Little Palestinian-Arab girl encourages stabbing Jews

Michael L.



This little girl is being trained by Palestinian-Arabs to promote the genocide of the Jewish people.

As far as I am concerned, all of what we are seeing now - the western promoted "Stabbing Intifada" - cancels out any Israeli responsibility for the non-peace process.

There never was a "peace process" on the Arab side.

There was only traditional, Koranically-based, Arab-Muslim hatred of the Jewish people and they are willing to sacrifice their own children in psychotic obeisance to that hatred.

I understand that many within the western-left believe that the Jews of the Middle East deserve whatever beating that they get, but the truth is...

Golda Meir was right.

“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

{A big hat tip to Kate.}

Should We Admit Syrian “Refugees”?

Emmett

{Editor's note - this is a guest post. A question that I would ask those who favor large-scale immigration from the Arab-Muslim Middle East and North Africa into the United States is why, as a Jew, should I ever favor introducing a highly anti-Semitic population into my own country? It is simply not rational to do so. - ML.}

It is clear that the Constitution allows Congress to determine the qualifications needed for entry into the United States.

Therefore, let's first find out who are these people. Fortunately, there exists some statistics on these people. Some of the statistics I quote are from a statement of Daniel Greenfield, Stillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center. He focuses on Radical Islam.

In a 2007 poll, 77% of Syrians supported financing Islamic terrorists, including Hamas and those groups that became ISIS.

63% wanted to refuse medical and humanitarian aid from the United States.

Some will claim that those numbers are too old and don't represent the feelings of the “refugees”. However, a poll this summer showed one in five Syrians support ISIS. Additionally, one third support Al Nusra, affiliated with Al Qaeda. Since these groups are mutually exclusive that means over half of the Syrians support an Islamic terrorist group.

Polls of the “refugees” show similarly alarming results.

Let's assume the refugees are clever. Nevertheless, 13 % still admitted to supporting ISIS. Nineteen percent of Syrian refugees chose America as the greatest threat. That wasn't too far behind the 22% that chose Israel.

Syrian refugees view American foreign policy negatively (63%).

The Sunni Muslims that the administration wants to admit are the oppressors. Countless stories from the refugee camps show the maltreatment of Christians and Yazidis. There are reports of the Muslim on Christian violence in the German “refugee” camps. That may be one of the reasons that Syrian American Christians oppose admitting Syrian Muslims.

We have taken in only 53 Christians and one Yazidi since the Syrian civil war began.

For those who claim that once these people enter the American “melting pot” they will adjust to the freedom of religion, women's equality, tolerance, separation of religion and state, and so forth. This has also proven to be false. Statistics published by the Pew Trust, state that significant percentages of American Muslims say suicide bombings are “sometimes justified”. In the same poll. 31% of American Muslims see “a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society”. In Britain a Sun poll stated that one fifth of British Muslims have sympathy for jihadis. A 2015 poll by the Mirror newspaper, showed that 1.5 million British Muslims see themselves as supporters of ISIS.

There are a number of American, Canadian and European Muslims who are attempting to “reform” Islam. i.e. modify the interpretation of some Islamic tenets, and bring it into the culture of a sectarian democracy. But, so far, these groups have not gotten as many American supporters as it hoped. This could mean that the above quoted statistics, of Muslims living in a democracy, will not decrease.

Of course, political correctness dictates that the “elephant in the room” should not be mentioned. I refer to the anti-Semitic views of both the Syrian government and the Syrian people. In 1944 before the establishment of Israel, the government prohibited immigration to Palestine, restricted the teaching of Hebrew in schools and tolerated attacks against Jews. The Jews, a population of 30,000, many whose families had been living in Syria for over 2000 years, had to leave. They left their property, (synagogues, land, business, etc.) barely escaping with their lives.

It's unfortunate, but we must come to the conclusion that these Syrian “refugees” should not be allowed in this country. It is a potential “fifth” column that we have to avoid.

Arab Migrants, Jews, and the "Radical-Right" in Europe

Michael L.

{Also published at Elder of Zion, Vocal Europe, Jews Down Under, and The Jewish Press.}

In a recent piece for Vocal Europe, Associate Professor of Political Science from DePaul University, Erik Tillman, worries about the possible rise of the "radical-right" due to the immigration crisis. But he does not worry overly much and for very good reason. He writes:

Their message does not appeal to the majority of European voters, even when broader political and social conditions are favorable. Thus, fearful predictions about the ‘specter’ of the radical right hanging over Europe are wide of the mark.

If there is one place on the planet least likely to enamor themselves of nativist, radical-right political trends it is western Europe which, given its bloody and racist history, has no desire for conflict or war and, despite the immigration crisis, remains committed to the principles of social justice and universal human rights. In fact, the Swedish Greens' deputy prime minister, Åsa Romson, literally cried before the cameras upon announcing a tightening up of the Swedish borders although, as it turns out, it is questionable the degree to which such actual tightening-up was undertaken.

I would like, however, to challenge this statement by Professor Tillman:

the refugee crisis is helping to push those voters attracted to the radical right—individuals who value security and social cohesion over individual autonomy and universal rights—to vote for those parties.

While it is true that right-leaning European voters favor security and social cohesion over human rights, it is not the least bit clear that they favor - or the degree to which they favor - such values over individual autonomy.

As for social justice and universal human rights, it might be wise for Europeans to consider the political leanings of the people streaming onto the continent and how those people will effect European politics going forward.

What Europe will look like in the future, from a social-political perspective, will depend upon the political values of its citizenry. To the extent that those values represent liberal values then the continent will be liberal. To the extent that those values do not represent liberal values then the continent will be other than liberal.

One thing that we know with certainty is that the great majority of Middle Eastern immigrants into Europe do not hold liberal values, i.e., the values of minority rights, gender equality, free speech, freedom of religion, and Gay rights. On the contrary, the young men streaming into Europe come from places notorious for holding the most reactionary right-wing, racist politics imaginable.

The tendencies within Arab and North African cultures are to oppress women and free thinkers, while seeking to murder Jewish people, Gay people, apostates, and anyone who says anything unpleasant about Muhammad.

Jews, in particular, are getting nervous on the European continent and for very good reason.

On December 22, the Times of Israel posted an article by Josefin Dolsten, Facing death chants and hate crimes, Sweden’s Jews live in a climate of fear:

On a chilly fall day, passersby on a central street in Sweden’s third largest city, Malmö, were greeted with chants in Arabic urging the killing of Jews...

These types of incidents, where anti-Israel rhetoric turns violently anti-Semitic, have created a climate of fear for Sweden’s small Jewish community, which numbers 15,000. Hate crimes against Jews are on the rise, with 2014 seeing a 38 percent increase in reported anti-Semitic incidents from the previous year, according to a report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention. 

“Right now, a lot of Jews in Sweden are scared. Parents are scared to drop off their kids at the Jewish preschool,” says Johanna Schreiber, a prominent Jewish journalist who lives in the country’s capital, Stockholm. “People of all ages are scared of going to synagogue, there are many people who are taking off their Stars of David because they are too scared to wear it.”

The inclination among many western Europeans to welcome refugees into their countries is commendable, but it needs to be done on a well moderated basis.

Given the sheer numbers of young, religiously-conservative, Arab-Muslim men flowing onto the continent, one must wonder how this will change the face of Europe in years to come. What I have argued is that introducing millions of religiously-inclined, conservative Arab-Muslim men into Europe will change the political and ideological nature of the continent and will drive out what little remains of its Jewish population.

It will also erode the liberal democratic nature of European societies... the very sensibility that opened the doors of Europe to begin with.

