Saturday, March 11, 2017

South African lawmaker: IDF a 'murderous machine' - Nitsan Keidar




by Nitsan Keidar

Israel to summon South Africa’s ambassador following anti-Israel remarks made by two senior officials.



Flag of South Africa
Flag of South Africa
iStock
Israel will summon South Africa’s ambassador to Israel for a rebuke following anti-Israel remarks made by two senior officials in the South African government.

Israel’s Ambassador to South Africa Arthur Lenk was also instructed to communicate his country’s outrage at the comments in a message to officials in Pretoria.

In one incident, South Africa’s Minister of Water and Sanitation, Nomvula Mokonyane, accused Israel of conducting a system of water apartheid against Palestinian Arabs.

“Israel uses water to control the Palestinians. This matter was investigated and confirmed,” she claimed.

Mokonyane also referred to the incident in which IDF soldier Elor Azariya shot a neutralized terrorist and claimed that Azariya “murdered an innocent protester who was lying helpless on the ground.”

She also claimed that Azariya’s shooting illustrated that the IDF was a “murderous machine.”

In another incident, the Deputy Secretary-General of South Africa’s ruling ANC party, Jessie Duarte, called on the government to strip South African Jews of their citizenship if they had drafted into the IDF.

She also said that "the United States supports Israel's heinous policies of collective punishment against innocent civilians and it must be stopped."

These incidents are not the first time that South African officials have publicly spoken out or taken actions against Israel.

The ANC party at one time proposed new rules regarding dual citizenship meant to stop South African citizens from joining the IDF.

In another example, the county’s Foreign Minister slammed Israel's plans to build new homes in Jerusalem, saying she was “losing sleep” over the size of “Palestine”.

The ruling party has in the past compared Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza to the actions of the Nazis during World War II, evoking outrage from Jewish groups in the country.


Nitsan Keidar

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/226473

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A powder keg ready to explode - Nadav Shragai




by Nadav Shragai

Many of the factors that led to the 2014 military conflict in Gaza are still in play, along with new developments • Israeli defense experts are scrutinizing Hamas' every move, hoping to pre-empt the group if it seeks to launch another round of fighting.



An IDF strike on terror targets in the Gaza Strip during the 2014 military campaign
|Photo credit: AFP


Nadav Shragai

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=40981

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American Based New Israel Fund Trying to Topple Netanyahu - Akiva Bigman




by Akiva Bigman


Mounting pressure on Israel's attorney general.



Reprinted from Mida.org.il.

