Displaying posts published in

2016

Palestinians: The Nightmare of Christians by Khaled Abu Toameh

For the past four decades, Samir Qumsieh, who hails from a large and well-respected Christian family in the town of Bet Sahour, near Bethlehem, has fought for the rights of the region’s miniscule Palestinian Christian minority. He has even dared to speak out against the subjugation of Christians living under the rule of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

He regularly receives death threats, and he has been the target of a petrol bomb attack.

“The solution to extremism starts with the kindergarten, with elementary school. It begins with the churches, with the mosques and the school curricula. Curricula are very important – Jewish, Christian and Muslim ones. They should concentrate on accepting the ‘other.’ If this idea is adopted, the future generation will be liberal and open-minded.” — Samir Qumsieh.

“Every day we hear and see some radical Muslim clerics speaking strongly against Christians. Just recently, one of the sheiks was saying that Christian Copts should be slaughtered like sheep. Where is the Egyptian security? If I were in charge of Egyptian security, I would have this sheikh arrested immediately, and have him rot in a dark underground cell.” — Samir Qumsieh.

“To understand the severity of the situation is, let us recall that in the 1950s about 86% of the population of the Bethlehem area was Christian. Today, we are only 12%. In Israel, by contrast, we have 133,000 Christians and the figure is stable. Of course, I am worried about the future of Christians here.” — Samir Qumsieh.

“I fear the day will come when our churches will become museums. is my nightmare.” — Samir Qumsieh.

Without question, Samir Qumsieh is one of the most courageous Christian leaders in the Middle East. Qumsieh is one of the few willing to risk his life to speak out against Muslim persecution of Christians in the Palestinian territories and the Middle East, generally.

Obama’s Anti-Israel Tantrum The U.N. resolution is a defining act of Obama’s Presidency.

The decision by the United States to abstain from a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel over its settlements on the West Bank is one of the most significant, defining moments of the Obama Presidency.

It defines this President’s extraordinary ability to transform matters of public policy into personal pique at adversaries. And it defines the reality of the international left’s implacable opposition to the Israeli state.

Earlier in the week, Egypt withdrew the Security Council resolution under pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. President-elect Donald Trump also intervened, speaking with Egypt’s government and, via Twitter, urging Mr. Obama to block the resolution, as have past U.S. Administrations and Mr. Obama himself in 2011.

As was widely reported Friday after the U.N. vote, the White House decided to abstain—thereby allowing the pro-Palestinian resolution to pass—in retaliation against the intervention by Messrs. Netanyahu and Trump.

Mr. Obama’s animus toward Prime Minister Netanyahu is well known. Apparently Mr. Obama took it as an affront that the President-elect would express an opinion about this week’s U.N. resolution.

It is important, though, to see this U.S. abstention as more significant than merely Mr. Obama’s petulance. What it reveals clearly is the Obama Administration’s animus against the state of Israel itself. No longer needing Jewish votes, Mr. Obama was free, finally, to punish the Jewish state in a way no previous President has done.

No effort to rescind the resolution, which calls the settlements a violation of “international law,” will succeed because of Russia’s and China’s vetoes.

Instead, the resolution will live on as Barack Obama’s cat’s paw, offering support in every European capital, international institution and U.S. university campus to bully Israel with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

U.S. Allows U.N. to Censure Israel Obama administration, breaking tradition, clears way for measure; Donald Trump miffed at stance By Farnaz Fassihi and Carol E. Lee

UNITED NATIONS—The Obama administration broke from a longstanding tradition of U.S. defense of Israel at the U.N. and allowed the passage of a resolution harshly criticizing the country’s expansion of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories.

It was the first time in 36 years the Security Council was able to adopt a resolution addressing the issue of Israeli settlement construction, an outcome made possible by the abstention of the U.S., which had veto power.

Throughout his tenure, President Barack Obama had warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against expanding Israeli settlements in disputed lands, saying such construction poses an obstacle to peace in the Middle East. And throughout that time, he was rebuffed.

The measure on Friday was approved with 14 members voting in favor and the U.S. abstaining. That abstention, years in the making, marked what could be Mr. Obama’s final jab at an Israeli leader with whom he repeatedly clashed.

The vote followed days of extraordinary international political drama as Israel directly lobbied President-elect Donald Trump to intervene against the adoption of the resolution.

Mr. Trump and his transition team on Thursday held talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi and Israeli officials. Egyptian officials originally drafted the resolution, but after the conversation between Messrs. Trump and Sisi, Egypt pulled the resolution from consideration a few hours before it was scheduled for a vote.

The move infuriated U.S. and European diplomats who saw the decision as the result of interference by Mr. Trump.

