Palestinian Terrorism Onslaught Intensifies - Joseph Klein

by Joseph Klein

In his UN General Assembly speech last week, Abbas tried to portray the Palestinians as “spreading the culture of peace and coexistence between our people and in our region.” What kind of snake oil is this con artist selling?

 

 

Palestinian jihadists have continued murdering Jews in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his security forces stood by for days and let these murders happen. In fact, by declaring last week at the United Nations General Assembly that he was prepared to walk away from the Oslo Accords and abandon the Palestinian Authority’s security responsibilities, Abbas effectively gave the Palestinian thugs a wink and a nod. His incendiary rhetoric regarding the Temple Mount has also contributed to the incitement of Palestinian violence. 

Abbas knowingly lied to the General Assembly when he accused the Israeli government of using “brutal force to impose its plans to undermine the Islamic and Christian sanctuaries in Jerusalem, particularly its actions at Al-Aqsa Mosque.” He also lied when he accused Israel of taking actions to “convert the conflict from a political to religious one, creating an explosive in Jerusalem and in the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory.” 

Abbas himself has helped create the explosive situation in Jerusalem and the West Bank with his irresponsible falsehoods, appeals to religious fanaticism and incitement to violence. He has no basis for claiming that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to keep his promise to maintain the status quo around the Old City compound where the Al-Aqsa Mosque is located, which means the Israeli government’s agreement that only Muslims are permitted to worship there. Despite Mr. Netanyahu’s repeated assurances, “Abbas continues to deliberately spread false allegations with the sole purpose of sparking violence amongst the Palestinian People,” Israeli UN Ambassador Ron Prosor correctly charged. 

The spark has been ignited. 

Last week, a couple riding with their children in a car in the West Bank were shot and killed. Israeli security forces have reportedly identified the Hamas cell responsible for this brutal slaughter.

A rabbi and an off-duty Israeli soldier were stabbed to death by a Palestinian youth in the Old City of Jerusalem over the weekend. The soldier’s wife and toddler were wounded.  Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack. Hamas praised the attack as a “heroic operation.”  This was too much even for United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who issued a statement that condemned Hamas specifically for “praising such heinous attacks.”

The violence continued as a Palestinian man stabbed and wounded a Jewish teenager near the Old City early Sunday morning. On Sunday night, Israelis celebrating on the eve of Simhat Torah had to face once again a rocket attack launched from Gaza.

The latest Palestinian attacks have prompted a security crackdown by Israeli military and police forces in order to curb further violence. Measures include detonating jihadists’ houses, more administrative detentions, a beefed up military presence and temporarily placing restrictions on Palestinians allowed to enter the Old City. 

Yet the violence has not abated. In a 24-hour period between Sunday and Monday more than twenty incidences of violence in several parts of Jerusalem and the West Bank erupted as Palestinian mobs attacked with firebombs, explosives and rocks. Two Palestinian youths were killed as Israeli soldiers tried to quell the Palestinian violence. At last, no doubt prompted by the loss of Palestinian lives, Abbas appears to have taken notice of the chaos he helped to spark. He is finally taking some steps to prevent the Palestinian-inspired violence from getting totally out of hand. But Abbas waited to act until after four Israelis were killed and Israel’s response aimed at the Palestinian assassins and rioters has resulted in the deaths and injury of Palestinians.   

Some Palestinians have justified the recent violence against Jews as deserved revenge for the burning alive of a Palestinian family, including a baby, reported to have been done by Jewish extremist settlers. This is nothing less than a cynical exploitation of a human tragedy by thugs who do not need any excuses for their murderous rampages. The fact is that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu immediately condemned the arson attack, which allegedly killed the Palestinian family, as an “act of terrorism” that will not be tolerated by the State of Israel “regardless of who the perpetrators are.” Contrast Netanyahu’s responsible leadership with Abbas, who has incited violence and then has been too slow to react when it happens, and with Abbas’s “coalition partner” Hamas, which sponsors or encourages such attacks.

In his UN General Assembly speech last week, Abbas tried to portray the Palestinians as “spreading the culture of peace and coexistence between our people and in our region.” What kind of snake oil is this con artist selling? When Mahmoud Al-Zahhar, the co-founder of Abbas’s “coalition partner” Hamas, said several years ago that Jews “have no future among the nations of the world” and “are headed to annihilation,” was he spreading “the culture of peace and coexistence?” Hamas has certainly not changed its stripes since its co-founder made that remark and suddenly become the Johnny Appleseed of peace and coexistence. In fact, Hamas today is teaching Palestinian children to become the next generation of hate-filled jihadists sent out to kill Jews. 

The Palestinian leadership is not interested in negotiating a viable, good faith peace agreement with Israel. It never has been. They refuse to compromise on a single thing, whether it be their insistence on returning to virtually the pre-1967 lines for establishing the border between Israel and a new Palestinian state or their insistence on the so-called “Right of Return” allowing potentially millions of so-called Palestinian refugees to overrun even a pre-1967 Israel. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other jihadist groups use violence as their tactic of choice to intimidate and try to annihilate Israelis. Abbas uses incendiary rhetoric and manipulation of international law and institutions as his tactic of choice to try and delegitimize Israel. Their desired end game is the same – the complete destruction of the Jewish state in the historic homeland of the Jewish people. 

Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260358/palestinian-terrorism-onslaught-intensifies-joseph-klein

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

A New Global Police to Fight “Violent Extremism” in the U.S.? - Matthew Vadum

by Matthew Vadum

“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set,” he said. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”

The Obama administration plans to create a global police force that counters “violent extremism” in the United States and elsewhere.

The problem is that in Obama-speak “violent extremism” refers not only to jihadists wishing to harm Americans but also to conservatives and Tea Party activists. Just ask all the law-abiding right-of-center nonprofit groups targeted by Lois Lerner’s IRS during the Obama presidency.

Ominously, President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch unveiled the Strong Cities Network last week at the United Nations.

America's chief executive, who speaks in hushed and reverent tones when discussing the Muslim faith, said the U.S. will use “all of our tools” to fight Islamic State terrorists.