Islamic State head: ‘Palestine will be graveyard’ for Jews

Michael L.

The Times of Israel tells us:

The leader of the Islamic State terrorist group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, issued Saturday an explicit threat against Israel, the first such indication from the organization’s head that the Jewish state was on his agenda.

In an audio recording released on social media, al-Baghdadi warned that his forces will “soon meet [the Jews] in Palestine,” Israel’s Channel 2 television reported.

The terrorist group’s elusive head added that “Israel will pay a heavy price at the hands of our fighters,” the report said.

“Palestine will not be your land or your home,” al-Baghdadi continued, according to the Ynet news site. “It will be a graveyard for you. Allah has gathered you in Palestine so that the Muslims may kill you.”  (Emphasis added.)

So, what do you do with this?

If there is one thing that Jewish people have learned from the last century it is that when savages call for Jewish blood they must be taken seriously.

This is a direct and explicit threat of genocide against the Jewish people within living memory of the Holocaust from a highly significant enemy.

Furthermore, we know who these people are. They are the ones who chop the heads off of Christians, burn down churches, bury Yazidis alive, rape young non-Muslim women and sell them into slavery, and destroy antiquities as we recently saw in Palmyra in order to wreck human heritage and history.

Our birthright.

But what can we do?

One thing that Israel can do, of course, is send the Israeli Air Force (IAF) over the lands in Syria and Iraq controlled by these heinous maniacs and carpet-bomb them into their joyous "paradise" where each can go forth and rape 72 virgins.

{Oh, Joy.}

Of course, if Israel were to do any such thing, the western world - and, yes, particularly the western-left - would scream from the rafters about Israeli genocide and apartheid and racism and colonialism and imperialism and whatever else they can find to fling at the Jewish people seeking to defend themselves and their children.

What I think is that Israel should, on the highest levels, go directly to the EU and the US and tell them that if they will not deal with these monsters, then Israel will.

Needless to say, this will not happen because it is not politically expedient. Instead, Israel will continue to allow itself to be pushed around by the Europeans and the Obama administration, rather than doing what is necessary to defend its own people.

The Islamic State cannot even muster an air campaign, yet the western world frets and worries and navel-gazes as people are burned alive in cages and as homosexuals are flung from roof-tops.

If Israel waits for the West to honestly deal with political Islam, it will wait forever.

If it acts unilaterally in a decisive manner, it will be condemned from all quarters.

So, you tell me.

Brownshirts, sharia police and Germans

geoffff

{Also published at geoffff's joint.}



What is it about the German people that could make them think that they have to embrace and empower a fascist racist antisemitic range of aggressive ideologies to atone for the crimes of a regime with an identical ideology that were committed before most of them were born?

It's a fair question.

Some of my best friends have been German. But sorry guys, that is some weird psyche stuff going down there and that's even before you consider that the number one stated ideological tenet of these new nazis is the obliteration of Israel, the extermination of the Jews, at the very least as a free people, and world domination.

Genuine war refugees deserve compassion but we are entitled to expect protection from any viruses they may carry. That has always been the case. Once that might have meant a spell in a secure facility on North Head or Stradbroke Island but these days ideological viruses are more dangerous.

Refugees should be tested for racism, violent antisemitism, terrorism sympathy or belief in global military conquest, either now or in the future. No religion, race or nationality should be exempted from this.

Those who exhibit dangerous viral traits should be deported.  In time, education and good citizenship courses may develop that offer recovery and reform but until then no chances should be taken.

It is spurious to see racism in this policy. It is racist if you do.

Right now there is a controversy here because Australia's most senior security official phoned some prominent conservative politicians to ask them to be moderate in their language when talking about Islam and terrorism. He feared a security blast back of some sort or a drying up of sources.

You may choose to regard the religion as irrelevant if you wish. I do at one level. Nazism is nazism. The mindset and the grip of the ideology on the mind are the same.  At most the religion is a vessel.  It is the fleas that carry the plague and for them any rat will do.

Of course it would be easy to fake and beat screening tests and anti-nazi filters and no doubt refugee advocates will be swarming to show how. But even that would be better than nothing.

It may cause some to give thought to why these security barriers are necessary. And why the country's top security chief is so concerned about these that he has phoned politicians to tell them to be careful about their language when they talk about what they see as the root cause of the security threat.

Spitting on the Holocaust to dampen Islamophobia

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under.}

The Jerusalem Post tells us:

A University of San Diego professor and some of her students wore yellow star badges modeled after the ones Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust to protest Islamophobia.

Bahar Davary, an Iranian-American associate professor of theology and religious studies at the college, and her students began wearing the yellow stars with the word “Muslim” on them around campus last Thursday. She estimates that over 100 student and faculty members are now wearing the yellow stars on campus.

Davary said, “The yellow Star of David with the word Muslim written on it is a symbol that my students and I wear with utmost respect for the memory of the Jewish lives lost.”

My first inclination is to remind Professor Davary that whatever hell her students must be going through - surrounded by all these murderous, racist white people in Southern California, after all - I imagine it is not quite the same thing as being forced out of one's home, separated from one's family, and dragged off to Treblinka.

Of course, being a full-grown university professor, Davary needs no such reminder.

Davary defended her idea through a university spokesman, telling the Washington Free Beacon that the protest is “not intended to make an analogy between the current situation of Muslims in the US to that of Jews in Germany and wider Europe before the Shoah.”

Fascinating.

So, the analogy is not an analogy, but apparently something else entirely... just what, however, remains a mystery.

According to literarydevices.net:

An analogy is a comparison in which an idea or a thing is compared to another thing that is quite different from it. It aims at explaining that idea or thing by comparing it to something that is familiar.

The University of San Diego is telling international Jewry that the yellow Star of David, as worn by Davary and her students, is merely a way to "raise awareness against Islamophobia," but not an analogy to the Holocaust.

If it were an analogy to the Holocaust it would suggest that Muslims in the United States are going through something similar to the rockin' good time that Jews had in Europe in the early-middle part of the twentieth-century.

Since it is not an analogy to the Holocaust, however, it must mean that the yellow Star of David patch is not meant to evoke the Holocaust.

It must, therefore, be meant either to evoke nothing or to evoke something else, entirely.  Of course, if it is not meant to evoke anything, and is therefore not meant to analogize anything, what would be the point of wearing it?

This being the case, it must be an analogy.  It is meant to convey a comparison of the terrible treatment of Muslims in the United States to something else that can be easily conjured into the mind of the observer... but what?  We already know that the yellow Star of David patch, with the word "Muslim" written across it, is not meant as a Holocaust analogy because the professor has told us so via the university.

That, I suppose, is the question that the University of San Diego, and professor Bahar Davary, will need to answer going forward.  If it was not meant to analogize the Holocaust, just what is its meaning?

Jews are sometimes told by people such as Norman Finkelstein that the Holocaust is an "industry" the product of which is "consumed" by Jewish people for nefarious reasons having to do with gaining power through highlighting the guilt of others.

I find this notion to be something akin to evil because it suggests that the remembrance and honoring of the loss of the 6 million - one-third of our number at the time - is really little more than a ploy to fool the stupid goyim into giving Jews free stuff, such as, for example, a country of our own wherein we can defend ourselves from the friends of Norman Finkelstein.

The fact of the matter is that Davary is an idiot and the University of San Diego is guilty of foisting idiocy upon its students.  The obvious fact is that the yellow Star of David patch - as opposed to the Star (or Shield) of David, in itself - is a highly charged symbol of the Holocaust and for professor Davary to claim that she is not using it in such a manner is disingenuous.

