by Daniel Stefanski | Dec 26, 2024 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
A Republican Congressman is pushing back against a controversial report regarding one of America’s strongest allies.
Earlier this month, U.S. Congressman Juan Ciscomani reacted to a report from Amnesty International about Israel and its fight against terrorists, writing, “Amnesty International’s baseless accusation against Israel is not only false, it is an antisemitic attack against the Jewish state as it fights to defend its people against Iran-backed terrorist proxies. The U.S. must reject this dishonest attack and continue to stand firmly with our ally in its fight against terrorism.”
In that report, Amnesty International asserted, “There is only one reasonable inference that can be drawn from the evidence presented: genocidal intent has been part and parcel of Israel’s conduct in Gaza since 7 October 2023, including its military campaign.”
The Israel Defense Forces vigorously confronted the accusations, saying, “The report’s allegations of genocide and intentional harm are not only unfounded but also ignore Hamas’ violations of international law, including its use of civilians as human shields and its deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians.”
AIPAC took special umbrage against the report, releasing a lengthy statement in response. The pro-Israel organization stated, “Once again Amnesty International has issued a slanderous attack on Israel that amounts to a blood libel against the Jewish state. In reality, it is Israel that has been the victim of a genocidal attack that was launched by proxies of the Iranian regime that has vowed to eliminate the Jewish state. Israel is doing what any other country would do when faced with enemies that seek its elimination – it is fighting a just and moral war of self-defense.”
AIPAC added, “This outrageous report is just the latest in a long line of biased anti-Israel missives from Amnesty, whose U.S. branch is run by an individual who doesn’t believe Israel should exist as a Jewish state and has been unanimously criticized by House Jewish Democrats for his ‘alarming and deeply offensive’ views.”
Back in April, Congressman Ciscomani joined some of his colleagues on an official delegation visit to Israel. According to a press release from his office, Ciscomani “met with top Israeli officials, participated in a briefing with former Israel Defense Forces military personnel, heard from families of current hostages held by Hamas, and visited sites of the October 7 attacks. After his visit, Ciscomani said, “This trip has equipped me and my colleagues with a better understanding of what the Israeli people experience every day, and how the United States can continue to support them in this critical mission.”
Ciscomani was just re-elected to his second term in the U.S. House of Representatives in a critical swing-district seat to help Republicans maintain control of the chamber. He serves on the Appropriations and Veterans’ Affairs Committees; and he is a member of the Western, Border Security, Taiwan, School Choice, and DOGE Caucuses.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Oct 9, 2024 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
Elected officials from around Arizona solemnly marked the first anniversary of the October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel.
One year ago, Israel was attacked by Hamas terrorists, who took advantage of completely unsuspecting communities to inflict horrific harms and devastation on innocent men, women, and children.
Ben Toma, the Arizona Speaker of the House of Representatives, announced that he had “issued a legislative proclamation declaring October 7, 2024, as a Day of Observance to honor the victims of the October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel.” Speaker Toma said, “The people of Arizona share in the grief of those affected by the attack and stand in solidarity with Israel as they continue to defend their nation and strive for peace.”
Toma’s proclamation encouraged all Arizonans, including his fellow lawmakers, “to observe a moment a silence on this day to honor those whose lives were lost and to stand in unity with those who remain in captivity.”
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs posted, “One year ago today, Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel took away the hopes and dreams of innocent people forever. My heart is with the families who mourn, the hostages who should be home, and the entire country of Israel as they pray and grieve.”
Attorney General Kris Mayes added, “On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas committed horrifying acts of violence, killing and kidnapping Israelis, sowing fear and agony in Jewish communities around the world. Together we must stand firm against all forms of hatred and commit to building a world that values dialogue over division, working toward a future where Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace.”
State Senator Frank Carroll wrote, “On this solemn day, my heart breaks for the Israelis who’ve suffered such horrifying acts of evil by Hamas and Iran, as well as for the hostages who are still enduring torturous conditions… We must stand united against this evil and support a permanent end to the war happening in the Middle East. I urge all Arizonans to speak out against the injustices our Jewish friends are experiencing and to condemn all antisemitic acts in the strongest sense. May the good Lord protect our world from the Iranian-directed terrorists who are attempting to spread death and destruction upon the innocent.”
State Representative Alma Hernandez stated, “Oct 7, 2023 The longest and most painful year for many of us. It was the day we realized who our real friends were, and it was the day I lost a lot of hope in humanity. May we never forget the innocent lives taken from us and the 101 hostages 13 of them women still being held by Hamas terrorist.”
Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said, “Today we remember the one-year anniversary of the attack on Israel. I pray for the safe return of the remaining hostages taken that day as well as for the families whose loved ones were killed.”
Peoria Mayor Jason Beck gave the following comment to AZ Free News: “Shortly after the October 7 attacks, I saw the places and heard the witness accounts of what took place. I will never forget the barbarity of the enemies of Israel. The Bible says that there is a time for peace and a time for war. I pray for the peace of Israel and know they must win the war against terrorists so they can have security. America needs to know that Israel’s fight is our fight. It is a fight for dignity and human rights. That is why I proudly fly the flag of Israel and support American leaders who understand that Israel’s cause is our cause.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | May 10, 2024 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
Mass protests have become popular with the radical Left because they work. They can achieve results unattainable through the political process or the courts by producing chaos and intimidating the cowardly leaders of our universities and government.
