THINK-ISRAEL features essays and commentaries that provide context for current events in Israel. The war Islam is waging against Israel and the West is top priority. We report on global anti-Semitism, Islamism and creeping Sharia.We aim to make sense of what's going on.
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What we are talking about in the September-October 2012 Issue
Smudge-out (noun, verb)
Techniques used to spin an event; i.e., to apply a slant or particular emphasis to information, with intent to deceive or minimize the import of the event. Techniques used in damage control.
Techniques include:
A. Was it a riot due to Muslim anger at a movie called the Innocence of Muslims?
This is actually two questions.
Why is the Obama Administration directly implicated? The riot story was certainly not concocted by the terrorists. The Administration started calling it a riot almost immediately. The Administrations knew two hours into the attack that it was unmistakeably a terrorist raid, yet for almost two weeks, they continued to mislead the public by calling it a spontaneous riot.
Why is the Obama Administration directly implicated? Other such weapons from Gaddafi's warehouses have shown up in Sinai, Mali and Syria. It suggests that after the massacre the Administration has tried to prevent it from becoming more widely known that the U.S. is supplying weaponry to the rebel groups fighting Syrian President Assad. Seasoned Al-Qaeda members are a major rebel asset. The Administration can not be seen to be associated with al-Qaeda.
B. Did officials in the Obama administration prevent people going to aid fellow Americans in danger?
This also breaks into two separate issues.
Why is the Obama Administration directly implicated. We know Ambassador Stevens and others had warned that security arrangements in Libya were inadequate. They were allowed to deteriorate further. We know the White House knew within an hour that the worst case scenario had come about and American officials were in danger and desperately needed help. No one other than a very high echelon official could have sent help or withheld help. We know none was sent, despite pleas from the besieged Americans. We know trained fighters were on the ready, waiting for the President to push the GO button. He went to bed, instead. By doing nothing, he denied help to a group of Americans, a group that included an American Ambassador.
Unlike Watergate, this isn't a question of what did the President know and when did he know it. Ordinary protocols and procedures would ensure that the President knew within the hour that the Americans were under siege and within two hours that terrorists had attacked with sophisticated weaponry. The questions are: Who let the massacre run its course? And why?
Because of the nature of the events, the cast of possible culprits is small: the only ones with the authority to order the appropriate personnel either to stand-down or to set in motion the actions required to send help are Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Director of the CIA David Petraeus, and the White House, primarily President Barack Obama and possibly his Grey Eminence, Valerie Jarrett. For some actions, only the President could initiate them.
The miracle of the century is that the Obama Administration has managed by smudging the details, distracting the public and blurring the issue to keep the story of the century out of public's consciousness. A personal anecdote: after voting, I went over to the table where the Democratic and Republican representatives were handing out literature. I asked, "People comment about Benghazi?" The Republican rep mumbled she's heard something about it. The Democratic party rep said in a puzzled manner, "Ben who?" This article reviews some of the information we have available a month after the Benghazi massacre.
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Clare Lopez writes of what is well-known to the counter terrorist community: the Obama Administration has been furtively supplying the Syrian rebels with armaments coming from Gadhafi's Libyan store houses. Unfortunately for us, the romanticized rebels include a sizable group of al-Qaeda fighters and are backed by the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia, who are intent on creating sharia-based governments throughout the Middle East.
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In what appears to be a repeat of our alliances in taking down Colonel Muammar Gadhafi in Libya, the Obama Administration, openly siding with the Syrian rebels, is also supplying them with weaponry. It is an open secret that seasoned Al-Qaeda fighters are among the star troops of the "rebellion" against Bashar Assad. In this article, Aaron Klein writes about American recruitment of Jihadists to fight Assad. Meantime, while we act to topple nasty dictators, we ignore that Iran continues to develop nuclear weaponry, which will trump all our good works in making Syria safe for a regressive fundamentalist government.
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The reader who sent us this article wrote this about
it: "This is the first explanation I've seen that really fits all the details.
