Congressional Follies: Trump Is Still Your President - Clarice Feldman

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by Clarice Feldman

The Democrats and their Corrupt Journalist Corps never saw any of this coming.

When even CNN reports that the economy is booming and the President’s popularity soaring, what can a Democratic House stuck with loser candidates do? Peddle a phony impeachment. And when the President says, bring it on, I want the same rights you give a felon for a fair trial (in this case, the Senate), what do you do? Refuse to name managers for the trial and fail to move the matter over to the Senate, which according to the Constitution is the body vested with the obligation to decide the matter.

Of course, so many of their low-information base thinks that the House vote to impeach means the President is out of office. So they’ll be surprised to learn that this week the very people who “impeached him” agreed to his signature USMCA which scraps NAFTA, an act signed by Bill Clinton. 

They’ll be even more surprised to learn that on February 5 he will be in Pelosi’s House at her invitation to deliver the State of the Union Address. That address usually (but not last year) has been a boring drone no one watched. This year it surely will be a blockbuster, unlike the Democratic debates no one watches. Why should they? Those candidates promise to put hundreds of thousands of workers onto the unemployment rolls, raise taxes and health costs, flood the country with unemployable and unassimilable wretched refuse from around the world, support unrestricted abortion and such. These are not issues with broad voter appeal.

While self-described Constitutional scholars debate the next step -- will McConnell simply throw this out for failing to state a justiciable complaint; will there be a trial; how long must we wait for the House to act on the partisan vote taken after its outrageously one-sided “hearings”? -- Scott Adams (Dilbert’s creator) pithily summed up my take.

To be fair, Pelosi sitting on the impeachment is halfway to where that impeachment needs to go.

Over at the Spectator, Rabbi Dov Fischer argues that Pelosi is “terrified to hand it over.”

As Chuck Schumer’s hapless demands for even more witnesses evince, Pelosi and Schiff did such a feeble job that she has no case to present. She is humiliated, like a Marcia Clark who gets the courtroom spotlight for a year and leaves behind a legacy that she could not convict an obvious murderer even with so much evidence that, in order to make room to store all of it, they had to ask the guy to wear some of it. For Madam Speaker, like a dowager whose time has come to hand over the estate keys to her progeny, including to the hated and unworthy daughter-in-law who married her impeccable son, Pelosi’s moment is done, and she has to decide whether to (a) hand it over or (b1) Abuse her Power and (b2) Obstruct Congress by remaining petulantly puerile. Heading the Resistance, she resists history’s verdict as she now sets the table for President Trump to emerge, unexpectedly and unintentionally, with a remarkable new claim to Mount Rushmore: the first president in American history so deeply loved by the American people that they reelected him to be their president only months after he was impeached. Wow -- the Democrats and their Corrupt Journalist Corps never saw that one coming.
So the cipher trembles to pass along the indecipherable charges, aware that her ambitious production netted her the sum of aught and naught: three years to produce, a moment to dismiss. One is reminded of the epic scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where an overbearing evildoer with contemptuous laughter in his voice and insatiable bloodlust in his eye, accoutered like Pelosi in Impeachment Black, ferociously demonstrates publicly before a crowded audience on a parched dusty street somewhere in Arabia, dramatically twirling and flipping his ostensibly deathly huge saber to intimidate and terrify Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones, on the cusp of slicing him to pieces. Indie sees the overwhelming display of imposing doom, but -- bored and sweating -- just pulls out his pistol, eliminates the character instantaneously, and turns to the next order of business. Pelosi is that thug. Her two “Articles of Impeachment” are that saber. The Senate is that bullet -- and thus will pass the haters with the lost bark.

Even as impeachment dies aborning, other matters of greater significance require resolution.

Upcoming Criminal Prosecutions

We are waiting for justice for those who hatched and promoted through leaks the nonsensical RussiaGate charges against the President. Over at Powerline blog, Paul Mirengoff reviews the publicly known information and asks if John Brennan (and others) will be indicted.

He argues that Kevin Clinesmith (former FBI lawyer) will be indicted for materially altering documents. Andrew McCabe (former deputy director of the FBI) might be, too, for lying to prosecutors about his authorization to leak the FBI’s investigation to the Clinton Foundation. John Brennan may be for privately contradicting his public statements, including his testimony to Congress under oath in May 2017. He may also be charged with perjury in written testimony “to the House Intelligence Committee when he claimed that he had briefed each member of the so-called Gang of Eight about ‘Russian attempts to interfere in the election’ between August 11, 2016 and September 6, 2016”. Mirengoff isn’t “convinced that Brennan will be indicted,” but while I am not sure, I think the facts I see of the case warrant it. 

Archer 52, who commented on the article, says if any of these people are indicted their defenses will be easy to predict:

We did it because we were saving the country. 2. We did it because we are professionals and had no choice. 3. There were some mistakes made but they were minor and did not impact the operation. 4. The people around me lied, but I had no idea, because I am really bad at my job. And finally, 5. I make a far better witness than an inmate, so PLEEEAASEE do not throw me in jail.

Whatever happens, white-collar criminal defense counsel in Washington will clean up. And Archer has already summed up their work for them.

Fisking the FISA Court

A little over a week ago, the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court slammed FBI misconduct in its four applications for warrants against Trump campaign official Carter Page. 

(As you may know, one FISA warrant on one person can lead to spying on thousands of people, not just those the subject of the warrant had contact with. This allowed massive spying on the Trump campaign.)

The order was a response to the IG Horowitz report, which documented the agency’s complete failure to include exculpatory evidence in these applications.
The order

…responds to reports that personnel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) provided false information to the National Security Division (NSD) of the Department of Justice, and withheld material information from NSD which was detrimental to the FBI’s case, in connection with four applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for authority to conduct electronic surveillance of a U.S. citizen named Carter W. Page.
The frequency with which representations FBI personnel made to the court turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case,” Judge Collyer continued, “calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.

The document orders the government to, by Jan. 10, “Inform the Court in a sworn written submission of what it has done, and plans to do, to ensure that the statement of facts in each FBI application accurately and completely reflects information possessed by the FBI that is material to any issue presented by the application.

If the FBI is unable to comply, the court concludes, the FBI must explain why the order has not been implemented, what steps it is taking to meet the order, the timetable to meet the order, and ‘why… the information in FBI applications submitted in the interim should be regarded as reliable.

