Trump’s wild popularity overseas is one of media’s best kept secrets - Thomas Lifson

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by Thomas Lifson

World-famous Italian festival parade that features giant ‘God-Emperor Trump’ is only the latest example. Not just a hero, a superhero!

The mainstream media pretends that their scorn for President Trump is almost universally shared overseas. While globalists everywhere (along with their media allies) dislike him for standing up for national sovereignty, a rising tide of populist revolt is shaking them to their core. And Trump is a hero – even a superhero – to the growing number of anti-globalist populists around the world.

Stark evidence of this popularity of President Trump comes from Italy, where a populist government won power – though the media tend to ignore this. The Carnival of Viareggio, described as “world-famous” by Medium.com (the website chosen by Jeff Bezos for his j’accuse manifesto against the National Enquirer) dates back to 1873, and has established itself as the venue for featuring amazing giant figures. It takes place in Tuscany, a wealthy area that is a magnet for tourists worldwide.
Check out the highlight of yesterday’s parade:

Source: Twitter

Don’t you love the Twitter sword that he carries?
There was at least one individual who picked up the theme in the parade:

Source: Twitter video screen grab

Most delightful of all: This crowd transferred their love of President Trump into love for America.

Source Twitter video screen grab

According to Bizpacreview, the representation of Trump has acquired a nickname, God-Emperor Trump.”

Trump’s supporters here in the states have dubbed this caricature “God Emperor Trump” because of its uncanny resemblance to the “God-Emperor of Mankind,” a character in the popular tabletop fantasy wargame Warhammer 40,000.
“The Emperor of Mankind is the immortal Perpetual who serves as the ruling monarch of the Imperium of Man, and is described by the Imperial Ecclesiarchy and the Imperial Cult as the Father, Guardian and God of humanity,” a Wikia fan page notes.
And this “Father, Guardian and God of humanity” looks just like the Italians’ caricature of Trump.

Looks pretty spot on to me:

Source: Twitter

Of course, this is but the latest evidence that President Trump is inspiring people all over the world. My colleague Monica Showalter offers these examples that are shunned by our lying media:

• Thousands in England chant “We want Trump”

• Protesting French Chanted “We Want Trump” as Media Ignores Them — Update
• WATCH: Mexican Protesters Chant ‘Trump Was Right,’ Caravan ‘Is An Invasion’
• And, from the Bezos Washington Post: ‘Just like Trump’: Bolsonaro leads Brazil’s presidential race with right-wing populist pitch

The globalists realize that this is a worldwide phenomenon, one directed squarely at them and the transition they have wright on countries everywhere. The last thing they want is for Americans to understand that President Trump is THE global leader of a populist movement that is growing, is pro-America, and has already toppled statist governments.

Thomas Lifson

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/trumps_wild_popularity_overseas_is_one_of_medias_best_kept_secrets.html

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Tragic Fallacies of the APA's Toxic Psychology of Boys and Men - Deborah C. Tyler

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by Deborah C. Tyler

Modern psychology has really gone down the tubes.

Twenty-nineteen is my 40th anniversary. It's been 40 years since I resigned from the American Psychological Association.

A tragedy befell humanity at large through the 1970s. The APA permanently abandoned a great and unique mission to create and disseminate scientific, universally relevant psychological theory, and instead reoriented philosophically to destroy the Judeo-Christian moral code. Since the 1970s, the APA has accredited tens of thousands of pieces of anti-moral propaganda designed to normalize and trivialize the psychological effects of abortion, including infanticide, and to devalue sanctified monogamy and the father-led family. Especially, APA literature has evidenced a full-blown obsessive disorder in incessant worshipfulness toward variant and deviant sexuality, symptomized by pathologizing Judeo-Christian morality regarding the problem of sex and by ceaselessly troweling LGBTQ+ slop onto a cultural pedestal.

The recently published "Guidelines for the Psychological Practice with Boys and Men" was instantly recognized by people of common sense as dehumanizing toward the male sex. The Guidelines epitomize three vast, tragic fallacies. They are anti-natural and anti-moral and exemplify irrational polemicism, which displaced scientifically based psychological theory in the major position statements of the APA. The Guidelines represent a new low in composting psychological theory.

The standing anti-moral movements of the APA, such as promoting abortion and homosexuality, have some basis in the humanist worldview and in researchable existential facts. However, the Guidelines can't even be said to be properly political because their fundamental message is gibberish. As proudly proclaimed by the principal composter, the Guidelines deny biological sex as the origin of masculinity and femininity and promote silly "non-binary" gender theory of social conditioning as the sole explanation of masculinity. The Guidelines are toxic because they promote the feminization and homosexualization of males as a remedy for men's struggles. They demean the dignity of manhood and masculinity, thereby fueling the crises of depression and suicide among middle-aged men.

1. The Guidelines are anti-natural.

The Guidelines are a discussion of the problems of "traditional masculinity." This term is almost oxymoronic, but alas, it is just moronic. There is no such thing as "traditional masculinity." Testosterone doesn't send out Christmas cards. Newborn males do not have 20-25% heavier muscles than newborn females around the world due to "gender stereotyping," nor do they display significantly more forceful muscle movement than females due to "gender roles." When a person suffering transsexualism wishes to simulate the opposite sex, he turns to endocrinology — not to non-binary gender theory. He takes opposite-sex hormones to masculinize or feminize his psyche, appearance, and behavior because nothing else will.

The APA Guidelines conclude that traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggresson — is on the whole harmful. Let's dispense with "competitiveness." Anyone who thinks males are more competitive than females has never belonged to a sorority. Males in general are more cooperative and less competitive than females. Males are more naturally disposed than females to form successful teams and to accept their place in a dominance hierarchy. If a group of males or a group of females undertake a task that calls for cooperation, there will tend to be more competition and infighting among the females. Have you ever seen a girl fight — hair-pulling, scratching, a furious swing or two — end in a handshake?

It's not that males are more competitive; it's that they compete in naturally masculine ways that are disrespected by the APA. Males play football, are NASCAR drivers, and fight against enemies with instinctual courage, all of which gifts are disparaged by the APA. At its core, literature such as the Guidelines is instigated by unconscious shame. Men who produce "non-binary gender theory" are too timorous to risk their lives for others, so they disparage men who do.