Yesterday, a recently formed organization called Zazim began a campaign to topple Prime Minister Netanyahu.  Currently, the Prime Minister is under investigation in two separate cases dealing with gifts that received from a businessman and certain ties and deals he may have had with the Media.
Avichai Mandelblit, the attorney general and a Netanyahu appointee, will be the one who will decide whether to recommend an indictment for Netanyahu. The organization is trying to apply public pressure on Avichai Mandelblit to recuse himself from the current investigation against Netanyahu. Zazim has begun their campaign by hanging up signs near Mandelblit’s house which say: "Mandelblit – Netanyahu’s Bodyguard" and call for him to recuse himself from all aspects of the investigation.
While Zazim  tries to appear as a populist movement, in reality it is another arm of the of New Israel Fund (NIF) which is an American based 501(c)3 organization which has been actively trying to undermine Israel’s character as a Jewish state. In 2015, Zazim received a $175,000 grant from NIF, part directly from NIF and the remainder funded by private donors in coordination with NIF.
Zazim presents itself as a “campaigning community for social and political change”, who are united by, “shared values of human rights, social justice, combating racism and the occupation, environmental protection, government transparency and independent media.” In an interview on army radio, Zazim’s executive director, Raluca Ganea, admitted that the organization is "political but not partisan".
The organization may be not affiliated with a certain party, yet the leaders of Zazim and its chief activists are all connected with other radical left wing organizations – also funded by NIF. In the year 2015, the following radical left wing organizations all received grants from NIF: The Association for Civil Rights in Israel ($485,000), Yesh Din ($77,000), Adva Center ($207,000), Mahapach ($77,000).
Ganea, executive director and co-founder, has been an activist in the radical organization Avaaz which has run pro-Palestinian campaigns which called for a boycott of Israel in the wake of Operation Protective Edge in 2015, and took part in the Coalition of Women conference. The Coalition of Women, funded by NIF in the past, is a major organization behind the BDS campaign.  Ganea has also published articles where she places sole blame on Israel for the Palestinian-Israel conflict, and has defended reporters who publicized classified information leaked to them by IDF soldiers.
The other co-founder of Zazim, Libby Lenkiski, took an active role in smearing Israel at the UN Human Rights Council through the ‘Shadow Report’ which accuses Israel of human rights violations against Palestinians, Bedouins and Israel-Arabs.
Ziv Stahl, Chair of the Board of Directors for Zazim, was previously head of the research department at Yesh Din. This organization recently handed over classified information on Israel to the United Nations. Stahl is an  activist for a Palestinian state,  and publicized a report accusing Israel of failing to enforce the law against right wing activists and is therefore responsible for injury of innocent Palestinians.
And the list continues.
Shada Zoabi, is a campaigner for Zazim, served as spokeswoman for The Association for Civil Rights in Israel. Previously, she was a legislative staffer for former Arab MK Azmi Bashara, who fled Israel after being charged with espionage for the terrorist organization Hezbollah during the second Lebanese war in 2006, and MK Haneen Zoabi, who took part in the violent Gaza flotilla, where IDF soldiers were attacked with knives and pipes, and has also used every public forum possible to attack Israel, support BDS and convicted Palestinian prisoners.
Nirit Moskovich, a member of Zazim’s board of directors,  previous served as spokesperson for the Association for Civil Right in Israel and is also a supporter of ‘Breaking the Silence’, an organization that has smeared IDF soldiers worldwide. She verbally attacked previous Homeland Security Minister Itzhak Aharonovich for supporting a border policeman who shot a terrorist trying to stab him, has pressured the UN to investigate IDF war crimes after Operation Cast Lead in 2007 and has appealed  repeatedly to Israel’s Supreme Court against all efforts made by the government to curb illegal immigration.
The members listed here, who are the leaders of Zazim, portray themselves as leading a populist campaign against the democratically elected government of Israel. However, this is but another effort in the continued witch hunt led by a small group of radicals to remove Prime Minister Netanyahu. They hope to have AG Mandelblit recuse himself from the investigation, and in his place have someone who they will believe will indict the Prime Minister.
As mentioned, NIF is not an Israeli organization, rather it is an American non-profit organization funded through tax deductible donations by American citizens. NIF’s efforts to intervene in an ongoing government investigation in Israel, pressure a senior legal figure, and topple a democratically elected Prime Minister, clearly crosses a red line and calls into question the legitimacy of its actions.
Gideon Israel contributed to this article.

Akiva Bigman

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266058/american-based-new-israel-fund-trying-topple-akiva-bigman

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Transportation minister floats idea of Gaza island, seaport - AP and Israel Hayom Staff




by AP and Israel Hayom Staff

Yisrael Katz says an island for moving goods in and out of the Gaza Strip can be part of the broader goal of creating regional security and economic peace between Israel and its neighbors • Project would take five years to build, cost some $5 billion.



Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz
|
Photo credit: AP


AP and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=40985

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European Parliament Censors Its Own Free Speech - Judith Bergman




by Judith Bergman

Where does this clearly totalitarian impulse stop and who will stop it?

  • The rule strikes at the very center of free speech, namely that of elected politicians, which the European Court of Human Rights has deemed in its practice to be specially protected. Members of the European Parliament are people who have been elected to make the voices of their constituents heard inside the institutions of the European Union.
  • The rule can only have a chilling effect on free speech in the European Parliament, and will likely prove a convenient tool in trying to shut up those parliamentarians who do not follow the politically correct narrative of the EU.
  • By lifting Le Pen's immunity while she is running for president of France, the European Parliament is sending the clear signal that publicizing the graphic and horrifying truth of the crimes of ISIS, rather than being received as a warning about what might soon be coming to Europe, instead ought to be punished.
The European Parliament has introduced a new procedural rule, which allows for the chair of a debate to interrupt the live broadcasting of a speaking MEP "in the case of defamatory, racist or xenophobic language or behavior by a Member". Furthermore, the President of the European Parliament may even "decide to delete from the audiovisual record of the proceedings those parts of a speech by a Member that contain defamatory, racist or xenophobic language".