Many question why the FISC waited so long to respond, after all, Congressman Devin Nunes reported this to the court over a year ago. 

Others wonder what the heck FBI Director Christopher Wray is doing and what, if anything, this damning order will do to get him off his backside.

There are no hearings before FISC. We’re told this is not an impediment to a fair resolution of warrant applications.

David Kris, a former assistant attorney general for national security, shared a 2013 correspondence between FISC and then-judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), which he said shows that formal hearings are not typical.
Draft applications are submitted a week in advance, and after review by 'the Court’s legal staff' the judge makes a preliminary determination 'to approve… to impose conditions... [to decide] that additional information is needed... or... that a hearing would be appropriate,'" he said while sharing some excerpts on Twitter.
[M]any applications are altered... or... withheld from final submission... often after an indication that a judge would not approve'; the 'approval rate' for criminal wiretap applications 'is higher' than for FISA; & a sample showed 'substantive changes' made in 24.4% of cases," he continued. "'The frequency of hearings varies' with 'the nature and complexity' of a case & the judge, but the Court gets information 'from the government… through telephone conversations [&] meetings' as well as 'hearings,' & 'typically' the interaction is via 'informal communications.
These legal experts were backed by Andrew McCarthy, senior fellow at National Review and former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, argued that if a warrant application is not backed by probable cause, then a judge should simply reject it.
The argument should be that DOJ & FISA judges have higher duty to follow rules and scrutinize applications because, unlike criminal proceeding where there’s eventual discovery and hearings, that’s all the due process warrant target will ever get.

In fact, the handling of these most important warrant applications on Page revealed the FISC is simply a rubber stamp for the Department of Justice. And it was so even with respect to the intelligence community’s unprecedented, unwarranted spying on Trump before and after his election.

I was curious, in any event, to refresh my recollection of why we were told the FISC was a necessary creation and how we could be assured our civil liberties would be protected, even though this sidesteps Fourth Amendment protections that even murderers are entitled to before searches are conducted. I reviewed the hearing transcript of Andrew McCarthy before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 10, 2005 and see a vast disparity between what were told and what has evolved.

Here are some relevant remarks before that committee:

The government officials whose conduct, actual and potential, is at the heart of our inquiry here are not anything near Big brother. They are not even slightly interested, as a general matter, in what Americans are reading or what websites they are accessing. They are not desirous of poring over personal healthcare or financial information unrelated to some good-faith investigative imperative. In point of fact, in this information age, they are awash in data and severely challenged to sort the wheat from the chaff -- which is to say they don’t have enough time to read and process the things we actually want them to read and process. It would be counterfactual and perilous to legislate based on the assumption that honorable people will behave badly. It is also unbecoming.

Arguing for a presumption of regularity that courts use in judging congressional acts, he concluded: “But it is a salient aspect of the dignity that impels our society to respect its institutions -- the very respect which undergirds the rule of law -- that we operate from a premise that our officials are neither reckless nor roguish, and that they act responsibly.”

The government officials in RussiaGate, however, were not honorable, did behave badly, and are not entitled to any presumption of regularity. In sum, they were precisely “reckless and roguish.” They have undermined respect for law, and the tardy and weak judicial (FISC) response appears to have condoned that. Maybe a safer approach is to view any legal backdoor as a license for government intrusion. I’m old enough to remember when conduct like this would have had the ACLU screaming for change instead of its present focus -- like demanding tampons in men’s bathrooms to achieve “menstrual equity.” 

Clarice Feldman

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/congressional_follies_trump_is_still_your_president.html

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Sharyl Attkisson explains why one FISA warrant on one person can lead to spying on thousands of people - Thomas Lifson

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by Thomas Lifson

Believe it or now, intelligence agencies can use one legal wiretap to monitor as many as 25,000 people for which there was no wiretap justification.

The genuine magnitude of the FBI spying on the Trump campaign (or Adam Schiff's getting a hold of the phone records of journalists and fellow representatives) was far greater than most people realize, reading or hearing about a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page. Many people naturally presume that an operation to trample on the rights of one man — even an Annapolis graduate who served as a source for the CIA — was bad, but not a major spying operation. After all, Page was not a top-level campaign adviser, but an unpaid volunteer. So what's the big deal?

Here's what the deal is, as explained by Sharyl Attkisson:

Believe it or now, intelligence agencies can use one legal wiretap to monitor as many as 25,000 people for which there was no wiretap justification.
Through a single warrant, government agents can capture phone calls, texts, emails and bank records from people "two hops" away. That means all of the suspected spy's direct contacts — "one hop" — and everybody who contacts those people or even visits their Facebook pages or websites — two hops.
In this way, one analysis found intel agencies can use one legal wiretap to access to 25,000 people's phones. Consider at least a half dozen Trump officials were caught in the FBI surveillance dragnet, according to news reports: campaign chair Manafort, multiple "transition officials" including Lt. General Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner, and adviser Carter Page — who was wiretapped over and over though never charged with anything.
Sidney Powell (former prosecutor and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn's attorney): And what most people don't understand is, they don't just get everything they want against Carter Page, they get everything they want against every person who communicated with Carter Page, and against every person who communicated with that person. So it goes out what's called two hops.
Sharyl: And that would allow them to find intelligence from someone nowhere near the original center that they went to the FISA Court about?
Sidney Powell: Exactly. They could have all kinds of banking records and personal information on tens of thousands of people by virtue of those FISA applications.
Sharyl: — including Trump who was known to be one or two hops away from surveilled targets.
On top of that, at least four key anti-Trump figures have admitted in testimony and interviews accessing sensitive, protected intelligence of US citizens — including Trump associates — under the Obama administration. All say they were guarding national security, had no political motives, and didn't leak the information. As the 2016 campaign peaked, Obama official Samantha Power's name was on hundreds of attempts to reveal the identities of Americans caught up in secretly-gathered intelligence. Obama adviser Susan Rice also took part. And Obama officials Sally Yates and James Clapper admit having reviewed intel gathered on US political figures.

If you are a target, Big Brother is watching not just you, but everyone you are in contact with, and everyone they are in contact with.

Photo credit: Sharyl Attkisson.com.

