New Israel Fund grantees pressed Rwanda to nix deportation plan - Tal Polon

by Tal Polon

Despite NIF denial of pressuring Rwanda, letter to Rwandan president reveals NIF grantees urged country to scrap deal with Netanyahu.

NGOs backed by the New Israel Fund sent a letter to the government of Rwanda, asking it not to accept illegals who had infiltrated Israel.

The revelation came to light following the Prime Minister’s cancellation on Tuesday of a deal with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees which would have “facilitated the departure” of 16,250 infiltrators to Western countries while granting legal status to another 16,250.

Following opposition to the plan from coalition partners and activists working on behalf of residents in southern Tel Aviv, where most of the infiltrators to Israel have been living, Netanyahu announced the plan’s suspension on Monday evening.

In explaining his decision, Netanyahu pointed a finger at US-based funding organization The New Israel Fund (NIF), asserting that the poorly-received deal with the UN had resulted from the failure of a prior infiltrator-deportation agreement with Rwanda, which the PM said had backed out due to NIF pressure.

"In recent weeks, as a result of the tremendous pressure placed on Rwanda by the New Israel Fund and elements in the European Union, Rwanda has withdrawn from the agreement and has refused to absorb infiltrators from Israel who were forcibly deported," he said.

Netanyahu ultimately cancelled the agreement with the UN the next day, subsequently announcing that he had established a parliamentary commission of inquiry against the NIF.

"The New Israel Fund is a foreign organization that receives funding from foreign governments and elements hostile to Israel, such as from the fund of George Soros. The ultimate objective of the fund is to erase Israel's Jewish character and turn it into a state of all its citizens, alongside a Palestinian nation-state that is free of Jews on the 1967 lines with Jerusalem as its capital," Netanyahu explained.

Despite Netanyahu’s accusations, the NIF denied having pressured Rwanda to back out of the deportation agreement.

“The New Israel Fund did not pressure the Rwandan government to refuse to participate in Netanyahu’s cruel mass deportation plan,” NIF CEO Daniel Sokatch said in a statement released on Tuesday. “We did support massive numbers of Israelis standing up for what is right and demanding action from their own government.”

“This isn’t about NIF. It’s about all of us - everyone who cares about democracy and equality in Israel. It’s time for everyone who cares about Israeli democracy to stand up and stand together against this blatant assault on Israeli civil society from an increasingly desperate and flailing PM.”

On Wednesday, Rwandan minister Olivier Nduhungirehe denied that the New Israel Fund had pressured Rwanda, asserting that Rwanda "didn't even know what this New Israel Fund is all about."

"I am extremely surprised by [Netanyahu's statements about the influence of the New Israel Fund]. My surprise comes less from the fact that Rwanda doesn’t even know what this New Israel Fund is all about, but more from the assumption that a foreign NGO can successfully impose any pressure on a sovereign government named [Rwanda]," he tweeted.

However, Arutz Sheva saw a letter addressed to Rwandan President Paul Kagame by seven Israeli NGOs - five of which have received funding from The New Israel Fund. In the letter, first printed in The Rwandan in November and also reported on by The Jewish Press, the NGOs call on the Rwandan leader not to accept infiltrators from Israel.

“His Excellency Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda,
We are turning to you, and to the people of Rwanda, with an urgent request.

Rwanda and Israel have an ongoing special relationship. However, this relationship cannot include trading in African lives.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is telling the Israeli public that Rwanda has agreed to take on African refugees from Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu says that the refugees will be forced to leave: if they do not agree to go to Rwanda, they will be put in prison forever.

We trust in you, and the people of Rwanda, that you will not agree to this denial of liberty. We hope and trust you will not agree that African refugees are caged and traded in this way.

We call on you to make it clear to Prime Minister Netanyahu – Rwanda will not take refugees who do not come of their own free will.

We urge you to use your friendship with Netanyahu to remind him – Israel is a country of refugees, it should open its heart to those who have fled Eritrea and Sudan and give them shelter."

[Signed] ASSAF-Aid Organization for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Israel

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel

Physicians for Human Rights -Israel

Hotline for Refugees and Migrants

Amnesty International Israel

Kav La’Oved – Workers’ Hotline

HIAS Israel


Tal Polon

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/244107

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US blocks Arab-led UN call for independent probe of Gaza border riots - Shlomo Cesana, Eldad Beck, Yoni Hersch, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

by Shlomo Cesana, Eldad Beck, Yoni Hersch, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff 

PA says U.S. "bias" in favor of Israel has rendered Security Council a "helpless hostage," demands U.S. be stripped of its veto power if the council is to retain credibility

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley  

Photo: Reuters

The United States on Friday blocked a U.N. Security Council statement supporting the Palestinians "right to demonstrate peacefully" on the Israel-Gaza Strip border" and endorsing Secretary General António Guterres' call for an independent investigation into the deadly border riots.

This was the second time in two weeks the U.S. has vetoed a Security Council decision on the matter.

Some 20,000 Palestinians participated in a second Hamas-backed demonstration on the border Friday. The military said the protest became violent almost immediately, with hundreds of Palestinians torching tires and throwing stones and firebombs at the Israeli troops, and some trying to use the thick smoke to breach the security fence.