"This is not an easy task," Obama said. "This is not a conventional battle. This is a long-term campaign — not only against this particular network, but against its ideology." The United States and a coalition of 60 other countries are “pursuing a comprehensive strategy” for dealing with Islamic State, he said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice teased the Strong Cities Network in a press release:

Cities are vital partners in international efforts to build social cohesion and resilience to violent extremism.  Local communities and authorities are the most credible and persuasive voices to challenge violent extremism in all of its forms and manifestations in their local contexts.  While many cities and local authorities are developing innovative responses to address this challenge, no systematic efforts are in place to share experiences, pool resources and build a community of cities to inspire local action on a global scale.

“The Strong Cities Network will serve as a vital tool to strengthen capacity-building and improve collaboration,” Lynch was quoted saying. “As we continue to counter a range of domestic and global terror threats, this innovative platform will enable cities to learn from one another, to develop best practices and to build social cohesion and community resilience here at home and around the world.”

The media release continues:

The SCN will include an International Steering Committee of approximately 25 cities and other sub-national entities from different regions that will provide the SCN with its strategic direction.  The SCN will also convene an International Advisory Board, which includes representatives from relevant city-focused networks, to help ensure SCN builds upon their work.  It will be run by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a leading international “think-and-do” tank with a long-standing track record of working to prevent violent extremism …

Although the European scene is different from the American, the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue doesn’t come across at first glance as a neutral observer.

Its website, which is filled with left-wing buzzwords, warns

The tragic attacks in Norway on 22 July, 2011 drew Europe’s gaze to the dangers of the growing presence of far-right extremism across Europe and the increasing legitimisation of anti-immigration and anti-Islamic discourses within mainstream European politics. The blurred relationship between violence from the extreme right and broader trends of Islamophobia and anti-immigration sentiment poses several challenges for policy makers seeking to address the increasing risk of violent right-wing extremism.

And although American conservatives might not quibble with a new U.S.-based initiative aimed at “violent extremism” outside America’s borders, they have ample reason to be concerned about one that targets organizations within the United States.

Conservative champion Pamela Geller railed against the Strong Cities Network in a column at Breitbart News.

This plan “amounts to nothing less than the overriding of American laws, up to and including the United States Constitution, in favor of United Nations laws that would henceforth be implemented in the United States itself – without any consultation of Congress at all.”

Announcing the plan at the United Nations is curious she writes, because the UN “is a sharia-compliant world body, and Obama, speaking there just days ago, insisted that ‘violent extremism’ is not exclusive to Islam (which it is).”

It is unlikely the new body will be used as a “global police force” to crush counter-jihad forces, she wrote.

After all, with Obama knowingly aiding al-Qaeda forces in Syria, how likely is it that he will use his “global police force” against actual Islamic jihadists?

I suspect that instead, this global police force will be used to impose the blasphemy laws under the sharia (Islamic law), and to silence all criticism of Islam for the President who proclaimed that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

Geller and other conservatives are painfully aware that in the parlance of the Left, “violent extremism” refers to conservatives and other patriotic Americans.

If you are opposed to enlarging the redistributive state and spreading the wealth around then by definition you're a potential terrorist.  If you're a conservative or a libertarian, if you believe in gun rights or don't support abortion rights or an immigration amnesty, if you don't like high taxes or welfare programs or if you dare to believe that the Constitution actually limits the power of the government, you're at risk of turning to terrorism.

In 2009, Janet Napolitano, then head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security gave her blessing to a spurious DHS report titled, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment."

Drawing heavily from so-called research by the loony-left Southern Poverty Law Center, the report lumped Ku Klux Klansmen and violent militias together with good government types and members of the Federalist Society. This law enforcement guidance claimed that large swaths of the nation that did not vote Democratic in the last election were boiling over with hatred and intolerance.

Anticlimactically, the report noted that there is no actual evidence "that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence." Nonetheless the report speculated, using language that would later be embraced by the violent Occupy Wall Street movement, that "the economic downturn and the election of the first African American president" might help these "rightwing extremists" gain new recruits.

Guffaws from Republicans and some of her fellow Democrats forced Napolitano to disavow the report but in the intervening years Obama’s DHS has kept up the pressure on patriotic Americans in an attempt to stigmatize and marginalize conservative beliefs.

As recently as this past February, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson released a report on what CNN called the grave “domestic terror threat from right-wing sovereign citizen extremists.”

“The government says these are extremists who believe that they can ignore laws and that their individual rights are under attack in routine daily instances such as a traffic stop or being required to obey a court order,” the news network reported.

To the Obama administration, zealous civil libertarians and ornery old guys in pickup trucks are a much greater threat to the homeland than Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, al Qaeda, and Islamic State combined.

CNN paraphrased Mark Potok, a senior fellow at -- you guessed it, the Southern Poverty Law Center -- hailing the report.

“Potok said that by some estimates, there are as many as 300,000 people involved in some way with sovereign citizen extremism. Perhaps 100,000 people form a core of the movement, he said.”

Around the same time counterinsurgency and counterterrorism expert Sebastian Gorka ridiculed the obviously politicized DHS report for going off the deep end.

Gorka, a professor who lectures on irregular warfare at the College of International Security Affairs at the National Defense University, said over the last two decades he could not remember right-wing extremists flying jumbo jets into buildings, bombing a marathon, or beheading Christian hostages.

"It really is the most egregious politicization of national security," Gorka opined. "We're going to be looking for right-wing extremists when ISIS prepares to attack us? It's outrageous."

"We have tens of thousands of people in the Middle East and elsewhere and here in America who have committed themselves to the destruction of this great nation. And we're going to be focusing on the small cluster of right-wingers here in the United States?" he said. "This could endanger American lives."

All of this brings to mind the jarringly strange thing then-Senator Obama said on the campaign trail in October 2008.

“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set,” he said. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”

Is the Strong Cities Network the civilian national security force Obama mentioned just once and then never brought up again?

We’re about to find out.

Matthew Vadum is an award-winning investigative reporter and the author of the book, "Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts Are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers."

