Saturday, August 27, 2016

Israel and the Death of Progressivism - Barry Shaw




by Barry Shaw

The new anti-Semitism tries to alienate Jews from Israel.


In my book “Fighting Hamas, BDs and Anti-Semitism” I detail the discovery of a new strain of anti-Semitism that I noticed in Europe, namely the urge by haters to drive a wedge between the local Jew and the Jewish State.

I wrote of several examples of the modern form of Jew hatred in the section entitled “The Malmo Symptom.”

I named it that to reflect the experience suffered by the local Jews of Malmo when their mayor, Ilmar Reepalu, insisted that they must “denounce Israeli violations against the civilian population in Gaza. Instead, it decides to hold a (pro-Israel) demonstration in the Grand Square, which could send the wrong signal.”

This veiled threat that his Jews must toe his anti-Israel line, at a time when Israeli civilians (some related to the Malmo Jews) were being targeted by intense Hamas rocket bombardments from Gaza, is shockingly revealing.

It was followed by the vandalizing of Malmo’s main synagogue and a physical attack on Rabbi Shneur Kesselman as he was walking away from the synagogue.

A similar attack left Rabbi Binyamin Jacobs as the victim in Holland when anti-Israel thugs targeted him as rockets were falling on Israel in 2014.

In the book, I predicted that this Jew-hating virus would jump the Atlantic and metastasize in America. I anticipated this would inevitably happen based on the rapid radicalization that is rampant on American campuses. Added to that, we now have the anarchy of the inner cities and the polarization of the American political system which would be controlled by radical far-left rabble-rousers.

Linking the fate of Jews to Israel in a disparaging anti-Semitic manner is not new. What is sinister is the moral tone taken by Israel haters against Jews as they insist that Jews must decide what side they are on. This means they must be anti-Israel, or their participation in liberal and progressive campaigns they care about will be blocked. This is the pernicious spread of modern-day political anti-Semitism into America.

The intolerance of the anti-Israel, anti-Jew, bias reverses the progressive movement into a regressive radicalism.

This regressive radicalism is epitomized by the anarchist Black Lives Matter group who decided to become joined at the hip with the BDS movement. They have rejected Jewish activists who fail to share their false rhetoric that a “genocide is taking place against the Palestinian people.” Rabid propaganda and lies is part of the BLM political platform, and if you stand with Israel you can have no place advocating for better lives for Afro-Americans in the BLM movement.

Similarly, the National Women’s Studies Association BDS resolution stated that “this resolution makes it explicit that BDS is a feminist issue…that one cannot call themselves a feminist without taking a stand on Palestine.”

This makes it difficult for women who love Israel to be members of the NWSA without feeling hypocritical.

As Dershowitz rightly pointed out in a recent and stinging article, apparently one can call oneself a feminist without taking a stand on Syria, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, or any other nation that grossly violates women, gay and human rights, but not if you support Israel or point out that Palestinian Arabs should follow Israel’s shining example when it comes to women’s and gay rights.

The sheer hypocrisy and blind anti-Jewish state hatred of the intolerant masters of the so-called progressive movement was demonstrated when BDS activists together with their Black Lives Matter henchmen broke up a LGBTQ gay pride event because it featured a presentation given by an Israeli gay group.

Apparently, you can’t be proudly gay if you are a proud supporter of Israel.

Perhaps one of the more hypocritical organizations is PACBI (Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott).  This group does not boycott Palestinians. It boycotts Israeli academics and attempts to block cultural or academic participation by Israelis.

This organization, which is firmly based on BDS against Israel for perceived wrongs against Palestinian Arabs, has nothing to say, and take no action, against Jordan, a country that is clearly guilty of the most sustained apartheid policies against the Palestinian Arabs. In Jordan, millions of Arabs who profess to be Palestinians have been kept in refugee status for seventy years, into their fifth generation.

Yet PACBI has nothing to say, no protest, and no boycotts, against a country practicing apartheid against the people they claim to represent.  Could it be that they fail to act because that country is not the Jewish state?  PACBI is shedding crocodile tears and is only using the Palestinian cause as a club to beat Israel.

What must be done? Clearly, the first thing that open-minded liberal thinkers can do is to distance themselves from movements whose bias and intolerance is the antithesis of all liberal values.

If hate and bias, built on propaganda and lies, is the platform of groups, organizations or associations that bar you from pursuing your values, or picks on one country and one country only to the exclusion of any other, these bodies should be outlawed, not pandered or supported.
 

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He is the author of “Fighting Hamas, BDs and Anti-Semitism” available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle format.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19400

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Trump and the American Dream - Caroline Glick




by Caroline Glick

Stopping the "fundamental transformation" of the U.S.



Originally published by the Jerusalem Post

According to most polls taken since last month’s party conventions, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton enjoys an insurmountable lead over Republican nominee Donald Trump. Consequently, a number of commentators on both sides of the partisan divide have declared the race over. Clinton, they say, has won.


There are several problems with this conclusion.
First of all, the “official campaign,” won’t begin until September 26, when Clinton and Trump face off in their first presidential debate. Clinton is not a stellar debater and Trump, a seasoned entertainer, excels in these formats.


Second, recent polls indicate that Trump is closing the gap. Whereas until this past week Clinton enjoyed a 6-8 point lead in the polls, in two polls taken this week, her lead had contracted to a mere 1-3 points.


