Palestinian Leaders: No to Solving Economic Crisis - Khaled Abu Toameh

 

​ by Khaled Abu Toameh

The Biden administration and other Western donors are wrong to assume that their funds could change the hearts and minds of the Palestinians. The only way to bring about such a change is by ending the anti-Israel rhetoric of Palestinian leaders and media outlets

• The Hamas charter does not talk about improving the living conditions of the Palestinians. It does not talk about boosting the economy or creating job opportunities for unemployed Palestinians.

• Instead, the charter talks about jihad (holy war) and urges all Arabs and Muslims not to abandon the fight against Israel....

• "The people of the Gaza Strip want their freedom," he said. "They want the return of their land. Israel does not know the reality of the Palestinian people and believes that economic solutions would prompt the Palestinians to abandon their goals of liberation and achieving the right of return. This is not an economic or material issue." Hazem Qassem, Hamas official, i24news.tv, September 13, 2021.

• The PA and Hamas leaders are apparently worried that the Palestinians would forget about the jihad against Israel once they have jobs and a strong economy.

• That is why the PA and Hamas rejected former US President Donald Trump's plan for peace in the Middle East, "Peace to Prosperity."

• By rejecting all the offers, the leaders of the Palestinians are actually telling... the world: For the Palestinians, the conflict with Israel is not about financial aid or boosting the Palestinian economy. Do not expect the Palestinians to make any concessions to Israel because of the billions of dollars that you are offering or have already given us.

• This is an important message that needs to be grasped by the Biden administration in the aftermath of its decision to resume financial aid to the Palestinians. The Biden administration and other Western donors are wrong to assume that their funds could change the hearts and minds of the Palestinians. The only way to bring about such a change is by ending the anti-Israel rhetoric of Palestinian leaders and media outlets -- something that is not likely to happen, at least not in the foreseeable future.

The Hamas charter does not talk about improving the living conditions of the Palestinians. It does not talk about boosting the economy or creating job opportunities for unemployed Palestinians. Instead, the charter talks about jihad (holy war) and urges all Arabs and Muslims not to abandon the fight against Israel. Pictured: Hamas gunmen parade on trucks with rockets in a street in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip on May 27, 2021. (Photo by Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images)

Palestinian leaders have again proved that they are continually and cynically putting their own interests before the best interests of their people.

On September 13, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid presented a plan for improving the conditions of the two million Palestinians living in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Addressing a conference of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University in Herzliya, Lapid called his plan -- dubbed "Economy for Security" -- a "more realistic approach towards reconstruction [of the Gaza Strip] in exchange for disarmament [of Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups]."

The plan consists of two phases. The first stage would include an overhaul of the Gaza Strip's electricity, health and transportation systems in exchange for Hamas halting its military build-up. The second phase would include major infrastructure projects in the Gaza Strip, including the construction of a seaport, connecting the coastal enclave to the West Bank and encouraging international investment in the Palestinian economy.

This was not the first time that an Israeli official had offered to help the residents of the Gaza Strip at a time when most of the Arabs are doing nothing to assist their Palestinian brothers.

In 2018, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman offered to turn the Gaza Strip into a prosperous territory by creating jobs and building infrastructure.

Lieberman proposed turning the Gaza Strip "into the Singapore of the Middle East" by building a seaport and an airport and by creating an industrial zone that would provide jobs to 40,000 Palestinians. Lieberman set one condition -- that Hamas agree to demilitarization and to dismantling its tunnel and rocket systems.

Hamas rejected the Israeli defense minister's offer and said that it would never agree to lay down its weapons or stop its terrorist attacks against Israel. Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar said that if Hamas wanted the Gaza Strip to be like Singapore, it would already have made it happen.

Zahar responded in a similar manner to the recent offer by the Israeli foreign minister. Hamas rejects Lapid's "failed" plan, he said, adding that the terrorist movement, which does not recognize Israel's right to exist, will not surrender its weapons.

Zahar stressed that Hamas continues to adhere to its charter, which calls for the "liberation of all of Palestine," a euphemism for the elimination of Israel.

The Hamas charter does not talk about improving the living conditions of the Palestinians. It does not talk about boosting the economy or creating job opportunities for unemployed Palestinians.

Instead, the charter talks about jihad (holy war) and urges all Arabs and Muslims not to abandon the fight against Israel:

"Leaving the circle of conflict with Israel is a major act of treason and it will bring curse on its perpetrators. World Zionism and Imperialist forces have been attempting, with smart moves and considered planning, to push the Arab countries, one after another, out of the circle of conflict with Zionism, in order, ultimately, to isolate the Palestinian people."

Another Hamas official, Hazem Qassem, also rejected the offer by the Israeli foreign minister to improve the living conditions of the residents of the Gaza Strip.

Qassem too dismissed any talk about disarming Hamas and other terrorist groups. "The people of the Gaza Strip want their freedom," he said.

"They want the return of their land. Israel does not know the reality of the Palestinian people and believes that economic solutions would prompt the Palestinians to abandon their goals of liberation and achieving the right of return. This is not an economic or material issue."

When Hamas leaders say that the Palestinians want "the return of their land," they mean that they want to replace Israel with an Islamist state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Moreover, when they talk about the "right of return," they are referring to the demand to flood Israel with millions of Palestinians and turning Jews into a minority in their state.

Hamas's rejection of Israeli offers to boost the economy of the Gaza Strip does not surprise anyone. The leaders of Hamas have repeatedly shown that they do not care about the well-being of their people. They have shown that Hamas prefers to invest millions of dollars in building tunnels and manufacturing rockets to attack Israel instead of creating jobs and easing the suffering of their people.

What is surprising, however, is that Hamas's rivals in the Palestinian Authority (PA) are also opposed to any plan to solve the economic crisis in the Gaza Strip. The PA leaders want to see the people in the Gaza Strip suffer, with the hope that they would one day revolt against Hamas. The PA leaders will never forgive Hamas for humiliating them and expelling them from the Gaza Strip in 2007.

Commenting on the Lapid plan, PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said: "The problem of the Gaza Strip is a political one." In this regard, the PA and Hamas agree on the need to deprive their people of a better life until a political solution is reached to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The PA and Hamas leaders are apparently worried that the Palestinians would forget about the jihad against Israel once they have jobs and a strong economy.

That is why the PA and Hamas rejected former US President Donald Trump's plan for peace in the Middle East, "Peace to Prosperity."

With the potential to facilitate more than $50 billion in new investments over 10 years, "Peace to Prosperity" represents the most ambitious and comprehensive effort for the Palestinians. The plan includes creating a business environment that provides investors with confidence that their assets will be secure by improving property rights, the rule of law, fiscal sustainability, capital markets, and anti-corruption policies.

Additionally, the plan includes investing billions of dollars in the electricity, water, and telecommunications sectors, as well as private-sector investment in entrepreneurship, small businesses, tourism, agriculture, housing, manufacturing, and natural resources.

