Saturday, December 29, 2018

Palestine: What if the Six-Day War never took place? - Dr. Martin Sherman


by Dr. Martin Sherman

Where is "Palestine"? Wherever the Jews stake their claim

If the “West Bank” was part of the “Hashemite Kingdom” up to 1967, how did it suddenly become the Palestinian Arabs’ long-yearned-for homeland which, up until then, they were submissively willing to cede to an alien potentate?

Not since the time of Dr. Goebels [Head of the Nazi Propaganda Machine] has there ever been a case in which continual repetition of a lie has born such great fruits...Of all the Palestinian lies, there is no lie greater or more crushing than that which calls for the establishment of a separate Palestinian Arab state in the 'West Bank'... - From “Palestinian Lies” in Ha’aretz, 30-7-76, by former far-Left Meretz Education Minister, Prof. Amnon Rubinstein.

As the new elections approach, the “Palestinian problem” is once again likely to dominate much of the inter-(and intra-) party debate. In many ways this debate is entirely superfluous. After all, a simple mental experiment will suffice to strip away the veil of mendacity shrouding the Palestinian Arab grievances against Israel.

Imagine for a moment…

To demonstrate this, imagine for a moment that the 1967 Six Day War, in which several Arab armies marshalled their forces with the undisguised intention to annihilate Israel, never took place. Imagine that Israel had not been compelled to launch a preemptive strike in self-defense to thwart the Arabs’ openly proclaimed aim of total genocide that resulted in it taking over Judea-Samaria (a.k.a. the “West Bank”)—which the Palestinian Arabs now contend is their long-yearned for homeland.

Then ask yourself: If that war had not occurred, where would “Palestine” be?

After all, but for this war, the “West Bank” would not have fallen under Israeli administration. Surely then, the Palestinian Arabs would have no grievances against the Jewish state and there would be no charges of Israel “occupying Palestinian lands” and dispossessing the “Palestinians” from their “homeland”.

Sadly, this is not the case. Charges of “occupation” of Palestinian land and dispossession of the Palestinians were widespread long before Israel had control of a square inch of the “West Bank.”
“We shall enter Palestine with its soil …saturated in blood”

Indeed, as early as March 8, 1965, over two years before the Six-Day War, Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt, proclaimed his bloodcurdling intent: “We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand, we shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood”.

But what “Palestine” was he referring to? It certainly was not the “West Bank” and Gaza, which were under Jordanian and Egyptian rule respectively. It could only be the territory within the pre-1967 borders of Israel—the very borders to which Israel is being pressured to return in order to ensure…peace.

Similarly savage sentiments were expressed by Ahmad Shukeiri, Yasser Arafat’s predecessor as chairman of the PLO. Indeed, only days prior to the outbreak of the Six-Day War, in a somewhat premature flush of triumph, he crowed: “D Day is approaching. The Arabs have waited 19 years for this and will not flinch from the war of liberation...”

Ominously, he threatened: “This is a fight for the homeland–it is either us or the Israelis. There is no middle road … We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants and as for the survivors—if there are any— the boats are ready to deport them.”

An ephemeral “homeland”

Here again, Shukeiri’s use of the words “liberation” and “homeland” is revealing…and damning for current Palestinian claims.

After all, they clearly did not apply to the “West Bank” or the Gaza Strip, since both were under Arab rule and certainly not considered the “homeland” towards which Palestinian Arab “liberation” efforts were directed.

The true significance of these terms emerges with stark clarity from the text of the original version of the Palestinian National Charter — formulated in 1964, a full three years before the “West Bank” fell under Israeli administration.

In it, Article 16 states: “The liberation of Palestine... [is] necessitated by the demands of self-defense” and “the Palestinian people look forward to [international] support... in restoring the legitimate situation to Palestine... and enabling its people to exercise national sovereignty and freedom.”

But Article 24 stipulates precisely what was not included in the “homeland” of “Palestine” and where sovereignty was not sought to be exercised. Indeed, it unequivocally forswears Palestinian claims to “any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Gaza.”
It is difficult to imagine a more authoritative source for exposing as bogus the Palestinian claim that the “West Bank” and Gaza comprise their “ancient homeland.”

An anomalous “nation”?

This, of course, creates the remarkably anomalous situation we have today.

On the one hand, the Palestinians profess that they are willing to forego all the territory they claimed as their pre-1967 “homeland”, but on the other, obdurately demand for their post-1967 “homeland” a completely different territory, which they explicitly excluded from their previous homeland demands.
It would be difficult to find any historical precedent of such a dramatic metamorphosis of an envisioned “homeland”, in which there is not an overlap of a single square inch between the territory originally claimed and that claimed only a few years later.

This is not a trivial matter. For a sense of Nationalism is driven by a sense of belonging, inextricably associated with geographical sites in the homeland, where great events took place that generated a distinct national historical memory and consequent coherent national identity.

But if such nation-generating sites were located in pre-1967 Palestine, what such sites could there possibly be in post-1967 Palestine that could generate a sense of nationhood—since the Palestinians themselves conceded that, up to 1967, it did not constitute part of their homeland? Indeed, if the “West Bank” was part of the “Hashemite Kingdom” up to 1967, how did it suddenly become the Palestinians long-yeaned-for homeland which, up until then, they were so willing to cede submissively to an alien potentate.

“Liberation of the homeland” means “annihilation of Israel”

Clearly then, the aspirations of the Palestinian Arabs have nothing to do with their attachment to the land, but everything to do with the detachment of Jews from the land—i.e. driving the Jews from any portion of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Indeed, even within the pre-1967 lines, long before today’s alleged “root causes of the conflict” (.i.e. “occupation” and “settlements”) were part of the discourse, much less facts on the ground, Israel was condemned as a colonial, fascist, expansionist power.