No one, however, has bothered to define what constitutes "defamatory, racist or xenophobic language or behavior". This omission means that the chair of any debate in the European Parliament is free to decide, without any guidelines or objective criteria, whether the statements of MEPs are "defamatory, racist or xenophobic". The penalty for offenders can apparently reach up to around 9,000 euros.

"There have been a growing number of cases of politicians saying things that are beyond the pale of normal parliamentary discussion and debate," said British EU parliamentarian Richard Corbett, who has defended the new rule. Mr. Corbett, however, does not specify what he considers "beyond the pale".

In June 2016, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, addressed the European Parliament in a speech, which drew on old anti-Semitic blood libels, such as falsely accusing Israeli rabbis of calling on the Israeli government to poison the water used by Palestinian Arabs. Such a clearly incendiary and anti-Semitic speech was not only allowed in parliament by the sensitive and "anti-racist" parliamentarians; it received a standing ovation. Evidently, wild anti-Semitic blood libels pronounced by Arabs do not constitute "things that are beyond the pale of normal parliamentary discussion and debate".


Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas receives a standing ovation at the European Parliament in Brussels on June 23, 2016, after falsely claiming in his speech that Israeli rabbis were calling to poison Palestinian water. Abbas later recanted and admitted that his claim had been false. (Image source: European Parliament)

The European Parliament apparently did not even bother to publicize their new procedural rule; it was only made public by Spain's La Vanguardia newspaper. Voters were, it appears, not supposed to know that they may be cut off from listening to the live broadcasts of the parliamentarians they elected to represent them in the EU, if some chairman of a debate subjectively happened to decide that what was being said was "racist, defamatory or xenophobic".

The European Parliament is the only popularly elected institution in the EU. Helmut Scholz, from Germany's left-wing Die Linke party, said that EU lawmakers must be able to express their views about how Europe should work: "You can't limit or deny this right". Well, they can express it (but for how long?), except that now no one outside of parliament will hear it.

The rule strikes at the very center of free speech, namely that of elected politicians, which the European Court of Human Rights has deemed in its practice to be specially protected. Members of the European Parliament are people who have been elected to make the voices of their constituents heard inside the institutions of the European Union. Limiting their freedom of speech is undemocratic, worrisome and spookily Orwellian.

The rule can only have a chilling effect on freedom of speech in the European Parliament and will likely prove a convenient tool in trying to shut up those parliamentarians who do not follow the politically correct narrative of the EU.

The European Parliament lately seems to be waging war against free speech. At the beginning of March, the body lifted the parliamentary immunity of French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. Her crime? Tweeting three images of ISIS executions in 2015. In France, "publishing violent images" constitutes a criminal offense, which can carry a penalty of three years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros. By lifting her immunity at the same time that she is running for president of France, the European Parliament is sending the clear signal that publicizing the graphic and horrifying truth of the crimes of ISIS, rather than being received as a warning about what might soon be coming to Europe, instead ought to be punished.
This is a bizarre signal to be sending, especially to the Christian and Yazidi victims of ISIS, who are still largely ignored by the European Union. European parliamentarians, evidently, are too sensitive to deal with the graphic murders of defenseless people in the Middle East, and are more concerned with ensuring the prosecution of the messengers, such as Marine Le Pen.

So, political correctness, now effectively the "religious police" of political discourse, has not only taken over the media and academia; elected MEPs are now also supposed to toe the politically correct line, or literally be cut off. No one stopped the European Parliament from passing this undemocratic anti-free speech rule. Why did no parliamentarian out of the 751 MEPs raise red flags about the issue before it became an actual rule? Even more importantly: Where does this clearly totalitarian impulse stop and who will stop it?
Judith Bergman is a writer, columnist, lawyer and political analyst.
Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10023/european-parliament-free-speech

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Jihadis Living on Support Payments from the Europe They Vowed to Destroy - Giulio Meotti




by Giulio Meotti

Filled with religious certainty and ideological hatred for the West, not required to assimilate to Europe's values and norms, many of European Muslims seem to feel as if they are destined to devour an exhausted civilization.

