Hamas Celebrates After Pregnant Woman Critically Injured After Terrorists Open Fire in Israel

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By Daily Wire. On Sunday, seven Israelis were wounded in a drive-by shooting near the town of Ofra, approximately 13 miles north of Jerusalem.

One of the critically wounded is a 21-year-old pregnant female. Following the violent attack, the woman was taken to Shaare Zedek Hospital, where doctors successfully delivered her baby, which is currently in a ward for premature infants.

The woman is said to be in critical condition and undergoing surgery. The Times of Israel spoke with a surgeon, Dr. Alon Schwartz, who said that the woman had “lost a lot of blood” as a result of the gunshot wound to her stomach.

Hamas has welcomed tonight’s Palestinian shooting attack, in which a pregnant Israeli woman and six others were wounded, calling it a “blessed” demonstration of “the ability of the resistance to hurt the enemy in its most sensitive places.” https://t.co/3FOFicjOgh

— Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) December 9, 2018

According to an IDF spokesperson quoted by Arutz Sheva: “Following the previous report regarding the shooting attack adjacent to the Ofra Junction, shots were fired from a passing Palestinian vehicle towards Israeli civilians who were standing at the bus station. IDF troops who were present nearby responded by firing towards the suspect vehicle, which fled.” . . .

On Thursday, the United Nations rejected a resolution to condemn Hamas, which was introduced by the United States. The resolution needed a two-thirds supermajority to pass, but only 87 member nations voted in favor, while 58 voted against. There were 32 members that abstained. (Read more from “Hamas Celebrates After Pregnant Woman Critically Injured After Terrorists Open Fire in Israel” HERE)

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Jerusalem Hospital Delivers Baby of Pregnant Israeli Woman Shot in Terror Attack

By Times of Israel. Doctors successfully delivered the baby being carried by a 21-year-old Israeli woman late Sunday night, shortly after she was shot and critically hurt in a terrorist attack outside the West Bank settlement of Ofra.

The baby, who was delivered in the 30th week of the pregnancy, was immediately transferred to the ward for premature babies at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center, the hospital said, and was said to be in “stable” condition.

The woman was undergoing surgery late Sunday and was “fighting for her life,” the hospital said. . .

The woman suffered wounds to her upper body and was rushed to Shaare Zedek, the Magen David Adom paramedic service said. (Read more from “Jerusalem Hospital Delivers Baby of Pregnant Israeli Woman Shot in Terror Attack” HERE)

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U.S. Fears Iran Planning ‘Massive Regional War’ in Middle East

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The Trump administration disclosed that Iran is behind the construction of several underground tunnels leading into Israel that Hezbollah militants and other terror forces have been using to conduct attacks, according to multiple U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon and communicated fears that Tehran is preparing to lead a “massive regional war.”

The public identification of Iran isn’t likely to surprise international observers, but signals aggressive moves by the Trump administration to tie Iran to the rise of terrorism not just in Israel, but across the Middle East, where Iranian-backed militants continue to strike U.S. interests and allies.

The Obama administration, in contrast to Trump, was careful to avoid singling out Iran as the chief force for terrorism against Israel and U.S. allies in the region in hopes of appeasing the hardline regime as it sought to ink the landmark nuclear pact that Trump abandoned earlier this year.

Senior U.S. officials familiar with Israel’s discovery of these new tunnels—a tactic long used by Hezbollah and Hamas to conduct cross-border raids against Israeli civilians and military personnel—say they mark a massive escalation by Iran’s terror proxies.

The Israeli military conducted operations to destroy the tunnels earlier this week, shortly after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held a one-on-one meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Brussels. (Read more from “U.S. Fears Iran Planning ‘Massive Regional War’ in Middle East” HERE)

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Immigrating to the U.S. Has Become the Welfare Program for the World

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We are told by the apathetic elites who run our culture that illegal aliens can invade our border, force themselves in, give birth to a baby, and steal our American birthright – and there’s not a darn thing we can do about it. Moreover, we are then stuck with the welfare, health care, and education tab for people from the most impoverished countries, while we have our own teenage pregnancy and poverty problems. We won’t cut a single dollar of the welfare state among Americans. Is it too much to ask that we stop funding welfare for the entire world under the false pretenses of immigration policy?

Although the overwhelming majority of the caravan is male, a number of pregnant women have made the trip north in order to game out our scandalous birthright citizenship policies. Once again, we see this all about magnets, not about border resources or wall funding. The AP reported today that a 19-year -ld pregnant woman, with a two-year-old child, was growing impatient that we are only allowing in 100 invaders per day (so much for stopping the caravan!). She rushed through in order to get arrested. She told agents she was going into labor and was sent to a hospital in San Diego, where she gave birth.

