Times “1619 Project” proudly claims her project served as inspiration for the current iconoclastic destruction happening around the nation.

The long and the short of Rosenberg’s involvement with Thousand Currents is that numerous Black Lives Matter organizers have ties to extremist movements of the past, and are not some brand new movement simply fighting for marginalized people today. And that the goal of destruction and violence is more of a political tool than a reaction to injustice.

Audit: US sent $1.4B in virus relief payments to dead people

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In this April 21, 2020, file photo Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington. The Trump administration has abruptly dropped on Friday, June 19, its insistence on secrecy for a $600 billion-plus coronavirus aid program for small businesses. Mnuchin refused to do so at a Senate hearing last week, saying the data was “proprietary information.” (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

By MARCY GORDON(AP)

Nearly 1.1 million coronavirus relief payments totaling some $1.4 billion went to dead people, a government watchdog reported Thursday. Legal and political issues hang over the misdirected taxpayer funds, the latest example of errors in massive aid being dispensed at crisis speed.

As of May 31, about 160 million so-called economic impact payments totaling $269 billion were sent to taxpayers as part of the $2.4 trillion coronavirus relief package enacted in March. The Government Accountability Office, Congress’ auditing arm, cited the number of erroneous payments to deceased taxpayers in its report on the government programs.

While the government has asked survivors to return the money, it’s not clear they have to.

It also may be a politically sensitive gambit for the Treasury Department to aggressively seek to claw back the money, especially because some recipients may have died in the early months of this year from COVID-19.

When billions in aid are rushed out the door in a crisis, “these are the kinds of things that happen,” said Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of advocacy group Public Citizen.

Gilbert acknowledged the sensitivity of the issue. But, she added, “it’s a big number, particularly at this moment when our economy is in free-fall. It’s a large amount of taxpayer money that’s not doing what it was intended to do.”

The errors occurred mainly because of a lag in reporting data on who is deceased. It’s a lapse that tax experts say is almost inevitable.

The revelation of more than $1 billion in public money erroneously paid out shines a light on the part of the government’s massive relief program with which most ordinary Americans are most familiar. It follows disclosures that several major restaurant chains and other publicly traded companies had received emergency loans under the $670 billion program for the nation’s struggling small businesses.

“GAO found that more than $1 trillion in taxpayer funds have already been obligated — including more than $1 billion to deceased individuals — with little transparency into how that money is being spent,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said in a statement.

The IRS didn’t use death records to prevent payments to deceased individuals for the first three batches of payments because of the legal interpretation the agency was operating under, the GAO report says.

The IRS asked in May for the money back from the deceased taxpayers’ survivors. Some legal experts have said the government may not have the legal authority to require that it be returned.

Spokespeople for the Treasury Department and the IRS didn’t return requests for comment Thursday on the report. Treasury pointed to its current guidance, indicating that the government’s position remains that the survivors must return the money to the IRS.

The payments were by paper check, direct deposit or debit card. All adults earning up to $75,000 in adjusted gross income annually were entitled to $1,200; that amount steadily declined for those earning more and phased out for people earning over $99,000. Up to $500 per qualifying child also was paid.

Former Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson has said there is nothing in the law prohibiting payments from going to the deceased. Nor is there anything in the law requiring people to return the payments. She notes that the language used on the IRS website does not say that returning the payments is required by law.

The relief payments were made to taxpayers based on the information filed on their 2019 or 2018 taxes. But it is considered a rebate on 2020 taxes. The government used the previous tax forms to help speed along payments to the public to offset some of the economic devastation from the coronavirus pandemic.

But some people who filed those taxes may no longer be alive. Those payments are sent to an heir or executor of their estate. If the payment is based off a final tax return completed after their death, an economic impact payment check may even denote, next to that person’s name, that the individual is deceased.

“I think the IRS will do little or nothing to pursue collection of these payments,” Keith Fogg, clinical professor at Harvard and an expert in tax law, said Thursday. “The cheapest way for the IRS to collect is offset of a future refund. That avenue will not exist for these taxpayers. I don’t think the IRS will take the somewhat difficult steps to pursue the heirs for this amount of money.”

Left-Wing Activist Shaun King Demands Removal of ‘White’ Jesus Statues

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(FREE BEACON)

Left-wing activist Shaun King on Monday said statues and images of Jesus Christ that look “European” should be removed because they are a form of “white supremacy.”

“All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down,” King wrote on Twitter. “They are a gross form [of] white supremacy. Created as tools of oppression. Racist propaganda. They should all come down.”

The former surrogate of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) described Jesus, a Jewish rabbi, as “Brown” but said it’s up for debate whether he was “real.” However, King did say he was sure that representations of Jesus as “white” are lies created to foster white supremacy.