  • Al Harith's story reveals the depth of one of Europe's biggest scandals: the jihadis' use of European cradle-to-grave entitlements to fund their "holy war".
  • Europe gave them everything: jobs, homes, public assistance, unemployment benefits, relief payments, child benefits, disability payments, cash support. These Muslim extremists, however, do not see this "Dependistan", as Mark Steyn called the welfare state, as a sign of generosity, but of weakness. They understand that Europe is ready to be destroyed.
  • Public policy goals instead need to be to move people off welfare -- shown to be basically a disincentive to looking for work -- and toward personal responsibility. There need to be legal limits on the uses to which welfare funds can be put -- for example, welfare funds should not to be used for purchasing illegal drugs, gambling, terrorism or, as there is no free speech in Europe anyway, for promoting terrorism. One could create and fine-tune such a list. Disregarding the limitations could result in losing benefits. This would help fight the ghettoization and Islamization of Europe's Muslims. The cycle of welfare and jihad needs to be stopped.
Four years ago, the British liberal newspaper, The Guardian, ran a story about the "survivors of Guantanamo", the "victims of America's 'icon of lawlessness'", "Britain's survivors of the detention centre that has been called the 'gulag of our times'". The article featured a photograph of Jamal al Harith.

Al Harith, born Ronald Fiddler, a Christian convert to Islam, returned to Manchester from detention at Guantanamo Bay thanks to activism of David Blunkett, Home Secretary of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. Al Harith was immediately welcomed in England as a hero, the innocent victim of the unjust "war on terror" after September 11. The Mirror and ITV gave him £60,000 ($73,000) for an exclusive interview about his experience at Guantanamo. Al Harith was also compensated with one million pounds by the British authorities. The victim of the "gulag of our times" bought a very nice house with the taxpayers' cash.

A few weeks ago, al Harith made his last "journey": he was blown up in Mosul, Iraq, on behalf of the Islamic State. Al Harith had also been recruited by the non-governmental organization "CAGE" (formerly known as "Cageprisoners") as part of its testimony advocating the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

Celebrities such as Vanessa Redgrave, Victoria Brittain, Peter Oborne and Sadiq Khan appeared at CAGE's fundraising events. The NGO has been funded by the Joseph Rowntree Trust, a fund created by the chocolate magnate, and by the Roddick Foundation, the charity of Anita Roddick. Al Harith was also invited to the Council of Europe, to give testimony against retaining Guantanamo.

Al Harith's story reveals the depth of one of Europe's biggest scandals: the jihadis' use of European cradle-to-grave entitlements to fund their "holy war". Europe gave them everything: jobs, homes, public assistance, unemployment benefits, relief payments, child benefits, disability payments, cash support. These Muslim extremists, however, do not see this "Dependistan", as Mark Steyn called the welfare state, as a sign of generosity, but of weakness. They understand that Europe is ready to be destroyed. They have no respect for it. From Marseille to Malmö, many Muslim children have been raised to despise the societies that have made them so comfortable. Most Islamists in Europe are now living on support payments from the nations they had vowed to destroy.

A few days ago, the Danish press revealed that the Danish government has been paying sickness and disability benefits to Muslim extremists fighting in Syria for the Islamic State. "It is a huge scandal that we disburse money from the welfare fund in Denmark for people who go to Syria," said Employment Minister Troels Lund Poulsen. The terrorists who struck Paris and Brussels have also used the generous British welfare system to fund their jihad. It is emerging from a trial in the UK that Mohamed Abrini, known as "the man with the hat" after the deadly attack at Brussels airport, received £3,000 in benefits before flying to Paris and disappearing.