Stoicism, dominance, and aggression are biologically based. Males have a higher threshold for pain from birth and throughout life. The biological imperative regarding aggression can be restrained only by moral training and punishment when morality fails.

The Guidelines say stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression are harmful. But males are too stoic and dominant compared to what? To kangaroos or maybe African violets? Doubt not: the APA opines that heterosexual men are too dominant and aggressive compared to homosexual men and females. The Guidelines bemoan manhood in the opposite way to Henry Higgins's lament. The APA asks, why can't heterosexual men be more like women and gays?

2. The Guidelines are anti-moral.

To understand anti-morality, it's necessary to understand morality. Morality is often mistaken for altruism, situational virtuousness, or ethicality. It is none of those. Moral codes arise in civilizations as experience of Divine presence, articulated in group religious experience to restrain human selfishness. Cults, social groups, and organizations engender rituals, conventionalities, or ethics, but morality can derive only from recognition of the intrinsic, unchanging value of life based in the Divine. That is a universal human experience, prefigured in some animal species, so moral codes tend to be stable and reflect cross-cultural imperatives.

Judeo-Christian moral methodology had become the most humane in world history, even as its nemesis, modern psychology, came to the forefront. Judeo-Christianity maintained the ideal of the father-led family and the privilege of sex confined to sanctified marriage, even as violent punishments for moral lapse, still inflicted by some religions, were eliminated. As science provided a level of material security that largely removed the survival benefits of moral conduct, all that remained was the intrinsic reward of righteousness. Godless anti-moral philosophies, prominently systematized by the APA, removed the challenge of righteousness by normalizing unnaturalness, weakness, and selfishness.

The Guidelines are the culmination of this effort to destroy Judeo-Christian morality regarding manhood and masculinity while offering no possibility of replacing essential moral ideals. For decades, the APA has demeaned enlightened patriarchy; disregarded masculine courage in military and police service; and degraded the natural love of the father for his children by normalizing divorce, illegitimacy, abortion, and infanticide.

3. The Guidelines are anti-scientific.

Reading the Guidelines in their entirety is a harrowing experience. Guideline 1 says it all: "Psychologists strive to recognize that masculinities are constructed based on social, cultural and contextual norms." Before striving begins, consider this dimwitted statement in support of a dimwitted thesis: "Many men are socialized by friends ... family ... peers ... and ... society." Other men have brains like a paramecium and aren't socialized by society? Mainly, this guideline rounds up and blames the usual suspects: "[d]ominant masculinity was historically predicated on exclusion of men who were not White, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied and privileged." Immigration status — a euphemism for illegality — is also cited as a barrier to dominance. If we assume that the majority of men are not "privileged," then most have been denied a shot at "dominance" in their own families or social groups, which is absurd.

Apparently, the principal compiler is Dr. Ryon McDermott, a counseling psychologist associated with a professional school, a low rung in academic psychology. Powerful intellects in psychology don't stoop to "non-binary gender theory." Dr. McDermott recently published "College Male Sexual Assault of Women and the Psychology of Men: Past, Present, and Future Directions for Research." A psychologist who studies the worst in heterosexual men is the APA's mouthpiece regarding masculinity? (Because homosexual men don't rape. Just ask the pope.) Dr. McDermott asks, "What is gender in the 2010s?" and concludes, "It's no longer just this male-female binary."

To answer Dr. McDermott's question: Gender theory is a tragic hoax perpetrated by angry, jealous leftists threatened by the self-evident truth of human nature, formed man and woman together.

(Dedicated to the manhood of a beautiful boy, born 2/2/19.)

Deborah C. Tyler

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/02/tragic_fallacies_of_the_apas_toxic_psychology_of_boys_and_men.html

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The Moral Idiocy of Our Times - Bruce Thornton

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by Bruce Thornton

How leftist political degeneracy leads to civilizational collapse.

One of the foundational myths of modernity holds that the progress of scientific knowledge and technology has been accompanied by moral progress. As wealth and knowledge increase, the old impediments to moral improvement such as poverty, religious superstition, and ignorance are being swept away, resulting in a kinder, gentler, and more pacific human nature.

Last week we were presented with evidence that this argument is woefully mistaken. In New York a bill was passed that removed restrictions on late-term abortions, allowing infants viable outside the womb to be killed “at any time” to protect the mother’s life or “health.” Worse yet, this regression into primitive custom was met with celebratory cheers and a standing ovation by the “lawmakers” who had approved it. In Virginia a similar law was proposed but rejected. It had been defended by Del. Kathy Tran and Gov. Ralph Northam (pictured above). They admitted that a baby could be killed even after the mother went into labor, or after delivery. Tran, by the way, on the same day as she introduced the bill to liberalize late-term abortions, also introduced a bill to protect gypsy moths and cankerworms.

In other words, infanticide, once a practice of savage and barbaric cultures like cannibalism, incest, and human sacrifice, has now been legalized by the culture that boasts of its moral progress and superiority. But this legislation is not just a return to ancient brutality, but a species of moral idiocy much worse than the savagery of the past.

Abortion and infanticide in the past had practical and religious purposes. Tribal bands aborted the unborn or killed the newly born, usually females, as a means of controlling their numbers to avoid overstressing their resources. The militarist Spartans killed infants deemed inferior in order to protect the strength of warriors. Several cultures sacrificed children in order to propitiate the gods. The ancient Phoenicians burned children, usually infants, as offerings to Baal or Moloch. The Aztecs cut the hearts out of children as offerings to the rain god Tlaloc; the tears of the parents and children were considered signs that the god would reward the people with abundant rain. The Incans also killed children to commemorate the death of a ruler, or to propitiate the gods during calamities like famines.
As horrific as such practices were, they made religious sense to the peoples who performed them. In their spiritual darkness they thought such barbarity pleased the gods and ensured their favor, since an infant or child was the purest and most valuable gift one could offer. Nor is there evidence that the ancients ever stooped to our ghastly crimes, like the charnel-house butchery of abortionist Kermit Gosnell, or the peddling of baby organs by government-subsidized Planned Parenthood abortion mills.