Thomas Lifson

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/12/sharyl_attkisson_explains_why_one_fisa_warrant_on_one_person_can_lead_to_spying_on_emthousandsem_of_people.html


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Netanyahu says ICC makes Jewish rights to Biblical Israel a war crime - Tovah Lazaroff

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by Tovah Lazaroff

Netanyahu said that with the prosecutor’s decision, the ICC had become ammunition in the political battle against the state of Israel.

International criminal court

(photo credit: REUTERS)

 Israel plans to push back against the “absurd” decision by the International Criminal Court: to turn the right of Jews to live in biblical Israel into a war crime, while ignoring the human rights abuses of countries like Iran, Syria and Turkey, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the cabinet at the start of its weekly meeting on Sunday.

On Friday, the ICC “finally became a weapon in the political war against the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said.

 

He spoke just two days after ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said that she believed war crimes had occurred in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

She plans to open an investigation into human rights abuses by Israelis and Palestinians in those territories.

But first, she has asked the pre-trial chamber to rule on the question of whether the ICC can consider Palestine a state for the purposes of adjudicating this issue – and if so, whether the court has jurisdiction over all the territory in question.

Netanyahu told his ministers that there were “three absurd things” with her decision.

“The ICC was established after the horrors of World War II, mainly the horrors that were inflicted on our people, and it was designed to deal with problems that states would raise regarding war crimes, such as genocide or large-scale deportations,” Netanyahu said.

“It was designed to do so for states that did not have true judicial systems of law, which of course do exist in the Western world,” he added.

Instead, what has happened here is that the ICC has accepted a claim by the Palestinians, “who do not have a state, and have accused the only democracy in the Middle East, which operates in accordance with the highest legal standards of Western democracies, which the court has no jurisdiction over,” Netanyahu said.

Secondly, he said that the “prosecutor’s decision contradicts historical truth. It opposes the right of the Jews to settle in the Jews’ homeland. To turn the fact that Jews are living in their land into a war crime is an absurdity of unimaginable proportions.”

Lastly, he asked, “Who are they bringing here? Who are they accusing here? Iran? Turkey? Syria? No – Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. This is terrible hypocrisy,” he said.

Israel will fight for its right and its historical truth with all the tools it has, the prime minister said.

Netanyahu thanked US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for the strong statement he issued Friday against the ICC and in support of Israel.

While Israel’s situation at the ICC has gotten worse, he said, its regional ties with Arab nations are strengthening.

He pointed to UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed, who on Saturday, “spoke about a new alliance in the Middle East: an Israeli-Arab alliance. This is the direct result of our policy, which has turned Israel into a rising power in the region and the world.”

He credited warming ties on the work that he and his government have done. “This remake is the result of the ripening of many contacts and efforts, which at the moment – and I emphasize at the moment – would be best served by my silence,” Netanyahu said.

The prime minister also spoke of the need to approve more money for the residents of southern Israel, who have been living under the threat of Gaza rockets and incendiary balloons.


Tovah Lazaroff

Source: https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Netanyahu-ICC-turning-Jewish-rights-to-Biblical-Israel-into-a-war-crime-611725

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Ten things to know about the ICC’s war crimes probe against Israel - Tovah Lazaroff

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by Tovah Lazaroff

A look into the ICC's investigation into the Jewish state for "war crimes."

Presiding Judge Robert Fremr in the courtroom at the ICC (International Criminal Court) in the Hague, the Netherlands, 2018

(photo credit: BAS CZERWINSKI/POOL VIA REUTERS)

1. The International Criminal Court finished its preliminary examination and wants to open a war crimes investigation into Israeli and Palestinian actions in Gaza, east Jerusalem and the West Bank beginning from June 13, 2014. 

2. If the case moves to the trial stage, then the court could issue arrest warrants against high-level Israelis and Palestinians. On the Israeli side, this could include Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Former defense ministers Avigdor Liberman and Moshe Ya’alon,  IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi and former IDF Chiefs of Staff Lt.-Gens. Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot.

 

3. ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda stated Friday she believes that war crimes were committed by both Israelis and Palestinians. 

4. Bensouda plans to investigate the 2014 Gaza war, the "Great March of Return" along the Gaza border that began in March 2018, Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and Jewish building in east Jerusalem. She will focus on the IDF’s disproportionate response and willful killing.  With regard to Hamas and Palestinian armed groups, she will examine their rocket attacks, willful killing, use of human shields and torture. Bensouda did not mention Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir in July 2014, but based on the dates of her investigation, his kidnapping and murder in Jerusalem by Jewish extremists could also be included. The first and second Gaza wars are not part of the scope of the investigation. 

5. The ICC is governed by the Rome Statute created in 1998. Some 123 nations are parties to the treaty. Israel and the United States initially signed the treaty, but never ratified it and are not considered to be parties to the statute. The court first began operating in 2002 and does not hear any cases relating to events that occurred prior to its founding. This means that the issue of Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights and east Jerusalem could never come before the court.

6. The Palestinian Authority signed the Rome Statute in January 2015. It did so three years after the UN General Assembly granted the Palestinians the status of a non-member observer state at the UN. The upgrade gave the Palestinians de-facto statehood status and awarded them the same rights to sign treaties as UN member states. The ICC opened a preliminary investigation into the situation in January 2015. It was only in May of 2018, however, that the PA asked Bensouda to open an investigation into human rights crimes committed on its territory. A pre-trial chamber was also assigned in 2018.

7. Prior to opening an investigation, Bensouda asked the ICC’s pre-trial chamber to rule within 120 days on the issue of Palestinian statehood, as it applies to the Palestinian standing before the court and to defining the territory over which the court has jurisdiction. She told the chamber that she believes Palestine is a state before the court, because it signed the Rome Statute and because the UN recognizes it as a non-member state. She also based her belief on multiple UN resolutions that speak of the “occupied Palestinian territory” as east Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank. 

8. Israel holds that the ICC has no jurisdiction because Israel is not a party to the treaty, there is no state of Palestine, and the PA is not sovereign in the territory in question. It has argued that signing onto the treaty does not grant it statehood status before the ICC.