The IDF used water cannons and huge fans to disperse the smoke, as well as crowd control measures, including tear gas, rubber bullets and in some cases, live fire, to prevent protesters from breaching the fence.

The Palestinians said nine Gazans were killed, including one minor and one journalist, and over 1,000 were wounded, 300 of them from live fire, in the clashes.

On Friday afternoon, Kuwait, which represents Arab countries on the Security Council, circulated a draft resolution among the council's members, seeking to "reaffirm the Palestinians' right to peaceful protest" and calling for an independent and transparent investigation of the clashes on the Israel-Gaza Strip border.

The draft, which was similar to the one Kuwait circulated two weeks ago, also urged both sides to exercise restraint.

Reuters

Palestinian protesters near the Gaza border, Friday

On Twitter, Kuwait's U.N. mission said the Security Council "should address this matter and have a unified position. … What is happening is a violation of international law."

The motion was endorsed by 14 of the council's 15 members but was vetoed by the United States.

Palestinian Ambassador to the U.N. Riyad Mansour slammed the U.S. veto of what he called a "nonbinding and modest" resolution, saying the U.S.'s actions were "very irresponsible" and gave Israel "the green light to continue with their onslaught against the civilian population" in Gaza.

Mansour said the Palestinian Authority would "keep all its options open" at the United Nations, including seeking a Security Council presidential statement or resolution, going to the General Assembly or the Geneva-based Human Rights Council – where no country has veto power – and urging Guterres to form an independent commission of inquiry.

"We will not give up. We will continue knocking on doors," Mansour vowed.

Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon said the Security Council "should condemn Hamas, which uses children as human shields while risking their lives, and must call for the end of these provocations which only increase the violence and tensions."

Arab League Ambassador to the U.N. Maged Abdelaziz said Arab foreign ministers would also discuss options to pursue the Palestinian issue at a meeting in Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh on April 12, ahead of a summit of Arab leaders in the country on April 15.

Vexed by its defeat at the Security Council, the Palestinian Authority on Saturday urged the U.N. to "devise a new formula" for the council's work that would strip the U.S. of its veto power.

EPA

Palestinian Ambassador to the U.N. Riyad Mansour

Ramallah's Foreign Ministry urged U.N. members and the international community to "search for a new formula that would invalidate U.S. vetoes and objections if they are found to be in violation of the goals, principles, and conventions on which the international system was established."

The ministry's statement said that unless such a formula was devised, the Security Council would remain a "helpless hostage in light of blind American bias in favor of the occupation and will lose what's left of its credibility."

U.S. "bias" in favor of Israel constitutes "an extension of hostile American positions against our people and rights, a continuation of its attempts to thwart any joint Palestinian-Arab moves at the Security Council, and a translation of its political positions and projects aimed at liquidating the Palestinian cause," the statement said.

Also on Saturday, the European Union said the number of casualties in Israel-Gaza border riots "raises serious questions about proportionate use of force" by Israel, saying such concerns "must be addressed" and that "reports by the Israeli Defense Forces about throwing of stones and firebombs against their positions and attempts to cross the fence into Israel must also be clarified."

The statement, which did not condemn Palestinian violence, called on both sides to exercise "utmost restraint" and stressed that "the priority now must be to avoid any further escalation and loss of life."

The United Nations Human Rights Council also urged Israel to ensure that its security forces do not use excessive force against Palestinian protesters at the Gaza-Israel border.

Firearms should only be used as a last resort, and unjustified recourse to their use may amount to willful killing of civilians, a breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, UNHRC spokeswoman Elizabeth Throssell said.

Shlomo Cesana, Eldad Beck, Yoni Hersch, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/04/08/us-blocks-arab-led-un-call-for-independent-probe-of-gaza-protests/

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What Arabs think about IDF Spokesman in Arabic - Mordechai Sones

by Mordechai Sones

Arab commentator Noam Benat teaches about Arab society through cartoons. This time: What do Arabs think about IDF Spokesman?

Gaza riots

Reuters

Middle Eastern studies expert and Intelligence Corps veteran Noam Benat of Window to the Renewed Middle East teaches Middle East studies, Islam, and pedagogy. His lectures are accompanied by caricatures, pictures, and films and he maintains an active dialogue with his audience.

In a video by the IDF Spokesman's Unit Arab media department head Major Avichay Adraee a week ago, he conveyed the message that Saudi clerics had decided Gaza residents should not participate in the "March of Return" demonstrations on the Gaza border, which he termed the "March of Chaos" (a play on words between "Oda" (return) and "Fauda" (Chaos). See the video here.

In response to the video, Gaza cartoonist Umaya Juha published a cartoon inspired by the poem by famous Egyptian poet Ahmed Shweki, in which he writes about a cunning fox. The title of the caricature is "One day Edrei appeared in preacher's cloak" while the line in the original poem was about a fox, known as a sly animal.

"The title tries to convey the puzzlement at how a person like Avichay Adraee, the 'IDF Spokesman in Arabic,' a person who, in their eyes is a liar and fraud (like the fox), could preach to them what to do while quoting Muslim religious rulings," explains Benat. "With a fox tail, skullcap, grey beard, and holding a prayer beads, Adraee is depicted saying the march is prohibited by Islamic law."