Instead of welcoming the Trump plan, the PA and Hamas immediately rejected it and vowed to continue the "struggle" against Israel. "We will not kneel and we will not surrender," said PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas, for its part, rejected the plan as a "conspiracy" against the Palestinians.

Had the Palestinian leaders accepted the Trump plan, the Palestinians would have been in a better situation today. Had they accepted Israel's offer to turn the Gaza Strip into Singapore, the Palestinians living there would not be complaining now about poverty and unemployment.

By rejecting all the offers, the leaders of the Palestinians are actually telling Israel, the US and the rest of the world: For the Palestinians, the conflict with Israel is not about financial aid or boosting the Palestinian economy. Do not expect the Palestinians to make any concessions to Israel because of the billions of dollars that you are offering or have already given to us.

This is an important message that needs to be grasped by the Biden administration in the aftermath of its decision to resume financial aid to the Palestinians. The Biden administration and other Western donors are wrong to assume that their funds could change the hearts and minds of the Palestinians. The only way to bring about such a change is by ending the anti-Israel rhetoric of Palestinian leaders and media outlets -- something that is not likely to happen, at least not in the foreseeable future.

• Follow Khaled Abu Toameh on Twitter

 

Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17774/palestinian-solving-economic-crisis

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Repulsive: John Kerry Accepts China's Genocide to Get Climate Deal - Gordon G. Chang

 

​ by Gordon G. Chang

Kerry is reinforcing that dangerous Chinese mindset by not talking about human rights. He is surrendering the most important leverage the United States has over China.

• The Beijing regime has, over the course of decades, attacked fundamental U.S. interests by, among other things, inciting violence on American streets, deliberately spreading COVID-19 beyond China's borders to America and the rest of the world, exporting fentanyl to the U.S. despite agreements to the contrary, stealing U.S. technology and other intellectual property, rejecting the principle of freedom of navigation, threatening to grab territory from American allies, and proliferating nuclear weapons technology.

• The critical question now is this: What, in addition to the human rights of China's minorities, is the Biden administration willing to give up to get a climate deal with Beijing?

• Democracies tend to deal with each other as Kerry evidently envisions, where cooperation on one issue can lead to warm relations and warm relations can lead to agreement in other areas.

• Unfortunately, that is not the way communist states, especially China's, operate. Kerry's immediate predecessor as secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, found that out the hard way in February 2009.... China did not return Clinton's gesture of cooperation. On the contrary, Beijing pressed the advantage and went on a bender. The following month, for instance, Chinese craft harassed the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed U.S. Navy reconnaissance vessel, in international waters in the South China Sea and even attacked it, trying to sever its towed sonar array.

• China puts its brightest diplomats to work on human rights issues precisely because it knows it has no defense, especially now when Beijing is committing not only genocide but also other crimes against humanity. Mass rape, slavery, torture, and killing of minorities are impossible to justify. When the Biden administration does not talk about these crimes, it relieves great pressure on the Chinese regime.

• Kerry is reinforcing that dangerous Chinese mindset by not talking about human rights. He is surrendering the most important leverage the United States has over China.

• If you want to get Chinese communists to do something, you have to impose great costs. That gives them an incentive to do something to relieve the pain. Offers of cooperation never work for long. Unfortunately, Beijing believes signals of friendship show American weakness.

John Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, is reinforcing a dangerous Chinese mindset by not talking about human rights. He is surrendering the most important leverage the U.S. has over China. Even if he thinks he should try to obtain China's cooperation on climate — a debatable goal — he is going about it the wrong way. If you want to get Chinese communists to do something, you have to impose great costs. That gives them an incentive to do something to relieve the pain. Offers of cooperation never work for long. Unfortunately, Beijing believes signals of friendship show American weakness. Pictured: Kerry on September 17, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images)

"Well, life is always full of tough choices in the relationship between nations," said John Kerry, responding to Bloomberg's David Weston on September 22. Weston had asked him, "What is the process by which one trades off climate against human rights?"

What is wrong with Kerry's response? For one thing, such a trade-off violates the Genocide Convention of 1948, which requires signatories, such as the United States, to undertake "to prevent and to punish" acts of genocide. China is committing "genocide," as defined in Article II of the Convention, against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Turkic minorities.

Second, Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, was going back on his word. In January, he said that climate was a "critical standalone issue" and promised that other matters "will never be traded for anything that has to do with climate."

Third, Kerry should know by now that, as a practical matter, no trade-off is possible with a militant communist regime such as the one run by the Communist Party of China.

So why is Kerry now in favor of trade-offs? For one thing, Beijing had told the Biden administration that relations were all or nothing, that there could be no "stove piping" issues as American diplomats traditionally tried to do with their cooperate-where-we-can-and-oppose-where-we-must approach. Chinese leaders, knowing how much Biden wanted an enhanced climate deal, had said there would be no Chinese cooperation on climate without American cooperation across-the-board.

The Beijing regime has, over the course of decades, attacked fundamental U.S. interests by, among other things, inciting violence on American streets, deliberately spreading COVID-19 beyond China's borders to America and the rest of the world, exporting fentanyl to the U.S. despite agreements to the contrary, stealing U.S. technology and other intellectual property, rejecting the principle of freedom of navigation, threatening to grab territory from American allies, and proliferating nuclear weapons technology.

The critical question now is this: What, in addition to the human rights of China's minorities, is the Biden administration willing to give up to get a climate deal with Beijing?

Democracies tend to deal with each other as Kerry evidently envisions, where cooperation on one issue can lead to warm relations and warm relations can lead to agreement in other areas.

Unfortunately, that is not the way communist states, especially China's, operate. Kerry's immediate predecessor as secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, found that out the hard way in February 2009. "We have to continue to press them," she said in Seoul, before journeying to Beijing, referring to a list of disagreements with the Chinese leadership. "But our pressing on those issues can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crises. We have to have a dialogue that leads to an understanding and cooperation on each of those."

As Laurence Brahm, a China-watcher with close connections then to Beijing, said at the time, China's leaders were "ecstatic" when they heard Clinton's words because they signaled that she would not be talking about human rights. Her concession, he said, was a confirmation that the United States "had finally succumbed to a full kowtow before the celestial emperor."

China did not return Clinton's gesture of cooperation. On the contrary, Beijing pressed the advantage and went on a bender. The following month, for instance, Chinese craft harassed the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed U.S. Navy reconnaissance vessel, in international waters in the South China Sea and even attacked it, trying to sever its towed sonar array. The Victorious, Impeccable's sister ship, was subject to extreme harassment in March and May 2009 in the Yellow Sea.

The lesson is clear. Even if one does not care about human rights, it is not productive to ignore China's atrocities. Although these rights may not be important to Clinton or Kerry, the issue is critically important to an insecure regime like China's.

China puts its brightest diplomats to work on human rights issues precisely because it knows it has no defense, especially now when Beijing is committing not only genocide but also other crimes against humanity. Mass rape, slavery, torture, and killing of minorities are impossible to justify. When the Biden administration does not talk about these crimes, it relieves great pressure on the Chinese regime.

