Palestinians: Shooting a Pregnant Woman and Lying - Bassam Tawil

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by Bassam Tawil

According to the logic of Abbas's ministry, Israeli soldiers searching for terrorists is an "act of terrorism," but not the shooting of a pregnant woman and six other Israeli civilians standing at a bus stop.

• According to the logic of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Ministry of Information, Israeli soldiers searching for terrorists is an "act of terrorism," but not the shooting of a pregnant woman and six other Israeli civilians standing at a bus stop.
• The message that Abbas is sending to the world is: How dare these Israelis take security measures to stop terrorist attacks against their soldiers and civilians!
• Finally, we might mention an important detail about which Abbas and his representatives are keeping their mouths shut tight: the Israeli crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank actually serves the interests of the Palestinian Authority. Without this ongoing crackdown, Hamas would have long ago overthrown Abbas's regime and seized control of the West Bank.

According to the logic of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Ministry of Information, Israeli soldiers searching for terrorists is an "act of terrorism," but not the shooting of a pregnant woman and six other Israeli civilians standing at a bus stop. (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

Three Israelis have been killed in the latest wave of Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank in the past week. The victims are two soldiers and a four-day-old baby who was prematurely born after his mother was shot and wounded in a drive-by shooting attack carried out by Palestinian terrorists.

The terrorist attacks took place near the West Bank city of Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority (PA), where President Mahmoud Abbas and most of his senior officials live and work. The car used in the drive-by shooting, which took place outside Ofra settlement, was later discovered by the Israeli army in the Ain Musbah neighbourhood of Ramallah, a few hundred meters from the private residence and headquarters of Abbas.

No one is suggesting that Abbas knew in advance of the terrorist attacks. However, the response of Abbas and his top officials to the attacks raises serious doubts about their purported commitment to peace with Israel.

Hours before the Ofra attack, Abbas said in a speech before leaders of his Fatah faction that he remains committed to "peaceful popular resistance" and diplomacy. "We don't believe in weapons, and we don't believe in rockets," Abbas said in a reference to the rockets launched by Hamas and other terrorist groups from the Gaza Strip toward Israel.

The same Abbas who says he is opposed to the use of weapons and rockets has nonetheless failed to condemn the terrorist attacks in which these three Israelis were killed. Instead, his officials and he have been condemning Israel on a daily basis for cracking down on the terrorists.

The anti-Israel incitement began almost immediately after the Ofra attack, when Abbas and his officials in Fatah and the Palestinian Authority began denouncing Israel for sending soldiers into Ramallah to search for the terrorists.

Instead of condemning the murders at Ofra, Abbas's Ministry of Information issued a strong condemnation of the Israeli army for entering the offices of the Palestinian news agency Wafa. The ministry described the entry of the soldiers as an "act of terrorism" and called on the international community to hold Israel accountable for its "aggression" against the Palestinians.

According to the logic of Abbas's ministry, Israeli soldiers searching for terrorists is an "act of terrorism," but not the shooting of a pregnant woman and six other Israeli civilians standing at a bus stop.

The Israeli army did not enter Ramallah because Israel wants to "reoccupy" the city and reinstall the Israeli military government. This was a limited operation that lasted for a few hours and was in the context of the manhunt against the Palestinian terrorists. Abbas and his senior officials, however, have since been waging a fierce campaign of incitement against Israel and spreading lies and ridiculous conspiracy theories.

Consider, for example, what PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat, who describes himself as the "chief Palestinian negotiator," had to say about the Israeli authorities' pursuit of the terrorists. Erekat, in a bizarre statement, claimed that the Israeli "intrusion into Ramallah was carried out with the backing of US President Donald Trump." Erekat, too, called on the international community to hold Israel accountable for its "crimes" and to provide international protection for the Palestinians.

What is strange about Erekat's statement is that he is suggesting that Israel needed permission from Trump to send its troops into Ramallah to catch the terrorists who murdered three people. What is also strange is that Erekat believes that the Israeli attempt to capture terrorists is a "crime" for which Israel should be held accountable in the global arena.

Yet, the bizarre PA statements continue. Take the remark made by Osama Qawassmeh, a senior Fatah official and spokesmen, who claimed that the Israeli military operation in Ramallah was actually aimed against Abbas himself. For Qawassmeh, the Israeli army "stormed" Ramallah because of Abbas's rejection of Trump's yet-to-be-announced plan for peace in the Middle East. As if that were not enough, the Fatah official went on to argue that the Israeli army's attempt to catch the terrorists was also linked to Abbas's opposition to a recent US resolution at the UN General Assembly that condemns Hamas for repeatedly firing rockets at Israel and inciting violence.

This absurd charge reflects the twisted logic of Abbas and his representatives in Ramallah. For them, the real problem is not the shooting of a pregnant woman or the killing of two soldiers. Instead, the Palestinian leaders, including Abbas, are pointing an accusatory finger at Israel for having the audacity to send its soldiers to capture Palestinian terrorists and prevent additional attacks against Israeli citizens. Needless to say, the Israeli soldiers who entered Ramallah never went close to Abbas's office or home and certainly had no intention of targeting him or any of his officials. In fact, not a single Palestinian Authority or Fatah official was arrested or harmed by the Israeli troops.

Does this Fatah official think the rest of the world is so stupid as to believe that Israel would put the lives of its soldiers at risk by sending them to Ramallah just because Abbas has rejected a peace plan that no one has seen or knows anything about? Did any of the soldiers who entered Ramallah knock on Abbas's door and hand him a letter saying he must accept Trump's unseen plan or else he would be punished? Of course not.