Stop Lying About Keith Ellison’s 11 Years With an Anti-Semitic Hate Group Keith Ellison is a liar and a racist. Daniel Greenfield

Congressman Keith Ellison is a liar and a racist.

If you listen to Ellison, which the media does, his time with the Nation of Islam, a violently racist and anti-Semitic hate group which believes that white people were created by a mad scientist and will be exterminated by UFOs, was a brief youthful mistake that he made back when he was a college student.

But Ellison appears to have been involved with the Nation of Islam for eleven years, from his time in law school to his early attempts at seeking public office, through his twenties and thirties.

Politico’s Glenn Thrush offers the aspiring DNC boss a platform in a puff piece and podcast which compares the extremist bigot’s “spiritual progression” to that of Martin Luther King Jr. Thrush prompts Ellison, “You were a young man” and asks him to explain his affinity for the racist hate group.

And right on cue, Keith Ellison begins distorting his own history. He cites the 1991 Rodney King case.

But Ellison was praising “Minister Farrakhan” and defending the Nation of Islam in 1989. Writing as “Keith Hakim”, he whined that the “sensational” news media smears the Nation of Islam as the “black Klu Klux Klan” so it never gets credit for “all of its laudable work.”

Keith Ellison doesn’t just defend the racist group and its leader. His rhetoric, denouncing Malcolm X for abandoning the “Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s legacy” is the sort of thing an NOI member would say.

And, back in 1989, Keith Ellison was already being condemned for anti-Semitism. The Minnesota Daily opinion editor, Michael Olenick, described Ellison’s writing as “a genuine threat to the long-term safety and well-being of the Jewish people, a threat that history dictates must not be ignored.”

“Time and time again my people have been slaughtered after the words of Hakim (Ellison) and those like him influenced the masses,” Olenick writes.

In a more recent comment, Olenick compared Ellison to David Duke.

Ellison tries to minimize his involvement to the Million Man March, claiming that he defended Farrakhan because it was important to “defend the person who called the March”.

A somber Hanukkah-Christmas reminder: Ruthie Blum

It is sadly fitting that, for the first time since 1978, this year the lighting of the first Hanukkah candle coincides with Christmas Eve.

Though the two holidays have nothing in common, they are often lumped together. This is partly due to their proximity on the Gregorian calendar. It is also a period when Jewish and Christian students in the West are let out of school for what is now called “winter vacation,” with a lot of gift-giving and overeating taking place.

But this year, Jews and Christians would do well to embrace a deeper similarity, and say prayers for one another — even while some are drinking eggnog at the foot of lavishly decorated trees, while others are feasting on jelly donuts around lit candles.

Last year on Dec. 24, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi attended mass at St. Mark’s Orthodox Coptic Church in Cairo to show that things in his country were going to be different now that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi was no longer at the helm. This gesture, like el-Sissi’s strengthening ties with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was particularly significant in a region ravaged by full-fledged genocidal war and horrific low-resolution conflicts. The message he was trying to convey was that Egypt under his rule would treat its Christian minority with respect. In the months since then, he has also made moves to embrace his country’s treaty with the Jewish state, with which he shares the goal of fending off terrorists in Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula. Perhaps mystically, the last time Hanukkah and Christmas Eve fell on the same night occurred three months after the signing of the Camp David Accords, the precursor to that treaty.

El-Sissi’s efforts have not paid off too well on either front. At the Rio Olympic Games in August, though his government warned judoka Islam El Shehaby that if he did not compete against Israeli contender Or Sasson he would be stripped of his Egyptian citizenship, fellow countrymen from all walks of life urged him not to “shame Islam” by fighting Sasson, and afterward denounced him for sharing the mat with a Jew.

Also in the year since el-Sissi went to church, Islamist terrorists have continued, as before, to commit heinous acts of violence against the Copts. This month, during Sunday prayers at the very cathedral that el-Sissi visited in 2015, two dozen worshippers were killed and many more wounded when a bomb went off in the packed premises. Though there is still some confusion as to whether the mass murder was carried out by suicide bomber or a terrorist who laid the explosives near a pew, the Islamic State organization took happy credit for the snuffing out of the lives of innocent Christians, mostly women and children, and vowed to continue its annihilation of “apostates” everywhere.

El-Sissi announced that the suspected perpetrator was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who had established ties with a Sinai-based Islamic State affiliate.

Patriots Day Rises to the Occasion Two new films show surprising respect for history. By Armond White

Peter Berg’s Patriots Day, about the April 15, 2013, Boston Marathon bombing, combines action-movie flash with commemorative-movie solemnity. Surprisingly, the competing genres even each other out: Neither insultingly exploitative nor piously dignified, it is a nearly ideal example of pop-art historical filmmaking.