Third, it is quite possible that Clinton’s problems have only begun. Her peak popularity may be behind her. Since her nomination, barely a day has passed without another stunning exposé of apparently corrupt behavior on the part of Clinton and her closest advisers. This week’s AP report that half of Clinton’s non-official visitors during her tenure as secretary of state were donors to the Clinton Foundation was merely the latest blow.


The continuous drip of corruption stories will have a corrosive effect on Clinton’s support levels. If the revelations to come are as damaging as many have claimed, their impact on Clinton’s candidacy may be fatal.


In light of Clinton’s weaknesses, Trump’s main hurdle to winning the election may very well lie with the NeverTrump movement. That movement encompasses much of the Republican establishment – that is, the political class of centrist elected officials, opinion-shapers, former officials and ideologues. Its members have vowed not to vote for Trump even if it means that Clinton wins the White House. The fact that so many prominent Republican voices continue to oppose Trump even after he has been nominated hurts his ability to build support among swing voters.


As far as the NeverTrumpsters are concerned, Trump carried out a hostile takeover of their party.


The man who discussed his private parts on national television and brutally and personally attacked his opponents may have won more primary votes than any Republican candidate in the past. But he also won the enmity of more members of the party establishment than any other Republican presidential hopeful.


In an interview with CNN in late May, Wall Street Journal columnist (and former Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief) Bret Stephens spoke for many in the NeverTrump camp when he said that he wants Trump to be “the biggest loser in presidential history.”


Stephens explained, “It’s important that Donald Trump and what he represents, this kind of ethnic quote ‘conservatism’ or populism, be so decisively rebuked that the Republican Party and Republican voters will forever learn their lesson that they cannot nominate a man so manifestly unqualified to be president in any way, shape or form.”


In June Stephens told radio host Hugh Hewitt that a Trump presidency would be more devastating for the US than a Clinton presidency. Stephens argued that whereas a Clinton presidency would be “a survivable event” he was unsure that the US could survive a Trump presidency.


He explained, “The United States survives so long as at least one of its major parties is politically and intellectually healthy. I don’t think the Republican Party... as the vehicle for modern American conservative ideas, survives with Donald Trump.”


This week, The Washington Times published a list of 50 senior Republicans who not only will not support Trump, but have switched sides and are publicly supporting Clinton.


The problem with Stephens’s view, which again, is widely shared by the intellectual and political establishment of the party, is that it ignores the cause of Trump’s primaries victory.


On the eve of his 2008 electoral victory, Barack Obama pledged to “fundamentally transform,” America.


He kept his word.


And it is this fundamental transformation and the Republican leadership’s failure to stop it that transformed a loud-mouthed, brash billionaire into the Republican nominee. It was this transformation, and the Republican establishment’s failure to block it, that made it impossible for moderates like Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush to win the Republican primaries in 2016.


Not only has the country been transformed, the Republican electorate has been transformed.


Today America is steeped in crisis. Foreign audiences concentrate on the crisis of American power overseas. Today, due to Obama’s decision to prefer his failed attempt at rapprochement with Iran over longtime US allies in the region, the Americans have lost their strategic superiority in the Middle East and are on the way to losing whatever residual influence they still maintain over regional affairs.


Turkey’s ground invasion of Syria on Wednesday is a clear sign of the disintegration of America’s regional position. While the invasion was ostensibly launched against ISIS, the plain fact is that its main target is the Kurds. That is, NATO member Turkey invaded Syria to take out the US’s primary ally in its campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.


And the US is providing air cover to the Turkish invaders while abandoning the Kurds.


Every advance the US has made in its campaign against ISIS has been achieved on the backs of the Kurds. And yet, Vice President Joe Biden, who was visiting in Ankara the day of the Turkish invasion, openly threatened the Kurds. Biden said the US will abandon them if they refuse to conform with Turkey’s demand that they withdraw to the eastern side of the Euphrates River.


Biden’s move merely reinforced the growing impression that the US is only dangerous to its allies. The Iranians, for instance responded to the Turkish move by harassing the US Navy destroyer USS Nitze as it traversed the Strait of Hormuz. Rather than sink the Iranian vessels that threatened it, the Nitze responded by shooting off a couple of flares. The State Department then whined about the assault, calling Iran’s act of war “unprofessional.”


And the worst part about the US’s strategic crackup is that it is but one of the crises endangering America today.


Economically, the US has been steeped in stagnation for eight years. Largely as a result of overregulation, entrepreneurship is producing almost no new jobs. The housing crisis has not ended. People who purchased homes before 2008 remain stuck with underwater mortgages, doomed to remain in towns with no jobs because they can’t afford to sell their homes.


Obamacare has made healthcare unaffordable for people who have insurance. Co-payments have risen so steeply that for many insured Americans, medical care is now viewed as a luxury item.


In Rust Belt states, tens of millions of blue collar workers find themselves living in ruined towns. In the past two decades company after company closed its factories, shipped its operations out of the US or went bankrupt in the face of foreign competitors. And their former workers, people who believed in the American Dream, and actually achieved it, now have no dreams and no hope of ever getting back what they lost, much less of seeing their children do better than they did.


The economic crisis has caused deeper crises.First and foremost the US is now in the midst of a crisis of faith. A Pew poll released this week showed that between 2007 and 2014, church attendance declined from 39 to 36 percent over the seven-year period. A significant number of nonobservant Americans no longer believe in God.


Those numbers themselves are highly inflated. A multiyear study of church attendance data gathered from the majority of churches in the US by sociologists C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler and published in 2005 showed that fewer than half of those who claim to go to church regularly actually do so. Hadaway and Marler assessed that a mere 17.7 percent of Americans go to church on a regular basis. The rest just tell pollsters that they attend because they are embarrassed that they don’t attend.


