Fear of ‘All-Out War’ as Intense Rocket Barrages Disrupt Southern Israel; 7 Gazans Killed in IAF Strikes~Kristallnacht In Israel: Muslim Mobs in Lod Attack Jews, Burn Cars, Set Synagogues On Fire

(The Times of Israel) — Cities and communities in southern Israel faced an intense barrage of rockets overnight Friday-Saturday, with several heavy waves of projectile fire targeting Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beersheba, Sderot and the surrounding areas.

The bombardment came as the Israeli military continued to strike numerous targets in the Gaza Strip since midnight, taking out rocket-launching sites, terror cells and a Hamas intelligence center, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

One of the rockets fired from Gaza in the middle of the night made a direct hit on an apartment building in Ashdod, while another landed in the Ashdod port, hitting a fuel reservoir and causing a massive explosion that sent huge flames into the night sky. No injuries were immediately reported in either incident.

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BY HUGH FITZGERALD

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/05/kristallnacht-in-israel-muslim-mobs-in-lod-attack-jews-burn-cars-set-synagogues-on-fire;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

In the middle of Israel, 16 miles outside of Tel Aviv, sits the city of Lod (Lydda). One-third of its population of 77,000 is Arab; it has been a source of local pride that Arabs and Jews have gotten along so well, and that the Arabs have flourished. Starting with an Arab population of 1,600 in Lod in 1949, the Arabs now number 25,700, a colossal increase of more than 1500%. Obviously, living in Lod agrees with them.

But in recent days, Arab mobs in Lod have been roaming the city, attacking Jews, burning cars, throwing petrol bombs into Jewish homes and shops, setting three synagogues on fire..

A report on this grim spectacle is here: “‘Kristallnacht in Lod’: State of emergency as Arab mobs set synagogues on fire,” Times of IsraelMay 12, 2021:

Intense Arab rioting broke out in the central Israeli city of Lod late Tuesday, with three synagogues and numerous shops reportedly set on fire, along with dozens of cars. The government declared a state of emergency in the Jewish-Arab city, and urgently dispatched several Border Police companies to work to restore order.

Some residents reported power was cut in their homes and petrol bombs were thrown through their windows, Channel 12 news said, and police acknowledged having to escort some residents from a community center to their homes as Arab mobs marauded in the streets. A local man, 56, was seriously hurt when hit by a slab on his car, and was hospitalized. Another local resident was seriously hurt.

Jewish shops were set on fire, three synagogues burned, gasoline bombs thrown into Jewish homes. It is a miracle that no one so far has burned to death, though several Jews have been seriously wounded by Arabs, and one Arab man was shot dead while attacking Jews. Meanwhile, Arab mobs for two days and nights roamed the streets, looking for Jews and Jewish property to attack. Some Jews had to be escorted home by the police, for fear of what might happen to them at the hands of the maddened Muslim marauders.

The mayor, Yair Revivo, said City Hall and a local museum were also attacked, and compared the situation to the Nazis’ 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom. “Civil war” is breaking out, he said, lamenting that decades of coexistence efforts had collapsed.

“Kristallnacht pogrom” is exactly the right description. In Lod, the Arab mobs have been attacking Jewish homes, Jewish shops, Jewish places of worship, just as the Nazis did on November 9-10, 1938, and hoping thereby to terrorize the Jews into psychological submission or, some might say dhimmitude.

After Revivo appealed directly to the prime minister for urgent help, a state of emergency was declared in the city for the first time in decades, and large Border Police forces deployed to work to restore order. “Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu directed that lawbreakers be dealt with severely and that units on the ground be reinforced in order to restore quiet and order to the city forthwith,” a government statement said….

Footage posted on social media showed a torched synagogue and two Torah scrolls being salvaged — unharmed — from its ruins.

The rioting by Israeli Arabs in October 2000 did not include attempts to set fire, with petrol bombs, to Jewish homes and shops, nor were synagogues set on fire. In 2000, chanting Israeli Arabs protested all across the country, declared their solidarity with Palestinian terror groups, and when the protesters got completely out of hand and became rioting mobs intent on attacking Jews, 13 of the Arabs rioting throughout Israel were shot.