Ronald Reagan was right: the nature of these regimes does matter. Cooperation between China and the United States, whether over climate change or anything else, is not possible, especially in light of exceedingly belligerent Chinese behavior. We know from the comments of Renmin University's Di Dongsheng in late November that, with President Donald Trump gone, China's leaders now feel they can do whatever they want.

Kerry is reinforcing that dangerous Chinese mindset by not talking about human rights. He is surrendering the most important leverage the United States has over China. Even if he thinks he should try to obtain China's cooperation on climate — a debatable goal — he is going about it the wrong way.

If you want to get Chinese communists to do something, you have to impose great costs. That gives them an incentive to do something to relieve the pain. Offers of cooperation never work for long. Unfortunately, Beijing believes signals of friendship show American weakness.

What makes the Chinese regime such a human rights abuser at home makes it an irresponsible power abroad. By defending the human rights of the Chinese people, Americans are, in a very real sense, also defending their national security.

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Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board.

Source:https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17801/china-climate-deal-genocide

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The demographic oblivion of Europe - Giulio Meotti

 

​ by Giulio Meotti

In the 14th century the plague wiped out 80 percent of the Italian population. In the 21st century it is disappearing by choice.

 

Ten years ago I wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal with a fairly eloquent title: "Italy, R.I.P.". It ended thus: "It is the mystery of one of the richest, most relaxed and peaceful societies in the world that opts for self-liquidation. By 2050, 60 percent of Italians will have no brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles. In the 14th century the plague wiped out 80 percent of the Italian population. In the 21st century it is disappearing by choice. ”

The president of the Bureau of Italian National Statistics, Gian Carlo Blangiardo, raised the demographic alarm, almost unheard. Speaking at the Treviso Statistics Festival, Professor Blangiardo said: “We are experiencing a problematic situation. Ours is a potential country of 32 million inhabitants”. The average age of the population makes Italy the third oldest country in the world, together with one of the lowest birth rates on the planet and the percentage of retirees compared to workers that will rise from 37 percent today to 65 percent in 2040 (from 1 in 3 to 2 in 3). We are traveling on a giant Titanic."

Professor Blangiardo does not give numbers, but he does provide the numbers of a frightening crisis. These are the same contents in a study by the medical journal The Lancet: "Italy will halve in 2100". Thirty million fewer Italians.

Depopulation is already underway, even if it is not visible in the cities.

In Capracotta, Molise, a sign in red letters on an 18th century stone building reads: “Nursery school”. Now it is a hospice. Capracotta is dying and the population has gone from 5,000 to 800.

It is not a difficult calculation. Against 650,000 deaths each year, there are fewer than 400,000 births. Even leaving the trend like that, it's an annual net loss of 250,000 people. In eighty years there are 20 million fewer, not to mention that the number of deaths will increase exponentially. “In 2100 the Italian population will halve without immigration”, headlines Bloomberg.

Oh yes, immigration ...

The effects of mass immigration are already becoming dramatically visible in many Italian schools. In Turin there are already classes without Italian children.

Where are we at? In a beautiful book written with the journalist Marco Valerio Lo Prete, Antonio Golini, one of the leading Italian demographers, writes: “Not everyone has been so reluctant to think the unthinkable, that is, to think about the effects of a demographic implosion that in some areas of the planet came immediately after the explosion."

"I remember a private interview that Baudouin, king of the Belgians from 1951 to 1993, wanted to have with a small group of demographers and economists summoned to Brussels for a conference on the subject in the late 1980s. It was a dinner with an exchange of questions and very informal answers. Baldwin pointed his finger at the signs of decline in fertility and suddenly asked the diners: ‘Is there a point of no return?’. I didn't hold back, a spontaneous one came out: ‘Good question, sir!’"

"The soldier who by protocol was standing behind the King made a face: how could I allow myself to tell the sovereign that he had asked a beautiful and correct question? Perhaps the others up to that moment were less so? Bon ton aside, I was sincerely convinced that Baldwin had hit the mark. So much so that on the basis of the analysis I was doing at the time, I formulated a sort of ‘law of aging ment ‘: if a country has a percentage of over 60s equal to or greater than 30 per cent of the total population, then that country - barring massive immigration - reaches a demographic point of no return.”

Today that percentage in Italy is 22.7 percent of the population. In 2050 it will exceed the fateful threshold of 30 percent.

An Italian think tank, the “Fondazione Fare Futuro”, has predicted that due to mass migrations and the different birth rates between Italians and immigrants, by the end of the century half of the Italian population will be Islamic.

This demographic suicide should be Europe’s top priority. Alternatively, as Michel Onfray wrote, “we just have to sink with elegance.”

 

Giulio Meotti

Source:https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/314071

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New York Times Pits "Principle" against Powerful "Rabbis" in Iron Dome Vote - Alan M. Dershowitz

​ by Alan M. Dershowitz

You are not getting "all the news that's fit to print" about Israel. You are getting only the "news" that its reporters and editors fit into their preconceived and biased narrative.

• [Catie Edmondson] cited no support for her "reporting" on the pressure placed by "powerful ...rabbis," nor did she name them, because her "reporting" simply was not true. She just made it up, because it supported the anti-Semitic narrative that AOC and her Squad deploy to deflect justified criticism of their anti-Israel and anti-American votes.

• No powerful rabbis or lobbyists were needed to pressure the nearly 500 Democrats and Republicans who voted to fund the Iron Dome defense system....

• No mention was made by the Times of powerful pro-Palestinian lobbyists or Imams, or of the pressure placed on AOC and others by radical leftists who hate Israel. No: it was supposedly"principles" that motivated the anti-Israel votes, and "powerful" rabbinical pressures that determined the "yes" and "present" votes. And this purports to be objective "reporting" from the newspaper of record.

• After much criticism, the Times quietly removed the reference to "rabbis" without apologizing for its reporter's mendacious anti-Semitism or disciplining her for her journalistic malpractice. Just imagine how quickly a journalist would be cancelled if she engaged in comparable bigotry toward another group. But the Times has long suffered from a double standard toward Jews and the Jewish nation.

• You are not getting "all the news that's fit to print" about Israel. You are getting only the "news" that its reporters and editors fit into their preconceived and biased narrative.

• The Times must publicly, clearly and substantively apologize for its reporter lying about "powerful ...rabbis" and explain how its editors could permit such an obviously anti-Semitic canard to be published on its pages. Quietly eliminating the offending words from its online version is cowardly and insufficient. It must acknowledge the harm that its false reporting has caused.

Catie Edmondson cited no support for her "reporting" on the pressure placed by "powerful ...rabbis," nor did she name them, because her "reporting" simply was not true. She just made it up, because it supported the anti-Semitic narrative that AOC and her Squad deploy to deflect justified criticism of their anti-Israel and anti-American votes. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

In purporting to "report" — not editorialize— about why AOC changed her vote from "no" to "present" on the iron dome funding, The New York Times congressional correspondent Catie Edmondson "reported" the following:

"[Progressives] have been caught between their principles and the still powerful pro-Israel voices in their party, such as influential lobbyists and rabbis."