Here’s the money quote from the article: “Maryury Serrano Hernandez, 19, told the network giving birth in the U.S. was a ‘big reward’ for the family’s grueling journey.” According to Fox, she supposedly climbed the border fence, even though pregnant, and then surrendered to the Border Patrol. Which, as we’ve warned before, is why a border wall is meaningless if we allow insane policies to continue.

Think about this for a moment: She is a 19-year-old who just gave birth and has a two-year-old son, and now, because of the TV scholars who twist and ruin our Constitution, the child will get an American birth certificate, and we will be responsible for this family for the rest of their lives. Who is looking out for the forgotten taxpayer? What’s worse, she said she wanted to connect with “family” in Columbus, Ohio, which means she likely has other illegal relatives. It’s a vicious cycle of illegal immigration chain migration. Look up the dictionary definition of sovereignty – “free from external control” – and you will understand that we are literally experiencing the opposite. We don’t control our own destiny as a people; we are controlled by the whims of invaders enabled by a corrupt ruling class and court system.

During the October debate over birthright citizenship for illegal aliens, I pointed out that Wong Kim Ark, the very court case proponents rely on for birthright citizenship of illegal aliens, used the word “domicile” in some form over 20 times to describe the type of immigrant eligible for citizenship and explicitly qualified it as “so long as they are permitted by the United States to reside here.” Our current brilliant legal scholars would have you believe a pregnant fence-jumper is domiciled with permission to reside here.

Yet Republicans are passing a budget today ignoring all of our severe immigration reform needs, and they are doing so by acclamation, without a recorded vote!

It is one of our founding principles since colonial times that immigration, being an elective policy of a sovereign nation, should only be a positive for Americans and never a liability in terms of public charge, health risks, or public safety problems. It is codified in our current laws that immigrants may not be a public charge on the nation. Yet the Center for Immigration Studies just published an analysis of Census data showing that “63 percent of households headed by a non-citizen reported that they used at least one welfare program, compared to 35 percent of native-headed households.” In states like California and Texas, the number topped 70 percent! Medicaid use among non-citizen families was 50 percent, as opposed to 23 percent for native families.

We refuse to enforce the public charge laws against even illegal immigrants. By far, more illegal immigrants are a public charge than legal ones, which is why the CIS study used a specific data set of the Census that includes illegal immigrants in its analysis. Many advocates suggest that they are not eligible for welfare, but this is why unconditional birthright citizenship is such a problem, because it gives illegal aliens access to the system on behalf of their children whom they insidiously ensure are born here.

What happened to the president’s promises of A) not letting in the caravan; B) stopping catch-and-release; and C) enforcing public charge laws? What happened to the inaugural promise that “the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer” and his complaint that “we’ve defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own”? We are still defending the borders of Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and Somalia, but not our own.

Unfortunately, the political class keeps telling us that unelected judges can declare the Constitution binding on all 7.7 billion people of the world. Consequently, if the Constitution extends to them, evidently so does the welfare state. (For more from the author of “Immigrating to the U.S. Has Become the Welfare Program for the World” please click HERE)

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One Marine Dead, Five Still Missing After Midair Collision near Japan

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By Townhall. A midair collision involving a Marine Corps KC-130 Hercules and F/A-18 Hornet 200 miles off of the coast of Japan has resulted in the death of one Marine, one being rescued, and five others still missing. III Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) announced the collision occurred around 2:00 A.M.

The Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force initially rescued one of the Marines, with another being found a short time later and was sent to hospital for medical evaluation. Hours later, III MEF revealed the Marine had died.

“The United States Marine Corps confirms that two Marines have been found. One is in fair condition and the other has been declared deceased by competent medical personnel,” III MEF stated. “The aircraft were conducting routine training and aerial refueling was a part of the training; as to what was taking place when the mishap occurred, that is under investigation.”

(Read more from “One Marine Dead, Five Still Missing After Midair Collision near Japan” HERE)

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Rescue Mission in Japan After Two US Marine Aircraft Collide

By BBC News. A big search and rescue operation is continuing in Japan for five missing US Marines after two aircraft with seven crew collided and crashed into the sea.

One Marine was rescued and was “in fair condition”, while another one “has been declared deceased”, Marines officials said in a statement.