It makes no sense that the administration would not jump to the rescue in
case of a mob action OR EVEN a terrorist attack. What's to lose? It would
have been killing Bin Laden all over again. "Yeah there were some remnants
of al Qaeda but we dealt with them!"
However if the administration recognized that this attack was:
(1.) Of unknown size and composition, probably (or known to be) larger than it
appeared and including anti-aircraft weapons; and,
(2.) A very long thread pulled out of the sweater of their illegal (because
not approved by Congressional oversight committees) covert operation.
And then doing nothing regardless of consequences on the ground AND
displaying total disarray afterward, make perfect sense.
Hillary's having taken the blame for the poor 'consulate' (it was actually a
CIA facility) security is just falling on her own sword to protect the boss.
"Talk about a foreign policy reset! Wandering around the world
destabilizing governments we don't like for one reason or another AND
messing with Russia's national interests is an indescribably bad idea, close
to guaranteed to come back at us in U.S. misery within a few years. I
don't think Doug Hagmann's closing statement is too strong.
At a deeper (yes, deeper than WW III!) level what we see is our president's
red line for his policy actions: 'Whatever I think I can get away with.'
If he should be reelected -- you can still find thoughtful opinions going
both ways -- then he will be impeached. Possibly immediately as a result
of this catastrophic scandal, although much will depend on whether the media
continue to bury it. But if not immediately, then later on, probably
following some domestic calamity when he goes far enough to scare courage
into even Congress."
Andrew Bostom writes about Ansar al-Sharia, the terrorist gang that stormed the American compound in Benghazi and killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. He points out that the group is one of many groups -- the Saudis, the Muslim Brotherhood, the many fundamentalists engaged in terror -- that are working for a Salafist takeover of all the countries in the Middle East. What is puzzling is why -- as in Egypt and Libya -- are we helping to create yet another regime fully devoted to brutal and totalitarian pre-medieval Sharia law? It may be different than a sort-of secular dictator, but it aims at re-establishing a Caliphate, not a democracy.
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As Raymond Ibrahim pointed out months ago, "Egypt's longtime banned Muslim Brotherhood — the parent organization of nearly every subsequent Islamist movement, including al-Qaeda — has just won the nation's presidency, in the name of its candidate, Muhammad Morsi. That apathy reigns in the international community, when once such news would have been deemed devastating, is due to the successful efforts of Muslim apologists and subversive agents in the West who portray the Brotherhood as "moderate Islamists" — irrespective that such a formulation is oxymoronic, since to be 'Islamist,' to be a supporter of draconian Sharia, is by definition to be immoderate. Obama administration officials naturally took it a step further, portraying the Brotherhood as 'largely secular' and 'pluralistic.'"
The Brotherhood in the person of Muhammad Morsi has won the presidency of Egypt and much of its parliamentary seats while neutering the military leadership -- it still has a cut of the spoils but is without the power to set policy for the country. They snatched some of the classiest weaponry from Libya and if the terror fiefdoms ever coalesce in that under-structured place, they'll probably be in charge. With the active cooperation of Prez Obama, they will take over Syria when Bashar Assad calls it quits, and they have their eye on Jordan. True, there are some lumps in the custard -- the Saudis are for the same objectives as the MB and work with them, but aren't fond of the MB; also, some of the terror fiefdoms in Libya aren't keen about relinquishing power to the MB. But, tut, tut. The MB and their buddy Obama are moving right along. The Brotherhood is beginning to show that its relationship to Obama is like that of its kinship to the Saudis: they work together, but the MB has more push, more organization, more planning ability. They seriously want sharia law, a Caliphate, and the Blind Sheikh responsible for the first attack on the Trade Center released. And it's a 24/7 mission. No golf games for them.
The media may echo Obama's claim that the MB are friendly secular sheep; but perhaps even Obama should be wary of the MB's wolfish teeth and claws. Morsi the so-called moderate has made it an early task to subjugate the Christian Copts even more than they are now. He dreams of forcibly converting them all to the religion of peace: Islam. It's not an empty threat, considering that many of the mainstream Western churches are too busy castigating Israel for not being subservient to the local Palestinian Arabs to worry about the fate of Christians in the Middle East. Nor does the MB ambitions stop at Egypt's borders. As Mudar Zahran noted in a Gatestone Institute article in October 2012, "The Muslim Brotherhood has proven itself a strategically patient radical organization that thinks long-term. It has been trying to take control of Egypt since 1928. Now that it does control Egypt, other countries, such as the UAE and Jordan, may already be on its list." Incidently, an excellent video on the history of the MB is available on the FSM website.
