Massive terror attack around election day thwarted - Arutz Sheva Staff

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by Arutz Sheva Staff

Senior Gaza Hamas terrorists enlisted terrorist from Judea and Samaria to carry out suicide attack and prepare car bomb near Ma'aleh Adumim.

The Shin Bet and the IDF recently discovered a terrorist operative in Judea and Samaria enlisted by senior Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip to carry out a serious terrorist attack near election day on April 9, 2019.

In the course of exposing the plot, Yihya Abu Dia, a 23-year-old resident of the village of A-Zayyim east of Jerusalem, who is identified with the Hamas terrorist organization, was arrested on March 31.
In his Shin Bet interrogation to date, it was found that Abu Dia had been in contact with senior Hamas operatives in the Gaza Strip via the Internet, was recruited for military activity and agreed to carry out missions and serve as a suicide attacker.

As part of his ties with Hamas operatives in the Gaza Strip, Abu Dia was asked to buy a car and rent a storage room in order to prepare a car bomb and to monitor the best point for an attack in the Ma'aleh Adumim area, where there is a high concentration of buses, civilians and soldiers.

Abu Dia followed instructions, carried out observations on busy sites, and reported to his superiors, who chose the “best” point and conveyed instructions on how to carry out the attack quickly.

As part of the preparations for the suicide bombing attack, Abu Dia was asked by the Hamas operatives from the Gaza Strip to film a final testament in the name of the military wing of Hamas. He planned to film the clip before he went to the attack wearing a Hamas military band, and for this purpose purchased a tripod for filming.

In the coming days, an indictment will be filed against Abu Dia.

A senior Shin Bet source said, "Hamas' terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza Strip is constantly recruiting Hamas operatives from the Judea and Samaria region to carry out murderous terrorist attacks in order to destabilize the security situation in the region. This activity of the military wing of Hamas joins a long list of attempted terrorist attacks under the direction of Hamas in the Gaza Strip by recruiting operatives in Judea and Samaria, that have been thwarted by the Shin Bet in recent years and have so far led to the imprisonment of many. The Shin Bet security service and security forces will continue to act to prevent terrorist attacks by Hamas in advance.”


Arutz Sheva Staff

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/262351

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Teacher Rejects President Trump as Subject of Student’s “Hero” Essay - Sara Dogan

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by Sara Dogan

But another student was allowed to write about ex-president Obama.

Sixth grade student Bella Moscato and her family have gone public after the middle schooler’s teacher assigned her class to write an essay on a person they consider a hero—and then rejected Bella’s proposal to write about President Donald Trump.


Bella is a student at Samoset Middle School, part of the Sachem Central School District located in Long Island, New York. According to the 11-year-old, who was interviewed with her parents by a local news channel, the teacher made no secret of her distaste for our current president.


That teacher, says Bella, rejected Trump as a subject of her essay “because he spreads negativity and says bad stuff about women.” According to Bella, this statement was made in front of the whole class as well as another faculty member. Her teacher then told her to pick a different individual to profile in her assignment.


“The thing I didn't get is she was okay with someone doing Barack Obama, but not okay with doing Donald Trump. That's what got me angry and I didn't like that,” Bella explained.
Bella’s parents brought the issue to a local school board meeting.


“My daughter’s hero is the president of our country. I can’t believe that anybody in the school would tell my daughter that that guy can’t be her hero. I’m incensed by this,” her father, Arthur Moscato, declared at the meeting. His comments were met with loud applause.


Her mother, Valarie Moscato, spoke up too: “This was really frustrating to me because you know my daughter has every right to do and pick a hero of her choice…so it was really upsetting to me that [the teacher] was trying to shut her down.”


School superintendent Dr. Kenneth Graham attempted to rebut the accusations. “It is not accurate that this student was told that they were not allowed to conduct research or report on any individual for a school assignment, including President Trump,” he claimed in a statement. “To the best of our knowledge, by choice the student is still conducting their project on President Trump.”


But as Bella’s father Arthur told the crowd assembled at the school board meeting, this statement, not his daughter’s story, is the lie. Addressing Superintendent Graham directly, the father stated, “And I’m incensed that my story was said to be inaccurate, by you. My story is not inaccurate. My daughter didn’t lie. No one should make a child feel that way. And you’re supposed to protect my child.”  His statements received further applause from the audience.


The one fact that Superintendent Graham apparently got right is that Bella is still writing her essay on President Trump, despite her teacher’s objections. “Because Donald Trump is my hero,” she explained.


The school board claimed they could not comment on the matter at a public meeting but promised to investigate. At last report, the Moscatos are still waiting for an apology from the teacher and school district.


Sara Dogan

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273588/teacher-rejects-president-trump-subject-students-sara-dogan

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Annihilation of Christian Life and People: Where is the Outrage in the West? - Giulio Meotti

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by Giulio Meotti

"Religious liberty, the core value of western civilisation, is being destroyed across large parts of the world. Yet the West, myopically denying this religious war, is averting its gaze..." — Melanie Phillips, British journalist, The Times, November 17, 2014.