The planes involved were a KC-130 and an F/A-18 based at Iwakuni near Hiroshima, south-western Japan.

US media say they crashed during a mid-air refuelling exercise.

The Marine Corps has not officially confirmed this, describing the incident as a “mishap”. (Read more from “Rescue Mission in Japan After Two Us Marine Aircraft Collide” HERE)

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The Ceasefire in Our Trade War with China Doesn’t Solve Deeper Problems

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The highly anticipated meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit concluded last Saturday evening with no major breakthrough. Pundits who had hoped for a good trade deal between the U.S. and China are surely disappointed.

President Trump previously threatened to raise tariffs from 10 to 25 percent on about $250 billion worth of Chinese imports on January 1, 2019. Now he has agreed to hold off on the tariff hike while both the Americans and Chinese delegations engage in trade negotiations for the next 90 days.

At present, President Xi has agreed not to impose any tit-for-tat response to current U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports. While stock markets and businesses worldwide can breathe a sigh of relief for now since the trade war will not get worse for another three months, the temporary truce can’t mask the deep divisions between the United States and China. . .

From the U.S. perspective, the rise of China has transitioned from a hope to a disappointment to a threat. When former president Richard Nixon visited Communist China in 1972 and established a diplomatic relationship, 99 percent of Chinese people made less than $2 a day and China’s per capita gross domestic product was less than $200. The Chinese people were poorer than people in Bangladesh, to put it into perspective.

In 2017, China’s GDP per capita was close to $9,000. Global poverty rates have been cut in half since 1981, mainly because of China’s impressive economic growth. This economic growth has a lot to do with the Chinese people’s ingenuity and certain market-friendly policies from their central government. But China often fails to mention that China wouldn’t have had almost four decades of impressive growth without the West, especially the United States, providing markets for Chinese goods, bringing foreign investment to China to build factories, and training millions of talented Chinese students at Western colleges and universities. (Read more from “The Ceasefire in Our Trade War with China Doesn’t Solve Deeper Problems” HERE)

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Climate Change Alarmism Is the World’s Leading Cause of Hot Gas

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By The Federalist. Even as anti-gas tax riots raged in France this week, the naturalist David Attenborough warned a crowd at a United Nations climate change summit in Poland that the “collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.” UN General Assembly President Maria Espinosa told the media that “mankind” was “in danger of disappearing” if climate change is allowed to progress at its current rate.

Speakers, who flew in to swap doomsday stories and partake of the meat-heavy menu, advocated for radical changes to avoid this imminent environmental apocalypse. These days, “the point of no return” is almost always in view, yet always just out of reach.

Sorry, but by now, this rhetoric is familiar. You can go back to 1970, when Harvard biologist George Wald, riding a wave of popular environmental panic during the decade, estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

Or you can go back to 1977, when President Barack Obama’s future science “tsar” John Holdren co-authored a book with Paul R. Ehrlich predicting that global warming could lead to the deaths of 1 billion starving people by 2020. (The authors theorized that “population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution.”)

Or you can go back to 2006, when Al Gore warned in his Oscar-winning documentary that sea levels would rise by 20 feet “in the near future.” The producers even offered chilling depictions of cities underwater. Gore was only off by around 20 feet, or so. Anyway, South Beach is still with us. (Read more from “Climate Change Alarmism Is the World’s Leading Cause of Hot Gas” HERE)

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New Zealand Defence Report Says Climate Change Greatest Security Risk

By The Economic Times. New Zealand released a defence policy statement on Thursday calling climate change its greatest security threat and stressed the importance of the issue to the geostrategically contested Pacific region, which is seeing increased influence from China.

The assessment came on the heels of a defence policy earlier this year that warned China’s rising influence in the South Pacific could undermine regional stability, drawing a complaint from the Asian giant.

“It identifies climate change as one of the most significant security threats of our time, and one that is already having adverse impacts both at home and in New Zealand’s neighbourhood,” said Defence Minister Ron Mark in an emailed statement. (Read more from “New Zealand Defence Report Says Climate Change Greatest Security Risk” HERE)

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Dr. Frankenstein of CRISPR Gene-Editing Infamy, Now Missing After Opening Pandora’s Box

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A Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, has allegedly created the first gene edited twin babies (born this past month) using the fairly new technology: CRISPR-Cas9. If reports are true, he has brought science a giant leap closer to “designer babies.”

Creepy CRISPR’s History

CRISPR-Cas9, commonly known as “CRISPR,” was largely created in 2012 by Jennifer Doudna, a University of California-Berkeley scientist, and Emmanuelle Charpentier. This technology makes gene editing much easier with greater precision. The changes made are also passed on through many generations of the cells.