“We can debate [whether] or not Jesus was real all day long,” King said in another tweet. “What I do know, is that white Jesus is a lie. And is a tool of white supremacy created and advanced to help white people use the faith as a tool of oppression. Also, they never would’ve accepted a religion from a Brown man.”

It is common for images of Jesus to resemble the ethnicities of different regions around the world, even though Christians do not dispute whether he was born in Israel. Among Asian Christians, for example, Jesus can sometimes be represented with some Asian features.

In response to calls for these images to come down, Seattle pastor Brian Gibson and others with the group Peaceably Gather launched an initiative to prosecute the vandalization of churches.

“Churches will prosecute any vandals or agitators to the full extent of the law, including seeking hate crime designations for any attempt to desecrate church property or religious symbols,” Gibson said in a statement.

US Death Rate Falls for Third Day in a Row

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A woman puts up a sign for COVID-19 testing at a boarded up business, as some streets remain closed near the White House on June 24, 2020 in Washington,DC, as protests triggered by the death of George Floyd while in police custody, continue in the area. (Photo by Daniel SLIM / AFP) (Photo by DANIEL SLIM/AFP via Getty Images)

By Solange Reyner (NEWSMAX)

The daily coronavirus death count in the United States is down for the third day in a row, according to data collected by the World Health Organization.

The daily death toll climbed by 513 from June 22 to June 23, then dwindled in the following days. More than 800 people died on June 23, 688 on June 24 then 442 on Thursday as of 4 p.m. E.T.

Positive coronavirus cases continue to climb in America, specifically in hotspots like Florida, California, Texas, Arizona, South Carolina, Alabama and Montana, among others.

An increase in reported cases could signal a growing caseload, though it could also be the result of increased testing. Still, public health officials in some places are reporting an increase in hospitalizations and in the percentage of tests that are coming up positive.

Arizona has a 17 percent increase in new deaths since June 18 at 219 while South Carolina has an 11 percent increase with 70 new deaths.

At least 120,000 people have died from coronavirus in the U.S., and more than 2.3 million cases have been reported.

Law enforcement struggles with policing in reckoning moment

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In this June 23, 2020, file photo a man gestures to Metropolitan Police Department officers standing guard after police closed the area around Lafayette Park near the White House after protesters tried to topple a statue of Andrew Jackson in the park in Washington. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File)

By COLLEEN LONG (AP)

(AP) — As calls for police reform swell across America, officers say they feel caught in the middle: vilified by the left as violent racists, fatally ambushed by extremists on the right seeking to sow discord and scapegoated by lawmakers who share responsibility for the state of the criminal justice system.

The Associated Press spoke with more than two dozen officers around the country, Black, white, Hispanic and Asian, who are frustrated by the pressure they say is on them to solve the much larger problem of racism and bias in the United States. They are struggling to do their jobs, even if most agree change is needed following the death of George Floyd, who was Black, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis.

Most of the officers spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation or firing.

“You know, being a Black man, being a police officer and which I’m proud of being, both very proud — I understand what the community’s coming from,” said Jeff Maddrey, an NYPD chief in Brooklyn and one of many officers who took a knee as a show of respect for protesters.

All of officers interviewed agreed they’d lost some kind of trust in their communities. For some, the moment is causing a personal reckoning with past arrests. Others distinguish between the Floyd case and their own work, highlighting their lives saved, personal moments when they cried alongside crime victims.

“I have never seen overtly racist actions by my brothers or sisters in my department,” wrote white Covington, Kentucky, police specialist Doug Ullrich in an Op-Ed. “In fact, I believe that my department is on the leading edge of ‘doing it right.’”

Of course, hardly all police support change. Some are incensed — deriding colleagues as traitors for taking a knee or calling out sick to protest the arrests of some police for their actions amid the protests.

For Dean Esserman, senior counselor of the National Police Foundation and past police chief of Providence, Rhode Island, and New Haven and Stamford in Connecticut, the result so far has been for communities and police to pull away from one another. That will mean fewer personal connections — and more problems, he said.

“Many police leaders who are saying ‘don’t call us’ when there are emergencies miss the point,” he said. “I delivered nine babies in my career, and I never shot anybody. The community isn’t part of the job. It IS the job.”

It’s not the first time that police officers have found themselves caught in the middle. The rise of the Black Lives Matter movement earlier this decade spawned a “blue lives matter” campaign and the belief among many Americans that cops were being unfairly stigmatized over the actions of a few or split-second decisions during tense situations.

But now, Americans are largely united behind the idea that change is necessary: 29% think the criminal justice system needs “a complete overhaul,” 40% say it needs “major changes.” Just 5% believe no changes are needed, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The long, often dark history of American policing has meant minority communities are treated one way, and white ones another. Floyd’s killing cracked open the pain anew, but minorities have long begged for officers to stop seeing them as criminals and to police with equity.