In other words, what the Pew survey shows is not a reduction in religious worship but a shift in values. Today fewer Americans view church attendance as normatively superior to nonattendance.


Loss of faith may well be directly correlated with a diminished view of the value of life. In Appalachia and the Midwest, the economic crisis and the spiritual crisis have also engendered a drug epidemic unprecedented in rural America. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 125 Americans die every day from drug overdoses. That is more than the number of Americans who die in car accidents. The most significant rise in drug addiction rates has occurred in rural America. New Hampshire is the heroin capital of the US.


Just last weekend, 10 people died of heroin overdoses in one rural county in Ohio. The heroin in question was laced with a tranquilizer generally used on elephants.


This is the American transformation that Obama has brought about. And the suffering and misery it has engendered are the reason that Trump is now the Republican presidential nominee.


Trump is no Billy Sunday. He is not a champion of free trade or social conservativism. He isn’t a neoconservative interventionist. Trump is the bar brawler who says things no one else will say. And the people who lack faith in the country’s ability to help them, who have lost hope that things that used to work can work again, adore him for it.


This brings us to the issue of the lessons that will be learned by Republican voters if Trump loses as the NeverTrumpsters hope and expect.


If Trump loses, his voters will not realize that they were mistaken to believe in him and support him in defiance of their party’s intellectual class. They will blame the NeverTrumpsters for the election results and boot them out of the party altogether. If the Republican Party even exists in 2020 and 2024, its candidates will make Trump look like a moderate.


If Trump wins, on the other hand, while it is true that the NeverTrumpsters will not maintain their unquestioned control over Republican policies, they will likely get a seat at the table and retain some influence.


More important, if Trump wins, the US will have a chance of changing back to the country it was before Obama fundamentally transformed it.


Clinton, who like Obama and the NeverTrumpsters scoffs at Trump’s dark descriptions of American life today, has pledged to double down on Obama’s foreign and domestic policies. Indeed, she even pledged to destroy what’s left of the coal industry.


So if Clinton is elected, what Republicans think about illegal immigration and free trade and foreign policy will be irrelevant. America’s fundamental transformation will become irreversible.


In that event, America as a whole – not Trump, and not even the NeverTrumpsters – will be the greatest loser of November’s election.


Caroline Glick is the Director of the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Israel Security Project and the Senior Contributing Editor of The Jerusalem Post. For more information on Ms. Glick's work, visit carolineglick.com.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263969/trump-and-american-dream-caroline-glick

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Hillary’s Race War - Daniel Greenfield




by Daniel Greenfield

Disgusting lies, smears and hate.



Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

 Hillary Clinton has met with leaders of a racist hate group responsible for torching cities and inciting the murders of police officers.

Deray McKesson, one of the Black Lives Matter hate group leaders she met with, had praised the looting of white people and endorsed cop killers Assata Shakur and Mumia Abu-Jamal. The Black Lives Matter hate group had specifically made a point of targeting white people in “white spaces” for harassment. It would go on to incite the mass murder of police officers in Dallas and other racist atrocities.

Despite all this, Hillary Clinton has never disavowed the racist hate group. Instead she doubled down on supporting the hate group and its icons at the Democratic National Convention.

Now, after Trump’s appeal to the black community, Hillary is desperately trying to divide us by race.

Despite Hillary’s latest hypocritical and self-serving accusations, Donald Trump has never held a meeting with leaders of a racist hate group. Hillary Clinton has. And she has refused all calls by police unions to end her support for a vicious hate group that has championed the release of cop killers and endorsed BDS against Israel.

When an 83-year-old great grandmother is viciously beaten by racist thugs and then set on fire, Hillary Clinton has nothing to say. She has remained silent about the wave of racist violence by her political allies that is sweeping this country and leaving victims battered or dead.

Hillary is trading on accusations of racism to distract attention from her ugly record of pandering to racists to get ahead. As Trump has said, “It’s the oldest play in the Democratic playbook. When Democratic policies fail, they are left with only this one tired argument. You’re racist, you’re racist, you’re racist!”

It’s not Hillary Clinton who has a consistent track record of opposing racists, but Donald Trump.

Trump’s first entry into presidential politics was a bid to block Pat Buchanan from gaining the Reform Party nomination. Trump accused Buchanan of anti-Semitism, racism and Nazi sympathies.

Hillary Clinton claimed that Trump had refused to disavow racist leader David Duke. But Trump had already rejected Duke back when he was considering a presidential campaign in 2000. "So the Reform Party now includes a Klansman—Mr. Duke, a Neo-Nazi—Mr. Buchanan, and a Communist—Ms. Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep."

If only Hillary Clinton had been as consistent in rejecting the company of Communists, Nazis and assorted racists as Trump has been.

Instead Hillary Clinton met with Black Lives Matter racist DeRay McKesson who spends his time denouncing “whiteness.” And on the other side of the racial line, Hillary Clinton praised the “courage, tenacity and vision” of Margaret Sanger who had delivered a speech to the KKK and whose Negro Project had promoted racial eugenics. Sanger’s pamphlet, “What Every Girl Should Know,” had described Australian aborigines as “the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development”. If this isn’t racism, I don’t know what is.

But according to Hillary Clinton, killing black babies and promoting hatred against white people isn’t racist. But criticizing what the Democrats have done to black communities is.

In her speech, Hillary Clinton denounced Trump’s criticisms of the Democratic exploitation of black communities as racist. According to Hillary Clinton, when Trump bemoaned poverty, lack of ownership and blight in black communities under Democratic rule, that was bigoted.