CRISPR is currently being used in adult cells as well as embryos. Previously, all human experimentation with this technology used donated embryos not “designated” for pregnancy. Sadly, during these experiments, numerous human embryos were destroyed until Jiankui eventually implanted a few into their mothers.

Jiankui’s initial objective in using CRISPR was to find a way to give HIV-positive fathers a chance to have babies resistant to HIV. He thought this was important, at least partially because of the stigma associated with people with HIV in China. But other scientists have pointed out that using CRISPR for such purposes was wholly unnecessary and reckless, as there are many other ways to protect against HIV, and CRISPR remains experimental.

Unintended Consequences

With respect to potential problems with CRISPR, studies suggest that the gene editing technique creates “off-target DNA damage” much more frequently than once thought. Two studies have also shown that this technology may increase cancer risk. Since CRISPR is also still relatively new, other side effects will likely be discovered with time.

As to ethics of using this new tech on humans, Jiankui has posted a video in which he specifically discusses gene-edited “designer babies.” He says that is an unethical use of CRISPR and is not what he is using it for. In yet another video, he attempts to devise moral boundaries for CRISPR with “five principles.” Curiously, his recent use of CRISPR squarely violates these principles.

For example, Jiankui’s second principle only allows CRISPR gene editing “when the risks of the procedure are outweighed by a serious medical need.” Today, HIV-positive fathers are already at low risk to pass on the virus to their babies. Moreover, other methods such as “sperm washing” can prevent the father from passing HIV onto his child. Finally, Jiankui’s last principle decrees that “[e]veryone deserves freedom from genetic disease.” Of course, HIV is not a genetic disease; it’s viral, not hereditary. For Jiankui to equate HIV with a genetic disease is troubling.

Nevertheless, He Jiankui’s research has had one benefit: it has accelerated the question of whether and/or how this technology should be used in the future. Many scientists (including Jennifer Doudna) have warned that Jiankui’s research was irresponsible, even atrocious. This mirrored the scientific community’s consensus as early as 2015 that genetic tampering with human embryos intended for pregnancy should never occur without far more research.

Not 100% Bad

On the brighter side, there’s hope that CRISPR can be used in humans to treat genetic diseases “such as sickle-cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, and chronic conditions such as Type 2 diabetes or Alzheimer’s.” It may even be used to eliminate HIV in adult cells. It is also being used in agriculture, and there are potentially thousands of other ways it may be used.

But who should be the arbiter as to how CRISPR ought be employed in the future? Should it be the scientific community? Probably not. As we have already seen in the case of Jiankui, the scientific community is pretty much unable to guide itself on how to use this technology. So do we leave it to lawmakers and the courts to decide CRISPR’s fate? As we can readily see from legalized abortion and assisted suicide, the Supreme Court does not always rule in a way that promotes life. In reality, neither science nor politics may be competent to determine the ethics of this technology.

We are already seeing how CRISPR is being used for ethically questionable projects. In China they are using the technology to enable two female mice (or two male mice) to create offspring. A leader in biohacking, Dr. Josiah Zayner, has created a website exclusively for the purpose of teaching others and selling inexpensive DIY kits on how to use CRISPR at home. He believes that “consumer genetic design” will be a big part of the future of this technology.

CRISPR Scientist “Disappeared”

Frightening stuff, even for the godless communists. In fact, on December 3rd, the official Chinese press reported that Jiankui “disappeared.” This was just a day after he apparently had been placed under house arrest for his troubling work.

But whatever the immediate outcome of Jiankui’s Frankenstein-like experiments, there seems to be little question that Pandora’s box has been opened. Eventually, designer babies will be ubiquitous.

And a new caste system will arise: super, genetically modified humans versus the rest of us. Like the Tower of Babel, the Creator’s intervention is the only wildcard; man, left to his own devices, will never stop playing god.

Why the Brexit Deal Has Become Such a Tangled Mess

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On Tuesday, President Trump said the withdrawal agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union designed to codify Brexit “sounds like a great deal for the EU.” This reflected the majority of political thought across Great Britain over the last fortnight, which has panned the agreement Prime Minister Theresa May obtained:

At some point, negotiations with the EU always seemed destined to hit a reality check. The gap between what many British leaders want and what May could deliver has placed the United Kingdom in the midst of high-stakes political drama with a far-from-certain outcome. . .