While many activists acknowledge that the problems they’re fighting go beyond police departments, they say that doesn’t mean individual officers aren’t guilty.

“People who try to sell you ‘police reform’ are trying to sell you the idea that you can (asterisk)train(asterisk) the anti-Black racism out of an institution built upon and upheld by anti-Black racism,” activist Adam Smith tweeted.

A culture that allows racism to fester in law enforcement hasn’t yet changed because that would take deep structural shifts, new blood and a lot of time, said Sandra Susan Smith, a criminal justice professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

“It’s not just about the institutional mandate to control and confine, it’s also about the views individual officers bring to neighborhoods,” she said.

The difference now is top police officials nationwide are increasingly supporting reform. Patrick Yeos, president of the national Fraternal Order of Police, said change must come from the top down — and lawmakers must play their role.

“These issues are not created by officers,” he said.

Police don’t always have the autonomy their elected leaders claim they do. When NYPD officers were stopping hundreds of thousands of mostly Black and Hispanic men a year, top brass said officers were exercising their judgment — and the stops were necessary. But officers testified at a federal trial over the stop-and-frisk tactic they felt pressured by superiors to show they were cracking down. And those stops rarely resulted in arrest.

Cerelyn Davis, police chief in Durham, North Carolina, and president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, said reform is possible, but there must national accountability standards, and teeth behind them.

“They talk about one bad apple,” she said. “In this field we can’t afford to have one bad apple. One bad apple can have grave consequences.”

As the debate has played out, the tensions have led to violence. Officers are accused of harming protesters. And they’re getting hurt and killed, too.

A sheriff’s deputy in California was killed and four others officers wounded by an Air Force sergeant with links to a far-right group, officials said. He was also charged with killing a federal security officer outside a courthouse. A 29-year-old police officer was shot in the head during a protest on the Las Vegas Strip and has been left paralyzed from the neck down.

Hundreds of officers have been injured in the protests in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, some critically.

This, too, has happened before. In 2014, after the grand jury declined to bring charges against a cop in the death of Eric Garner, a man angry over the death shot two officers dead in their patrol car. Across the nation, others were targeted.

In New York, where an officer was charged with strangulation Thursday after an apparent chokehold — the same tactic used on Garner — Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said continued reforms are needed and he lauded the push for them.

But, he said: “It’s also a moment in time where it’s a pretty tough time to be in law enforcement.”

A Second Facebook Whistle blower Exposes Deep Bias and Censorship of Conservatives

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Another report demonstrating rampant censorship of conservative content by Facebook content moderators and an interview with the latest insider who experienced it firsthand was released today, by the non-profit media company, Project Veritas.

“I was seeing them interfering on a global level in elections. I saw a blatant exception that just targeted conservatives or favored liberals—and you know, we’re deleting on average 300 posts or actioning 300 posts a day,” said Arizona-based Facebook content moderator Ryan Hartwig. “If you magnify that by however many content moderators there are on a global scale, that’s a lot of stuff that’s getting taken down,” he said.

Below is the latest Project Veritas report

 

As Seattle Protest Area Collapses Business Owners Sue City & Leader Tells Protesters to Go Home & Vote for Biden

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Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the Brown & Black Forum at the Iowa Events Center, Monday, Jan. 20, 2020, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Suggesting that violence has distracted from the movement’s message, Seattle CHOP leaders have told protesters to go home vote for “revolutionary change” by electing Joe Biden.

Far-left Black Lives Matter demonstrators have been occupying the 6 block area of downtown Seattle for weeks, but entirely as predicted it has descended into violent anarchy, with four  people being shot in the space of 48 hours over the weekend.

Numerous businesses and residents in Seattle, Washington, are suing the city for tolerating the CHOP zone, claiming officials were complicit in depriving them of the right to their own property.

“The plaintiffs, including a tattoo parlor and auto repair shop, emphasized in the lawsuit filed Wednesday that they were not trying to undermine the anti-police-brutality or Black Lives Matter messaging of the ‘Capitol Hill Occupied Protest,’” King 5 reported.

The Lawsuit reads according to Breitbart:

This lawsuit is about the constitutional and other legal rights of Plaintiffs—businesses, employees, and residents in and around CHOP—which have been overrun by the City of Seattle’s unprecedented decision to abandon and close off an entire city neighborhood, leaving it unchecked by the police, unserved by fire and emergency health services, and inaccessible to the public at large. The City’s decision has subjected businesses, employees, and residents of that neighborhood to extensive property damage, public safety dangers, and an inability to use and access their properties

“The CHOP project is now concluded,” a message posted on the official CHOP Twitter account said. “While we expect a very small handful of holdouts may try to remain in the CHOP no further organizing will be occurring to support this presence and the number on-site will be too small to be more than an annoyance for pedestrians rather than a zonal blockade.”