Arab violence erupted in numerous other cities across Israel, and there were also reports of Jewish revenge attacks, including in Lod, where a Muslim cemetery was set ablaze.

Setting a cemetery ablaze causes damage, but does no harm to anyone living; everyone in the cemetery is already dead. But the targets of the Arab mobs in Lod were very much alive and at risk of death – the Jewish shopkeepers in their shops that were set alight, the Jewish families in their homes, when petrol bombs were thrown through the windows, the Jews praying in synagogues where flames suddenly erupted. No Jews in Lod have attacked Arab-owned shops or houses, or mosques. The difference matters.

Attacks were reported on Jewish homes in Ramle, where cars were also stoned. In Acre, a restaurant and a hotel were set ablaze.

Roads were blocked in Umm al-Fahm, an Arab town. There were confrontations reported after midnight in Jaffa, where a car was overturned and set alight, and minor fights reported in Tel Aviv’s Habimah Square.

Throughout central Israel, the Arab attacks spread: in Ramle, right near Lod, more attacks on Jewish homes and cars; major fires consumed a restaurant and hotel. In the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm, the locals blocked roads so that the forces of order – the Israeli police – would keep out. On the coast, in Jaffa, a car was set on fire and Arabs and Jews clashed, Even in the overwhelmingly Jewish Tel Aviv, fights broke out between Arabs and Jews in the very center, Habimah Square, of the city.

The surge in violence came hours after Hamas fired some 130 rockets at central Israel, and claimed “victory” in what its leader Ismail Haniyeh said was “the battle for Jerusalem.” Hamas later hailed Arab Israelis for joining the struggle against Israel.

The rockets launched by Hamas from Gaza emboldened the local Arabs, who now wanted to show that they could make common cause with Hamas in helping to “strike terror” at Israelis from within.

Lod resident Shiloh Fried told Channel 12: “Gangs of Arab youths are going street to street, burning stores, smashing windows… Jewish families are huddled at home, terrified of going out… Their cars are being set alight outside… Police are nowhere to be seen.”

Israel was supposed to be the Jewish National Home, a refuge for world Jewry. The Israelis are used to fighting for their survival against the armies of Arab states. They are used to fighting terror groups, too — Hamas, Hezbollah, PFLP, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. But in Lod, many of the Arabs with whom they have lived side-by-side, among whom they had grown up, people whom they had allowed themselves to believe were reasonably content as citizens of Israel, with all the civil, religious, and political rights of Israeli Jews, suddenly turned on their Jewish neighbors. Within two days of the first Hamas rockets landing in southern Israel, and just a week after Arabs on the Temple Mount had started flinging rocks and Molotov cocktails at Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall below, and at the Israeli police on the Temple Mount itself, and only a few weeks since Arabs had begun to attack Jews on the streets of Jerusalem, and to upload using the TikTok app videos of their attacks, to share them with other Arabs who they were sure would enjoy the spectacle, the Arabs of Lod went on a rampage.

There were reports that some residents were avoiding using public shelters during rocket sirens out of fear they would be attacked by mobs.

Some Jews in Lod were caught between the rockets fired at the city by Hamas in Gaza, and the Israeli Arabs, whose vicious fanatical frenzy worried them so much that they did not use public shelters lest they be “attacked by mobs” of hysterical Arabs.

Channel 12 also showed footage of Jewish residents of Lod hurling rocks at cars of Arab residents, though Fried said these incidents were minor ones compared to the scope of Arab rioting. An Arab resident was killed on Monday night amid violence, in what Jewish eyewitnesses said was self-defense against Arab assailants.

Having endured the violence of Arab mobs setting on fire Jewish shops, homes, cars, and synagogues, the Jews of Lod — many of whose parents were refugees from Arab lands – managed to get back in the only way they could, with what were apparently two or three incidents of rock-throwing at Arab cars (no one hurt as a result), an understandable reaction to being goaded beyond endurance by so much Arab mob violence.

Before the army was sent in, Lod Mayor Revivo had warned “this is too big for the police.”

This is Kristallnacht in Lod,” Revivo said on Channel 12. “I have called on the prime minister to declare a state of emergency in Lod. To call in the IDF. To impose a curfew. To restore quiet… There is a failure of governance…This is a giant incident — an intifada of Arab Israelis. All the work we have done here for years [on coexistence] has gone down the drain.”