She cited no support for her "reporting" on the pressure placed by "powerful ...rabbis," nor did she name them, because her "reporting" simply was not true. She just made it up, because it supported the anti-Semitic narrative that AOC and her Squad deploy to deflect justified criticism of their anti-Israel and anti-American votes.

No powerful rabbis or lobbyists were needed to pressure the nearly 500 Democrats and Republicans who voted to fund the Iron Dome defense system that was jointly developed by the United States and Israel and that is currently being used to defend American troops from rocket attacks. The Iron Dome kills no one. It saves the lives of Israeli Jews, Muslims and Christians who are targeted by Hamas rockets. It's also saves the lives of Gaza residents by reducing the need for Israel to invade in order to stop the rockets. No objective person should oppose funding for this life-saving system. But Edmondson decided to "report" — make up— a canard that has deep roots in the sordid history of anti-Semitism: namely, that powerful rabbis—sometimes called "the elders of Zion"— pressured elected officials to surrender their patriotic American "principles" by voting in an unprincipled way in support of a foreign power. This not only demeans Jews as having dual loyalty, but it also insults every member of Congress who voted for this allegedly "unprincipled" result, presumably because of illicit pressure from lobbyists and rabbis, and not because they believed it was the right thing to do for America and its ally. No mention was made by the Times of powerful pro-Palestinian lobbyists or Imams, or of the pressure placed on AOC and others by radical leftists who hate Israel. No: it was supposedly "principles" that motivated the anti-Israel votes, and "powerful" rabbinical pressures that determined the "yes" and "present" votes. And this purports to be objective "reporting" from the newspaper of record.

After much criticism, the Times quietly removed the reference to "rabbis" without apologizing for its reporter's mendacious anti-Semitism or disciplining her for her journalistic malpractice. Just imagine how quickly a journalist would be cancelled if she engaged in comparable bigotry toward another group. But the Times has long suffered from a double standard toward Jews and the Jewish nation.

The Times has repeatedly felt the need to apologize for its persistent insensitivity — and worse— toward Israel and its Jewish supporters. Remember the Der Stürmer-like cartoon it published in its international edition? It must do better. It must take steps to identify and control biased reporters, such as Edmondson, and reporting, such as her false claim about powerful rabbis,before they have to apologize for the damage that has already been done.

The Times has the right to editorialize against Israel, as it constantly does. It has the right to publish multiple columns and op-eds that are skewed against Israel, while employing only one pro-Israel columnist. But it has no journalistic right to editorialize on its news pages, as it repeatedly does. It defrauds its readers by disguising its subjective and biased opinions as objective unbiased reporting of the news. In this regard the Times is among the worst offenders of any influential newspaper.

So let the reader beware. You are not getting "all the news that's fit to print" about Israel. You are getting only the "news" that its reporters and editors fit into their preconceived and biased narrative.

I challenge the Columbia School of Journalism, or any other objective academic institution, to conduct a study of the Times "reporting" on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the last few years. The results will shame the Times and caution its readers to skeptically evaluate what passes as "reporting".

In the meantime, the Times must publicly, clearly and substantively apologize for its reporter lying about "powerful ...rabbis" and explain how its editors could permit such an obviously anti-Semitic canard to be published on its pages. Quietly eliminating the offending words from its online version is cowardly and insufficient. It must acknowledge the harm that its false reporting has caused.

• Dersh.Substack.com.

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Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School and served on the legal team representing President Donald Trump for the first Senate impeachment trial. He is the author of numerous books, including his latest, The Case for Color-Blind Equality in an Age of Identity Politics. His podcast, "The Dershow," is available on Spotify and YouTube. He is the Jack Roth Charitable Foundation Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17809/new-york-times-pits-principle-against-powerful

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A Thaw in Swedish-Israeli Relations? - Joseph Puder

 

​ by Joseph Puder

Will Jews in Sweden finally be safe from the violence of Middle Eastern migrants?

 

The relationship between Israel and Sweden has been a tense one in recent years, and even hostile during the stint of former Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom. In September, 2019, Wallstrom resigned her post. Replacing Wallstrom was Ann Linde, and this week, Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid announced that he spoke on the phone with his Swedish counterpart. In the first such conversation in seven years, Linde wished Lapid and Israel a Shana Tova. 

Lapid expressed satisfaction with the conversation he had with Linde. He said, “I appreciate her statement regarding Sweden’s strong and solid commitment to the security of Israel, and her recognition in the course of the conversation of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.” Linde reciprocated by emphasizing the “importance of our bilateral relations.”  

Sweden and Ireland, both European Union (EU) member states, have been the most hostile toward the Jewish state within the EU. In 2014, Sweden, led by the recently appointed Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, was the first EU member state to extend recognition to the non-existent Palestinian state. While the Swedish action didn’t create an avalanche against Israel, it however, prompted the parliaments of other EU member states, such as Ireland, Britain (before Brexit), France, Portugal, Spain, and Italy, to adopt resolutions supporting Palestinian statehood.

During the five years Wallstrom served as Sweden’s Foreign Minister, relations with Israel deteriorated to an unprecedented low. The Social-Democratic government of Prime Minister Stefan Lofvan, in which Wallstrom served as Foreign Minister, witnessed a huge influx of Middle Eastern Muslim immigrants (from Syria and Iraq in particular), and high crimes that accompanied their arrival. Sweden received the less than charitable title of the “rape capital of Europe.”

In 2015, Wallstrom claimed to the Swedish parliament that Israel was conducting extrajudicial executions of Palestinian stabbers. She subsequently called for an investigation to determine if Israel was guilty of these crimes. The Israeli foreign ministry, in response, called her statements “irresponsible and delusional,” adding that Wallstrom is “giving support to terror and thus encouraging violence.” I-24 TV reported that when asked by a Swedish parliamentarian why she refused to condemn Palestinian acts of violence against Israelis, Wallstrom replied that while she didn’t condone terrorism, and that Israel did have the right to self-defense, Israeli response doesn’t need to be extrajudicial executions or disproportional force…

The Israeli foreign ministry pointed out in a statement that Israeli citizens and security forces have the right to defend themselves against terrorists, and that Israel’s legal system guarantees a fair judicial process for everyone. “In Israel, every criminal is brought to court, including terrorists.”

Wallstrom’s anti-Israel outbursts didn’t stop with her statement on the libelous “extrajudicial executions.” Following the November 13, 2015 Islamic State terror attack in Paris, in which 130 people were murdered, Wallstrom asserted on Swedish television that the attacks were rooted in the frustration of Muslims in the Middle East, including the Palestinians.

Wallstrom may not be an outright anti-Semite, but, when it comes to the Jewish state, Swedish leaders have used Israel as their “convenient boogeyman,” to explain the antisemitic violence in Sweden, perpetrated mostly by Arab Muslim immigrants who flooded the country in 2015, as Syrian, Iraqi, and other Middle East “refugees.” 