According to Article 19: “Zionism is a colonialist movement in its inception, aggressive and expansionist in its goal, racist in its configurations, and fascist in its means and aims. Israel, in its capacity as the spearhead of this destructive movement and as the pillar of colonialism, is a permanent source of tension and turmoil in the Middle East.”

The pre-1967 implication is clear. To remove enduring “tension and turmoil” in the region, their “source” — Israel — must be removed.

Clearly then, the only conceivable “plain-English” translation for the “liberation of the homeland” must be the “annihilation of Israel.”

Denying all ties between Jews & “Palestine”

The 1964 Palestinian National Covenant was replaced by a 1968 version, which, in the guise of “the liberation of Palestine,” continued to advocate the destruction of Israel as a necessary precursor for Mideast peace —in blatantly explicit terms.

Article 22 states that the “liberation of Palestine will destroy the Zionist and imperialist presence and will contribute to the establishment of peace in the Middle East.”

Any thoughts that this reference was to the post-1967 “occupied territories” is quickly dispelled by Article 19, which declares: “The partition of Palestine in 1947, and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time...”

Article 20 delves even further back into history — to 1917 — to deny the validity of Jewish statehood in any portion of the Holy Land: “The Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate System, and all that has been based on them are considered null and void. The claims of historic and spiritual ties between Jews and Palestine are not in agreement with the facts of history and the conception of what constitutes statehood.”

“Palestine” is where the Jews are

So, going back to our mental experiment and the original question it posed: If the 1967 Six-Day War had never taken place and the “West Bank” had remained under the rule of the Hashemite Kingdom, where would “Palestine” be?

The inevitable answer would be: Wherever the Jews are …

Is it too much to hope that simple truths will determine attitudes in the next election?


Martin Sherman is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

Dr. Martin Sherman served for seven years in operational capacities in the Israeli Defense establishment, was ministerial adviser to Yitzhak Shamir's government and lectured for 20 years at Tel Aviv University in Political Science, International Relations and Strategic Studies. He has a B.Sc. (Physics and Geology), MBA (Finance), and PhD in political science and international relations, was the first academic director of the Herzliya Conference and is the author of two books and numerous articles and policy papers on a wide range of political, diplomatic and security issues. He is founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (www.strategicisrael.org). Born in South Africa,he has lived in Israel since 1971.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/23229

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Merkel: 'Nation-states must be prepared to give up their sovereignty' - Rick Moran


by Rick Moran

The only way globalism can live is if the nation-state dies

German chancellor Angela Merkel gave a deeply disturbing speech at the Konrad Adenaur Foundation in Berlin, where she stated in no uncertain terms that the traditional idea of a nation-state is dead.

Zero Hedge:
"Nation states must today be prepared to give up their sovereignty", according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who told an audience in Berlin that sovereign nation states must not listen to the will of their citizens when it comes to questions of immigration, borders, or even sovereignty.
No this wasn't something Adolf Hitler said many decades ago, this is what German Chancellor Angela Merkel told attendants at an event by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin. Merkel has announced she won't seek re-election in 2021 and it is clear she is attempting to push the globalist agenda to its disturbing conclusion before she stands down.
The only way that globalism can live is if the nation-state dies. The two ideas are incompatible with one another, no matter how much E.U. leaders give lip service to notion of state sovereignty.
"There were [politicians] who believed that they could decide when these agreements are no longer valid because they are representing The People".
"[But] the people are individuals who are living in a country, they are not a group who define themselves as the [German] people," she stressed.
Huh? What kind of double-talk is that? The same kind of double-talk we got recently from French president Emmanuel Macron:
Her words echo recent comments by the deeply unpopular French President Emmanuel Macron who stated in a Remembrance Day speech that "patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism [because] nationalism is treason."
The French president's words were deeply unpopular with the French population and his approval rating nosedived even further after the comments.
Macron, whose lack of leadership is proving unable to deal with growing protests in France, told the Bundestag that France and Germany should be at the center of the emerging New World Order.
"The Franco-German couple [has]the obligation not to let the world slip into chaos and to guide it on the road to peace".
"Europe must be stronger... and win more sovereignty," he went on to demand, just like Merkel, that EU member states surrender national sovereignty to Brussels over "foreign affairs, migration, and development" as well as giving "an increasing part of our budgets and even fiscal resources".
And some people wonder why the nationalists are gaining strength in Germany and France?

A sizable percentage – probably a clear majority – of citizens in E.U. countries would prefer not to give up their traditions, their history, their national character built up over hundreds of years to E.U. bureaucrats in Brussels. This has been the goal of the E.U. all along, and many traditionalists and nationalists warned against it. But E.U. leaders have successfully created the false link between nationalism and fascism, which serves the dual purpose of making it easier to destroy sovereignty and castrating the political right in their countries.

It is remarkable how much popular support nationalist and conservative parties in the E.U. have been getting in recent elections. It's remarkable because the left wing and their allies in the media have employed scare tactics to convince voters that a vote for the nationalists is a vote for Hitler. 

It's not working very well, and, as the protests in France are demonstrating, there are many more citizens in the E.U. who sympathize with the goals of the nationalists than the elites would care to admit.

Rick Moran

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/12/merkel_nation_states_must_be_prepared_to_give_up_their_sovereignty.html

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Pallywood Rears Its Ugly Head Again - Ari Lieberman


by Ari Lieberman

How a girl from Deir ez-Zor, Syria was miraculously beamed into Gaza.