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260363/new-global-police-fight-violent-extremism-us-matthew-vadum

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

The Roots of Obama’s Catastrophic Foreign Policy - Bruce Thornton

by Bruce Thornton

And why the catastrophes are so consistent.

Russia’s armed intervention in the Syrian civil war is but the latest foreign policy disaster of Barack Obama’s tenure. Yet Obama has been nothing if not consistent. What many see as bungling, naiveté, or evidence of a plot to destroy America is simply the consequence of a particular view of interstate relations he has openly and frequently endorsed.

Obama came into office chanting all the mantras of idealistic internationalism. In contrast to the caricature of George W. Bush as a unilateralist cowboy disdainful of diplomacy, Obama promised to “rebuild the alliances, partnerships, and institutions necessary to confront common threats and enhance common security.” Balance of power realism, which is predicated on the notion that sovereign nations seek power to pursue their own interests, was rejected: “In an era when our destiny is shared, power is no longer a zero-sum game. No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group or people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold.” Contrary to accepting force as an arbiter of conflict, he championed “tough diplomacy” and “new partnerships,” promising our enemies to “seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect,” and to “extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” Finally, he evoked America’s history of foreign policy aggression as a factor in contemporary conflict, in his Cairo speech decrying “colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations.”

In short, Obama represented the foreign relations idealism that despite its repeated failures is now in its second century. Central to this idealism is the false notion that humanity is progressing away from violence as an instrument of state policy, towards a world of international institutions focused on verbal engagement and discussion. This “new world order,” as George H.W. Bush called it, is founded on a “harmony of interests,” a shared commitment to peace, prosperity, democracy, and human rights. Any nation that behaves contrary to this internationalist ideal is merely an avatar from the brutal past, one “doomed to failure,” as Obama has said of Putin’s adventurism.

Obama has consistently evoked this belief in his statements about Russia’s aggression. He scolded Putin’s attacks on Ukraine by asking rhetorically, “Does he recognise that Russia’s greatness does not depend on violating the territorial integrity and sovereignty of other countries?” The implication is that this eternal method for nations to achieve their interests––force–– is a relic from the past, an anachronism in the brave new world of a global “shared destiny.” Thus Putin is, as Obama has called him, “the bored kid in the back of a classroom,” making trouble because he doesn’t understand that he “looks at problems through this Cold War lens, and, as a consequence  . . . he’s missed some opportunities for Russia to diversify its economy, to strengthen its relationship with its neighbors, to represent something different than the old Soviet-style aggression.” Last week Obama reprised this belief in a new world when he told the U.N., “We, the nations of the world, cannot return to the old ways of conflict and coercion. We cannot look backwards.” But what if Russia wants something other than a diversified economy and good relations with its neighbors?

Meanwhile, the backward-looking Putin has taken over the Crimea, solidified his hold on eastern Ukraine, and now has replaced the U.S. as the dominant power in the Middle East, positioned to influence if not control that oil-rich region on which the global economy depends. Putin’s methods may be old-fashioned and crude, but they work.

As for Obama, his multilateralism, fetish for diplomacy, and aversion to force have laid the groundwork for this new anti-American alliance in the “multilateral” cooperation of Iran, Russia, Iraq, and China. Indeed, even as Putin was sandbagging Obama at the U.N., our president was overseeing an empty exercise in international diplomacy, a “Leaders Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism.” Obama introduced this gab-fest by welcoming ““representatives from more than 100 nations, more than 20 multilateral institutions, some 120 civil society groups from around the world, and partners from the private sector” with whom he will construct a “comprehensive strategy” for restoring order in a region disintegrating because of his own folly and preference for diplomatic words rather than military deeds.

Meanwhile, as Russia bombs and puts boots on the ground in Syria, Obama sneers at a press conference, “I didn’t see after that speech at the United Nations suddenly that 60-nation coalition we have lining up behind him.” The difference is Putin’s tiny coalition is getting something done by taking action, while Obama’s relegates itself to a symbolic 11 bombing sorties a day, a third of which don’t even drop their bombs. Maybe that’s because Obama has flatly stated, “No amount of U.S. military engagement will solve the problem” in Syria. I surmise that Putin, the mullahs, the Chinese, and the Iraqis would disagree.

Then there is Obama’s equally feckless Secretary of State, who met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after Russia began bombing the American-backed fighters battling Assad. Kerry later said that he and Lavrov had planned a “military-to-military de-confliction discussion, meeting, conference, whichever … and several options were agreed to be further discussed…we also agreed that it is imperative to find a solution to this conflict… even as we don’t yet have a resolution with respect to some critical choices in that political solution, we think we have some very specific steps that may be able to help lead in the right direction. That needs to be properly explored … And so, we finally agreed we have a lot of work to do.” In other words, they exchanged empty phrases and talked about talking. This is the same John Kerry, remember, who two years ago warned against a “Munich moment” in Syria if something wasn’t done about Assad’s stockpile of chemical weapons. He must not know that the “Munich moment” is about talking rather than acting.

And while all this “discussion” is going on, Russian commanders commence bombing in Syria after giving the U.S. one hour to get its own aircraft out of the way. That’s what passes for “deconflicting” in the alternative universe of Obama’s foreign policy. One is reminded of the Athenian orator Demosthenes chastising the Athenians’ inaction in the face of Philip of Macedon’s aggression: “It is not surprising that Philip has the upper hand: he serves on campaign and toils hard in person, is present on the spot in every situation, and lets pass by no chance or opportunity, while you procrastinate, vote decrees and make inquiries.” Russia acts, Obama and Kerry “discuss.”

Obama’s catalogue of failure has been the fruit of the bad ideas he expressed as a candidate and then as president. These widely shared ideas, moreover, have a long history, and ultimately reflect the mistaken assumption that humanity is progressing away from violence to peaceful coexistence, since all peoples across the globe are “just like us” and share the same aims. But as the great historian of Soviet tyranny Robert Conquest wrote, this assumption is the most dangerous mistake those managing our foreign policy can make:

We are still faced with the absolutely crucial problem of making the intellectual and imaginative effort not to project our ideas of common sense or natural motivation onto the products of totally different cultures. The central point is less that people misunderstand other people, or that cultures misunderstand other cultures, than that they have no notion that this may be the case. They assume that the light of their own parochial common sense is enough. And they frame policies based on illusions. Yet how profound is this difference between political psychologies and between the motivations of different political traditions, and how deep-set and how persistent these attitudes are!