It’s the opposite of bigotry. Hillary Clinton is so threatened by Trump’s challenge to Democratic hegemony in the black community that she has been forced to resort to the most “tired” of arguments.

There is no defending the track record of the Democrats in black communities. All that Hillary can do is accuse those who point to the tragedy of the inner city of being racists.

The rest of Hillary Clinton’s accusations are equally absurd.

Hillary Clinton accused Trump of somehow being involved with anti-Semitism. This is the same man who said, “I want to thank my Jewish daughter. I have a Jewish daughter.”

The idea that Trump has anything in common with Richard Spencer, the anti-Semitic bigot who coined the term “Alt-Right,” is absurd. There are members of the Alt-Right using Trump to promote themselves. But Trump has no idea who or what they are. And, unlike Hillary, he has a track record of rejecting them.

But Hillary is rerunning her old “vast right-wing conspiracy” meme. Its purpose is to turn the tables on her critics. But her speech is a bizarre rant which claims that Putin has masterminded some sort of global nationalist conspiracy. But Putin isn’t interested in American nationalism. He doesn’t want a strong America. He wants a weak America. He wants the America of Hillary Clinton stretching out a reset button to one of his lackeys and asking the Russian tyranny to forgive us for George W. Bush.

Hillary Clinton denounces Trump as paranoid, but it’s her speech that is throbbing with unhinged paranoia, vague rumors and guilt by association. Even as she tries to claim the mantle of the optimistic candidate, her campaign runs on conspiracy theories and alliances with the vilest of racists.

The Obama years have been the biggest gift to racists of all shades and colors. During his time in office, both the black and white view of race relations has plummeted dramatically. If racist hate groups of both colors are in ascendance, it’s not because of Trump, but because of Obama.

And four to eight years of Hillary continuing this ugly legacy would see them grow even further.

Why would racists want Trump, who has denounced them, when they can have Hillary?

Why would Putin want a stronger America, when he can have more of the inept fumbling and appeasement of the Obama years?

Why would anyone believe Hillary Clinton’s paranoid conspiracy theories when they make no sense?

If Vladimir Putin had wanted to dictate our foreign policy, he couldn’t have done any better than Obama. If black and white racists had wanted to divide us by race, they couldn’t have done any better than Obama.

Hillary Clinton’s disgusting accusations are an attempt to divert attention from the real issues that Trump has raised, from black suffering under Democratic rule to Islamic terrorism.

As Trump has said, “People who speak out against radical Islam, and who warn about refugees, are not Islamophobes. They are decent American citizens who want to uphold our values as a tolerant society, and who want to keep the terrorists out of our country.”

Hillary Clinton wants to bring the terrorists to this country. She wants to continue destroying our national security the way that her mentor in the White House has been doing.

And she will tell any lie and launch any smear to crawl her way to power. Now she’s trying to play on racial divisions while trying to attribute her own tactics to Donald Trump.


Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263972/hillarys-race-war-daniel-greenfield

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Extremist Islam in Canada - Lloyd Billingsley




by Lloyd Billingsley

A shocking new report reveals what is being taught in mosques and schools inside the country.


Leading Canadian politicians have been proclaiming that, despite what former prime minister Stephen Harper contended, Islamic extremism is rare or nonexistent in Canada’s mosques, and that to believe otherwise is racist or Islamophobic. On the other hand, an investigation by two experts finds that in some Canadian mosques and school libraries, extremist Islamic literature is the only brand available. 

That is the contention of “The Lovers of Death”? Islamist Extremism in Our Mosques, Schools and Libraries, a recent study by Thomas Quiggin, formerly an intelligence analyst with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Privy Council Office. Quiggin is also a court-qualified expert on the structure of jihadist terrorism. Co-author Saied Shoaaib, a journalist originally from Egypt, has written extensively on Islamic extremism in the Middle East and in Canada.

“It is not the presence of extremist literature in the mosque libraries that is worrisome,” the new report contends. “The problem is that there was nothing but extremist literature in the mosque libraries.”

Examples include In the Shade of the Qur'an and Milestones by Sayyid Qutb, an author al-Qaida leaders found inspirational, as Lawrence Wright noted in The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Quiggin and Shoaaib also found prevalent the complete works of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism, perhaps the most extremist form of Islam, heavily promoted by Saudi Arabia. 

This type of material, the authors argue, has eclipsed Canadian Muslims with humanist and modernist outlooks. At certain mosques in Montreal and Toronto, authors Quiggin and Shoaaib found statements that promoted jihad and homophobia. Likewise, Canada’s CIJ news found that some Islamic private schools in Canada use textbooks produced by the Saudi Ministry of Education. In two textbooks homosexuality is depicted as “one of the most heinous sins” and punishable by death.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims denounced the Quiggin and Shoaaib study as an anecdotal attempt at vilification, an exercise in shoddy research, and attempt to sew fear and distrust toward Canadian Muslims. The Council’s statement charged that Quiggin and Shoaaib’s report “only fans the flames of ignorance at a time when vandalism of mosques and hate incidents against Canadian Muslims are increasing.”

Quiggin told reporters that “The Lovers of Death”? was not about bashing Muslims but an attempt to “provoke the government and the media into addressing the actual issues of what’s going on.” He and Shoaaib had presented the material that is being taught, where it came from and posed the question: “Is this acceptable in Canada, yes or no?”

