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2016

My Say :High Noon to Midnight: Why Current Immigration Policy Dooms American Jewry By Stephen M. Steinlight

FROM MIDEAST OUTPOST FEBRUARY 2016

Editor’s note: This prescient article was written in 2004, long before the current Muslim invasion which is overwhelming Europe and, thanks to Obama’s policies, will have a major impact here. While Steinlight believed American Jewish organizations were waking up to the dangers of Muslim immigration, this has turned out to be wildly over-optimistic. This is an edited version of a much longer essay—well worth reading in its entirely—at www.cis.org/articles/2004/steinlight2.html

Dr. Stephen M. Steinlight is a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies. For more than six years he was the Director of National Affairs at the American Jewish Committee.

Among the articles of faith in the waning culture of secular liberalism that has served as an ersatz religion for many mainstream American Jews, the most vulnerable tenet is belief in “generous legal immigration,” the euphemism for open-borders immigration in the lexicon of American-Jewish public affairs agencies. This is not to accuse them of crude hypocrisy and double-talk so much as engaging in intellectual and moral trimming, self-deception, and denial.

Promulgating self-deception isn’t merely bad ethics; it’s untenable as a matter of policy: it conflicts with the interests, security and values of American Jewry. Survey research, plus mountains of anecdotal evidence, reveals a profound change in attitude among American Jews. Opinion polls in the three years following the attacks of September 11, 2001 show a plurality favoring lowered immigration, 70 percent the introduction of a secure national identity card, and 55 percent believing Muslims are the most anti-Semitic group in the United States. It may not require another domestic terrorist enormity for respondents to discern simple cause-and-effect relationships; more ambitious efforts to persuade might suffice.

My experience at the grassroots suggests Jews know little about the history of their own immigration, immigration policy, the scale of immigration, or the engines that drive it. Frequently, all that’s required to effect attitudinal change is apprising them. When I began my efforts, the Jewish media spoke of Jewish attitudes in favor of open-borders immigration as “monolithic;” now it’s commonplace to speak of “a raging debate.” If this could be accomplished essentially by one person, what might a concerted, well-funded effort achieve? Among the community’s organizational leadership, enthusiasm for this dangerous anachronism is a mile wide and an inch deep.

The IDF’s Misplaced Trust in the Palestinian Authority The new major threat inside Israeli communities enters a new phase. Caroline Glick

Amjad Sakari made no effort to hide his feelings and intentions towards Israel. The soldier in the Palestinian security forces filled his Facebook page with paeans to Saddam Hussein. Last weekend he published two posts indicating his imminent plan to carry out a terrorist attack.

In other words, if the PA forces he served had been serious about preventing their members from carrying out terrorist attacks, they could have easily prevented Sakari from driving to an IDF checkpoint between Ramallah and Beit El Sunday morning, opening fire and wounding three soldiers – one critically. Sakari, who was killed in the course of his attack, was the third member of the US-backed PA security forces who engaged in terrorism in the past two months.

On December 3, Mazen Ariba, an officer in the PA’s US-sponsored Preventive Security Forces opened fire on Israelis at the Hizma checkpoint north of Jerusalem. Ariba wounded two Israelis – one critically – before he was shot and killed.

Ariba, was PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat’s nephew. Erekat made a very public condolence call to Ariba’s home. Ariba was posthumously hailed as a hero.

Two weeks ago, the Shin Bet arrested Ala’a Barkawi, an officer in the PA’s US-supported intelligence services. Barkawi was a member of a three-man terror cell that carried out a shooting attack against IDF forces operating in Tulkarm earlier last month.

Sunday night Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu demanded that PA President Mahmoud Abbas condemn the terrorism carried out by forces operating under his command. Abbas rejected Netanyahu’s demand and instead doubled down in supporting terrorism.

A Tale of Two Professors How Connecticut College treats a pro-Israel professor — and how Kent treats a pro-Islamist one. Noah Beck

To understand just how depraved today’s college campuses are, compare the treatment of two professors – one defending a Western, pro-American democracy (Israel) and the other suspected of supporting this century’s most gruesome Islamist terror organization, the Islamic State (“ISIS”).

Julio Pino, an associate history professor at Kent State University, is currently under investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security for potential ties to ISIS.

Pino’s jihadist leanings include possible threats against the U.S. government and virulently anti-Israel rants. In 2002, he praised a teenage Palestinian suicide bomber who had killed two people in Jerusalem, saying that the teen had “died a martyr’s death in occupied Jerusalem, Palestine.”

In a 2014 open letter to “academic friends of Israel,” Pino published an unhinged and anti-Semitic invective: “I hold you directly responsible for the murder of over 1,400 Palestinian children, women and elderly civilians over the past month…[w]hile The Chosen drain the blood of innocents without apologies you hide behind the mask of academic objectivity, nobility of research and the reward of teaching to foreign youth – in a segregated university, of course.” Pino closed the letter with: “Jihad until victory!”