It is a lie.

I have no reason to believe that Davary's intentions are anything but the finest, but this is a hurtful stunt that will do little more than conjure anger and confusion.

How impossibly stupid does the University of San Diego think that Jewish people are?  How impossibly stupid does Davary think that we are?  Of course, the yellow Star of David patch is a symbol of the Holocaust and when she and her students wear that symbol they are analogizing the experiences of Muslim-Americans in 2015 to the extermination of the Jewish people under Nazi Germany before and during World War II.

Not only is the very notion an insidious lie, and an insult to the Jewish people, but it waters down the meaning of the Holocaust to the expense of all of us.

The University of San Diego should be ashamed of itself and the Jewish student body should be, if not outraged, at least highly curious about what Professor Davary is up to, exactly.

In Memoriam: Avi Davis (1958-2015)

Michael L.

I did not know the man, and I do not know that I shared all of his political views or values, but it is important to acknowledge the friendship and demise of pro-Israel / pro-Jewish fighters.

Adelle Nazarian, from Breitbart, writes:

Davis suffered a heart attack 11 days ago while cycling. He was placed in an induced coma as doctors ran a series of tests to determine his brain function, but ultimately he was unable to recover. He leaves behind two sons, Mati and Amiad, both his parents, Betty and Jack, a sister Yvette, and brothers Yoni and Shimmi. He was just 57 years old.

I was alerted to the loss of Avi Davis by Michael Burd of Nothing Left on J-AIR radio, both of whom are out of Melbourne, Australia.

Davis was born in Melbourne, Australia, but called America his home. He also had residences in Tzfat, Israel, and in Montana. He loved to visit both places, where he would complete much of his writing.

Avi was a loving, caring father, known for his generosity. He loved to welcome people into his home and took the time discuss issues close to his heart, including fighting the liberal hijacking of education, securing the State of Israel, and preventing the rise of radical Islam. He hosted countless Friday night Sabbath dinners at his home in West Los Angeles, which were open to people from a variety of backgrounds.

Standing up for Israel is lonely work and it is important to remember our friends.

Avi, although I did not know him personally, fought for the Jewish people and he fought for the State of Israel.

I am very much looking forward to learning more about the man.

Many thanks to Michael Burd.

Sam Harris, the Jihad, and Common Sense

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at the Elder of Ziyon and the Algemeiner}

It is always a pleasure to discover a writer / thinker whose thoughts can serve as a sort-of baseline, or measure, of one's own.

Neuroscientist / Philosopher Sam Harris is just such a guy.

His first book is a 2004 offering entitled, The End of Faith.  His most recent is Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue, co-written with British Muslim reformer, Maajid Nawaz.

For most of his career Harris wrote about the intersection between faith, rationality, and cognition from the perspective of a mystically-inclined atheist neuroscientist.

{To those of you who may wonder how one can be both an atheist and mystically-inclined one need only point to the example of Mahayana Buddhism.}

In recent years, however, he has focused on the rise of political Islam and the theocratic-ideological roots of that heinous head-chopping movement.  His interlocutor, Nawaz, is a Muslim reformer and former Islamist.  Both men overcame their ideological differences in order to find common ground and both serve as a model on how to speak with those with whom we may have serious disagreements.

I want to emphasize two aspects of Harris' thinking that very much caught my attention and that I take simply to be commonsense... but important and often overlooked commonsense.  These are the link between behavior and belief and the significance of intention as an ethical matter and one of predicting likely future behavior.  Harris relates both to political Islam and the ongoing siege of the Jews in the Middle East.

The Link Between Behavior and Belief

Academics, politicians, and journalists have been searching high-and-low for the reasons why Jihadis rammed two commercial jets into the World Trade Center, killing around three thousand innocent people on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent rise of political Islam throughout the Middle East and Europe following the so-called "Arab Spring."

The answers put forth by the purveyors of public opinion generally center around socio-economic factors and the history of western and American imperialism in the Middle East.

In this way the West tends to blame itself for the violence against it.

What Harris suggests is that if we want to understand the rise of political Islam then we must listen to what they have to say about themselves.  What he, therefore, argues is that there is a direct and obvious line between belief and behavior.

Belief drives behavior.

Thus if we listen to what the Islamists say about themselves it becomes clear that they are primarily driven by a fundamentalist, Salafist, seventh-century vision of Islamic dominance and the restoration of the Caliphate under al-Sharia and all the head-chopping that entails.

This does not mean that political or socio-economic factors should be dismissed.

What this does mean - despite Barack Obama's admonishments otherwise - is that the reasons for the rise of the Jihad are directly connected to Islamic primary sources, i.e., the Qur'an and the hadiths.

Chomksy and the Significance of Intention

Harris, like numerous others before him, recently clashed with MIT linguist and left political icon, Noam Chomsky.

Harris approached Chomsky in the hope that, as with his conversation with Nawaz, they could explore the political and ideological differences between them, within the academic tradition of collegiality, and thereby lay-out in a coherent manner their differences for you and I to consider.

This was not to be and Harris published the email conversation between the two of them as a lesson on the difficulty of speaking entrapped within what I call "ideological blinkertude."

What struck me most about the conversation, however, was Harris' focus on the ethical significance of intention.

Chomsky is, essentially, a peddler of the moral equivalency canard.  He has suggested that there is no greater source of terrorism in the world outside of Washington D.C.

In support of his thesis he notes Bill Clinton's 1998 bombing of the l-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan and suggests that the negative effects on Sudanese society were at least as bad, and probably far worse, than anything that the United States suffered after 9/11.

Clinton claimed that the plant was manufacturing chemical weapons and had ties with al-Qaeda, which is why it needed to be taken out.  Chomksy claims that the attack was a wanton act of retaliation for the US embassy bombing that left 200 dead in that same country, that same year.

What Harris argues is that the difference is one of intention and that intention matters.  The people who flew those commercial jets into the World Trade Center intended to kill as many innocent people as possible.  Clinton, if we can believe his own stated intentions, did not desire to aimlessly murder people, but to prevent the creation of chemical weaponry in Sudan coming directly on the heels of the embassy bombing.

Harris, I would argue, is quite correct.

Intention does matter both for ethical reasons and because it indicates how the actor is likely to behave in the future.

Chomsky may argue that the "road to hell is paved with good intentions," and he is undoubtedly correct, but from an ethical perspective intention still matters and, as Harris points out, it demonstrates the likely behavior of the individual or the group going forward.

Will the Real Racist Please Stand Up?

I first became aware of Harris when Ben Affleck decided to get into his face on Bill Maher's Real Time a few months ago:



Essentially, all Harris said, quite rightly, is that criticisms of the doctrines of Islam get immediately conflated, on the progressive-left, with bigotry or "racism" toward Muslims as people.

Then, not surprisingly, the well-meaning Ben Affleck rushed forward to do precisely that.

Affleck is an intelligent guy - as I am sure that Matt Damon can attest - but he is wrong to conflate criticisms of Islamic doctrine, or criticisms of political Islam, with bigotry towards Muslims, in general.

In fact, without realizing it, Affleck slipped into the very bigotry that he claims to find "gross."

Anyone who thinks that criticism of political Islam (or radical Islam or Islamism) is the same as bigotry toward Muslims, in general, is unwittingly suggesting that all Muslims are essentially Jihadis.

Now that is bigotry.

Ben Affleck is a serious guy, a significant artist, writer, producer, actor, and an intelligent man with a heart in the right place.

But he is simply wrong on this matter.