The message concluded by urging protesters to vote for “revolutionary change” by electing Joe Biden, a strange directive given that Biden is a veteran of the political establishment.

By late Thursday evening, Twitter suspended the CHOP account with this posting, the reason is unknown as of press

FBI ‘Looking Carefully’ at Foreign Involvement in Floyd Protests

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With law enforcement nationwide taking unprecedented amounts of abuse from the public, NYPD officials were quick to point out “These are unprecedented times. Through it all, the men and women of the NYPD have worked relentlessly to ensure the safety of New Yorkers across all neighborhoods.” Photo Credit: AP Photo/Seth Wenig

By Brian Trusdell (NEWSMAX)

FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday his agency is “looking carefully” at the possibility foreign agents have involved themselves or influenced the protests and riots in the United States over the death of a black man in police custody.

Wray’s comments to Fox News Channel anchor Bret Baier come as the four-to-six-block zone occupied by demonstrators in Seattle appeared to be breaking up.

“We have certainly seen in the past a variety of foreign adversaries looking to amplify controversy in this country,” Wray said. “And they use state media. They use social media. Some of that is through propaganda, some of that’s through disinformation, some of that’s through just fake information. And we are looking carefully at the prospect of foreign influence or foreign interference in all of the protests and activities that have occurred over the last few weeks.”

Wray’s statement came a month after former national security adviser in the Obama administration Susan Rice claimed Russia could be behind the riots and violent protests, although she offered nothing to support the accusation. Her remarks compared to other Democrats who blamed white supremacists for the violence.

President Donald Trump and other Republicans have suggested the leftist organization of Antifa as culprits.

Riots and protests erupted in many cities in the United States following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day. Critics have claimed a widely circulated video of Floyd’s arrest, in which a white police officer was seen restraining Floyd with his knee on Floyd’s neck, was evidence of systemic racism in America.

Wray also disclosed in his Fox News Channel interview, “the FBI has over 2,000 active investigations that trace back to the government in China.”

The number was “about a 1,300% increase in terms of economic espionage investigations with the Chinese nexus from about a decade ago,” he said.

BLM Leader: Without Change, ‘We Will Burn Down This System’

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(Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

By Jeffrey Rodack (NEWSMAX)

Hawk Newsome, president of the Greater New York Black Lives Matter, reiterated that if the movement doesn’t get what it wants, it will “burn down this system.”

His comments came Wednesday evening during an interview on the Fox News show “The Story With Martha MacCallum.”

MacCallum had questioned him about comments he’d made in the past regarding the need for violence in certain situations.

He replied that he had said: “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. All right? And I could be speaking … figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation.

“Wow, it’s interesting that you would pose that question like that because this country is built upon violence. What was the American Revolution? What’s our diplomacy across the globe?

“We go in and we blow up countries and we replace their leaders with leaders who we like. So for any American to accuse us of being violent is extremely hypocritical.”

Meanwhile, the son of Muhammad Ali said his father would not agree with Black Lives Matter, referring to the cause as “racist” and its members as “devils.”

“Don’t bust up s***, don’t trash the place,” Muhammad Ali Jr. told the New York Post. “You can peacefully protest.

40% of Employees at NY’s Museum of Jewish Heritage Laid Off Due to Coronavirus Pandemic

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Times are tough, which explains – at least in part – why the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan is letting 40% of our employees go, and reducing others’ hours. Photo Credit: mjhnyc.org

By: Jason Schleiger

Times are tough, which explains – at least in part – why the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan is letting 40% of our employees go, and reducing others’ hours.

Jack Kliger, the museum’s president and chief executive, told more than 50 staff members the bad news during a Zoom conference on Monday.

“Two weeks ago, I shared with you that the Museum was facing an existential crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic,” Kliger told staffers. “By now, you know that this crisis has forced us to make some very difficult decisions in order to ensure the Museum’s survival.”

In all, 32 employees are going to be let go, said an apologetic Kliger. Those who managed to get through the meeting with their jobs intact will nonetheless face  “new roles or reduced hours.”

“The museum, which describes itself as “a living memorial to the Holocaust,” was formed with the aim of “educating diverse visitors about Jewish life before, during and after the Holocaust,” the New York Times reported.

“An audio recording of the Zoom meeting that was obtained by The New York Times included questions from employees. One asked: “What, if any pay cuts, were implemented at the executive and senior management level?” There were no pay reductions for executive and senior managers, Mr. Kliger responded.”

The irony is that the museum has been basking in the public reception of its Auschwitz exhibition, which was introduced last  year and has proven to be wildly popular. The exhibition features drawings made during and shortly after the Holocaust by eyewitnesses documenting their experiences. Rendering Witness: Holocaust-Era Art as Testimony is curated from the Museum’s collection and features a majority of artworks never presented before. The exhibition will be on display from January 16 to July 5, 2020 at the Museum located in Manhattan’s Battery Park City.