Swedish Jews are now living in constant fear of violence. Even earlier, in 2009, on a visit to Sweden, this reporter had to call the Chabad synagogue in Stockholm in advance of arrival. At the Chabad Stockholm address, I found the structure boarded up with no sign that inside there was a synagogue, a sacred place of worship. It was only after repeated knocks on the door that someone let me in. One can only imagine how dire the situation for Jews is in Sweden these days when, in the relatively “safe” capital of Stockholm, Jewish worshippers must hide or have police protection. In the southern Swedish city of Malmo, the situation is far worse. The Muslim population there, along with their leftist Swedish supporters, are harassing Jews with impunity. The Swedish government does not want to, or is unable to restrain the Muslim harassers for fear of being accused of Islamophobia…

Antisemitism in Sweden has prompted many young Jews to leave the country. Speaking to a 27-year-old former officer in the Swedish army, I was told that, “Sweden is no longer safe for Jews.” He added, “I am considering moving to Israel or America.”

While in Sweden, the country’s largest newspaper, Aftonbladet, published a story that accused Israel of harvesting Palestinian organs, an unabashed modern blood libel. The same newspaper ridiculed the notion that Jews are leaving Sweden because of antisemitism, dismissing it as “lying” and “hysteria.” Swedish state TV attributed former President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as the result of the influence of the “Jewish lobby.” 

In today’s Sweden, radical Islam has free rein. The country has become one of Europe’s top recruiting grounds for various Islamist terror organizations. In April, 2017, five people were killed in an Islamic terror attack in downtown Stockholm. Yet, Swedish taxpayers are funding radical Muslim clerics and their mosques, while these imams continue to freely radicalize young peoples’ minds, and promote hatred and violence toward Jews, Israel, and ordinary Christians. This reporter was hosted by his Swedish-Kurdish Muslim friends, and was shown a high crime Arab-Muslim neighborhood, where Swedish police dare not enter. My Kurdish friends, being productive Swedish citizens, decried the apathy of the Swedish authorities, and the disregard they have toward the taxpayers. The Swedish authorities have in fact, deliberately hidden the extent of Muslim immigrant crimes.

The influx of Muslim immigrants has raised the Muslim population in Sweden to about 10 percent of the total. And, while the right-wing Swedish Democrats are anti-Muslim, and seek to stop Muslim immigration, the leftist Social-Democrats are seeking electoral support from the Muslim community. That may explain to some extent the anti-Israel rhetoric of the party officials. Historically though, Swedish-Israeli relations were not always smooth.

Sweden voted for the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan, which provided the legal foundation for the State of Israel. Count Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish diplomat and nephew of then Swedish King Gustaf V, was assassinated by the Lehi underground (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) in September, 1948. Bernadotte appeared to be siding with the interests of the Arabs in Israel’s War of Independence, when he sought to arrange a ceasefire just as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were pushing the invading Arab armies out of the territories allotted to the Jewish state. The 1950’s and 1960’s saw many young Swedes flock to Israeli Kibbutzim. Tage Erlander, the social-Democrat Prime Minister at the time, coincided with Israel’s Labor-Socialist party, and relations improved measurably. In subsequent years, Swedish governments were critical of Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s (Saddam Hussein’s) Osirak nuclear reactor. In 1982, during the first Lebanon war, Sweden’s Premier Olaf Palme compared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazi treatment of Jews.

In the wake of Lapid’s positive connection with his Swedish counterpart Ann Linde, it seems that Israel and Sweden might be opening a new page in their relationship. Israel’s President Isaac Herzog is due to visit Sweden in mid-October, to participate at the Malmo International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Anti-Semitism. The visit will be an opportunity to focus on issues both governments consider vital to their interests.

 

Joseph Puder

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/thaw-swedish-israeli-relations-joseph-puder/

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The Exodus of Jews from the Muslim World - Michael Curtis

 

​ by Michael Curtis

The more successful the story and progress of Israel, the more difficult and perilous the position of Jews in the Arab-Muslim world.

Overlooked the news of the chaos in Kabul is the story of the exit from Afghanistan on September 7, 2021, of 62-year-old Zabulon Simintov, the last Jew in the country. Not a heroic figure, he is a difficult man who has debts, received food, including matzos, from Afghans in New York and elsewhere, and was unkind to his wife who lives in Israel, because he refuses to grant her a get, the Jewish religious divorce process. He had some saving grace: he did save both the Afghan women’s soccer team, and a group of women judges.   

Simintov lived in and took care the Kabul synagogue, lived for a time in Turkmenistan, and lived under the Taliban without problems, but he is afraid of the more extreme terrorist group, ISIS.   He is an unusual person, a carpet trader and restauranteur, he was born in Herat in 1959, keeps kosher, observes the Sabbath, reads the Torah, prays in Hebrew, is fond of whiskey, and keeps a pet partridge. He was taken out of Afghanistan by bus to a neighboring country, Tajikistan, with the help of an ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn man and an Israeli-U.S. businessman.  The group also brought out 30 women and children.

Simintov is unimportant in himself but he represents a historic moment, the last person of the Jewish population which had been in Afghanistan for 2000 years, living as merchants, landowners, and moneylenders.  In the city of Herat there were four synagogues. Anti-Semitism became more evident in the 1930s. Jews were declared noncitizens and began emigrating. In 1948 there were 5,000, but by 2005 there were only two Jews left:  Simintov and Isaac Levy, who died in 2005. They disliked each other and lived in opposite sides in the synagogue.  

The departure of Simintov is a reminder of the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries, still observed in the Jewish festivals at Passover and at Sukkot, the festival for giving thanks not only for the yearly harvest, but also for food and shelter when escaping from Egypt.

Jewish communities had existed in the Middle East and North Africa for millennia, since Biblical times.  They had been ruled by different empires from the Babylonians on.  In Islamic countries, Jews had the status of “dhimmis,” second-class citizens, the people of the book.  Yet when Jews were persecuted in medieval Europe, many found refuge in Muslim lands.  This was noticeably the case when Jews were persecuted in Spain and Portugal.  Between 1290 and 1421 Jews were expelled from Egypt, France, Spain, Portugal, and Austria.

After pogroms in Spain in 1391, the Alhambra decree (Edict of Expulsion) in April, 1492 ruled that Jews must either convert to Catholicism or be deported.  Over 200,000 converted, and an estimated number of 100,000 were expelled. Portugal granted temporary asylum to Jews but then also deported those who refused to convert. Many of the Iberian Jews went to parts of the Ottoman Empire. The list of those descended from the expelled Iberians is formidable. They include Benjamin Cardozo, Camille Pissarro, Pierre Mendes-France, David Ricardo, and Emma Lazarus.