From the outset of the treaty process, the EU held most of the negotiating cards, for two big reasons. First, British business fears the prospect of a “no-deal” Brexit. Under this scenario, the U.K. would exit the European Union next March 29—the date currently scheduled for Britain’s withdrawal—with no agreement in place governing future relations between the two entities. Overnight, border and customs checks would go into place, and tariffs would be re-imposed on British goods entering the EU and vice versa.

A no-deal Brexit has terrified the business community, ranging from the banking sector, where London’s reputation as a financial capital relies in large part on its EU ties, to concerns about supply chain interruptions. To give but one example of the uncertainty plaguing industry, the head of Britain’s Food and Drink Federation testified before a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that “warehouses around the U.K. for frozen and chilled food are ‘for all practical purposes booked out at the moment’”—businesses are stockpiling supplies to try and avoid disruptions next spring.

A no-deal Brexit also would create political uncertainties in Northern Ireland. Without an agreement governing customs between Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom exiting the EU) and the Republic of Ireland (a sovereign state that will remain in the EU), a no-deal Brexit could lead to the re-imposition of a “hard border” between the two nations. (Read more from “Why the Brexit Deal Has Become Such a Tangled Mess” HERE)

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Why Putin’s Game of Russian Roulette With Ukraine Is a Big Deal

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In a stunning sequence of events, the Russian military opened fire then seized three Ukrainian navy vessels in an unprovoked attack on the Black Sea last Sunday. In the melee, several Ukrainian sailors were wounded and 24 captured. Moscow followed up this flagrant act of war by parading the sailors on Russian television to give clearly coerced confessions of guilt.

This attack is but the latest escalation in the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine that has been churning since 2014. It’s also the first great test for the Trump administration regarding Russia and one that will have lasting consequences on the future of Europe and the world. . .

The war in Ukraine began in 2014 after Russian special forces seized Crimea. The tactic Moscow used is what I dubbed, in U.S. Army publications, “the strategy of ambiguity.” Putin directed that his troops remove all symbols and anything else that would identify them as Russian soldiers.

This had the desired effect, as American journalists breathlessly reported of the ridiculously labeled “little green men” from unknown origins taking control of Crimea. President Obama and the rest of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies wrung their hands on what to do. The tactic worked––as President Obama dithered, Russia seized Crimea within a week without firing a shot in anger.

The takeover of Crimea was quickly followed by local referenda to ascertain if Crimea desired to become part of Russia––a vote, of course, that overwhelmingly supported the idea. The deal was sealed just a month after the little green men seized the country, with Putin announcing that Crimea would be annexed by Russia. (Read more from “Why Putin’s Game of Russian Roulette With Ukraine Is a Big Deal” HERE)

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The GOP Congress Could Respond to Airbnb’s Anti-Israel Move, but Probably Won’t

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A recent move by Airbnb to block Jews in the West Bank from using its listing services has sparked policy action from the incoming governor of Florida and the outgoing governor of Illinois, but not so much from the outgoing Republican Congress.

CR foreign policy correspondent Jordan Schachtel reported earlier this week:

Florida Governor-elect Ron DeSantis has also pledged to take legal action, if necessary, to stop Florida government employees from using Airbnb, should the policy continue.

Outgoing Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner is also looking into taking potential action against Airbnb.

In the Washington Free Beacon report, reporter Adam Kredo noted that the situation could potentially lead to a renewed push for anti-boycott legislation on Capitol Hill. There’s one anti-BDS bill in the Senate and another in the House, each with bipartisan support. These would be updates to 1977 anti-boycott provisions signed by President Carter.

Will legislation make it to the president’s desk before Christmas?

I asked the offices of several pro-Israel members of both chambers whether or not the Airbnb news would lead to an end-of-year push on anti-boycott legislation. “Not that I know of,” one senior GOP aide told me.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is vocal about his interest in using the power of Congress to address anti-Semitism. “This kind of persecution has no place in any society and must end,” Cruz told the Free Beacon. “Airbnb should reverse its decision, and I will continue to work with my colleagues to combat anti-Semitism here and abroad.”

Other offices did not respond in time for publication. If responses are received, CR will update this article.

Absent any movement next week, it seems unlikely that we’ll see any progress on this front before Democrats take over the House in January. Sure, this would have been an easy last-minute messaging win for the GOP, but if Republicans were good at picking up the easy wins, they might not have lost the House earlier this month. (For more from the author of “The GOP Congress Could Respond to Airbnb’s Anti-Israel Move, but Probably Won’t” please click HERE)

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