But to what god are we, who fancy ourselves morally superior and products of reason and science, legalizing the sacrifice of a baby able to live outside the womb at 22 weeks? Very few late-term abortions are performed to save the mother’s life, or because of the infant’s severe deformity. The protection of the woman’s “health” is vitiated by the inclusion of “mental health,” which often involves subjective and vague interpretations of moods and emotional states. The justification based on protecting the mother is a red herring.

In fact, for the supporters of no-limit abortions, the god is “choice,” the right of a woman to be free to make decisions regarding her life, even at the cost of another life. But this “choice” seems to be a strange deity, one that is indifferent to the non-negotiable corollary of choice –– responsibility for one’s freely chosen behavior and its consequences. True freedom cannot exist without people taking responsibility, and holding themselves accountable, for their choices. To sacrifice a human life––and scientifically, a person at any stage of development is still a human being––in order to avoid the consequences of one’s careless choice and to serve one’s own convenience, is moral idiocy.

But abortion is just one example of our culture’s daily demonstration that we have morally regressed, not progressed. The Virginia governor who casually described a scenario in which a woman would give birth, and then legally could kill the baby, was not criticized by his party for this ghoulish speculation. But he has been attacked and pressured to resign for a medical school year-book photo from thirty years ago in which he allegedly posed dressed in either a Klan robe and hood or in black-face. Even conservatives called this photo “horrific,” which is a hysterical debasement of that word’s integrity. You want to see some truly horrific racist acts, visit this website about lynching postcards (not for the squeamish). Abusing the meaning of words, a staple of the totalitarian playbook, is moral idiocy.

Indeed, the issue of race is rife with moral idiocy. Nearly 5000 male blacks are murdered every year, the vast majority by other black men. This yearly toll is about equal to all the blacks murdered in race-riots and lynchings over the last century. Yet this crisis of slaughter only occasionally gets in the news, or is addressed by politicians “woke” or otherwise. Instead, an uncorroborated and sketchy story about a black, gay star of a television show claiming to have been attacked by two white men in MAGA hats is hysterically reported and analyzed as yet another example of Trump’s inveterate racism––the same Trump whose policies have put millions of blacks to work and lowered black unemployment to historic levels. Ignoring those benefits to blacks while harping on a dubious claim of racist assault is moral idiocy.

How about immigration? Well-heeled progressives who enjoy walled compounds and armed security, who interact with immigrants legal or illegal only as domestics or gardeners, whose children attend private schools or ritzy zip-code public schools, who agitate against immigration reforms and border security, or who preen morally about their city’s or state’s “sanctuary” policies that release felons and murderers back onto our streets, where their primary victims are other immigrants–– they are moral idiots. 

Likewise with “climate change.” The green catastrophists, mostly comprising the upper-class and college educated, demand anti-carbon policies that primarily will impact the developing world and our own low-income people. People who never think twice about their gas or electric bills lobby for global regulations that deny coal-fired electrical power to the one billion people across the globe who lack it, and who have to burn charcoal or dung for light and cooking. What makes this callous indifference even more reprehensible is that all these policies will do nothing to stop the alleged warming the warmists blame on human use of carbon. These modern-day Marie Antoinettes are moral idiots who blithely sacrifice the lives and well-beings of the less fortunate not for a practical purpose, but to signal their class sophistication and “moral” superiority.

Or take the willful blindness to the intolerance, misogyny, illiberalism, and sanctified violence of Islam––proudly proclaimed in word and deed for fourteen centuries, and still today inspiring terrorist murder and state violence against Christians and other “infidels.” Westerners who fret and fulminate about “Islamophobia,” which includes merely quoting accurately from the Koran, pass over in silence the oppression of women, anti-Semitism, and the on-going genocide against Middle Eastern and Nigerian Christians, even as they wax hysterical over the measures Israel is forced to take to defend itself against terrorist murder and global calumny simply because they are living in their ancestral homeland, which is also the home of the freest Middle East Muslims. That is suicidal moral idiocy.

But this contradiction between the Western claim to moral progress, and the immoral cultures and barbaric practices of Western nations, has been around since the Enlightenment started to popularize this self-congratulatory interpretation of history. Even as European nations created transnational institutions that presumably reflected this growing moral progress, they continued to slaughter each other with ever-increasing lethality and demonic ingenuity.

We haven’t progressed morally, we simply have become rich and comfortable. We can afford an empty sentimentalism about suffering, and think such conspicuous compassion is the same thing as moral judgment. But moral idiocy is unsustainable, particularly when it is enshrined in laws that diminish the intrinsic worth of human beings, and that sacrifice their well-being to ideology, cultural fashion, and political cults that choose which people deserve moral solicitude and which don’t. Politics then degenerates into raw power, and power becomes the slave of humanity’s worst passions and instincts. And that’s how civilizations die.


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/272764/moral-idiocy-our-times-bruce-thornton

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Et tu, Benny? - David M. Weinberg

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by David M. Weinberg

Lt. Gen. Gantz seems to be suggesting unilateral withdrawals and another disengagement. This is frightening and clarifying. Judicious conflict management requires a steady hand at the helm of state.

Benny Gantz, chairman of the new Israel Resilience Party, got off to a fine start in late January with a smooth speech. My esteemed colleague, Jerusalem Post columnist Professor Gil Troy, enthused that it was an "oratorical grand slam" and a "testament to temperament" that "showed how to dream and build."

I'll grant that Gantz has charmed the Israeli electorate with soaring Zionist rhetoric and his rising poll numbers reflect this. His sunny deportment offers a counterpoint to Prime Minister Netanyahu's negative campaign messaging. And let's face it, Netanyahu has been in office for a very long time, and some voter fatigue is setting in.

But when evaluating Lt. Gen. (ret.) Gantz's suitability to lead Israel, inevitably we must seek out his defense and diplomatic worldview and this has been hard to discern; purposefully so.

There was, however, one roaring policy hint in his inaugural speech. Gantz said that "if it turns out that there is no way to reach peace [with the Palestinians] at this time, we will shape a new reality. Israel will not be deprived of its status as a strong, Jewish and democratic state."

"Shaping a new reality" is code for unilateral Israeli action in Judea and Samaria; withdrawals in the West Bank; disengagement from settlements – without peace or any diplomatic concessions from the Palestinians.