• Islamic extremists have seen that the West has not mobilized to prevent them from repressing Christians, as if unconsciously there were a strange convergence between our silence and the ethnic cleansing project of the Islamic State, aimed at erasing Christians.
• "Religious liberty, the core value of western civilisation, is being destroyed across large parts of the world. Yet the West, myopically denying this religious war, is averting its gaze..." — Melanie Phillips, British journalist, The Times, November 17, 2014.
• The Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, just visited the Muslim survivors of the attack on the mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Why does the same compassion not spur the British royal family to stop in Sri Lanka, their former colony, to meet the Christian survivors, before going back to England?
• The appeal of Asia Bibi's daughters to help her mother met a deaf West. The UK refused to offer asylum to this persecuted Pakistani Christian family.

Sri Lanka after the jihadist massacre of Christians is not just a terrible succession of crying mothers and little coffins. Unfortunately, it also tells us a lot about the discouraging state of the West. Pictured: The funeral of one of the victims of the April 21 Easter Sunday attack in Sri Lanka. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

"Where is the solidarity for the Sri Lanka's Christians?" asked the British scholar Rakib Ehsan, a Muslim.

"The differences in tone and nature between the condemnations of the Christchurch and Sri Lanka terrorist attacks are striking. After Christchurch, there was no hesitation about stating the religious backgrounds of the victims and directing emotion and affection towards Muslim communities. Politicians took no issue with categorising the events in Christchurch as terrorism.
"In contrast, the words 'terrorism' and 'Christianity', along with their associated terms, have so far failed to feature in much of the reaction to the attacks in Sri Lanka.
"What is evident is not only a clear reluctance to specify the religious background of Christians who were killed in Sri Lanka, but also an absence of heartfelt solidarity with Christian communities across the world, which continue to suffer grave forms of persecution on the grounds of their faith."

Rakib Ehsan asked the right question. But it might be rewritten as: Where is the Western solidarity for the Sri Lanka's murdered Christians?

This is a drama in three acts. The first act consists of the Christians and other non-Muslim indigenous peoples being violated and murdered. The second act consists of Muslim extremists who create this genocide. And the third act consists of the indifferent West, which looks everywhere else.

The number of murdered victims in the April 21 Easter Sunday jihadist attacks in Sri Lanka is too terrible even to think about: 253 dead. Among the victims, 45 children were murdered. Their small faces and stories have begun to emerge. The Islamic terrorists knew there were many children in the three churches, and they deliberately targeted them with their bombs. Footage shows one of the bombers patting a young child on the head before he enters the St. Sebastian's Church in Negombo, where "everyone has lost someone".

The Fernando family had taken a photograph at the baptism of their third child, Seth. In Negombo they were all buried together. Father, mother and three children aged 6, 4, and 11 months. According to the New York Times:

"Fabiola Fernando, 6, was an elementary school student. In a photo posted to her mother's Facebook page, she showed off a gold medal, a small smile on her face. Leona Fernando, 4, the middle child in her family, was learning to read and was holding a copy of "Sleeping Beauty" in the picture. Seth Fernando, 11 months, was the newest addition to the Fernando family. He was buried alongside his parents and two sisters."

The silence of the Western intellectual world and the media is particularly deafening. The new humanitarian conscience seems to see only two groups: those who have the right to the compassion and protection of the international community, and those, such as Christians, unworthy of help or solidarity.

The deliberate murder of an 8-month-old baby, Matthew, in a Sri Lankan church apparently did not upset or chill the West, did not go viral on social media, did not to become a hashtag, did not to push the Europeans to crowd into their public squares, did not press the Islamic world to examine its conscience, did not to induce Western politicians and opinion-makers seriously to reflect on who killed that child, or on those who foment and finance the Islamist anti-Christian hatred.

Sudesh Kolonne was waiting outside St. Sebastian's Church when he heard the blast. He then ran inside and searched for his wife and daughter. It took him a half hour to find their bodies.

The attacks also killed three children of a Danish billionaire. Another woman lost her daughter, son, husband, sister-in-law and two nieces. A British father had to make a choice over which of his two children to save. Another British family was destroyed. To add horror to horror, the pregnant wife of one of the terrorists, when police raided her home, detonated a suicide vest, killing her own children.

The Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, just visited the Muslim survivors of the attack on the mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, including children recovering in the hospitals. It was a gesture of humanity and compassion. Why does the same compassion not spur the British royal family to stop in Sri Lanka, their former colony, to meet the Christian survivors, before going back to England? Entire Christian families were decimated in the attack.

Where is the outrage in the West for the annihilation of Christian life and people? It feels as if there is no indignation, only silence, interrupted by bombs and "Allahu Akbar". The history books of the future will not condone this Western betrayal. If the West had taken seriously the persecutions of Christians, now the bell would not toll for the death of the Christian presence -- not only in historic lands of Christianity, but also for the West. Islamic extremists have seen that the West has not mobilized to prevent them from repressing Christians, as if unconsciously there were a strange convergence between our silence and the ethnic cleansing project of the Islamic State, aimed at erasing Christians.

The British author Melanie Phillips has called this persecution of Christians "our guilty secret."

"Religious liberty, the core value of western civilisation, is being destroyed across large parts of the world. Yet the West, myopically denying this religious war, is averting its gaze from the destruction of its foundational creed in the Middle East and the attempt to eradicate it elsewhere. It is therefore no surprise that, faced with jihadist barbarities abroad and cultural inroads at home, the free world is proving so ineffectual".