Between 1948, the creation of Israel, and the early 1970s about 850,000 Jews, mainly of Sephardic and Mizrahic backgrounds fled, usually penniless and leaving assets and businesses worth up to $6 billion in today’s money, or were evacuated from Arab countries and the Muslim world.  About two-thirds lived in areas in North Africa controlled by France and Italy.  Of these, 15-20% lived in Iraq, 10% in Egypt, 7% in Yemen, and 200,000 in Iran under the Shah and in the republic of Turkey.  The Ottoman Empire had 200,000 Jews at the beginning of 19th century. By 1972, 600,000 Jews from Arab and Muslim countries had reached Israel. Their descendants constitute more than half of the total population of Israel.

The numbers remaining in Arab countries and Iran are small, as figures show in comparison between 1948 and today: Egypt 80,000, now 100; Iran 65,000 now 8,300; Iraq 140,000, now 5-7; Libya 35,000, now 0; Sudan 350, now 0; Morocco 250,000, now 2150, Yemen 63,000, now 50; Tunisia 105,000, now 2,000; Turkey 80,000, now 14,000.

Jews left or were forced to leave Arab countries for a variety of reasons:  general and persisting anti-Semitism, pogroms, property confiscation, persecution, death threats, torture, removal of citizenship, poverty, and expulsion. To this can be added fulfillment of yearning to return to Zion, with affiliation for Zionist objectives, and desire for better economic status and personal security.

The first waves of removal from Arab and Muslim countries in the late 1940s and early 1950s were from Yemen, Iraq, Libya, and Egypt. Exodus from Egypt increased after the 1956 Suez crisis. Other factors pushing Jews out were OAS violence in Algeria, and anti-Semitism in countries controlled by the Soviet Union.

Iraq once had a well-integrated, relatively prosperous Jewish community, prominent in trade, banking, with representatives in the legislature and executive.  Conditions changed after the creation of Israel.  Pogroms, influenced by Nazi ideas, took place,.A prominent Jew, Shafiq Ades, chief agent of Ford in Iraq, was publicly hanged, followed by bombings in 1950 and 1951. Jews were deprived of civil and economic rights and subject to special taxes and restrictions on professional activity. Zionism was made a crime. In those years.  Jews were saved by operations Ezra and Nehemiah which took 120,000 to Israel. In all, 95% of Iraq Jews left.

Egypt, remembered in Passover services, once had 16 important Jewish schools, five in Cairo, nine in Alexandria, two important Jewish hospitals, retirement homes, more than 60 synagogues, and a Jewish population of 75,000. After Israel was created, Jews were attacked, and under the rule of Nasser, Jews were persecuted and expelled.

Jews in Iran are traced back to Babylonian exile of the 6^th century B.C.  In 1948, Jews numbered 140,000, before the Islamic revolution 1979 they were 80,000. In the 2012 census, the number was 8,756.

In North Africa, Jews have been present since the 6^th century B.C. Some 530 children were saved by Operation Mural in 1961 led by author David Littman ,who in Casablanca organized the airlift of children from Morocco in the guise of supposed holidays in Switzerland.

Can the Jews who left Arab and Muslim countries be counted as refugees?  Can they get belated justice? If so, Jews who left Arab countries and now live in Israel can be counted as a core factor and be significant in any resolution of the Middle East conflict.

In any case, the story of Mr. Simintov reminds us that the Jews were forced to leave Arab countries, and the exodus was formidable. Moreover, the paradox remains in much of the Arab and Muslim world. In this topsy turvy world, the more successful the story and progress of Israel, the more difficult and perilous the position of Jews in the Arab-Muslim world.

Image: PxFuel

 

Michael Curtis

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/09/the_exodus_of_jews_from_the_muslim_world.html

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Joe Biden Speaks to UN General Assembly on Need for a ‘Sovereign and Democratic Palestinian State’ - Hugh Fitzgerald

 

​ by Hugh Fitzgerald

[F]orget all that talk about a “two-state solution,” let deterrence do its work In keeping the peace between Israel and its enemies, and turn your attention elsewhere, please, Joe, to whatever needs to be done to deter China, Russia, North Korea.

 

Joe Biden showed up at the U.N. General Assembly on September 21 and delivered his prescription for ensuring Israel’s future. Robert Spencer wrote about his speech here, and a report on Biden’s “commitment to Israel’s security” is here: “Biden Says Two-State Solution Is ‘The Only Way’ to End Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” i24 News, September 21, 2021:

President Joe Biden said Tuesday that a sovereign and democratic Palestinian state is the “best way” to ensure Israel’s future.

How likely is it that there will ever be a “democratic” Palestinian state? There are right now 22 Arab states. Not one of them is a true democracy, nor is ever likely to be one. As for the Palestinian Arabs, in particular, the savage repression by the Hamas rulers in Gaza, where dissidents routinely are beaten, imprisoned, or “disappeared,” is matched in the West Bank by the repressive rule of the P.A., which treats its own dissidents in similar fashion. The P.A. has held exactly one presidential election, back in 2005. The ruler of the P.A., Mahmoud Abbas, is wildly unpopular; he is known to be corrupt, with a family fortune of some $400 million. Still he clings to power. He is now entering the seventeenth year of his four-year term. If you dissent from his rule, you are likely to be beaten, imprisoned, or – as happened recently to a well-known dissident, Nizar Banat — even killed.

“We must seek a future of greater peace and security for all people of the Middle East,” Biden said in a speech to the UN General Assembly.

Why? Why must “we seek a future of greater peace and security for all people of the Middle East”? Why the Middle East and not, say, for the people in Latin America, or Africa? After the costly fiascos — many trillions of dollars wasted — in Iraq and Afghanistan, where naive geostrategists had hoped to transplant democracy, are we now to take upon ourselves, or ask the world to take on with us, the hopeless task of turning the Middle East into Western Europe? What about a different set of goals that can, in fact, be achieved and that make sense? The first of these goals ought to be to prevent the unthinkable: “We must make sure that Iran never acquires nuclear weapons, even if that requires military action by us or our allies.” Second, we should reassure our closest ally: “We must make sure that Israel has the weapons to defend itself and the knowledge of our full support.” Third, to tell the Palestinian Arabs that our patience with them is running out: “We will from now on extend aid only to those who convincingly demonstrate that they neither support nor condone terrorism or antisemitism.” That means no more of those antisemitic schoolbooks that the P.A. keeps promising to replace. And it means an end to the “Pay-for-Slay” program that Mahmoud Abbas has sworn never to give up.

“The commitment of the United States to Israel’s security is without question and our support for an independent Jewish state is unequivocal,” he said.

Does Biden not realize that the “commitment of the United States to Israel’s security” seems not quite “without question” nor “our support for an independent Jewish state” seem “unequivocal,” given that the Bidenites are determined to provide hundreds of millions of dollars to the P.A., in direct violation of the Taylor Force Act? That is the law that was meant to prevent American aid from being given to the P.A. as long as it continued to supply generous stipends to imprisoned terrorists or to the families of terrorists who have been killed. The P.A.’s “Pay-For-Slay” program has not stopped; the Taylor Force Act remains on the books; yet Biden has already been lavishing money on the P.A. He’s violating the law, and no one is stopping him. And he is calling into question his own “commitment” to Israel’s security, by allowing a program that both rewards past, and incentivizes future, terrorism against the Jewish state.