Arab residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, who identify as “Palestinians,” and those who shill for them have a penchant for fabricating and staging photos and videos in an effort to advance a pernicious and false narrative depicting Palestinians as innocent victims of brutal Israeli occupiers. Photos are often photoshopped or simply lifted from other war zones with no nexus to Israel. Sometimes, videos are the product of elaborate staging events geared specifically for the cameras; where alleged dead and wounded make miraculous off-camera recoveries. Often, this tactic is employed for the express purpose of soliciting donations. This disgraceful and dishonest practice has been dubbed “Pallywood.”

Last week, I was provided with a fascinating, firsthand look into the makings of a Pallywood production. A Twitter account called Free Gaza Team inexplicably followed me on the social media platform. I took a look at the account and saw multiple graphic photos of a young girl whose arm had been sheared off. The injury appears raw, exposing bone and tissue. The account referred to the Girl as “Noor from Gaza” and provided a link to an online crowd funding site called “Social.fund.” Once at the site, the viewer is again exposed to the disturbing image as well as the following brief narrative;

“Help Noor from Gaza get an artificial limb.
Free Gaza Team visits people in Gaza to help people get their needs, some days ago, we visit Noor's family, after the mother invited us to visit them, we find this little beauty girl, but unfortunately, she is without left limb, it's due a shrapnel of Israeli rockets in the last war on Gaza, shee [Sic] needs some essential medications before the gangrene happens then we will help her to get an artificial limb, we should work together to restore her smile.
Free Gaza Team.”

Aside from the atrocious grammar and spelling, the entire storyline seemed suspicious. If the incident had indeed occurred as reported by the Free Gaza Team, it would have been plastered in the front pages of the New York Times, the Guardian and Al-Jazeera as these publications are notoriously anti-Israel.

I then proceeded to perform a Google image search and VoilĂ , Noor’s image magically appeared. Unfortunately, this Noor wasn’t injured by Israeli rockets. In fact, she wasn’t even from Gaza. The girl advertised by the Free Gaza Team was in fact a Syrian child from Deir ez-Zor, injured as a result of airstrikes. The images of Noor had been circulating on social media for more than a year. When I pointed this out to the Free Gaza Team, they quite predictably unfollowed and blocked me. I immediately reported the scam to the Social Fund, which responded positively to my complaint and promptly terminated Free Gaza Team’s donation drive. Having been deprived of the Social Fund platform, the fraudsters of the Free Gaza Team opened another “charity drive” for “Noor,” this time on PayPal. I have since filed a complaint with PayPal as well.

The fraud perpetrated by The Free Gaza Team represents the essence of Pallywood and is reminiscent of similar schemes perpetrated by Palestinians and their allies throughout the years. The list is too numerous to outline but here are some of the more notable ones.

In May 2017, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) featured a photo on its social media pages and website of what it described was an 11-year-old Gazan girl named Aya, pictured against the backdrop of strewn rubble and a destroyed building. UNRWA claimed that little Aya was the victim of a cruel and barbaric Israeli blockade, enduring only hardship since infancy. UNRWA then pleaded for cash to shore up its overstuffed coffers. There was just one problem, little Aya was a Syrian girl, and UNRWA itself tweeted a picture of the girl a year prior with the caption, “A year in #Syria: http://goo.gl/5cBaOv.” Once confronted with the scam, UNRWA removed the photo and issued a belated, half-hearted apology.

Infamous 9-11 Truther and conspiracy theorist Rosie O’Donnell was guilty of the same offense. In an effort to peddle what she termed “limited edition artwork,” her website featured a photo of a man carrying an injured baby alongside the caption, “Israel Begins Bombing Gaza; This man carries a baby about the same age as the one I sit next to, watching Frozen.”

Blogger Aussie Dave from the blog Israellycool exposed O’Donnell’s artwork as fraudulent. The featured photo was lifted from the Syrian theater and the child was from Aleppo, the victim of that dysfunctional country’s internecine conflict. Once exposed for the fraudster that she is, O’Donnell pulled the merchandise but without apology.

One of the more egregious cases of Pallywood that I’ve witnessed involves the gut-wrenching case of Mohammed al-Farra, a Gazan boy who was born with a rare genetic disease which necessitated the amputation of his arms and legs. His Gazan parents abandoned him and he ended up in the care of his grandfather, who out of desperation, contacted Israeli authorities for assistance and managed to get the child to Israel’s Tel Hashomer hospital where al-Farra received premium medical care covered by Israeli fundraising activity.

Partisan extremist Mohammed Omer, who has written puff pieces for anti-Israel shill outlets like the Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera, featured a photo of the boy on his Twitter feed accompanied by the caption, “One of the last #Gaza war victims #RememberThoseChildren.” This case is particularly egregious because Omer almost certainly lifted the photo from Tel Hashomer’s website or at the very least failed to perform a basic rudimentary search of the photo’s origins. Once exposed, Omer deleted the tweet but also blocked me and others from viewing his Twitter feed. Liars don’t like to be told that they’re liars.

Pallywood is an insidious, Jew-hating practice akin to modern-day blood libels. In the age of modern communications and social media, it is manifestly more dangerous and damaging. The fraudulent images are transmitted to millions of people in seconds and negative impressions and beliefs are instantly formed. No one bothers with the corrections, which are all but buried and forgotten. It is fair to characterize Pallywood as an endeavor worthy of Hitler’s chief propagandist, Joseph Goebbels. 


Ari Lieberman is an attorney and former prosecutor who has authored numerous articles and publications on matters concerning the Middle East and is considered an authority on geo-political and military developments affecting the region.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272369/pallywood-rears-its-ugly-head-again-ari-lieberman

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Climate Change: The Poetry of Dreams and the Prose of Reality - Alexander G. Markovsky


by Alexander G. Markovsky

If the climate change alarmists were really concerned about CO2 emissions, they would be advocating planting more trees.