Gantz went further in a recent interview with Yedioth Ahronoth, where he praised the unilateral Gaza withdrawal and the destruction of Gush Katif towns, saying that it was "carried out with a lot of political consideration," "done legally," and "handled well."

"We must take the lessons of the disengagement and implement them in other areas," he added ominously.

This is both frightening and clarifying. It suggests that Gantz would willingly repeat the mistakes of the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and that in Israeli Resilience Party parlance, the self-referential term "centrist" in reality means "leftist."

Gantz's spokesmen mightily are trying to wiggle out of these remarks, contending that the reference to "lessons" in his interview referred only to the importance of preventing a rift in the nation (really?) and making sure that any future border decisions include strict security provisions (sure).

But Gantz's hints at unilateral Israeli withdrawal don't come in a vacuum. They have a pedigree. For seven years, center-left generals and Barak-Olmert era officials have been pumping plans for more unilateral Israeli withdrawals.

Ehud Barak and Shaul Mofaz, both former defense ministers, have touted unilateral Israeli action. "We are on borrowed time," Barak said in 2012 speech. "If it isn't possible to reach a permanent agreement with the Palestinians, we must consider an interim arrangement or even a unilateral move."

Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin of the Institute for National Security Studies backed up Barak with an "academic study" that reached the conclusion that no agreement can be reached with the Palestinians and therefore Israel "should go forward [with withdrawals] without depending on the Palestinians."

In 2013, Barak's former bureau chief, Gilead Sher, tabled a report that also advocated unilateral Israeli withdrawal. He then launched an organization called "Blue White Future" to push a "compensation law" that would provide payment to tens of thousands of settlers for leaving their West Bank homes.

In 2015, the same plan for unilateral withdrawals and the starving of settlements outside settlement blocs, even in the absence of peace with the Palestinians, was the political platform that General Yadlin used when he stood as Zionist Union candidate for defense minister.

Last month, Yadlin and company launched another version of their grand withdrawal plan, with Israel unilaterally granting a contiguous Palestinian "entity" approximately 65% of the West Bank.

The INSS "new strategic framework" is nicely wrapped up as "professional, politically neutral" research (sic.) that took a year of intensive discussions to produce.

Lo and behold, private citizen Benny Gantz took part in these consultations. And – surprise, surprise – the plan is couched in lofty language about "taking Zionist initiative," as was Gantz's speech.

The problem is that unilateral Israeli withdrawals will neither enhance Israeli security nor improve Israel's international position and moral standing. As the Lebanon and Gaza precedents proved, unilateral Israeli withdrawals only guarantee continuation of the conflict and even its escalation, not its de-escalation.

Nor will unilateral moves provide Israel with diplomatic breathing room. Withdrawing from one part of the territories won't convince anyone that Israel has a right to keep other parts.

On the contrary: A partial Israeli pullout will intensify the illegitimacy of any remaining presence in the territories. Every Israeli retreat is taken as proof that the territories are all stolen property that must be returned to their rightful Palestinian owners.

Unilateral withdrawals will bolster Palestinian maximalism, not engender Palestinian cooperation or moderation.

Worst of all, unilateral withdrawals will unnecessarily and unjustifiably tear asunder the internal fabric of Israel. It's indefensible to tie a death-knell tourniquet on Israeli towns in Judea and Samaria – if at all – without comprehensive and sustainable peace in the offing.

Gantz's Israel Resilience Party partner, Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon, knows that Palestinian radicalism and the unpredictable nature of regional events make Palestinian statehood a very doubtful venture.

He says that Israel must not jeopardize its existence by embarking on rash initiatives – neither unilateral withdrawals nor annexations – that would radically worsen its situation, just to please proponents of "forward progress" at any cost.

Moreover, Ya'alon supports significant increases in Jewish settlement of Judea and Samaria. How does this square with Gantz's views?

Perhaps Ya'alon should explain to Gantz that "Zionist initiative" means reinforcing Israel's hold on the Greater Jerusalem envelope and other key settlement zones, not unilateral withdrawals.

And that long-term conflict management is preferable to wild diplomatic escapades like unilateral withdrawals.

And that managing the conflict indefinitely is not a cowardly choice by hapless political and military leaders but a rational choice; especially when the Iranian challenge looms larger than ever on Israel's horizons.

Judicious conflict management requires a steady hand at the helm of state, and self-confidence in the justice of Israel's long-term interests in Judea and Samaria.

Most of all, it requires patience. It's sad to learn that Gantz is leaning toward precipitance.

David M. Weinberg is vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, jiss.org.il. His personal website is davidmweinberg.com.

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/et-tu-benny/

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Leftism - Not Just Wrong, But Evil - Mark Tapson

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by Mark Tapson

We cannot afford a lack of moral clarity in our political civil war.

Conservative commentator Dennis Prager once made an insightful distinction between the political left and right. The right, he noted, generally sees the left as wrong but not evil, whereas the left sees the right not merely as wrong but as evil. This was a valid assessment once upon a time, but as the left has increasingly exposed itself in the Trump era as rabidly illiberal, irrational, and immoral, it is time for the right to acknowledge that the left is not merely wrong, but evil.

What is evil? Let us set theological explanations aside for the moment and settle on a practical definition upon which most can agree: if cruelty means the willful disregard for human suffering, even taking pleasure in inflicting suffering on others, then evil is profound cruelty. It is a malevolence so dark and bottomless that ordinary people cannot fathom it. Psychologists may prefer less highly-charged terms to describe people who commit unconscionable acts, but evil is as evil does, and what leftism has done over and over again throughout history and around the world is provide a worldview which justifies perpetrating unimaginable horrors on untold numbers of victims.

To be clear: evil is hardly the sole domain of the left. It can inhabit individuals of any color, sex, political persuasion, or religious belief. But as an ideology, Progressivism – the rebranding of Communism – embraces totalitarianism and absolute statist control, which always and everywhere leads to misery, corruption, and brutality, and never elevates humanity. Can anyone look objectively at the ghastly devastation wrought by Communism in the 20^th century – the gulags and the mass starvation, the torture and executions, the existential fear and hopelessness, the tens of millions dead and countless more lives destroyed – and not conclude that leftism is an ideology of evil? Add to that its unholy alliance with fundamentalist Islam today to subvert the whole of Western civilization, and there can be no doubt.