Gaza riots

Reuters

Regarding IDF Arab world outreach efforts, Benat said "There's no doubt that Israeli entry into the space of Arab social networks and media is not convenient for Arab leadership. We'll continue to see attempts to ridicule Israeli elements trying to establish a connection, be they civilian bodies such as the Prime Minister's Office or Foreign Ministry, or of course the Arab media division of the IDF Spokesman's Unit."

Adraee, whose Facebook page in Arabic has over 1.2 million followers, has become a familiar figure in Arab social networks and even in the media, not only because of his interviews with them. This week, for example, he infuriated Al-Jazeera after he used a caricature by Alaa al-Lakta, a Gaza man.

 In the cartoon appearing on the Qatari Al-Jazeera channel, one sees an Arab Gaza family walking towards a fence. Their feet are depicted as roots of an olive tree, crudely symbolizing "Palestinian attachment to the land." The father holds the key to the return, whether the flag and their son. The fence is a barbed-wire fence and at its bottom two IDF soldiers with guns pointing at them.

Adraee published the cartoon with a few changes. He removed the IDF soldiers and put up an inscription "Hamas told us to come." The Qatari channel's anger was provoked by Adraee removing the illustrator's name and the place where the cartoon was hosted, Al-Jazeera.

Mordechai Sones

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/244102

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Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics - Brian C. Joondeph

by Brian C. Joondeph

Press reports of illegal border crossings being down under President Obama don't hold much water upon closer scrutiny.

The quote in the title has been attributed to Mark Twain, Benjamin Disraeli, and others, but its true source remains unknown. Let's call it an anonymous source, which these days forms the basis of numerous stories in the New York Times or Washington Post. At least the unsourced quote is from many years ago and not particularly relevant now, unlike the unsourced stories of today, which make up the new standard of journalism.

Regardless of who said it first, the quote, "is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments." In other words, numbers and statistics can be used selectively to bolster an erroneous premise – or, to put it more simply, to create fake news.

This week, social media were busy showing this graphic in response to President Trump's continued promises to secure the border, using the military if necessary. Here is a graphic from MSNBC.

The point of the chart is to show that border crossings are at a 46-year low. Followed by the media accusing the mean and ignorant president of wasting taxpayer money sending the National Guard to the southern border to stop the migrant caravans bringing the poor and downtrodden to a better life in the U.S.

As an aside, MSNBC has no concern about the hundreds of millions of wasted and destructive taxpayer dollars going to support illegal aliens – or, for that matter, Planned Parenthood, whose taxpayer cash goes to aborting a disproportionate number of poor and minority babies. But that's another subject. 

Looking at the chart, the quick takeaway is that illegal border crossings, quite high during the George W. Bush years, precipitously dropped under President Obama, who, despite the assertions of the right, was indeed an illegal immigration hawk, tough on border security, doing yeoman's work stopping illegal immigration.

The media narrative goes on. Trump is merely continuing what Obama started, thuggishly acting as though he is solely responsible for cutting down on illegal immigration, riding the coattails of the great and visionary Barack Hussein O, blowing smoke as usual to keep his oversized ego fully inflated.

OK, that's the MSNBC and CNN narrative. Let me suggest another interpretation.

The graphic is based on the 2017 Border Security Report from the Department of Homeland Security. From the actual report, "[i]n FY17, CBP recorded the lowest level of illegal cross-border migration on record," CBP being U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

That's as far as big media read in preparing their graphic and talking points. It's similar to how they edit the words of those they dislike – NBC, for example, cutting part of a 911 call from George Zimmerman to create a false narrative that Zimmerman was a racist.

If the intrepid journalistic sleuths read the very next sentence, their story might have changed. The report then said, "As measured by apprehensions along the border and inadmissible encounters at U.S. ports of entry."

Four simple words turn their entire story upside-down – as measured by apprehensions.

The entire chart is based not on how many illegally crossed our borders, but how many were apprehended. It's as if the number of drug-dealers in the U.S. were based on how many are caught and convicted, which is a fraction of the total number out there.

What if the Obama policy were to understaff border crossings? Or direct agents to be less vigilant or vigorous in arresting illegal aliens? In other words, what if the numbers dropped dramatically during the Obama years simply because existing law wasn't being enforced?

Rather than apprehending illegal aliens, the Obama directive was to look the other way and let them in. Then voilà: the number of apprehensions drops dramatically, despite illegal immigration actually increasing.

Obama's approach to border security was well known, going as far as directing his Department of Justice to sue states, such as Arizona, for having the unmitigated gall to enforce actual federal immigration law.

How many busloads of "unaccompanied alien children" crossed the U.S. border during the Obama years? Obama "declared it an urgent humanitarian situation and named a federal coordinator to make sure the children are cared for – but offered no new ideas for how to keep them from trying to enter."

That was in 2014, and the White House expected the 60,000 "unaccompanied minor children" number to double in 2015. If they weren't apprehended, how were they measured? The MSNBC chart showed that only apprehensions were down, not actual illegal immigration, which was on the rise. Fake news.

No wonder the CBP chart showed a drop during the Obama years. The door was wide open, and only a fraction of those entering the country illegally were actually apprehended and measured for the sake of this statistical report.

This is similar to what was discovered, but hardly reported, after the Parkland school shooting. Many public schools have a policy of not reporting crimes in order to secure federal funding under the measure to supposedly prevent the "school-to-prison pipeline."

