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February 2017

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

MY SAY: THE COGNOCENTI VS. THE KNOW IT ALLS

By on February 7th, 2017

Cognoscenti – is used by pretentious people, moi included, to describe those who are particularly well informed about a subject- usually in the arts- but also in sports, cuisine, wines etc.

The “know it alls” by contrast are a group of people who ostracize, libel, boycott, protest and demonstrate against all those who do not agree with the political left and every cult du jour such as global warming, reproductive rights (???) unlimited and unvetted immigration, Islamophobia, and now transgender phobia, and of course the Israeli “occupation. “They are unfettered by any knowledge of history. They know as little about the Korean War and its aftermath as they do about the Peloponnesian Wars. While their rhetoric is about their custodial rights to their “body” they know nothing about biology or anatomy. Their knowledge of the “Cold War” is equal to their knowledge of the Ice Age. And they bandy words like “fascist” and “dictator” without a clue about their definitions. Their ignorance would fill volumes and their human made hot air would really warm the planet.

They are the collective antithesis to the cognoscenti…. they are the” ignoranti “- a word I just coined to describe the smug and opinionated fools who preen and pose as “activists.”

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Make Haste — Deliberately If Trump shows that his actions are a reaction to past extremes, his changes will win public support. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on February 7th, 2017

The emperor Augustus who oversaw the transition from the nonstop civil war of a collapsing republic to the Principate — with all the good and bad that such a transition entailed — was fond of quoting the Greek aphorism “Make haste slowly” (σπεῦδε βραδέως / Latin: festina lente).

That seeming paradox of advocating both speed and caution was actually no contradiction at all. The adage instead reminded leaders that swift change can proceed only with careful forethought and deliberation, the same way that a swift crab scurries boldly across the beach but does so well protected in his shell.

The classical message is that to effect change, the agent must first anticipate from where and why furious opposition will arise — and then how best to preempt it and turn it against the opponent. Key to the strategy of change is to remind citizens that the present action is a corrective of past extremism, a move to the center not to the opposite pole, and must be understood as reluctantly reactive, not gratuitously revolutionary. Such forethought is not a sign of timidity or backtracking, but rather the catalyst necessary to make change even more rapid and effective.

Take Trump’s immigration stay. In large part, it was an extension of prior temporary policies enacted by both Presidents Bush and Obama. It was also a proper correction of Trump’s own unwise and ill-fated campaign pledge to temporarily ban Muslims rather than take a pause to vet all immigrants from war-torn nations in the Middle East.

Who would oppose such a temporary halt?

Obviously Democrats, on the principle that the issue might gain political traction so that they could tar Trump as an uncouth racist and xenophobe, and in general as reckless, incompetent, and confused. Obviously, the Left in general sees almost any restriction on immigration as antithetical to its larger project of a borderless society run by elites such as themselves. Obviously Republican establishmentarians fear any media meme suggesting that they are complicit in an illiberal enterprise.

Perhaps the Trump plan was, first, to ensure that radical Islamist terrorists and their sympathizers do not enter the U.S., as they so often enter Europe; second, to send a message to the international community that entry into the country is a privilege not an entitlement; and, third, symbolically to reassert the powers of assimilation, integration, and intermarriage as we slow and refine legal immigration. (The U.S. currently has about 40 million foreign-born residents, or a near record 14 percent of the population; one in four Californians was not born in the United States.) If this was the Trump-administration strategy, then it might have preempted criticism in the following manner with a supplementary communiqué:

1) We wish to extend and enhance prior presidential temporary directives that slowed and monitored unchecked immigration and visitation into the United States from war-ravaged regions in Middle East, by providing a brief breathing space of 90–120 days to ensure we can catch up and properly vet newcomers. In the past, the Obama administration has astutely identified “countries of concern” that might pose problems in visa applications. We wish to refine and calibrate such precedents to ensure the safety of the American people as the displaced-persons crisis in the Middle East expands. We wish to avoid indiscreetly and recklessly admitting persons into our country about whom we have no accurate background information.