At the core of the true leftist is a hatred for anyone and anything that stands in the way of his or her lust for power over others: the nuclear family, Christianity, the Constitution, Donald Trump, etc. As David Horowitz had noted on numerous occasions, during a presidential debate in October 2016, candidate Trump spoke more naked truth about leftists than any establishment Republican would ever have dared when he said that his opponent Hillary Clinton had “tremendous hate in her heart.”

Let us zero in on specific, recent examples of the left’s cruel methodology. Keep in mind that the contemporary leftist, like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, has been mentored either directly or indirectly by the influential, Mephistophelean strategist Saul Alinsky and his book Rules for Radicals, whose thirteenth and final rule has transformed the left’s entire modus operandi into the politics of personal destruction: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Alinsky dedicated his book, as you may recall, to Lucifer.

Nothing has demonstrated this evil stratagem quite as starkly recently as Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings last fall, which degenerated into a circus of demonic behavior by leftists gleefully determined to destroy Kavanaugh and his family over a single, decades-old, unsubstantiated accusation of sexual assault. The sick smears from even the mainstream media that Kavanaugh was a gang rapist, belligerent drunk, and pedophile helped wake up many people to the boundless cruelty in which the left revels.

Similarly, the left pounced on the opportunity to demonize and destroy the Covington Catholic high school kids involved in a more recent controversy completely manufactured by the left-dominated media. Trump-deranged former comedienne Kathy Griffin called for their doxing. Late-night talk show hosts, Twitter’s blue-checked media elites, and leftist pundits like disgraced Islam apologist Reza Aslan “joked” about punching the face of Nick Sandmann, the white 16-year-old at the center of the controversy. He and his family received death threats. One could list dozens of examples of Trump supporters victimized by leftist violence over the last two or more years. Add to this the persecution of conservative students and visiting speakers in universities, the nihilist thuggery of Antifa, and the lawfare of LGBT activists out to destroy Christian bakers and photographers, and can anyone claim that the left’s collective heart is not, as Trump said of Hillary’s, full of hate?

More examples: Virginia politicians including Governor Ralph Northam recently repulsed countless Americans for casually endorsing the abortion of babies all the way up to literally the moment of birth and even beyond. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson brought Monica Klein, the co-founder of a political messaging firm called Seneca Strategies, on his show to ask her opinion of this shocking pro-abortion extremism, and for the entirety of the nearly four-minute segment Klein belligerently stonewalled his question, hurling irrational accusations and predictable Democrat Party talking points, refusing to address third trimester abortions except to fiercely defend a woman’s right to discard her child. If the left is so literally hell-bent on having the right to put an infant – not a mere “clump of cells” but a live infant outside the mother’s womb – to death, then there is no moral limit to what they will do in service to their satanic vision.

The Democrat Party is the face of Moloch, the Canaanite god whom Milton called the “horrid King besmear'd with blood / Of human sacrifice.” It is a cult of criminality and death. On every political issue, Democrats take the side of chaos and destruction, crime and disorder. They hype the threat of white supremacism while whitewashing Islamic terrorism. They are actively engaged in erasing our history and undermining our rights. They support open borders over national security; sanctuary cities for criminal aliens and the abolishment of ICE over law-abiding citizens and legal immigration; infanticide over the sacredness of human life; the dismantling of Western civilization over its preservation. This is not simply wrong – this is evil.

Conservatives who believe that it is still possible to reason with the left and engage them in fair-and-square policy debates are clinging to a failed strategy, sadly. We must accept the reality that leftists have long since abandoned rational rules of engagement, if they ever had any; instead, they operate from a hate-filled mob mentality, a bloodlust for power, and a complete absence of moral boundaries. We cannot afford a lack of moral clarity about the undeclared civil war raging across the United States of America.

Mark Tapson is the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Media Director and Shillman Journalism Fellow on Popular Culture.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272805/leftism-not-just-wrong-evil-mark-tapson

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Syria: French Count Returns as Russian Apparatchik - Amir Taheri

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by Amir Taheri

For Russia, Turkey and Iran, the terrible troika, Syria is an ungoverned territory, the future of which must be decided without its "inhabitants."

• For Russia, Turkey and Iran, the terrible troika, Syria is an ungoverned territory, the future of which must be decided without its "inhabitants."
• All three wish to dilute the Arab aspect of Syria's identity. The official media in the troika is full of supposedly learned papers claiming that only 50 percent of Syrians are Arabs. All three oppose naming the future state as "Arab Republic of Syria." Iran is campaigning for the term "Islamic Republic," which is also used in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan and Mauritania.
• The Russians want a federal system that would enable them to hang on to their enclave on the Mediterranean regardless of what happens to the rest of Syria. The Turks and Iranians oppose federalism because they fear Syrian Kurds might end up with an autonomous state of their own.
• Syria isn't a blank page on which the Russo-Turco-Iranian wannabe empire builders could draw whatever they dream of. The international community should not accept the re-emergence of a 100-year old colonial monster.

For Russia, Turkey and Iran, Syria is an ungoverned territory, the future of which must be decided without its "inhabitants." Pictured: Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Sochi, Russia, on November 22, 2017. (Image source: kremlin.ru)

Had I believed in the transmigration of souls, I might have thought that the spirit of a French aristocrat from some 100 years has slipped into the body of a Russian apparatchik today.

The Frenchman was the Viscount Robert de Caix de Saint-Aymour. His Russian reincarnation is Alexander Lavrentiev, Russia's Special Presidential Envoy for Syria. What links them is Syria, a land under French occupation 100 years ago and now partially occupied by Russia.

Caix was sent to Syria as Consul General with a mission to decide what to do about a chunk of territory, some 200,000 square kilometers to be exact, snatched from the crumbling Ottoman Empire.

Within weeks, Caix had concluded that the territory in question had no distinct identity in terms of nationhood as defined by the Westphalian Treaties that midwifed the birth of modern European nation-states.

In other words, the territory was a blank page on which the French could draw whatever shape they liked. The solution he came up with was to rename the territory as Syria, a term dug up in Byzantine history, replacing the term Shaam under the Ottomans.

Then he asserted that "Syria does not exist, and will never exist."