The jihadist attack in Sri Lanka was not only "the deadliest attack on Christians in South Asia in recent memory." It was also the largest massacre of Christian children. But no newspaper has launched a campaign to raise awareness of European public opinion, no pro-Christian solidarity movement has arisen, no Western leader appears to have visited a church in solidarity, no Western church leaders had the courage to point out the culprits by calling them by name, no Western mayors hung photographs of the 45 children torn to pieces, no public square was filled in thousands saying "Je suis chrétien".

A few years ago, at the height of the migrant crisis in Europe, a photograph conquered public opinion in the West. It was the famous picture of the three-year-old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, who drowned off the coast of Bodrum, Turkey. That little migrant moved the West. His image went viral. The New York Times called it "Aylan Kurdi's Europe".

"For historical reasons, Angela Merkel feared images of armed German police confronting civilians on our borders," wrote Robin Alexander, Die Welt's leading journalist, in his book, Die Getriebenen ("The Driven Ones"). If photographs of migrant children spurred Europe's leaders to open their borders, the photographs of murdered Christian children -- such as the 45 in Sri Lanka -- apparently left them indifferent.

The appeal of Asia Bibi's daughters to help her mother met a deaf West. The UK refused to offer asylum to this Pakistani Christian family and take persecuted Christians.

"It is with indifference that we witness a catastrophe of civilization with no precedent", wrote the French scholar historian Jean-François Colosimo, commenting on the destruction of Eastern Christianity. No religion, no community, is today more persecuted than Christians. Why, then, this silence by the West? Have we become so foreign to ourselves, to our roots and to our history, that we can contemplate this outbreak of jihadi violence without blinking an eye? Or are we so short-sighted that we hoped to buy "peace" with the Muslim extremists at the cost of abandoning those Christians? The same jihadi ideology that murdered Christian children in Sri Lanka, targeted European children in Nice, Manchester and Barcelona.

Sri Lanka after the massacre is not just a terrible succession of crying mothers and little coffins. Unfortunately, it also tells us a lot about the discouraging state of the West.

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14142/annihilation-christian-life

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France: Macron makes a U-turn, vows an “intractable fight against political Islam” - Christine Douglass-Williams

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by Christine Douglass-Williams

-- out of the blue, Macron “has vowed an ‘intractable’ fight against ‘political Islam,’ which he said seeks secession from the French Republic.”

Back in January, Hungarian leader Viktor Orban called French leader Emmanuel Macron a “leader of the pro-migration forces” and stated “if what he wants with regards to migration materializes in Europe, that would be bad for Hungary, therefore I must fight him.”

Orban is known as “one of the most vociferous opponents” of Muslim immigration, and he has openly sought to protect his country’s Christian culture and democracy from Islamization, taking the path opposite to that of Emmanuel Macron. The tragic burning of the Notre Dame cathedral has been seen by many to be symbolic of the slow burning, destruction, and doom of French culture, and along with it, its democratic rule of law. Macron made things worse by his grossly insensitive suggestion to restore the Gothic Cathedral not to its former glory, but to reflect “diversity.”

Now, out of the blue, Macron “has vowed an ‘intractable’ fight against ‘political Islam,’ which he said seeks secession from the French Republic.” Something very strange is going on with Macron in his sudden U-turn from full multicultural appeasement to condemning “political Islam” and seeking to protect the “French Republic.” One must remember that Sharia is divine law in normative Islam, and to try to divorce politics from Islam renders one an apostate. Macron has therefore in effect rebuked and condemned normative Islam. This sudden flip-flop by Macron is likely due to upcoming elections in May; polls show that he is neck-and-neck with anti-globalist Marine LePen, who has risen in popularity due to her stance on Muslim migration. The revolt of the yellow vests is another headache for Macron. If France’s culture is to be saved from Islamization, the French public will do well to vote out Macron despite his posturing about “political Islam,” a threat he has chosen to ignore all along, right up until election time.


“‘Political Islam’ wants to ‘secede’ from France – Macron,” RT News, April 25, 2019:

French President Emmanuel Macron vowed an ‘intractable’ fight against ‘political Islam,’ which he said seeks secession from the French Republic. His comments left many puzzled about his goals.
After delivering a speech addressing numerous social issues tied to France’s burgeoning protest movement, the Yellow Vests, Macron’s press conference took an odd turn when he laid into the French Muslim population.
“We are talking about people who, in the name of a religion, pursue a political project,” he said. “A political Islam that wants to secede from our Republic,” against which he asked the government to be “intractable.”
Macron also gave a ringing defense of French secularism, and called out “communitarianism.”
“We must not hide ourselves when we talk about secularism, we do not really talk about secularism, we talk about the communitarianism that has settled in certain districts of the Republic,” Macron said, referring to Muslim communities.
French citizens gave mixed reactions on social media to the president’s remarks, some posing their own questions in response.
Some suggested Macron sought to draw support from the right, capturing some of the constituency of National Rally (previously National Front) party leader Marine Le Pen…..

Christine Douglass-Williams

Source: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/04/france-macron-makes-a-u-turn-vows-an-intractable-fight-against-political-islam

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Resisting the Resisters - Joseph Klein

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by Joseph Klein

Trump says no to House Democrat subpoenas.

“We’re fighting all the subpoenas,” President Trump declared Wednesday in response to the flood of House Democrats’ subpoenas engulfing his administration. “These aren’t, like, impartial people. The Democrats are trying to win 2020,” he added. Referring to the Mueller investigation, which took nearly two years to complete, the president said, “I thought after two years we’d be finished with it. No. Now the House goes and starts subpoenas. I say it’s enough.” In short, the president has decided to fully resist the political shenanigans of the Democrat resisters in Congress who have sought to delegitimize and hobble his presidency from the get-go.