I very much hope that upon reflection he gives Harris the consideration that his work deserves.

Palestinian shot dead in attempted West Bank car-ramming

Michael L.

Times of Israel staff writes:

A Palestinian attacker was shot dead Friday afternoon as he tried to drive his car into Israeli security forces at the entrance to the settlement of Ofra in the northern West Bank.

A Magen David Adom team sent to the scene said that no Israelis had been wounded in the attempted attack, Channel 2 television reported. The driver’s death was confirmed at the scene.

Initial reports said that the driver hit a concrete barrier and the soldiers there managed to scatter seconds before the impact. The troops then opened fire on the vehicle. The IDF said that the attack took place during widespread riots at the adjacent village of Silwad.

I find it difficult to believe that anyone can think that the Jewish minority of the Middle East are not a people under siege within the third intifada against them.

In truth, World War II never really ended for the Jews in that part of the world.

This is the third attempt since the late 1980s wherein Arabs send their children out into the streets for the purpose of killing Jews, and getting killed in the process, to much applause and celebration within Palestinian-Arab society.

I am certain that the families are very proud of their "martyrs" and will appropriately celebrate their welcome into paradise for the noble effort of endeavoring to murder Jews.  The Palestinian Authority will name streets and sporting arenas and elementary schools after those who have been most successful in murdering innocent Jewish grandparents and children in the streets of Jerusalem or Hebron.

I honestly do not know what more can be said about this other than the fact that Israel must clamp-down hard on its internal Arab-Nazi-Klan situation and make it exceedingly clear to their families that when they seek to murder Jews on the streets in Israel that there will be a very serious price to pay.

I do not know if Israel should bulldoze the homes of these murderers or subject them to the death penalty or oust their families from the country.

In any case, very serious measures need to be taken in order to send the appropriate message to the families of these bastards that the Jews will simply no longer put up with this.

One thing that non-Jews need to understand is that Israel stands for the Jewish people.

Israel stands for the Jews.

Our presence in the world as a people - not as cringing victims - is assured by the Jewish State.

Thus Israel must fight back against the miserable bastards that seek to run Jews down with their automobiles or who send their children out with knives to murder innocent Jews on the streets.

If Israel does what is necessary to protect its people Europeans, progressives, and Arabs will scream from the hillsides about Jewish "aggression," but if Israel fails to stand up there will be more Jewish dead and a continuing diminishment of the already tiny Jewish population.

Israel has no choice but to seriously fight back, whether Europe or Barack Obama likes it or not.

From the comments: 

Jan Poller

If Palestinians don't want to die while trying to kill Israelis, they should stop trying to kill Israelis.  It isn't a difficult concept.

Maybe if they believed that they were going to eternal flames and damnation instead of "paradise" they wouldn't be so anxious to commit murder and then die.

What Jan understands, but the EU and the UN and Barack Obama do not, is the religious nature of Arab hatred toward Jews in the ancient Jewish homeland.

They honestly believe that the people who have treated the Arabs best in that part of the world are the ones who have treated them worst and therefore deserve whatever beating they get from their former conquerors.

Third Interview with Michael Burd

Michael L.
I am happy to report that Michael Burd, of "Nothing Left" out of J-Air in Melbourne, and I held another conversation recently that can be accessed here.

It is a brief chit-chat, only ten minutes in length, and is the concluding segment that begins at the 1 hour, 35 minute mark.

I am exceedingly honored to have been chosen as a replacement for Isi Liebler who does a weekly check-in with Michael and his partner Alan Freedman, but who is currently on holiday.

These guys host some of the very top names among pro-Israel / pro-Jewish politicians, journalists and scholars, including Alan Dershowitz, Jonathan Tobin, Matthias Küntzel, Mordechai Kedar, Michael Harris, Robert Spencer, Noni Darwish, Moshe Feiglin, not to mention Shirlee Finn of our sister site, Jews Down Under, among many others.

You guys should give a listen.

Lessons from a Sabbath meal

Sar Shalom

One time during a Sabbath meal I had joined with a neighbor of mine, my host started to ask his kids when they would be able to learn, that is to study Torah, with him. As he suggested a few times, the kids would respond that they could not learn then. Eventually, in frustration, he said that he did not want to know when they cannot learn, he wanted to know when they can learn.

Such is the case with explaining Israel's stalled progress towards peace to those who just want to see the conflict end. Throughout the past decade, we have rightfully declared that PA strongman Mahmoud Abbas is not a partner for peace. However, emphasizing reason after reason, which in a fair world would demonstrate that Abbas is indeed not a partner, sound to the end-it-already crowd like just more excuses for not doing anything. What is needed is to identify who would be a partner for peace and what qualities make that person a partner.

Fortunately, Mordechai Kedar has an article up about just such a partner. As Kedar describes, the tribal leaders in each of the major Palestinian cities are partners who would accept Israel as a Jewish state. One could add Mohammed Daoudi Dajani of Wasatiya to this list.

The point of calling attention to these Palestinian alternatives is not about realizing "rights" for the Palestinians, whatever one's opinion is about Palestinian rights. Rather, it is to make a case about what constitutes a viable way forward to any sort of lasting peace. If the current Palestinian powers-that-be (PTB) were amenable to some sort of Jewish sovereignty on some sliver of the Middle East, then providing what is needed for the PTB to agree to the specifics would be the quickest path to peace. However, Abbas has amply demonstrated that he will not accept any Jewish sovereignty on a postage stamp sized plot of Dar al-Islam and that all claims to the contrary are nothing but Taqqiya. Thus, trying to bring about peace by this route would be like Peter trying to end a game of Jumanji by fixing the outcome of a die-roll. Unfortunately, for too many Westerners, this fact without any alternative path to peace is, as Jeremy Ben-Ami would put it, "too depressing."

The alternative path to peace is to identify powers-that-aren't (PTA) that genuinely accept the right of Jews to have a sovereign corner in the Middle East, help them become PTB, and then meet their demands. The impatient Westerners would have two objections to this plan. One would be that it is not for us to choose the Palestinians' leaders. I have no brief answer to this objection, but an answer likely would be needed. The second is that turning the PTA into the PTB would take too long. My answer is that not taking time to turn the PTA into the PTB would be like refusing to take time off from cutting a piece of wood to sharpen your saw because it would waste too much time. If the PTB is not a viable path to peace, then any time lost from boosting the PTA would be time lost from advancing peace. Offer them a choice between preening for the cause of "peace" and doing something that will actually, if more slowly, advance the cause of peace.

Enemies

Michael L.

The western-left refuses to stand up to the cruel bullies of political Islam.

In doing so, the Left has abandoned women in the Muslim-Middle East, gay people in the Muslim-Middle East, all non-Muslims in that part of the world, as well as freedom of speech even in Europe.  As a direct consequence, as I have argued ad nauseum, they have flushed adherence to the ideal of universal human rights directly down the toilet.

In this way, the progressive-left has abandoned its very reason to be because it has abandoned the heart of its movement in favor of the multicultural ideal.

When I think of the joyous escapades of our friends in the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) - such as, for example, burying Yazidis alive in mass graves or using young non-Muslim prepubescent girls as sexual slaves or the mass chopping off of "infidel" heads or the destruction of ancient antiquities, such as we recently saw in Palmyra - one word comes immediately to mind:

Enemy.

The thing about the western-left, in general, and the American-left, as well, is that it recognizes no such category of human being - beyond Republicans, Evangelical Christians, or conservatives - as an enemy.  They may actively and loudly despise people such as former president George W. Bush, but they can live with the Muslim Brotherhood or Islamic Jihad or Boko Haram.  This is because they tend to have little, or no, sense of ethical proportionality.  Sure, Boko Haram might kidnap hundreds of young girls for the purpose of raping them and selling them into sexual slavery but, aghghg!, George W. Bush is a Texas Republican!