“Rendering Witness is a very special opportunity to see the first-hand experiences of the Holocaust as depicted by individuals who lived through its horrors. The artists, which include a young girl, took great risks to make this art. These were tremendous acts of bravery and resistance. That these fragile works have survived is a testament to the human spirit,” said Kliger in a statement.

Each artwork reasserts the artist’s humanity and individuality, qualities that are often obscured by the iconic Holocaust photographs taken by the Nazis or their collaborators. The works were produced in Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, and Poland during the Holocaust, primarily in ghettos and a slave labor camp, or immediately after the Holocaust. The artists documented the Holocaust as it unfolded around them, providing a unique personal layer to the visual culture of World War II.

Some of the art depicts iconic scenes of the Holocaust, such as ghetto topographies and deportations, while other works are more introspective and include portraits of fellow prisoners and views from cramped bunks.

Bannon Ally Takes Charge of VOA News; Directors Resign in Protest

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AP

By Benyamin Davidsons

On Monday June 24, two veteran journalists who led Voice of America resigned, following the recent congressional confirmation of Michael Pack as the new head of the U.S.-funded news agency.  Mr. Pack was appointed to direct the government’s broadcast organization on June 4th.  President Trump has been avidly denouncing the way the organization is run, and has been working over the past few months to convince Republicans in the Senate to place Mr. Pack as the new head of Voice of America.  Mr. Pack is a conservative activist, a filmmaker and an ally of Stephen Bannon, the President’s former campaign strategist and White House adviser.

As reported by the NY Times, Amanda Bennett, the director of VOA since 2016, and Sandra Sugawara, the deputy director, emailed a letter to employees informing them  of their official resignations to Mr. Pack. The letter did not specify if they has been asked to resign by Mr. Pack.  “As the Senate-confirmed C.E.O., he has the right to replace us with his own V.O.A. leadership,” they wrote.

“Nothing about you, your passion, your mission or your integrity changes,” they added. “Michael Pack swore before Congress to respect and honor the firewall that guarantees V.O.A.’s independence, which in turn plays the single most important role in the stunning trust our audiences around the world have in us.”    “We know that each one of you will offer him all of your skills, your professionalism, your dedication to mission, your journalistic integrity and your personal hard work to guarantee that promise is fulfilled,” they wrote.

Voice of America was founded in 1942 to fight Nazi propaganda, with the goal of candid news coverage.  Authoritarian governments, such as China, have denounced VOA, accusing it of being a propaganda arm of Washington.  China has even reportedly delayed visas approvals for VOA journalists.

On Sunday, also Libby Liu, the chief executive of the Open Technology Fund, which promotes internet freedoms globally, resigned from her position.  The OTF is run by Voice of America.

Democrats had disputed Mr. Pack’s appointment, due to a criminal investigation initiated against him last month, probing whether he may have illegally sent $1.6 million from a nonprofit group he oversees to his film production company. Democrats also question his capacity to uphold and guarantee editorial independence.  Notwithstanding, Senator Jim Risch, Republican of Idaho and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pushed the confirmation of Mr. Pack through the chamber in a 53-38 vote.

Mr. Trump had publicly complained about Mr. Pack’s stalled nomination.  The President has often criticized Voice of America with the harshest terms, having called it the “voice of the Soviet Union”.  “If you hear what’s coming out of the Voice of America, it’s disgusting,” Mr. Trump said in April. “The things they say are disgusting toward our country. And Michael Pack would get in and do a great job.”  Mr. Bannon has also had a hand in publicly urging the President to change things up at V.O.A., calling the agency  “a rotten fish from top to bottom.”   Dan Scavino Jr., Mr. Trump’s social media director, had also attacked VOA on Twitter.  He wrote: “American taxpayers — paying for China’s very own propaganda, via the U.S. Government funded Voice of America! DISGRACE!!”

 

Here’s A List Of Fake Hate Crimes Involving Nooses

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AP

(DCNF) The false alarm about the “noose” in NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace’s garage followed is one of several recent incidents where a widely reported hate crime accusation involving a noose crumbled under scrutiny.

Here are five recent examples of public outrage about a noose turning out to be either a false alarm or an outright hoax.

Bubba Wallace Noose Incident

The FBI announced Monday that it was investigating a noose found in Wallace’s garage at Talladega Superspeedway.

Celebrities and sports stars flocked to support Wallace following news of the supposed noose, and the hashtag “#IStandWithBubba” trended on Twitter. Wallace said on Tuesday that he was offended by those who suggested the incident could be a hoax.

“It offends me that people would go to those measures but again, I’m not shocked,” Wallace said. “People are entitled to their own opinions to make them feel good and help them sleep at night.”

“But it is still an ongoing investigation with the FBI,” he added. “I can now say I have talked to the FBI, never thought that would happen.”