President Trump cooperated fully with the Mueller investigation, waiving executive privilege. His administration turned over more than 1 million pages of documents. The president also permitted then-White House counsel Don McGahn, who had counseled President Trump not to cooperate with the Mueller investigation in the first place, to submit to over thirty hours of questioning by the Mueller team. The Mueller report concluded that “the evidence was not sufficient to charge that any member of the Trump Campaign conspired with representatives of the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election.” With respect to a possible charge of obstruction of justice, the Mueller team laid out a series of worst-case scenarios and assumptions, relying extensively on Mr. McGahn’s testimony, but reached no definitive conclusion as to the president’s criminal liability.  The Democrats are not satisfied. The House Committee on the Judiciary has subpoenaed Mr. McGahn to testify on a broad range of matters already addressed in the Mueller report, as well as on matters that are the subject of pending judicial proceedings outside of the scope of the Mueller investigation.

President Trump intends to fight the McGahn subpoena on executive privilege grounds, in court if necessary. His lawyers will likely argue that the Democrats are seeking to use Mr. McGahn to plow over old ground for the sole purpose of harassing him and are also trying to use his testimony to elicit privileged information that was not covered in the Mueller report. However, the president risks losing this fight in court on the grounds that he may have already waived executive privilege. President Trump allowed detailed information regarding Mr. McGahn’s statements to the Mueller team, which the president did not try to stop Mr. McGahn from making on any privilege grounds in the first place, to be made public in the non-redacted portions of the Mueller report. Democrats' lawyers will argue that the president thus waived executive privilege with respect to Mr. McGahn's congressional testimony.

Nevertheless, President Trump should call the Democrats’ bluff.  He should force them to go to court to defend their fishing expedition with Mr. McGahn and with all their other investigations targeting the president. Very few cases involving such legislative-executive branch clashes over protection of confidential executive branch information have reached the courts. The president is on sound grounds to invoke his legal and executive privileges as aggressively as he can where he reasonably believes that the Democrat-controlled House committees are creating false pretexts in order to exact political revenge and help their presidential nominee in the 2020 election.

Thus, President Trump should stick to his guns and not allow Mr. McGahn and other current and former aides who have provided confidential advice to either the president himself, or to those within the executive branch who regularly interact with the president in connection with his deliberations, to appear before any House committee. Whether the matter involves congressional prowling into internal high level Trump administration deliberations leading up to its decision to include a question on citizenship in the 2020 census form, the president’s and his advisers’ deliberations leading up to his immigration policy and personnel-related decisions, or what the president discussed with his White House lawyers and advisers in responding to the Mueller investigation, the answer to House Democrat subpoenas should be the same. Resist the resisters. This will serve as a shot across the bow to the rabid partisans in Congress who seek to encroach on President Trump’s ability to effectively carry out his constitutional responsibilities.  

Even more egregious on the Democrats’ part, they are harassing him politically with subpoenas that have no legitimate legislative purpose when it comes to delving into his pre-presidency business and private concerns. The fact that no president is above the law does not mean that a president must forfeit the constitutional rights of every other person in America as the price for serving the nation as its president. That is exactly what the House Democrat snoopers are trying to do to President Trump.

For example, the president’s tax returns, especially those filed for years prior to when he took office, should be off-limits to Congress on constitutional grounds as an invasion of his privacy rights. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-MA) is relying for his authority to request the president's returns on a statute that he claims provides his committee with broad investigatory powers, including the right to receive anyone's tax returns upon request. In one of his letters to the Internal Revenue Service purporting to further justify his request, Rep. Neal quoted very selectively from a Supreme Court case, Watkins v. United States, 354 U.S. 178 (1957), dealing with the scope of legitimate congressional inquiry during the McCarthy era. He characterized the Supreme Court decision as instructing “that Congress’s power to investigate is ‘broad’ and ‘encompasses inquiries concerning the administration of existing laws as well as proposed or possibly needed statutes.’” True enough, but Rep. Neal left out the part of the decision in which the Court set limits on what constitutes a proper scope of an investigation for legitimate legislative purposes.

 “There is no general authority to expose the private affairs of individuals without justification in terms of the functions of the Congress,” the Supreme Court said. “Nor is the Congress a law enforcement or trial agency. These are functions of the executive and judicial departments of government,” the Court added. “No inquiry is an end in itself; it must be related to, and in furtherance of, a legitimate task of the Congress. Investigations conducted solely for the personal aggrandizement of the investigators or to ‘punish’ those investigated are indefensible… The public is, of course, entitled to be informed concerning the workings of its government. That cannot be inflated into a general power to expose where the predominant result can only be an invasion of the private rights of individuals.”

These are the limits that the House Democrats are clearly overstepping. They are abusing their legislative oversight responsibilities by vengefully attempting to use bogus investigations of President Trump’s personal and business life even before he became president for the sole purpose of embarrassing him politically and helping his rival in 2020. Since the Democrats took charge of the House of Representatives, the inmates have been running the asylum. It is time to put an end to this madhouse.