Return to ArchiveWe begin this section with what the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) sees as its mission in its own words. Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik cite some pertinent comments made by Mustafa Mashhur, who lead the Egyptian MB from 1996 to 2002. They are consistent with what the MB has been saying since its creation in 1928. Can anything be further from the misleading nonsense spouted by the Obama administration and the uncritical media, which insist the MB is secular, moderate and a swell bunch of guys?
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Matthew Hausman goes beyond the superficiality of the claim that Egypt is now a democracy because people used the ballot box and examines the true nature of the new government in Egypt. In doing so, he makes clear the contrast between the underlying theocracy in Egypt and the republican form of democracy we enjoy in the USA. He spells out the difference between the Muslim desire for totalitarian sharia law to encase people and their institutions and the American desire for freedom of action and self-determination for the individual.
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Ryan Mauro writes that the United Arab Emirate (UAE) recognizes the threat the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) can be to the Gulf states and is proposing a coalition against both the MB, which is a Sunni product, and the Shi'ite Mullahs of Iran. Even Saudi Arabia -- which works with the MB to destroy the Syrian regime -- sees the MB as the root cause of unrest and turbulence in the region. Mauro writes that the USA is wrongheaded to support the MB when it should be working with Arab governments to counter MB ideology
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Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of al-Qaeda, was in his younger days a member of the Muslim Brotherhood,(MB) leaving it for a possibly more extremist group, but always determined to carry out the mission of the founder of MB to recreate the Caliphate and revive the practice of every minutia of sharia law. On the Arabian Pennisula, Ansar al Sharia (AAS), is the organizational name shared by multiple, more-or-less autonomous groups in Tunisia, Libya and Yemen. It is variously described as a renamed al-Qaeda or as an affiliate of al-Qaeda. One such group committed the Benghazi massacre. As Bruce Riedel points out, Zawahiri has called for al-Qaeda members to go fight the Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime, while urging Sunnis to rely only on al-Qaeda. For an organization the Obama administration reassured us was withering away, it seems remarkably energetic.
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Now that the Muslim Brotherhood(MB) has taken over the Egyptian government, Yaakov Lappin observes that the next stage is to complete the "Islamization of the Egyptian state and society, before they can turn their sights on their final goal, the creation of a pan-Islamic super-state that will encompass the region, and then wage war on Israel." This has been made clear by several prominent clerics. Sheikh Mohammed Badie, head of the MB, who has called for a "jihad for the recovery of Jerusalem."
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Lee Smith points out that were Jordon's King Abdullah II's regime to fall, Israel "would lose its remaining strategic partner in the region—having already lost Turkey and Egypt—and face a possible nightmare on its longest border." Abdullah's position is affected by what happens in Syria. "A Muslim Brotherhood victory in Syria could put wind in the sails of Jordan's own Brotherhood party, the Islamic Action Front, and perhaps inspire them to add another Arab state, along with Tunisia and Egypt, to their collection."
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The Project is a Muslim Brotherhood (MB) plan to infiltrate and defeat the U.S., using a multitude of flexible methods, all coming under the rubric of stealth jihad. It's been known by the Western intelligence communities since the plan was discovered in 2001 accidentally during a raid on Youssef Nada, director of the Al-Taqwa Bank of Lugano, a member and a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood for more than 50 years. but it has never been publicized by the main stream media. (See for example, two articles detailing their methodology and goals by Patrick Poole: from 2006 here and from 2007 here. In this essay Kerry Patton discusses how Glenn Beck is alerting the public with two shows devoted to The Project. (More details are available in the Appendices to his article.) Patton's main point is that it is true that Shi'ite Iran is evil, but that doesn't make the Sunni MB or the Saudis less of an enemy to us.
