This month, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reported that the Shanghai-based Polar Research Institute of China revealed that "China has completed the field testing and evaluation of an underwater listening device that will be deployed on a large scale in the Arctic Ocean."

The innocuous-sounding report tells us that China intends to wage war against the United States and Canada from the Arctic.

Other than this buoy, the institute said, China had "never planted a listening device there."

That assertion is not truthful. Last fall, the Canadian military, according to Canada's Globe and Mail in February, removed buoys placed by China in Canadian waters in the Arctic.

"China is now covertly preparing the groundwork for militarization of the largely undefended northern territory and critical Arctic sea routes." — Charles Burton of the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute, to Gatestone, July 2023.

All of this data is needed to listen for submarines, specifically American ones. China wants to track and destroy American subs from the top of the world before they can flood into Asian waters.

The U.S.'s generous "engagement" approach to China has resulted in China obtaining observer status in the Arctic Council although no Chinese territory is in or near the Arctic.

China already has two permanent research stations in the Arctic, one in Norway and the other in Iceland. That is two too many.

[F]or China the Arctic is primarily a military domain. In addition to the buoys they are leaving in the Arctic, the Chinese are surveilling the area by air. The spy balloon that flew over the lower 48 states this year initially crossed into Alaska and Western Canada.

China is not only pressing the United States and Canada from the north. In the other direction, China is establishing military bases in South America and the Caribbean and is infiltrating saboteurs across the border with Mexico. The Biden administration is allowing a hostile state to go hard against America from all sides. A menacing China is now everywhere in the Western Hemisphere.

But not every Senator and Congressman was present. A group of radical leftists, who misidentify themselves as "progressives", boycotted Herzog because he is president of the nation-state of the Jewish people... It was not the current Israeli government that they were boycotting. It was the symbol of the entire nation of Israel.

Among the boycotters was the notorious antisemite Senator Bernie Sanders, whose Jewish heritage cannot save him from the legitimate accusation of antisemitism. He flew to Britain to campaign for Jeremy Corbyn, a notorious antisemite who thrived on Jew-bashing and Jew-hating. Sanders would have welcomed the leaders of Iran, China and Cuba, because he supports left-wing tyrannies. Back in the day, he probably would have been a Stalinist. Indeed many of his views echo those of the former Soviet Union. Sanders grew up in Brooklyn but he decided to go to the Soviet Union for his honeymoon, and then to a place where he could fight against racism. So he chose Vermont, which has among the fewest minorities among all of our states. From his isolated, if not segregated, distance from America's real problems, he has long preached the message of "do as I say not as I do."

Herzog refused to condemn those who boycotted him, thus showing what kind of tolerance the boycotters oppose. The core of this and other boycotts of Israel lies in deep-seated antisemitism, which is often disguised as anti-Zionism, anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism and even anti-Americanism. The contrast between Herzog's message of hope and the boycotters' message of hate was striking.

Sometimes, such as now, after being hit with thousands of rockets and terrorist attacks in just one year, 2022, the mood in Israel results, not surprisingly, in the election of some extreme right-wingers.

The recent election of a right-wing government and the recent protests against its efforts to change the judiciary are reflections of true democracy at work. Democracy does not always guarantee desirable results.

Israel will always retain its democratic character. As Herzog said: it is in Israel's DNA. But the political results of Israel's democratic processes will vary over time. Americans, whatever their political views, should support the concept of Israel as the legitimate nation-state of the Jewish people. They do not have to agree with all of its particular policies at any given time, just the way Americans support the concept of a democratic America, while fundamentally disagreeing with some of its policies at any given time.

Americans should listen to Herzog, who loves America, rather than to Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and the other squad members who disdain their own nation.