“All of Israel should know, this is a complete loss of control,” Revivo added, sounding desperate. “This is unthinkable. Synagogues are being burned. Hundreds of cars set alight. Hundreds of Arab thugs are roaming the streets… Civil war has erupted in Lod… The Orthodox-nationalist community here has guns. I’m imploring them to go back home but they understandably want to protect their homes. Molotov cocktails are being thrown into [Jewish] homes. The situation is incendiary.”

Reacting to the ongoing riots in Arab-Jewish cities across Israel, Meretz MK Isawi Frej said “anyone who calls themselves a public figure in Arab society must call for restoring calm.”

“I call on [the Joint List’s] Ahmad Tibi, Ayman Odeh along with Arab mayors: This is the test of your leadership. Don’t hide. Don’t only speak out during elections. It’s your job to go out and influence,” Frej said….

Frej, an Arab, called on Arab MKs and mayors to denounce the rioters and call for calm. So far he has gone unheeded. No other Arab leader has yet spoken out. That failure must certainly alarm Israeli Jews.

What must Israeli Jews be thinking when they confront the spectacle of those whom they thought of as their peaceful Arab neighbors, with whom they shared so much, suddenly allowing themselves to be whipped up enough to set fire, in Lod alone, to three synagogues, to destroy Jewish-owned shops, to firebomb Jewish-owned homes, and to attack at random Jews whom they came upon in the streets of Lod?

In his statement, Rivlin said he asked Younes “to do everything in his power to calm things down. The people of Israel, Jews and Arabs alike, must hear the Arab leadership sounding a clear and strident [si] voice against this wild violence, against damage to synagogues, against this wild behavior. The police will do all that is required to restore the peace. I ask for cooperation from the Arab leadership to restore calm and law and order to our streets.”

Rivlin’s cri de coeur for Israeli Arab leaders to speak out has still not, by the following week, been heeded. The Border Police have been called in to restore order in Lod, where the Arab mob violence has finally been suppressed. But the former trust between Arab and Jew in Lod, and in other mixed cities, too, have been broken by the Arab mobs that have been attacking, sometimes murderously, the Jews among whom they live and who have done nothing to deserve such treatment.

President Rivlin, normally so measured and soft-spoken in his remarks, said that “the sight of the pogrom in Lod and the disturbances across the country by an incited and bloodthirsty Arab mob… is unforgivable.” In a mixed city that prided itself on how Jews and Arabs got along. Too many Arabs suddenly turned on their Jewish neighbors, and became unhinged predators. The Jews of Israel, even those on the far left, will neither forgive nor forget what happened in Lod.

And nor, of course, should we.

Long Island University Prof’s Rant: An ‘Islamophobe’ Behind Every Bush

BY ANDREW HARROD

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/05/profs-ramadan-rant-an-islamophobe-behind-every-bush;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Long Island University political science associate professor Dahlia Fahmy stated her goal of “breaking the Islamophobia industry” in the April 24 webinar, “Islamophobia & the American Muslim Community.” Her reiteration of hackneyed distortions under the contrived term of “Islamophobia” took center stage at this American Muslim Institution (AMI) event for the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan.

AMI executive director Shahid Rahman introduced the panel by claiming that during Ramadan “we have seen our Muslim-American community live up to their reputation as the most charitable of people.” Yet a 2019 Philanthropy Roundtable study found that “Mormons are the most generous Americans . . . Evangelical Christians are next. Then come mainline Protestants.  Catholics lag both.” Muslim scholars who studied Muslim-American philanthropy in 2018 found that “U.S. Muslim giving to religious causes and institutions is far behind that of other U.S. religious groups.”

Among other reasons, these Muslim academics noted under one heading that “U.S. Muslims Are Relatively Less Affluent.”  Among the “poorest of the poor in America, comparatively speaking, the larger percentage of them are Muslims.” Irrespective of means, charity among Muslims also raises doctrinal disputes within Islam over whether Muslims should aid non-Muslims.