9. The ICC is already investigating at least twelve other situations including in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Central African Republic, Kenya, Libya, Cote D’ivoire, Mali, Central African Republic II, Georgia, Burundi and Bangladesh/Myanmar. It is also examining the genocide in Darfur. In addition, it is holding eight preliminary investigations and has heard or is hearing 27 cases. The ICC has also issued at least 34 arrest warrants. 

10. Bensouda is Gambia’s former justice minister. She has served as the ICC’s chief prosecutor since 2012 and has worked for the court since 2004.


Tovah Lazaroff

Source: https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Ten-things-to-know-about-the-ICCs-war-crimes-probe-against-Israel-611721

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We read of Iraqi protests every day, but do we remember Iraqi Jewry? - Uzay Bulut

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by Uzay Bulut

The ongoing current massive protests across Iraq started in the same square, the Tahrir Square, in which nine Jews were hanged fifty years ago.

Since protests broke out in Iraq in October, at least four hundred protesters have been killed and thousands injured by Iraqi security forces.  In the midst Iraq’s demonstrations, which are among the largest and bloodiest protests in modern history, we must remember one of the oldest communities of Iraq that no longer live there: Iraqi Jews.

The modern nation-state of Iraq came into existence in the early twentieth century. During ancient times, lands that now constitute Iraq gave rise to some of the world’s earliest civilizations such as Assyria. The name for the region in the Assyrian language is Beth Nahrain or “the land between the rivers”, also known as the cradle of civilization.

The Jewish presence in Assyria began after the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the eighth century BCE and the exiling of the ten tribes.  Later, Jews from the tribe of Judah arrived in Iraq.when Babylon (today's Iraq) destroyed the First Temple. Jewish study thrived in Iraqi yeshivas where the Babylonian Talmud was compiled in the 6th century.

Sadly, this ancient community of Iraq is almost extinct now.  “Jews lived in that region for more than 2,600 years, but only about five Jews live in Iraq today as far as we know,” Lily Shor, the Director of External Relations and Events of the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center (BJHC), said.

The anti-Jewish pogrom, also known as Farhud, that broke out on June 1 in 1941 was the beginning of the end for the country’s Jewish population.  “A turning point for Jews in Iraq was the pogrom in 1941 influenced by Nazi propaganda during World War II. Around 200 Jews were murdered and this number stems from only those whose names were reported; many more could not be identified and were buried in a mass grave. During and following the pogrom, the Jews understood that there was no future for them in Iraq. This led to a massive emigration in 1950 and 1951. A hundred and ten thousand Jews came to Israel.”

The Iraqi government, which had long oppressed and murdered its Assyrian, Jewish, and Yazidi minorities, then used the 1967 Arab–Israeli War or the Six-Day War as another excuse to target its remaining Jewish citizens.

“In the 1960s,” said Shor, “following the Six-Day War, the Iraqi regime’s revenge developed into severe persecutions against the Jews. Many lost their jobs, were not allowed to study in universities, their bank accounts and property were frozen, others were arrested, and many were murdered in prison or in their homes. In January, 1969, nine Jews were executed publicly in the Tahrir Square in Baghdad while tens of thousands of Iraqis who were invited by the government and brought to town in special buses came to celebrate this barbarian act and danced around the bodies of the Jews who were hanged there. 

“In Basra, too, Jews were murdered and executed.  Hundreds of Jews decided to flee, leaving everything behind, locking their doors and taking only a small bag with them. Almost all the community escaped. The schools were shut down and only one Synagogue served the few hundreds who remained there. Those Jews found a way to leave Iraq in the following years.”

The ongoing current massive protests across Iraq started in the same square, the Tahrir Square, in which the Jews were hanged fifty years ago, said Shor.

“When I saw the Freedom Monument in the Tahrir Square in Baghdad on TV, tears filled my eyes. We cannot forget the TV transmission all day long on January 27 in 1969 and in the following days, showing the bodies of the innocent young Jewish men while tens of thousands of Iraqis celebrating the deaths of the ‘spies’ and dancing around the gallows. This trauma will never leave the hearts and minds of the Jews who lived in Iraq at that time.

“Now I see these young Iraqi protesters and realize that they are not the same people who rejoiced in the murder of the Jews. They are victims exactly like us, trapped under a government which harms its people instead of fulfilling its duty of protecting them and providing for them. They only want to live their lives in peace. I feel strong solidarity with these young people in the Tahrir Square and proud of them for not retreating from their goals despite of all they have suffered. I wish them success with all my heart, and I do hope that Iraq will one day be a prosperous, calm country that recognizes equal rights for all: Muslims, Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Assyrians, Armenians, and all others.”

Juliana Taimoorazy, the founding president of Iraqi Christian Relief Council and an advocacy fellow of Philos Project, visited the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in November. She said:
“I met Lily at the museum and felt in my heart her deep longing and pain for the place she and her family were born. We wept together for the ancient homeland of Iraqi Jews and Assyrians.  I also visited northern Iraq in 2018 with my Jewish guests. We celebrated Shabbat at the site of a synagogue there that was in ruins. The townspeople who are Assyrian came to us and supported the Shabbat ceremony. Then an Assyrian old man approached the Jewish guests and wept, saying ‘I miss the Hebrew language. I miss our Jewish neighbors. I wish we could live together again.’

“A lot of Jews from Iraq speak Assyrian. Many Jewish taxi drivers that I have met in Israel are descendants of the Jews from Iraq and they speak the Assyrian/Aramaic language. Preserving the language and culture of Jews from Assyria/Iraq is of utmost importance to us because when the members of this generation pass away, so will the culture they have brought from Assyria - if it is not preserved.”

The Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda, Israel is both a research institute and a museum.  According to its website, it was “established in 1973 to preserve the history of the Jewish community of Iraq and to ensure that it remains part of the future narrative of the Jewish nation. To this end, the Center fosters research, preservation and publication of the culture and folklore of Iraqi Jewry.” Shor explains the museum’s mission:

“The Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center (BJHC) brings the story of the Jewish people which was brought 2,600 ago to the region that is today called Iraq and the generations that have lived there until today through exhibitions, research, conferences, and various cultural activities for school students, and the wide public, especially for the young generation. Lately, the descendants of the Iraqi immigrants have taken a growing interest in their roots as well as Iraqi Jews from all over the world. The BJHC is the home to all Iraqis. We also welcome gladly non-Jewish Iraqis who are very enthusiastic when they visit the Museum and meet with Iraqi Jews.” 