2) This act is necessary because we plan to continue prior administrations’ policies of admitting refugees, but we cannot fairly and judiciously screen an anticipated 50,000 entrants this year without allotting proper time and consideration that was often lacking under former policies.

3) This temporary hold on admittances shall not affect those who were previously vetted through the issuance of green cards or those foreign nationals who — as translators, guides, and intelligence operatives — in time of war bravely and at risk to themselves helped the United States military at war.

4) Although the number of current travelers inconvenienced by the issuance of this order will be small, we will do all in our power to clarify implementation of the policy and to expedite problems affecting those in transit at the time of this executive order’s issuance.

Had the administration announced something like the above before or as the edict was issued, and followed up on its provisions, it would have preempted most criticisms and rendered them shrill from the get-go.

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IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Supreme Court Deadlock on Trump’s Travel Ban? Not So Fast Justice Kennedy may have other ideas. By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on February 7th, 2017

As our Monday editorial details, there is every reason to believe that the eventual ruling of the Ninth Circuit federal appeals court will control the outcome of litigation over President Trump’s temporary travel ban on both aliens from seven countries and refugees. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit is considering the Justice Department’s appeal of a temporary restraining order issued by Seattle federal district judge James Robart, which suspends the ban. The panel has announced that it will hear oral argument on Tuesday.

The Ninth Circuit’s determination is likely to be dispositive because there are currently only eight justices on the Supreme Court, a situation that will obtain until the vacancy created by Justice Scalia’s death is filled. It is assumed that the four left-wing justices on the Court (Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) would vote to uphold Judge Robart’s lawless restraining order. I believe that is an entirely reasonable assumption because, as I’ve been arguing for years now, the Supreme Court operates more like an unelected super-legislature than a judicial tribunal. Like Robart, the politically “progressive” justices make decisions based on the desired policy result, not the law.

This proclivity has led to an assumption, oft repeated in the commentariat, that the Supreme Court would deadlock 4–4 on the case, meaning that the decision of the lower court, the Ninth Circuit in this instance, would stand. I suspect that, for conservatives and other defenders of the executive order, that might be overly optimistic. Notwithstanding that the law is clearly on Trump’s side, there is a very good chance that the swing justice, Anthony Kennedy, would vote with the left-wing bloc – meaning that the administration could lose 5–3 in the High Court.

As anyone who was measuring the Atlanta Falcons for Super Bowl rings late in the third quarter will tell you, the prognostication game is an uncertain business. Still, you may get my drift if you think about the legal theory supporting Trump’s order, and then consider Kennedy’s majority opinion in favor of constitutional habeas corpus rights for alien enemy combatants in the controversial 2008 case of Boumediene v. Bush.

The main principle underlying Trump’s executive order is that the political branches of the federal government have plenary authority over border security, particularly as it pertains to aliens who could pose a threat. There is little or no legitimate role for the courts. The Supreme Court has long recognized that “it is undoubtedly within the power of the Federal Government to exclude aliens from the country,” and that even American citizens and their belongings may be searched without judicial warrants due to the sovereign imperative of “national self-protection.” (I’m quoting the Court’s 1973 decision in Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, which cites many of the Court’s relevant precedents.)

To summarize: Since (a) aliens have no enforceable judicial right to enter the U.S.; (b) the president has constitutional authority to act against potential foreign threats to national security; and (c) Congress, which has indisputable power to prescribe the requirements for alien entry into the country, has delegated to the president sweeping power to deny the entry of aliens whose presence – in the president’s judgment – would be detrimental to the U.S., that should be the end of the matter. The matter is outside judicial responsibility and there is therefore nothing for the courts legitimately to review.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Time to Abandon the ‘Terrorist Recruitment’ Delusion What really motivates jihadists. Bruce Thornton

By on February 7th, 2017

Trump’s executive order slowing down the admission of people from seven Muslim majority nations drew the expected hysterical and hypocritical criticism from the Democrats. But Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham piled on as well. It’s no secret that neither pol likes Donald Trump, and both are no doubt still angry that Trump crashed their Party. But some of their criticism recycled preposterous received wisdom we’ve been hearing for decades.