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Daniel Greenfield in the persona of Tim Paulin writes as if he were channeling the British poet Tom Neilson Paulin, a doting Palophile, who identifies so completely with the Arab blood lust culture that he has no problem interpreting barbaric behavior as moral and just. Even fun. As a reader, Shiva, notes, "the point is skillfully made: that this is where the current Leftist mindset inexorably and logically leads, to a 21st century re-incarnation of Jew hatred and Nazism." Or, as Tom Paulin said to Al-Ahram Weekly, "I never believed that Israel had the right to exist at all."
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Bosch Fawstin has described himself as a recovering Muslim. Buy or download his "Faces of Palestine" (see below) and share his insights about the Palestinian Arabs. (For an excellent summary of the history, culture and personalities of the Arabs that says in words what Fawstin's drawings say in images, read "Arabism=racism!" here.)
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After 9/11, as Daniel Greenfield points out, "[j]ust when Americans had good reason to fear Islam, they were cautioned that such fears were symptomatic of an irrational and bigoted Islamophobia..." The number of Muslim-linked phobias has grown. We now have khwanophobia (the fear and or hatred of the Muslim Brotherhood), Shi'itophobia and Salafi-phobia, to name but a few. Curiously, no one appears to have been diagnosed with a phobia of non-violent Muslim sects, only "of violent Muslim groups—almost as if there is nothing irrational about those phobias at all."
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Amil Imani points out that "Islam is a brutal, tribal warrior cult that glorifies jihad and martyrdom." It can't be mellowed into civilized behavior because its culture was molded by its holy books and these are regarded as immutable. Unfortunately, "Islam is a powerful magnet for the masses who are unable to deal with the uncertainties of life and death on their own. It is from this population, many already thoroughly indoctrinated from birth that the majority of die-hard jihadists emerge."
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It is often argued that Arab hostility to Jews is a modern phenomenon, brought about by the creation of a Jewish state on land the Arabs regard as theirs. Until recently, it is claimed, Jews and Arabs lived harmoniously. Alex Rose informs us this is mythology not history. In point of fact, Jew-hatred has been an integral part of Islam since its inception and it has continued unabated for fourteen hundred years. As Rose writes, "From the days of Mohammed, non-Muslims under Muslim rule were subject to taxation, humiliation, oppression, exile, and murder."
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Diana West speaks bluntly of what our soldiers are subjected to in Afghanistan, when interacting with their Afghan counterparts. There are actual assaults by our supposed allies. There is the pressure by the American leadership that they behave as dhimmis in this Muslim culture, keeping a low profile and being very respectful. The worst is their exposure to a culture that is stomach-turning, a culture that abuses women, rapes children and tortures animals.
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"Do the Jewish state and the Territories belong to the Jews? The question was recently brought into prominence by a report issued by a committee of Israeli legal experts, chaired by Supreme Court Justice Edmund Levy. The jurists focused narrowly upon the legality of Jewish settlements in Samaria and Judea -- affirming that towns and villages in Samaria and Judea are indeed legal, thus undermining the demonization of "settlements" by those who fear that Jews living in the "West Bank" (as they ahistorically call it) will make it harder to give away Jewish land to the Arabs (See the article by Richard Cravetts below). In place of the capricious and often malicious treatment of Jewish citizens living in the towns and villages of Samaria and Judea, it recommends easing regulations, halting scheduled demolitions and planning building as the population grows.
Just as when Newt Gingrich bluntly said that there was no Palestinian people and there had never been a Palestinian state, many are opposed to speaking openly about Israel's entitlement to her land, fearing it will jeopardize the defunct "peace process." Some opponents of the Levy Report, such as David Kretzmer in the Jerusalem Report of July 24, 2012, have claimed Israel was ignoring "international consensus and the considered view of almost all experts in international law." Berman would appear to be advocating that the law be decided by majority vote rather than from legal principles (See Wallace Brand's article on Berman's mistaken view). He may be right that, thanks to the vast amount of propaganda asserting the land belongs to the Arabs, many lawyers, if not the law, are on the side of the Arabs. Nevertheless, over the years, major knowledgeable experts in international law have asserted what the Levy Report states: Jewish settlements are legal (see Ted Belman's article below).