Obama has serially proved the truth of this timeless wisdom, misunderstanding every one of our adversaries and enemies from the mullahs in Iran to Vladimir Putin. The human race is not progressing towards some peaceful utopia, because human nature has not advanced that much over the last three millennia. The desire for power, resources, and status is as constant among nations as it is among men, and force is the eternal means of achieving those aims. To think that such men can be talked or bargained out of what they perceive is their interests is sheer folly. The truth is, war is not an anomaly or evidence of a failure to progress, but a sad constant of state relations. To think otherwise is to encourage the bold and violent and the death and misery they leave in their wake. The 4 million Syrian refugees and 250,000 dead after Obama’s bluster of “red lines” and “Assad must go” are testimony to this eternal truth.


Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, a Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, and a Professor of Classics and Humanities at the California State University. He is the author of nine books and numerous essays on classical culture and its influence on Western Civilization. His most recent book, Democracy's Dangers and Discontents (Hoover Institution Press), is now available for purchase.

Source:  http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260357/roots-obamas-catastrophic-foreign-policy-bruce-thornton

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

Blood, sweat, tears and insanity - Ruthie Blum

by Ruthie Blum

If anything proves the power of propaganda over truth, it is the Temple Mount issue.

On Sunday night, the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem was nearly empty. Though it was the eve of Simchat Torah, when thousands of Jew normally congregate at the holy site to celebrate the holiday by dancing with Torah scrolls, the Palestinian terrorist attack that took place in the area 24 hours earlier served to scare off even those people who believe that everything is in God's hands.

No one could possibly be blamed for such fear. 

The stabbing of an Israeli family by a 19-year-old Ramallah resident and Jerusalem law student -- culminating in the death of 22-year-old Aharon Bennett and 41-year-old Rabbi Nehemia Lavi, who came to the rescue; the critical wounding of 21-year-old Adele Bennett; the injury to the couple's two-year-old boy and trauma to their physically unscathed baby daughter -- was not merely brutal. It was documented on the cellphones of Arab onlookers, who laughed and spit at the young mother covered in blood, begging for help as she tried to flee the scene with a knife wedged in her shoulder.

"You should die, too," they chanted, while she stumbled ahead in the direction of Israeli Border Police. 

The horrifying event also came on the heels of Thursday night's slaying of Naama and Eitam Henkin, the parents of four children under the age of 10, among them a nursing baby, whose own lives were spared by a fluke accident that occurred, mid-slaughter, to one of the Hamas terrorists. Different neighborhood, same purpose: to kill Jews for being Jews, whenever and wherever possible. 

The ostensible impetus for the current escalation in Palestinian violence, which is being touted as the start of the third intifada, is the Temple Mount. More specifically, according to a blood libel being spread by the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, it is a response to the Jewish "rape" of the Al-Aqsa mosque and attempt to prevent Muslims from praying there in peace.

That this is a bald-faced lie makes no difference. The fact that it is only Jews (and Christians) who are forbidden from praying on or around the holiest site in Judaism, while Muslims -- including members of the Israeli Knesset -- taunt and harass non-Muslim visitors to the Mount, is ignored internationally. If anything proves the power of propaganda over truth, it is this issue.

Abbas' response to the savagery, which continued early Sunday morning with the stabbing in Jerusalem of 15-year-old Moshe Malka, was to blame Israel for the death of two Palestinians. The ones he was referring to were the perpetrators of the latter attacks, killed while on their rampages. The five Nablus residents who shot the Henkins at point-blank range in front of their children were apprehended after the carnage. They are now alive and well, in custody.

Though the Western Wall has been relatively deserted, an estimated 10,000 people gathered outside of the Prime Minister's Residence on Monday night to demand that the government take action to stop the latest wave of terror. Ironically, some government ministers were among the protesters.

Later that night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that cabinet had approved a set of measures to confront the violence: expediting the demolitions of terrorists' houses; stronger police presence and operational latitude in Jerusalem; administrative detention for rioters; and fast-tracking plans for building roads to circumvent Palestinian areas.

However, Netanyahu also stressed that he intends to preserve the "status quo" on the Temple Mount -- which means the continued prohibition of Jewish prayer there. Since this egregious policy has remained constant, it is unclear how a statement of the obvious, other than from the Muslim-Arab world, will make a dent in the lies about it. 

Meanwhile, a demonstration was held at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, also attended by some 10,000 people. This protest was against the violation of animal rights. According to a report in Haaretz, "Participants chanted and held up signs protesting consumption of meat and dairy products, as well as placards opposing animal experimentation. 'Justice, compassion, veganism' and 'Meat is murder' were chanted repeatedly. ... They also called for the cessation of shipments of live calves and lambs from Australia and Europe, stopping the poultry market reforms, increasing budgets for the sterilization or neutering of cats and dogs, as well as imposing criminal responsibility on directors of corporations found abusing animals."

Channel 10 morning-show host Orly Vilnai, who moderated the rally, said, "While we are here tonight, the conversation elsewhere is quite different. I imagine we'll be accused of being disconnected from reality, as part of the Tel Aviv bubble. [But] we must continue this conversation in order to remain sane."

Or insane, as the case may be, particularly in the current context. Still, the "Let the Animals Live" campaign probably has a better chance of achieving its goals in the foreseeable future than the "Let Israel Live" endeavor of the Jewish-state faithful, whose blood, sweat and tears continue to flow.

Ruthie Blum is a Tel Aviv-based author and journalist.

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=13901

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

The Politics of Lies - Burak Bekdil

by Burak Bekdil

• "There is no more rule of law." — Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia's prime minister for 22 years.
• The essential dynamics of the Islamist polity do not much vary from one Muslim-majority country to another: Corrupt, authoritarian leaders who have no respect for ethnic or religious plurality or dissent of any kind, who crack down on the press and legitimize their corrupt governance by frightening Muslims masses with a made-up threat of the clandestine Jew.