It is not the first time that the role of the welfare state emerges in the Islamic infrastructure of terror:
  • The family of Omar Abdel Hamid el Hussein, the terrorist behind the attack in Copenhagen in February 2015, which killed two people, received money from Danish social programs.
  • British Islamist Anjem Choudary, convicted of encouraging people to join the Islamic State, urged the faithful to leave work and to seek unemployment benefits to devote full-time to war against the "infidels". Choudary himself pocketed £25,000 a year in benefits.
  • In Germany, when the newspaper Bild ran an analysis of the 450 German jihadists fighting in Syria, it found that more than 20% of them have received benefits from the German state.
  • In the Netherlands, a jihadist named Khalid Abdurahman appeared in a video of the Islamic State in front of five heads just cut off. The Dutch newspaper Volkskrant revealed that he had been declared "unfit for work" and was paid for a treatment of claustrophobia.
Europe's welfare system has created a cultural toxin for many in a sullen, unproductive Muslim underclass who live in the segregated enclaves such as the banlieues of Paris or "Londonistan". Filled with religious certainty and ideological hatred for the West, not required to assimilate to Europe's values and norms, certain of these European Muslims seem to feel as if they are destined to devour an exhausted civilization.


Muhammad Shamsuddin, a 39-year-old London-based Islamist, was featured in a documentary called "The Jihadis Next Door." Shamsuddin, a divorced father of five who lives on state handouts and claims he cannot work because he has "chronic fatigue syndrome," was filmed preaching hate against non-Muslims on British streets. (Image source: Channel 4 video screenshot)

Public policy goals instead need to be to move people off welfare -- shown to be basically a disincentive to looking for work -- except in extraordinary cases, and toward personal responsibility. There need to be legal limits on the uses to which welfare funds can be put -- for example, welfare funds should not to be used for purchasing illegal drugs, for gambling, for terrorism or, as there is no free speech in Europe anyway, for promoting terrorism. One could create and fine-tune such a list. Disregarding the limitations could result in losing the benefits. Measures such as that would will help fight against the ghettoization and Islamization of Europe's Muslims.

Who is winning here? Democracy or Islamic extremism? The cycle of welfare and jihad needs to be stopped. Now.
Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10022/jihadi-welfare

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Why Is General Mattis Nominating the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’s Stooge’? - Raymond Ibrahim




by Raymond Ibrahim


A familiar face from the Obama disaster in Egypt.



Reprinted from PJ Media

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. 
Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’ pick for undersecretary of defense for policy, Anne Patterson, is problematic.

Politico briefly explains why:
If nominated and confirmed, Patterson would hold the fourth most powerful position at the Pentagon -- and would effectively be the top civilian in the Defense Department, since both Mattis and his deputy, Robert Work, were military officers.
As ambassador to Egypt between 2011 and 2013, Patterson worked closely with former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and his Islamist government. She came under fire for cultivating too close a relationship with the regime and for discouraging protests against it -- and White House officials are voicing concerns about those decisions now.
This is putting it mildly. Back during the months leading to the June 30, 2013 revolution, Patterson -- the “Brotherhood’s Stooge” as she was called by all, from news analysts to the Egyptian street -- was arguably one of the most hated individuals by the millions of Egyptians who took to the streets against Morsi and the Brotherhood.

Not only did her face regularly appear next to Obama’s in placards; it sometimes appeared alone, indicating just how closely she was seen as supporting the Brotherhood. It should be noted that these were not isolated sightings, as shown by the number of different placards and signs:














Below are just a few anecdotes that I have translated from Arabic language media before, during, and after the June 30, 2013 revolution that highlight Patterson’s unsavory ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the days leading to the revolution, Patterson called on Egyptians not to protest. She even met with the Coptic pope and asked him specifically to urge the nation’s Christian minority not to oppose the Brotherhood -- even though Christians were naturally going to suffer the most under Morsi, especially in the context of accusations of "blasphemy."

Soon after the revolution, she repeatedly tried to reinstate the Brotherhood to power.

Even Muhammad Heikal -- “the Arab world’s most respected political commentator,” and for over 50 years an Egyptian political insider -- said during a live interview that Patterson had assured the Muslim Brotherhood’s Hisham Qandil, who under Morsi was Egypt’s prime minister, that “there are many forms of pressure, and America holds the keys to the Gulf.”