By contrast, Fahmy strove to present Muslim-Americans as model citizens, with reference to statistical claims such as Muslim women are America’s second-highest educated religious minority group. Thus “Muslim Americans are productive, educated, and civic-minded individuals.” She ignored that America’s prison population is disproportionately Muslim.

“The more you understand the Quran, the more pro-justice you are,” Fahmy said, citing her former Princeton University adviser in a proposition that would astonish victims of Islamic sharia oppression throughout history. Overlooking Islam’s traditional division of the world into Dar al-Harb (house of war, or non-Islamic lands) and Dar al-Islam (house of Islam, the lands Muslims have conquered), she claimed that the Muslim “ummah is one body, and when one part of the body hurts, the entirety of humanity suffers.” Therefore, she added, people should “think about Muslim issues as being human issues.”

For Fahmy’s Muslim social justice warriors, “Muslim issues are healthcare, ensuring that the poor are taken care of, that the hungry are fed, that there is equal access to education.” Seemingly leftist Muslims should be “going into the inner cities, breaking the boundaries of privilege, and saying that we can’t fight for Muslim rights until we fight for the rights of all,” she said. She praised a “positive correlation between Muslims being engaged in their local mosque and Muslims being civically engaged as Americans.” Yet her defense of radical, antisemitic Representative Ilhan Omar, who she asserted “has endured a campaign of hate and defamation,” exposed her desire to whitewash such Muslim activism.

“Islamophobia is defined as the unfounded or irrational fear towards Islam and Muslims,” Fahmy stated, but her accusations of anti-Muslim bigotry themselves are largely unfounded. She cited several incidents from 2015, including the “arrest of young people with nothing other than, for example, a boy with a clock.” This “Clock Boy,” a fourteen-year-old Muslim high school student in Irving, Texas, triggered a security scare at his school by bringing in a science project that closely resembled a bomb. His family launched a series of lawsuits in response, the last of which a court dismissed “with prejudice” in 2018 while denying “all relief by plaintiff.”

Fahmy also condemned what she called the “execution-style murder of three young people in [Chapel Hill] North Carolina,” but a disturbed anti-religious, leftist man murdered these three Muslims over a parking dispute, not “Islamophobia.” She cited arson at a Houston Islamic school, but the alcoholic homeless man with a criminal record who was convicted said that the school’s destruction was an accident caused by a fire he started to keep warm on a cold night. She also noted a stabbing attack against an Arab-American in Brooklyn, but one of the two Asian-Americans brothers who perpetrated the stabbings was later found mentally incompetent to stand trial.

Given that activists such as Fahmy fail to adhere to a consistent definition of “Islamophobia,” it is unsurprising that her fellow Americans do not share her twisted outrage. She paraphrased President Barack Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address, in which he said the “United States is a nation that will not tolerate antisemitism” to standing congressional applause. “But in his next breath he said that the United States is also a country that will stand against rising Islamophobia and much of the chamber remained silent, but we as Muslims heard this loud and clear,” she added.

Fahmy also denounced political “language that, for example, the United States is a Judeo-Christian nation, indicating that Islam has no presence here or that Muslims can’t be trusted.” This would, she claimed, “exclude Muslims from the definition of what it means to be American.” Yet JewsChristians, and others from myriad faiths and no faith at all have recognized that America’s moral character as a society respecting rights for all stems from its biblical heritage.

“Islamophobia” in Fahmy’s telling has a long history, as found, for example, in the 1921 book The Sheikh, which appeared the next year as a hit silent film starring Rudolph Valentino. Yet Muslims themselves have praised Washington Irving’s 1849 biography of Islam’s prophet Muhammad, contrary to Fahmy’s criticism of that work. She also did not explain in her condemnation of Mark Twain’s 1869 travelogue, Innocents Abroad, how it was inaccurate in its harsh description of the Ottoman Empire in places such as Palestine. Similarly, she offered no proof for her claims about the “Islamophobia industry,” which she complained is “well-funded,” and “unregulated,” as if the First Amendment is inapplicable to commentators on Islam.