“We fear this executive order will become a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism,” the Senators said in a joint statement, explaining that Trump’s executive order “may do more to help terrorist recruitment than improve our security.” This is the tired “infidels made us do it” rationalization apologists for Islamic terrorism have been peddling––and jihadists exploiting–– since 9/11. The Senators’ version is as facile as asserting that Guantanamo, Sykes-Picot, cartoons of Mohammed, an obscure pastor burning a Koran, or Israeli settlements are responsible for “recruiting” jihadists.

This notion that Muslims become jihadist terrorists because of Western slights to their self-esteem is an absurd psychological argument alien to minds formed by Islam and its doctrines, and by cultures and histories very different from our own. Thus it commits the mortal sin of foreign policy and diplomacy: assuming that our adversaries and enemies think exactly as we do, and share the same beliefs about human motivation.

Since we attribute most behavior to material and environmental causes, we slight or dismiss religion and spiritual beliefs as a motivating force in people’s behavior. Or we reduce faith to an epiphenomenon of some deeper material cause such as poverty or a lack of political freedom, and so reduce religion to Marx’s “opiate” or Freud’s “illusion.” Even sillier, we treat other peoples as though they are over-sensitive children prone to “acting out” when their self-esteem is not nourished. So, like grade-school teachers, we should take every opportunity to tell Muslims how wonderful their faith is, how much we respect and honor it, and how diligent we will be in making sure that nobody dares link Islam and its traditional doctrines to “extremist” terror perpetrated by a small minority of “hijackers” and “distorters” of the “religion of peace.”

Obama, of course, was most fanatic about adhering to this fantasy. He began his presidency by going to Cairo and addressing a crowd, including Muslim Brotherhood honchos, about the glories of Islam and the West’s bad behavior toward the faithful. He scrupulously avoided using “Islamist” in speaking of terrorist acts, and he ordered our national security institutions not to mention “jihad” at all in its communications. The result? During his two terms there were three times more jihadist plots and attacks than during George Bush’s presidency. Al Qaeda, ISIS, and a plethora of other jihadist outfits now have a wider geographic base and scope of operations, and are perpetrating or inspiring attacks in Europe and the U.S. The world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, is now a global power punching far above its weight, and shaping the Middle East according to its interests as it continues to develop nuclear weaponry.

Such “outreach” and flattery have been no more useful than they were for the Brits in the 20’s and 30’s, when the politicians, pundits, and intellectuals championing appeasement of Germany blamed the Big Four for the “Carthaginian peace” of the Versailles Treaty, which supposedly accounted for Germany’s truculence and aggression. Then and now, such efforts communicated only weakness and fear that emboldened the aggressor and led to massive slaughter.

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Not ‘Lone Wolves’ After All: How ISIS Guides World’s Terror Plots From Afar By Rukmini Callimachi

By on February 7th, 2017

HYDERABAD, India — When the Islamic State identified a promising young recruit willing to carry out an attack in one of India’s major tech hubs, the group made sure to arrange everything down to the bullets he needed to kill victims. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/world/asia/isis-messaging-app-terror-plot.html?_r=0

For 17 months, terrorist operatives guided the recruit, a young engineer named Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani, through every step of what they planned to be the Islamic State’s first strike on Indian soil.

Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani, left, and his younger brother Ilyas, whom he recruited to participate in the Hyderabad plot.

They vetted each new member of the cell as Mr. Yazdani recruited helpers. They taught him how to pledge allegiance to the terrorist group and securely send the statement.

And from Syria, investigators believe, the group’s virtual plotters organized for the delivery of weapons as well as the precursor chemicals used to make explosives, directing the Indian men to hidden pickup spots.
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Until just moments before the arrest of the Indian cell, here last June, the Islamic State’s cyberplanners kept in near-constant touch with the men, according to the interrogation records of three of the eight suspects obtained by The New York Times.