The Left knows who their real enemy is and it is definitely neither Boko Haram, nor the Islamic State.

I understand, of course, that the concept of "enemy" is not a pretty one.  When a people or a nation have an enemy then their leadership is obligated to defeat that enemy.  This requires a willingness to stand up, put oneself forward, and actually do whatever is necessary to win the war.  People on the Left, however, have no such inclination unless they are spitting hatred at the likes of Dick Cheney or that heinous Zionist, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The rise of political Islam represents the single most significant geopolitical event since the downfall of the Soviet Union.  The crazed and vicious denizens of organizations like ISIS or Hamas despise essential western values such as the equality of women, freedom of speech or, even, freedom of thought, and they are perfectly happy to use the most horrendous forms of violence to prove it.

And, needless to say, political Islam is the most violently anti-Semitic political movement that we have seen in the world since the Nazis were pulling gold out of Jewish teeth.  This makes them unequivocally my enemy and they should be the acknowledged enemy of anyone who believes in western-liberal values... which the Left no longer does, if it ever did.

There are at least two important reasons why the progressive-left finds it difficult to acknowledge groups like ISIS as an enemy.  The first is because the United States is a powerful, largely white country, and people "of color" in the Middle East are considered underdogs and the natural instinct is to protect the underdog even, apparently, if the underdog is burning people alive in cages.

The second reason is because most progressives blame the West for the rise of political Islam due to unjust material factors imposed by Europe for centuries and by the United States since early in the twentieth.  That is, they believe that western and American imperialism destabilized traditional societies, subjecting them to war and poverty, thereby encouraging a rational hatred of the West.

There is only one major problem with this analysis.  It infantilizes Arabs in an exceedingly bigoted and prejudicial manner and it fails to acknowledge the linkage between strongly held religious beliefs and behavior.  ISIS, whatever else it may be, is a religious-political movement drenched in the Salafist form of Islam.  When they say that they wish to carry out the violent Jihad for the purpose of establishing the Caliphate, they mean it.  When they say that head-chopping is the pleasure of Allah and that if they die in Jihad they will go to paradise, they mean that, as well.

They act on their beliefs and those belief are not due to the fact that sometimes Jewish people build housing for themselves beyond the Green Line.  Their beliefs are grounded in their religious faith and the primary sources of that faith are the Qur'an and the hadiths.

Drop Sam Harris a line.

He will have a few words.

Trudy's View on US-Israel Relations

Empress Trudy

{Editor's note - Trudy's views are not my own.  Nonetheless, I think that there are some important and cutting edge ideas in this concise piece that should be considered.  We can discuss it in the comments, but I am willing to say that if the US and Israel are beginning to go their separate ways, which I hope is not the case, that such a process would be gradual and amicable.  Although, given this current administration, I would not necessarily count on that. - ML}

In a wider sense there truly isn't that much that Israel garners from it's so called relationship with the US. Israel should dial back all relations with the US in a very big way. Little to no diplomatic, intelligence, or economic partnering. True, the VC community loves Israel but it's not enough and there's enough money laying about in the rest of the world to partner with. There are individual companies that work well with Israel, but broadly speaking there's little point.

Let the US wave its UNSC veto. Let the EU do without Israeli technology and Israeli-Cypriot gas fields and so on. I'm sure that the US and the EU can struggle on without it.

The future is the East. Israel needs to look to the east and kiss the US goodbye for all practical purposes. The relationship with the US shouldn't be any more material to Israel than her relationship with Mexico or Chile. There's simply not enough there beyond the outsized value we place on it. Remember this is a global world and the US and the EU are in their twilight phases.

Another generation or two they will no longer be major players on the world stage just as Britain experienced after WW2. In many ways it's the West that hasn't realized that the Cold War is over, not the East. They still operate with a world view more oriented to the 1950's and '60's while it's the former Communists who are changing and have changed more. And while Israel, I suppose, was some sort of semi-valuable card to the West during the Cold War, those days are over, for both the West and for Israel.

Today Israel is coordinating attacks on Hezbollah with Russia. You DO understand how momentous that is. Not the US, but Russia. Israel is now coordinating attacks on ISIS in Sinai with Egypt now. Not the US. Egypt. An Egypt that the US has also rejected.

As America hollows itself out and morphs from a society that makes and builds things to a society of social scientist protesters proclaiming the end of petrochemicals it's less and less relevant the sweet sounding platitudes it gushes. What's the value of that to Israel? I submit it's not very much. What's the utility to Israel for an America that's entire national movement is directed at abolishing coal and oil and simultaneously focused on little more than renaming all buildings formerly named after old dead white men who had bad things to say about black people 120 years ago? Where is the locus for Israel there? There isn't.

It's time to split up.

Israel and the Decline of American Support Under Obama

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at the Elder of Ziyon and Jews Down Under.}

It needs to be understood that the United States has no intention, whatsoever, of fighting political Islam (or "radical Islam" or "Islamism") and will likely not do so anytime in the near future.

On the contrary, the foremost Islamist force in the world is the country of Iran and the United States has switched sides from opposing Iranian Islamist ideology, and expansionism, to supporting it as an alternative to Pax Americana.  This means that the United States, particularly under the current administration, is morphing into an enemy of the Jewish State of Israel and, thus, into an enemy of the Jewish people.

Current polling demonstrates American hostility toward Israel is growing, particularly among Democrats and "progressives."  In fact, recent polling for the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings demonstrates that a full 49 percent of Democrats believe that Israel has too much influence over American politics.

Unless things change significantly with the new American administration in 2016 - which is unlikely short of a Cruz or Rubio presidential win - we are going to see more of the same hostility toward Israel that Barack Obama massaged and smoothed over for the next Democratic presidency.

Do not be swayed by sweet words from Hillary Clinton.  As an agent of Obama, she defended Hamas against Israeli-Jewish retaliation for the years of bombings against S'derot and Ashkelon.  She enforced the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, despite the fact that they prevented Christian Copts from voting at the point of a rifle.  And she attacked Israel merely for building housing for Jews within the Jewish homeland.

Obama, of course, is not the first American president to be hostile toward either the Jewish people or the Jewish State, but he is the first to combine that hostility with open support for political Islam, an anti-Semitic genocidal political movement.

Everything is in flux at the moment and Angela Merkel, along with the idiots in Sweden and the EU, have turned Europe into a tinderbox.

Given the millions of Arab-Muslims flowing from the Middle East and North Africa into Europe, what we will see is a heavy increase in violent Jihadi activity throughout the continent and the UK - more bombings, stabbings, and murderous rage against the "infidel" - along with a slow, steady decline of the rights of women, Gay people, and the steady decline of what little Jewish population is left.

I would honestly encourage all European Jews, if they can, to move to friendlier locales, preferably in Israel, but for the moment North America and Australia are relatively safe havens, despite San Bernardino.

American "progressives" and Democrats, however, are turning against the Jewish people which accounts for the latest poll revealing that fully 30 percent of Americans support sanctions against Israel and, therefore, support the hostile Arab majority in the Middle East against the besieged Jewish minority in that part of the world.

Just as Obama sent US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to Israel in order to defend Hamas from Israeli retaliation during Operation Cast Lead, so Obama sends current Secretary of State, John Kerry, to harangue Israel about Jews who want to live in Judea and Samaria, the homeland of the Jewish people.