As they put it in the study, “Is it possible that Canadian politicians are misleading or deliberately lying to the population about the threat of Islamist extremism in Canada? Have the forces of political correctness and cultural relativism captured them so completely that they are unable to speak on these sensitive subjects?”

A vice.com article by Davide Mastracci came headlined: “That Study About Extremist Mosques in Canada Is Mostly Bullshit” and argued that it had not been peer-reviewed. On the other hand, there can be little dispute that young Canadians are indeed being radicalized. 

As Frontpage noted, on August 10, Muslim convert Aaron Driver, 24, targeted a London shopping mall but the RCMP shot him dead before he could denote a powerful explosive. In October, 2014, Muslim convert Michael Zehaf-Bibeau killed a Canadian soldier on ceremonial sentry and wounded a guard in the House of Commons. In 2013, Muslim convert Canadian Muslim convert John Stewart Nuttall plotted to plant pressure-cooker bombs at the British Columbia legislature in Victoria, scene of a mass celebration for Canada Day, July 1. 

Further, ease of entry to Canada for Muslims has not prompted terrorists to go easy on Canadians at home or abroad. At least 24 Canadians perished in the attacks of September 11, 2001. Last January, an attack by Al Qaeda jihadists in Burkina Faso claimed six Canadian lives and more than 20 others from 18 different countries. In April, Muslim Abu Sayyaf terrorists in the Philippines beheaded Canadian hostage John Ridsdel of Calgary, held since last September with another Canadian and a Norwegian national for $6.5 million in ransom. According to one news report, “Two men on a motorcycle left Ridsdel’s head, placed inside a plastic bag, along a street in Jolo town in Sulu province and then fled.”

Canada may be officially multicultural, tolerant, and politically correct, but Islamic extremism knows no bounds. 


Lloyd Billingsley is the author of Bill of Writes: Dispatches from the Political Correctness Battlefield and Hollywood Party: Stalinist Adventures in the American Film Industry

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263958/extremist-islam-canada-lloyd-billingsley

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Will UNRWA schools in Jerusalem be part of the incitement crackdown? - David Bedein




by David Bedein

Why should UNRWA schools be outside the jurisdiction of the Israeli Education Ministry?


Over the past few weeks, there have been a number of news stories in the Israeli media that Israel will finally "crack down on incitement in east Jerusalem schools" and that "the Jerusalem Municipality is censoring textbooks designated for Arab students in Jerusalem" in order to delete the war education which has dominated Israeli Arab schools in Jerusalem ever since these schools began to adopt the virulent PA curriculum introduced in August 2000

The latest one of those news stories appeared on Arutz Sheva.

However, before jumping to conclusions that a new policy is about to be implemented thoroughly, it is vital to note that representatives of the Israel Ministry of Education testified at  Knesset Parliament Education Committee on Oct. 27, 2015 that they do not supervise or oversee UNRWA schools,  curriculum  or the UNRWA teachers that operate in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem Municipality Education Department officials reported to me in an interview three years ago that 42% of the Arab students in Jerusalem study in UNRWA schools.


Israel Resource News Agency, the news outlet that I run in Jerusalem, has submitted an official formal inquiry to the Israeli government and the Israeli Knesset Education Committee, to ask if and when UNRWA schools will now be included in the  "crackdown on incitement in east Jerusalem schools."

We await an answer.

If UNRWA schools are not included in the crackdown on incitement in Jerusalem schools, that crackdown will be meaningless.

Since last October, Israel Resource News Agency has submitted numerous inquiries to all Israeli government officials  to ask why it is that the Israeli Ministry of Education, operating in sovereign Jerusalem, does not take  responsibility for  UNRWA schools which operate in sovereign Israel

We await an answer


David Bedein

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19398

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Europe: The Substitution of a Population - Giulio Meotti




by Giulio Meotti

In one generation, Europe will be unrecognizable.

  • Eastern Europe now has "the largest population loss in modern history", while Germany overtook Japan by having the world's lowest birth rate.
  • Europe, as it is aging, no longer renews its generations, and instead welcomes massive numbers of migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, who are going to replace the native Europeans, and who are bringing cultures with radically different values about sex, science, political power, culture, economy and the relation between God and man.

Deaths that exceed births might sound like science fiction, but they are now Europe's reality. It just happened. During 2015, 5.1 million babies were born in the EU, while 5.2 million persons died, meaning that the EU for the first time in modern history recorded a negative natural change in its population. The numbers come from Eurostat (the statistical office of the European Union), which since 1961 has been counting Europe's population. It is official.

There is, however, another surprising number: the European population increased overall from 508.3 million to 510.1 million. Have you guessed why? The immigrant population increased, by about two million in one year, while the native European population was shrinking. It is the substitution of a population. Europe has lost the will to maintain or grow its population. The situation is as demographically as seismic as during the Great Plague of the 14th Century.

This shift is what the British demographer David Coleman described in his study, "Immigration and Ethnic Change in Low-Fertility Countries: A Third Demographic Transition." Europe's suicidal birth rate, coupled with migrants who multiply faster, will transform European culture. The declining fertility rate of native Europeans coincides, in fact, with the institutionalization of Islam in Europe and the "re-Islamization" of its Muslims.

In 2015, Portugal recorded the second-lowest birth rate in the European Union (8.3 per 1,000 inhabitants) and negative natural growth of -2.2 per 1,000 inhabitants. Which EU country had the lowest birth rate? Italy. Since the "baby boom" of the 1960s, in the country famous for its large families, the birth rate has more halved. In 2015, the number of births fell to 485,000, fewer than in any other year since the modern Italy was formed in 1861.