Fahmy bemoaned survey results showing Americans’ negative impressions of Islam and Muslims, but her skewed, superficial sophistries simply reinforce the reasoning behind those impressions. Middle East studies academics like her do a disservice to Muslims concerned about bigotry by refusing to truthfully critique difficult issues within Islam. These range from what the late Harvard scholar Samuel P. Huntington called “Islam’s bloody borders” to the unwillingness of Muslim immigrants in the West to assimilate to their host cultures. True friendship and understanding can develop only with frank, truthful discussions of these and other problems – virtues sorely lacking in Fahmy’s warped presentation.

Andrew E. Harrod is a Campus Watch Fellow, freelance researcher, and writer who holds a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a J.D. from George Washington University Law School. He is a fellow with the Lawfare Project. Follow him on Twitter at @AEHarrod.

New York City: Muslim mob screaming ‘Allahu akbar’ attacks Jewish man in midtown Manhattan

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/05/new-york-city-muslim-mob-screaming-allahu-akbar-attacks-jewish-man-in-midtown-manhattan;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

The writer below says: “This is not a new conflict of 2021. The outburst of violence and venom we are witnessing is the continuation of the 1948 Independence War that is now in its 74th year.”

Actually, it’s the continuation of a 1,400-year jihad against the Jews.

New York City: Muslim mob screaming ‘Allahu akbar’ attacks Jewish man in midtown Manhattan

The writer below says: “This is not a new conflict of 2021. The outburst of violence and venom we are witnessing is the continuation of the 1948 Independence War that is now in its 74th year.”

Actually, it’s the continuation of a 1,400-year jihad against the Jews.

 

“Arab Muslim Mob Attack Jew In Midtown Manhattan,” by Avi Abelow, Israel Unwired, May 13, 2021 (thanks to G.):

I honestly do not have the details about this event. You see what we all see, a Jew harassed and injured by a mob, including Arab Muslims, in the center of New York City screaming “Alluh Akhbar” and other curses. The policemen are whisking him away to try to protect him, even though they are doing little to stop the mob. It looks like this took place outside the Midtown Manhattan library in the center of New York City. We have been told that this took place just yesterday.

It is important for people to understand that this is directly connected to the violent war Hamas and many Israeli Arab Muslims have launched against Israel. Hamas has launched thousands of missiles on innocent Israelis while Arab Muslims have scorched Jewish synagogues, lynched neighboring Jews and shot at neighbors in joint Jewish/Muslim Israeli cities. Meanwhile, antisemitism is spreading around the world as well – all in the name of standing up for the fake cause called “palestine.”

Please, everyone understand. This is not a new conflict of 2021. The outburst of violence and venom we are witnessing is the continuation of the 1948 Independence War that is now in its 74th year. That war never ended! Many Arab Muslim Israelis are taking part in this war today.

They forget that the reason they are Israeli citizens is because their grandparents were blessed to stay put and trust the Jews after we won the 1948 war. All those who became Arab “refugees” after the 1948 war, were the ones who listened to the Arab Muslim leaders who told them to leave their homes in order to allow the Arab Muslim armies and militias to come in and massacre all the Jews.

They did not learn the lesson that those who bless the Jews are blessed and those who curse the Jews are cursed. So, today, many Israeli Arab Muslim citizens have decided to join their Muslim brethren in Gaza in order to try to kill Jews and destroy Israel from within Israel. And their brethren abroad, like the ones in the video from New York City, are joining the fight as well against innocent Jews abroad….

“Man attacked at pro-Israel rally in Midtown, NYPD says,” by Tina Moore and Larry Celona, New York Post, May 13, 2021 (thanks to Kevin):

A man attending a heated protest over the Israel-Palestinian crisis in Manhattan earlier this week was whacked in the head with a folding chair by another man who yelled, “F–k you, Israeli,” police said Thursday.

A dispute between the 29-year-old victim and his attacker broke out around 7 p.m. Tuesday at the rally outside 11 W. 42nd St., police said.

It escalated when the suspect hit the man over the head with a chair and sneered, “F–k you, Israeli. Allahu Akbar” before fleeing, cops said.

Video posted on Twitter shows the victim, who sources said was with his wife at the time, bleeding from the head as he runs across the street to safety with the help of an apparent NYPD officer.

The video was posted by Twitter user Joshua Washington.