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

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273593/resisting-resisters-joseph-klein

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China Ratchets Up Its Anti-Islam Campaign in Xinjiang - Hugh Fitzgerald

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by Hugh Fitzgerald

It is the West, not the Muslim countries, that registers complaints regarding the violation of Muslims' religious rights in China

"In August, a United Nations human rights panel said it had received many credible reports that a million or more Uighurs and other minorities are being held in what resembles a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy” in Xinjiang.
China says it is not enforcing arbitrary detention and political re-education.
Aside from the mass detentions, rights groups also say that the Chinese government has significantly raised limitations on everyday religious observances in the region.
Last month, the region’s capital Urumqi launched a campaign targeting halal products, like food and toothpaste, which are produced according to Islamic law, in order to prevent what it sees as the incursion of Islam into secular life.

Just as the Chinese government forced Uighur restaurants to stay open during Ramadan, it is making it ever more difficult for Muslims to avoid what is haram. The Chinese government is now targeting what it calls “pan-halalization.” This is done by making sure that non-halal foods are present everywhere, including schools, hospitals, and government canteens. Those who are government employees, according to official reports, “should not have any diet problems” — meaning that if you work for the government, you should be willing to eat regular, non-halal foods. And “work canteens will be changed so that officials could try all kinds of cuisine” — which means, of course, trying out foods that are strictly haram.

After more than a year of witnessing the ratcheting up of the campaign to restrict the practice of Islam in Xinjiang — those shorn beards, those confiscated Qur’ans replaced by edited versions, those banned babies’ names, those dancing imams in the public square, those re-education camps, Muslim countries have remained remarkably silent. Some, such as Egypt, have even sent Uighurs back to China, where they undoubtedly faced prosecution. Even when a Pakistani government official finally issued, in late September, a statement about the crackdown in Xinjiang, in late September, it was only to urge that there be a “softening of restrictions” on the Uighurs — with no details given, and that the Chinese government exercise “patience” in dealing with the Uighurs — in other words, the mildest of protests.

The silence is understandable. Chinese are big buyers of oil and gas from Muslim countries. They are also providers of large amounts of both foreign aid and investment, and Pakistan, in particular, economically on the ropes and so reliant on Chinese investment and aid, cannot afford to alienate Beijing.

Finally, at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, not Muslim but Western countries spoke out about the re-education camps:

China faced calls on Tuesday [Nov. 6] from Western government to end its mass detention of Uighur Muslims, but brusquely rebuffed the concerns as “not factual” and “politically driven.”
“China is here to seek cooperation,” said its vice foreign minister, Le Yucheng, at the opening of a review by the United Nations Human Rights Council. He pointed to China’s achievements in lifting millions of people from poverty, largely skirting its treatment of ethnic minorities.
The focus and tone changed after North American and European diplomats expressed concern over deteriorating human rights and a crackdown in the western region of Xinjiang that has swept upwards of a million people into indefinite detention in re-education camps. The Muslim detainees are told that they are infected with an “ideological virus,” and are indoctrinated in devotion to the state and the Communist Party.
Representatives of the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Australia and other countries called for an end to the detention of Uighurs and members of other minority groups, and urged respect for freedom of religion, expression and association.

Here is something to bring up, whenever Muslim propagandists tell us how aggrieved they feel at the “colonialist” and “anti-Muslim” West and its “islamophobic” peoples. Remind them that it was that West — NATO forces, led by the United States — that rescued the Muslim Bosnians from the Serbs. (Whether that policy was folly is a different question.) Remind them that the Americans have spent 5.6 trillion dollars on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Pakistan. The Americans wanted only to end the despotic rule of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, of the fanatical Taliban in Afghanistan, and also to help Pakistan, which has proven to be a meretricious ally, to fight the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and other terrorists, while remaining economically afloat. At least 5.6 trillion dollars — keep reminding yourself and the world’s Muslims — has been spent since 9/11 to improve the lives of Muslims. Mention, too, the colossal sums — in the tens of billions — the United States has spent since 2001 on economic and security aid to Egypt, to Jordan, to Pakistan, and other Muslim-majority countries. Note, and re-note, that of the six top recipients of American aid, five are Muslim countries.

And then, as a final fillip, point out that it was the West — the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Australia — that raised with China the issue of the re-education camps for Muslim Uighurs, while the representatives of Muslim countries sat on their hands. That might, if only temporarily, shame the International Islamic Grievance Committee into a chastened silence.


Hugh Fitzgerald

Source: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/04/hugh-fitzgerald-china-ratchets-up-its-anti-islam-campaign-in-xinjiang-part-three

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By its own standards, the New York Times deserves blame for the Poway synagogue shooting - Thomas Lifson

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by Thomas Lifson

If the shoe fits...

Does anyone else remember when a New York Times editorial blamed Sarah Palin for the shooting of Gabby Giffords because of a bulls-eye on a map?

The New York Times published a hideous, obviously anti-Semitic cartoon the day before a gunman entered a Chabad synagogue in suburban San Diego, killing one person and injuring 3.

Rabbi Yonah Fradkin, executive director of Chabad of San Diego County, says in a statement that Lori Kaye, 60, of Poway was killed. He says those injured in the shooting Saturday were Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, Noya Dahan, 8, Almog Peretz, 34.

By the standards that a 2017 New York Times editorial published after Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson attempted a mass assassination of members of the GOP House caucus, the Times bears some responsibility.