A flight from Kuala Lumpur to Istanbul will usually take around 11 hours. All the same, politically, Turkey and Malaysia are not so distant. The Turkish-Malaysian political parallels are crucial in understanding political Islam.

Back in 2013, President (then Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan's chief advisor, Yigit Bulut, said that he would be "willing to die for Erdogan." He added: "There are millions like me." The statement was not shocking news in a country where Erdogan fans had the habit of walking around in shrouds -- in expression of their willingness to die for the supreme leader.

Two years later, the same leader-fetish has emerged in Malaysia. Rizuan Abd Hamid, a local leader in Kuala Lumpur of Malaysia's ruling party, UMNO (United Malays National Organization), said that he was willing to fight for Prime Minister Najib Razak "until his last breath."

Turkish President Erdogan's chief advisor, Yigit Bulut (left), says he's willing to die for his boss. Rizuan Abd Hamid (right), a local leader in Kuala Lumpur of Malaysia's ruling party, says he's willing to fight for Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak "until his last breath."

In 2013, Erdogan's government was badly shaken by two events. In the summer, millions of secular Turks took to the streets to protest the government's increasingly authoritarian and Islamist practices. In December, countless audio leaks, police reports and indictments unveiled massive corruption involving Erdogan, his family, four government ministers, high-ranking bureaucrats and Erdogan's business cronies.

Two years later, thousands of Malays are protesting Najib under a campaign named Bersih ("clean") -- a loose coalition of non-governmental organization that demand electoral reform. In July, the Wall Street Journal reported that nearly $700 million had been deposited into Najib's bank accounts shortly before elections in 2013. The money is linked to a government-owned investment company, 1MDB whose dealings are now being probed in Switzerland.

In 2013, Turkey's pro-government media and AKP party loyalists falsely claimed that the corruption allegations against them Prim[e] Minister Erdogan were being masterminded by the Jewish lobby (among other foreign groups). In Malaysia, one party leader said that the money found in Najib's account would be used in a political campaign against an opposition party, which he falsely claimed was backed by "clandestine Jews."

In Malaysia, a government agency suspended the printing licenses of two newspapers, and now the government is considering curbs on social media. "There is no more rule of law," said Mahathir Mohamad who was Malaysia's prime minister for 22 years.

In Turkey, hundreds of journalists critical of Erdogan have been intimidated, prosecuted or have lost their jobs. Most recently, state prosecutors launched a probe into the country's most influential newspaper, Hurriyet, allegedly for making terrorist propaganda.

UMNO has led coalition governments in Malaysia for six decades. It remains the most popular political party among ethnic Malay Muslims. Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been Turkey's most popular party since it joined the political race in 2002. Its voters are mostly conservative Muslims.

In a 2013 speech at a United Nations forum, Erdogan said that Zionism is a "crime against humanity" and likened it to anti-Semitism, fascism, and Islamophobia. In the same year, Erdogan, along with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei and UN official Richard Falk, was on top of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's annual list of the top 10 anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slurs.

The Malay response to Erdogan came with some delays. Last month UMNO party bigwig Rizuan Abd Hamid expressed pride in that "UMNO is one of the few governments that fight the Jews... other Asian countries have already been defeated by the Jews; Singapore is done, Thailand is done, Philippines is done, Indonesia is almost done for, but Malaysia has been protected by Datuk Seri Najib [Prime Minister Razak]."

Hardly any of this is surprising. The essential dynamics of the Islamist polity do not much vary from one Muslim-majority country to another, despite deep cultural, ethnic and linguistic differences: Corrupt, authoritarian leaders who have no respect for ethnic or religious plurality or dissent of any kind, who crack down on the press and legitimize their corrupt governance by frightening Muslims masses with a made-up threat of the clandestine Jew.

Few Turks could point to Malaysia on a map of the world. But most would sympathize with their "Malay brothers." It must be a pure coincidence that Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's official curriculum vitae proudly mentions: "In 1990 he became an Assistant Professor at the International Islamic University of Malaysia where he established and chaired the Political Science Department until 1993."

Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6608/malaysia-tukey-islamists

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

Priceless: US State Dept. Can't Explain Israel Double-Standards - Ari Soffer

by Ari Soffer

State Dept. official left speechless when questioned why US army doesn't live up to the high standards it sets for Israeli forces.

US Secretary of State John Kerry

Reuters

During last year's Operation Protective Edge, during which the IDF battled Islamist terrorists in Gaza to put an end to the threat of rocket fire and terrorist infiltration tunnels targeting its citizens, Israel faced the usual tide of criticism for its use of force despite unprecedented measures to limit civilian casualties.

Among the critics was none other than the US State Department, which issued a remarkably harsh condemnation of Israel after one particular exchange with terrorists resulted in a stray shell hitting a UN school close to where terrorist gunmen were operating.

Despite it being unclear precisely who was responsible, or what the precise circumstances were, the State Department immediately rushed to accept Hamas's version of events in the following statement:

"The United States is appalled by today’s disgraceful shelling outside an UNRWA school in Rafah sheltering some 3,000 displaced persons, in which at least ten more Palestinian civilians were tragically killed...
"The suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians. We call for a full and prompt investigation of this incident as well as the recent shelling of other UNRWA schools."

The State Dept. accused the Israeli army of ignoring coordinates of the school sent "repeatedly" to its forces, and called on Israel to "meet its own standards and avoid civilian casualties."

But it appears now that even the US is unable to meet those "standards"; on Sunday, a US airstrike in Afghanistan struck a hospital, killing at least 22 civilians.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) branded the airstrike a "war crime."

Associated Press journalist Matt Lee challenged US State Dept. spokesman Mark Toner over the strike, asking whether the US government viewed that incident - in which significantly more civilians were killed - as just as "disgraceful."

The response (see video below) was a series of pauses, stammering non-answers and evasion - underscoring the blatant double-standards so often employed by foreign governments when it comes to condemning Israel.