The museum’s work is immensely important for Shor as she was born in Baghdad and escaped from the country in 1971 when she was 14.

“The whole Jewish community was terrorized after the Six Day War. My father too was followed by Iraqi Secret Police agents like many of the Jews. Everyone’s life was in danger and it was only a matter of time to be arrested. There was only one solution – to escape. My family, like many of our Jewish friends, locked the doors of their houses and fled with one suitcase.  We were lucky that we were able to come to Israel; we are so lucky to have a country for the Jews.


Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist; political analyst and Muslim affiars expert formerly based in Ankara. Her writings have appeared in various outlets such as the Washington Times, Christian Post, Arutz Sheva, Jerusalem Post and Gatestone Institute.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/24915


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Schiff's and Pelosi's impeachment dream has become their nightmare - Patricia McCarthy

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by Patricia McCarthy

Just how many of the Democrats, and perhaps a few Republicans, got rich via Ukraine during the previous administration? Where was the outrage?

"Hatred is blind; rage carries you away; and he who pours out vengeance runs the risk of tasting a bitter draught." 

―Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
So the Democrats in the House have achieved their dream and impeached President Trump. Or have they? The real votes are yet to be cast. Nancy Pelosi has seriously screwed the pooch this time around. She has well and truly lost her mojo. She let Adam Schiff lead her down the low road fraught with brambles.

Schiff clearly lied about what his faux whistleblower had to say, and Pelosi bought the farm. Neither thought Trump would ever release the transcript of his conversation with then newly elected President Zelensky of Ukraine. Schiff's hearings were monstrous — a wholly illegitimate, Soviet-style show trial in which his target, President Trump, was denied any and all due process.

Now the Dems are claiming they can't send their slapdash articles of impeachment to the Senate because McConnell is a partisan! Chances are that Pelosi is by now embarrassed. She certainly should be. If she is not, then she is more demented than she appears to be.

Pelosi's 12/19/19 presser (YouTube screen grab).

Is the outrage on the left all about covering up for Biden's and his son's clear abuses of their positions of power? Perhaps. But even the Bidens are not as corrupt as the Clintons. Hillary's "foundation" took in millions from Ukraine and practically every other nation on the planet. She used her position as secretary of state as a pay-to play scheme to enrich herself. Peter Schweizer has documented her criminality in detail. Did the Left care about her abuse of office? Not one bit. They celebrated it; it's what they all do. Just how many of the Democrats, and perhaps a few Republicans, got rich via Ukraine, then the most corrupt nation in all of eastern Europe? Might be good to know. It's most likely that Adam Schiff is one of them.

Trump the candidate promised to drain the swamp that is the D.C. bureaucracy. Over the past three years, Americans have seen just how corrupt that swamp truly is. Like cockroaches, they do not like the light. Horrified that their system of backchannel payoffs might be exposed, the self-appointed powers that were set out to destroy Trump before he could take office. Once he was inaugurated, they were determined to see him removed from office.

Now we are beginning to learn just how deviant this bunch of traitors actually were and are thanks to the Horowitz report and Judge Collyer's report on FISA abuse. These thugs all confidently assumed they were above the law they now accuse Trump of abusing.

In the meantime, the progressives have been carried away by hatred and rage. The left in the House, as evidenced by its silly, repetitive, self-serving bits of self-promotion on television, has collectively lost its mind. There is not an original thought among these people. They regurgitate leftist talking points. That is all they have to offer.

The same is true of the deranged Trump-haters in the print media. Just who distributes those talking points? Tom Perez? Or the heads of CNN and MSNBC? Would be good to know. They might consider providing their Stepford subjects with a thesaurus so they cease using the exact same words as every other pundit who got the same list of talking points. Is there not a single critical thinker among the leftists who slavishly perform their prescribed shticks for CNN and MSNBC, etc.? It seems not. They are all of a piece. No wonder they were shocked when Trump won. They are all blinkered and live in the bubble of Trump derangement, which does not afflict those of us outside the Beltway. We love him more and more each day.

Pelosi's ill advised maneuvering on her ill advised impeachment articles are going to backfire well beyond Trump's rising approval ratings. She has revealed herself to have very poor judgment. She let herself be marooned by a colleague with even worse derangement, worse judgment; that would be Schiff, the pathological liar if there ever were one. 

No matter what happens next, Pelosi and her manipulators are the losers. President Trump and the American people are the winners. The Left has done nothing but pour out vengeance since the day Trump was elected. They are about to taste the bitter draught. A.G. Barr and Durham are coming on the heels of Horowitz and Collyer.

The debate on Wednesday among the Democrat candidates again proves their dark view of America and Americans. They all speak only of how terrible our country is, how racist, unequal, how illegitimate our founding is because of slavery, how devastating capitalism is, even though it has brought more people out of poverty than any other economic system on the planet. They all claim to love their country and our Constitution, but their words reek with contempt for America, Americans and our Constitution.

In fact, they are despondent by Trump's many successes; they wanted to further manage our decline, a decline that would not affect their lives one bit. President Trump has revitalized the nation. The democrats' impeachment dream has become their nightmare.

"It is the way of weakened minds to see everything through a black cloud. The soul forms its own horizons; your soul is darkened, and consequently the sky of the future appears stormy and unpromising."

—Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

Patricia McCarthy

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/12/schiffs_and_pelosis_impeachment_dream_has_become_their_nightmare.html


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UAE Foreign Minister Tweets Article about Israel–Arab Alliance - Seth Frantzman

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by Seth Frantzman

"A new narrative is emerging in the Middle East,"

United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan (left) tweeted an article by Ed Husain (right) entitled "Islam's reformation: an Arab-Israeli alliance is taking shape in the Middle East."

Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation for the United Arab Emirates, tweeted an article supporting an emerging alliance of Arab states with Israel. He tweeted from his personal account to his 4.6 million followers. The tweet repeated the headline of the article: "Islam's reformation, an Arab-Israeli alliance is taking shape in the Middle East."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded that he welcomed closer readings between Israel and many Arab states. "The time has come for normalization and peace."