Later, Patterson demanded that Egypt’s recently appointed supreme commander of the Egyptian Armed Forces, General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, release all Muslim Brotherhood members currently being held for questioning:
And when Sisi rejected this order, the American ambassador began threatening him that Egypt will turn into another Syria and live through a civil war.
Another report said Patterson was “trying to communicate with General Sisi, demanding dialogue with the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, and concessions to them,” to which Sisi reportedly retorted:


Stop meddling in our affairs … the Egyptian people are capable of looking after their own welfare.
In a live interview on Tahrir TV, political insider and former Egyptian Member of Parliament Mustafa Bakari exposed the relationship between Patterson and Khairat al-Shater, the deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

He said she was regularly seen going to and from the Brotherhood leader’s private residence, as opposed to meeting at the party’s headquarters. He said she told al-Shater “we [the U.S.] will stand with you [regarding the June 30 protests],” and that she treated the Brotherhood leader as the “true ruler of the nation.” Bakari concluded by saying:
[I]n fact, in my opinion, she is a member of the sleeper cells of the Brotherhood, likely recruited by Essam al-Erian or Muhammad al-Baltagi.
Because of all this, several of Egypt’s revolutionary forces, including Tamarod, which played a pivotal role in the June 30 Revolution, staged protests in front of the U.S. embassy in Cairo “calling for the ejection of ambassador Anne Patterson.”

In connection, Egyptian journalist Abdullah al-Sanawi said this on live TV:
Anne Patterson’s presence in Egypt has become a great burden for America, and Patterson should be admitted into a mental hospital for her deeds are full of bloodshed and the Obama administration is in a very awkward position in front of the whole world, the [U.S.] Congress and the Pentagon.
Soon thereafter, Youm 7, a popular newspaper in Egypt (then the sixth-most visited website in the nation according to Alexa.com), conducted a survey asking its readers:
Do you support the call to kick U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson out because she interfered in Egyptian affairs?
A whopping 87.93% said yes, 10.54% said no, and 1.53% were indifferent. Youm 7’s audience is almost exclusively secular-leaning or Christian. It was the non-Islamists of Egypt that disliked the U.S. ambassador -- not the Muslim Brotherhood, which benefited from her.

In 2013, even Foreign Policy, a publication notorious for always siding with establishment D.C., noted that Patterson was widely seen among Republicans “as the key implementer for a policy that at least offers tacit support to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Such is the person that General Mattis wants to place in a top Pentagon position.


Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Judith Friedman Rosen Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum and a CBN News contributor. He is the author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (2013) and The Al Qaeda Reader (2007).

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266066/why-general-mattis-nominating-muslim-brotherhoods-raymond-ibrahim

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Anti-Israel, pro-Sharia activist arrested in NYC - Gary Willig




by Gary Willig

Linda Sarsour and other leaders of anti-Trump movement arrested during protests outside Trump hotel.

The four main organizers of the "A Day Without a Woman" protests in New York City were arrested for disorderly conduct Wednesday.

Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez, and Bob Bland were arrested for blocking traffic near the Trump International Hotel in Manhattan. Police had instructed the protesters to disperse and warned them that they faced arrest if they did not comply.

The protesters were released Wednesday night.

Sarsour, one of the leaders of the feminist anti-Trump Women's March, is the daughter of Palestinian Arab immigrants, and is a long-time anti-Israel activist and Sharia law apologist. Sarsour praised stone-throwing terrorists targeting Jews, calling such attacks “the definition of courage”, and decried Zionism as “creepy”.

In 2011, Sarsour blasted author Brigitte Gabriel and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, both critics of Islam, musing that she wished she could remove their reproductive organs because they “don’t deserve to be women.”

A year later, Sarsour admitted that several of her relatives in Israel were arrested for alleged ties to the Hamas terror group.

Another leader of the Women's March is Rasmea Odeh, an Arab terrorist who was convicted of taking part in a terrorist bombing in which two Hebrew University students were murdered and nine others injured.


Gary Willig

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/226482

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The Rise of the Networked Left - Caroline Glick




by Caroline Glick


The riots against Murray and Yiannopoulos are a familiar sight to the campus Jewish community.



Originally published by the Jerusalem Post

An acrid stench of repression is spreading through America.

Last Thursday, conservative political scientist Charles Murray from the American Enterprise Institute was attacked by a leftist mob at Middlebury College.

Murry was invited to Middlebury by the college’s AEI club. He was to discuss his new book, Coming Apart, which discusses the plight of white working class Americans. Middlebury’s liberal political science professor Allison Stanger was set to ask him questions about his work.