As officials around the world have faced a confusing barrage of attacks dedicated to the Islamic State, cases like Mr. Yazdani’s offer troubling examples of what counterterrorism experts are calling enabled or remote-controlled attacks: violence conceived and guided by operatives in areas controlled by the Islamic State whose only connection to the would-be attacker is the internet.

In the most basic enabled attacks, Islamic State handlers acted as confidants and coaches, coaxing recruits to embrace violence. In the Hyderabad plot, among the most involved found so far, the terrorist group reached deep into a country with strict gun laws to arrange for pistols and ammunition to be left in a bag swinging from the branches of a tree.

For the most part, the operatives who are conceiving and guiding such attacks are doing so from behind a wall of anonymity. When the Hyderabad plotters were arrested last summer, they could not so much as confirm the nationalities of their interlocutors in the Islamic State, let alone describe what they looked like. Because the recruits are instructed to use encrypted messaging applications, the guiding role played by the terrorist group often remains obscured.

As a result, remotely guided plots in Europe, Asia and the United States in recent years, including the attack on a community center in Garland, Tex., were initially labeled the work of “lone wolves,” with no operational ties to the Islamic State, and only later was direct communication with the group discovered.
ISIS Attacks, Outside of Its Self-proclaimed Caliphate

In at least 10 executed attacks, officials have found that the assailant was in direct communication with planners from the Islamic State.

Sized by number of deaths

Injuries only
JulyOct.2015AprilJulyOct.2016AprilJulyOct.2017DirectedParisBeirutSousseBrusselsTunisEnabledInspiredOrlandoIstanbulSan Bernardino
The Islamic State has declared its caliphate to include parts of Syria, Iraq and about a dozen other countries where it has affiliates.

While the trail of many of these plots led back to planners living in Syria, the very nature of the group’s method of remote plotting means there is little dependence on its maintaining a safe haven there or in Iraq. And visa restrictions and airport security mean little to attackers who strike where they live and no longer have to travel abroad for training.

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The Evolving Threat Of Jihad In The West And how we’re handicapping ourselves. Caroline Glick

By on February 7th, 2017

The very act of mentioning bad behavior carried out by members of a specific group seems inherently bigoted.

One of the most important stories related to the September 11 attacks was the one that was deliberately left largely untold. That story is the response of some Muslims in America to the massacre of nearly 3,000 people by Islamic supremacists in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

According to a Washington Post article published on September 18, 2001, in Jersey City, New Jersey, across the river from the destroyed World Trade Center, “Within hours of the two jetliners plowing into the World Trade Center, law enforcement authorities detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river.”

The New York Post reported on September 15, 2001, that Muslim Americans in Patterson, NJ were also seen celebrating the attacks. Word-of-mouth reports abounded in the weeks and months following September 11 of spontaneous celebrations carried out that day in Dearborn, Michigan, in Virginia and other Muslim American communities.

The most notable aspect of the published reports of the celebrations was that there were so few of them.

After all, the notion that any Muslim Americans would celebrate the jihadist attack was certainly newsworthy.

The stories were suppressed at the time by political leaders. Then New York mayor Rudy Guiliani for instance said the celebrations shouldn’t be reported lest they lead to violent attacks against peaceful Muslims.

Then president George W. Bush rushed to defend and uphold Islam as a “religion of peace,” almost immediately after the attacks. Bush insisted that al-Qaida was a fringe movement and ideology in the world of Islam. Its Islamic supremacism did not reflect either the Islamic faith or the ideology of the overwhelming majority of Muslims.

In 2007, then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice banned US officials from using the terms “jihad,” “Islamic” and “Islamism” in describing Islamic jihad and the ideology of Islamism or in conjunction with discussions of Islamic jihad and terrorism.