Despite decades of hateful and extremist statements, Kent State reportedly gave Pino multiple awards, including the Faculty Excellence Award in 2010, 2003, 2000 and 1996, along with the Professional Excellence Award in 1999 and 1997.

Terrorists Among “Asylum Seekers” Forged passports, ISIS Jihadists and planned terror attacks. Emerson Vermaat

“ZDF Heute,” a leading news program on German TV, reported, on January 25, 2016, that terrorists are using the asylum channel to enter countries where they plan to carry out terrorist attacks. The German news program mentioned three recent cases. The first case was the terrorist attacks in Paris, on November 13, 2015. Among the perpetrators were two terrorists who entered Greece as asylum seekers and then traveled to France via the so-called Balkan route. They carried forged Syrian passports in the names of Ahmad al-Mohammad and Mohammad al-Mahmod. They arrived on the Greek island of Leros, on October 3, 2016, where their fingerprints had been taken.

ISIS later glorified the Paris attackers in the manifesto “Black Flags From the Islamic State.” This manifesto, quoted by John Rossomando in IPT News, describes how “the plotters evaded detection by Western intelligence.” “This has shocked the intelligence agencies and many European countries are thinking about closing their borders so future Mujahideen cannot escape to neighboring countries.” The only attacker who survived was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian-Moroccan national from Brussels. John Rossomando adds: “Black Flags From the Islamic State brags that Abaaoud slipped in and out of Europe hiding among the refugees traveling through Turkey into Greece and then deeper into the continent.” This was shortly before the terrorist attacks in Paris.

No holds barred: Torrent of anti-Israel advice found in Hillary’s emails

Clandestinely stirring up potentially violent protests in an attempt to try and force Israel to go against its best interests? Advice like this was par for the course with Clinton’s advisers.It’s already been established that one of Hillary Clinton’s most trusted advisers, Sid Blumenthal, sent her anti-Israel articles, ideas and advice during her time as secretary of state. But the stream of anti-Israel advice received by Clinton was much more comprehensive.

In the entire forced dump of Clinton’s emails, you will be hard pressed to find a single one sympathetic toward the Jewish state from any of the people she relied on. The negative, poisonous approach to Israel throughout this email expose shows the atmosphere that she had established around herself. These emails seem to demonstrate that a huge segment of her close advisers and confidantes were attacking Israel, condemning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and strategizing how to force Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria at all costs.

This was occurring against the backdrop of Israel’s recent Gaza withdrawal, which led to the takeover of Gaza by Hamas. There is almost zero mention of the huge risks to Israel’s security in withdrawing as Clinton and the Obama administration did everything they could to pressure Israel to capitulate to their demands.

The Cure for Media Bias Breaking the monopoly of the progressive gospel. Bruce Thornton

We have long known that the progressive media no longer have any journalistic integrity. The pass given to Barack Obama on his gaffes, sketchy personal history, and dubious associates––all of which would have sunk a Republican candidate––stripped the last camouflage from reporters who used to at least try to hide their political biases and prejudices. Now facing the end of their messiah’s presidency, the media left are pulling out all the stops to elevate Hillary Clinton and demonize her opposition in order to complete The One’s fundamental transformation of the United States.

But candidate Obama, whose dubious personal biography the media helped to keep on the down low, lacked much of a public record, making him something of a blank slate to be filled with pleasing rhetoric and a feel-good bio. Hillary, on the other hand, has a long public history of money-grubbing, lying, and abusing power. We all know the catalogue of Hillary scandals, from Whitewater to Benghazi, from Filegate to Emailgate, from lying to the grieving parents of the dead heroes of Benghazi, to lying to the American people about the classified information that passed through her unsecured private server. Despite their eagerness to cover Bill’s sexual scandals in the 90s, today’s mainstream media have ignored, downplayed, or rationalized most of Hillary’s bad behavior. And during this primary season, they have not objectively followed the most blatant scandals––Benghazi, the unsecured email server, and the fiscal skullduggery of the Clinton Foundation–– with the obsessive fervor they’ve devoted to Donald Trump’s bad manners, Carly Fiorina’s alleged failures at Hewlett-Packard, Dr. Ben Carson’s missing surgical sponges, Ted Cruz’s “meanness,” or Marco Rubio’s traffic violations.

So we shouldn’t be surprised that the New York Times endorsed Hillary on the eve of the Iowa caucuses. Having helped put an incompetent and malignant token black in the White House, the Times is now eager to install a token woman, no matter how lacking in skill and achievements. But still astonishing is the editors’ claim that Hillary is “one of the most broadly and deeply qualified presidential candidates in modern history.” Such preposterous praise recalls the presidential historian who claimed that Obama is the most intelligent candidate for president ever––the same genius who thinks there is an “intercontinental railroad” and an “Austrian language.” As I’ve learned during 40 years of observing affirmative action in the university, when progressives are serving the gods of diversity and leftist ideology, reality doesn’t matter, and hectoring claims of achievement substitute for the real thing. Like a poem, the diversity “mascot,” as Thomas Sowell puts it, doesn’t have to do anything but exist.