The reason, he argued, was that the estimated 1.8 million people who inhabited the area were divided into "countless ethnicities, languages and faiths". The best, not to say the only, way would be to carve the area into two states plus three mini-states built around one of the larger ethnic and/or faith communities.

Caix's plan was sidelined by a secret accord between France and Great Britain that led to the creation of Lebanon as a state for Christians and Syria as a kingdom for one of London's exiled Hijazi allies. In the process, a piece was also handed back to the Turks who, having been enemies in the First World War, had become potential allies against Bolshevism in former ally Russia.

Despite revolts and years of insurgency by the local population, the carve-up went relatively easily because Syria, like any other area emerging from any imperial rule, did not have a national identity in the modern sense of the term.

Had Caix studied history he would have learned that his own country, France, had had a similar experience after the disintegration of the Holy Roman Empire and the emergence of a Frankish kingdom. On the eve of the French Revolution in 1789, only 12 per cent of the population of the kingdom, divided into over 30 different ethnicities, spoke French.

Like other modern European countries, it took centuries for a French nation to be formed and centuries more for that nation to express itself in the form of a state.

In Syria, the path to nationhood and, later, statehood was different.

In Europe, the nations had created their states. In post-Ottoman Levant, the creation of a state preceded the birth of a nation. That is not so unusual.

The United States is, perhaps, the best example of the birth of a state preceding that of the nation that it is supposed to represent. There are numerous other examples including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and virtually all African and Latin American states.

Over the past 100 years, the many peoples of the "area" that Caix had treated as a jumble of conflicting identities have blended together to create a Syrian nation with its own identity. Regardless of ethnic, religious and, in a few cases, even linguistic differences, they all share a certain Syrian-ness, to coin a phrase, which would be wrong to ignore. That Syrian-ness is a tangible reality in every walk of life that expresses distinct nationhood, including a desire for self-determination.

Fast-forward to Lavrentiev who, like Caix, seems to believe that there is no Syrian nation and that he and his partners from Ankara, not to mention second fiddles from Tehran, have the right, indeed the duty, to decide the future of Syria, starting with the writing of a new constitution.

In the Russian resort of Sochi next week, Lavrentiev is to present his report to President Vladimir Putin, flanked by his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Iranian partner Hassan Rouhani.

Curiously, even the Assad regime, now a ghost of its past, is not invited to Sochi to at least show the flag. For Russia, Turkey and Iran, the terrible troika, just as Caix thought in his time, Syria is an ungoverned territory, the future of which must be decided without its "inhabitants."

Factually, if not symbolically, it is true that Syria no longer has a legitimate government. That, however, does not mean that it has ceased to be a nation-state and thus deserving treatment as such. Taking into account obvious differences between the two situations, we have a similar configuration in Venezuela, which has ceased to have a legitimate government but has not disappeared as a nation-state.

To complicate matters, the self-styled troika is divided by their recipes for Syria.

All three wish to dilute the Arab aspect of Syria's identity. The official media in the troika is full of supposedly learned papers claiming that only 50 percent of Syrians are Arabs. All three oppose naming the future state as "Arab Republic of Syria." Iran is campaigning for the term "Islamic Republic," which is also used in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan and Mauritania.

Erdogan prefers the term "Syrian state" while Putin would be happy with "Federal Republic of Syria".

The Russians exaggerate the number of Christians whom they claim to protect. The Turks have all but invented a Turkic community that is supposed to seek a leading role in Syria's future. The Iranians are making an amalgam of many communities under the label of "fatimiyoun" to claim that their brand of Shiism is bigger than one percent it really is.

The Russians want a federal system that would enable them to hang on to their enclave on the Mediterranean regardless of what happens to the rest of Syria. The Turks and Iranians oppose federalism because they fear Syrian Kurds might end up with an autonomous state of their own.

Like 100 years ago, Syria is under foreign occupation -- this time by Russians, Iranians and their mercenaries, Turks and, until they leave, Americans.

The comparison with Germany and Japan after the Second World War, where the American occupier imposed constitutions of its choice to create new nation-states, is disingenuous. Germany and Japan had been at war with America and, by surrendering to it, had ceased to be independent nation-states. This is not the case in Syria today.

Syria isn't a blank page on which the Russo-Turco-Iranian wannabe empire builders could draw whatever they dream of. The international community should not accept the re-emergence of a 100-year old colonial monster.

This article was originally published by Asharq al-Awsat

Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13707/syria-colonialism

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The 40th Anniversary of the Islamic Republic of Iran - Majid Rafizadeh

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by Majid Rafizadeh

To harness both the trust and the loyalty of the Iranian people, Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers initially portrayed themselves as spiritual people who had no desire to rule the country.

• To harness both the trust and the loyalty of the Iranian people, Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers initially portrayed themselves as spiritual people who had no desire to rule the country.
• One of the regime's worst mass executions of political prisoners took place when approximately 30,000 individuals, including children and pregnant women, were executed within a period of four months. According to a US congressional condemnation, "prisoners were executed in groups, some in mass hangings and others by firing squad, with their bodies disposed of in mass graves."
• Even more surprising than Iran's flourishing indifference to the rule of law is that some Western politicians and governments have attempted, and are still attempting, to appease this inhumane regime.

Iran's Islamist regime, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary today, scores highest in the world when it comes to executing people per capita. Pictured: The execution of Kurdish men and others by forces of Iran's Islamist regime, in 1979. (Image source: Jahangir Razmi/Wikimedia Commons)

Today, February 10, the Iranian regime officially celebrates the 40^th anniversary of the day it seized power. The fundamentalist and Islamist party of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini surprised the international community and the Iranian people when in 1979, it hijacked a revolution. The successful power-grab sent waves through global politics.

Although some people were aware of the intentions of the Islamist party, many underestimated the extent of its organizational skills and power. To harness both the trust and the loyalty of the people, Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers initially portrayed themselves as spiritual people who had no desire to rule the country. Many, including several political parties, also believed that, during a transitional period, the ruling mullahs would relinquish any power gained.