George Bernard Shaw so aptly wrote, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.”

There couldn’t be a better description of a newly released climate-change report compiled by 13 federal agencies. The report blames human activities and emission of CO2 for the rise in temperature and warns that it will hurt the U.S. economy and lead to thousands of deaths. Apparently, “Apocalypse Now” is threatening a host of calamities, and we should blow trillions of dollars to save the planet. Haven’t we heard this song before?

To make the argument more convincing, the proponents of climate change insist that the majority of the scientific community -- they call it “scientific consensus” -- supports global warming. This is a fallacious argument that the Romans called argumentum ad populum (appeal to the people) or argumentum ad numerum (appeal to the number). Furthermore, the "majority argument" is totally irrelevant because scientific disputes are not settled by majority consent. The majority once believed that the Sun revolves around the Earth; the atom could not be cracked and so on, and has been proven wrong throughout history. 

In the mid-1970s, the majority supported global cooling with the same vigor and urgency as they support global warming today. The cover of the April 28, 1975, issue of Newsweek proclaimed “The Coming Ice Age.” In the article “The Cooling World,” the magazine suggested the disasters similar to those predicted in the government report. In the June 24, 1974, issue of Time magazine, the article “Another Ice Age” painted a bleak picture for the future of our planet: “When meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe, they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing (emphasis mine).

There was also the “scientific” theory of “acid rain” propagated during the 1970s and 1980s that was supposed to be destroying the forests and poisoning our lakes and rivers unless we closed down coal-fired power plants. Acid rain was also blamed on CO2. Sounds familiar? Aren’t we happy that President Reagan was wise enough not to take that nonsense seriously?

However, what "the majority" of the climate scientists so authoritatively predicted and the media so loudly blared in the 1970s 1980s never came to pass and proved to be a hoax.

Never mind; if not cooling, there must be warming. As long as there is a climate, there is a change; as long as there is a change, there must be a crisis. Not to let a crisis “go to waste,” the same scientists and publications that have been so demonstrably wrong in the past now advocate global warming.

Since Galileo’s time, ideology has been trying to overtake science and it often has. It may just be human nature to want to acquire wisdom from prophets rather than bother with facts and scientific analysis -- however satisfying -- is a poetry of dreams.

Here is the prose of reality; there is no compelling evidence to suggest that the source of climate change is man-made. There are other persuasive causes such as the Sun’s activity and the Earth’s reflectivity, could affect temperatures on this planet.

As the argument goes, if the United States would replace internal combustion engines with batteries and shut down oil refineries and coal-fired power plants, we would save the planet. There is a reason they keep emphasizing the United States. Other countries, especially the major polluters such as Russia, China, and Eastern Europe, have no intention of following this destructive path. Every single week of the year, China brings into service a new, large coal-fired plant that has practically no environmental controls and subsequently contributes to 30 percent of the air pollution in Los Angeles. By taking this position, the supporters of global warming have demonstrated that they selectively collect, analyze, and utilize scientific data to support their ideological position. Otherwise, they might have found that the theory of global warming is full of holes.

It has been well documented that the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia around 2200 B.C. was brought about by a catastrophic rise in temperatures and subsequent droughts. At the same time, the European continent was being subjected to a prolonged ice age. The supporters of Global Warming might also be surprised to learn that the Romans grew grapes in northern England. Hence, temperatures on this planet were a lot higher then. Given the level of erudition of the advocates of global warming and some of our elected officials, we should wonder whether they are aware that neither the Bronze Age civilizations nor the Romans had cars, oil refineries, or coal-fired power plants.

Recent fires in Southern California demonstrated that Mother Nature can produce in several days more greenhouse gases than all the cars in the region in a whole year. California’s yearly fires have been known since the Spanish conquistadors first visited it in 1542. If we add volcanoes spitting into the air millions of tons of CO2 every year for millions of years, then according to the proponents’ theory, we should already be living on small islands surrounded by an ocean of melted Arctic ice.

Moreover, the supporters might be amazed to learn that only 0.04 percent of Earth’s atmosphere is carbon dioxide, which is part of the air we breathe. Plants make themselves from it and, as every sixth-grader in China or Russia knows, by way of photosynthesis they produce oxygen. Therefore, if not for CO2 there would not be O2 and subsequently no life on Earth.

There is no solid evidence CO2 is having an impact on the Earth’s temperature one way or the other and no amount of scientific falsehood can make it so.

The inconvenient truth is that the climate change movement has nothing to do with climate and everything with making money, ideology, and degrading America’s industrial capabilities.

Climate change, whether warming or cooling, justifies the unlimited expenditure, strangles oil and gas production and coal mining, and places power generation under tight government control. It also makes charlatans like Al Gore very rich through exchanges of greenhouse gas emissions. Like medieval priests, modern swindlers sell indulgences that forgive carbon sins making money literally out of thin air, by underwriting the sale of “carbon credits” that industries, utilities, and other entities must purchase for the “right” to operate facilities that produce industrial emissions.

If the climate change alarmists were really concerned about CO2 emissions they would be advocating planting more trees. President Trump, just as Ronald Reagan, should not take the current hysteria seriously.


Alexander G. Markovsky is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, a conservative think hosted at King’s College, New York City, which examines national security, energy, risk-analysis and other public policy issues, He is the author of Anatomy of a Bolshevik and Liberal Bolshevism: America Did Not Defeat Communism, She Adopted It. Mr. Markovsky is the owner and CEO of Litwin Management Services, LLC.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/12/climate_change_the_poetry_of_dreams_and_the_prose_of_reality.html

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Bennett and Shaked form new political party - Tzvi Lev


by Tzvi Lev


After 5 years of leading the Jewish Home, Bennett and Shaked to form 'HaYamin Hachadash'.