Eastern Europe now has "the largest population loss in modern history", while Germany overtook Japan by having the world's lowest birth rate, when averaged over past five years. In Germany and Italy, the decreases were particularly dramatic, down -2.3% and -2.7% respectively.


Out with the old, in with the new... Europe, as it is aging, no longer renews its generations, and instead welcomes massive numbers of migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, who are going to replace the native Europeans, and who are bringing cultures with radically different values about sex, science, political power, culture, economy and the relation between God and man.

Some businesses are no longer even interested in European markets. Kimberly-Clark, which makes Huggies diapers, has pulled out of most of Europe. The market is simply not cost-effective. Meanwhile, Procter & Gamble, which produces Pampers diapers, has been investing in the business of the future: diapers for old people.

Europe is becoming gray; you can feel all the sadness of a world that has consumed itself. In 2008, the countries of the European Union saw the birth of 5,469,000 children. Five years later, there were nearly half a million fewer, 5,075,000 -- a decrease of 7%. Fertility rates have not only fallen in countries with aching economies, such as Greece, but also in countries such as Norway, which sailed through the financial crisis.

As Lord Sacks recently said, "falling birth rates could spell the end of the West". Europe, as it is aging, no longer renews its generations, and instead welcomes massive numbers of migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, who are going to replace the native Europeans, and who are bringing cultures with radically different values about sex, science, political power, culture, economy and the relation between God and man.

Liberals and secularists tend to dismiss the importance of demographic and cultural issues. That is why the most important warnings come from some Christian leaders. The first to denounce this dramatic trend was a great Italian missionary, Father Piero Gheddo, who explained that, due to falling birth rates and religious apathy, "Islam would sooner rather than later conquer the majority in Europe". He was followed by others, such as Lebanese Cardinal Bechara Rai, who leads the Eastern Catholics aligned with the Vatican. Rai warned that "Islam will conquer Europe by faith and birth rate". A similar warning just came from yet another cardinal, Raymond Leo Burke.

In one generation from now, Europe will be unrecognizable. People in Europe now largely seem to feel that the identity of their civilization is threatened primarily by a frivolous libertarianism, an ideology under the guise of freedom, that wants to deconstruct all the ties that bind man to his family, his parentage, his work, his history, his religion, his language, his nation, his freedom. It seems to come from an inertia that does not care if Europe succeeds or succumbs, if our civilization disappears, drowned by ethnic chaos, or is overrun by a new religion from the desert.

As a paper in the Washington Quarterly explains, the fatal meeting between Europe's falling birth rates and rise of Islam has already had significant consequences: Europe has turned into an incubator of terrorism; formed a new poisonous anti-Semitism; seen a political shift to the far right; undergone the biggest crisis in European authoritarian unity and witnessed a refocusing of foreign policy since Europe's withdrawal from the Middle East.

Demographic suicide is not only experienced; it appears to be wanted. The xenophile European bourgeoisie, which today controls politics and the media, seem imbued with a snobbish and masochistic racism. They have turned against the values of their own Judeo-Christian culture and combined it with a hallucinatory, romanticized view of the values of other cultures. The sad paradox is that Europeans are now importing young people in large numbers from the Middle East to compensate for their lifestyle choices.

An agnostic and sterile continent -- deprived of its gods and children because it banished them -- will have no strength to fight or to assimilate a civilization of the zealous and the young. The failure to counter the coming transformation seems to come down on the side of Islam. Is what we are seeing the last days of summer?
Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8761/europe-population-substitution

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

US-Russia reportedly near a deal to end the fighting in Syria - Rick Moran




by Rick Moran

"The Great Syrian Giveaway" is well underway, and the Kurds, the Free Syrian Army, and all other military forces we armed and trained will pay the price


U.S. secretary of state John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov are reportedly near a deal that would end the fighting in Syria after five bloody years of civil war.

That is, if all parties can be convinced to abide by the agreement.

A ceasefire was agreed to in February, but it collapsed almost immediately.

NBC News:
"As we have all seen now, violations eventually became the norm rather than the exception," Kerry said. Kerry said the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has conducted a continued aerial bombardment with barrel bombs and choline gas.
Kerry said "we have a few narrow issues to be resolved" on an agreement. Much of the discussions have involved how to make a ceasefire stick.
"We are close," Kerry said. "But as I have said to you in other contexts before, we're not going to rush to an agreement until it satisfies fully the needs of the Syrian people and the ability of the international community to address them in ways that can show real results."
Sources close to the negotiations told NBC News the framework of the agreement being discussed includes a nationwide ceasefire and unrestricted access given to humanitarian groups.
The agreement being discussed also includes Russian guarantees that Moscow can and will influence the Syrian regime to abide by a deal, and a commitment to a process that would result in a new Syrian government, the negotiator said.
Some of those involved in the negotiations expressed concern that even if a deal was reached, it would not hold for long.
More than 250,000 Syrians have been killed since the civil war erupted in 2011 and over one million have been injured, according to United Nations estimates.
"We don't want to have a deal for the sake of the deal," Kerry said.
Yeah, Johnny.  That's exactly what you said about the Iran nuclear deal.  How's that workin' out for ya?

Given Kerry's lack of skill as a negotiator, you have to wonder what he's giving away to the Russians.  It's a safe bet that any statement or promise made about Syria by President Obama or Secretary Kerry in the past is no longer valid.  "Assad must go" can be considered inoperative.  Any red lines are equally null and void.  "The Great Syrian Giveaway" is well underway, and the Kurds, the Free Syrian Army, and all other military forces we armed and trained will pay the price.

