JEWISH WORLD

plot to overturn the election results. They expect the army to physically remove Trump from office. Then there is the issue of mail-in voting. In April, former president Barack Obama published a series of tweets promoting voting by mail. In large part due to Obama’s interven- tion, mail-in voting has become the signature cause for Democrats in this electoral cycle. Nearly 40 per- cent of votes are expected to be mailed in — an all-time record. There are many problems with this. As Thomas Edsall reported in the New York Times , over the past two years, on average 6.4 percent of mail-in ballots have been deemed invalid everywhere they were used. Recently, 100,000 ballots sent to voters in New York City were inval- idated. Shoddy ballots are only one prob- lem. There is also vote fraud. Mail- in ballots invite voter fraud, ballot harvesting and illegal disposal. Over the past month, as the number of ballots being mailed in has steeply risen, reports have surfaced of postal workers dumping ballots. Investigative reporting organization Project Veritas has recently exposed a massive ballot harvesting scheme carried out in Minnesota’s Somali community by allies of Rep. Ilhan Omar. And this brings us to Democrat projection. Since the impeachment hearings last January, Democrat lawmakers and aligned media have been pushing the claim that Trump will refuse to accept the election results if he loses. Just as Trump is repeatedly asked whether he con- demns white supremacists, he and his campaign advisors have been asked repeatedly by reporters whether he intends to concede if the results of the election are not in his favor. At Tuesday’s debate, Wallace continued the practice. He asked the candidates to pledge to accept the election results. Biden quickly agreed. Trump refused to play the sucker’s game. The President noted that the Democrats still haven’t accepted the results of the 2016 elections and tried to oust him from power through false allegations of collu- sion with Russia that Clinton invent- ed while working with Russia. He also pointed out the ease with which mail-in votes can be, and allegedly already are being falsified by Democrats. It is impossible to know how the election will pan out or when, if ever, the true results will be known. What is clear however is that if you want to understand who the Democrats are and what they are doing, all you need to do is look at what they are accusing Trump and his colleagues of being and of doing. C aroline Glick is an award-win- ning columnist and author of “The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.” Smear continued from page 22 JEWISH WORLD • OCTOBER 16-22, 2020 13 who would tear down our nation, destroy statues, and attack our police. Both are wrong. There has to be one standard with condemning violence, regardless of the source or reason. Our Constitution and our laws provide peaceful reme- dies to wrongs, regardless of the source or reason. Further, the rule of violence is simply the antithesis of the rule of law. Both parties and candidates have to declare they condemn all violent reactions to the election while supporting proper legal remedies. The Justice Department has to coordinate with state and local law enforcement officials. Attorney General William Barr has to immediately establish a bipartisan task force to anticipate and prepare for any vio- lence after the election. T he key to preventing violence is bipartisan actions and words. If violence is stoked even subtly by either side, then it will persist and escalate. We all have a stake in preventing violence since its targets tend to be random. In the riots and vandalism of these recent months, the victims have included minority store owners and others who had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. When violence spreads, it pro- vokes more violence, as we have seen during this unrest. We all are potential victims. The time to take action is now before the outcome in the election this fall is known, and while we still can speak out and take key measures against violence in a bipartisan manner. Once the elec- tion is over, and especially if it produces that kind of uncertain outcome reminiscent of 2000, it will be past this deadline for a united front against violence that may almost certainly be perceived as supporting one side or the other. What is at stake is nothing less than the rule of law which benefits us all, regardless of party affilia- tion. We must preserve it against mob violence, whatever its source or reason. If we are to preserve the rule of law after the election, we must take action before the voting begins. Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, served on the legal team represent- ing President Trump during the Senate impeachment trial. Forecast continued from page 9 Extremists, and even people who up to now have not engaged in violence, may mob the streets instead of the courts. At a time when the craft of jour- nalism is widely pilloried as an exercise in muck-raking and rumor-mongering, there is some- thing particularly bitter about Spyer’s predicament. A ban on traveling to the United States can’t prevent him from continuing to report on these conflict zones, but it will increase the level of risk he faces should he return to the field. Nor will the impact of this deci- sion be confined to Spyer alone; there is a dangerous precedent here that could be applied to other reporters whose work furrows official eyebrows in Turkey (or Saudi Arabia, or Qatar, or Egypt — or any other autocratic U.S. ally in the Middle East.) Over many decades, American Jews have expressed concern about bias in media coverage of the Middle East, along with the skewed picture of the region that presents the Palestinian question as being at the core of its conflicts. For that reason, ours is a commu- nity that should be especially dis- turbed by the State Department’s decision to ban Spyer, and espe- cially resolved in seeking to over- turn it immediately. Let us hope as well that his case is quickly brought to the attention of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who knows a thing or two about the Middle East, and will therefore grasp why Spyer’s punishment is so profoundly absurd and unjust. In the mean- time, Spyer has the minor consola- tion of a growing audience for his work. Ben Cohen is a New York City- based journalist and author who writes a weekly column on Jewish and international affairs for JNS. Banned continued from page 10 American Jews complain about presenting the Palestinian question as the central conflict. Bad journalism. ELECTION ISSUES TE 2020 Publishing October 2, 16, 23 & 30, 2020 To place your ad call 516-594-4000