Police, in cahoots with the school boards, would ignore crimes, or downgrade their severity, as well as lose evidence, all to make their school statistics show little if any crime. And in exchange, the school boards would receive taxpayer dollars to use as they wished, whether to fund the re-election campaign of the local sheriff, complicit in the scheme, or pad the salaries and benefits of school administrators.

If they don't arrest or charge anyone with a crime, then statistically, the crime didn't happen. It's like the old axiom for medical interns: "If you don't take a temperature, you can't find a fever" – thereby avoiding hours of extra work evaluating the cause of the fever. Decriminalize an activity, and it goes away – statistically, anyway, but not in reality.

I suspect that Trump's numbers on illegal border crossing apprehensions reflect the reality that crossings are indeed way down because fewer are trying to cross the border illegally. The few who do are being apprehended at a much higher rate. Potential border-crossers fear Trump in a way they never feared Obama, especially now that Trump signed a memo ending "catch and release." There is a new sheriff in town.

The entire premise of illegal border crossings being down under Obama, and no lower under Trump, is either a lie or a damned lie. You can decide which.

The left is using dishonest statistics to push a false narrative, parroted by the complicit media. That explains why media distrust is at an all-time high.


Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., MPS is a Denver-based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/04/illegal_immigration__lies_damned_lies_and_statistics.html

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"Terrorism" Turkish Style - Uzay Bulut

by Uzay Bulut

Turkey, a NATO ally that considers itself a worthy candidate for EU membership, warmly welcomes and assists terrorists who commit genocidal crimes against humanity, yet persecutes non-violent academics and journalists whose opinions differ from those propagated by the regime.

• "Erdoğan has cynically referred to these students as 'terrorists,' vowed to expel them from Boğaziçi University, and to deny them the right to study at any other university. We have heard this kind of verbal attack from Erdoğan before and it was followed by the detention of thousands of academics, journalists, artists, and human rights advocates." — Open Letter signed by over 1,800 renowned academics from around the world, including Nobel and Pulitzer Prize laureates.
• Ankara does nothing to prevent ISIS from selling Yazidi women and children in Turkey; allows unspecified numbers of people to use Turkish territory as a point of entrance into Syria and Iraq to join ISIS or other jihadist groups; hosts and aids Hamas, a terrorist organization that proudly targets civilians and vows to obliterate Israel; and enables jihadi terrorism through the oil trade.
• Turkey, a NATO ally that considers itself a worthy candidate for EU membership, warmly welcomes and assists terrorists who commit genocidal crimes against humanity, yet persecutes non-violent academics and journalists whose opinions differ from those propagated by the regime.

On March 19, a group of students at Istanbul's Boğaziçi University, Turkey's leading institute of higher education, demonstrated against an event on campus. The event against which they were demonstrating, organized by the Society for Islamic Research, was to champion the Turkish soldiers who had participated in the Afrin invasion. While the pro-government students distributed Turkish delight sweets, the counter-demonstrators unfolded a banner reading: "Invasions and massacres are not [to be celebrated] with delights."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded by having the anti-war students arrested for spreading "terrorist" propaganda. On April 3, a Turkish court jailed nine of them and freed the other six, pending their trial.

To protest what they called a "disturbing trend of criminalizing political speech and dissent in Turkey," over 1,800 renowned academics from around the world, among them Nobel and Pulitzer Prize laureates, signed an "Open Letter of Support for Students Arrested at Boğaziçi University". The letter reads, in part:

"The arrests on campus, as well as subsequent police raids of student homes and dormitories, continue a disturbing trend of criminalizing political speech and dissent in Turkey.
"Erdoğan has cynically referred to these students as 'terrorists,' vowed to expel them from Boğaziçi University, and to deny them the right to study at any other university. We have heard this kind of verbal attack from Erdoğan before and it was followed by the detention of thousands of academics, journalists, artists, and human rights advocates.
"We call upon the Turkish government to immediately cease all investigations and arrests of students exercising political speech."

The curtailing of free speech is nothing new in Erdogan's Turkey. Anyone who dares to challenge the government's accepted narrative runs the very real risk of being targeted and punished. Non-Turkish residents of the country are no exception.

Take the case of the American academic Norma Jeanne Cox, for example. After receiving a postgraduate degree from Boğaziçi University in 1983, Cox worked as a lecturer at Istanbul University, and subsequently at the Middle East Technical University in southern Turkey, where she engaged in discussions with her students and colleagues about the 1915 Armenian genocide, the forced assimilation of Kurds, and protested against the film The Last Temptation of Christ. For these "crimes," she was arrested, fired from her job and ultimately deported. The Ministry of the Interior claimed that Cox had been expelled and banned from re-entering Turkey due to "her separatist activities, which were incompatible with national security." In a suit she filed with the European Court of Human Rights -- which in 2010 convicted Turkey of violating her freedom of expression -- Cox argued that her rights had been violated by Turkey because of her Christian faith and dissenting opinions.

Since then, little has changed. On January 11, 2016, members of "Academics for Peace" -- who signed a declaration calling for non-violence between the Turkish government and the Kurds -- were detained by police, banned from going abroad, exposed to administrative investigations and dismissed from their jobs for "making propaganda for a terrorist organization," among other perceived offenses.