Nor is that all that Biden has done to undermine Israel. He now wants to move back to east Jerusalem the “consulate to the Palestinians” that had been folded into the Embassy when it was moved to Jerusalem by President Trump. This reopening of that consulate will help to legitimize the Palestinian claim to Jerusalem as the site of its future capital. And just as bad, Biden wants to allow the PLO, a recognized terror group, to reopen an office in Washington; it was one of the first things Biden called for, on January 28, when he had been in office for scarcely more than a week.

How do any of these moves — the renewal of aid without an end to “Pay-For-Slay,” the reopening of the “consulate to the Palestinians, the PLO office to be re-opened in Washington — demonstrate a “commitment of the United States to Israel’s security”?

“But I continue to believe that a two-state solution is the best way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish democratic state, living in peace alongside a viable, sovereign and democratic Palestinian state,” he said.

“We’re a long way from that goal at this moment but we should never allow ourselves to give up on the possibility of progress.”

What does that mean – “a two-state solution”? They come in all configurations. President Trump had a “two-state solution,” but Israel’s territory would have been far more ample in his version than what Mahmoud Abbas, and likely Joe Biden, have in mind. Biden has never spelled out what his “two-state solution” would look like. Would Israel be forced back within something like the 1949 armistice lines, which Abba Eban famously called “the lines of Auschwitz,” giving Israel only a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea? Would Biden support Israel if the Jewish state insisted that in order to have “secure [i.e.defensible] and recognized borders,” as allowed by U.N. Resolution 242, it had to hold onto the Jordan Valley, as well as the major settlement blocs in the West Bank, and the Golan (annexed in 1981)?

Here’s another way to look at the Arab war on Israel: there is no solution. Not one-state, not two-state, not an n-state solution. Biden needs to recognize that there is not a “problem” susceptible of a “solution,” but rather, a “situation” that must be “managed.” Just as the U.S. held the Soviet Union in check, through deterrence, during the Cold War, Israel can keep the Palestinians and other enemies in check, if the IDF is supplied with the necessary weaponry and retains control of territory it deems essential. That means no return to a nine-mile-wide waist for Israel. No giving up of the Jordan Valley, either, control of which is indispensable to preventing an invasion from the east. No return of the Golan to Syria, which if it ever got that territory back would use it just as it did before – as a site from which to rain fire down on Israeli farmers in the valley far below. No giving up of the major settlement blocs, where citizen-soldiers — Israel, remember, has universal military service — by their mere presence help to secure the West Bank.

Israel will then be able, through deterrence, to “live in peace” with or without the consent of the Palestinian Arabs, who have never given the slightest sign of being able to create a “viable, sovereign and democratic Palestinian state.” Instead, they now have two mini-states, both despotisms, whose corrupt leaders – in the P.A. and Hamas — are at each others’ throats, while they keep their own people in thrall, violently suppressing all dissent, while graspingly taking their cut from the foreign aid that has kept them going for decades. Neither Gaza nor the P.A.-ruled parts of the West Bank are “viable” in any sense; without constant large infusions of foreign aid — which may not always be forthcoming in the future — they remain economic basket cases. It’s impossible to imagine the P.A. and Hamas ever making peace with each other, or their leaders ever surrendering power through elections. Give Israel the weapons it needs to defend itself, including bunker busters for those nuclear facilities deep inside the mountain at Fordow, forget all that talk about a “two-state solution,” let deterrence do its work In keeping the peace between Israel and its enemies, and turn your attention elsewhere, please, Joe, to whatever needs to be done to deter China, Russia, North Korea.

 

Hugh Fitzgerald

Source: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/09/joe-biden-speaks-to-un-general-assembly-on-need-for-a-sovereign-and-democratic-palestinian-state

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Professors and Activists Spin 9/11 Conspiracy Theories While Claiming Victimhood - Andrew E. Harrod

 

​ by Andrew E. Harrod

Variations on "some people (but certainly not Muslims) did something"

Zaid Shakir on 9/11: "Was it Mossad, the CIA, and how did bin Laden get operatives in the building to orchestrate a controlled demolition."

The webinar "9/11: American Muslims Twenty Years Later" does not concern "who did it, was it Mossad, the CIA, and how did bin Laden get operatives in the building to orchestrate a controlled demolition," stated Zaytuna College co-founder and professor emeritus Zaid Shakir. On 9/11's twentieth anniversary, he and his fellow panelists spun absurd conspiracy theories about the terrorist attacks, while doing their best to obscure the plain facts of Al Qaeda's guilt.

Shakir, who organized the webinar on behalf of the radical, anti-Israel Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), has long embraced conspiratorial nonsense. After the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, he wrote that "some [unnamed] observers" said it "was undertaken by the Zionist forces" in order to "intensify their anti-Islamic propaganda campaign." Admitting he "was an extremely anti-American person" when 9/11 happened, he stayed true to form by expressing his desire to focus the webinar on 9/11's subsequent effects on the American Muslim community, "regardless of who is responsible" for the attacks.

Post 9/11, Shakir noted the political quandaries traditional Muslims including him face in the modern West. The number of American Muslim politicians has grown and they have been "doing some great things, especially in terms of foreign policy," he said. By contrast, he lamented, "in terms of domestic policy" these policymakers "have almost universally . . . adopted a progressive, leftwing agenda that advocates for things that Muslims traditionally have held to be forbidden and/or repugnant."

Yasir Qadhi claimed 9/11 still presents "a lot of unanswered questions."

Leading American Muslim scholar Yasir Qadhi tried (and failed) to simultaneously condemn and embrace 9/11 conspiracies. Despite Shakir's earlier statements, Qadhi quipped to him that "even you and I have a redline that we are not going to cross" regarding theories about 9/11 that they would discuss publicly. "We are not going to go down certain things," Qadhi said, before claiming that 9/11 still presented "a lot of unanswered questions."

Qadhi likewise raised questions about Islam's relationship to democracy while discussing Muslim Americans in the two decades before 9/11. Back then, the "norm was to hear this notion of voting is haram [forbidden], it was the default in most suburban masajid [mosque]. And our imams and sheikhs from Al Azhar and from other places [said] there was this identity, we shouldn't really get involved in the system too much," he said. Post-9/11, "that's literally out the window," for Muslims realized the necessity of political engagement for protecting their civil rights. Although Qadhi condemned 9/11 as "un-Islamic; it was unethical, it was unjust, regardless of whatever political grievances that existed before," he argued that 9/11 brought "Islamophobia," the "demonization of the ummah, of our texts, of even our prophet."