As the mullahs began to generate support, they sought to gain even more by reaching out to other social groups. Khomeini's radical followers assured people of different faiths, such as Christians and Jews, that their safety and concerns would be a high priority once the new government was put into place. These often-neglected groups responded positively to those promises. When a delegation from the Jewish community visited the founder of the theocratic establishment before the revolution, Khomeini, assuring their safety, famously issued a fatwa stating:

"In the holy Qu'ran, Moses, salutations upon him and all his kin, has been mentioned more than any other prophet. Prophet Moses was a mere shepherd when he stood up to the might of pharaoh and destroyed him. Moses, the Speaker-to-Allah, represented pharaoh's slaves, the downtrodden, the mostazafeen of his time. Moses would have nothing to do with these pharaoh-like Zionists who run Israel. And our Jews, the descendants of Moses, have nothing to do with them either. We recognize our Jews as separate from those godless, bloodsucking Zionists."

The Ayatollah also told other religious minority groups that they would receive protection:

"In Islam, Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians are all accepted as equal — unless they become a Fifth Column for foreign meddling in this country. Jews are accepted as Jews but not as defenders of Zionist aggression."

It therefore came as a shock to those who had put their faith in Khomeini's radical party, that soon after its rise to power, these guaranteed protections quickly changed. The Ayatollah began pursuing an Islamist agenda; Sharia law was imposed word for word. "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" became statements chanted through the most influential offices as well as the streets. Whoever stood up against these harsh and vague laws often faced the ultimate consequences: swift and unquestionable executions. The head of the Jewish community, Habib Elghanian, a businessman and philanthropist, was executed immediately. His granddaughter, Shahrzad Elghanayan, writes that the execution had taken place "after a 20-minute trial on trumped-up charges." His murder sent a strong message that, under the new Sharia system, other religions would not be tolerated. Rule of law was out the window.

Persecution of Christians, Bahai's, Sunnis, and other religious and ethnic minorities was ratcheted up. One of the regime's worst mass executions of political prisoners took place when approximately 30,000 individuals, including children and pregnant women, were executed within a period of four months. According to a US congressional condemnation, "prisoners were executed in groups, some in mass hangings and others by firing squad, with their bodies disposed of in mass graves."

Some thought that the radical leaders of Iran would become more moderate over time. But 40 years later, the regime has increased its violence and become even more aggressive both within Iran and outside it. Due to its glorification of violence, and the encouragement of hatred and intolerance, terror and militia groups such as Hezbollah were formed. Iran made efforts to cooperate with Al Qaeda and to this day consistently trains and supports many other militant groups. Iran has been declared the top state sponsor of terrorism year after year; the Islamic Republic and its Sharia law are now a global threat.

Khomeini's regime also still scores highest in the world when it comes to executing people per capita. According to Amnesty International, Iran leads the entire world in the number of children it executes. Despite hopes that the violence and hatred would eventually diminish, instead, during the last 40 years, the regime's promotion of anti-Christian and anti-Semitic sentiments has continued to spread and grow.

Even more surprising than Iran's flourishing indifference to the rule of law is that some Western politicians and governments have attempted, and are still attempting, to appease this inhumane regime. Former President Obama led the charge to lift four rounds of established UN sanctions against the ruling mullahs, and famously -- with no quid pro quo -- reportedly gave the mullahs at least $150 billion; under Director of National Intelligence James Clapper removed Iran and Hezbollah from list of terror threats to U.S. interests, and sidestepped sanctions to give Iran secret access to the US financial system. The mullahs, not surprisingly, used it to promote terrorism, fund their Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and advance their aggression.

Currently, the European Union is trying to come up with new mechanisms to circumvent US sanctions and make it easier to continue trading with Iran's regime.

Forty years of the Iranian regime should be a sufficient lesson for the international community to make clear that appeasing the Iranian leaders will do exactly nothing either to protect the people of Iran or the global community. Concessions, for the ruling mullahs, only translate as weakness: they will seize any opening as an opportunity to increase their power. The only language to which the fundamentalist regime will respond is economic, political and, if necessary, military pressure.

As long as powerful governments continue to coddle the current regime, eruptions of violence and crimes against humanity will continue.

Will the global community just stand back and do nothing for another 40 years?

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Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US Foreign Policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13708/iran-islamic-republic-anniversary

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British woman arrested for calling a transgender woman a man - Rick Moran

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by Rick Moran

Does anyone believe that by arresting people who don't agree that a man is actually a woman, you are going to change anyone's mind?

A British woman was arrested in front of her children and held in police custody for 7 hours after calling a transgender woman a man online.

Kate Scottow was detained following an argument on Twitter with a transgendered woman. She was charged with "harassment and malicious communications."

"Malicious..." what?

Daily Mail:

Writing on online forum Mumsnet, Mrs Scottow – who has also been served with a court order that bans her from referring to her accuser as a man – claimed: 'I was arrested in my home by three officers, with my autistic ten-year-old daughter and breastfed 20-month-old son present.
'I was then detained for seven hours in a cell with no sanitary products (which I said I needed) before being interviewed then later released under investigation ... I was arrested for harassment and malicious communications because I called someone out and misgendered them on Twitter.'
Confirming the arrest, Hertfordshire Police said: 'We take all reports of malicious communication seriously.'

You will be forced to care...or else.

Aside from the tyrannical actions of the police and the odious "malicious communications" law, does anyone really believe that by arresting people who don't agree that a man is actually a woman, you are going to change anyone's mind? The "misgendering" of trans people is still a matter of opinion. There is no scientific basis to believe that a man can magically transform himself into a woman just by calling himself one. Therefore, the law becomes a tool of oppression and stifling dissent and not of fostering understanding.

Coercive measures to force acceptance of trans people are not going to work. You don't change the culture by mandating that people be required to believe something they do not wish to believe. So this is not about gaining acceptance for trans people. This is all about the raw exercise of naked power in the most non-diverse, illiberal ways imaginable in order to punish political and cultural opponents.

Presently, this could never happen in the US, although I'm sure that trans activists would love to lock up those who don't agree with them. Given the attitudes toward the First Amendment by many millenials, it's probably only a matter of time before the activists get their wish.


Rick Moran

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/british_woman_arrested_for_calling_a_transgender_woman_a_man.html

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Why Palestinians Oppose an Anti-Iran Coalition - Khaled Abu Toameh

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by Khaled Abu Toameh

It seems the Palestinian leadership would rather see Iran continue to pose a threat to Arab countries than see peace between those countries and Israel.