Berg’s directorial career has been the opposite of illustrious (junk like The Kingdom, Hancock, and Battlefield), but in Patriots Day, the former Hollywood actor shows a serviceable grasp of American vernacular. He depicts the devastating events as the story of tough-talking ethnic community — a vulgar and crude but also a unifying story — without ever succumbing to the sanctimony implied by the title.

Given the title’s plural noun, Berg covers a lot of ground and brings together a variety of Americans, starting with brash Boston street cop, Sgt. Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg), who was reluctantly on duty at the Marathon. Berg extends the perspective to Sgt. Jeffrey Pugliese of Watertown (J. K. Simmons), M.I.T.–assigned police officer Sean Collier (Jake Picking), and FBI agent Richard DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon). Fanning out, the story accumulates a range of civilians, two with contrasting immigrant backgrounds: Chinese immigrant engineer Dun Meng (Jimmy O. Yang), whose Mercedes-Benz gets car-jacked by the Chechen-immigrant Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan (Themo Melikidze) and Dzhokhar (Alex Wolff), while they’re on the run after having committed the bombing.

Through these characters (named after the real-life people), Patriots Day sketches home-grown radicalization and terror as undeniably linked with our contemporary culture of diversity. It is the simple yet vivid characterizations that distinguish Berg’s storytelling from Michael Bay’s fanboy fantasy history in Pearl Harbor (2001) and from the seditious nihilism in Day Night Day Night, Julia Loktev’s 2006 suicide-bomber indie movie. The tense rivalry between the Tsarnaev brothers gives us unexpected insight into ethnic and family tradition and the pressures of both radicalization and assimilation. Patriots Day provides the closest look so far into ethnic terrorism’s feral authority.

We first see Tamerlan as he is shaving off his tribal beard, preparing for war; he dominates both his wife (radicalized American Katherine Russell, played by Melissa Benoist) and his younger brother. Dzhokhar’s twisted sense of entitlement points to the irony of American youths’ radicalization. When Tamerlan decrees, “Martin Luther King was not a Muslim, he was a hypocrite, a fornicator,” Dzhokhar retorts, “I’m a fornicator” — a defense of the dorm-room pot-smoking, video-gaming style that eventually won him a place on a Rolling Stone magazine cover. Berg parallels Dzhokhar’s hip sensibility with Officer Collier’s courtship of an Asian-American girl and his video-game recreation with friends, white guys from Boston who recite the rap interlude of Jason Aldean’s “Dirt Road Anthem” (“Better watch out for the boys in blue!”), a different yet equally complex kind of rebellion.

Hollywood often seems unfamiliar with such common American types, but Berg knows them. This is his fourth film with Wahlberg, who once again authentically portrays a working-man type. In Wahlberg’s hot-tempered Saunders, vulgarity becomes an ethnic, class, and psychological trait, the mark of his character. When among the elites at the FBI’s command-center re-creation of the bomb site, Saunders’s beat-cop acumen (he demonstrates what actors call “sense-memory”) serves the investigation.

Berg may have learned his craft from Tony Scott and the British TV-ad style of incessant montage and excitation — quick shots of bloody limbs mixed in with documentary footage and dramatized mayhem is sometimes aesthetically offensive. Yet this is the same craft that takes Patriots Day beyond the usual Hollywood procedural suspense and builds a captivating narrative about national allegiance, fortitude, and resolve. When the manhunt spreads beyond Boston, Berg’s action-movie bluntness takes on riveting purpose. Issues of class and professionalism come together wonderfully. (Saunders advises the FBI, “We got to let [the people of] Boston work for us” — an unimaginable idea for a less parochial town like, say, New York.) An especially excellent scene is the examination of the radicalized Tsarnaev wife by a police investigator (Khandi Alexander); their exchange has a political and sexual bravura worthy of Oliver Stone at his incendiary best.

In one clip, President Obama consoles, “This country shall remain undipped.” His Ivy League cadence and rhetorical sophistication are that of a leader who deludes the public. Berg’s vulgar panache shows a gutsy, nearly tactile respect for the people.

Why Journalists Always Tap the Brakes on Terrorism Stories The media are guilty of a double standard on terror attacks. By Jonah Goldberg

Here’s a paradox for you. Whenever there’s a terrorist attack, the immediate response from government officials and the media is: “Let’s not jump to conclusions.” Yet when there are breaking reports that Muslim or Arab Americans were allegedly victimized by bigots in some hate crime, the response is instant credulity, outrage, and hand-wringing.