Bennett and Shaked announce formation of new party
Bennett and Shaked announce formation of new party                                             Hezki Baruch

Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked announced in a bombshell move on Saturday night that they will be leaving the Jewish Home to form a new party.

The new party will be called 'HaYemin Hachadash'. or the 'New Right,' bringing to a close Bennett's five years of leading the Jewish Home, which began when he defeated incumbent MK Zevulun Orlev for the post of party head.

Speaking at Beit Sokolov in Tel Aviv, Bennett and Shaked harshly attacked the Likud and said that the "New Right" will be "a true partnership between religious and secular Israelis."

"The Jewish Home has become a very influential force in the State of Israel, but in the last year and even more so in recent months, this era of our great influence has ended," said Bennett. "Prime Minister Netanyahu understood that the wonderful Religious Zionism sits in his pocket, that no matter how often and how much he betrays them, they will stay with him."

Bennett saved special criticism for Prime Minister Netanyahu. "Netanyahu is transferring money in cash to Hamas, "alleged Bennett, calling it "capitulation to a protection racket ". Joining HaYemin Hachadash is Jewish Home MK Shuli Mualem-Rafaeli.

In recent days, Bennett has met with top Religious Zionist leaders, including Rabbis Zalman Melamed and Haim Druckman, in order to recruit support for the dramatic move. The Jewish Home thanked Bennett and Shaked "for 5 years of great work on behalf of the Jewish people, adding that "we believe that success awaits them in the right-wing camp," but told Religious Zionists to vote for the Jewish Home Party.

Jewish Home lawmaker Bezalel Smotrich hinted that he would contend for the Jewish Home's leadership following Bennett and Shaked's departure.

"On the one hand, it was a logical move that Bennett and Shaked left," said Smotrich. "From the moment they entered politics they did not come to lead Religious Zionism. They set a much higher goal for themselves, and it took them time to understand that this would not happen from within this platform."

Smotrich added that the move "comes as a surprise to me, I think it was possible to continue working together, I do see religious Zionism advancing to lead Israel".

"I congratulate them, wish them success, and take upon myself the task of consolidating Religious Zionism."

Watch statement: (Hebrew):



Tzvi Lev

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/256870

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UK Welcomes Extremists, Bans Critics of Extremists - Douglas Murray


by Douglas Murray

The problem is that the trend for taking a laxer view of extremists than of their critics keeps on happening.

  • In November, it was reported that the Pakistani Christian mother of five, Asia Bibi, was unlikely to be offered asylum by the British government due to concerns about "community" relations in the UK. What this means is that the UK government was worried that Muslims of Pakistani origin in Britain may object to the presence in the UK of a Christian woman who has spent most of the last decade on death row in Pakistan, before being officially declared innocent of a trumped-up charge of "blasphemy".
  • One person who has had no trouble being in London is Dr Ataollah Mohajerani, Iran's former Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Mohajerani is best known for his book-length defence of the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa against the British novelist Salman Rushdie.
  • This week we learned that the UK government has allowed in a man called Brahim Belkaid, a 41-year old of German origin, believed to have inspired up to 140 people to join al-Qaeda and ISIS. His Facebook messages have included messages with bullets and a sword on them saying, "Jihad: the Only Solution".
  • It is almost as though the UK government has decided that while extremist clerics can only rarely be banned, critics of such clerics can be banned with ease. The problem is that the trend for taking a laxer view of extremists than of their critics keeps on happening.

Britain's idea of who should be allowed to travel to the country (and stay) looks ever more perverse. One person who had no trouble immigrating to the UK is Dr Ataollah Mohajerani, Iran's former Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, who wrote a book-length defence of the Ayatollah Khomeini's death sentence against the British novelist Salman Rushdie. Pictured: Salman Rushdie in 2015. (Photo by Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images)

The British government's idea of who is -- and who is not -- a legitimate asylum seeker becomes stranger by the month.

In November it was reported that the Pakistani Christian mother of five, Asia Bibi, was unlikely to be offered asylum by the British government due to concerns about "community" relations in the UK. What this means is that the UK government was worried that Muslims of Pakistani origin in Britain may object to the presence in the UK of a Christian woman who has spent most of the last decade on death row in Pakistan, before being officially declared innocent of a trumped-up charge of "blasphemy".

Yet, as Asia Bibi – surely one of the people in the world most needful of asylum in a safe country – continues to fear for her life in her country of origin, Britain's idea of who should be allowed to travel to the country (and stay) looks ever more perverse.

One person, for instance, who has had no trouble being in London is Dr Ataollah Mohajerani, Iran's former Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Mohajerani is best known for his book-length defence of the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa against the British novelist Salman Rushdie. After the Khomeini's call on the world's Muslims to kill Rushdie for writing a novel, Mohajerani wrote a 250-page book, A Critique of the Conspiracy of The Satanic Verses, which justified the death-sentence. For more than a decade, however, apparently fallen out with part of the regime in Iran, Mohajerani has been living in Harrow, where he intermittently keeps up his campaign against Rushdie.

We have also seen time and again how extremist clerics such as the Pakistani clerics Muhammad Naqib ur Rehman and Hassan Haseen ur Rehman have been allowed to enter the UK despite their track records of supporting the murder of people merely suspected of having blasphemed against, or apostasised from, Islam. Nevertheless, while the UK government continues to allow clerics such as these to enter Britain, it develops an ever-growing banned list of people who are not Muslim but who have been critical of aspects of Islam. It is almost as though the UK government has decided that while extremist clerics can only rarely be banned, critics of such clerics can be banned with ease.