 


Ari Soffer 

 Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/201462#.VhPOpiuzddt 

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

Free Speech Under Fire at UK University and Art Show - Johanna Markind

by Johanna Markind

Two events last week crystallized the grave danger facing freedom of speech in the United Kingdom.

Previously published under the name "Free speech loses to Islamists at UK universities.

Warwick U. Students' Union Censors Speaker Against Radical Islam, Then Caves

Maryam Namazie

Maryam Namazie is a human rights campaigner, critic of Islamism, and member of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. Warwick Atheists, Secularists and Humanists Society (WASH) invited her to speak at Warwick University in Coventry, England, on October 28. The university's students' union then rescinded the invitation on the stated grounds that Namazie was "highly inflammatory" and could spread hatred and intolerance against Muslims.

WASH's president objected and began an online petition asking the union to reverse its decision. Prominent people, including Richard Dawkins and physicist Brian Cox, signed the petition. 
Others, like Salman Rushdie and science writer Ben Goldacre, also criticized the decision. Dawkinscomplained, "To ban a speaker you happen to disagree with is a contemptible betrayal of everything a university stands for." Rushdie echoed this observation, commenting, "Protecting students from ideas is idiocy. It is the free play of ideas that universities must protect." Under the public pressure, the students' union buckled and reversed course on September 27, offering a "full and unequivocal apology" to Namazie.

Warwick University and its students' union have been criticized before for creating a campus atmosphere hostile to free speech. Spiked gave the students' union a red (worst) rating and the university itself a yellow rating in its Free Speech University Rankings. What's new here isn't the effort to suppress speech, but the positive outcome.

The moral? Firm and outspoken support for free speech is an effective tool against politically correct speech suppression.

"Passion for Freedom" Show Not So Passionate, Censors Anti-ISIS Artwork

"Passion for Freedom 2015" Poster

Censorship at a London art exhibit – ironically entitled "Passion for Freedom" – has garnered less press attention, but is perhaps more typical for being more insidious. This was the seventh year for the annual show, on display September 21-26, whose mission has been described as "to display the work of artists who are thinking seriously about freedom, what it means and how you lose it." It describes its purpose as "Creat[ing] space for artists and writers who discuss subjects omitted in politically correct circles [and inviting] people to open and uninhibited discussion." Brave words.

One of the advertised entries this year, called "ISIS Threatens Sylvania," consisted of a series of seven satirical light box tableaux by the artist known as Mimsy. The scenes showed peaceful village residents going about their business, like girls going to school and people vacationing at the beach, suddenly assaulted by armed Islamists. Police alerted organizers that they considered the work's content "potentially inflammatory" and that, if it were included in the six-day show, police would charge £36,000 for security.

The show opted to drop the piece, which remained listed in the program and online. The move was condemned by the Index on Censorship, but major celebrities did not speak out about it as they did over the Warwick University Student Union ban; perhaps they did not know about it.

"ISIS Threatens Sylvania" remained listed on the Passion for Freedom show website.

Let us assume the show organizers acted from practical necessity and not fear. And, since the show had already accepted Mimsy's piece for its show and advertised it in the program, let us assume political correctness and desire to censor played no role in the final decision to exclude it. The end result was the same. The cost (here, financial) of free expression about Islamist violence simply became too high.
The threat of radical Islam is not shrinking, but growing. As it grows, decisions about whether to speak out about, expose, and confront it have become more widespread and urgent. Unfortunately, the counter-pressures not to do so – be they fear of physical violence, ideological disdain and intimidation (political correctness), or the more mundane one of cost – often overwhelm the impulse to speak out. Once upon a time, a group of people asserted their country's freedom by "mutually pledg[ing] to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." Freedom will survive only if people are willing to make these sacrifices.


Johanna Markind is Associate Counselor for the Middle East Forum.

Source: http://www.legal-project.org/4421/free-speech-under-fire-at-uk-university-and-art

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

How Islam Creates Sociopaths - Nicolai Sennels

by Nicolai Sennels

Psychopathic people and behavior are found within all cultures and religions. But one tops them all — by many lengths.

The daily mass killings, terror, persecutions and family executions committed by the followers of Islam are nauseating, and the ingenuity behind the attacks — always looking for new and more effective ways of killing and terrorizing people — is astonishing: hijacking jumbo jets and flying them into skyscrapers, hunting unarmed and innocent people with grenades and automatic rifles in shopping malls, planting bombs in one’s own body, using model airplanes as drones, attaching large rotating blades to pickup trucks and using them as human lawn movers, killing family members with acid or fire, hanging people publicly from cranes in front of cheering crowds, etc.- in addition to stabbing people in the back, shooting parents in front of their children, slitting throats of sleeping babies, etc.

It makes one ask oneself: what creates such lack of empathy and almost playful and creative attitude towards murdering perceived enemies?

This is a question for psychologists like me.

Studying the Muslim mind

Nobody is born a mass murderer, a rapist or a violent criminal. So what is it in the Muslim culture that influence their children in a way that make so relatively many Muslims harm other people?

For people to change, they have to want it, to be allowed to change, and to be able to change — and only a tiny minority of Muslims have such lucky conditions.
As a psychologist in a Danish youth prison, I had a unique chance to study the mentality of Muslims. 70 percent of youth offenders in Denmark have a Muslim background. I was able to compare them with non-Muslim clients from the same age group with more or less the same social background. I came to the conclusion that Islam and Muslim culture have certain psychological mechanisms that harm people’s development and increase criminal behavior.

I am, of course, aware that Muslims are different, and not all Muslims follow the Quran’s violent and perverted message and their prophet’s equally embarrassing example. But as with all other religions, Islam also influences its followers and the culture they live in.

One could talk about two groups of psychological mechanisms that both singly and combined increase violent behavior. One group is mainly connected with religion, which aims at indoctrinating Islamic values in children as early as possible and with whatever means necessary, including violence and intimidation.

One can understand a Muslim parent’s concern about his offspring’s religious choices, because the Sharia orders the death penalty for their children should they pick another religion than their parents. The other group of mechanisms are more cultural and psychological. These cultural psychological mechanisms are a natural consequence of being influenced by a religion like Islam and stemming from a 1,400 year old tribal society with very limited freedom to develop beyond what the religion allows.