Under former president Barack Obama, the war on language went into high gear. Not only were all terms relating to Islam banned from use in the federal government, the term “terrorism” was even purged from the official discourse. Obama dumped the Bush-era term, “War on Terror,” for the even more meaningless phrase, “Overseas Contingency Operations.”

Obama barred the FBI from investigating radical Islamic breeding grounds and replaced surveillance operations with a program called, “Countering Violent Extremism.” Under that program, Islamists were given federal support. The notion was that once they were empowered, they would convince their communities to reject violence.

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Perez Gains on Ellison in DNC Race Two radical leftists who could help keep Democrats out of power for generations. Matthew Vadum

By on February 7th, 2017

Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez appears to be gaining on Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota in the increasingly fractious race for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.

That things are bad out there for Democrats is part of South Carolina party chairman Jaime Harrison’s stump speech. “We like to say, if Jesus Christ came back and ran in some of these districts as a Democrat, he couldn’t win.”

The jihad-friendly Ellison is still considered to be the frontrunner over Perez who joined the chaotic contest in December, the month after Ellison launched his own campaign to become the public face of the Democratic Party. Ellison is reportedly leading Perez and all the other DNC candidates in fundraising. The 447-member DNC is scheduled to choose its next chairman Feb. 23 in Atlanta.

The travelling freak show that is the DNC’s caravan of candidate forums is part of the ongoing meltdown among Democrats in deep denial that Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton. Democrats are doubling down on the rampant anti-white racism and identity politics that marked the past eight years of incessant race-baiting and guilt-tripping by former President Obama.

The DNC doesn’t support free speech. DNC chairman candidate Vincent Tolliver was kicked out of the race by interim DNC chairman Donna Brazile for speaking truth to power regarding Islam. He got into hot water at a candidates’ forum on Saturday for saying Ellison should not become DNC chief because he is “a Muslim” and “being gay is a direct violation” of Islamic law. “In some Muslim countries being gay is a crime punishable by death.” Brazile said the comments were “disgusting.” Tolliver told Breitbart News he intends to sue over this “violation of my First Amendment right.”

From conservatives’ point of view the race between the two leading candidates could be likened to Operation Barbarossa: both sides represent abhorrent ideologies that aim to strangle freedom. Both Ellison and Perez are proudly, fiercely radical, race-baiting, class-warfare-loving, community-organizing lawyers owned by the labor unions.

Both are onboard with the DNC, which officially endorses the racist, terroristic Black Lives Matter movement whose paranoid radical left-wing members accuse police nationwide of systemic anti-black racism and brutality against black suspects. In 2015 the DNC, the party’s governing body, adopted a resolution accusing American police of “extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children.” In a recent candidates’ forum, Ellison said would-be murderer Trayvon Martin had been “executed.”

Perez, the outspoken champion of illegal aliens, comes across in speeches as more sophisticated and articulate – and at least superficially reasonable – compared to Ellison. Ellison, with his ties to the Nation of Islam and other fringe groups, is significantly more abrasive, in-your-face, and arguably threatening in the eyes of the average voter. Both have close ties to the HAMAS front group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Endorsements have been stacking up for the two candidates.

Perez has been endorsed by Rep. Filemon Vela Jr. (Texas) along with four governors – former DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe (Virginia), John Hickenlooper (Colorado), Gina Raimondo (Rhode Island), and John Bel Edwards (Louisiana). The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, United Farm Workers, International Association of Fire Fighters, and the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry also support Perez.

Ellison has been endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (New York), Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Reps. John Lewis (Georgia) and Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), and Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton. The AFL-CIO, AFSCME, Communications Workers of America, and UNITE HERE also back Ellison.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s So-Called Poverty Problem OECD Poverty Lines Do Not Define Poverty by Malcolm Lowe

By on February 7th, 2017

According to the OECD definition of the “poverty line,” you can make everyone fabulously rich while keeping them all as poor as before. But you can eliminate poverty by reducing them all to starvation levels.

Assume that large differences between OECD countries in alleged “child poverty” may, nevertheless, have some significance. The consequence of this assumption, however, is that Israel is doing better than numerous other OECD countries when the uniquely high fertility rate in Israel is taken into account.