As has been widely reported, a mob of leftist students prevented Murray from speaking. They shouted him down with a stream of epithets that went on without interruption, until Murray and Stanger were spirited out of the lecture hall.

They were brought to another location where they carried out their conversation in front of a camera that was livestreaming to students blocked by the mob from hearing them in person. The mob followed them to the new location and rioted outside the room as they spoke.

The rioters assaulted them as they made their way from the second location to their car. They hurt Stanger in the neck.

The assault continued after the professors entered their getaway car and at the restaurant where they tried to dine at with students.

In the end Murray and his companions were forced to leave town in order to have dinner away from the rioters. Stanger was later treated for her wounds at a local hospital.

The riot against Murray at Middlebury occurred barely a month after right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulis was blocked from speaking at the University of California at Berkeley by a similarly violent mob. The Berkeley rioters caused more than $100,000 in property damage. They beat up students who came to hear Yiannopoulis speak.

The riots against Murray and Yiannopoulis both received wide media coverage. The basic narrative of the stories regarding both is that the shouting down of speakers and mob assaults by leftist students and professors is a new phenomenon.

To Jewish ears, this storyline is deeply unsettling.

Jewish speakers and students have been subjected to identical, and often worse, campaigns of repressions for nearly 20 years at universities and colleges throughout the US.

What is new about the riots against Murray and Yiannopoulis is that they were shouted down despite the fact that they weren’t talking about Israel.

Since the PLO rejected statehood and peace with Israel in 2000 and launched a multipronged political and terrorist war against Israel instead, the climate on US campuses has become progressively worse for pro-Israel students, faculty and visiting speakers.

Perhaps the moment that signaled open season for Jews on campuses occurred on May 7, 2002, at San Francisco State University. That day, Muslim students and their leftist supporters launched a mini-pogrom against pro-Israel Jewish students.

As Laurie Zoloth, who served at the time as the director of SFSU’s Jewish Studies Department, and was present on the scene, wrote in a letter published shortly after the events, that day some 400 Jewish students participated in a pro-Israel, pro-peace rally on the campus’s central thoroughfare.

After the rally ended, several dozen Jewish students remained on hand to clean up the area. As they gathered up their posters, they were beset by an antisemitic mob.

“They screamed at us to ‘go back to Russia,’ and they screamed... ‘Get out or we’ll kill you,’ and ‘Hitler didn’t finish the job,’” Zoloth wrote.

When Zoloth asked the police at the scene to arrest the rioters, they refused, explaining they had been ordered to take no action. Arrests, they explained, “would cause a riot.”

After a week of silence, SFSU’s then-president Robert Corrigan posted a statement condemning the incident and referring it to the district attorney to assign to his hate crimes unit.

The pogrom at SFSU and the administration’s belated condemnation of the crime set in motion what became a pattern of ever-escalating violence and intimidation of pro-Israel voices on college campuses accompanied by half-hearted and short-lived denunciations of the assaults by campus authorities.

Today, the situation is even worse. If SFSU felt the need to condemn the Muslim students who called for their Jewish counterparts to be killed 15 years ago, today they stand openly with those calling for Jews to be killed against those who protest the calls.

In 2014, SFSU signed a memorandum of understanding with An-Najah University in Nablus. The MoU was organized by the leaders of the BDS campaign on campus and the General Union of Palestine Students on campus. An-Najah is a hotbed of terrorism in the PA. Its alumni include terrorism masters and terrorist murderers.

In 2013, then-president of the GUPS Mohammad Hammad posted a video of himself holding a machete and expressing his desire to murder IDF soldiers.

In 2015, SFSU president Leslie Wong praised the GUPS saying, “GUPS is the very purpose of this great university.”

In May 2016, GUPS members led protesters in silencing Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat when he tried to address students during a visit to campus.

When the David Horowitz Freedom Center launched a campaign to expose the Jew-hatred at SFSU which involved putting up posters on campus decrying antisemitism, school authorities and the local media were quick to condemn the Freedom Center and accuse it of repressing free speech and fomenting racism. Wong called the posters an act of “vandalism.”

SFSU is not unique. The often violent repression of pro-Israel voices is now the rule rather than exception at campuses around the US.