Classical Brainwashing Methods in the Upbringing

Brainwashing people into believing or doing things against their own human nature — such as hating or even killing innocents they do not even know — is traditionally done by combining two things: pain and repetition. The conscious infliction of psychological and physical suffering breaks down the person’s resistance to the constantly repeated message.

Totalitarian regimes use this method to reform political dissidents. Armies in less civilized countries use it to create ruthless soldiers, and religious sects all over the world use it to fanaticize their followers.

During numerous sessions with more than a hundred Muslim clients, I found that violence and repetition of religious messages are prevalent in Muslim families.

Muslim culture simply does not have the same degree of understanding of human development as in civilized societies, and physical pain and threats are therefore often the preferred tool to raise children. This is why so many Muslim girls grow up to accept violence in their marriage, and why Muslim boys grow up to learn that violence is acceptable. And it is the main reason why nine out of ten children removed from their parents by authorities in Copenhagen are from immigrant families. The Muslim tradition of using pain and intimidation as part of disciplining children are also widely used in Muslim schools — also in the West.

Combined with countless repetitions of Quranic verses in Islamic schools and families, all this makes it very difficult for children to defend themselves against being indoctrinated to follow the Quran, even if it is against secular laws, logic, and the most basic understanding of compassion.

And as we know from so many psychological studies, whatever a child is strongly influenced by at that age takes an enormous personal effort to change later in life. It is no wonder that Muslims in general, in spite of Islam’s inhumane nature and obvious inability to equip its followers with humor, compassion and other attractive qualities, are stronger in their faith than any other religious group.

Four Enabling Psychological Factors

Not only does a traditional Islamic upbringing resemble classical brainwashing methods, but also, the culture it generates cultivates four psychological characteristics that further enable and increase violent behavior.

These four mental factors are

• anger
• lack of self-confidence
• no sense of responsibility for oneself
• intolerance

When it comes to anger, Western societies widely agree that it is a sign of weakness. Uncontrolled explosions of this unpleasant feeling are maybe the fastest way of losing face, especially in Northern countries, and though angry people may be feared, they are never respected. In Muslim culture, anger is much more accepted, and being able to intimidate people is seen as strength and source of social status. We even see ethnic Muslim groups or countries proudly declare whole days of anger, and use expressions such as “holy anger” — a term that seems contradictory in peaceful cultures.

In Western societies, the ability to handle criticism constructively if it is justified, and with a shrug if it is misguided, is seen as an expression of self-confidence and authenticity.

As everyone has noticed, this is not the case among Muslims. Here criticism, no matter how true, is seen as an attack on one’s honor, and it is expected that the honor is restored by using whatever means necessary to silence the opponent. Muslims almost never attempt to counter criticism with logical arguments; instead, they try to silence the criticism by pretending to be offended or by name-calling, or by threatening or even killing the messenger.

The third psychological factor concerns responsibility for oneself, and here the psychological phenomenon “locus of control” plays a major role. People raised by Western standards generally have an inner locus of control, meaning that they experience their lives as governed by inner factors, such as one’s own choices, world view, ways of handling emotions and situations, etc. Muslims are raised to experience their lives as being controlled from the outside.

Everything happens “insha’ Allah” — if Allah wills — and the many religious laws, traditions and powerful male authorities leave little room for individual responsibility. This is the cause for the embarrassing and world-famous Muslim victim mentality, where everybody else is blamed and to be punished for the Muslims’ own self-created situation.

Finally, the fourth psychological factor making Muslims vulnerable to the violent message in the Quran concerns tolerance. While Western societies in general define a good person as being open and tolerant, Muslims are told that they are superior to non-Muslims, destined to dominate non-Muslims, and that they must distance themselves socially and emotionally from non-Muslims. The many hateful and dehumanizing verses in the Quran and the Hadiths against non-Muslims closely resemble the psychological propaganda that leaders use against their own people in order to prepare them mentally for fighting and killing the enemy. Killing another person is easier if you hate him and do not perceive him as fully human.

Why Islam Creates Monsters

The cultural and psychological cocktail of anger, low self-esteem, victim mentality, a willingness to be blindly guided by outer authorities, and an aggressive and discriminatory view toward non-Muslims, forced upon Muslims through pain, intimidation and mind-numbing repetitions of the Quran’s almost countless verses promoting hate and violence against non-Muslims, is the reason why Islam creates monsters.

The Psychological Problem within Islam

The problem with Islam and Muslim culture is that there are so many psychological factors pushing its followers towards a violent attitude against non-Muslims that a general violent clash is — at least from a psychological perspective — inevitable. With such strong pressure and such strong emotions within such a large group of people — all pitched against us — we are facing the perfect storm, and I see no possibilities of turning it around. For people to change, they have to want it, to be allowed to change, and to be able to change — and only a tiny minority of Muslims have such lucky conditions.

Far too many people underestimate the power of psychology embedded in religion and culture. As we have already seen, no army of social workers, generous welfare states, sweet-talking politicians, politically correct journalists or democracy-promoting soldiers can stop these enormous forces. Sensible laws on immigration and Islamization in our own countries can limit the amount of suffering, but based on my education and professional experience as a psychologist for Muslims, I estimate that we will not be able to deflect or avoid this many-sided, aggressive movement against our culture.

I do believe that we, as a democratic and educated society can become focused and organized concerning the preservation of our values and constitutions, can win this ongoing conflict started by the often inbred followers of Sharia. The big question is how much of our dignity, our civil rights, and our blood, money and tears will we lose in the process.

  
Nicolai Sennels

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/17646#.VhK-AJezddt

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

The ‘Refugee Crisis’: Muslim History vs. Western Fantasy - Raymond Ibrahim

by Raymond Ibrahim

Those who forget or ignore history are destined to be conquered by those who remember and praise it.

One of the primary reasons Islamic and Western nations are “worlds apart” is because the way they understand the world is worlds apart.  Whereas Muslims see the world through the lens of history, the West has jettisoned or rewritten history to suit its ideologies.  