When the antisemitic, pro-Islamist demonstrations broke out on multiple university campuses this spring, most Americans assumed it was just naïve, ill-educated kids doing their thing. Why wouldn’t they? Protesting is a hoot. You’re showered with attention. You may even see yourself on the evening news. The gold star goes for being arrested and thrown in jail, where you are sure to be released the next morning.
The modern political protest movement began in 1968 with draft resisters who successfully opposed the Vietnam war. Another victory for the mob came from the assault on the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle in 1999. Those riots are credited with establishing the international anti-globalization movement and influencing the Clinton administration to issue an executive order requiring environmental reviews for trade deals.
In 2011, the “Occupy” Wall Street type movements were focused on income inequality. Again, victory was achieved when cowed Democrats subsequently backed higher taxes and more government handouts.
The George Floyd riots of 2020 were possibly the most successful of all. A single incident of bad policing by a rogue cop touched off riots in many American cities and even internationally. The “mostly peaceful protests” included vandalism, theft, and property destruction for up to 100 days in cities like Portland, Oregon.
The consequences were light, the rewards abundant. Kamala Harris supported a bail fund for criminal protesters, few of whom faced jail time anyway. The Democrat convention of 2020 decline to condemn the rioting.
Meanwhile, Democrat cities around the country slashed police funding, eliminated cash bail, and stopped making criminal arrests in response to the rioters’ demands. The predictable result was a spike in urban crime which is still raging, driving out businesses and further decimating once proud cities.
The image of well-meaning but ignorant students out on a lark was partly true. Many riot participants were in fact useful dupes, curiously uninformed about the activities of Hamas or other Islamist groups. They seemed unaware that their chant “from the river to the sea” was a call for eradicating Jews. The orderly rows of similar tents also suggested the protests were not entirely “organic.”
The Wall Street Journal uncovered the mystery by discovering an influential activist website directing affairs for anarchists like Antifa and other career radicals. Their mission is to create chaos and eventually overturn the social order.
Thus, “organizers should not concern themselves with de-escalation or remaining peaceful” they advise. “In order for this crisis to develop further, student occupations should take buildings wherever possible” to further the goal of “making it more expensive” for administrations to refuse their demands. Putting up tents is highly recommended because it defies school policy and elicits a response, which is the point of the exercise.
This is a crisis with enormous implications. President Biden is terrified of losing left-wing political support. In spite of the fact that a clear majority of Americans do not support Hamas or the campus protesters, he took a powder again, condemning the campus protestors but also “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”
The clueless president of Columbia did the exact wrong thing by agreeing to negotiate with the campus terrorists on their demands. Despite the outpouring of hate and antisemitism on her campus, she praised them for fighting for the “rights of Palestinians” and against the “humanitarian tragedy in Gaza.”
The protesters’ demands are ambitious. They include the divestiture of funds from Israel which would have the effect of financially ostracizing Israelis and a cease-fire in the Gaza war, which would hand a critical victory to Hamas and condemn Israel to a future of perpetual Islamist attacks.
Psychologists and common sense tell you the behavior that is rewarded gets repeated. America’s enemies win again.
We are a constitutional republic with a structure artfully designed to make policies and resolve disputes based on majority rule, while respecting minority rights. Conceding to the Islamist- inspired mob the right to set American public policy is a grave mistake.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
by Staff Reporter | Apr 28, 2024 | Education, News
By Staff Reporter |
A University of Arizona assistant professor who moonlights as a drag queen, Harris Kornstein, pushed children to support Hamas during a recent drag story hour with Valley Families for Palestine, arranged by Queer Storytime for Palestine.
Kornstein encouraged the crowd of children to chant “Free Palestine!” as a response to: “If you’re a drag queen and you know it…” during a performance this week.
Palestinians don’t tolerate LGBTQ+ individuals, especially Hamas. Anyone involved in those lifestyles in the area risks persecution and violence at minimum, even death.
Valley Families for Palestine, an activist coalition located in the Connecticut River Valley, privatized their social media accounts after Kornstein’s video went viral.
Also involved in the drag story hour were Sarah Prager, an LGBTQ+ author; Hannah Moushabeck, a queer author and Palestinian supporter; Jewish Voice for Peace Western Mass; Booklink Books; MassEquality; Parasol Patrol at Western Mass; and Western Mass Mask Bloc.
Kornstein, who goes by the drag name “Lil Miss Hot Mess,” often does his drag performances for minors in other states in addition to drag story hours.
Kornstein is also a board member for Drag Queen Story Hour, and author of two books marketed to children normalizing drag lifestyles: “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish,” and “If You’re a Drag Queen and You Know It.”