"A new narrative is emerging in the Middle East," wrote Ed Husain in an article on Saturday in The Spectator arguing that an Arab-Israeli alliance is taking shape in the Middle East. "Sunni Arab neighbors are changing course," he wrote, contrasting this year with the 1960s when Israel's neighbors sought to destroy the country. "Islamist leaders are losing their appeal, at a time when Iran, with its brand of theological fascism, poses a threat to Israel and the Arab world alike."

The article argued that polls show that while religious extremism is falling in the region, young people are open to new ideas. They want prosperity and some are open to build new alliances, including with Israel. The author of the article is currently on a visit to Israel, and tweeted photos from Tel Aviv on Friday. "In Tel Aviv today with Ibn Sina, Maimonides and Aquinas," he wrote, referencing historic Jewish, Islamic and Christian philosophers. Husain has worked at influential think tanks, including Civitas and the Wilson Center's Middle East program. He is an author and advisor.

By retweeting the article, the UAE's influential minister gave wind to it and spotlighted it to his four million followers. Many of the comments were positive. The UAE has been a key ally of Saudi Arabia in recent years and has also been leading the region to confront extremism, including the Muslim Brotherhood and Tehran's regime. However, the UAE is also in a complex position because it wants to support tolerance but knows that Iran is a neighbor across the Gulf. The US has Al Dhafra air base in the UAE and the French are basing a force to help with maritime security in the wake of Iranian attacks on tankers in May and June this year. The UAE has generally been seen as having shared interests with Israel in recent years.

"Israel is being seen by moderate Arab governments as a trade and security partner," wrote Husain.

Husain's article noted that Abu Dhabi is pushing for coexistence in the region. "In Dubai, Jews have been worshiping at a synagogue for several years now. Rabbis from Israel, America, Australia and Europe have been attending annual international Muslim peace conferences." There has been talk about a US-supported non-aggression pact between Israel, the UAE and several other states in the region. Israel will participate in an expo in Dubai in 2020. Israeli Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar attended an interfaith gathering in Bahrain recently. Israeli minister for Culture Miri Regev went to the UAE in 2018 during the same period that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to Oman. "King Hamad of Bahrain has also led a path towards more open relations between Islam and Judaism," Husain wrote.

There are signs of a "religious glasnost" with Saudi Arabia as well. "Several Saudi bloggers, Youtubers and Twitter personalities have been praising Israel in Arabic." Husain said he has noticed a change in mood in the region. Part of this is shared interests against Iran's threat and heavy hand in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria. "Israel is being seen by moderate Arab governments as a trade and security partner." Israel and many Arab states were united in an uproar over the Obama administration's Iran deal. He even notes that an Arab prince recently asked, "Who else will fly in joint missions against Iranian targets with us?" Husain argued that now is the time for a rebirth of tolerance after seven decades of antisemitism in the region. He says that the Quran can also point the way because of respect for Jews in Islam. "There are enough historical and scriptural narratives of Muslim-Jewish fraternity to form the basis for rapprochement." It can lead to decades of peace.

For Israel, the Gulf and neighbors such as Jordan and Egypt, there are many shared interests. For instance, concerns about energy in the Mediterranean are drawing Israel and Egypt closer. The UAE recently met with Greek officials to express concern about Turkey's role, and also the Libya crisis. Israel, Greece, Egypt and Cyprus have shared interests in energy and natural gas issues off their coasts.


Seth Frantzman, a Middle East Forum writing fellow, is the author of After ISIS: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East (2019), op-ed editor of The Jerusalem Post, and founder of the Middle East Center for Reporting & Analysis.

Source: https://www.meforum.org/60141/uae-fm-tweets-about-israel-arab-alliance?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum

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"Silent Night": Persecuted Palestinian Christians Kept Out of Sight - Raymond Ibrahim

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by Raymond Ibrahim

Christian Palestinians are subject to severe persecution by Muslim Palestinians

• In short, Palestinian Christians are suffering from the same patterns of persecution — including church attacks, kidnappings and forced conversion — that their coreligionists suffer in other Muslim nations. The difference, however, is that the persecution of Palestinian Christians has "received no coverage in the Palestinian media."
• "The only thing that interests the PA [Palestinian Authority] is that events of this kind not be leaked to the media. Fatah regularly exerts heavy pressure on Christians not to report the acts of violence and vandalism from which they frequently suffer, as such publicity could damage the PA's image..... Even less does the PA want to be depicted as a radical entity that persecutes religious minorities. That image could have negative repercussions for the massive international, and particularly European, aid the PA receives." — Dr. Edy Cohen, "The Persecution of Christians in the Palestinian Authority", Begin-Sadat Center, May 27, 2019.
• The bread and butter of the PA and its supporters, particularly in the media, is to portray the Palestinians as victims of unjust aggression and discrimination from Israel. This narrative would be jeopardized if the international community learned that Palestinians are themselves persecuting fellow Palestinians — solely on account of religion.
• "The systematic persecution of Christian Arabs living in Palestinian areas is being met with nearly total silence by the international community, human rights activists, the media and NGOs..." — Justus Reid Weiner, attorney, "Palestinian Christians: The plight of believers under Palestinian rule", International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem.

Christianity is on the verge of disappearing in the place of its birth, including Bethlehem (pictured). According to lawyer and scholar Justus Reid Weiner, "The systematic persecution of Christian Arabs living in Palestinian areas is being met with nearly total silence by the international community, human rights activists, the media and NGOs... In a society where Arab Christians have no voice and no protection it is no surprise that they are leaving." (Image source: Daniel Case/Wikimedia Commons)

"The moment they [Hamas] took control [of the Gaza Strip], they started persecuting us, ruining our churches and forcing Christians to convert to Islam."

Such are the recollections, reported recently, of Kamal Tarazi, a 60-year-old Christian man from Gaza, now living in the streets of Nazareth. Before fleeing, he tried to resist the Islamist takeover, including by calling on Muslims and Christians to unite against Hamas. As a result, "I was jailed several times. Do you know what a Hamas prison is? It is pure torture."

The report adds that "the Islamic group decided to keep him alive to avoid depicting themselves as persecutors of the local Christian population, something that could potentially anger the international community." Tarazi was eventually released, fled the region, returned, got imprisoned again, and fled again, permanently. "I am sure there are no more than 500 Christians left in Gaza," he offers, "and it is just part of the general trend."