To me, Kretzmer's most ludicrous notion is that Modern Israel is somehow a different entity than the one established on the basis of San Remo and the Balfour Declaration. This ignores the irrevocable trust whereby the League of Nations (LON) gave the land to the Jews for establishing a Jewish State -- the trust was transferred to the United Nations when it came into being (See Shifftan's and Brand's articles below). I find the notion that the action of the LON is no longer applicable strange. If it were true, what happens to the legality of the large number of Arab countries -- including Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Syria -- carved out of the defunct Ottoman Empire, which came into being by the same LON's authority? Scraping the barrel's moldy bottom, Kretzmer further insists that the intent was for the Jews to establish a homeland [Heimstätter was the term used by Max Nordau as a less of a in-your-face substitute for state] in Palestine, rather than the establishment of Palestine as the home of the Jewish people." Would he argue that the rights the Balfour Declaration granted to existing non-Jewish communities (civil and religious but not political) were to be applied IN some parts of Palestine, but not others?
Some like Jonathan Tobin of Commentary Magazine have taken the centrist position, not disapproving the judicial decision but not abandoning the current way of pursuing peace: "How can Israel hope to bargain for such an outcome [a peace deal] if it is unwilling to state that Jews have every right to live in these towns and villages as well as in Jerusalem?"
It is too soon to know whether the media belief that nothing will suit but that tiny Israel must chop off more of its small space will continue to dominate international thinking and control the actions of the Israeli Government. Here, the general population has been ahead of the officials. It has long since decided the peace process is dead and they might as well hold onto their land.
As more Israelis understand the government has been negligent in not asserting their legitimate rights, perhaps the government will begin to deal with the more important issue: whether peace is more likely to be gained: by giving up Biblical Israel, relocating its Jewish inhabitants -- Abbas and other Palestinian Arab leaders insist that any state they control will not have a single Jew living in it -- and encouraging the growth of the Arab population in Israel and the Territories OR by formally annexing the Territories and relocating the local Arabs to the neighboring Arab countries. Attention should be directed at the obvious: Israelis are not occupying Israel and the Territories, except in the sense that they live there. They live there legally and morally, by an irrevocable trust guaranteed by international law; by historic association; by Biblical promise; by unbroken devotion to the homeland for thousands of years; by redemption and revival of a land that lay fallow for hundreds of years; by the creation of a thriving State, whose citizens are in ferment, creating innovations in agriculture, industry, science and medicine that benefit everyone in the world and by modern-day conquest, having defeated Arab invaders several times over. The Israeli government suppressing the truth and sacrificing its own people to benefit the Palestinian Arabs will never win accolades from the media; it will just encourage the Jew-haters.
The first articles below are mainly about the legal principles, justifications and ramifications. The later ones discuss other aspects: the sustained anti-Israel propaganda that this report finally negates, and the importance of Israel finally speaking out about what it has known since it acquired permanent title to the land almost a hundred years ago.
Over the years, Think-Israel has examined various aspects of of Israel's legitimate ownership of Israel and the Territories. Use the Google box at the top of the home page for articles by Howard Grief, Yoram Shifftan, Wallace Brand, Ted Belman, Martin Sherman, Eli Hertz and terms such as legal, mandate, Palestine and San Remo.
Return to ArchiveThe Elder of Ziyon website posted an English translation of the legal arguments in the Levy Report. Actually, they posted one by Joel, a second by Hadar of CIFWatch that "tidied up" the first and added footnotes and paragraph numbers and a third done by UNISPAL (http://unispal.un.org). This below is the second one posted. All are available at http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/07/english-translation-of-legal-arguments.html. Previously only the conclusions and recommendations were available in translation.
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Wallace Brand writes that the solution to the Arab-Israeli Conflict is usually presented as either a single bi-national state with an Arab majority OR two states, with the Arab state cutting Israel or residing in its heartland. He reminds us there is a third way that is based on rights to the territory granted at San Remo almost a hundred years ago: a single Jewish state. In this article, he discusses the background, details and implications of the momentous San Remo decision.