On January 13, 2017, an Armenian MP, Garo Paylan of the opposition party HDP, was suspended from three sessions of parliament for delivering a speech in which he warned against repeating the mistakes of the past. "Between 1913 and 1923, Armenians, Greeks, Syriacs, and Jews... were either exiled with genocides and major massacres or subjected to population exchanges," he said. All mentions he made of the Armenian genocide were removed from the parliamentary minutes.

On January 5, 2018, during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace in Paris, Erdogan accused members of the media of nurturing terrorism, in response to Macron's concern over the Turkish government's crackdown on students, teachers and journalists:

"Terror doesn't form by itself. Terror and terrorists have gardeners. These gardeners are those people viewed as thinkers. They water ... from their columns on newspapers, and one day, you find, these people show up as a terrorist in front of you."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently accused members of the media of nurturing terrorism, and had anti-war students arrested for spreading "terrorist" propaganda. (Photo by Defne Karadeniz/Getty Images)

Erdogan's definition of terrorism is as skewed as Turkey's anti-terrorism laws, frequently used and abused by the government to arrest and imprison peaceful demonstrators -- a practice criticized in a 2010 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report entitled: "Protesting as a Terrorist Offense."

Meanwhile, Turkish authorities turn a blind eye to actual terrorist activities in, and on behalf of, the country. Ankara does nothing to prevent ISIS from selling Yazidi women and children in Turkey; allows unspecified numbers of people to use Turkish territory as a point of entrance into Syria and Iraq to join ISIS or other jihadist groups; hosts and aids Hamas, a terrorist organization that proudly targets civilians and vows to obliterate Israel; and enables jihadi terrorism through the oil trade.

Turkey, a NATO ally that considers itself a worthy candidate for EU membership, warmly welcomes and assists terrorists who commit genocidal crimes against humanity, yet persecutes non-violent academics and journalists whose opinions differ from those propagated by the regime. The inversion is not only surreal; it is deadly.

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Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist born and raised in Turkey. She is presently based in Washington D.C.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12124/terrorism-turkish-style

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Syria: The Putin-Erdogan Summit Was a Missed Opportunity - Amir Taheri

by Amir Taheri

With victory over the so-called Islamic Caliphate now almost complete, the US would be ill-advised to throw away its laurels and hand the trophy to rivals and adversaries in the region.

• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gives Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is asserting himself as the arbiter of Syria's future, an "Islamic" cover.
• The Putin-Erdogan tandem's aim is to marginalize Iran's role in Syria and to encourage US President Donald Trump's penchant for withdrawal from the Syrian quagmire.
• With victory over the so-called Islamic Caliphate now almost complete, the US would be ill-advised to throw away its laurels and hand the trophy to rivals and adversaries in the region.

Earlier this week Russian President Vladimir Putin, still beaming from his re-election victory, tried to heighten his global profile with a much-advertised "summit" with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

At the tactical level, Putin and Erdogan need each other.

Erdogan gives Putin, who is asserting himself as the arbiter of Syria's future, an "Islamic" cover to counter claims that Russia, having bombed large parts of Syria into rubble and killed tens of thousands of civilians, is now at war with Islam. It is no accident that Kremlin's recent "advice" to Muslim preachers in mosques across the Russian federation includes the claims that Putin's moves in Syria are backed by Erdogan.

For his part Erdogan, too, needs Putin a tactical level. It was Putin who told his protégé Bashar al-Assad not to press a claim for control of Syrian Kurdish areas annexed by Turkey in recent operations. Russian forces in Syria looked the other way as Turkish forces carved out the Syrian cordon sanitaire that Erdogan wanted.

It was also thanks to a nod and a wink from Putin that the mullahs of Tehran suddenly ceased their initially violent denunciation of Turkey for annexing chunks of Syrian territory. Furthermore, Erdogan, as any middleweight player in a power game knows, needed a big power protector against another big power, in this case the United States.

More importantly, perhaps, both Putin and Erdogan needed each other to complete Iran's exclusion from the top table on Syria, a process that started in 2015 when Putin rode in to claim the title of protector for what was left of Assad's ramshackle regime. A group of Iranian parliamentarians who visited Damascus recently were surprised to find posters celebrating the "victory" of Putin and Assad with no mention of Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, let alone Gen. Qassem Soleimani the self-promoting the poster-boy of "Imamist Jihad".

Another poster distributed in Deir az-Zour puts giant images of Putin and Assad in the front section with small images of Khamenei and the Lebanese Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in the background.

To hammer in the point that we are witnessing a two-man show, Putin and Erdogan did all they could to be seen together, announced grandiose plans for a nuclear industry in Turkey, re-hashed old projects for oil and gas pipelines, and even evoked the sale of Russian military hardware to Turkey.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left) with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Akkuyu nuclear power plant in Turkey, April 3, 2018. (Image source: kremlin.ru)

The Putin-Erdogan tandem's aim is to marginalize Iran's role in Syria, to encourage US President Donald Trump's penchant for withdrawal from the Syrian quagmire and to allow no space for any Arab initiative on Syria. With the remnants of the Assad regime reduced to irrelevance, Putin and Erdogan hope to seize sole control of Syria's destiny.

But how realistic is such an ambition? The short answer is: not very!

