On Saturday night, the Israeli military made a macabre and horrifying discovery: the slain bodies of six hostages taken by Hamas, including American citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin. All six hostages had been shot point-blank in the head some 48-72 hours prior, presumably upon the approach of IDF soldiers; Hamas terrorists chose to murder the hostages they had held in terror tunnels for over 300 days rather than risk their liberation. The discovery sent the entire nation of Israel into mourning. On Oct. 7, Israelis were forced to remember that the enemy they face is not merely violent, but purely evil. In subsequent months, with the extraordinary progress of the IDF in Gaza over the protestations of the Biden administration, Hamas’ evils were relegated once more to the realm of military conflict. But the very thought of these victims — Goldberg-Polin, 23; Eden Yerushalmi, 24; Ori Danino, 25; Alex Lobanov, 32; Carmel Gat, 40; and Almog Sarusi, 27 — suffering without sunlight, food or water for nearly a year, all to be shot to death within hours of their possible freedom, reopened all the wounds of Oct. 7. It turned out that all the diplomatic overtures made by America — overtures largely accepted by the supposedly intransigent administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — meant nothing. As Netanyahu pointed out, “whoever murders hostages does not want a deal.” That was predictable enough, given the fact that Hamas’ chief goal is its own survival — a goal directly at odds with Israel’s necessary goal of extirpating Hamas. That is why Hamas has consistently declared for months that there would be no hostage release without a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, along with the discharge of hundreds of convicted terrorists and murderers. Anything less than survival for Hamas is a loss. Dead Palestinians help Hamas achieve its goal of pressuring Israel; dead hostages help Hamas achieve its goal of pressuring Israel. And yet the immediate response of America and Great Britain has been to push Israel into more concessions. Asked whether Netanyahu had done enough to secure the hostage release, President Joe Biden — fresh from the beach in Delaware — said “no.” That is obviously political madness; if the murder of hostages wins indulgences, surely Hamas has the incentive to murder more hostages. But it is, far more importantly, moral madness; handing a victory to the very monsters who currently hold toddlers and threaten to shoot them in the head is the essence of cowardice. It’s worse: it’s complicity in evil. The only possible moral frame in which Israel can be blamed for Hamas’ monstrousness is a relativistic one, in which barbaric evil can be projected onto the “root cause” of the West. There is a reason so much of the left views America’s loss of the Vietnam War as a victory, or sees the Afghanistan pullout as a triumph, ignoring the viciousness of the Viet Cong and the Taliban. In this view, the cruelty of the West’s enemies is merely a response to the West’s own cruelty — and the evidence of that proposition is the existence of our enemies. Were we kind, generous and tolerant, we would have no enemies, goes the logic — thus the presence of our enemies demonstrates how fatally flawed we are. This perverse philosophy gives ammunition to the world’s worst human beings. Depriving evil actors of agency means leaving them free to pursue their worse designs, secure in the knowledge that the more savagely they act, the more they will be excused for their cruelty. The West, in this view, can never triumph but through surrender. This philosophy will destroy the West from within as well as from without. Cowardice is the greatest aid to evil; in fact, it is its own form of evil, for without it, evil could never win. A West incapable of distinguishing between those who kidnap and murder hostages in pursuit of Islamist theocracy and those who seek to free those hostages is a West that simply cannot survive. Ben Shapiro’s new collection, “Facts and Furious: The Facts About America and Why They Make Leftists Furious,” is available now. Shapiro is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author. To find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Hunter Biden’s shocking guilty plea in a California courtroom on Thursday led to a more shocking network-news result. ABC, CBS, and NBC all led their evening newscasts with Hunter’s plea. Between them, the Big Three aired more than eight minutes of coverage. Public broadcasting? Not so much. The PBS NewsHour gave it 54 seconds in a longer interview with NPR legal reporter Carrie Johnson with the online headline “Trump attorneys and prosecutors clash over key details of his election interference case.”     NPR’s All Things Considered listed their four-minute Ryan Lucas story online as story number 15. Fifteen. Their top story was a puffball by Asma Khalid titled “What Kamala Harris' foreign policy of might look like if she becomes president.” Let’s review what did not appear in these stories on the pro-Harris networks: No Republican soundbites or statements.  Republicans would have had plenty to say. The Big Three all ran Hunter’s lawyer Abbe Lowell proclaiming “Hunter decided to enter his plea to protect those he loves from unnecessary hurt and cruel humiliation. Hunter put his family first today.” No mention of the suppression of Hunter Biden's laptop exposing the guilty activities from in the last weeks of the 2020 campaign. We saw dated Biden soundbites pledging he wouldn't pardon his son. We didn't see dated Biden soundbites ludicrously claiming “My son has done nothing wrong." He even said that last year to Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC.  