The Obama administration, thus, has learned nothing.

I assumed that a former president of the Harvard Law Review might be open to changing political views given additional information and alternating circumstances over time, but I was wrong.

It was clear as early as 2009 that the Obama administration was, intentionally or not, hell-bent on wrecking whatever potential may have been left in the Oslo "peace process."  By demanding that Jews be allowed to live in certain places, but not others, it forced Palestinian-Arab dictator, Mahmoud Abbas, to agree because he cannot, for his life, be seen as softer on Jews than the American president.  In fact, I wrote about this in a piece published in December of that year entitled, The End of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process.

Thus Obama threw a monkey-wrench into Oslo and then, as is Obama's tendency, blamed Israel for his own mistakes.

Michael L.

This a shot of the Venus Express (VEX) from the European Space Agency which continually orbited that planet, the second from the sun, and monitored its atmosphere between 2006 and 2014.

It was, you should know, Galileo's observations of the phases of Venus in the early part of the seventeenth-century that proved the truthfulness of the heliocrentric model of the solar system or, as they thought at that time, the universe.

As a graduate student I once spent an exceedingly warm summer at the Johnson Space Center, outside of Houston, doing research for NASA's Oral History Project.

Houston, Texas, is not so wonderful in July, but the Johnson Space Center is an amazing place.

I very much wish that Washington, D.C. valued it more.

The Courageous Mr Carr

geoffff


Bob Carr Again.

What An Intellectually Courageous Man 

Big Brave Bob was Premier of NSW for quite a spell and as executive power in Australia vests in the ruling party in the lower house and  Bob was boss of the ruling faction of that party, that made him boss of Sydney as well.

The rest of the state was just icing.

He was kind of the Binyamin Netanyahu of New South Wales politics and Sydney was his Jerusalem. Except Bibi is a brave and honest man. His courage is on the record.  I've never liked the man. Carr I mean.  Bibi is a matter for the Israelis of course and you would hope that a decent respect for the liberal democratic process would also respect that.

Bob Carr on the other hand is a matter for Australians

He was an unelected foreign minister in the dying months of Australia's last Labor government and was most notable for white anting the PM who appointed him and changing Australian foreign policy on Israel where he spent enormous amounts of time, effort and political capital.

Enormous.

Quite disproportionate if you ask me but then again it always is.   

The only way to influence policy in Israel, if that is what he was trying to do, is through the Israeli public and government. Israelis happen to think they have interests and rights in this as well.  You can't be sure about these things but Carr must think that he is making some kind of an effective appeal to Israeli public opinion perhaps through Australian Jews. If he doesn't think that then what does he think he is doing?

Carr, Hawke and Evans must know they have no audience at all in Jerusalem, the seat of Israel's capital. That is because Israel is a liberal secular democracy beholden only to the welfare of her people and not at all to the grisly internal affairs of another out of whack former social democratic party in the West about which no one has any interest at all.

Not even most Australians.

From where they stand Carr, Hawke and Evans carry as much weight in Jerusalem as a possum belch at sunset.  They must know this. They couldn't be that egomaniacal not to. Not even them.  So if they know they are not talking to the Israelis, who do they think they are talking to and what are they trying to say? 

Add Graham Richardson , another old macher with a walker from the NSW right with a focus and concentration disability when it comes to the Middle East, and you could have the fourth wise monkey of the gang. The one who should have kept his hands behind his back for decency's sake.

This from a report by Christian Kerr in the Australian of 4 December 2015.

"Former foreign minister Bob Carr has lashed out at Israel accusing it of fabricating history and bribing Australian politicians .... 

"The one time titan of the Labor right let loose at a dinner in Sydney late last month at an International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People function in a speech that has appeared online, accusing Israel of eliminating the Arab character of Israel.

"Mr Carr praised Greens senator Lee Rhiannon, the leader of the party's so called "watermelon faction" and an arch foe of his old NSW Labor colleagues. "The people of Palestine are seeing street by street the character, the nomenclature, of Jerusalem being changed " ... "The story of Jerusalem is now being fabricated. Judaising and eliminating the Arab character of this great Arab city is a shocking thing to take place".

"Judaising" . He actually used that word. The Jews are "Judaising" Jerusalem. Repeat that and let it sink in.

He said "parliamentarians are being seduced and bribed with paid overseas trips to Israel, describing offers of such study tours as "disgraceful".

Seeing for themselves what is going on is "disgraceful". I don't know who pays for those trips but I sure wish they would seduce and bribe me.

He condemned an ALP federal frontbencher for not being an Israel hater like him and lauded Senator Watermelon Brown for her work on the issues, saying "she's been very strong and very brave on this over many years. " .

Watermelon Brown. Or if you prefer, Senator Rhiannon, is the political heir of Stalinist ideology that was absorbed amoeba -like, into the Greens on dissolution of the Soviet aligned Australian communist party when the USSR fell apart. She was loyal to the end. Even Honeker jumped before her. 

As you would expect, she was up to her elbows in BDS from the start. To give her  credit at least her political pedigree is there to see. An ideology that drips with old style antizionism/ antisemitism with roots in Marx, Trotsky, Lenin and of course Stalin.   

It is astonishing how obsessed the hard left are with Israel and Jews. The obsession anywhere is always astounding.

Someone like Rhiannon would have been completely unelectable anywhere in Australia but for the Greens. She would have to have sailed under her own banners. Instead she changed her name and party.  

There's courage for you. But nothing compared to the courage of the Greens.  It is no wonder the Greens are such a strange and secretive party. Quite sinister in a democracy that respects and expects transparency and free expression.  

It's hard to pinpoint what is most disgusting about this  born again Bill Hartley style ideologue but surely a tipping point must be when they start congratulating themselves on their courage.

Carr claims that a small group of Melbourne Jewish businessmen control Australian foreign policy on the Middle East, infers that if Israel transferred the "illegal" Jewish population from beyond the 1949 armistice line with Jordan, as if it was Poland  1941,   stopped permitting people move to, live in or being born in "illegal" neighbourhoods and towns that all rational parties know and say will always be part of Israel, then there will be peace.

That's brave.

Bob Carr fancies himself as an intellectual so I'm guessing he is congratulating himself and his brave little band on their intellectual courage. Because as sure as the sun rises he can't mean physical courage. Nearly all Australian Jewish schools have hired armed guards to protect the kids and that doesn't happen without the advice of the police and security agencies. Melbourne held out as long as it could.

Taking your kids to schools that need armed guards. That is what I call courage. Carr, Hawke and Evans are irrelevant old men who were never much in the first place and who have chosen to spend a portion of their twilights betraying the principles that sustained them. They did that at the first show of real resistance from the people who hate those principles most of all. They abandoned Israel and the human rights of the Israelis as soon as there was any pain in it.     

You could only call that intellectual courage I suppose.

These guys are swimming in intellectual courage.

Trump Calls for Banning Muslims

Michael L.

The New York Times - blecch - tells us:

Donald J. Trump called on Monday for the United States to bar all Muslims from entering the country until the nation’s leaders can “figure out what is going on” after the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., an extraordinary escalation of rhetoric aimed at voters’ fears about members of the Islamic faith.

Well, there is a very good reason that many Americans are becoming more and more concerned about the behavior of some within the Islamic faith.

{The mass murdering of people with semi-automatic rifle fire in the name of Allah, while crying out Allahu Akbar!, will tend to do that.}

The truth of the matter is that since 9/11 Americans have, within the United States, been exceedingly moderate in their response to the Jihad, but things are heating up and the San Bernardino attack is going to bring out nativist tendencies throughout the US.