This doesn’t really even scratch the surface of the double standard. When there’s a terrorist incident, there’s deep skepticism at every stage of the unfolding story. At first we’re told there’s no evidence that the attack is terror-related. Then, when reports come in that a shooter shouted “Allahu akbar!” or has an Arabic name, we’re assured there’s no evidence that the shooter is tied to any international terror groups. Days go by with talking heads fretting about “self-radicalization,” “homegrown terror,” and “lone wolves.” This narrative lingers even as the killer’s Facebook posts declaring allegiance to ISIS emerge.

Now, truth be told, I think some of this skepticism is understandable. Often, the media and the pundit class on the left and right are too eager to win the race to be wrong first. It’s perfectly proper to not want to get ahead of the facts.

More annoying is the Obama administration’s studied practice of slow-walking any admission that the War on Terror isn’t over, but at least it’s understandable. President Obama came into office wanting to end wars and convince Americans that terrorism isn’t such a big deal. It seems to be a sincere belief. The Atlantic reported that Obama frequently reminds his staff that slippery bathtubs kill more Americans than terrorism. It took Obama six years to admit that the shooting at Fort Hood was terrorism and not “workplace violence.”

Regardless, my point here is that I can understand why politicians and the media want to be skeptical about breaking news events and even why they try to frame those events in ways that fit a political agenda.

The best defense of that agenda isn’t the sorry effort to pad the legacy of our Nobel Peace Prize–winning president. It’s the desire to err on the side of caution when it comes to stigmatizing law-abiding and patriotic Muslims with the stain of acts of terror in the name of their religion. The media don’t want to give credence to the idea that all Muslims are terrorists, not least because that attitude will only serve to radicalize more Muslims. As we are often told, ISIS wants peaceful Muslims in the West to feel victimized and unwelcome.

And that brings me back to the media’s instant credulity for stories of anti-Muslim bias. This eagerness to hype “anti-Muslim backlash” stories has been around for nearly 20 years, and it has always been thin gruel. According to the FBI, in every year since the 9/11 attacks, there have been more — a lot more — anti-Jewish hate crimes than anti-Muslim ones. Which have you heard about more: the anti-Jewish backlash or the anti-Muslim backlash?

Amazingly, the “experts fear an anti-Muslim backlash” stories keep popping up after every Islamic terror attack, despite the fact that the backlash never arrives. To be sure, there have been hateful and deplorable acts against Muslims. But evidence of a true national climate of intimidation and bigotry has always been lacking.

Gingrich predicts most of Obama’s legacy will ‘disappear within a year’

Newt Gingrich has warned that the majority of President Obama’s legacy will soon be wiped out by the Trump administration.

The former House speaker made the remarks on Fox News Wednesday after he was shown a clip of Obama’s recent NPR interview where he advised Trump to go through Congress to pass policies rather than rely on executive powers because, in his words, “it’s harder to undo.”

Gingrich commented by saying, “What you’re watching is a man who realizes all of a sudden that like 90 percent of his legacy’s gonna disappear because he didn’t do the hard work of passing legislation. He didn’t reach out to work with the other side which, by the way, is also a warning to Trump…”

Gingrich then said, “Starting the opening day when Trump begins to repeal all these executive orders, it’s gonna be like one of those balloons that deflates…and down to a core to 10 or 15 percent of what he originally did. The rest is all gonna disappear within a year.”

During a speech he gave in October, Trump, stated, in fact, that one of his first 100-day priorities as president would be to “…cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama.”

Will Santa go to Chicago this Christmas?Dr. Robin McFee,

Will Santa go to Chicago this Christmas? Maybe…but only if he can wear body armor. To be sure, there’s nothing funny about Santa needing to wear Kevlar TM when he goes to certain areas of the Windy City. In fact it is tragic. But for law enforcement and likely some in EMS, body armor is more than a fashion extra in Chicago, and other major cities, it is a potentially life-saving necessity, and way of life. As an aside, one has to wonder would the death count in Chicago among children, young adults, and other innocent bystanders decrease if Santa left kids Kevlar lined backpacks instead of toys, and winter coats had stab-resistant plate inserts?!

Sadly the remedy for the killing fields of Chicago may be more than Santa, or a Christmas truce can pull off. I wonder, do gang truces exist on Christmas morning? Will the bloodshed slow down this Holiday Season in Chicago or Baltimore or Detroit or…..?

Societies like nations die from within….