It was a real achievement to raise the employment rate of single mothers from 66% to 81%. To insist that nothing has changed because the same proportion of such families remains below the so-called poverty line is both wrongheaded and could discourage attempts to improve the situation further.

It is sometimes thought to be paradoxical that Israel features so highly in the “World Happiness Reports” – at 11th place out of 157 countries in the latest report. There is no paradox if such factors as joy over having children and pride at being in work outweigh artificially defined poverty.

Israel joined the “Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development” (OECD) on September 7, 2010. Since then, Israel has featured in the OECD’s annual reports. Every year we are told that “Israel’s poverty rates are highest among OECD nations,” as again in 2016. Especially bewailed are figures about “the proportion of children living in families below the poverty line.”

There are, of course, poor families in Israel. Any social worker dealing with families can name some. The question is whether the OECD reports provide information that can serve to deal with such poverty as exists. The answer is negative because OECD “poverty lines” are falsely construed as measures of poverty. They define, instead, something quite distinct from poverty: income disparity.

This absurd discrepancy is revealed in a little Wikipedia article on “Measuring Poverty,” where we are told:

“The main poverty line used in the OECD and the European Union is a relative poverty measure based on ‘economic distance,’ a level of income usually set at 60% of the median household income.”

To be exact, the OECD sets the level at 50%. In one place, its website states:

“The poverty rate is the ratio of the number of people (in a given age group) whose income falls below the poverty line; taken as half the median household income of the total population.”

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Trump-Trudeau Tryst by Thomas Quiggin

By on February 7th, 2017

It had been reported prior to 2015 that the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami front groups would use the Liberal Party of Canada as a vehicle for political entryism.

The article also noted the roles of ISNA Canada and ICNA Canada in these efforts. A number of Canadian Members of Parliament have Islamist connections, advocate for sharia law or, in the case of Cabinet Minister Maryam Monsef, states that “Sharia fascinates me :)”

President Trump may be meeting with Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada shortly. The two leaders worked across from each other on the world’s longest undefended border.

The January 29, 2017 shooting at a Quebec City mosque in which six people were killed may prove to be “interesting” as it plays on USA/Canada relations. There is emerging information to show that the mosque may have been targeted as a “Muslim Brotherhood mosque.” This includes a July 2016 article (i.e. seven months before the attack) by the Journal de Quebec which stated that a pamphlet had been circulated in the neighbourhood claiming it was a Muslim Brotherhood mosque. Three weeks prior to the pamphlet being distributed, a pig’s head had been left at the doorway of the mosque. Three incidents around one mosque suggests a pattern of activity and escalation by an individual or group that has grievances with the Muslim Brotherhood. It is not yet clear if terrorism charges will be laid in addition to charges of first degree murder.

South of here, a series of reports suggest that President Trump may use executive authority to list the Muslim Brotherhood and some of its front groups in the USA as terrorist entities. Senator Cruz (R-TX) has a bill in the US Congress that would have the effect of listing the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist entity along its front groups CAIR USA, ISNA and the North American Islamic Trust.
Trudeau and the Islamist Front Groups

Prior to the Canadian election of November 2015, it had been reported that the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami front groups would use the Liberal Party of Canada as a vehicle for political Entryism. The article also noted the roles of ISNA Canada and ICNA Canada in these efforts. A number of Canadian Members of Parliament have Islamist connections, advocate for sharia law or, in the case of Cabinet Minister Maryam Monsef states that “Sharia fascinates me :)”

In December of 2015, Prime Minister Trudeau sent a video message to the “Reviving the Islamic Spirit” conference in which he stressed “our shared beliefs.” This, despite the fact the conference is sponsored by and has been attended by a virtual who-is-who list of Muslim Brotherhood front group members over several years. The same conference also featured Linda Sarsour who is currently leading a number of US demonstrations against President Trump and has ties to a variety of Islamist groups. Many members of her family have a long history with HAMAS – another Muslim Brotherhood spin-off organization. Prime Minister Trudeau had also appeared as a member of Parliament at the Reviving the Islamic Spirit Conference in 2012.