Here is another example of the lies and conspiracy theories promoted by Abbas's officials in the past few days. Mahmoud Habbash, who serves as Abbas's religious affairs adviser, said in response to the Israeli security measures against terrorism, that Israel and Hamas were colliding to "flip the table" in the West Bank to pave the way for the implementation of Trump's upcoming "deal of the century."

It is also worth noting that Hamas has publicly admitted that it was behind the recent spate of terrorist attacks in the West Bank. Yet according to Habbash, Israel's crackdown on terrorism is nothing but a conspiracy concocted by Israel and Hamas to undermine the Palestinian Authority and pave the way for "passing the deal of the century, which is aimed at liquidating the Palestinian cause."

Abbas's adviser, however, is convinced that the world is so stupid as to believe that Israel and Hamas were together behind the recent terrorist attacks. This is yet another blood libel against Israel from the Abbas and his entourage. Not only is this statement a lie as well as an insult to common sense, it almost seems lifted from a comedy show. "Almost", that is, because these apparently laughable remarks refer to a series of terrorist attacks that have claimed the lives of Israelis. As such, the statements should be taken seriously, and seen in the context of the Palestinian leadership's anti-Israel campaign of incitement and fabrications. It is precisely this sort of inflammatory rhetoric that prompts Palestinian terrorists to continue their attacks on Israel.

Instead of blaming Hamas for the terrorist attacks, Abbas's office chose to hold Israel responsible for the upsurge of violence in the West Bank. "The climate crafted by Israel's policy of recurring incursions into Palestinian cities, as well as incitement against President Abbas, has led to this round of violence, which we reject," said a statement issued by the Palestinian president's office.

Again, this statement shows that Abbas considers Israel's anti-terrorism measures, and not Hamas-engineered attacks, as the source of unrest and violence. The message that Abbas is sending to the world is: How dare these Israelis take security measures to stop terrorist attacks against their civilians and soldiers!

Abbas is obviously afraid of condemning his rivals in Hamas for waging the latest wave of terrorist attacks in the West Bank. He knows that the day he condemns the shooting of a pregnant Israeli woman, his people will rise up against him and charge him with collaborating with Israel. But Abbas has only himself to blame: his ongoing incitement and lies against Israel have made it too dangerous for him to utter a word against Palestinian terrorists.

Finally, we might mention an important detail about which Abbas and his representatives are keeping their mouths shut tight: the Israeli crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank actually serves the interests of the Palestinian Authority. Without this ongoing crackdown, Hamas would have long ago overthrown Abbas's regime and seized control of the West Bank. It is the Israeli soldiers stationed some hundreds of meters from Abbas's office and residence that is keeping him safe and sound. As inconvenient a truth as this is for Abbas and his spin doctors in Ramallah, it is the truth, nonetheless.

Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13431/palestinians-shooting-pregnant-woman

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Mahmoud Abbas Contradicts the Palestinian Narrative on Refugees - Amb. Dore Gold

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by Amb. Dore Gold

Abbas is saying that the Arab states caused the Palestinians to flee with the false promise that they would come back. While Jewish leaders begged them to stay.

Institute for Contemporary Affairs

Founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation

Click here for more Diplomatic Dispatch videos.

It has been axiomatic for the Palestinian narrative that as a result of the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, the Palestinian Arab refugees were forcibly expelled by Israeli forces from their towns and villages. This has been the official line appearing in Palestinian school textbooks and molding the attitudes of generations of young people.

For example those textbooks assert:

Palestine’s war ended with a catastrophe that is unprecedented in history, when Zionist gangs stole Palestine and expelled its people from their cities, their villages, their lands, and their houses and established the State of Israel.

That’s from an Arabic language textbook in 2006, grade 12.

Here’s another quote:

Let us think and discuss: the impact of the Palestinians’ forced emigration at the Zionists’ hands in 1948.

That’s from a textbook of geography studies, grade 11, written just recently in 2017.
A third quote:

“The Palestinian refugee camps were formed because of the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Zionist gangs.

That’s from a mathematics text, grade 11, in 2017.

Despite the fact that the 1948 war was caused by the invasion by five Arab armies into the nascent State of Israel, the emerging Palestinian narrative put the blame squarely upon the Israeli side. The idea that the Palestinian “exodus” was caused by the orders of the Palestinian Arab leaders or was connected to the invasion by Arab armies has been rejected out of hand by prominent writers like Edward Said in his book The Question of Palestine. 

That is why the recent words of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, at the PLO Consultative Council on December 9, 2018, are so significant. 

Looking back historically, Abbas declared:

Everyone started to speak in our name, in our absence. Therefore we could do nothing. And you recall, if you remember, that in 1948, when the “Nakba,” or catastrophe, took place, we weren’t a party to it. We were taken out, and we were told, after a week we will return you.

Elsewhere he was even more explicit on this point. Back in March 1976 in the Palestinian publication Falastin El-Thawra that came out in Beirut, he said that the Arab armies forced the Palestinians to emigrate and to leave their homeland.

In other words, Abbas is saying that the Arab states caused the Palestinians to flee with the false promise that they would come back.

The truth is that throughout the State of Israel, in places like Haifa, Tiberias, and the villages of the coastal plain, Israeli leaders told the Palestinians to stay. They begged them to stay!