Most ignored or soft-soaped Hunter's binging on crack cocaine and hookers with his untaxed millions. ABC and CBS couldn't explain where the "humiliation" came from in a trial. NBC mentioned "payments to women and luxury car purchases."  NPR's Ryan Lucas said the trial was "expected to dredge up some very embarrassing details of a very dark period in Hunter's life when he was addicted to crack cocaine." Most omitted the word “felonies.” They referred vaguely to Hunter pleading guilty to “federal tax charges.” ABC’s Pierre Thomas was the exception.  Most ignored any effects on the Kamala Harris campaign. On this, NPR's Ryan Lucas spun furiously. Anchor Ari Shapiro asked, "Does it still matter politically?" He claimed it's disappeared:  RYAN LUCAS: Well, they certainly do not matter to the same extent as they did back in, say, June, when Hunter was convicted of gun charges in Delaware. But these legal troubles of Hunter certainly were seen as a political liability for President Biden in the middle of what was a very tight 2024 presidential race. Republicans certainly have tried to use Hunter's personal problems to hamstring his father politically. But, yeah, now that President Biden isn't running for reelection, the potential political impact of Hunter's conviction here -- well, his guilty plea here and his conviction in Delaware on gun charges has really kind of disappeared. 

A former Minnesota state lawmaker was arrested for allegedly providing alcohol to an 18-year-old woman he met on a dating app and brought to his cabin.44-year-old Jason Metsa is a Democrat and was an appointee of Gov. Tim Walz, who is now the vice presidential candidate for the Democratic ticket. 'She had about four shots of alcohol and became tipsy.'Deputies said they searched the cabin and found alcohol after the incident reported on the Fourth of July, according to a criminal complaint reported by KMSP-TV. The woman told police he picked her up from her home and took her to his cabin, where she had about four shots of alcohol and "became tipsy, but had clarity, could talk for herself, and had rational thoughts."When deputies interviewed Metsa, he admitted to meeting the 18-year-old on Tinder and said that he asked her if she was 18 when they met. He is due in court in October. Metsa was a Minnesota state representative between 2013 and 2019. He was appointed to the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board by Walz in 2019 and had a stated mission to carry out Walz's "One Minnesota" vision. Walz had his own run-in with the law over alcohol. When he was a teacher in Nebraska in 1995, Walz was arrested for apparently driving drunk and speeding up to nearly 100 mph. He later pleaded guilty to reckless driving, but after becoming a politician, he downplayed the incident. He has been criticized for numerous lies and exaggerations in regard to details of his personal history. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The Biden administration has never been a fan of political dissidents, and RFK Jr. is living proof. “Thirty-seven hours after he took the oath of office, President Biden’s White House opened up a portal for the FBI to begin to have access to social media posts on all the different social media sites,” RFK explained in an interview with Tucker Carlson. “The FBI then invited in the CIA, DHS, the IRS, and CISA. CISA is this new agency that is the center of the censorship industrial complex that is in charge, making sure Americans don’t hear things that their government doesn’t want them to hear.” Those agencies, as well as agencies like the CDC, were given access to social media sites to change posts and shadow-ban users. “I lost my Instagram account; I had almost a million followers. They say it was for ‘misinformation,’ but they could not point to a single post that I ever made that was factually erroneous,” RFK explains. In emails, Facebook was recorded pushing back and saying RFK wasn’t factually incorrect, so they had to come up with a new word for what RFK was doing. “Malinformation, which is information that is factually true but nevertheless inconvenient for the government,” he says, to which Tucker responds, “That’s illegal.” “The White House was overtly telling them that if they didn’t comply, that their Section 230 immunity was in jeopardy,” RFK adds. Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” isn’t surprised but is disturbed. “It should be noted that even if RFK Jr., with his 1 million followers on Instagram, was sharing misinformation,” Rubin says, “it's not illegal.” “It would be against the First Amendment,” he adds. Want more from Dave Rubin?To enjoy more honest conversations, free speech, and big ideas with Dave Rubin, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Ann Atwater was a single mother in Durham, North Carolina when she helped integrate the city's schools with C.P. Ellis in 1971 — a story that inspired the film "The Best Of Enemies." The post How Ann Atwater Convinced A Ku Klux Klan Leader To Change His Mind On Civil Rights appeared first on All That's Interesting.

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