The rebels still have fight left in them.  But it seems likely that we are about to cut the legs from underneath them.  Any agreement will almost certainly involve ending support for the rebels, leaving them in a precarious position.

In the end, Putin will get exactly what he wanted when he intervened in the civil war: a reliable client in power for the foreseeable future.


Rick Moran

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/08/usrussia_reportedly_near_a_deal_to_end_the_fighting_in_syria.html

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Obama’s Iran Strategy Creates Support for the Islamic State - Rabbi Daniel M. Zucker




by Rabbi Daniel M. Zucker

--the administration not only failed to comprehend Iranian culture and the absolutist theological nature of the Islamic Republic of Iran  -- but also compounded the error by believing that the mullah regime could be enticed to moderate its behavior


Despite the obvious fallacy in Donald Trump’s recent statement that President Obama and his former Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton were the “founders of ISIS”, Hudson Institute scholar Michael Doran’s February 2, 2015 essay “Obama’s Secret Iran Strategy” demonstrates that a very flawed U.S. policy towards Iran actually helped create Sunni support for the radical Sunni Islamic State. Due to what former Senior Director at the National Security Council Elliott Abrams terms Obama’s “ideology”, the administration not only failed to comprehend Iranian culture and the absolutist theological nature of the Islamic Republic of Iran -- a blunder already begun in the Carter White House and perpetuated through all subsequent administrations -- but also compounded the error by believing that the mullah regime could be enticed to moderate its behavior.

A year after the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action we find Majlis Speaker of Parliament hard-liner Ali Larijani threatening that Iran may violate the JCPOA with a new startup of nuclear enrichment if any new sanctions are employed against Iran for its alleged nuclear activities, or those which UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon criticized in his report concerning ballistic missile tests. So too, the BfV, Germany’s domestic security apparatus, indicates that Iran has attempted to buy illegal nuclear technology since last year’s deal. Additionally, a recent report indicates that Iran has stepped up its cyberwar capabilities against the West. Thus, it’s clear that the White House’s hope that Iran would begin to change its behavior has proven erroneous. In reality, Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not changed his opposition to the United States one iota. Indeed, the monies Iran has reaped from the deal have found their way to increased Iranian support  for the Syrian regime of Bashar el-Assad and its various terrorist proxies -- particularly Hizb’allah -- in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, and Gaza.

Having pulled all U.S. troops out of Iraq without stabilizing the situation between the warring Sunni and Shia populations, the administration not only allowed Iran to continue to support and fund the most radical Shia factions and their militias, but also gave the radical Dawa party’s Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki the chance to suppress the Sunni minority. The result of allowing al-Maliki to continue his sectarian oppression of the Sunnis was to cause a large portion of Sunnis to become radicalized and support the formation of the Islamic State, particularly among former Baathist army officers and officials. As Iran’s radical Shia agenda became more prevalent in Iraq, leading both the Tehran-led Badr Organization militia and other Shia militias such as Asaib Ahl al Haq, or “League of the Righteous” to attack and assassinate Sunnis, particularly those that had any ties to the Saddam regime, the Sunnis reacted, and thus ISIS/the Islamic State found a steady supply of local recruits.

For the United States to win the war against the Islamic State, it is necessary not only to destroy it physically, but also to reverse the conditions that made it popular with a good portion of the Sunni masses. Unfortunately, the U.S. is relying on Iraq’s Shia Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs) which too often commit atrocities against the fragmented Sunni minority.

As long as the current policy of relying on the Shia PMUs in its fight with Islamic State, the U.S. will fail to tame Iraq and arrest the sectarian wars. The PMUs are -- in essence -- Iranian proxies as their battlefield leadership is clearly demonstrated by the presence of Major General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Qods Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC/Pasdaran), in Iraq at Takrit and Fallujah during the battles there. Soleimani not only advises but actually directs the battles and is aided by his own Qods Force troops as well as Shiite Fatemiyoun recruits from Afghanistan and Pakistan that have been employed to bolster Hizb’allah in Syria.

Accountability and strict discipline need to be enforced in American relations with Iraq. “Leading from behind” will not do in any manner whatsoever -- that’s an open invitation to the Islamic State to morph into another terrorist entity. Boots on the ground and officials in Baghdad to enforce strict compliance with a non-sectarian agenda will be required. With careful instruction and guidance we succeeded in the “Tribal Awakening” of 2006-2007 and the “Surge” of 2007-2008; future success requires similar diligence on our part along with that of the government of Iraq. But this time we need to stay the course and not retreat from the arena until Iraq is at peace with itself. Given the right support, the GOI will opt for a successful harmonious state. But with the long history of mutual Sunni-Shia animosity and the ferocity of both sides in attacking the other, it will not be simple or quickly achieved. However, if we withhold our support and supervision, Iraq will not achieve peace and will continue to be a weak client of Iran whose malevolent agenda is all too well known from the past thirteen years of experience.

Across the border in Syria, the situation is somewhat more complicated. The “moderate” opposition -- thought by the U.S. to be concentrated in the Syrian Free Army (SFA) -- has recently allied itself with jihadist militias fighting the Assad regime, especially in the current battle over Aleppo. Although the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, led by Abu Mohammed al-Golani, has split recently from al-Qaeda in order to form Jabhat Fatah el al-Sham as an umbrella organization of all non-Islamic State Sunni opposition to the Assad regime, the jihadi agenda it espouses has not changed at all. Like Islamic State, Jabhat Fatah el al-Sham seeks to remove the Assad regime and replace it with a Sunni Islamic state.