“Attempted lynching of a Jewish man in New York,” Washington posted with the video. “This should be literally everywhere.”…

Democrats hindering investigations into origins of COVID-19

Rumble — Democrat lawmakers seem intent on washing their hands of any involvement in probing the origins of the pandemic. One America's Hans Hubbard has more.

Rumble — More conservatives are joining Sen. Rand Paul in questioning Dr. Anthony Fauci’s credibility. One America’s John Hines caught up with Sen. Roger Marshall from Kansas and has more from Capitol Hill.

Feds Caught Deleting Data to Make It Appear That “Climate Change” Causes Wildfires

Feds Caught Deleting Data to Make It Appear That “Climate Change” Causes Wildfires

BY MICHAEL TENNANT

SEE: https://thenewamerican.com/feds-caught-deleting-data-to-suggest-that-climate-change-causes-wildfires/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

A federal agency has been caught tampering with historical wildfire data in an obvious effort to make wildfire prevalence and severity appear to be correlated with alleged global warming.

Created in 1965, the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) maintains statistics on annual wildfire counts and the number of acres burned in those fires. Until recently, the NIFC posted on its website wildfire statistics for every year since 1926, as evidenced by this Internet Archive screen capture. However, the agency now only posts statistics from 1983 to the present. Why?

“The answer,” asserts climate realist Anthony Watts, “is simple; data prior to 1983 shows that U.S. wildfires were far worse both in frequency and total acreage burned. By disappearing all data prior to 1983, which just happens to be the lowest point in the dataset, now all of the sudden we get a positive slope of worsening wildfire aligning with increased global temperature, which is perfect for claiming ‘climate change is making wildfire[s] worse.

To prove his point, Watts created graphs from both the original data and the now-scrubbed data. The graph of the complete dataset shows that from the 1920s to the early 1980s, there were far more wildfires covering far more acreage than there have been since. The graph of the current NIFC dataset, on the other hand, suggests an increase in both statistics over time.

Another graph generated by Watts sheds further light on the complete dataset. The worst of the wildfires occurred during the 1930–1941 “Dust Bowl” era and again during the 1976–1978 drought in the West. Meanwhile, 1982–1983 saw a “super El Nino” that soaked the western states, causing 1983 to have the fewest and least-destructive wildfires on record. After that, wildfire and acreage counts naturally increased, but thus far they have seldom approached most of the pre-1983 counts and have been far below the counts from the peak years of that era.

Watts traces the history of the NIFC’s public statements on the pre-1983 data and finds a curious pattern: Since Watts’ publicization of the data’s death blow to the claim that “global warming” causes wildfires, the NIFC has cast increasing doubt on the reliability of the older data to the point that it now claims said data is so bad it cannot be posted publicly.

When the NIFC, in 2011, initially posted the wildfire data on its website, it added this relatively benign caveat: “Figures prior to 1983 may be revised as NICC [National Interagency Coordination Center] verifies historical data.”

In December 2017, Watts republished an article citing the NIFC data as part of its justification for doubting that “climate change” was the cause of wildfires in California.

By the following March, NIFC had become considerably less confident that its pre-1983 data was accurate, replacing the previous caveat with:

The National Interagency Coordination Center at NIFC compiles annual wildland fire statistics for federal and state agencies. This information is provided through Situation Reports, which have been in use for several decades. Prior to 1983, sources of these figures are not known, or cannot be confirmed, and were not derived from the current situation reporting process. As a result the figures prior to 1983 should not be compared to later data.

Today, the NIFC only posts data from 1983 and later, saying, “Prior to 1983, the federal wildland fire agencies did not track official wildfire data using current reporting processes. As a result, there is no official data prior to 1983 posted on this site.”

Watts isn’t buying it. The deleted data, he observes, “has been trusted for decades in almost every news story about any wildfire that ever occurred in the U.S.”

“NIFC … is essentially labeling every firefighter, every fire captain, every forester, and every smoke jumper who has fought wildfires for decades as being untrustworthy in their assessment and measurement of this critical, yet very simple fire data,” he declares.

Why would the agency do this? Watts’ conclusion is fairly inescapable: “It seems to me that NIFC very likely caved to pressure from climate activists to disappear this inconvenient data. By erasing the past data, NIFC has become untrustworthy. This erasure is not just unscientific, it’s dishonest and possibly fraudulent.”