In 2011, Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl. At the time, we and others were sharply critical of the heated political rhetoric on the right. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map that showed the targeted electoral districts of Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.

Keep in mind that an unsigned editorial means that it is the product of [the]  editorial board itself, not just one op-ed writer, and is this the Times’ official position Punditfact described the hornet’s nest the NYT prodded with a stick:

The New York Times has since issued a correction following broad criticism. (snip)
The original editorial claimed that maps circulated by Sarah Palin's PAC amounted to "political incitement," which the authors said was clearly linked to the subsequent 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz. (snip)
The editorial, penned amid the frenzy of the mass shooting, sought to connect the attack on GOP lawmakers with the 2011 Giffords shooting to make a broader point about politically motivated violence. The piece reasoned that the latest attack, which left the gunman dead and four injured, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R–La., was probably "evidence of how vicious American politics has become," and that the shooter’s derangement "found its fuel in politics."

Now, I think it is nonsense to blame attempted mass assassinations on one item published somewhere. But the NYT proclaimed that standard when it gave them an excuse to vilify Sarah Palin. Now, the shoe is on the other foot (which to mix metaphors, is firmly planted in the Times’ metaphorical mouth).

Hat tips: Andrew Bolt, John McMahon

Thomas Lifson

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/by_its_emown_standardsem_the_new_york_times_deserves_blame_for_the_poway_synagogue_shooting.html

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Biden: The Democrats’ Flavor of the Week - Clarice Feldman

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by Clarice Feldman

The Democrats’ great white (straight male) hope could well prove this year’s hill for them to die on

I think there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 Democrats who have thrown their hats into the ring so far. Frankly, I’ve lost count. Each week, as a new hat comes flying, the contender is the recipient of free, often favorable, press doting, only to be followed within hours by attacks on his or her personality, policies and history.

This week’s person-whose-definitely-going-to beat-the President is Obama’s former vice president, Joe Biden.

He postponed the big announcement several times, and finally, the big day arrived this week.

His party’s theme for some time now has been straight white men bad, and it’s difficult to see how he’ll garner the nomination. But shrewd Joe has a plan: He hired Symone Sanders as his campaign manager just weeks after she’d contributed to another wannabe contender, Pete Buttigieg, the gay mayor of a failing Indiana city. Previously, she was the spokesperson for Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign. After leaving that position, she announced on CNN "We Don't Need White People Leading The Democratic Party Right Now." 

That was then. Apparently, we need them now, in campaign official-speak. 

You can see why viewing the crazy train of Democrat contenders, party people who want to wrest the White House back, have hitched their star to someone who might appeal to straight white men, a still not insignificant voting tranche to political observers outside newsrooms.

It doesn’t seem likely to meet their expectations. In the first place, Biden is still not very fast on his feet. Watch him stumble through even this cloud-soft interview on “The View,” the idiotic show I imagine is watched largely by shut-ins too weak to change the channel on their remotes.

And if you want to know what ill-informed millennial youngsters think, there’s no better source than Vox, which I think may still be hoping for a totally inexperienced person of the right sexual orientation and ethnicity to grab the Golden Apple:

Mainstream Democrats like other mainstream Democrats. But what it means to be a mainstream Democrat has changed significantly since Biden entered the Senate 46 years ago. As Democrats gear up to take on Trump, the party’s best shot is to do anything possible to avoid repeating the 2016 experience of defending decades’ worth of twists and turns on various issues from the Iraq War to LGBTQ rights to banking deregulation.

Vox noted his then-mainstream positions which are out of synch with progressives in today’s party: He was an Iraq war proponent. He was too tied to the banking industry, He voted for the “discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act” and was a “tough on crime’ drug warrior.” He “mishandled” the Clarence Thomas hearings. (This was before (a) all women must be believed; and (b) before Bill Clinton when some women must not be believed; and (c) Kavanaugh hearings where once again all women must be believed or something .)

Much is made of his habitual groping of women and young girls.

Far more serious handicaps in my opinion, are his apparent corrupt acts to benefit his son, Hunter. He steered $1.8 billion dollars to the then-Russian-linked government of the Ukraine and in return his son Hunter received millions of dollars from a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma. 

He pulled a similar stunt with China.

Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and author of the new book Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends, joined SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight on Monday to detail the involvement of Hunter Biden, former Vice President Joe Biden’s second son, in a China-backed private equity firm’s investment in a Chinese atomic energy company indicted for “nuclear power conspiracy against the United States.”
In an interview with Breitbart News Senior Editors-at-Large Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak, Schweizer highlighted the financial relationship between Hunter Biden and the Chinese state -- including a $1.5 billion deal establishing a private equity firm -- as an illustration of what he dubbed “the new corruption.” He further explained how foreign governments purchase political influence through “sweetheart deals” with the children of politicians.

I think after the Clintons, the voters are fed up with such corrupt self-dealings.

While his name has not yet appeared to my knowledge in the now rapidly unraveling coup attempt against President Trump, Biden was vice president during all this, and not coincidentally, the prior Ukraine government plays a prominent role in the scandal. He may still find himself enmeshed in it as a new Ukrainian prosecutor,who replaced the one Biden forced out, reopens the case.

Some hard questions should be answered by Biden as he prepares, potentially, to run for president in 2020: Was it appropriate for your son and his firm to cash in on Ukraine while you served as point man for Ukraine policy? What work was performed for the money Hunter Biden’s firm received? Did you know about the Burisma probe? And when it was publicly announced that your son worked for Burisma, should you have recused yourself from leveraging a U.S. policy to pressure the prosecutor who very publicly pursued Burisma?