There is no doubt that Iran's role in Syria has been dramatically reduced while Putin has denied Iran its own share of Syrian territory in which to set up a permanent base through which to maintain control over Lebanon. Iran's fundamental weakness in Syria is that it has no indigenous constituency. Turkey can count on the sympathy of the Muslim Arab majority in Syria while Russia is cast as protector of the Alawite and Christian minorities there.

Iran, however, cannot count on any such popular support base. But Iran remains the biggest paymaster for the Assad regime. In fact, before travelling to Turkey for a mini-meeting with Putin and Erdogan, Rouhani had hinted that he would demand that Russia and Turkey make a serious contribution to the cost of keeping Syria "safe from terrorists". Iran's other asset in Syria is the estimated 40,000 mercenaries it has recruited from Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

That makes Iran the second largest military force on the ground after the remnants of Assad's army and ancillaries'.

Putin and Erdogan would be mistaken if they think they could easily exclude Iran from the Syrian scene.

Putin and Erdogan would be equally wrong if they take a Trumpian tweet as a US decision to withdraw from Syria. It may be hard to guess Trump's next move on Syria or, indeed, on any other issues. But, right now, political, diplomatic, economic and military facts on the ground point to an American comeback to the Middle East as a major player. With victory over the so-called Islamic Caliphate now almost complete, the US would be ill-advised to throw away its laurels and hand the trophy to rivals and adversaries in the region.

Putin and Erdogan may also be underestimating the ability of Arab states to seek a leading role in shaping Syria's future. The prospect of a Turko-Russian tandem to dominate the region, with Iran playing second violin, is unlikely to leave most Arab states indifferent.

Machiavellians may suggest that it is not so bad to let Putin and Erdogan, with the mullahs of Tehran hanging to their tailcoats, to remain bogged down in a Syria reduced to the status of an ungoverned territory consisting of mile after mile of rubble. With their economies in meltdown mode, Russia, Turkey and Iran are in no position to rebuild Syria into anything resembling a functioning state.

That immense task requires genuine international participation, which means an active role by the United States, the European Union, the Arab states; China and Japan among others.

Putin and Erdogan have not been able to forge a realistic policy on Syria. Such policy could only be based on one inclusion and one exclusion.

The inclusion part would aim at acknowledging the interests and concerns of all foreign powers as well as all domestic forces involved in the seven-year old imbroglio that country. Such inclusion need not take the model of the Berlin Conference on the division of colonies among major European powers. But it would have to accept cold realities on the ground at a time priority must be given to restoration of a measure of stability.

The exclusion part would have to apply to the Assad regime which is already no more than walking caricature of the undead, and to the remnants of its evil twin "ISIS".

Syria can be saved, but only if it is saved for all, starting with its martyrized people. This week we heard nothing from Putin and Erdogan to show that they understand that simple fact.

This article first appeared in Asharq Al Awsat

Amir Taheri, formerly editor of Iran's premier newspaper, Kayhan, before the Iranian revolution of 1979, is a prominent author based on Europe. He is the Chairman of Gatestone Europe.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12135/putin-erdogan-summit

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Are We Rolling Downhill Like a Snowball Headed for Hell? - Bruce Thornton

by Bruce Thornton

The kernel of wisdom in the "declinism" impulse.

Country music legend Merle Haggard released “Are the Good Times Really Over” in 1982. Like his earlier songs “Okie from Muskogee” and “Fightin’ Side of Me,” Haggard was looking back to simpler times, before the sixties revolution began the two-bit Nietzschean “transvaluation of all values,” especially the disdain for traditional virtues like patriotism and faith. Progressives and leftists dismissed Haggard as a naïve hillbilly at best, and a white racist pining for his lost privilege at worst. 

But the question in Haggard’s chorus still persists in our culture and politics, with prophecies of doom coming from both ends of the political spectrum. So, are “the good times really over”? Or is anxiety over declinism misplaced?

After all, worrying over decline is universal. In constitutional governments, much of it comes from the melodramatic hyperbole of political rhetoric. Ever since ancient Athens, prophesizing doom is a way to frighten voters into choosing one party and set of policies instead of another. After the disappointment of 1968, the left-leaning Democrats particularly turned to hysteria and hyperbole to salve their wounds and jump-start the “fundamental transformation of America.” Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and his son were all cast as portents of the coming doom: the destruction of civil liberties, the dismantling of the democratic order, nuclear annihilation, the creation of a plutocracy––these are just a few of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse predicted by Dems. 

The ongoing attacks on Donald Trump are just a more hysterical and hyperbolic version of this age-old staple of electoral politics. From Robert Kagan’s “this is how fascism comes to America,” to Thomas Friedman’s looming “constitutional crisis,” bipartisan disappointment seasoned with class prejudice conjures up these signs of imminent doom that only the elite political class can ward off. Yet for now, the resilience of the Constitutional order has made theses Jeremiads mere sound and fury.

Another, more insidious response to declinism is to remind us how good we in the West have it. Popular explainer Steven Pinker reminds us just how much progress has been made over the last 150 years. Electricity, homes networked to treated water and sewers, antibiotics, pain-killers, communication and transportation technologies, governments based on consent rather than force, historically unprecedented levels of personal freedom, modern medicine, the wider distribution of wealth, the decline in inter-personal violence and large-scale wars have all created more leisure, more nutrition, longer, safer, and healthier lives, and greater freedom from the tyrannies of nature, prejudice, and irrational superstition. Even the most ardent declinist would not want to return to 1870, before these innovations began their development. 

