The Nuts Are Running The Asylum

Sante Fe public schools punish ROTC program because the NRA are terrorists or something

Sending a “message.”

Posted April 4, 2018 by Chris Pandolfo

Jeff Swensen | Getty Images

 

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Anti-gun activists on the five-member school board in Sante Fe, New Mexico, have unanimously voted to stop accepting funding or equipment from the National Rifle Association for the school district’s ROTC program.

Referring to the NRA, whose membership includes millions of law-abiding gun owners, as “a horrible, horrible, blood-ridden vehicle,” school board President Steven Carilo said “we don’t want your money.”

The U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) program is offered to high school students to teach leadership, good citizenship, and military skills, including marksmanship. There are more than 1,700 high school JROTC programs in the United States, supervised by retired officers from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. The NRA Foundation backs these programs at schools by providing air guns, ammunition, targets, and financial support. According to the Associated Press, the NRA gave nearly $7 million to hundreds of schools between 2010 and 2016.

But according to the Santa Fe New Mexican, many testifying to the Santa Fe school board said that the NRA needed to be sent a “message” for opposing gun control legislation after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that claimed the lives of 17 people and another December shooting in Aztec, New Mexico, where two students and the shooter died. Last year, Santa Fe High School also received two shooting threats by students.

“We are the ones who are in the schools, we are the ones who are getting the backhand of it all,” said Capital High School senior Gabriella Rodriguez. “We’re scared to go to school. We have teachers who are scared to go to school.”

But who is receiving this “message?” Refusing NRA funding doesn’t hurt the NRA. It doesn’t make the school safer from shooting threats. It only hurts the Santa Fe High School JROTC program, which has received about $4,000 worth of equipment from the gun rights association. It also punishes the award-winning students who participate in that program, four of whom “earned top honors at the 2018 All-Service National Junior ROTC Championship, a marksmanship competition for high schoolers, beating out 25 other four-person teams from across the country” in March.

The Junior ROTC program produces some of the best and brightest young people in this country. Three of the students slain in the Parkland school shooting were JRTOC cadets. Alaina Petty, Peter Wang, and Martin Duque were each posthumously awarded the JROTC Medal of Heroism by the U.S. Army. Wang heroically died holding a door open for other students to escape from the shooter.

Why should the Santa Fe JROTC program lose NRA funding? Why should the NRA be targeted by the school board in the first place? The NRA’s opposition to unconstitutional and nonsensical gun control legislation that cannot prevent mass shootings does not make the NRA complicit in shootings. The maligning of the NRA and its millions of members by the anti-gun Left is outrageous.

This vote by the school board is strictly virtue-signaling. It does not make Santa Fe schools safer from school shootings. It only reinforces the point that anti-gun hysterics are not interested in finding real solutions, but they will punish innocent and law-abiding Americans who disagree with gun control.