The coordination between Obama officials and the Ukrainians began in January 2016:

Donald Trump began his meteoric rise to the presidency, the Obama White House summoned Ukrainian authorities to Washington to coordinate ongoing anti-corruption efforts inside Russia’s most critical neighbor.
The January 2016 gathering, confirmed by multiple participants and contemporaneous memos, brought some of Ukraine’s top corruption prosecutors and investigators face to face with members of former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), the FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ).
The agenda suggested the purpose was training and coordination. But Ukrainian participants said it didn’t take long -- during the meetings and afterward -- to realize the Americans’ objectives included two politically hot investigations: one that touched Vice President Joe Biden’s family and one that involved a lobbying firm linked closely to then-candidate Trump.

The end result was to scotch the claims about Biden and tar Trump with Manafort.

More than the seemingly corrupt payoff to the Biden family is involved. The President made this clear a few days ago.

Ukrainian officials said this month they have gathered a heap of evidence of collusion with Democrats and they are trying to share the information with the US Justice Department.
A court in Ukraine ruled recently that the Manafort leak amounted to illegal interference in the 2016 election.
Back in 2017, a report by Politico found that Ukrainian officials had sought to undermine the Trump campaign by questioning his fitness for office.
They were also said to have worked to secure Clinton's victory by conducting research on her behalf and going after Manafort for his ties to Russia.

And then there are the lying, divisive comments he made when he announced his candidacy, which has enraged even the very moderate former law professor, Ann Althouse:

How dare Biden rest his campaign on a blatant lie -- a lie that has been used to stir up fear and racial discord?! The hypocrisy of offering to bring us together and embrace lofty values when he is either repulsively ignorant or just plain lying!
I could not finish watching that video. I tried, but I couldn't force myself. It's utterly toxic bilge.
If Biden does not come forward and retract this video and apologize and commit himself to making amends, I consider him disqualified. He does not have the character or brain power to be President.

She was referring to the false claim that Trump endorsed the neo-Nazis In Charlottesville. He did not. His reference to “good people on both sides” as the transcript shows was to those who demonstrating for and against the removal of historic Confederate statues. He specifically condemned the violent protestors.

Indeed, while repeating this slander, Biden endorsed Antifa, the fascist thugs who revel in beating up anyone who opposes their views.

Former Vice President Joe Biden endorsed Antifa in a video announcing his presidential bid Thursday, characterizing the group as “courageous” and saying it’s wrong to draw a moral equivalence between white nationalist groups and those opposing them
The violent methods of Antifa are well documented. The nebulous group often uses these violent means against peaceful conservative speakers, benign free speech advocates, and even journalists.
In a retelling of the events at a 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Biden describes the white nationalists as having “crazed faces, illuminated by torches, veins bulging and baring the fangs of racism,” but describes the Antifa members who engaged violently with them as “a courageous group of Americans.”

Capri Cafaro, a Biden fan, notes how unlikely it is that Biden’s announcement will win over the support he needs:

The insinuation was that another four years of Donald Trump would do irreparable damage to our nation’s core values. The latent message seemed to suggest that if Trump stays in the White House, we are doomed to be a nation that accepts racism and bigotry, doubts our institutions of government and the press, rebukes our historic global allies and attempts to ignore the rule of law if it is politically expedient or personally beneficial. While Biden did not explicitly say these all of these things in his video, the message seemed to permeate the underlying premise.
Herein lies the problem with this bold strategy. This message, by deduction, basically says to Trump supporters, “Hey, since you support Trump you are on the side of evil. You are embracing these bigoted policies. You are just as bad as I am saying Trump is.” Again, Biden did not explicitly say this in the same kind of way Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables.” But, the offensive insinuation is there, leaving me to wonder how Joe Biden in 2020 can win over Americans who voted for Trump in 2016.

The Democrats’ great white (straight male) hope could well prove this year’s hill for them to die on.

Clarice Feldman

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/04/biden_the_democrats_flavor_of_the_week.html

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From Khartoum to Tehran: Graveyard of Forlorn Hopes - Amir Taheri

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by Amir Taheri

Turabi boasted that he had triggered an avalanche that would bury the "corrupt world" of Zionists and Crusaders. Well, that didn't happen.

• PAIC's program contained ambitious goals, including the elimination of Israel, the collapse of the United States following the disintegration of the Soviet Empire, and the establishment of "truly Islamic" regimes in all the 57 countries where Islam was a majority religion. With a handful of exceptions, almost all the men who were supposed to build Turabi's brave new world ended rather badly.
• One of the two members of the committee to avoid a bad end, was Rached al-Ghannouchi, founder of the Tunisian Islamic Ennahdha ("Awakening"). Ghannouchi was wise enough to understand that Tunisians will not consent to replace a pseudo-secular despot with a religious tyrant. Some say Ghannouchi abandoned conspiratorial shenanigans in favor of consensus politics.
• Turabi boasted that he had triggered an avalanche that would bury the "corrupt world" of Zionists and Crusaders. Well, that didn't happen. What was buried was the sheikh's forlorn hope; the ghost of which is now haunting the ayatollah in Tehran.