Yet just because declinism is a political cliché, and our material lives are so good, doesn’t mean that decline is just the product of electoral calculations, or ignorance of our good fortune, or our susceptibility to making judgments based on the flood of dramatic images in which we are daily submerged. Cultures and civilizations do decline and disappear, and the causes are not just material, such as depletion of resources or destruction by invaders. More important are the ideas and beliefs of a culture that weaken it from within, causing the loss of faith and confidence in who we are as a people, what we believe, and why we prefer to live as we do. 

History shows us that certain political ideas can undermine a society’s cohesion, its stabilizing narrative and belief in its goodness that motivate a people to die and kill in its defense. Leftist ideas like radical egalitarianism, centralized power, or collectivism, for example, are contrary to human nature, and so must resort to force and tyranny in order to realize those ideals. The cost of this ambition is political freedom, human rights, respect for life, moral vigor, personal autonomy and dignity, and self-rule according to the law––the foundational ideas of the West, and the reasons why the West is for now so globally dominant. 

Policies and ideas that chip away at these goods, that denigrate the belief in the superiority of a life lived by those ideals, and that marginalize patriotic affection for one’s way of life, will lead to an insidious process of decline. At that point, as we see in Western Europe today, once the will to defend one’s civilization and to nourish its foundational goods is lost, political-social cohesion begins to weaken and eventually fragment. The process is slow, and its effects often not visible until the disease is well advanced. 

The modern West displays numerous symptoms of this civilizational failure of nerve. Secularism has triumphed, sweeping away the spiritual foundations of our virtues, principles, and morals. Traditional wisdom, the “democracy of the dead,” as Chesterton called it, is scorned and denigrated by the “small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” Our history and its heroes are scrutinized for sins to be judged and condemned, weakening their role as exemplars of our cultural achievements. Martial valor and service have become the purview of a small portion of our citizenry, and satisfying the people’s desire for butter rather than guns is the highest goal of our political leaders. 

The pleasures of the body, subsidized by our unprecedented wealth, have replaced the development of the mind’s critical judgment, leaving us prey to intellectual charlatanism and fads. Families are broken, leaving children adrift to be raised by the streets or popular culture. Nature is simultaneously worshiped as a threatened mother, even as its truths about sex identity and the costs of sexual license are cast aside. The future of our civilization is a matter of indifference to people who don’t want children and the sacrifices they require. The tragic truths of the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions have been replaced by the therapeutic cult of personal feelings and sentimental regard even for the enemies sworn to our destruction.

In short, what makes us human, our minds and the cultures they have projected into the world, has been reduced to the merely material. That is why the Panglossian argument of a vulgar materialist like Pinker is more dangerous than political rhetoric, and in the end is a distortion of creatures with minds and free will, who do not live by bread alone, no matter how various and abundant it may be. Without something more than the mere material, we cannot be truly fulfilled. We will retreat into sordid hedonism and cheap sentimentalism, living only for the self, averse to risk and sacrifice, and willing to barter away our freedom if only we can consume for one more day. 

If history teaches us anything, it is that such a people will be overwhelmed by those who still believe that there is something, even if that something is evil, worth killing and dying for. Political speech that exhorts us to beware of bad ideas and to fight against their destructive consequences is not just a campaign device, but the first duty of a true leader who sincerely cares for his country and its future.

For decline, as the cliché goes, is a choice, not a destiny. Haggard ends his song with some good advice: “Stop rolling downhill like a snowball headed for hell/Stand up for the flag and let’s all ring the liberty bell.” Simplistic and corny, the jaded sophisticates no doubt think, typical of retrograde “deplorables.” But that doesn’t make it any less true than was Churchill’s rousing call after the Munich debacle for a “supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor” so that “we rise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.” 


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: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/269803/are-we-rolling-downhill-snowball-headed-hell-bruce-thornton

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The Left Kills an American President Twice - Daniel Greenfield

by Daniel Greenfield

The Left is not fighting racism, sexism, homophobia, income inequality or war. It is fighting us.

First, Obama renamed Mt. McKinley. Now the Arcata City Council in California wants to tear down a statue of President William McKinley. 

“Put a rope around its neck and pull it down,” a leftist activist shouted.

There were similar protests last year in Honolulu at McKinley High School, a push to remove a McKinley statue in Massachusetts, and a McKinley statue was repeatedly vandalized in San Francisco. 

If there’s any Republican president who would appear an unlikely target for the left, it’s McKinley.

Unlike the Confederate generals previously targeted by the Taliban left, McKinley began the Civil War as a Union private and ended it as a major. At Antietam, he delivered food to his men while under fire.

Suffragists and African-Americans campaigned for him. Susan B. Anthony had celebrated her birthday at the White House. He had vowed to secure the rights of “every citizen, black or white, rich or poor.”

But the left is coming for President McKinley again.

On September 6, 1901, a radical leftist murdered the President of the United States. 

Like Lee Harvey Oswald, Leon Czolgosz was a shiftless radical. His target was a popular president who was at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo to deliver a speech defending his plan to defend and expand the American economy. Like Trump, McKinley wanted to use tariffs as leverage for mutual trade agreements with other countries that would benefit American workers and industries.

His mission was, “gaining for America a supremacy in the markets of the world.”