Of course there were cases in which Palestinians left as a by-product of the war. But as Israel historian Benny Morris argued in Ha’aretz on July 29, 2017, Israel had no “expulsion policy” in 1948. 

Yet the notion that Israel had been born in sin because of its supposed role in the “ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinian Arabs has persisted and fueled the BDS movement on American campuses and in other places, spreading hate against Israel to this very day.


Ambassador  Dore Gold has served as President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs since 2000. From June 2015 until October 2016 he served as Director-General of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Previously he served as Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN (1997-1999), and as an advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Source: http://jcpa.org/video/mahmoud-abbas-contradicts-the-palestinian-narrative-on-refugees/

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Visa/Mastercard and the Assault on Civil Rights - Wallace Nunn

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by Wallace Nunn

As simple and as faceless as a lethal injection.

Every day there is a new report about how Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and other giants of social media censor content, banish certain commentators for incorrect views, and otherwise work in a steady if unsystematic way to homogenize political opinion within an acceptably progressive bandwidth.  Ideas are scoured for “racism”—as contentiously defined by the intellectual stylebook of the hard left Southern Poverty Law Center, which the media have set up as an “authority” on hate speech; freedom of speech is seen a nuisance rather than a guarantee of personal liberty and true diversity of opinion.

But there is an even more sinister threat to the first amendment than the social media, a threat that operates in a stealth way in the most crucial arena of our economic system.  It is corporate giants Master Card and Visa, which now use their unparalleled financial power to determine what speech should be allowed and what speech should be silenced.

Most Americans use a credit or debit card everyday and take these two corporations as much for granted as the light switch or the automobile ignition.  We buy things with their cards ranging from the annual vacations to the daily groceries. These two interlocked corporations are the drum majors marching us into a cashless society.  They are powers unto themselves, but their eminence rests on our money and the fees they exact to accommodate our transactions. 

The cards they issue are even more critical to the vendors whom they pay. Without the ability to accept charges to these cards as payment many businesses would in effect be out of business.

Unlike the comparatively clumsy and very public efforts of the social media to erase “offensive”—all too often a synonym for conservative—opinion, the cognate machinations of Visa/Mastercard take place more remotely and without response in the dark space of the mundane financial transaction.

It is as simple and as faceless as a lethal injection: An individual who wants to support an organization online makes the digital donation and is then informed that Visa/Mastercard will not process it.  Neither the individual nor the organization he wishes to support are told that it is on a blacklist, let alone informed how or got there or how to get off.  The donor is denied his right to put his money where his mouth is.  The organization he supports is condemned to death by strangulation in the dark in a world designed by Kafka.

The Freedom Center had such an experience a few months ago when online donations were overnight peremptorily refused by Visa/Mastercard with no reason given and no protest accepted.  We were able to create enough noise about this injustice—in the media and with the threat of legislative attention—that the credit card giants turned the power back on just as capriciously as they had turned it off.

We were lucky. Robert Spencer, whose jihadwatch.org is one of the indispensable sites for understanding the intentions and the threat of Islamic terrorism, has been shut down from receiving supporters’ donations for several weeks now, and is forced to try to keep jihadwatch going on a shoestring while Visa/Mastercard imperiously ignores demand letters and threats of court action from his attorneys.  The anti Semitic Nation of Islam’s credit card donations are processed; the anti Islamist jihadwatch’s are not.

This oligopoly acts with the faceless finality of an IRS lien when it sets itself up as lawmaker, judge and jury with the power to decide which speech should be allowed and which should be shut down.  It kills free speech not by arguing against the ideas it disapproves of, but by the silence of the arbitrary act, using the financial system to accomplish the deed.

An analogue to what Visa/Mastercard has done and is doing was once banned by the 1964 Civil Rights Act which, among other things, gave U.S. citizens, specifically African Americans, the right to sit at a lunch counter and have a sandwich the way any other America could. This opening of public accommodations to African Americans in effect told private businesses that they were accommodations open to the public and that all people, regardless of race, comprised that public and that they could not deny the civil rights of anyone seeking to use their facility.

Can there be any doubt that MasterCard and the other major card companies are similarly a public accommodation? Over half the people of the United States who own a debit or credit card use as their sole method for paying bills. (Most of the other half uses them too, just not as frequently.) In 2015 there were 69.5 billion debit card payments with a value of $2.56 trillion and 33.8 billion credit card payments with a value of $3.16 trillion--together adding up to around 6 trillion in an economy of 19 trillion.

This is a very sizable public accommodation. More importantly it is immense power, power that can be and is being used to shut down the civil rights of people who want to support the speech of the Freedom Center, Jihadwatch, other conservative groups and anyone else in our political universe.  

Visa/Mastercard tell the people whose rights they strangle that they can always get funds to the organizations whose speech they want heard by other means.  That is true---people can write a check and mail it or make a cash withdrawal from their bank and drive it to the offices of the organization they support  just as black people in the South in the 1950s could have eaten at some other lunch counter in a more remote part of town. 

The money these corporate giants hold belongs to private individuals who have a fundamental civil right to direct that money—which they pay the oligopoly a handsome fee to distribute to organizations they approve of and for the opinions they want heard in the public square.  Their money is their speech.  When they hit the “donate” button on a nonprofit’s website they are saying, “I believe….”as surely as if they were holding a placard in a march or writing to a legislator.  