In the first time, ever, I recently saw fear in the face of a friend of mine concerning radical Islam because her sister lives within a ten minute drive of the attack site in southern California.

For most Californians, until this moment, Islamic terrorism has been an abstraction and viewed as a result of the history of Western-American colonialism, imperialism, and racism.

Trump, however, is wrong to call on a ban of all Muslims coming into the United States because it is too much of a broad brush.  He is correct to be concerned, and the Democrats are fools not to be, but the ban should be limited to the current rush of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

The EU is selling Europe the rope with which to hang itself, but that does not mean some innocent Muslim family from, say, Indonesia or Europe, should not be allowed entrance to the United States.

I know a thing or two about American History and given late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century disdain for both Catholic and Jewish immigration, there is no possible way that I would support a general ban on Muslim immigration into the US.

However, that does not mean that the Jihad should be disregarded, as is the progressive-left tendency.

Both ISIS and Hamas should be demolished.

The West is at war with political Islam... whether it likes it or not.

The Genocidal 72 Percent

Michael L.

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon, The Jewish Press, Jews Down Under and The Algemeiner.}

This is the contemporary Ku Klux Klan.

As with the Klan they feel it necessary to wear masks.

They are worse than Night Riders because they feel free to carry out their violence in the daytime because they know they have Arab-Palestinian society, as created by Yassir Arafat and the PLO, behind them... as well as the Western-Left.

A recent Watan Research Center poll, conducted between November 14 and the 21st of this year, reveals that 72 percent of Arabs living in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza favor the Stabbing Intifada.

This is to say that 72 percent of Arabs who live within the Land of Israel believe that they have a religious-political imperative to send their kids into the streets with kitchen knives for the Allah-inspired purpose of murdering random Jews.

It does not matter the age of those Jews; a woman in her 80s, a child in her crib, it does not matter.  Nor does it matter the personal beliefs of those Jews.  All that matters is that, if you are to kill them - and you are, young Achmud - that they be Jewish.  Even Palestinian-Arab Jihadis do not necessarily have a particular desire to murder Tibetan-Buddhist care-takers , after all.

{But, who knows, really?}

Still another way of gaining perspective on this 72% figure is to understand that it also means that 72% of Arabs within Israel yearn for the genocide of the Jews.  It can mean nothing else.  If you believe that Allah wants you to send your children into the streets for the purpose of killing Jews then, ipso facto, you favor the genocide of the Jews.

There is no way to escape from that conclusion, now, is there?

Referencing a recent poll of Arabs within Israel, Dalit Halevy, writing in Israel National News, tells us:

A full 72% said they support continuing the "Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Intifada," as it has been termed, until it achieves its "goals," which they were later asked to define.

No less than 44% of the Arab public expressed support for an armed intifada terror war using guns, 18% gave support to stabbing attacks, and 14% supported attacks throwing rocks at Israelis.

The goal of the intifada terror war according to 48% of the Arabs is the "liberation of Palestine," indicating the conquest and occupation of all of Israel.

This is not a border dispute.

The War of the Filthy-Footed

This is a theocratic war waged by a much larger, hostile Arab-Muslim majority in the Middle East against a much smaller besieged filthy-footed Jewish minority endeavoring to survive and thrive.

The only reason that tiny bit of land on the edge of the Mediterranean is important to the Arab world is because Jewish people currently hold sovereignty over our ancestral homeland.  Unfortunately, it is hard-coded into Islam that Muslims have a theological imperative to maintain sovereignty over any bit of land - including Spain - that at any time was taken from the "infidels" by Muhammad's soldiers.

Thus Jewish sovereignty on Jewish land is considered an abomination before the eyes of Allah and an indignity to the Prophet Muhammad... Peace Be Unto Him.

You can be sure, considering Israel's technological and medical contributions to the world community, that if Israel represented a 23rd Arab-Muslim country it would be considered a "light unto the nations."

When Israel was under Ottoman rule, Jerusalem was a backwater.  The al-Aqsa mosque had no gold plating.  The place was essentially a ruin and nobody spoke of it as the third holiest anything to anyone.  The Jews, being indigenous to the region, have lived on that land for something close to four thousand years.

The Jewish people are the closest thing that the Land of Israel has to an indigenous population.  It is true that other peoples have lived on that land prior to the Israelites, but unless there is a wondering band of Jebusites out there someplace then the land from the river to the sea is the land of Jewish sovereignty.

The West

Vic Rosenthal, of Abu Yehuda fame and a columnist at the Elder of Ziyon, has a bold and interesting article entitled, Calling their bluffs.

His argument is that the enemy is attacking the Jews in Israel via a dual strategy of "micro" attacks and "macro" attacks.  The micro attacks represent things like the cute blonde child, who the Elder has dubbed "Shirley Temper" - part of the vaguely annoying Tamimi clan - that they send out to shake her little fist at Jewish soldiers.  

Here is a video from 2012:



As you can see, the Arabic press is there to broadcast any Israeli Jewish push-back as aggression.

The purpose is to induce an IDF response which can then be transmitted around the world via a sympathetic news media in Europe and the United States.  The little girl is not brave because she knows she has nothing to fear.

The purpose of demonizing Israel is to soften it for its eventual dissolution.

If that were to happen the genocide of half the world's Jewish population - amazingly enough about 6 million people (there is that number again) - would die in Holocaust Version II, the Arab-Muslim variety that the Mufti hoped to accomplish with the victory of Nazi Germany over the Allies during World War II.

The macro strategy is to attack Israel in a military fashion with rocket-fire from Gaza in order to intimidate the southern Israeli population, particularly the towns of S'derot and Ashkelon, and then appeal to the world community for mercy from Israeli aggression when the Jews - after years of such attacks - finally respond.

It is pathetic, but effective, given western multiculturalism and failure of self-esteem.

A Steady Diet of Hate

Michael L.

The Elder has a piece from last Wednesday, November 25, entitled, The death cult.

It is the story of two Arab-Palestinian children, one aged 11 and one aged 14, who recently set forth to murder Jews.

The Times of Israel tells us:

In their interrogation, the two children said they carried out the attack as an act of revenge, without planning in advance and with no encouragement from any adults.

“We travelled from Shuafat to Damascus Gate in order to stab a soldier but did not do it because the soldiers were in groups and we didn’t find one standing alone,” recalled the 11-year-old. “Then he told me ‘let’s do an attack together to revenge the death of Muhammad Ali.’ He opened his bag and showed me the knife. At Damascus Gate I bought a pair of scissors and then we boarded the light rail and looked for Jews to stab.” (Emphasis added.)

Looked for Jews to stab.

One thing that needs to be understood is that none of this is new.

Arabs have encouraged their children to harm Jews, or stab Jews, or stone Jews, for many centuries since the time of Muhammad.

In Jews and Arabs: A Concise History of Their Social and Cultural Relations, S.D. Goitein recalls that:

In former times--and in remote places even today--it was common for Muslim schoolboys to stone Jews. When the Turks conquered Yemen in 1872, an envoy was sent from the Chief Rabbi of Istanbul to inquire what grievance the Yemenite Jews had against their neighbors. It is indicative that the first thing of which they complained was this molestation by the schoolboys. But when the Turkish Governor asked an assembly of notables to stop this nuisance,there arose an old doctor of Muslim law and explained that this stone-throwing at Jews was an age-old custom (in Arabic 'Ada) and therefore it was unlawful to forbid it.

Unlawful, under al-Sharia, to forbid it.

People need to understand that Arab violence against Jews is not because Jews are mean to Arabs.