To be sure, what is going on in Chicago is more than a national embarrassment – assuming you read about it beyond a few sites like FSM or occasionally in the Tribune. Criminal beyond the average level of corruption of Daley and Capone infamy, take a good, long look, because a city near you or me could be next. Communities are dying from within, but poverty is only part of the problem. This is not about race, either, although some try to make it part of the divide. Chicago gun violence primarily is black on black…such bloodshed should no more be tolerated than white on black, or black on white. And more gun laws aren’t the answer; Chicago already has some of the strictest in the nation.

The sad reality folks throughout the city seem ok with the persistent decay amidst a not insignificant section of the metroplex; it is inconceivable that the majority of a community would contribute to or remain culpable in the creation of children condemned to lives of lack or danger or criminality, and incomprehensible that it is politics as usual in those communities. Tolerating such an existence, preferring it would seem to accept subsistence, or adhering to a stance that resists fresh air and help – it boggles the mind.

Ironically Chicago is also full of great universities (think adolescents with energy and ideas and sense of volunteerism), and people of wealth and generosity; people of all races, creeds, faiths, and ethnicities. Could Santa tap into these folks and catalyze greater outreach and collaboration?

Regrettably Santa, in his autobiography, as told to Jeff Guinn, notes that his powers diminish the closer he gets to war and violence. Too bad, because if ever this saintly bishop is needed, it is in the war zone of our inner cities. And make no mistake about it…many of our cities have dangerous areas that are war zones. I guess Santa will need our help!

Is it right to kill on Christmas?

In the book Home and Away by Dean Hughes, one of the characters in the story who is in a fox hole while German artillery shells threaten, asks his fellow soldier “is it right to kill on Christmas?” It is a profound question – and one I have no doubt frequently was asked in real life by many soldiers on both sides of the conflict. But one has to wonder, has that question even come to mind by the folks doing the killings in Chicago, and similar urban war zones? Have we developed citizens who no longer share a common humanity? Have we changed so dramatically since the 1940s when soldiers accustomed to death tugging at them every second could give themselves a humanity check, a morality check, a decency check amidst a bloody battle? What is wrong with society 2016 that our fellow Americans are racking up carnage that all but the most coldhearted Jihadists would denounce; do gang bangers ever wonder “is it right to kill on Christmas?”

So why focus on Santa and the killing fields of Chicago? Because I, like you, care about children. Having run programs and a free clinic for underserved kids, it becomes abundantly clear children need protection, role models, and to believe in something affirming, like the kindness manifest by an older man in a red costume. Clearly a father figure is needed in many inner cities – not a judgment, but a medical and public health assessment.

The Disloyal Opposition: Tom McCaffrey

Former Red Sox star pitcher Kurt Schilling posted the following on Facebook this past April: “A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. I don’t care what they are, who they sleep with, men’s room was designed for the pe*is, women’s not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic.”

He followed this with a re-post of an item by someone else that showed an image of a man dressed as a woman, accompanied by the following: “Let him in! To the restroom with your daughter or else you’re a narrow-minded, judgmental, unloving, racist bigot who needs to die!!!” Mr. Schilling was fired as a sports commentator by ESPN for the posting.

I first heard of Mr. Schilling’s remarks while listening to ESPN on my car radio. I was struck by the moral certitude of the announcer, who said he would not dignify Schilling’s comments by repeating them. I wondered how he had arrived at such a high degree of certainty that anyone who chooses not to reorder his life to accommodate the men who think they are women must be morally depraved.

Surely it is reasonable to question the psychological health of any man who thinks he is a woman, or vice versa. We have believed that a person’s “gender,” as we say now, is determined by his sex for the entire history of the human race. So recently has this view been called into question that there is little, if any, science available to support the new, alternative view. And surely it is reasonable for a person to require some very persuasive science before abandoning the common sense view that no psychologically healthy man thinks he is a woman.

But persons like that sports announcer do not require science, precisely because they are not reasonable. In their readiness to accept newly-popular notions that contradict what their own minds tell them, and to do so without any supporting evidence, they are beyond the reach of reason.

They are not bothered by the illogic that transgender boys should be allowed into girls’ bath and locker rooms because they are uncomfortable around other boys, but that the girls who must accommodate them in their bath and locker rooms will just have to get over their discomfort.

And they are not bothered that Mr. Obama enacted his bathroom edict without any public discussion of the matter, and without consulting Congress, two things that any reasonable person would have insisted upon.

Indeed, in requiring its adherents to ignore their own minds-American cities have a police problem, not a black crime problem; Islam is a religion of peace, not the source of most of the world’s terrorism; social convention alone dictates that we treat men and women differently, not fundamental differences in their natures-political correctness leaves them no choice but to embrace irrationality as a principle of action. No need to think for yourself, just follow the party line.