We have come to a point in our history when government must once against step in to preserve rights and prevent wrongs just as it did in 1964. Civil Rights are as much imperiled now as they were then. The technology revolution has undeniably brought much that is good and fruitful, but as it has evolved, this revolution has developed a dark side that concentrates increasing power in the hands of fewer people.  These people control vast amounts of information. The information can tell the most of intimate of details from what we spend, what we bought with what we spend, what our daily commute is, who we may like or dislike, and, yes, our political leanings.  Hardly a day goes by without some news of an intrusion into private lives which are ransacked and violated for others’ profit.

And in this context, Visa/MasterCard must be seen not merely as the hygienic facilitators of the billions of daily transactions that are the white sound of our financial life, but as an oligopoly that has converted its privileged position into political power exercised opaquely and without control or justification.  

Congress should immediately investigate the imperious intrusions of Visa/MasterCard into consumers’ privacy and draft legislation that would prevent this cartel from violating their civil right to use their money as a form of speech.

 

Wallace Nunn is a member of the David Horowitz Freedom Center Board of Directors.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272269/visamastercard-and-assault-civil-rights-wallace-nunn

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Tensions rise as Israeli, Lebanese soldiers face off on northern border - Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff

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by Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff

Lebanese soldiers on alert after IDF troops roll out barbed wire along border • UNIFIL troops deploy in the area "to prevent misunderstandings, maintain stability"

Lebanese soldiers went on the alert on Monday after Israeli troops rolled out barbed wire along the border.

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said the incident occurred when Israeli troops installed 200 meters (660 feet) of wire.

Lebanese troops protested that the wire was placed on their side of the border.

The IDF said its troops were placing concertina wire "adjacent to the Blue Line" – the border demarcation ‎between Lebanon and Israel set by the U.N. – when the standoff occurred. It said the wire was installed entirely in Israeli territory, in coordination with U.N. peacekeepers.

"No violent incidents were reported," it said.

Andrea Tenenti, spokesman for the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, said that after reports of a "standoff" between Lebanese and Israeli troops along the Blue Line, "UNIFIL troops were deployed in the area to defuse the situation, prevent misunderstandings and maintain stability."

"The situation in the area is now calm and our troops are on the ground," Tenenti said.

Lebanon's Al-Kataeb newspaper reported Monday that ‎the Lebanese army had forced the IDF to cease its ‎operations near the Blue Line and had demanded two ‎points along the border that were apparently damaged ‎by the excavations be repaired before work was ‎allowed to continue. ‎

The Lebanese troops reportedly relayed their demand ‎through UNIFIL. ‎

The newspaper said the Israeli troops halted ‎the work.

But an IDF statement said, "Operations ‎along the border continue as planned, both on overt and covert levels."‎

Earlier Monday, U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon said that at least two of the four tunnels discovered by Israel as part of an ongoing operation to neutralize terror tunnels dug under the security fence by the Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah were in violation of the cease-fire agreement that ended the 2006 war between the two countries.

UNIFIL said it has been investigating the tunnels uncovered in the Israeli operation launched earlier this month, which has been limited to Israel's side of the border.

"This is a matter of serious concern and UNIFIL technical investigations continue," the peacekeeping force said in a statement. UNIFIL said two tunnels cross the Blue Line and called on Lebanese authorities to take "urgent follow-up" actions.

"Based on UNIFIL's independent assessment, UNIFIL has so far confirmed the existence of all the four tunnels close to the Blue Line in northern Israel. After further technical investigations conducted independently in accordance with its mandate, UNIFIL at this stage can confirm that two of the tunnels cross the Blue Line. These constitute violations of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701," the organization said in a statement.

Resolution 1701 brought an end to the Second Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006. It requires the parties to end hostilities and prohibits the presence of any armed group south of the Litani River in Lebanon apart from the central government's military, known as the Lebanese Armed Forces.

Israel has called on the international community to impose new sanctions on the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, the heavily armed mini-army with an arsenal of some 130,000 of rockets that can reach nearly every part of Israel.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun said earlier this month his government was ready to take necessary action following a full report from the peacekeeping force on the tunnels, without offering specifics.

In Beirut, Prime Minister Saad Hariri said Lebanon is committed to the full implementation of the cease-fire agreement and respect of the Blue Line. During a meeting with Gen. Stefano Del Col, the head of UNIFIL, Hariri said the Lebanese army will conduct patrols to deal "with any flaw in the implementation" of the cease-fire.

Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/12/18/tensions-rise-as-israeli-lebanese-soldiers-face-off-on-northern-border/

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Yellow Vest Riots Spread: Week Five - Bruce Bawer

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by Bruce Bawer

Perhaps the question should not be why Western Europeans are rioting but why they did not start rioting a long time ago.

• Across Western Europe, ordinary citizens feel ignored and condescended to by their political, business, academic, and media elites. Against the will of most of these citizens, their leaders are gradually surrendering their nations' sovereignty to the EU.
• Also against these citizens' will, their nations have been flooded with Muslim immigrants who embody a major cultural challenge, have caused massive social unrest, and represent a devastating economic burden.
• Although it is increasingly obvious that taxpayer-funded Islamization is leading Western Europe down the wrong path, the EU, which stands foursquare behind this disastrous development, refuses to reverse course.
• Perhaps the question should not be why Western Europeans are rioting but why they did not start rioting a long time ago.