Member of Parliament Justin Trudeau also gave a speech at the ISNA mosque in Mississauga, albeit in 2013 before the ISNA had the charity status for its “Development Fund” revoked for funding terrorism. The ultimate destination of the funding was the south Asian based Jamaat-e-Islami , the same group noted above as being involved in the Liberal Party. The ISNA in turn has welcomed the election of Prime Minister Trudeau.

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France’s New Islamist Guillotine The Trial of Georges Bensoussan by Denis MacEoin *****

By on February 7th, 2017

It is not racist to accuse Muslims of wrongdoing; Islam is a religio-political system, not a race. This conflation of two very different things already causes endless confusion and miscarriages of justice. Such scattershot accusations fail to make a distinction between genuine hatred for Muslims and fair and balanced criticism of some of their behavior and their religion.

“Anti-racism… an instrument of intellectual terrorism has become today the greatest channel of the new anti-Semitism”. — Georges Bensoussan.

The CCIF’s charge of “Islamophobia” is almost certainly built, not so much about Arabs but about perceptions of a refusal by Muslim immigrants from North Africa to integrate into French society,

“To say that one drinks in anti-Semitism from one’s mother’s milk means that it is transmitted culturally. I have not spoken of a transmission through blood, which implies a genetic transmission. And I maintain that in some Arab families in France, anti-Semitism is taught. … I have not invented the Kouachi brothers, who, after the attack on Charlie Hebdo, asked the printer with whom they took refuge if he was Jewish.” — Georges Bensoussan.

“This visceral anti-Semitism proven by the Fondapol survey by Dominique Reynié last year cannot remain under a cover of silence. Conducted in 2014 among 1,580 French respondents, of whom one third were Muslim, the survey found that they were two times and even three times more anti-Jewish than French people as a whole”. — Georges Bensoussan.

Why should this be surprising? Anti-Jewish feelings in Muslim countries and elsewhere are deeply embedded, with roots in the Qur’an, the Hadith, Islamic law-books, and general social attitudes from the 7th century onwards.

If Bensoussan is convicted, the CCIF and other organisations like it will start further prosecutions of other innocent people and succeed in shutting down debate about what is the greatest single threat to the stability not only of France and Europe, but the West.

The French historian and philosopher Georges Bensoussan is best known for his studies of matters relating to the Jewish world, on topics such as the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the fate of the hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from Arab countries after the declaration of Israel’s independence in 1948 and the signal defeat of Arab armies which invaded the new state between then and 1949. He himself was born in Morocco in 1952, but moved with his family to France in his early years.

After a doctorate in history from the University of Paris I in 1981, Bensoussan became director of a journal for Holocaust history (Revue d’histoire de la Shoah) and went on to develop a training service for Holocaust education. Over the years, he has published several well-researched books on the Holocaust, Zionism, and related topics. Juifs en pays arabes: Le grand déracinement 1850-1975 (2012) covers the too-little known history of the way in which nearly a million Jews in Arab countries were reduced in fewer than thirty years to about 5,000. His intellectual and political history of Zionism, Une histoire intellectuelle et politique du sionisme 1860-1940 (2002), counters the modern use of the term Zionist as a pejorative.

Given these credentials as a leading opponent of Europe’s oldest form of racism, one might very well expect that Georges Bensoussan would be one of the last people fit to be labelled a racist. And you would be correct. But on January 25, Bensoussan was obliged to present himself at the 17th chamber of the Tribunal Correctionel of Paris to face a charge of “provocation of racial hatred” (“provocation à la haine raciale”). A more honest description of the charge would have read “provocation of ‘Islamophobia'”. It is not racist to accuse Muslims of wrongdoing; Islam is a religio-political system, not a race. This conflation of two very different things already causes endless confusion and miscarriages of justice.

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