His account is a reminder that, while reports on the persecution of Christians emerge regularly from other Muslim majority regions around the world, little is mentioned of those Christians living under the rule of Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

This is not because they experience significantly less persecution than their coreligionists. Open Doors, a human rights group that follows the persecution of Christians, notes in its most recent report that Palestinian Christians suffer from a "high" level of persecution, the source of which is, in its words, "Islamic Oppression":

"Those who convert to Christianity from Islam, however, face the worst Christian persecution and it is difficult for them to safely participate in existing churches. In the West Bank they are threatened and put under great pressure, in Gaza their situation is so dangerous that they live their Christian faith in utmost secrecy... The influence of radical Islamic ideology is rising, and historical churches have to be diplomatic in their approach towards Muslims."

It seems that the unique situation of Palestinian Christians — living in a hotly contested arena with much political and media wrangling in the balance — best explains the lack of news from that area.

"The Persecution of Christians in the Palestinian Authority," a report by Dr. Edy Cohen, published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies earlier this year, goes a long way in validating this supposition.

First, it documents three anecdotes of persecution of Christians, all of which were back-to-back, and none of which was reported by the so-called "mainstream media." Summaries include:

• April 25: "[T]he terrified residents of the Christian village of Jifna near Ramallah ... were attacked by Muslim gunmen ... after a woman from the village submitted a complaint to the police that the son of a prominent, Fatah-affiliated leader had attacked her family. In response, dozens of Fatah gunmen came to the village, fired hundreds of bullets in the air, threw petrol bombs while shouting curses, and caused severe damage to public property. It was a miracle that there were no dead or wounded."
• May 13: "Vandals broke into a church of the Maronite community in the center of Bethlehem, desecrated it, and stole expensive equipment belonging to the church, including the security cameras.... [T]his is the sixth time the Maronite church in Bethlehem has been subjected to acts of vandalism and theft, including an arson attack in 2015 that caused considerable damage and forced the church to close for a lengthy period."
• May 16: "[I]t was the turn of the Anglican church in the village of Aboud, west of Ramallah. Vandals cut through the fence, broke the windows of the church, and broke in. They desecrated it, looked for valuable items, and stole a great deal of equipment."

These three attacks, which occurred in the span of three weeks, fit the same pattern of abuse that Christians in other Muslim majority regions habitually experience. While the desecration and plundering of churches is prevalent, so too are Muslim mobs rising against Christian minorities, whenever the latter — perceived as dhimmis, or third-class, tolerated "citizens" who are often expected to be grateful they are tolerated at all — dare speak up for their rights, as occurred the Christian village of Jifna on April 25:

"[T]he rioters called on the [Christian] residents to pay jizya—a head tax that was levied throughout history on non-Muslim minorities under Islamic rule. The most recent victims of the jizya were the Christian communities of Iraq and Syria under ISIS rule."

Moreover, as often happens when Muslims attack Christians in Islamic nations, "Despite the [Christian] residents' cries for help" in Jifna, "the PA police did not intervene during the hours of mayhem. They have not arrested any suspects." Similarly, "no suspects were arrested" in the two church attacks.

Palestinian Christians, in short, are suffering from the same patterns of persecution — including church attacks, kidnappings and forced conversion — as their co-religionists in dozens of Muslim nations. The difference, however, is that the persecution of Palestinian Christians has "received no coverage in the Palestinian media." In fact, Cohen explains, "a full gag order was imposed in many cases":

"The only thing that interests the PA is that events of this kind not be leaked to the media. Fatah regularly exerts heavy pressure on Christians not to report the acts of violence and vandalism from which they frequently suffer, as such publicity could damage the PA's image as an actor capable of protecting the lives and property of the Christian minority under its rule. Even less does the PA want to be depicted as a radical entity that persecutes religious minorities. That image could have negative repercussions for the massive international, and particularly European, aid the PA receives."

Considered another way, the bread and butter of the Palestinian Authority and its supporters, particularly in the media, is to portray the Palestinians as victims of unjust aggression and discrimination from Israel. This narrative would be jeopardized if the international community learned that Palestinians are themselves persecuting fellow Palestinians — solely on account of religion. It might be hard to muster sympathy for a supposedly oppressed people when one realizes that they themselves are doing the oppressing of the minorities in their midst, and for no other reason than religious bigotry.

Because they are so sensitive to this potential difficulty, "PA officials exert pressure on local Christian to not report such incidents, which threaten to unmask the Palestinian Authority as yet another Middle East regime beholden to a radical Islamic ideology," Cohen writes in another report.

"Far more important to the Palestinian Authority than arresting those who assault Christian sites is keeping such incidents out of the mainstream media. And they are very successful in this regard. Indeed, only a handful of smaller local outlets bothered to report on these latest break-ins. The mainstream international media ignored them altogether."

Notably, a similar dynamic sometimes exists concerning Muslim refugees. Although West European politicians and media present them as persecuted and oppressed, in need of a welcoming hand, some Muslim migrants themselves persecute and oppress Christian minorities among them — whether by terrorizing them in refugee camps, or drowning them in the Mediterranean.

Objective numbers confirm that Christians living under Hamas and the PA are experiencing some unpleasantry that Muslims are not: there were approximately 3,500 Christians in the Gaza Strip in 2007; now, there are now reportedly no more than 500-1,300.

As Justus Reid Weiner, a lawyer and scholar well-acquainted with the region, explains:

"The systematic persecution of Christian Arabs living in Palestinian areas is being met with nearly total silence by the international community, human rights activists, the media and NGOs... In a society where Arab Christians have no voice and no protection it is no surprise that they are leaving."

By all counts, Christianity is on the verge of disappearing in the place of its birth, including the scene of the Nativity -- Bethlehem.

• Follow Raymond Ibrahim on Twitter and Facebook

Raymond Ibrahim, author of the new book, Sword and Scimitar, Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15318/persecuted-palestinian-christians

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Britain: Flushing Out the Corbynista - Amir Taheri

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by Amir Taheri

The beauty of democracy is that nothing is irreversible. However, democracy needs a strong opposition.