The FBI and DOJ said later Tuesday that there was no noose in Wallace’s garage but instead a “garage door pull rope fashioned like a noose” that had been there since 2019. No federal crime was committed, the FBI said.

Wallace doubled down on the incident Tuesday night, insisting that he had experienced an act of racism.

“I’ve been racing all of my life. We’ve raced out of hundreds of garages that never had garage pulls like that … It’s a straight up noose,” Wallace told CNN’s Don Lemon.

“The FBI has stated it was a noose over and over again, NASCAR leadership has stated that it was a noose. I can confirm that I actually got evidence of what was hanging in my garage over my car … to confirm that it was a noose,” Wallace added.

He later said Wednesday that he is  “relieved” that the FBI found that he wasn’t the victim of a hate crime.”I want to say how relieved that this wasn’t what we feared it was,” the driver said in an Instagram post. “I want to thank my team, NASCAR and the FBI for acting swiftly and treating this as a real threat.”

Oakland Exercise Equipment

Democratic Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf launched a hate crime investigation in June into alleged nooses found in a local park. “Symbols of racial violence have no place in Oakland and will not be tolerated,” she said.

Following her remarks, a black resident named Victor Sengbe told WKYT that he had set up the ropes as part of an exercise course.

“Out of the dozen and hundreds and thousands of people that walked by, no one has thought that it looked anywhere close to a noose. Folks have used it for exercise. It was really a fun addition to the park that we tried to create,” Sengbe told WKYT, adding, “It’s unfortunate that a genuine gesture of just wanting to have a good time got misinterpreted into something so heinous.”

“Intentions don’t matter when it comes to terrorizing the public,” Schaaf said following Senge’s explanation. “It is incumbent on all of us to know the actual history of racial violence, of terrorism, that a noose represents and that we as a city must remove these terrorizing symbols from the public view.”

Oakland Parks and Recreation director Nicholas Williams also said that “the symbolism of the rope hanging in the tree is malicious regardless of intent. It’s evil, and it symbolizes hatred.”

Jussie Smollett Hate Crime Hoax

Black ‘Empire’ actor Jussie Smollett sparked national outrage in 2019 when he claimed he was a victim of a hate crime and had been attacked near his home in Chicago.

Smollett told police that two men had yelled racist and homophobic slurs at him, told him he was in “MAGA country,” threw a rope around his neck and poured a bleach-like substance on him.

An investigation by the Chicago police found that Smollett paid two Nigerian brothers, Ambimbola and Olabinjio Osundairo, $3,500 to stage a fake attack in order to gain fame from the incident, the Associated Press reported.

Michigan State Noose Scare

A female student at Michigan State University said in October 2017 that she had found a noose on the handle of the door in a residence hall.

“A student reported a noose was hung outside of her room,” president of Michigan State University, Lou Anna Simon, said in a statement. “I want to recognize the courage it took for the student to report this incident.”

“This type of behavior is not tolerated on our campus,” Simon added. “No Spartan should ever feel targeted based on their race, or other ways in which they identify. A noose is a symbol of intimidation and threat that has a horrendous history in America.”

Police found that the alleged “noose” was not in, fact, a noose, but a shoelace.

“The matching packaged shoelace was found outside of the residence hall,” university spokesman Jason Cody said in a statement. “Officers located and spoke to the student who lost both of the shoelaces, which are packaged in a way that someone could perceive them to look similar to a noose.”

“Also, the original shoelace found inside the residence hall was not directed at any individual,” Cody added. “It originally was seen on hallway floor and later on a stairwell door handle, where officers believe someone put it after picking it up.”

Black Students Draw Noose Picture On Library Whiteboard

In April 2016, officials at Salisbury University confirmed that two black students had drawn a stick figure hanging from a noose with a racial slur and the hashtag #WhitePower on a whiteboard in the school’s library, according to Delmarva Now. The Salisbury University Police Department investigated the drawing as a hate crime, before finding out who the culprits were.

The university cited the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act in defense of not citing the names of the students, the publication reports, and police determined not to file criminal charges after consulting with the Wicomico County State’s Attorney’s Office.

“Regardless of who created the drawing, we find such actions demeaning to all members of the campus community and against our core values,” said Dane Foust, vice president of student affairs, in a statement to Delmarva Now.

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Jordanian Ammunition Stash from the Six Day War Discovered Today near the Western Wall

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The Western Wall Heritage Foundation and Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists were surprised today to discover an ammunition stash from the Six Day War while excavating underneath the lobby of the Western Wall Tunnels.  Among the findings uncovered are rifle magazines full of bullets, a bayonet, and other rifle parts.