The only Syrian group working actively against Islamic State in Syria is the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces which recently took the city of Manbij from IS after a two-month siege. This Kurdish-dominated coalition is made up of the Syrian YPG and a variety of Arab minorities.

Success against the Islamic State both in Iraq and in Syria is hampered by our reliance on Iran’s Shiite axis in Iraq while attempting to remove Iran’s client in Syria. Our “friends” in these fights do not share our values nor do they have similar goals and objectives for final outcomes. Until we realize that every coalition action that we take has multiple repercussions because of our “allies” all-too-frequent misdeeds, we will continue to fail to bring any sense of calm to the area. As mentioned above, “leading from behind” is a guarantee of failure. Success will require tremendous effort, diligence and hands-on supervision in order to prevent sectarian violence against civilians, minorities, and the less devout.  And this problem will not be solved quickly no matter how much we wish it. But ignoring it will only allow it to fester and grow much more dangerous and lethal.


Rabbi Dr. Daniel M. Zucker, author of over one hundred articles on the Middle-East, is founder and Chairman of the Board of Americans for Democracy in the Middle-East, an organization dedicated to teaching the public about the dangers posed by radical Islamic fundamentalism. He may be contacted at contact@ADME.ws and/or ADME.chairman@aol.com.
Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/08/obamas_iran_strategy_creates_support_for_islamic_state.html

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Growth shows global confidence - Yoram Ettinger




by Yoram Ettinger

According to the Huffington Post: "The emergence of Israel as a small, but significant, player on the world stage is one of the remarkable developments at the end of the post-Cold War era.


Chinese telecommunications conglomerate Xinwei recently announced it would be acquiring Israeli satellite operator SpaceCom for $285 million. In 2015, Chinese companies invested about $500 million in Israeli companies. Israel's trade balance with China is $11 billion -- 10% of Israel's overall trade balance -- double the trade balance in 2010, far from the $50 million in 1990. 

Chinese companies are investing more in Israel than ever before, and Israeli companies and government officials are returning the embrace. China is increasingly investing private and government funds in Israeli high-tech, agro-tech, and irrigation companies. In 2015, China's Bright Food bought control of Israel's Tnuva for $2 billion, and in 2011 China's National Chemical Corp. acquired Israel's Adama, a pesticide and crop protection company, for $2.4 billion. Taiwan's General Mobile Corporation acquired MassiveImpact, an Israeli advertising technology company, for tens of millions of dollars. 

The Israeli high-tech industry is not the sole interest of foreign investors. 

Automotive giant Ford, which is determined to develop a driverless car by 2021, recently made its first acquisition of an Israeli company, SAIPS, a computer vision and machine learning company, and Israel's NLT was acquired by the San Diego-based SeaSpine for $54 million in milestone payments. The Minnesota and Ireland-based Medtronic, the world-largest standalone medical technology company, acquired an additional 3.4% of Israel's Mazor Robotics for $20 million, expanding its ownership to 7.27% of Mazor. Israel's Insightec concluded a joint venture agreement with Germany's Siemens, following a similar agreement with GE. 

The $3.3 billion raised by Israeli startups since January, 2016 may break the $4.4 billion annual record set during 2015. Intel invested in three Israeli startups, expanding its Israeli investment portfolio to 80 startups with $345 million invested since 1997. 

In 2016, the three leading global credit rating companies reaffirmed their confidence in the long-term viability of Israel's economy. 

Standard & Poor sustained an A+ rating with stable outlook, Fitch upgraded Israel's credit rating outlook to "positive," while retaining its A rating, and Moody's sustained an A1 rating with stable outlook. 

Israel's government debt-to-gross domestic product ratio, the Achilles' heel of most countries, has been reduced from 100% in 2002 to 63.9% in 2016, compared with the euro bloc's 90.7% and the OECD's 94%. Israel's unemployment rate has declined to 4.8%, compared to the OECD average of 6.3% and the euro bloc's 10.1%. 

Israel's IDE is second on Fortune Magazine's Change the World List of companies, which have had a positive social/business/innovation impact. IDE builds and operates major desalination plants in Israel and 40 additional countries, such as the U.S. China, Mexico, etc. In Carlsbad, Southern California, IDE operates the largest desalination plant ($1 billion) in the Western hemisphere, transforming seawater into potable water, providing 8% of San Diego county's water, at a cost of less than 0.5 cents per gallon of drinking water, which amounts to an additional monthly cost of only $5 per homeowner.

According to the Huffington Post: "The emergence of Israel as a small, but significant, player on the world stage is one of the remarkable developments at the end of the post-Cold War era. … With a flourishing economy of $300 billion and nearly $40,000 GDP per capita ... its military was rated by the Institute for the Study of War as pilot to pilot and airframe to airframe, the best air force in the world. ... Israel's extensive work on air defense with the U.S. makes it a serious military power. ... Its intelligence capabilities are formidable.

"With over 250 foreign companies creating research facilities in Israel, its strong high-tech capability has been rated by the University of Lausanne as one of the top five world powers in this key area. ... Apple has invested over a billion dollars in creating a hardware development center with 800 employees. ... Three of the world's most powerful countries have invited Israeli companies to work with them in high tech [the U.S. Russia and China]. Israel is also developing a strong relationship with India: $5 billion in trade, which could multiply to $15 billion if the two sides decide to create a free-trade zone. Israel is the second-largest exporter of arms to India, preceded only by Russia."


Yoram Ettinger

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=17027

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.