"Yellow vest" protesters gather at Place de l'Opera on December 15, 2018 in Paris, France. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Paris has now seen its fifth weekend of street demonstrations by the so-called gilets jaunes, or "yellow vests," although reports suggest that things may be finally winding down. Meanwhile, the protests -- which in many instances rise to the level of riots, with innumerable examples of looting, vandalism, and arson – have spread. The last couple of weekends have seen disturbances in other major French cities, such as Toulouse, Bordeaux and Lyon, as well as in cities in the Low Countries, including Brussels, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Nijmegen and Maastricht. This weekend, in London, as the tension, confusion, and frustration surrounding Brexit have intensified and the possibility of a second referendum seemed to increase, yellow-vested protesters, most of them apparently supporters of Brexit, blocked major bridges and shut down streets in the city center.

As these displays of lawlessness have spread, ideas about the participants' motives have evolved. At first, it was reported that the protesters in France, far from being political extremists of the left or right, were ordinary citizens angered by new hikes in gas taxes. But even when President Emmanuel Macron yanked the tax increase, the turmoil continued. Why? Writing at Gatestone, David Brown noted that "[l]ower-middle class families are not poor enough to receive welfare benefits but have seen their income flat-line whilst cost-of-living and taxes have risen..... The French people feel screwed." Amir Taheri suggested that "the French, like most other people in rich countries, are simply bored, with a lot of time on their hands and little exciting to do." At PJ Media, Rick Moran opined that "the ordinary people who are paying for the grandiose schemes of the social planners in Brussels have had enough. And they are finally rising up to demand an end to it." For my part, I wondered whether this dramatic sign of popular discontent marked "the start of the Western European public's pushback against the elites' disastrous multicultural and globalist project."

The proliferation of the protests indicates, of course, that the demonstrators are motivated by anger over social, economic, and or cultural phenomena that are not confined to France. Earlier this month, the Dutch daily Het Parool said that Dutch protesters are opposed to the European Union, to immigration and to current efforts to put an end to "Zwarte Piet," an age-old Dutch Christmastime tradition that, as it involves putting on blackface, is now viewed by many observers as racist, even though the character in question is beloved. As one Dutch news site pointed out, "The Netherlands does not have a tradition of mass protests or mass strikes, like France or Belgium," which makes the spread of these activities to that country rather surprising, even though they have not reached anything like the scale of the uprisings in France.

The first thing one notices about the variety of motives cited in the media is that they are not unrelated. Anti-EU sentiment? Opposition to the huge immigrant tide? A major reason for anti-EU sentiment in Western Europe is resentment at the power of Brussels to force member states to take certain numbers of so-called refugees. Similarly, protesters who are angry over high taxes know very well that a great deal of their money is being used to support immigrants who become welfare clients the moment they enter the country.

One curious wrinkle: this weekend, thousands of people in yellow vests marched in Rome. These protesters, however, were looking-glass images of their counterparts to the north and west: while the French, Belgian, and Dutch agitators were mostly native Europeans, apparently fed up by governments that take too much from them and give them too little in return, the protesters in Rome were migrants and their supporters, who disapprove of Italy's new immigration law. In this instance, what we appear to be observing is a movement that, for whatever reasons, has decided to mimic the appearance of another movement that is, philosophically, pretty much its exact opposite.

These people in Rome, though, would appear to be the exception that proves the rule. Setting them aside, the more one reads about the supposedly varied concerns that animate the yellow vest protesters in France, Britain, and the Low Countries, the less varied they look. Across Western Europe, ordinary citizens feel ignored and condescended to by their political, business, academic, and media elites. Against the will of most of these citizens, their leaders are gradually surrendering their nations' sovereignty to the EU, which Macron has frankly admitted wanting to transform into a United States of Europe. Also against these citizens' will, their nations have been flooded with Muslim immigrants who embody a major cultural challenge, have caused massive social unrest, and represent a devastating economic burden.

Although it is increasingly obvious that taxpayer-funded Islamization is leading Western Europe down the wrong path, the EU, which stands foursquare behind this disastrous development, refuses to reverse course. Naturally, the powerless man and woman in the street are scared, resentful, and, yes, outraged. Perhaps the question should not be why Western Europeans are rioting but why they did not start rioting a long time ago.

Bruce Bawer is the author of the new novel The Alhambra (Swamp Fox Editions). His book While Europe Slept (2006) was a New York Times bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. His other books include A Place at the Table (1993), Stealing Jesus (1997), Surrender (2009), and The Victims' Revolution (2012). A native New Yorker, he has lived in Europe since 1998.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13433/yellow-vest-riots

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CAIR Sex Predator Changes Name, Heads to Pakistan - Joe Kaufman

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by Joe Kaufman

Parents beware: Ahmad Saleem may be coming to a town near you!

Former CAIR-Florida operative Ahmad Saleem’s two-year prison term stemming from his 2015 Orlando-area arrest, during a child sex sting operation, has expired. In an attempt to put the shame and scandal behind him or a way to further his illicit exploits from a different locale, Saleem looks to be starting anew elsewhere. He has even traveled outside the country, and he has changed his name on social media. Unsuspecting parents, both here and abroad, need to be made aware of his presence.

On the night of May 20, 2015, Ahmad Abrar Saleem was arrested in Clermont, Florida, a short distance from his Orlando home. Saleem was intending to meet the twelve-year-old girl he had been chatting with online, but instead, met Sheriff’s deputies waiting for him and 21 others in a child sex sting operation. He was charged with “use of computer to seduce/solicit/entice a child to commit sex act” and “travel to seduce, solicit, lure a child to commit sex act.” Ironically, the car he was driving, when apprehended, had a specialty license plate which read, “Invest in Children.”