• What the pundits ignore is that all those constituencies had already voted Conservative in 2016 when they voted for Brexit.
• Looking beyond Brexit, one key feature of the election may well be the dramatic rejection by voters of the Labour Party and its current leader Jeremy Corbyn. The party's performance was the worst since the 1930s and, if opinion polls are to be trusted, its leader the most disliked since James Ramsay MacDonald, who headed a Labour government for nine months in 1924 before transforming himself into a turncoat.
• The beauty of democracy is that nothing is irreversible. However, democracy needs a strong opposition. The sooner Corbyn and the Corbynista bow out, the better for British democracy.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and his cohorts did all they could to destroy British social democracy. However, the beauty of democracy is that nothing is irreversible. But democracy needs a strong opposition. The sooner Corbyn and the Corbynista bow out, the better for British democracy. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

The British Conservative Party's victory at last week's general election has been described variously as "an earthquake" and "a triumph." Because the party won it biggest parliamentary majority since the 1980s, the election may look like a triumph for its leader, Prime Minister Boris Johnson. However, if applied to the opposition Labour Party's performance, the label "earthquake" may also appear to be in order.

A closer examination of the results, additionally, may provide a more nuanced picture or at least a less pixelated one. One key feature commentators have focused on was the massive switch of many traditional Labour-supporting constituencies to the Conservatives. Pundits ask: How did people who had never voted Conservative decide to do so after generations of attachment to socialism?

What the pundits ignore is that all those constituencies had already voted Conservative in 2016 when they voted for Brexit. In other words, by voting Tory in the general elections they were just confirming their previous transfer of loyalty. The Labour Party lost just one constituency that had voted against Brexit, Kensington in London, to the Conservatives. However, it won another constituency, Putney, also in London, which had voted Remain.

So was last week's election a re-run of the referendum on Brexit? Not quite. The pro-Brexit vote, headed by the Conservative Party, collected around 46 percent of the votes compared to 52 percent in the original referendum on the subject. In other words, if we keep the focus solely on Brexit, fewer voters supported leaving the European Union this time.

Looking beyond Brexit, one key feature of the election may well be the dramatic rejection by voters of the Labour Party and its current leader Jeremy Corbyn. The party's performance was the worst since the 1930s and, if opinion polls are to be trusted, its leader the most disliked since James Ramsay MacDonald, who headed a Labour government for nine months in 1924 before transforming himself into a turncoat.

However, blaming all on Corbyn, a rather mediocre politician stuck in the student politics of the 1960s, may also be unjustified.

Corbyn's ambivalent response to anti-Semitic shenanigans in his party, his past flirtations with the IRA, his "brotherly relations" with Hezbollah and Hamas, his decade-long career as commentator for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard's English-language TV, his visceral anti-Americanism and opposition to NATO, and his pathological hatred of Israel, have all been highlighted as reasons why he could not be trusted as prime minister of a major western democracy.

Even then, blaming Corbyn as the sole cause of the collapse of Labour's support base may not give us the full picture.

The British version of social democracy, represented by the Labour Party, has been a key player in that country's politics since the 1930s. Under Corbyn, however, the party seemed to be redefining itself as a radical movement suffering from what Lenin in 1918 dismissed as "an infantile disorder". In the new discourse promoted by the Corbynista, a new version of class struggle, this time in the form of a war of generations, genders and levels of income replaced the traditional reformist, or as critics might say, managerial, approach of the party to politics. Corbyn supporters divided society into three categories: the mass of the poor, the tiny minority of the rich, vilified as "billionaires", and themselves in the middle as savior of the former and punishers of the latter.

They did not realize that their "poor" may not see themselves as indigents in need of neo-Stalinists saviors and that many middle-income former Labour voters may resent being classed with "the evil rich" simply because they lived a comfortable life. Moreover, that categorization missed a large chunk of the population now known as those who "just about managing" or JAM for short.

Despite his denunciation of the "infantile disorder", Lenin himself may have been the father of a generic form of leftism that treats society as a blank page on which small elite of revolutionaries could draw their vision of an ideal society. Before seizing power in 1917, Lenin had penned many articles and leaflets against reformist social democrats, notably the Austrian Karl Kautsky and the Prussian Ferdinand Lassalle, accusing them of sabotaging the chances of working people ever to win political power and change society.

With his celebrated, though infantile, dictum "better fewer but better", Lenin put the emphasis on "class loyalty" and "ideological purity" even if that meant fewer people were attracted to the party.

The century that followed showed Lenin to be wrong, and Kautsky and Lassalle to be right. Since then not a single Leninist party has won a democratic election in any country while social democratic parties have shared power in almost all Western democracies and some nations beyond. Even the US Democrat Party, though certainly not socialistic, has adopted aspects of Kautskyan socialism, at least on occasions. In Britain itself, the Labour Party, in its social democratic version, has been in power for almost a quarter of the century in question.

Social democracy has been a key feature of Western life since the 1848 series of revolutions that, despite their short-term failure to secure power, transformed the political landscape of Europe. Kautsky and Lassalle insisted that the aim of social democracy should be to win the political argument by convincing enough of the voters to choose that option at the ballot boxes. Later, Antonio Gramsci, an Italian neo-Marxist denounced some Corbynista as a class traitor, developed that belief into a method of political work.

Successive British Labour governments understood that treating voters as mere objects of a grand messianic design would never bring the party to power. By adopting a pragmatic approach, successive Labour governments succeeded in introducing reforms that none of the Leninist parties across the globe achieved.

The creation of the National Health Service, now turned into a secular religion for the Brits, the founding of NATO based on the Atlantic Charter, the start of decolonization and the formation of the British Commonwealth were among the earliest achievements of British social democracy in the post-World War II period. In the 1960s followed the democratization of higher education by creating dozens of new universities, the abolition of capital punishment, and the removal of residual colonial encumbrances. Between 1997 and 2010, the longest spell of government by Labour, came the introduction of a minimum wage, the end of Irish "troubles", devolved government for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, legal equal rights for gays and lesbians, and the independence of the Bank of England ensuring greater fiscal responsibility.

Corbyn and his cohorts did all they could to destroy British social democracy. However, I doubt if they have succeeded. In 1997, the Conservatives suffered a bigger defeat, winning 165 seats compared to the 203 seats the Labour won last week.

The beauty of democracy is that nothing is irreversible. However, democracy needs a strong opposition. The sooner Corbyn and the Corbynista bow out, the better for British democracy.

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. He is the Chairman of Gatestone Europe.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15317/britain-corbynista

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