Some people might say that as it is 30 years since Mohajerani wrote his book justifying the murder of a British citizen, we should all let bygones be bygones -- as though advocating murder is the sort of thing anyone might do in a moment of weakness. The problem is that the trend for taking a laxer view of extremists than of their critics keeps on happening. The Canadian blogger Lauren Southern may not be allowed into the UK because she constitutes a threat to public order. Yet, this week we learned that the UK government has allowed in a man called Brahim Belkaid, a 41-year old of German origin, believed to have inspired up to 140 people to join al-Qaeda and ISIS. The British press this week discovered that he was able to settle in Leicester nearly five years ago after returning from Syria, where he is suspected of having supported terrorist groups. It does not appear that Belkaid has used his time in the UK to lie low or mull over his past mistakes. As his activities on the streets and on social media attest, he has in fact been openly continuing to preach and recruit for his radical version of Islam.

As The Times reported this week, Belkaid was photographed handing out hardline translations of the Quran to fans celebrating the local football team's victory in Leicester in 2016. He has also used his social media presence to call for the destruction of the USA and to promote his own extremist views as well as the views of other extremists like him.

His Facebook messages have included messages with bullets and a sword on them saying, "Jihad: the Only Solution". In another post, he poses smilingly with one arm on a carton of washing powder labelled "ISIS". By any analysis it is clear that Belkaid is doing in Britain precisely what he was doing in Germany.

There are several possible explanations for how such an insane policy could continue to operate in the UK. The first is that the British government does not know what it is doing, and that while it is unbelievably good at spotting Canadian bloggers who it thinks might pose some risk, it is just less adept at recognising the names, faces and backgrounds of well-known ISIS recruiters. That is one explanation. But it is the sort of explanation -- known in Britain as a "cock-up theory" -- which begins to run dry as a pattern develops. After all, to have allowed in one jihadist may look like an accident, to keep on letting them in looks like carelessness. Moreover, that this goes in tandem with the extreme strictness applied by the UK government to any critics of Islam who may be trying to enter the UK begins to look like a policy.

It is also possible that this is a policy decision. The British government may honestly have come to the conclusion that while Islamist extremism is a containable problem, the possibility of wider public "radicalisation" against elements of the Muslim community in the UK and worldwide is a much more serious one. To put it another way, they may have decided that the terrorist attacks in Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge, Borough Market, Woolwich and elsewhere are unlikely to be repeated, while Darren Osborne's solitary attack on worshippers coming out of Finsbury Park Mosque last year is part of a pattern.

Other than the "cock-up theory" or a general (if misguided) policy decision, it is hard to see what else is going on here. The decisions that keep being revealed to have been made by the UK border agency and the whole asylum and immigration policy of the UK government are so inexplicable that they are precisely the sort of thing to give rise to the most fevered and fetid conspiracy theories -- such as that politicians and civil servants are more afraid of being accused of "racism" than of letting Islamic extremists loose in the country. If the UK government wants to avert the spread of such conspiracy claims, it should act hard and fast. Specifically, it should be able to crack down hard to prevent people like Belkaid from being allowed to reside here. Curtailing such easy, open-and-shut cases would do an enormous amount to reassure the British public and to persuade us that although the UK's border agencies may not be perfect, at least they are not suicidal.

Douglas Murray, British author, commentator and public affairs analyst, is based in London, England. His latest book, an international best-seller, is "The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam."

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13455/britain-extremists

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Jews targeted in NYC more than all other groups combined - Arutz Sheva North America Staff


by Arutz Sheva North America Staff

New York saw more hate crimes against Jews in 2018 than all other targeted groups combined, according to police figures.

New York saw more hate crimes against Jews in 2018 than all other targeted groups combined, according to police figures published Friday by JTA.

Anti-Semitic incidents rose by 22 percent from last year, NYPD figures show, according to a report in Patch. Of the 352 hate crimes this year recorded as of Sunday, 183 were anti-Semitic incidents.

Brooklyn has seen a spate of hate crimes against Jews in recent months, but the report did not break down the figures by boroughs.

Earlier this month, at least three large swastikas were spray-painted in a Brooklyn neighborhood.

The swastikas were painted within a block of each other. Two were accompanied by the letters “WP,” which stands for White Power.

Also this month, a man ran up to a group of Hasidic Jews standing on the sidewalk, punched one of them in the head and ran off. He was later arrested.

A week earlier, an assailant punched a Jewish boy walking in Williamsburg, knocking the boy onto the pavement before running off. Just half an hour later several blocks away, according to the New York Post, a group of men approached a Jewish boy in Williamsburg, shoving him to the pavement and punching him before fleeing the scene.

Overall, the tally of hate crimes in New York is up about 6 percent from 331 in the same time last year.

Evan Bernstein, the Anti-Defamation League’s New York Regional director, told Patch that those holding anti-Semitic beliefs are feeling emboldened. ADL believes that 12 to 14 percent of Americans hold such beliefs.

The October 27 slaying of 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue by a lone gunman unleashed a spate of incidents in New York and “opened up people even more to act out on these feelings,” Bernstein said. “I think for certain people it gave them (a) green light and that’s what is so concerning.”

The ADL has recorded a 60 percent increase in anti-Semitic assaults this year, he added.


Arutz Sheva North America Staff

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Tag.aspx/47899

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Actor Says Che is 'Cool' But Trump is 'Cruel' - Humberto Fontova


by Humberto Fontova

“Groovy name, groovy man, groovy politics!"