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This article by Yoram Shifftan was initially published in the September-October 2004 issue of Think-Israel as a companion piece to his article "Is Israel's Legal System Acting Illegally?" ( http://www.think-israel.org/archives/1205issue/201205sepoct.htmlshifftan.legalsystem.html). It emphasizes the lack of awareness of the legal foundation of the irrevocable right of the Jews to what was Mandated Palestine.
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In this essay Wallace Brand focuses on the principle that law is by judicial process, not by concensus. He discusses the circular argument accepted by many that goes like this: most lawyers disagree with the Levy Report, therefore those wishing to explain why the Levy report is accurate and the opposition has got it wrong should be kept from confusing the public. The critical argument is that the Levy Report is not a new idea thought up by Israel right wingers but a circumspect restatement of what was decided a century ago on how to prepare for a Jewish State. In point of fact, by the time the League of Nations issued the Mandates for Jewish and Arab states, the British had lopped off some 78% of the land intended for an eventual Jewish state and given it over to the Hashemites to administer — when no one objected formally, this eventually became transJordan and then Jordan.
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Avi Bell writes that the Levy Commission "is on solid ground in observing that neither Jordan nor any other foreign state had territorial sovereignty over the 'West Bank' in 1967 and that the territory cannot therefore be 'foreign' for purposes of the law of belligerent occupation. Indeed, had the Levy Commission chosen to so argue, it could have argued cogently that Israel itself was already the lawful sovereign over the 'West Bank' in 1967." He expects that the Report will open up discussion of "the legitimacy of Israel’s position under international law after many years in which Israel has been silent about its legal rights."
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Ted Belman presents the opinions of some eminent jurists that confirm one consequence that Judea and Samaria were given as an irrevocable trust to the Jewish people; namely, that they can build housing and businesses, and public and private institutions upon their land. Those that would help the Arabs try to steal the land are fond of citing the Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC) to claim that Jewish settlements are illegal, but in point of fact, the FGC doesn't apply.
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Richard Cravetts spells out some of the collateral damage the Levy Report does. It makes clear that the world has been fed a fanciful tale by the Arabs. It calls an intellectual halt to the fallacious anti-Israel propaganda promulgated by hostile Western politicians, diplomats and media for whom "the perennial victim status of the long-suffering Palestinians trumps any sovereign rights of Israel regarding its borders, security, and even its survival in a sea of jihadist foes who yearn for its destruction." Thus, Samaria and Judea (aka the West Bank), Gaza and the eastern part of Jerusalem have been untruthfully called "Arab" land and Israel the "occupier" oppressing the po' Palestinians, who no way to fight for their rights except with rocks, knives and explosives against the enemy, in the person of Jewish babies asleep in their cribs, Jewish toddlers in their beds and Jewish children at school. I hope it doesn't take as long for Western leaders to accept the truth of the Levy report as it has taken for the Vatican to admit officially that the earth revolves the sun -- it finally conceded this in 1992, 359 years after Galileo was condemned for speaking the truth.
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Moshe Dann notes that the Levy Report is Israel's "first authoritative and official opinion on Israel's legal right to Judea and Samaria." This is a fact. What is amazing about it is that Israel's legal right to the Territories was established irrevocably well before there was a Jewish State, yet successive governments, anxious for peace with flaky Arab neighbors, never rebutted the myth that Israel was occupying Arab land. As Dann points out, "Whether or not its recommendations are accepted and implemented, the report is a turning point in how Israel and hopefully the international community understand the critical question: whose land?"
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This set of articles examines some examples of extreme pro-Jihad media propaganda. While pretending to be impartial, 60-Minutes did an amateurishly one-sided hatchet job on Israel. Their theme was: Christians are leaving the West Bank. It must be Israel's fault. More generally, Cultural Jihadists aren't just verbally protesting messages they consider anti-Islam, they are vandalizing ads, making ad writers very uneasy, especially when, as the last article in the set shows, Islamists don't just talk, they vilify, demonize, destroy and murder what they don't like. And they get away with it. Isn't it about time we countered jihad propaganda more strenuously by attacking political Islam rather than responding?