Two factors account for the fact that the same means that have been used for years to repress pro-Israel voices on campuses are now being used against non-leftists who speak on subjects unrelated to Israel.

First, the tactics are being used more broadly because they have been successful. Pro-Israel voices have been largely silenced on campus. Indeed, Jews themselves now join those who repress them.

For instance, last year SFSU’s Hillel and its Jewish Studies Department condemned the Horowitz Center’s campaign to highlight the antisemitism and support for terrorism endemic on their campus.

The second reason that the Left has expanded its assault on freedom of speech and inquiry beyond Israel and the Jews is that the Left today is no longer a collection of issue specific organizations and causes. Today the Left is a network of interlinked organizations, largely funded from the same sources and run by the same people.

It might have been hoped that once antisemites merged into a larger network, their voices and power would be diminished. But the opposite has happened. The antisemites who pioneered the intimidation tactics now being employed against non-leftists who speak on issues unrelated to Israel, are now the leaders of the leftist network. The network includes African-Americans, Latinos, LGBTQs, feminists and Communists.

The move by antisemitic organizers into the center of the newly networked Left was first exposed with the rise of the Black Lives Matter group. Although BLM arose to protest what its members claim is excessive police violence against African-Americans, from the outset, antisemitic groups pounced on the movement as a means to take over the rising network of leftist groups. In cities across the US, BLM protesters’ signs opposing law enforcement authorities were accompanied by signs calling for Israel to be destroyed.

When BLM published a platform last year, the group explicitly linked the movement with the cause of Israel’s destruction. BLM’s platform accused Israel of committing “genocide” against Palestinians and claimed that Israel is an “apartheid” state.

In their work with the BLM activists, anti-Jewish operatives exploited a campaign that was launched independently of their anti-Jewish efforts. Today, the anti-Jewish operatives are themselves initiating and organizing the actions of other groups and so directing the course of the political Left in the US in general.

Case in point is the new group organizing women’s marches throughout the US. The “International Women’s Strike” group organized the women’s protests against President Donald Trump on January 21, the day after his inauguration. The group also organized this week’s protests which took place on International Women’s Day. Among the organizers of January’s protests was Linda Sarsour, an anti-Israel, antisemitic operative who has repeatedly praised Hamas terrorists and condemned “Zionism,” in her public statements.

This week, Sarsour was joined by the convicted terrorist Rasmeah Odeh. In 1970, Odeh, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, participated in a terrorist attack at a Jerusalem supermarket in which two Israeli college students were murdered.

With Hamas supporting operatives and actual Palestinian terrorist murderers serving as leaders of the organization behind the women’s marches, it is no surprise that the International Women’s Strike group is anti-Israel. The group’s published platform makes destroying Israel, or the “decolonization of Palestine,” its goal no less than free abortions on demand.

In other words, the feminist movement in the US is run by antisemites who use the feminists to advance their anti-Jewish agenda.

The core justification that the networked Left uses to defend its actions – first and foremost its goon squads on campuses – is that its actions are protected speech.

The claim of course, is ridiculous. There is a world of difference between freedom of expression and freedom of action. When students harass and shout down speakers with whom they disagree, they are not exercising freedom of speech. They are denying the freedom of speech of others.

When BDS operatives coerce university administrations and corporations to divest from Israel and ban Israelis from campuses, they are not exercising free speech. They are engaging in economic and cultural warfare against Israel.

Rather than recognize the distinction, major Jewish groups have embraced the antisemites’ false defense, internalizing the notion that opposing the onslaught against the community is tantamount to opposing freedom of speech.

So for instance, two major American Jewish groups harshly criticized the Knesset’s recently passed law banning BDS operatives from entering Israel. The American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League issued statements claiming the move is a blow to free speech.

The riots against Murray and Yiannopoulis alerted non-Jewish Americans to the intellectual and moral decay of their campuses. It is possible that in moving beyond the safe confines of antisemitism – now largely accepted on campuses – the Left has gone too far. Perhaps its wings will be clipped.

But given the Jewish community’s inability to understand, let alone defend against, the campaign being waged against it, it is likely that even if the networked Left curbs its assaults on non-Jewish non-leftists, it will continue and escalate its campaign against Jews and the Jewish state.


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/266068/rise-networked-left-caroline-glick

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