In December 2016, Saleem was sentenced to two years behind bars in state prison.

This could not have come at a worse time for Saleem. His star was quickly on the rise within the radical Muslim community. He had just a couple years earlier served as President of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at the University of Central Florida (UCF) as well as the MSA National Service Director; he was being invited to speak at different Islamist conferences; and he had recently been named Orlando Regional Coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Indeed, merely two weeks prior to his arrest, Saleem posted on his Facebook page, where he now goes by the name “Ahmad Shaheen,” a photo of himself posing with 60 other CAIR leaders from around the nation. He is seated in the front row only five seats from CAIR’s founder and National Executive Director Nihad Awad. About the photo, he wrote, “Proud to upgrade this year to be sitting and being amongst such community giants… May Allah bless the CAIR National team across the country…”

CAIR has strong ties to Hamas, including financial ties. The group was founded by Hamas operatives and established within an umbrella organization run by then-global head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook.

CAIR’s Florida chapter reflects a similar pro-terror, anti-Israel ideology. In November 2012, CAIR’s future replacement for Saleem in Orlando, Rasha Mubarak, tweeted, “#LiesImTiredOfHearing Israel has the right to defend herself.” In July 2014, CAIR-Florida co-sponsored a pro-Hamas rally held outside the Israeli Consulate in downtown Miami, where rally goers repeatedly shouted, “We are Hamas” and “Let’s go Hamas.” And in August 2014, CAIR-Florida Executive Director Hassan Shibly tweeted, “Israel & it’s supporters are enemies of God and humanity!”

No doubt, CAIR was thrilled to have Saleem as part of its organization. Under another photo of Saleem on Saleem’s Facebook page, in August 2014, CAIR-Florida Regional Operations Director Nezar Hamze commented/exclaimed, “My man!”

Around the same time, there were several extremely disturbing photos of Saleem pictured with very young children, on his Facebook. One, posted April 2014, has Saleem holding the hand of a small girl [maybe five-years-old] with him referring to her as “My little lover.” Another has him with the same girl putting a stuffed dog to his face with him writing, “Is this your way of kissing me, A’aishah?” Yet another has him lounging on a bed [appears to be in Pakistan] with two small girls laying on his lap with him writing, “Get off me?... please? lol.”

Saleem was released from jail, last August. [He still owes a debt of $37,500 for his incarceration.] Parents should be awfully concerned.

When Saleem was convicted, he was found solely guilty of “willful child abuse.” As such, he is not subject to any sexual offender registry, and therefore, the communities that he resides in cannot be properly informed about his troubling history.

According to Saleem’s Facebook page, he is currently living in Denver, Colorado. Also according to his Facebook page, last month he flew to Pakistan, the native home of both his father and mother. He says he will be there “at least till mid january.”

He arrived at the Islamabad International Airport, on November 14th, and headed straight for a conference, titled ‘LIFT Pakistan.’ While there, he claims to have spoken to a number of young people. About them, he states, “[T]hey are regular young people ready to support passionate people…”

It makes sense that Saleem would wish to get away from Florida, given the egregious crime that he has committed there. First of all, he has family and friends in Florida, and they all must have felt anger and embarrassment over Saleem. Second, by leaving the area – and changing his identity – it helps Saleem, if he wishes to continue with his sordid activities, finding new fanatical Islamist groups to join up with and seeking out new victims to further his deviant behavior.

For Saleem (Shaheen) and the rest of the community he dwells in, it is a recipe for disaster.

Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.

Joe Kaufman was the 2016 Republican nominee for United States House of Representatives in Florida’s 23rd Congressional District. He is an expert in the fields of counter-terrorism, foreign affairs and energy independence for America. He has been featured on all major cable networks, including Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, PBS and C-SPAN. Joe has been instrumental in getting terrorist charities shut down and terror-related individuals put behind bars. Exactly one month prior to the September 11 attacks, he predicted the attacks by stating in an article that “the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was no aberration” and that it would happen again.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272241/cair-sex-predator-changes-name-heads-pakistan-joe-kaufman

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Turkey's Fake Outrage over the Murder of Khashoggi - Uzay Bulut

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by Uzay Bulut

It is high time for members of the Western media to stop relying on Turkish officials as sources of reliable information in their reports on Khashoggi, and start highlighting Turkey's ongoing deadly persecution of its own journalists.

• There are at least 170 journalists and media workers currently in Turkish jails and prisons, according to the Platform for Independent Journalism.
• Hrant Dink, as editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper, Agos, wrote about the Armenian Genocide. For this he was prosecuted under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which makes it illegal to insult Turkey or Turkish government institutions or to "denigrate Turkishness." Dink was shot dead outside his newspaper's office in Istanbul on January 19, 2007. Eleven years after the murder, the trial is still in progress.
• The Turkish government still has not officially recognized, apologized for, or made reparations on behalf any of these and other such crimes at any time in its history; impunity for past injustices continues to lead to present injustices.
• It is high time for members of the Western media to stop relying on Turkish officials as sources of reliable information in their reports on Khashoggi, and start highlighting Turkey's ongoing deadly persecution of its own journalists.