This dichotomy of Muslim and Western thinking is evident everywhere.  When the Islamic State declared that it will “conquer Rome” and “break its crosses,” few in the West realized that those are the verbatim words and goals of Islam’s founder and his companions as recorded in Muslim sources—words and goals that prompted over a thousand years of jihad on Europe. 

Most recently, the Islamic State released a map of the areas it plans on expanding into over the next five years.  The map includes European nations such as Portugal, Spain, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Greece, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, Armenia, Georgia, Crete, Cyprus, and parts of Russia.

The reason these European nations are included in the Islamic State’s map is simple.  According to Islamic law, once a country has been conquered (or “opened,” as it’s called in the euphemistic Arabic), it becomes Islamic in perpetuity. 

This, incidentally, is the real reason Muslims despise Israel.  It’s not due to sympathy for the Palestinians—if so, neighboring Arab nations would’ve absorbed them long ago (just as they would be absorbing all of today’s Muslim refugees).  

No, Israel is hated because the descendants of “apes and pigs”—to use the Koran’s terminology — dare to rule land that was once “opened” by jihad and therefore must be returned to Islam.  (Read more about Islam’s “How Dare You?!” phenomenon to understand the source of Islamic rage, especially toward Israel.)

All the aforementioned European nations are also seen as being currently “occupied” by Christian “infidels” and in need of “liberation.”  This is why jihadi organizations refer to terrorist attacks on such countries as “defensive jihads.”

One rarely heard about Islamic designs on European nations because they are large and blocked together, altogether distant from the Muslim world.  Conversely, tiny Israel is right in the heart of the Islamic world—hence why most jihadi aspirations were traditionally geared toward the Jewish state: it was more of a realistic conquest.  

Now, however, that the “caliphate” has been reborn and is expanding before a paralytic West, dreams of reconquering portions of Europe—if not through jihad, then through migration—are becoming more plausible, perhaps even more so than conquering Israel.

Because of their historical experiences with Islam, some central and east European nations are aware of Muslim aspirations.  Hungary’s prime minister even cited his nation’s unpleasant past under Islamic rule (in the guise of the Ottoman Empire) as reason to disallow Muslim refugees from entering.  

But for more “enlightened” Western nations—that is, for idealistic nations that reject or rewrite history according to their subjective fantasies—Hungary’s reasoning is unjust, unhumanitarian, and racist.   

To be sure, most of Europe has experience with Islamic depredations.  As late as the seventeenth century, even distant Iceland was being invaded by Muslim slave traders. Roughly 800 years earlier, in 846, Rome was sacked and the Vatican defiled by Muslim raiders. 

Some of the Muslims migrating to Italy vow to do the same today, and Pope Francis acknowledges it.  Yet, all the same, he suggests that “you can take precautions, and put these people to work.”  (We’ve seen this sort of thinking before: the U.S. State Department cites a lack of “job opportunities” as reason for the existence of the Islamic State). 

Perhaps because the U.K., Scandinavia, and North America were never conquered and occupied by the sword of Islam—unlike those southeast European nations that are resisting Muslim refugees—they feel free to rewrite history according to their subjective ideals, specifically, that historic Christianity is bad and all other religions and people are good (the darker and/or more foreign the better).

Indeed, countless are the books and courses on the “sins” of Christian Europe, from the Crusades to colonialism.  (Most recently, a book traces the rise of Islamic supremacism in Egypt to the disciplining of a rude Muslim girl by a European nun.) 

This “new history”—particularly that Muslims are the historic “victims” of “intolerant” Western Christians—has metastasized everywhere, from high school to college and from Hollywood to the news media (which are becoming increasingly harder to distinguish from one another).  

When U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama condemned medieval Christians as a way to relativize Islamic State atrocities—or at best to claim that religion, any religion, is never the driving force of violence—he was merely being representative of the mainstream way history is taught in the West.

Even otherwise sound books of history contribute to this distorted thinking.  While such works may mention “Ottoman expansion” into Europe, the Islamic element is omitted.  Thus Turks are portrayed as just another competitive people, out to carve a niche for themselves in Europe, no differently than rival Christian empires.   That the “Ottomans” (or “Saracens,” or “Arabs,” or “Moors,” or “Tatars”) were operating under the distinctly Islamic banner of jihad—just like the Islamic State is today—that connection is never made.  

Generations of pseudo history have led the West to think that, far from being suspicious or judgmental of them, Muslims must be accommodated—say, by allowing them to migrate into the West in mass.  Perhaps then they’ll “like us”?  

Such is progressive wisdom.

Meanwhile, back in the school rooms of much of the Muslim world, children continue to be indoctrinated in glorifying and reminiscing over the jihadi conquests of yore—conquests by the sword and in the name of Allah.  While the progressive West demonizes European/Christian history—when I was in elementary school, Christopher Columbus was a hero, when I got into college, he became a villain—Mehmet the Conqueror, whose atrocities against Christian Europeans make the Islamic State look like a bunch of boy scouts, is praised every year in “secular” Turkey on the anniversary of the savage sack Constantinople.  

The result of Western fantasies and Islamic history is that Muslims are now entering the West, unfettered, in the guise of refugees who refuse to assimilate with the “infidels” and who form enclaves, or in Islamic terminology, ribats—frontier posts where the jihad is waged on the infidel, one way or the other.

Nor is this mere conjecture.  The Islamic State is intentionally driving the refugee phenomenon and has promised to send half a million people—mostly Muslim—into Europe.  It claims that 4,000 of these refugees are its own operatives: “Just wait….  It’s our dream that there should be a caliphate not only in Syria but in all the world, and we will have it soon, inshallah [Allah willing].”

It is often said that those who ignore history are destined to repeat it.  What does one say of those who rewrite history in a way that demonizes their ancestors while whitewashing the crimes of their forebears’ enemies? 

The result is before us.  History is not repeating itself; sword waving Muslims are not militarily conquering Europe.  Rather, they are being allowed to walk right in.

Perhaps a new aphorism needs to be coined for our times: Those who forget or ignore history are destined to be conquered by those who remember and praise it.


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/260338/refugee-crisis-muslim-history-vs-western-fantasy-raymond-ibrahim

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