RUTHFULLY YOURS

On June 23 the British people will be going to the polls to choose whether they want to continue with the present system whereby 60% of British laws are made in Brussels and foreign judges decide whether those laws are legitimate or not, or whether we want to strike out for independence and the right to make all of our own laws and have our own British judges decide upon them.

It’s about whether we can recapture the right to deport foreign Islamist hate preachers and terrorist suspects, or whether under European human-rights legislation they must continue to reside in the U.K., often at taxpayers’ expense. The European Union is currently experiencing migration on a scale not seen since the late 17th century—with hordes of young, mostly male Muslims sweeping from the southeast into the heart of Europe. Angela Merkel invited them in and that might be fine for Germany, but why should they have the right to settle in Britain as soon as they get a European passport?

Surely—surely—this is an issue on which the British people, and they alone, have the right to decide, without the intervention of President Obama, who adopted his haughtiest professorial manner when lecturing us to stay in the EU, before making the naked threat that we would be sent “to the back of the queue” (i.e., the back of the line) in any future trade deals if we had the temerity to vote to leave.
Was my country at the back of the line when Winston Churchill promised in 1941 that in the event of a Japanese attack on the U.S., a British declaration of war on Japan would be made within the hour?

Was Great Britain at the back of the line when America was searching for allies in the Korean War in the 1950s?

When America decided to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War in the early 1990s, was Britain at the back of the line when we contributed an armored division that fought on your right flank during Operation Desert Storm?

Were we at the back of the line on 9/11, or did we step forward immediately and instinctively as the very first of your allies to contribute troops to join you in the expulsion of the Taliban, al Qaeda’s hosts, from power in Afghanistan?

Or in Iraq two years later, was it the French or the Germans or the Belgians who stood and fought and bled beside you? Whatever views you might have over the rights or wrongs of that war, no one can deny that Britain was in its accustomed place: at the front of the line, in the firing line. So it is not right for President Obama now to threaten to send us to the back of the line. CONTINUE AT SITE

The 57-member-state Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) have been working hard for years to render Islam the only religion, political system and ideology in the world that may not be questioned with impunity. They have tried — and are in many respects succeeding — to ring-fence Islam as a creed beyond criticism, while reserving for themselves the right to condemn Christians, Jews, Hindus, democrats, liberals, women and gays in often vile, even violent language. Should anyone say anything that seems to them disrespectful of their faith, he or she will at once be declared an “Islamophobe.”

Like almost every world leader, Obama declares, with gross inaccuracy, that “Islam is a religion of peace”. It is politically expedient to deny the very real connection to jihad violence in the Qur’an, the Traditions (ahadith), shari’a law, and the entire course of Islamic history. They do this partly for political reasons, but probably more out of fear of offending Muslims. We know only too well how angry many Muslims can become at even the lightest offence.

“If PEN as a free speech organization can’t defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures, then frankly the organization is not worth the name. … I hope nobody ever comes after them.” – Salman Rushdie, on the PEN members who objected to giving its award to Charlie Hebdo, after 12 of its staff were murdered by jihadists.

The OIC succeeded in winning a UN Human Rights Council resolution that makes “defamation of religion” a crime. But the OIC knows full well that only Muslims are likely to use Western laws to deny free speech about their own faith. Last year, the US Congress introduced House Resolution 569, also purportedly intended to combat hate speech. It contains an oddity: it singles out Muslims for protection three times. It does not mention any other faith community.

One of the greatest achievements of the Enlightenment in Europe and the United States is the principle of free speech and reasoned criticism. Democracy is underpinned by it. Our courts and parliaments are built on it. Without it, scholars, journalists, and advocates would be trapped, as their ancestors had been, in a verbal prison. It is enshrined in the First Amendment to the US Constitution, in the words

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman died of a single bullet to the head in January 2015, a day before he was scheduled to testify to Argentina’s Congress about an alleged government coverup of the 1994 Iranian terrorist bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish community center. There is still no official court ruling on whether he was murdered, but a new investigative report—to be published Tuesday—goes a long way in proving motive.

Joseph Humire, the executive director of the Washington, D.C., based Center for a Secure Free Society, uses thousands of documents and legal wiretaps released to the public to show how the prosecutor’s death eliminated a key stumbling block for Iran and “paved the way for [it] to move into a new phase of its information and intelligence operations in Latin America.” If the theocracy, which is the No. 1 state-sponsor of terrorism in the world, did not murder Nisman, it was the biggest beneficiary of his death.
Nisman was the special prosecutor investigating the terrorist attack on the Jewish community center—known by its Spanish initials as the AMIA. In 2006 he indicted eight former Iranian officials (including former President Ali Rafsanjani) and one Lebanese national. The following year, at Nisman’s behest, Interpol issued “red notices” for the arrest of six of the accused. But Iran took no action.

Using legal wiretaps, Nisman later built a case that President Cristina Kirchner’s government had a covert agreement with Iran to wipe Tehran’s fingerprints off the AMIA attack in exchange for Iranian oil and reopening Iran’s market to Argentine grain and beef.

Nisman had filed a criminal complaint against members of the Kirchner government the week before he died. Killing him did nothing to stop the public from learning of the contents of his report. Yet his death did put the brakes on his plan to bring the Iranian crime into the international arena. It had the potential to undermine the key foreign-policy objectives of Tehran.

Iran’s asymmetric warfare against the West demands commercial engagement because it allows Tehran to deploy political operatives specializing in propaganda, intelligence and terrorism and to finance their activities under the guise of business activity. CONTINUE AT SITE

This essay goes far beyond today’s dispute back into history and covers Jews, Judaism antisemitism and much more. Recommended reading…
In response to a string of anti-Semitic incidents involving prominent members of his party, British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has reluctantly established a commission of inquiry. Members and supporters of the Labour Party and members of relevant communities have been invited to submit evidence.