There are at least 170 journalists and media workers currently in Turkish jails and prisons, according to the Platform for Independent Journalism. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's public expression of outrage over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, then, is not merely hypocritical; it is utterly fake, and should be called out as such. Pictured: Silivri Prison, Turkey. (Image source: CeeGee/Wikimedia Commons)

Since the October 2 murder of Saudi Muslim Brotherhood political activist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been condemning the perpetrators of the "ferocious murder," vowing that his government would "uncover what has happened" and portraying himself as a champion of human rights.

During a press conference at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires on December 1, Erdogan said:

"Through our intelligence organization, we have already informed the whole world of this incident [Khashoggi's death] and are still doing so. Particularly the American media and the Western media are following this matter and our intelligence organization answers all of their requests and conveys all required information to them."

This statement is tragically two-faced for several reasons. The first is that the Turkish government is the world's largest jailer and killer of journalists -- so much so that every year, April 6 is commemorated by Turkey's Journalists Association (TGC) as the "Day of Murdered Journalists". The event was initiated on April 6, 1909, when the first murder of a Turkish journalist, Hasan Fehmi, took place for criticizing the government. The Platform of Solidarity with Arrested Journalists (TGDP) reported that between 1909 and 2012 -- in 103 years -- 112 journalists and writers were murdered in Turkey.

The second reason is that the Turkish intelligence organization which Erdogan claimed is providing the Western media with information about Khashoggi's murder has provided no information to family members and others seeking the truth about the fate of Turkish journalists and activists who have disappeared without a trace.

Worse, the Erdogan government has been cracking down on a leading grassroots organization, "Saturday Mothers," that has been holding peaceful weekly vigils since 1995 on behalf of disappeared loved ones. On August 25, Istanbul police forcibly broke up one such vigil by using water cannons and tear gas against participants and detaining dozens of them, including veteran protester Emine Ocak, who is in her 80s. A week later, on September 1, police and anti-riot vehicles were once again deployed to put a stop to the demonstrations. Since then, the government has continued its weekly clampdown.

"Disappearances" were among the most horrific, yet commonplace, incidents of the 1980s and 1990s in Turkey. During those years, many people, mostly Kurdish civilians -- including activists, politicians, journalists and businesspeople -- were kidnapped and murdered. It was then that the group "Saturday Mothers" was formed.

To this day, the exact number of victims remains unknown, and no perpetrator has been brought to justice. Meanwhile, the Erdogan government does not even tolerate debate on the issue. In 2005, for instance, the Istanbul Criminal Court sentenced Fatih Taş, the head of the Aram Publishing House, to six months in prison for "openly insulting the Republic of Turkey," after he published a book entitled Kayıpsın diyorlar ("They Say You Disappeared"). The book was about the 1994 disappearance of a 19-year-old journalist, Nazım Babaoğlu, who was taken into police custody while working on an investigative report in southeast Turkey. In September this year, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned Turkey for having violated Taş's freedom of expression.

Sadly, journalists and human-rights activists in Turkey continue to be murdered by "unknown assailants." In November 2015, for example, Tahir Elçi, a prominent Kurdish human-rights lawyer, was shot dead in broad daylight during a press conference. Three years later, the murderers remain "unidentified," and Turkish police recently prevented lawyers in Ankara from holding a memorial gathering in his honor.

Another noted case is the murder of the Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, known for advocating minority rights. Dink, as editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper, Agos, wrote about the Armenian Genocide. For this he was prosecuted under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which makes it illegal to insult Turkey or Turkish government institutions or to "denigrate Turkishness." Dink was shot dead outside his newspaper's office in Istanbul on January 19, 2007. Eleven years after the murder, the trial is still in progress. Out of the 85 defendants -- including police, intelligence and gendarmerie officials -- only six have been jailed pending trial. The next court hearing, the 83rd, will be held on December 18.

Assyrian (Syriac) intellectuals in Turkey have also been systematically targeted. Professor Ashur Yousuf, publisher of the Assyrian newspaper Mhadyono Dothuroye, and Bişar Hilmi Borucu, publisher of the newspaper Şifuro, were murdered during the 1915-1923 Assyrian genocide. Both newspapers folded after the murders. As the Turkish government still aggressively denies the genocide, no justice has been delivered for the descendants of the victims.

Murders of Assyrians did not end with the genocide. Many Assyrian Christian community leaders, such as Şükrü Tutuş, former mayor of the town of Idil, and Edvard Tanrıverdi, whom the locals called "the best medical doctor of the region" in Midyat, were murdered in the 1990s. Despite repeated calls by Assyrians for justice, the murderers of all these victims "remain unknown" and still freely wander about.

Today, almost all media outlets in Turkey are in the Turkish language; most of those belonging to minorities have been eliminated. The country's Greek-language press, for instance, is almost extinct. During the 1955 anti-Greek pogrom in Istanbul, Turks in the city attacked everything owned by Greeks, including newspapers. Professor Speros Vryonis Jr. writes:

"All three principal dailies, the Apoyevmatini, the Tachydromos, and the Embros suffered heavy losses. The first two had both their offices and printing establishments completely wrecked. In the case of the Embros only its offices were destroyed since it had no printing press of its own."

The Turkish government still has not officially recognized, apologized for, or made reparations on behalf of any of these and other such crimes at any time in its history; impunity for past injustices continues to lead to present injustices. There are at least 170 journalists and media workers currently in Turkish jails and prisons, according to the Platform for Independent Journalism.

Turkey has also exported its tradition of persecuting dissident journalists all the way to Cyprus, the northern part of which it has been illegally occupying since 1974. Şener Levent, a prominent Turkish Cypriot journalist, for instance, is being tried by both the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" (recognized only by Turkey) and by prosecutors in Ankara.