How Can One Expect Peace, When It Is Shot Down Every Time

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The Palestinians' "Creativity for Hate" by Khaled Abu Toameh August 8, 2017 at 5:00 am https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10783/palestinians-creativity-hate Share117   Comment The angry reactions to the joint Palestinian-Israeli summer camp in the US should be seen in the context of the Palestinians' strong opposition to all forms of "normalization" with Israel. Most comments posted by Palestinians and other Arabs in response to the joint Palestinian-Israeli camp vilify the Palestinian girls and their families. The postings brand them as traitors, sluts, filthy people who are not ashamed to be seen in the company of Israeli girls. Then there is the barrage of abuse that is not fit for print. Such campaigns will surely warn any Palestinian leader against seeking real peace with Israel. Palestinian teenage girls are facing ridicule and hate for attending a summer camp for coexistence in the US. The camp, which brings Palestinian and Israeli girls together, is organized by Creativity for Peace, an organization in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Since 2003, up to 20 Israeli and Palestinian girls, aged 15 to 17, each year have participated in the Creativity for Peace camp. Photos of the Israeli and Palestinian girls enjoying their time together have enraged many Palestinians and other Arabs, who took to social media to express their disgust and outrage over the event and hurl abuse at the Palestinian participants. The angry reactions to the joint Palestinian-Israeli camp in the US should be seen in the context of the Palestinians' strong opposition to all forms of "normalization" with Israel. The Palestinian girls who attended the coexistence camp are being accused, among other things, of injuring the feelings of their people by "promoting normalization" with the Israeli "enemy." Palestinian activists have waged a long-standing war against any form of "normalization" with Israel. Activists have repeatedly targeted even meetings between Israelis and Palestinians, especially in Ramallah and east Jerusalem, on the pretext that such encounters pave the way for "normalization" with Israel. Some of these activists have resorted to threats, intimidation and violence to prevent such meetings from taking place. At the Ambassador Hotel in Jerusalem, for example, two years ago, a group of Israeli and Palestinian peace activists tried to hold a conference. Just before the conference began, Palestinian activists stormed the hall. They chanted slogans against "normalization" with Israel and forced participants to call off the event. This was not the first incident of its kind at the hotel. Or take the case of another group of Israeli and Palestinian peace activists who tried to hold a conference in Al-Bireh (the twin city of Ramallah), in 2014. There, too, Palestinian protesters forced participants to cancel the meeting after attacking the hall and hurling abuse, especially at Palestinian "traitors" attending the conference. Palestinian Authority policemen had to rescue the Israeli peace activists and escort them out of the city out of concern for their safety. Who are these individuals, so dedicated to derailing "normalization" with Israel? They hail from a wide spectrum of Palestinian society, including Fatah, Hamas, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Palestinian People's Party (formerly the Communist Party). These factions are far more foe than friend when it comes to interrelations among each other, but when it comes to thwarting coexistence, they join together to unite and destroy. To them, even Palestinian and Israeli children playing soccer together or attending joint musical concerts is anathema. Now it is the turn of the Palestinian teens who attended the summer camp in the US to taste this venom. As far as the enemies of "normalization" are concerned, those girls are nothing more than criminals. They played with Israeli girls, danced with them, and they even watched movies and went shopping together. Rising to the height of criminality -- the biggest slap in the face of their people -- these Palestinian teens shared sleeping quarters with the Israeli girls. On social media, these Palestinian girls and their families are being condemned as "traitors" and "prostitutes." Those are only some of the insults leveled against them, especially on innumerable Facebook accounts. Those who are waging the smear campaign against these girls have already made up their mind -- that this is a "Normalization Camp." The Israeli girls attending the summer camp are being described as "settlers" in order to whip up Palestinian anger even more by making the Palestinian girls look as if they are socializing with "extremist Jewish settlers." In addition to attacking the children, many Palestinians also directed their outrage towards the parents for allowing their daughters to socialize with Israeli girls. "Regrettably, the absence of cultural awareness and national belonging among the parents is the number one reason (for such encounters)," remarked Mu'ath Al-Hims on Facebook. Mu'ath Al-Hims' remarks on Facebook, criticizing the parents of Palestinian girls who allowed their daughters to socialize with Israeli girls. The bulk of the humiliation, however, was reserved for the girls themselves. Palestinian activists spared no words in this regard. Commenting on the photos of the Israeli and Palestinian girls at the camp, Tayseer Katot wrote: "This is disgraceful and undignified. This dispirited group [of girls] does not deserve to be called Palestinian." "Appalling and unfortunate" was the assessment of Majed Al-Hasayneh concerning the photos of the Palestinian and Israeli girls mixing together at the camp. Even more descriptive was Mahmoud Abu Al-Bara's post: "Prostitutes raised by Fatah (the Palestinian faction headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas). Imad Chiri, another Facebook user, commented: "This is clear treason and shameless normalization." Most comments posted by Palestinians and other Arabs in response to the joint Palestinian-Israeli camp vilify the Palestinian girls and their families. The postings brand them as traitors, sluts, filthy people who are not ashamed to be seen in the company of Israeli girls. Then there is the barrage of abuse that is not fit for print. The Palestinian girls being castigated on social media are the latest victims of a culture of hate into which Palestinians have been inculcated. This environment is the direct result of an ongoing campaign of incitement and indoctrination that aims to delegitimize and demonize Israel and Jews. Only a handful of Palestinians dared to come out to defend the teenage girls and their families. Why? Two words: agreement and fear. Such campaigns of abuse will surely, as they are doubtless intended to do, deter families from sending their children to such encounters with Israelis. What parent in his or her right mind would allow a child to be exposed to such an onslaught of hate? In addition, such campaigns will surely warn any Palestinian leader against seeking real peace with Israel. Rather than "creativity for peace," the Palestinian line is more accurately "creativity for hate." Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist and television producer, is based in Jerusalem. Follow Khaled Abu Toameh on Twitter © 2017 Gatestone Institute. 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