• It seems the Palestinian leadership would rather see Iran continue to pose a threat to Arab countries than see peace between those countries and Israel.
• Several Arab countries appear completely fed up with the Palestinians, particularly the continued bickering between Fatah and Hamas. Egyptian intelligence officials have devoted years trying to convince Hamas and Fatah to work together for the benefit of the Palestinians.
• Instead of doing so, however, Palestinian leaders are preoccupied with blocking Arab participation in a conference that could see the creation of a coalition against Iran -- the same country Abbas and his loyalists hold responsible for the ongoing divisions among the Palestinians. Might it be possible that the Arab countries are finally rousing themselves from their long slumber and beginning to seek better lives for themselves and their neighbors?

The Palestinians have good reason to believe that influential Arab countries have given up on both them and the Palestinian cause. They fear that several Arab countries might be headed toward normalizing their relations with Israel. Pictured: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shakes hands with Oman's Sultan Qaboos bin Said, during Netanyahu's official visit to Oman, October 26, 2018. (Image source: Israel PM's Office)

The Palestinians have good reason to believe that some influential Arab countries have given up on both them and the Palestinian cause. They fear that several Arab countries might even be headed toward normalizing their relations with Israel.

For several weeks now, the leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) has been waging a campaign against a US-Polish conference that is scheduled to take place in Warsaw later this month. US and Polish officials said that the conference will include sessions on the situation in Syria, Yemen, missile development, terrorism and illicit finance and cybersecurity. A US official said that the conference will also discuss "Iran's destructive policies in the region."

Why are the Palestinians so worried about the upcoming conference? Because they care about Iran or Yemen or Syria or missile development? No, the Palestinians are concerned because they have somehow convinced themselves that the main purpose of the conference is to bring the Arab countries closer to Israel. It is not clear on what the Palestinian claim is based, especially as neither the US nor Poland has mentioned the issue of normalization between Israel and the Arab countries as being on the agenda of the conference.

"The PLO considers the conference a form of direct and public normalization [between the Arabs and Israel]," said PLO Executive Committee member Ahmed Majdalani. "This is an attempt to change the priorities in the Middle East so that confronting Iran would become the main issue instead of ending the [Israeli] occupation." The PLO official called on the Arab countries to boycott the conference.

PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat also expressed concern over the planned conference in Warsaw; he said it was a "serious attempt to overturn the Arab Peace Initiative" that was endorsed by the Arab League in 2002. This 10-sentence initiative calls for normalizing relations between the Arab countries and Israel in exchange for a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines (including east Jerusalem) and a "just settlement" of the Palestinian refugee issue based on UN resolution 194. The resolution states that refugees "wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practical date."

Although Israel has expressed tentative support for the initiative, it also made clear that it cannot accept the relocation of millions of Palestinians into Israel. Such a move would mean the creation of two Palestinians states: one in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, and another in Israel, where Jews would become a minority in their country.

Erekat and other Palestinian officials seem worried that the Arabs planning to participate in the conference will abandon the Arab Peace Initiative, including the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel. They are also apparently concerned that their Arab brothers will abandon the Palestinian issue in favor of an anti-Iran coalition. Several Arab countries now consider the Iranian "threat" their main priority and believe that it should take precedence over the Palestinian dispute.

"The Palestinian cause is an Arab and Islamic issue par excellence," Erekat said, echoing Palestinian fears of Arab indifference toward the Palestinians. "We have not authorized anyone to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians. The US is planning, through the Warsaw conference, to first achieve normalization between the Arabs and Israel before peace [between Israel and the Palestinians]."

Even if the planned conference is aimed at creating a coalition against Iran, one would expect the Palestinian Authority to be the first to join it. In the past few years, the Palestinian leadership has repeatedly charged Iran with meddling in the internal affairs of the Palestinians, especially by supporting Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. It seems the Palestinian leadership would rather see Iran continue to pose a threat to Arab countries than see peace between those countries and Israel.

Recently, a senior Palestinian official accused Iran of being behind the weekly demonstrations that began in March 2018. "Iran is financing these marches," the official said, referring to the demonstrations being held in the context of the Hamas-sponsored March of Return.

The "March of Return" is the name chosen by Hamas and other Palestinian groups to describe the weekly protests along the Gaza-Israel border. The groups say that their main goal is to force Israel to lift the Gaza Strip blockade, but by calling the demonstrations a "March of Return," Hamas and its supporters are also saying that they want Palestinian refugees and their descendants to move into Israel as part of what they consider a "right of return."

Osama Qawassmeh, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's ruling Fatah faction, also lashed out at Iran:

"Iran has not provided anything for the Palestinian people. It is shameful that some think that the economic crisis in Iran is because of its support for the Palestinians. We never heard that Iran helped build a school or hospital or university or any other developmental project."

Iran's support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, he explained, does not mean that it supports the Palestinian people. "This is a huge misconception and mistake," he said.

In addition, Abbas loyalists have accused Iran of supporting Hamas's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007. One official claimed that the Hamas terrorists who staged a coup against the Palestinian Authority back then had received military training in Iran and "some Arab countries."

Another sign that the Arab countries have turned their backs on the Palestinians was provided by the recent convening of Arab foreign ministers in Jordan to build a consensus among Arab states on regional security issues. The Palestinians were not invited.

The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank city of Ramallah should ask itself why is everyone disparaging the Palestinian cause," said Palestinian political analyst Fayez Abu Shamaleh. "Why is the Palestinian cause no longer at the center of the attention of Arabs and Jews? Even the candidates running in the Israeli election have ignored the Palestinian issue."

The Palestinian fears do not seem unjustified. Several Arab countries appear completely fed up with the Palestinians, particularly the continued bickering between Fatah and Hamas. Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Arab countries have tried in the past decade to help the two rival parties resolve their differences, to no avail. Egyptian intelligence officials have devoted years trying to convince Hamas and Fatah to work together for the benefit of the Palestinians.

Instead of doing so, however, Palestinian leaders are preoccupied with blocking Arab participation in a conference that could see the creation of a coalition against Iran -- the same country that Abbas and his loyalists hold responsible for the ongoing divisions among the Palestinians. Might it be possible that the Arab countries are finally rousing themselves from their long slumber and beginning to seek better lives for themselves and their neighbors?

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Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem, is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13697/palestinians-iran-coalition

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