Government Survey Asks 13-Year-Olds to Pick Their Gender (or Genders) from a List of 25 Parents of kids in Brighton, England are not too happy. By Katherine Timpf

Schoolchildren as young as 13 in Brighton, England were told to fill out a government survey that asked them to pick out their gender (or genders) from a list of 25 options.

Yes — gender or genders.

Among the options were “tri-gender” (having exactly three genders,) “gender fluid” (having your gender change over time,) “demi-boy/demi-girl” (someone who is only partially male/female,) and “all genders” (which would be an infinite number because gender is obviously a spectrum.)

Below is the complete list, from which instructed students to “choose as many as [they] want:”

Male

Female

Girl

Boy

Tomboy

(Young) woman

(Young) man

The Intifada Is Ideological Hatred of Israel in Word and Deed Arabs under Palestinian rule are bombarded with anti-Jewish, anti-Israel messages. By Douglas J. Feith

In recent weeks, Arabs armed with knives and hatchets have struck at dozens of Israelis on the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Afula, Beersheba, and elsewhere. Victims include children, women, and elderly men.

Imagine how the American public would react to a political group that incited supporters to knife people on the streets of New York, Cleveland, Denver, and Seattle. Fear, indignation, and anger would translate into furious insistence that the government put an end to the evil. No political grievance would be accepted as an excuse for the savagery.

Yet in this case, murders spawned by false, fanatical accusations from Palestinian religious and political leaders spawn still more foul words of a different kind: equivocation by U.S. officials who, having completely lost their bearings, sound like apologists for the murderers.

Obama-administration officials urged both sides to exercise restraint. U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power invoked the “cycle of violence.” Using the passive voice to cloud the picture, she said that “mistrust has been exacerbated by viral images and videos shared on social media, which further polarize narratives and foster suspicion, and even hatred on both sides.” Secretary of State John Kerry spoke of the murders with a hey-that’s-just-politics tone. Saying (inaccurately) that there’s been a recent “massive increase in settlements,” he then commented understandingly, “Now you have this violence because there’s a frustration that is growing.”

If Americans were being systematically knifed on the streets, no American official would be so morally blind as to excuse the attacks as an expression of political frustration. Not a chance.

President Barack Obama took a similarly cool and neutral line. He called on both Palestinian and Israeli leaders “to try to tamp down rhetoric that may feed violence or anger, or misunderstanding.”

The Year of the Islamists Why we are all Israel now By Lee Habeeb & Mike Leven

The first month of the year is behind us, and so is the season for predictions. But if there’s one thing we can be sure of as this year unfolds, it’s this: 2016 will be the year of the Islamists.

It doesn’t take a Las Vegas handicapper to know it. The State Department’s annual report on terrorism revealed that the number of people killed by terror attacks rose by 80 percent, to nearly 33,000, in 2014. Things weren’t any better in 2015.

This will be the year of the Islamists because they’re facing no competing force. No opponents with the will to fight them — or their ideas. And it’s not just the people of Middle East and Africa who will suffer in this year of the Islamists. It will be Europeans and Americans.

It happened late last year in San Bernardino. And the month before in Paris. And earlier the year before in Paris, when Islamic radicals targeted the creatives at Charlie Hebdo and the patrons and workers at a nearby kosher deli.

These weren’t spectacular mass murders of the 9/11 variety, but they were, in some ways, worse — because they were carried out by lone Islamist wolves, part of a loose network of international killers who report to no one.

A Stronger Congress, a Healthier Republic By Sen.Mike Lee (R-Ut) & Rep.Jeb Hensarling (TX District 5)

“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

— Article I, Section 1, U.S. Constitution

The federal government is broken. And while there is plenty of blame to go around, only Congress can fix it.

We don’t mean this as an indictment of any one leader or party, because the dysfunction in Washington today has accreted over decades, under Houses, Senates, and presidents of every partisan combination, as well as the many different justices of the Supreme Court.

To be sure, not every misguided, dysfunctional federal policy is a direct act of Congress. But that points toward the root problem.

The stability and moral legitimacy of America’s governing institutions depend on a representative, transparent, and accountable Congress to make its laws. For years, however, Congress has delegated too much of its legislative authority to the executive branch, skirting the thankless work and ruthless accountability that Article 1 demands and taking up a new position as backseat drivers of the republic.

So today, Americans’ laws are increasingly written by people other than their representatives in the House and Senate, and via processes specifically designed to exclude public scrutiny and input. This arrangement benefits well-connected insiders who thrive in less-accountable modes of policymaking, but it does so at the expense of the American people — for whose freedom our system of separated powers was devised in the first place.