 

DHS Waives Antiquated Law Slowing Recovery From Colonial Pipeline Shutdown~WAS SABOTAGE BY THE DEEP STATE WORKING WITH CHINA

“No ‘Freedom Papers!’”: Hundreds Rally Against Vaccine Passports in Orange County

“No ‘Freedom Papers!’”: Hundreds Rally Against Vaccine Passports in Orange County

BY

SEE: https://thenewamerican.com/no-freedom-papers-hundreds-rally-against-vaccine-passports-in-orange-county/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Orange County (OC) Board of Supervisors meeting on May 11 to protest against digital proof of vaccination, i.e., vaccine passports, after county officials added it to their vaccination app a few weeks ago without explanation.

The passport is being promoted by the OC Health Agency as a way for businesses to allow or restrict patrons from receiving goods and services based on whether or not they have been vaccinated.

According to Orange County Register, the county had planned to give anyone who received vaccines at sites run by the OC Health Care Agency the choice to get an electronic QR code they could keep in their smartphone and show if requested to get into a business or entertainment venue.

County officials had already approved changes to a contract with the creator of the Othena vaccine-scheduling app that would allow the addition of digital vaccine records. County CEO Frank Kim said he won’t move forward unless the Board of Supervisors specifically directs him to. The discussion on the app’s enhancement with a “Proof of Vaccination” option was on the Board’s May 11 meeting agenda.

OC officials have said repeatedly they are not requiring, and don’t plan to require, that anyone get vaccinated, or show proof that they have been vaccinated, to receive county services. State and federal officials also have said they don’t plan to mandate a vaccine passport system.

At the same time, according to the state reopening guidelines, California does allow large venues such as stadiums and convention centers to admit more people if they are tested for COVID or show proof of vaccination, de-facto creating an incentive for businesses to require a proof of vaccination.

“Of course, it is a form of a vaccine passport,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, a UC-Berkeley infectious-disease expert. That California has not embraced the label is not surprising, he said.

As reported by KABC, the protests in OC spilled inside the building where the Board of Supervisors was meeting, with more than 700 people signing up to speak during the board meeting.

“This is against the law. It would strip us of our privacy rights,” said one of the speakers.

“You are not going to brand us with a barcode like we are cattle. The Nazis looked like they were winning, too, for a little while,” said another.

From business owners to lawyers to everyday residents, the list of speakers went on for hours.

“Being that I am a Black American, and you’re asking me now to carry ‘freedom papers’ is absolutely appalling. I will bring every Black member of this community back down here if this goes any further,” said a speaker.

“This isn’t communist Russia, this isn’t communist China, this isn’t Nazi Germany. We should have the freedom. The Jews had passports, look what that led to,” said another.

Many speakers said they were concerned over establishing any sort of digital vaccine-verification method would lead to mandated vaccinations, infringe on personal privacy, enable tracking capabilities and lead to discrimination based on medical information. People also urged the board to ban private businesses from requesting proof of vaccination, calling the practice unconstitutional.

Many residents wanted county supervisors to ban businesses from requiring proof of vaccinations at Tuesday’s meeting.

Katrina Foley, one supervisor who stands firm in favor of a vaccine passport, believes most people support it and that only a small faction of people oppose it.

“These individuals are mostly people who don’t believe in vaccinating in the first place. They’re also people who in the past year have denied that COVID exists, denied the pandemic,” Foley argues. She went even further and added that these are “the same individuals” who “have marched on our United States Capitol, participated in the insurrection.” In other words, who else but extremists would reject electronic proof of the unapproved, experimental genetic injection?

Providing a digital record to people who opt in “is just a professional courtesy to businesses,” Foley said. She encouraged anyone worried that vaccine records would be used to track their activities “should throw away their iPhones and get off Facebook.”

However, in response to the public outcry, the board ended up voting 4-1 to “pause” a plan to offer a digital vaccination record.

The “noise” over the topic “has now reached a point where there is more harm than good that comes from it,” Chairman Andrew Do said before proposing to pause the QR code development.

The supervisors said they plan to revisit funding at a July 27 meeting.