Drag Queen Story Hour is a national organization with state chapters that emerged from Michelle Tea, a leftist author from San Francisco who launched it out of her desire almost 10 years ago to raise her toddler in “queer culture.”
In a 2021 research paper, Kornstein defended the creation of Drag Queen Story Hour as a means of allowing children to explore “queer pedagogy” and engage in “queer imagination” from a young age. The latter term, Kornstein said, enhanced child development through play as praxis, aesthetic transformation, strategic defiance, destigmatization of shame, and embodied kinship. Kornstein noted that drag queen engagement with children would lead to normalization of the practice.
“Within this complex political landscape, [Drag Queen Story Hour] seems to uniquely thread the needle between queer activism and broad cultural acceptance,” said Kornstein.
At the University of Arizona, Kornstein taught in the College of Humanities Public & Applied Humanities. Up until he went on research leave last year, Kornstein served as an assistant professor for the Institute for LGBTQ+ Studies, School of Art, School of Information, and Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory.
Kornstein was able to go on leave thanks to a $60,000 grant from the Biden administration’s National Endowment for the Humanities. That funding is going toward a book project theorizing queer and transgender strategies of countering “surveillance capitalism” through observations of drag queens, transgender taxi drivers, cruising gay men, witchcraft, “mystical intuition,” and “gay hanky codes.”
Last December, the University of Arizona awarded Kornstein the Chatfield Impact Award — an honor for exemplary teaching, research, and service — for which he received $5,000.
Kornstein auctioned his books for a “Books for Palestine” fundraiser last November.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Mar 15, 2024 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
During World War II, the civilians of the Axis nations suffered greatly. Their daily lives were disrupted by bombing. Severe food shortages were common. Families were separated. An estimated 2 million civilians died in Japan alone.
Yet the Allied powers would have thought it preposterous to provide humanitarian aid. These countries had attacked us and were committed to achieving world domination. Our only hope to save civilization was to force their surrender. Instead of sending relief packages, we dropped atomic bombs on them.
You know how it worked out. America and the Allies prevailed and proved to be unusually benevolent victors. Germany, Italy, and Japan eventually became functioning, prosperous nations.
During the war, the Allies, like combatants throughout history, realized it was lunacy to work against your own war aims by subsidizing your enemy. Yet that is precisely what America is forcing on Israel in the Gaza War with our persistent calls for ceasefires, which give the beleaguered Hamas forces the opportunity to regroup and resupply.
Anthony Blinken alone has made at least three trips pressuring Israel to give their enemy a fighting chance by providing humanitarian aid. President Netanyahu is widely criticized for not going along.
The American far left, which exerts an outsized influence on foreign policy in Democratic circles, holds large rallies calling for a complete ceasefire. For them, Israel’s only way to avoid international censure is to admit defeat and accept subjugation to their savage foe, an unthinkable option.
Netanyahu’s response to the unprovoked, horrific massacre orchestrated by Hamas on October 6 was transparent. Decades of seeking accommodation with them through negotiations had come to naught. Hamas, among the Islamist terrorist groups sponsored by Iran, has fighters who since birth have been taught to hate all Jews.
The only strategic goal of any interest to Hamas is the complete annihilation of the Jewish state. They put Israel into a position where it had to permanently destroy Hamas to have any hope for a safe, peaceful future.
America seemed to initially understand the Israeli position. Israel is a small, mostly Jewish state of 10 million residents surrounded by 24 hostile countries with 500 million Muslims, most of whom ascribe to an ideology that demands eradicating Judaism. Every day, Israeli Jews must defend their right to exist.
America’s initial support of Israel’s response to a massive act of war melted under pressure from the pro-Muslim left to end the collateral damage of civilian death and suffering. The Israeli military is considered one of the most careful anywhere, sometimes amending battle plans to avoid civilian casualties.
Hamas, on the other hand, uses civilians as human shields, often housing them in the same building as military targets. Hamas celebrates their deaths as public relations coups.
Wartime hostages are always a difficult issue. Few loved ones anywhere would act differently than those piteously begging now for the return of their family members.
Yet the cruel calculus of war is that ransoming hostages, especially in lopsided transactions, inevitably means more will be taken in the future. Only a policy of remorselessly attacking hostage takers can prevent future potential kidnappings.
At this point, it is clear that the Biden administration, once Israel’s ally, is now siding with Hamas. Biden publicly criticizes Netanyahu for not agreeing to an immediate ceasefire. He is planning to build a large port into Gaza to accommodate bounteous food shipments.
We seem not to know or care that this is handing victory to Israel’s enemy. If Hamas can escape consequences for the October 6 debacle and live to fight another day, their greatest dreams will be achieved.
America has not only been an inconstant friend to Israel, we did much to enable this Gaza war in the first place. Obama and Biden rescued Iran when it faced a serious domestic uprising. They also provided the subsidies for Iran to fund its proxies, which are now enthusiastically killing Americans. The dynamic duo has virtually assured that Iran will soon be nuclear armed.
At a time when the world order is changing and new alliances are being formed, America does itself great harm by proving such a weak and indecisive ally. Make no mistake, the world is watching.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