A Jordanian ammunition stash (known as a “slick”) was discovered today during Israel Antiquities Authority excavations under the lobby of the Western Wall Tunnels site.  The ammunition was hidden in the bottom of a British Mandate period water cistern.  The excavations are being conducted in cooperation with the Western Wall Heritage Foundation in preparation for a new and fascinating tour in addition to the classic Western Wall Tunnels tour.  Israeli police bomb-disposal experts came to the site to examine the findings.

According to Dr. Barak Monnickendam-Givon and Tehila Sadiel, directors of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority: “While excavating the water cistern, a surprise awaited us: about ten full magazines of Bern light machinegun , full clip chargers,   and two bayonets of a British Lee Enfield rifle.  Usually, in excavations, we find ancient findings from one or two thousand years ago, but this time, we got a glimpse of the events that occurred 53 years ago, frozen in time in this water cistern.  Apparently, this is an ammunition dump that was purposely hidden by soldiers of the Royal Jordanian Army during the Six Day War, perhaps when the IDF liberated the Old City.  The water cistern we excavated served the residential structures of the Moghrabi neighborhood that was built in the area of what is today the Western Wall Plaza”, added Dr. Monnickendam-Givon and Sadiel.

Assaf Peretz of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who identified the ammunition: “This is ammunition that was produced in Britain in the Greenwood and Batley Ltd factories in Leeds, Yorkshire.  Based on theheadstamp on the rim, the ammunition was produced in 1956 and reached the Royal Jordanian Army.”  “The discovery of the ammunition stash for Bern light machine gunsguns match two other Bren guns that were found about a year and a half  ago in a different water cistern in the Western Wall Plaza, in an excavation of Dr. Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah of the Israel Antiquities Authority”, added Peretz.

The Western Wall Heritage Foundation said: “Along with other glorious discoveries of our nation’s past from the Second Temple period, we are also happy about discovering findings from the war of this past generation to return the Jewish nation’s heart and be able to cling to the stones of the Western Wall.  This discovery is a privilege for us – to be able to acknowledge the miracles of the Creator of the Universe at this site.”

About a month ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Western Wall Heritage Foundation publicized that an interesting subterranean network hewn into bedrock from the Second Temple period was uncovered in an archaeological excavation at the foot of an impressive 1400-year-old public structure.

Countdown to Sovereignty Day 5

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The Jewish town of Karnei Shomron in Judea and Samaria, on June 4, 2020. Photo by Sraya Diamant/Flash90.

Searching for the Word of Hashem

By: Tamar Adelstein & Faigie Lobel

“The days are coming,” declares Hashem, “when I will send a hunger through the land. Not a hunger of food or a thirst for water, but a hunger to hear the words of Hashem” (Amos 8:11) The vital need to decide, once and for all, the status of the territories Israel liberated in the SixDay War could not be more pressing. Last week’s High Court ruling invalidating the property rights of at least 2,000 Jewish homeowners in Judea and Samaria — while at the same time, the State is gearing up to apply sovereignty where they live — along with the growing number of unanswered questions about the real deal within the Deal — and, finally, the shocking disclosure that the IDF and Shin Bet have not once been consulted, expose what happens when we operate away from our Jewish Identity and Jewish Law.
When common sense and self-preservation are cast aside, foolhardy, dangerous ideas take over. Such as, ignoring the loss of Israel’s primary source for drinking water! The issue came to our attention, in a roundabout way, after reading David Elhayani’s claim that the Trump peace plan snips off 5% of the parcel designated for Israeli sovereignty in Area C to go, instead, to the “waters of the Dead Sea.” See: jpost.com/israel-news/yesha-us-rejected-settler-changes-tosovereignty-map-629240. With a bit of research, we soon discovered that withdrawing from Judea and Samaria poses much more than a threat to Israel’s security – it leaves control of the all important Mountain Aquifer in hostile and reckless hands, G-d Forbid.