In an interview with Vladimir Putin’s propaganda organ RT during the Havana Film Festival recently, Hollywood actor Benicio Del Toro spoke about Che, a film directed by Steven Soderbergh and produced by Del Toro in partnership with Stalinist Cuba’s propaganda ministry. “The film’s production crew spent six years in Cuba investigating everything about Che Guevara." NOT Miami, please note, where people who knew Che can talk truthfully about him without fear of firing squads and torture chambers! “I remember sitting with Che’s wife Aleida who told me, 'It’s not important if you resemble Che physically. The important thing is to understand the person.' And Che Guevara’s person educated me about my roots of being a Latin-American and a Puerto-Rican.”

Nothing new here, amigos. In fact:

“I’d like to dedicate this award to the man himself, Che Guevara! I wouldn't be here without Che Guevara, and through all the awards the movie gets you'll have to pay your respects to the man!...Ideologically I feel very close to Che." Thus gushed Del Toro (made a multi-millionaire mostly by American audiences) while accepting the ‘best actor’ award at the Cannes Film Festival for his role glorifying Che (who denounced Americans as “hyenas fit only for extermination!”).

But on the other hand:

”I don’t understand what’s going on with the United States government… It’s cruel. What’s the morality inside this monster [Donald Trump] for separating children from their parents? I don’t know. The bottom line: this has to stop.” (Benicio del Toro earlier this year.)

To be fair, who can blame Del Toro for being a trifle biased in favor of a movie he co-produced? So let’s look for more “objective” sources.

“Learn some history! The movie is Che. Go!..Learn!” (Stephen Colbert while hosting Del Toro.)

“A great piece of work. This movie is based on history. It went to the source. If you own the poster and t-shirt you owe it to yourself to go learn about the man.” (MSNBC’s Willie Geist while hosting Del Toro.)

“I still have my Che Guevara poster. Che Guevara was a freedom fighter.” (Bob Beckel, former FoxNews commentator.)

“Dammit This Guy Is Cool!” was the title of an interview the BBC conducted with Del Toro upon the celebrated movie's release. “I hear of this guy, and he’s got a cool name, Che Guevara!” Del Toro told the BBC. “Groovy name, groovy man, groovy politics! So I came across a picture of Che, smiling, in fatigues, I thought, ‘Dammit, this guy is cool-looking!’” 


Right here Benicio Del Toro, who fulfilled an obvious fantasy by starring as Che in the four-and-a-half-hour movie he also co-produced, probably revealed the inspiration (and daunting intellectual exertion) of most Che fans worldwide, including Beckel and Colbert.

In addition, upon the communist hagiography’s screening by the American Film Institute at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in 2008, the families of the thousands of Che’s murder victims were gratuitously and cheekily insulted:

“Che Guevara is a hugely controversial figure,” laughed Lou Diamond Phillips, who played the role of Bolivian Communist party leader Mario Monje. The cameras in front of Grauman’s then turned to “Che” himself, Benicio Del Toro (oh so sensitive to separation of children from parents on U.S. border, remember?) who snickered along with Phillips. “I don’t know how this film is gonna go over in Miami,” smirked their co-star Joaquim de Almeida while cackles from the ultra-hipster, ultra-sensitive Hollywood cast erupted in the background. 

And all this in Hollywood, the world capitol of ultra-sensitivity, where an off-handed quip about a black or a gay, about slavery or lynching can end a career. Where “bullying” can take the form of prolonged eye contact or a sneer. But where, apparently, public laughter and open ridicule of at the grief of thousands of Cuban-Americans whose loved ones were tortured and murdered passes for humor.

Miami, as you might guess, is home to most of the wives, mothers, daughters, sons and brothers of the thousands of defenseless men (and boys and even some women) murdered by the regime Che Guevara co-founded.

 “The U.S. is the great enemy of mankind!” raved the terrorist whom Soderbergh and Del Toro glorified and who got a standing ovation in Hollywood with both Robert Redford’s The Motorcycle Diaries and Soderberg’s Che. “Against those hyenas [Americans] there is no option but extermination! The imperialist enemy [Americans] must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves. Thus we’ll destroy him! We must keep our hatred [against the U.S.] alive and fan it to paroxysm! If the nuclear missiles had remained [in Cuba] we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City.”

As usual, most of the people Che Guevara craved to incinerate viewed protests against the movie (mostly in Miami) as a quaint and silly obsession by hyper-sensitive, loudmouthed and even ungrateful Cuban-Americans. The film’s reception in Castro’s Cuba was vastly different from the one in Miami – but quite similar to the one in Hollywood.

"Che film gets thumbs up in Cuba," ran the headline from CNN's Havana Bureau upon an earlier Del Toro red-carpet visit to the totalitarian Castro-Family-Fiefdom. "Benicio Del Toro, who stars as Che, was in the Cuban capital at the Havana Film Festival that week presenting the movie he co-produced. The lengthy biopic of the Argentinean revolutionary won acclaim from among those who know his story best."

Indeed, but the acclaim came because those "who knew his story best" (Castro and his Stalinist henchmen, the film's chief mentors and veritable co-producers) saw that their directives had been followed slavishly, that Che's (genuine) story was completely absent from the movie. This, of course, “seemed lost” on CNN, the first network to be bestowed a Havana Bureau by the film’s Stalinist, terror-sponsoring co-producers.


Humberto Fontova

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272380/actor-says-che-cool-trump-cruel-humberto-fontova

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The PC Chastity Belt - Lloyd Billingsley


by Lloyd Billingsley

The “Baby It’s Cold Outside” cover-up.