Let me be very clear: I have zero confidence in this inquiry. And not just because Mr. Corbyn’s past actions (such as calling members of terrorist organisations ‘friends’, sharing platforms with Holocaust deniers, patronage of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign) are questionable to say the least. No, a desire to whitewash, rather than shed light, is obvious from the choice of the inquiry panel.

Mr. Corbyn has called the inquiry ‘independent’ — but it is anything but. It’s Chair, Ms. Shami Chakrabarti, is an enthusiastic member of the Labour Party. In her own words

“I share the values of the Labour Party constitution and will seek to promote those values in any recommendations and findings […] not just in the Labour Party but in the world.”

Ms. Chakrabarti can claim no particular expertise on the subject of anti-Semitism. She formerly headed the campaigning organisation ‘Liberty’, a body that militates – among other things – for unrestricted freedom of speech, including the freedom to publish vile racist rants.

The inquiry’s Vice Chair, on the other hand, can certainly claim to be an expert on anti-Semitism. Corbyn’s appointment for this position is Prof. David Feldman, Director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism. But, while his expertise in historical anti-Semitism is not in doubt, Prof. Feldman’s positions on contemporary anti-Semitism are – to use a typical British understatement – ‘controversial‘. As are his views on Zionism and Israel. Prof. Feldman does not see anything wrong with singling out the Jewish state for disproportionate criticism. He does not think that likening Israeli Jews to Nazis is anti-Semitic.

Vice Chair of the Inquiry, Prof David Feldman, shared a platform
with Shlomo Sand, author of a “The Invention of the Jewish People”,
which claims that modern Jews descend from Khazars, a Turkic population.
Prof. Feldman thanked Sand for writing the book.

Even more interestingly, the good professor is a member of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), a group who has stated its opinion before the inquiry even started:

“allegations of pervasive antisemitism within the Labour Party […] are, in our view, baseless and disingenuous [and] deployed politically – whether by the press, the Conservative Party, opponents of Corbyn’s leadership within Labour, or by those seeking to counter criticism of the actions of the Israeli government.”

In its own submission to the inquiry, IJV claims that

“Today, Zionism follows the path of maximalist nationalism and settler colonialism, driven largely by right-wing politicians, rabbis and settlers pursuing an ethnoreligious, messianic and exclusionary agenda. […] This maximalist Zionism is the only form of Zionism that has any political agency or power today. All the constructions of Zionism by those who propagate ‘new antisemitism’ theory are designed to spread the net of the ‘new antisemitism’ ever more widely in such a way as to outlaw recognition of this basic reality. To Palestinians it means the ongoing denial of their civil, political and human rights and the impossibility of achieving Palestinian national self-determination.”

Clearly, some of Mr. Corbyn’s best friends are Jews. No wonder that he has appointed as Vice Chair a ‘good Jew’ – rather than, for instance, the President of the Board of Deputies (the elected representatives of British Jewry). The Far Labour leadership is happy to listen to ‘Jewish Voices’, as long as they are properly ‘independent’, not excessively ‘Jewish’ and voice the correct opinions.

Antony Lerman, who prepared the Independent Jewish Voices submission,
complained in an interview about “the Israel Lobby”.

The second Vice Chair, by the way, is Baroness Royall, a Labour Party peer who has already completed an investigation into antisemitism at the Oxford University Labour Club. Folding that inquiry into the larger one and appointing Baroness Royall as Vice Chair gave Corbyn the excusenot to publish her report in full and not to implement its recommendations.

In light of all this manoeuvring and of its composition, it is clear that the ‘independent inquiry’ is nothing but a cover-up operation. Its report might as well have been written in advance. It will no doubt exonerate the Party and its new, hard-left leadership (as well as some if not all of the individuals accused of antisemitism) of any systematic and pervasive racist inclinations; it will take great pains to emphasise the difference between antisemitism and ‘anti-Zionism’; it will claim instead that anti-Jewish prejudice and anti-Jewish State ‘criticism’ (however obsessive) are two completely different kettles of fish: one rotten, the other smelling of roses.

Is Israel increasingly isolated? Is Israel experiencing a slowdown of foreign investments? Not according to the documentation of foreign investments in Israeli companies.

For instance, Hewlett-Packard (HP), a personal computers and printers global giant, which operates eight research and development centers in Israel, just established theSilicon Valley-Israel HP Tech Ventures, an investment arm seeking path-breaking US and Israeli companies in the areas of 3D, virtual reality, hyper mobility, Internet-of-Things, artificial intelligence and sophisticated machinery. Expressing confidence in the potential of Israel’s healthcare cutting-edge innovations, Orbimed, the world’s preeminent healthcare investment and asset management fund, just raised $300MN for its second Israel Fund, surpassing the $222MN first fund. In May, the German carmaker, Volkswagen, concluded a strategic partnership agreement – involving a $300MN investment – with Israel’s taxi-hailing, delivery and logistics applications start-up, Gett. And, General Motors announced the tripling of the personnel – from 100 to 300 employees – of its research and development center, in Herzliya, Israel, which has developed a number of technologies, enhancing GM’s competitive edge in the global market. Since 2011, GM Ventures, GM’s investment arm seeking growth-driven, innovative technologies, has invested in a number of Israeli start-ups.

Furthermore, during the first ten days of June, $237MN were invested – mostly by foreign investors – compared with $28MN during the first ten days of May and $327MN during the entire month of May, approaching $2BN for the first half of 2016.