Founded in 1937, Israel’s National Water System is a labyrinth of interdependent connections utilizing freshwater from the Kinneret, rainwater and deep underground wellsprings to sustain the country’s health and well-being, agriculture, and industry. Spanning the length and breadth of the “West Bank,” the Mountain Aquifer is key to the system functioning in both delivering drinking water to where most Israelis live and balancing the salt/freshwater equation in the Coastal Aquifer. See: https://marklangfan.com/wp-content/themes/marklangfan/images/resources/water_topographic_cross_section/water_topographic_cross_secti on.pdf (courtesy of Mark Langfan)
As can be seen in the above link, ceding control over the Mountain Aquifer would leave Israel dependent upon the goodwill of Palestinian authorities to supply them with water. Israel would also have to rely on unlikely and unreliable Palestinian cooperation to maintain the above noted salt/freshwater balance, a risky move considering what poor guardians Palestinians have shown themselves to be since signing a water sharing agreement with Israel in 1995. Not only have Palestinians engaged in unauthorized drilling, but they have also been lax in treating their sewage, contaminating the environment, streams, and the aquifer en route.
Despite a 2017 incentive facilitated by President Trump’s then peace envoy Jason Greenblatt that increased water sales to the Palestinian Authority, they continue to abuse and mismanage the precious Mountain Aquifer. Along the eastern side of the Mountain Aquifer, water wends its way in streams and underground springs along a steep descent into the Jordan Valley. Nourishing lush reserves like Ein Gedi, Nature also takes a small but necessary contribution to help replenish the nearby Dead Sea basin. Fortuitous discoveries in 2006 by Hebrew University’s Institute of Earth Sciences revealed a massive underground reservoir of fresh water flowing under the Judean Hills that has the potential to supply up to 5% of Israel’s freshwater needs…if it remains under Israeli control. In 2015 Israel and Jordan signed a water sharing project – still in the pilot stage – to build a 900 million-dollar desalination plant on the Gulf of Aqaba that would also pipe a token amount of brine (a byproduct of desalination) mixed with water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. Jordan agreed to sell desalinated water to southern Israel in return for more water from the Kinneret. Even if this pipeline will someday be built, the agreement is not designed to increase Israel’s total supply of fresh water.
The consensus among experts rejects ceding control, in any way, over the Mountain Aquifer. For an in-depth analysis, see: https://strategic-israel.org/water-in-israel-the-dry-facts/ Israel will have no way to fill in the gap should it cede control of the Mountain Aquifer– and we haven’t even mentioned the hit the fertile Beit Shaan and Jezreel Valleys will take when they no longer have water flowing in from the Northern wellspring in Samaria!
The same mistake made in 1995, relying on Arab Palestine goodwill to share and manage water resources, is being made again in the Peace to Prosperity plan, only this time with far worse ramifications for Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu is unilaterally giving away vital freshwater resources for a product that is at best second rate and setting in motion a watershed of economic, social and security woes that will take decades to repair.

Relinquishing Judea and Samaria points to a serious lack of forethought or total insanity on the part of the triune who crafted the Deal of the Century. Far worse, though, is the open disregard shown by the Israeli architects of Land for Peace for the welfare of their fellow Jews. Instead of surrendering land, resources and security, Israel should expand its presence and talent in Judea and Samaria.

This, said the Lubavitcher Rebbe, is what will truly bring peace and prosperity to Israel – and, the Arabs who choose to live there and pledge loyalty to the State of Israel will reap its benefits as well. As Gimmel Tammuz, the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Yom Hillula approaches, let us draw upon the Rebbe’s wise counsel.

The Rebbe firmly believed that when Jewish lives are at stake, all of us are obliged to resist and protest, “for even if there is only one thousandth of a chance or even a fraction of that, we may not stand idly by while our brother’s blood is being spilled – this is the ruling in the Code of Jewish Law.”(the Rebbe in a public address on Motzie Shabbos B’reishis, 1978)
On several auspicious occasions the Rebbe called on Rabbonim and G’dolei Torah to assume their responsibility and take the lead in amending the situation with the issuance of a clear ruling, again and again, until it is well understood by all: “That the entire Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish nation. It is forbidden to relinquish any parcel of real estate in Israel to a Gentile, no matter how small. Any compromise on this is forbidden, even more so when we speak of a city on the border. Today, every single city in Israel has the law of a city on the border. The one and only reason for this ruling is the danger [it brings] to Jewish lives, G-d forbid.” (Lubavitcher Rebbe, 1978)

Moreover: “This plan represents a retreat. It calls for us to leave 70% of Judea and Samaria and retain only 30%. But at present, we have 100%! Practically speaking, the area is in our control. Our army rules, our citizens pay taxes, receive government funding, take part in national elections, and go the army, and there is water and electricity. It is in our hands.

This is exactly what we are commanded: ‘Not to abandon the Land into the hands of others’ meaning [we cannot allow any of our land to be] under foreign rule.” (Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, Rosh Yeshiva Ateret Kohanim in Jerusalem, in an interview with Vision Magazine, June 9, 2020) “May it be G-d’s Will that there should finally be the fulfillment of the verse: And the earth will be filled with the knowledge of G-d as the water covers the ocean bed. Resulting, immediately, in no longer fearing ‘what will the nations say’ or worrying over which policy they will favor; no longer will a Jew shake at ‘the sound of a driven leaf.’ For G-d will help His nation to walk upright, with conviction and strength.” (from the Rebbe’s letter to Israeli journalist and poet, Uri Tzvi Greenberg, the 22nd of Cheshvan, 1977)
Mrs. Tamar Adelstein & Mrs. Faige Lobel had written this op-ed article on the eve of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s 26th Yom Hillula Gimmel Tammuz. They are members of an organization known as Crown Heights Women for the Safety & Integrity of Israel. The organization unites Jewish women around the world under the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s directives for true peace.