In early December, with winter and Christmas coming on fast, WDOK in Cleveland, Ohio, home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, slapped a ban on “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” A similar ban followed from KOIT in San Francisco, California, just across the bay from Berkeley, where the Free Speech Movement allegedly started. What exactly is the problem with this tune?

Frank Loesser wrote “Baby, It's Cold Outside” way back in 1944, during the final FDR Administration. The song showed up in the 1949 film Neptune's Daughter, with Ricardo Montalban and Red Skelton crooning to, respectively, Esther Williams and Betty Garrett. The song, which won an Oscar, leaves everything to the imagination, the movie style of the time. It’s all different now.

Ricardo may have been trying to get below decks with Esther, something that has happened since way back in the Garden of Eden, as Wayne Fontana said. Now such a date is “sexist,” a hissing epithet of the word police, who urge radio stations to ban the tune. Might something much worse have escaped that fate?

“Once again I gotta punch a bitch in her shit,” raps Jasper Dolphin of Odd Future, who warns that “I might blind you bitch.” Likewise, Eminem raps, “Slut, you think I won’t choke no whore? Till the vocal cords don’t work in her throat no more.” It’s all about violence against women but any proposal to keep this material off the radio has managed to escape publicity. And when it comes to violent lyrics, to paraphrase Chubby Checker’s “Limbo Rock,” this is hardly as low as you can go.

I want to slit your throat and fuck the wound
I want to push my face in and feel the swoon


The lyrics are from the 2001 “Disasterpiece” by the band Slipknot, whose “People=Shit” says: “Blood’s on my face and my hands, and I don't know why, I’m not afraid to cry,” before closing out with the theme of “people=shit.” Slipknot is normally classified “heavy metal,” “death metal,” or “deathcore,” but the true genre here is sub-nihilist. As John Goodman said in The Big Lebowski, whatever you think of the tenets of National Socialism, at least that was an ethos.

Slipknot fans, known as “maggots,” have been involved in deadly violence. The 2013 double murder in Davis, California, by Daniel Marsh, 15, shows inspiration from Slipknot. Like his heroes, Marsh work a mask as he slashed and mutilated his victims. Marsh was also a fan of Chelsea Grin, a band named after a torture Marsh perpetrated on one of his victims. That never emerged in trial but the 6,000-word autopsy report will confirm.

Public complaints about sub-nihilist non-music are rather hard to find. Throat slitting and sex with a corpse was not what the great Ray Charles had in mind for Betty Carter, in their 1961 version of “Baby It’s Cold Outside.”  To be fair, violent lyrics should not be singled out, and before violence came racism.

Police and niggers, that’s right
Get outta my way
Don’t need to buy none of your
Gold chains today

That is from the 1988 “One in in Million,” by Guns ‘n Roses. The tune also says:
Immigrants and faggots
They make no sense to me
They come to our country
And think they'll do as they please
Like start some mini-Iran
Or spread some fucking disease
And they talk so many God damn ways
It’s all Greek to me


To be sure, the lyrics created something of a stir, but check and see if the outrage matched the campaign to ban “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” What might be called Ku Klucker rock was not a new trend, and the back story here may have been forgotten.

During the 1980s, Tipper Gore, wife of U.S. Senator Al Gore, Tennessee Democrat, launched the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) to complain about foul lyrics in rock music. In 1985 the Senate actually held hearing on the lyrics, with witnesses such as Dee Snider, whose Twisted Sister band made Tipper Gore’s “Filthy Fifteen” list.

Readings from the lyrics included the usual terms four-letter terms and even “anal vapor.” Other Witnesses included Frank Zappa and even, yes, John Denver. It was not the sort of thing anybody could make up, but you can watch the whole thing here. Nothing like it has occurred since and as the record shows, things swiftly got worse.

By the turn of the century, bands are celebrating murder, mutilation and such, and people=shit. Call it inclusive nihilism, all ignored by the people who want to ban “Baby It’s Cold Outside.”

In a crowded field, the ban is a strong contender for the stupidest act of political correctness in 2018.

The trouble with the modern world is that stupidity has begun to think, Jean Cocteau reportedly said, but there’s more to it.  With this ban, political correctness drops its progressive drawers to reveal a chastity belt with a LoJack alarm system on full alert. And as we say, inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out.


Lloyd Billingsley is the author of Barack ‘em Up: A Literary Investigation, recently updated, and Hollywood Party: Stalinist Adventures in the American Movie IndustryBill of Writes: Dispatches from the Political Correctness Battlefield, is a collection of his journalism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272378/pc-chastity-belt-lloyd-billingsley

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Thursday, December 27, 2018

Satellite images reveal Iranian facility destroyed in Syria strike - Israel Hayom


by Israel Hayom

Report issued by satellite imaging company ISI shows extensive damage to site targeted in airstrike near Damascus, largely attributed to Israel



A satellite image of a site targeted in Wednesday's airstrike in Syria
Photo: ImageSat International

An intelligence report issued by the satellite imaging company ImageSat International (ISI) on Thursday revealed the aftermath of the recent airstrikes in Syria, largely attributed to Israel.

According to reports, the target of the airstrikes was an Iranian weapons depot near Damascus. The satellite images unveiled Thursday showed extensive damage to the targeted site. A caption on the satellite imagery indicates that the site was "completely destroyed."


 London-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday that three weapons facilities, belonging to Iran and Hezbollah, had been targeted outside Damascus overnight between Tuesday and Wednesday.

The ISI report included a survey of the targeted area, focusing on a reported Iranian weapons facility inside the Division 4 camp. The report further concluded that there was no evidence of attacks on the airport in Damascus or in Al-Kiswah.


Israel Hayom

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/12/27/satellite-images-reveal-iranian-facility-destroyed-in-syria-strike/

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