Return to Archive60 Minutes staff members have made a career of taking nasty jabs at Israel. Not only are these assertions nasty, they range from misrepresentation to outright lies. Their recent report on Christian life in Israel "was sufficiently twisted to promote the Palestinian narrative." They selected Christian dhimmis who talked about Christianity being a Palestinian export! This blithely ignores that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea. There never was a Palestinian State. Bob Simon spoke mournfully of the problems of Christians living in the Holy Land, but didn't mention he was talking about Arab-Christians living miserable lives under Muslim Arab rule. In actuality, Christians are wisely fleeing fundamentalist Arab/Muslim countries, while the Christian population in Israel is increasing. Tabitha Korol feels "60 Minutes should apologize and correct its defamation of Israel while exposing the true plight of Christians in the Islamic world." Rots of ruck.
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As Edward Cline writes, "the de facto imposition of Sharia law on Western non-Muslims is insidiously accumulative." In their unswerving determination to destroy any public message they regard as anti-Islam, cultural Jihadists have singled out the lewd ad –– and that can be anything that shows more female skin than what is visible wearing an ankle-length sack over the head. Edward Cline relates their campaign to "the near psychotic or pathological mindset about women that Islam inculcates in Muslim men." Their religion doesn't encourage respect for women. They grow up believing that women are chattel that lose their value if they lose their chastity. And an immodest woman is fair game for rape and torture –– by them. The connection between the cage-like restrictions on a woman's freedom, honor killings and the permitted raping of any "immoral" woman isn't a coincidence. We might ignore this and mumble multiculturalism were this restricted to their own countries, but unfortunately, they insist their host cultures behave according to their ideas. Or suffer brutal and barbaric punishment.
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Vincent Gioia writes about how Islamists excel in "the art of intimidation - using freedom in western civilization as a weapon in the battle to rule the world." They are helped by the inability of Westerners to believe people can behave so badly, that in our modern world, some people will do anything to "replace all other religions and governments with Islam and Sharia law." Despite all contrary information, "the news media ... is filled with misinformation about Islam. Despite untold acts of atrocities by Muslims, Islam is still regarded in many circles as "a religion of Peace..." Despite the fact that "[i]In Islamic countries the non-Muslims are treated like second or fifth class people and their populations are decreasing enormously." Despite the fact that high-profile refugees from jihad must have police protection from Muslims who openly and without penalty state they are going to kill the apostates. Vincent Gioa says "we need to engage in the effort [to inform the public] not only through films and videos; we must address the financial culture and reveal the truth about Sharia banking and finance. We must also prepare propaganda [if you can call truth propaganda] that is directed towards the blue collar workers." He suggests such topics that might break through the thick layer of media support that shields the public from hearing about what Islam's stealth Jihad campaign is doing to our country. Above all, as Gioia wisely says, "We must become bigot-proof because any challenge will invite accusations of racism." Why should we inflict the pain of action on ourselves? As Gioia says, "It is simple; we either fight or lose our civilization." And dominance by Islam isn't happiness-making.
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Paul Harris posted these photographs taken by Hugo Jaeger, the German photographer who was Hitler's personal photographer. They provide us with images hinting at what life was like in Poland for the Jews in 1939-1940 after the German invasion and before the mass extermination of the Jews got underway. They were taken in Kutno, Poland.
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Annette Keen was born in a Displaced Persons Camp just after World War 2. Her family moved to the USA, where her father, a trained cantor, together with other Holocaust survivors, became farmers. She writes about Yom Kippur 1952, walking with her father silently along the muddy road to the Synagogue the Survivors had built. When they arrived and he had donned his ceremonial robe, her father shared with her some of the agony he felt on Yom Kippur 1939 when, at his father's insistence, he reluctantly fled the advancing Germans, abandoning his own father, who stayed and chanted Kol Nidre. In a few sentences, she makes the incident a parable of the Jew's relationship to HaShem.
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