The fact of the matter is that if Israel was a 23rd Arab-Muslim country it would be regarded as the most enlightened country in that part of the world; the freest country and the country with most civil liberties for its citizenry, the only country hospitable to the civil liberties of Gay people and of women and of all people, regardless of religion.

It is strictly because it is the lone, sole Jewish state that it is reviled by the surrounding Arabs and its hostile European interlocutors.

And it should not be terribly controversial to say that the reason the nearly 400 million Arabs surrounding the Jews are largely impoverished is due to the heavy hand of Islam because Islam discourages freedom of thought.

The reason that Arab children are fed "a steady diet of hate" is for religious reasons.  The Quran specifically directs hatred toward the unbeliever in a manner that is not found in either the Bible or the New Testament.

There is much blood in the Bible, but it is not prescriptive.  The Bible is, in a sense, an initial attempt at history... prior to Thucydides.

But nowhere in either book do we read anything like this, found in the Quran:

O you who believe!  Fight the Unbelievers who are around you, and let them find firmness in you: and know that Allah is with those who fear him.

The idea of fearing G-d is intrinsic to all three faiths of the Levant, but it is only within Islam that fear of G-d is translated into the necessity for submission of the infidel.  

Christianity is about peace.  Whatever anyone might say about the behavior of Christians over the centuries, there is no question that Jesus is a figure of peace.

Judaism is about law.  It is about following the precepts of G-d.  It is about justice.

Islam is about submission.

It is the very meaning of the word.

The Jewbadours - Peg

Doodad

 Just heard about these guys!

I don't Always Drink Beer But When I Do.....

Doodad

  A possible explanation for her recent weird choices.

We must change the narrative. What are we going to do in order to do so?

Sar Shalom

This past week, Malanie Phillips wrote an article on the need to change the narrative surrounding the conflict over Israel (h/t Elder). Those who have followed my writings for some time should not be surprised that I find Phillips to be absolutely correct. The issue is, what should be done in order to address the narrative.

The first step in addressing the narrative is to identify it. To paraphrase Phillips, the root of the western narrative

is that the "Palestinian people" are the original inhabitants of the land. Whatever justification Europe's behavior towards its Jews, most notably during the Holocaust, created, the Zionists displaced those original inhabitants in creating their state. As such, their rights are limited to a portion of the land and the "Palestinians" are merely "resisting" to reclaim what the Zionists took beyond their entitlement.

Further statements are derivatives of this root narrative. Examples include John Kerry saying

There’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years. Now you have this violence because there’s a frustration that is growing.

and the equation of the deaths of Palestinian terrorists killed in the act of perpetrating terror with those of their victims.

To analogize, the root narrative is like rotting vegetables, the derivative narratives are like vermin, and activities like BDS are like the diseases that the vermin carry. No matter how often you call the exterminator, if rotting vegetables are strewn about, the vermin will come back and come back and spread whatever diseases they carry. Similarly, if the Jews did steal the land from the native Palestinians, then it is truthy that Israel is gobbling up land for settlements. And if Israel is gobbling up land and no appeals to moral conscience are inducing a change, then BDS may be necessary to push Israel's hand. However much we knock down the BDS efforts, if it is truthy that Israel is gobbling up land, the BDSholes will find fertile ground with the public and as long as the public believes that Jews are not indigenous to the southwest Levant while the Palestinians are, Israel's gobbling up land will be truthy.

One observation about supplanting the current western narrative is that doing so will require repeated airing of a counter-narrative. One means of doing so would be for someone who is sympathetic to Israel and has a position in the major media to write regularly about the history of the Jews of Palestine. An alternative approach would be for a public official to push information that challenges this narrative, which the media would be forced to cover. As of now, this is unlikely because no politician faces any pressure to do so. This is because currently the pro-Israel community's definition of a friend of Israel is one who is at least non-belligerent about the "settlements," a measure by which Obama is notably poor, or who supports providing arms to Israel, by which Obama is imperfect but reasonably good. Those two objectives are altogether appropriate objectives, focusing on them ignores what drives the constant challenges on those fronts. The message we have to tell our lobbyists who press our case to the politicians and decide whom to support is "It's the narrative stupid!"

If we were to evaluate politicians based on their contributions to the narrative, the question becomes what contribution we should demand from those wishing to be viewed as friends of Israel. There are two general categories of what we should wish to see promoted. One is the general history of the Jews of the southwest Levant. Critical topics would be Jewish history of the region in all major time periods and connections maintained between the diaspora and the Land of Israel. A supplement to this would be that the Arabs have no record of any kind showing any sort of connection to the southwest Levant. The second is the social order between Jews and Muslims in 19th century Palestine. These two categories provide a one-two punch against the prevailing western narrative. The former demonstrates that long before anyone migrated from Arabia to the southwest Levant, Jews were building there culture there and that they never fully vacated the region. The latter sets up a counterclaim regarding the reasons for Palestinian "resistance." Our goal should be that instead of seeing such "resistance" being based on "statelessness," that it is based on irredentism for the 19th century social order. In order to make that claim, it is necessary to describe what the Palestinians are irredentist for. The history of the 19th century provides that.

Brief Note: The NATO-Russia Proxy Fight in Syria

Michael L.

Whatever else the chaos is in Syria, it is also a proxy fight between NATO and Russia over the Assad regime.

This situation is broadly reflective of the Cold War alliances and the proxy wars (Korea, Vietnam) between the United States and the Soviet Union that took place during the mid-late twentieth-century.  

This is an important context to put the current Russia-Turkey dispute within, if you wish to understand it.

Turkey is a member of NATO as, of course, is the United States.  Russia is not.  Russia is endeavoring to prop up Syria's Assad, whereas the US and NATO are opposed to that regime.  In the mean time, everyone agrees that the heinous Islamic State needs to go away, but nobody wants to put boots on the ground and Russia is more interested in defending its ally then going after ISIS.  This means that Syria is a land wherein numerous sovereign countries exercise their rights to bomb whatever the hell they want.

Since Putin backs Assad this means, naturally, that Russia bombs the rebels.

But NATO and the US back the rebels and this is why, essentially, we are looking at a proxy fight between NATO and Russia in Syria.  It should also be noted that the anti-Assad rebels are also mainly, if not entirely, Jihadis, thus US foreign policy in the region remains consistent with Obama's egregious pro-Islamist tendencies.

Complicating matters is the fact that Syria and Turkey have a long-standing border dispute in the region wherein Turkey took down that Russian warplane last Tuesday.  As far as Russia was concerned, Syria being its ally, they were still within Syrian airspace.

Turkey, obviously, disagreed.

Now we are seeing Putin place a raft of economic sanctions on Turkey.

Reuters tells us:

The decree, which entered into force immediately, said charter flights from Russia to Turkey would be banned, that tour firms would be told not to sell any holidays there, and that unspecified Turkish imports would be outlawed, and Turkish firms and nationals have their economic activities halted or curbed.

"The circumstances are unprecedented. The gauntlet thrown down to Russia is unprecedented. So naturally the reaction is in line with this threat," Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, said hours before the decree was published.

A senior Turkish official told Reuters the sanctions would only worsen the standoff between Moscow and Ankara. 

So, boys and girls, from an international crisis perspective, Europe is beginning to contend with the Middle East for the Grand Prize.

When you add the NATO - Russia fight in Syria to the amazingly ill-considered open-door policies of Germany, Sweden, and the EU to the immigration crisis, you get the sense that Europe is beginning to swing around like a yo-yo in the hands of an Arabic six year old.