Howard University assistant Dean for religious life Nisa Muhammad expressed similar sentiments. She is a follower of the rabidly antisemitic Louis Farrakhan, who inspired her to abandon her Baptist roots and convert to Islam as graduate student at Howard University. Muhammad is a writer for Farrakhan's Final Call magazine and a television host for the Islamic Republic of Iran's antisemitic Press TV.

After 9/11, she said, the "entire faith of Islam was blamed for the actions of a few. This was unheard of when the Ku Klux Klan terrorized black people in America. The entire faith of Christianity was never condemned or criticized." She never explained which Christian doctrines justified racism or how she, Farrakhan, Al Qaeda, and Iran's Islamic Republic represented just a "few" marginal extremists.

Saafir Raab II, a former consultant to President Barack Obama, also questioned 9/11's historical record. Raab organized Obama's 2016 visit to the Islamic Society of Baltimore, a mosque under FBI surveillance because of links to jihadists and a past imam who preached that suicide bombings were justified. Raab described 9/11 as an exceptional event involving a "few individuals who are clearly mentally deranged, whoever was involved with that effort, those are people who are not mentally fit for civility . . . whoever they were."

Sherman Jackson equated the Taliban's abolishment of female education to legislators' opposition to critical race theory.

University of Southern California professor Sherman Jackson, bemoaned that 9/11 opened Americans' eyes to what most recognize as the dangers presented by sharia. "Before 9/11 we could say all kinds of things, and America was kind of an ideological playground," he stated, before adding "9/11 said, no, no, no, you can't do that anymore, you now have to be more disciplined and more measured in what you say." He then offered a back-handed compliment to restrictions of traditional Islam by complaining that "given the levels of literacy we have within institutions we have today, the Prophet himself would have been condemned." "Cancel culture would have affected him," Qadhi agreed.

Jackson defends Critical Race Theory (CRT), a radical leftist ideology that considers racism intrinsic to American institutions and life. He falsely analogized opposition to CRT to the resurgent Taliban's abolishment of female education. "We can complain about that and yet turn around, have state legislators say, we are not going to have Critical Race Theory taught in our schools, and not see the double standard," he said.

While the webinar participants emphasized Muslim victimhood, their own comments clearly showed that Muslim self-reflection would have been a more appropriate response to 9/11. The panelists' conspiracy mongering, prejudices, and troubled relationship to democratic participation exposed their conflicts with America's constitutional regime and civil society. That several are professors of Islamic and Middle East studies demonstrates the toxic nature of academe and makes clear the urgent need for thoroughgoing reform.

 

Andrew E. Harrod, a Middle East Forum Campus Watch Fellow, freelance researcher, and writer, is a fellow with the Lawfare Project. Follow him on Twitter: @AEHarrod.

Source: https://www.meforum.org/campus-watch/62677/professors-and-activists-

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A ‘Real Muslim’ Tries to Run Down a Crowd of Jews With His Car in LA, and the Media Yawns - Robert Spencer

 

​ by Robert Spencer

Reuters took no notice. Neither did AP. The New York Times didn’t find it fit to print. Neither did the Washington Post, or CNN, or anyone else, including the hometown Los Angeles Times. It doesn’t fit the narrative.

On Wednesday night at Shaarei Tefila synagogue in Los Angeles, a man showed up at a Sukkot holiday concert, looked around, and said: “I’m a real Muslim, I’ll show you what real terrorism looks like.” About twenty minutes later, the man returned in a car. According to The Algemeiner, he “allegedly accelerated down a one-way alley into a crowd of women and children” as the concert was ending. “The crowd of about 20 to 30 managed to jump out of the path of the vehicle before the assailant stopped short in front of a metal gate, yelled ‘f**k the Jews’ and left.” One of the most striking aspects of this entire incident is that The Algemeiner’s report is the only one you can read about it. Reuters took no notice. Neither did AP. The New York Times didn’t find it fit to print. Neither did the Washington Post, or CNN, or anyone else, including the hometown Los Angeles Times. It doesn’t fit the narrative.

The Algemeiner describes itself as “a global news destination published online and in print, serves as an independent media voice covering the Middle East, Israel and matters of Jewish interest around the world.” One would think that the establishment media giants would be interested also in this matter of “Jewish interest,” but no dice. As far as they’re concerned, Muslims are always and everywhere victims of “Islamophobia,” and stories that depict them as such are the only ones worth reporting, not ones in which Muslims victimize others.

The reality is that anti-Semitic attacks such as the one in Los Angeles Wednesday evening are far more common than incidents of anti-Muslim hatred.  In 2018, there were 225 anti-Muslim hate crimes, and 896 anti-Jewish hate crimes; in 2019, there were 219 anti-Muslim hate crimes, and 995 anti-Jewish hate crimes. In 2020, anti-Muslim hate crimes decreased by 42%.

Yet ABC News gave a Muslims-As-Victims spin to all this on September 11 when it stated: “Hate crimes against Muslims rose 1617% from 2000 to 2001, according to the FBI marking some of the highest numbers of Islamophobic hate crimes ever in the U.S. But even as the country moved further from the attacks and the Muslim American population in the country grew, discrimination against this community has not waned, Pew Research Center reports.”

This kind of “journalism” is published as Jew-hatred becomes increasingly legitimized on the Left, and leads media outlets to minimize, downplay, or ignore altogether stories that they think will lead people to think ill of Islam, driving the MAGA-hatted thugs of Leftist fever dreams to commit more “Islamophobic” attacks.

Back in the real world, Jews have been targeted in attacks like the one in Los Angeles many times, but not in the United States. In Israel in 2018, a Muslim murdered two people and injured three more in a vehicular jihad attack. And there have been many others. A billboard in Nazareth actually called for attacks of this kind. “Moderate” Fatah also called for such attacks. And the Islamic State issued this call in September 2014: “So O muwahhid, do not let this battle pass you by wherever you may be….If you can kill a disbelieving American or European — especially the spiteful and filthy French — or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be….Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car…”

Related: Anti-Semites Get Their Wish: Democrats Yank Money for Israel Defense

But you won’t read about that in establishment media sources, any more than you will about this attack. Nor are you likely to learn that this synagogue has been targeted before. In May 2020, The Algemeiner reported “a member of the Jewish volunteer security group Magen Am described fending off vandals intent on defacing another synagogue, Shaarei Tefila in Fairfax. ‘They were spray-painting this whole area,’ he said, but were unable to damage the synagogue before ‘I sent them off.’ Noting that several nearby stores had been ‘pillaged’ and the area ‘had tear gas galore,’ he nonetheless noted, ‘We defended Shaarei Tefila today.’”

From whom? Likely the culprits were Leftist activists, along with supporters of the Palestinian jihad such as the fellow who tried to drive into the crowd Wednesday. In the establishment media, however, such people are angelic children and heirs of the American troops who defeated the Nazis. Sure they are. And we’ll find our news elsewhere, thank you.

 

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here. For media inquiries, contact communications@pjmedia.com.

Source: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/09/a-real-muslim-tries-to-run-down-a-crowd-of-jews-with-his-car-in-la-and-the-media-yawns

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