"The good work will go on. It cannot be stopped," President McKinley had declared in his final speech. "These buildings will disappear," he said, referring to the Temple of Music in which he was to be assassinated, "this creation of art and beauty and industry will perish from sight, but their influence will remain to, 'make it live beyond its short living, with praises and Thanksgiving.'"

It was the age of anarchist terror. But McKinley was innocent of the leftist terror threat. "Why should I? No one would wish to hurt me,” he told his secretary, dismissing concerns for his safety.

As the Star-Spangled Banner began to play, the president started shaking hands with fairgoers.  Czolgosz approached with a gun hidden in a handkerchief. As President McKinley reached to shake his hand, the leftist radical shot him twice. The crowd grabbed the terrorist while the wounded president urged them to be gentle with him. “Don’t hurt him,” he said, referring to him as "some poor misguided fellow."

”My wife, be careful how you tell her—oh be careful,” he pleaded.

The First Lady had been ill for some time and had nearly died during their travels. And the president feared that hearing about his assassination would do her in.

That year, Ida McKinley said that few would know, “what it is like to have a wife sick, complaining, always an invalid for twenty-five years … and yet never a word of unkindness has ever passed his lips. He is just the same tender, thoughtful, kind gentleman I knew when first he came and sought my hand.”

Eight days later he was dead.

Czolgosz credited a speech by leftist activist Emma Goldman with inspiring his crime. In a pamphlet written after the assassination, she denounced McKinley as a capitalist and praised his killer for having “wounded government in its most vital spot”. She concluded her screed by writing that her “heart goes out to him in deep sympathy, and to all the victims of a system of inequality, and the many who will die the forerunners of a better, nobler, grander life.” Terrorists like Czolgosz who would die for the cause.

After President McKinley’s murder, statues of the murdered Republican went up around the country: towns, schools, parks and other locations were named or renamed in his memory. 

But the left wasn’t satisfied with murdering President McKinley once. It’s trying to kill him all over again. The radical hatred that drove Czolgosz to kill a good man is still howling in the minds of the left.

McKinley’s death may be ancient history to most, but the left remembers its comrades and enemies.

Under Bill Clinton, the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument to Czolgosz's fellow anarchist terrorists was designated a National Historic Landmark, while the statue memorializing the police officers they murdered had already been banished to obscurity after being vandalized by the Weathermen.

In approving the “Martyrs’ Monument”, the National Park Service described socialist terrorists like August Spies who had preached the violent overthrow of the United States and its replacement by a Socialist tyranny as "martyrs" and “dissenters" fighting for an "eight-hour workday".

There is a direct continuity between the leftist terrorists who murdered 7 police officers in 1886 Chicago and earned a National Historic Landmark designation from the Clintons for their act, Leon Czolgosz’s murder of President McKinley, and the Wall Street Bombing of 1920 which killed 38 people and wounded another 143, and all the later acts of leftist terror from the Weathermen to the present day.

The Weathermen understood that when they bombed a statue memorializing the murdered officers in 1969. Obama understood that when he renamed McKinley toward the end of his regime. 

The Arcata City Council understands it today.

The left doesn’t pull down statues because they memorialize racist men. Marx, Che, Margaret Sangers and the rest of their heroes could give the most bigoted Klansman a run for his sheets.

Nobody’s pulling down their statues or tossing out their t-shirts. 

The left began pulling down Confederate statues because they were the easiest. Few people really wanted to defend them. And the most vocal defenders were the racists who played into their hands. 

And then came Columbus, Washington and Jefferson.

Now McKinley. 

Why pull down a statue of President McKinley?  For the same reason that Czolgosz shot him. 

“No one would wish to hurt me,” President McKinley had said. But he didn’t understand the enemy. Personal decency, kindness and compassion were not defenses against leftist violence. 

They were an opening and an incitement to violence.

In his confession, Czolgosz wrote that, “I read books on socialism and met a great many Socialists.” 

"In the meetings I attended I heard people talk about the duty they were under to educate the people against the president form of government and they should all they could to change the government." 

That was also Lee Harvey Oswald’s story. He read books on socialism and looked for someone to kill.

The left is not fighting racism, sexism, homophobia, income inequality or war. It is fighting us. It is not tearing down statues because they memorialize racists, but because they memorialize Americans.

It isn’t enough for them to have murdered President McKinley. They have to destroy his memory. The Communists in the Soviet Union didn’t just kill people; they erased them from photos and books. They made them non-persons. Their goal was to achieve a total control of the present through the past.

When Czolgosz spoke of replacing a government, it was a total replacement. He murdered the man, his comrades today are trying to eliminate his memory so that there will never have been a McKinley.

Do it enough times, tear down enough statues, rewrite enough books, teach enough lies and there will have never been an America. 

The cult of the left worships history as the tea leaves forecasting an inevitable future. It is convinced that if it can rewrite history, it will write the future. It does this, as everything else, through lies, special pleading, hysterical outrage, self-righteous threats and finally the inevitable violence.

“No one would wish to hurt me,” President McKinley had said. Czolgosz, Obama and the Arcata City Council disagree. They want to hurt him. And all the rest of us. 

And if they get their way, they will bully us, enslave us, kill us and finally erase us from history.


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

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/269812/left-kills-american-president-twice-daniel-greenfield

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