Erdogan's public expression of outrage over the killing of Khashoggi, then, is not merely hypocritical; it is utterly fake, and should be called out as such. It is high time for members of the Western media to stop relying on Turkish officials as sources of reliable information in their reports on Khashoggi, and start highlighting Turkey's ongoing deadly persecution of its own journalists.

Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute and is currently based in Washington D.C.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13415/turkey-outrage-khashoggi

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Israeli spacecraft gets final element before 2019 moon launch - Reuters

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by Reuters

If successful, Israel will be the fourth country to carry out a controlled "soft" moon landing, after U.S., Russia, China.

The time capsule placed on the spacecraft set to take off for the 
moon in early 2019
Photo: Reuters 

Israeli engineers on Monday added the final element to a spacecraft destined for the moon – a digital time capsule – saying they aim to send the craft up early next year and land it between the landing sites of Apollo 15 and 17.

It will be the first attempted moon landing since 2013, and if successful, will make Israel the fourth country to carry out a controlled "soft" landing of an unmanned vessel on the moon.

Since 1966, the United States and the former Soviet Union have landed around a dozen vessels on the moon, while China carried out the last "soft" landing, in December 2013.

"The spacecraft is completely built, tested ... and will be ready to ship to Cape Canaveral in a few weeks," said Ido Anteby, CEO of SpaceIL, the non-profit organization that has led the project.

Israel has launched satellites before, but this is the first longer-range Israeli spacecraft of its kind.

The craft, called "Beresheet" ("Genesis"), is shaped like a round table with four carbon-fiber legs. It stands about 1.5 meters tall and weighs 585 kilograms (1,290 pounds), with fuel accounting for two-thirds of the weight.

The time capsule is a single, space-resilient disc, roughly the size of a CD, that holds digital files of children’s drawings, photographs and information on Israeli culture and the history of humanity.

"The capsule will remain on the moon and stay in the environment of the moon and maybe in a couple [or] tens of years someone will send a spacecraft to bring it back," Anteby said.

The spacecraft also carried a device to measure the moon’s magnetic fields.

SpaceIL is backed mainly by private donors, including from the United States. It was founded in 2011 by a group of engineers with a budget of about $95 million. State-owned defense contractor Israel Aerospace Industries has collaborated in the project.

Beresheet will blast off from Florida on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early in 2019, after an initial December date was pushed back. At 60,000 kilometers (37,000 miles) above Earth, it will split off from the Falcon launch vehicle. It will at first orbit Earth in expanding ellipses until, about two months later, it crosses into the moon’s orbit. It will then slow and carry out a soft landing designed to cause no damage to the craft.

"Our landing site is located somewhere between the landing sites of Apollo 15 and Apollo 17," Anteby said. "It's a flat area, but it still has small craters and a lot of boulders."

Reuters

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/12/18/israeli-spacecraft-gets-final-element-before-2019-moon-launch/

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A Male Miss Universe Contestant Is Being Applauded By The Same People Who Complain About Appropriation - Matt Walsh

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by Matt Walsh

Normally, liberals become profoundly upset when a woman's achievement is overshadowed by a man. They made an exception last night, however.

"Miss" Spain was the first transgender to compete in the pageant. He didn't finish in the top three, but he still managed to steal much of the spotlight from the authentic women on the stage. Not to mention, there is a real beauty queen somewhere in Spain who was excluded entirely because a man took her spot. If you're looking for appropriation to rail against, look no further.

Of course, the Left is not interested in this kind of appropriation. They are too busy screaming at little white girls for dressing like Moana on Halloween. But unlike the girl in the Disney costume, a man in a women's beauty pageant, or a man in a women's restroom, or a man in a women's track meet, etc., is actually taking something from women. It is true appropriation because it involves deprivation. A woman in Spain was deprived of her chance to be Miss Universe because a man took her place. A girl on a track team is deprived of the gold medal because a man stole it. Women in restrooms and girls in locker rooms are deprived of privacy because men are allowed to intrude. This is how appropriation works.

On the other hand, much of what the Left calls "cultural appropriation" isn't appropriation at all because it doesn't take anything away from anyone. A white girl in a Moana costume isn't preventing a Polynesian girl from wearing one. A frat boy in a Native American headdress isn't stopping Native Americans from wearing headdresses. This isn't appropriation — it's merely participation. Even if the participation is unwelcome, it still is not preventing anyone of the "correct" culture from engaging in their own traditions.

Another important point about appropriation: a thing can only be appropriated if it is first owned. You appropriate when you seize or commandeer something without the permission of the owner. But cultures cannot really own anything. They especially cannot own styles of dress or music or whatever else. These things really are fluid. They are shared between cultures. They change. They develop. They are not absolute or engrained.

Women, on the other hand, own womanhood. Only they have the right to be called women because only they can be women. A drag queen makes a mockery of womanhood, and himself, but he doesn't really appropriate womanhood because he isn't claiming to be a woman. He's just dressing like a grotesquely exaggerated version of one. But the man in the beauty pageant last night, and the men in women's restrooms and so on, do not just demand the right to participate in female fashion or female hobbies. They demand the right to be women. And wherever they are given that right, women are deprived of what is rightfully their own.


Matt Walsh

Source: https://www.dailywire.com/news/39413/walsh-miss-universe-matt-walsh

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