Last month, the Islamic Republic of Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei published his manifesto for "building the new Islamic civilization over the next four decades". (Image source: khamenei.ir)

Last month, the Islamic Republic of Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei published his manifesto for "building the new Islamic civilization over the next four decades".

The manifesto is based on the assumption that the original Islamic civilization, which shone in its full glory in Medina and later in Kufa during Ali ibn Abi Talib's caliphate, has been all but destroyed by internal and external enemies and thus needs to be entirely rebuilt. Khamenei's argument echoes the analysis presented by the late Sudanese Islamist Hassan al-Turabi in the first "Popular Arab and Islamic Congress" (PAIC) he presided over in Khartoum in April 1991.

It may be a coincidence that Khamenei's manifesto is published almost exactly 28 years after the Khartoum gathering that attracted over 500 leading Islamist theoreticians and activists from all over the world. The men who gathered at PAIC had fixed a 30-year period for their dream of recasting the world according to their vision of Islam to be realized. That rather optimistic vision was meant to sweep away the deep pessimism that marked their view of Islamic history as nothing but centuries of retreat and decline.

PAIC's program contained ambitious goals, including the elimination of Israel, the collapse of the United States following the disintegration of the Soviet Empire, and the establishment of "truly Islamic" regimes in all the 57 countries where Islam was a majority religion.

To be sure, we still have two years before the 30-year deadline, and thus cannot be sure that the kind of Islam that Turabi dreamed of won't dominate the world in 2021. But what is certain is that, with a handful of exceptions, almost all the men who were supposed to build Turabi's brave new world ended rather badly.

The 1991 PAIC, the first of three conferences to be concluded in 1995, elected a leadership committee to carry out the project.

Representing Sudan, Turabi himself chaired the committee. However, before the decade was out, Turabi had been knocked off his pedestal and sent to jail after shattering Sudan's relative tranquility by unleashing the religious police against the Muslim majority and encouraging greater repression against the minority in the south.

The next prominent member of the committee was Abbasi Madani, leader of Algeria's Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and a key player in the tragedy that claimed the lives of over 300,000 people in the bloodiest decade of that nation's history. After briefly appearing as a possible leader of Algeria, Abbasi had to flee into exile in Germany, where he briefly flirted with a business career, and in 2011 settled in Qatar, where he died last week.

Another member was the businessman-cum-activist Osama bin Laden, who had lost his Saudi citizenship and received shelter in Sudan, where he gained prominence through investments and bribery. He was expelled from Sudan after the military, led by General Omar al-Bashir, tried to flirt with the West by handing over to the French, Ilych Ramirez Sanchez, alias "The Jackal", despite the fact that the Venezuelan terrorist had converted to Islam.

Bin Laden's subsequent career until his execution in Pakistan by an American special squad is too well documented to need repeating here.

The committee's Iranian member was Hojat al-Islam Mahdi Karrubi, then leader of the hardline faction in the Khomeinist establishment in Tehran. His career peaked with his two-term speakership of the Islamic Majlis, Iran's (erstaz) parliament, and he ended up under house arrest, which he still suffers.

The warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was the committee's Afghan member. A founder of the Hizb Islami (Islamic Party) and, for years, the darling of the CIA in Afghanistan, he managed to win his country's premiership but was unable to enter Kabul to exercise power. He had to flee to Iran, where he set up a trucking company and made some money before returning to Kabul to what seems a quiet life.

Another member, representing Egypt, was Ayman Rabi' al-Zawahiri who made his name as Bin Laden's sidekick in Al Qaeda. Going into hiding after the fall of the Taliban in Kabul, he is believed to have found shelter among Pushtun tribes in Pakistan's Swat Valley.

Representing Lebanon was Imad al-Mughniyah, Hezbollah's top security chief and one of Tehran's key operatives in the region. He was assassinated in Damascus in 2005 either by the Israelis or by Bashar al-Assad's secret service.

One of the two members of the committee to avoid a bad end, was Rached al-Ghannouchi, founder of the Tunisian Islamic Ennahdha ("Awakening"), who seized the opportunity provided by the Jasmine Revolution to return home and claim a slice of the power left behind by Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

Ghannouchi was wise enough to understand that Tunisians will not consent to replace a pseudo-secular despot with a religious tyrant. Some say, thanks to his daughters who had been brought up in exile in London, Ghannouchi abandoned conspiratorial shenanigans in favor of consensus politics.

Also escaping a bad end, at least so far, is Recep Tayyip Erdogan who built a political career over the following two decades, ending up as Turkey's first elected president. His critics claim that he is now trying to impose on Turkey the system for the promotion of which he had been chosen in Khartoum.

The Khartoum "show" included the leaders of almost all Palestinian groups dedicated to armed struggle, but none was included in the high committee. The five countries with the largest number of Muslims, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nigeria, were also not represented on the committee.

Turabi's big show had another interesting feature: it brought together enemies within the Islamic world, including senior officers from the Iranian security services alongside a brother of the Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein.

In an interview with a French journalist, later published as a book, Turabi boasted that he had triggered an avalanche that would bury the "corrupt world" of Zionists and Crusaders. Well, that didn't happen. What was buried was the sheikh's forlorn hope; the ghost of which is now haunting the ayatollah in Tehran. As Persian poet Zahir Faryabi said: history is a graveyard of forlorn hopes!

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/14140/khartoum-tehran-forlorn-hopes

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