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December 2024

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Meet Syria’s ‘Moderate’ Jihadi Peter Smith

By on December 21st, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/islam/meet-syrias-moderate-jihadi/

When “rebels” booted out Assad and took over Syria I surveyed a couple of people. Both, having listened to the news, probably the ABC News, indicated that they were suspending judgment on the outcome. One of the two is gay. I said to him ‘they are jihadis’. He was not convinced. I don’t know why but many, perhaps most, Westerners are naïve when it comes to Islam. Thus the metamorphosis of Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the terrorist leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – which evolved out of Al Qaeda – is given some unmerited benefit of the doubt. This is probably down to all that misconceived talk of moderate Muslims; and you might recall “the religion of peace” had a run before it tested the credulity of even useful idiots.

The new top guy in Syria, al-Jolani, has swapped his nom de guerre for his birth name Ahmed al-Shara. He dresses in a suit rather than fatigues. He is every bit the model of the moderate Islamic gentleman. All part of the makeover. Antony Blinken is ready to be wooed, though we can safely bank on Netanyahu to remain locked and loaded. Penny Wong will undoubtedly and happily take any position which most harms Israel. If recent history is a guide, Tony Burke will be keen on rushing tourist-visa applications to disaffected Syrian Muslims.

To a small extent, this piece is a cautionary tale for Mr Shara. Feign being moderate too effectively and a fundamentalist henchman might well take your head. However, mainly it is a cautionary tale for those in the West whose optimism about Islam outruns their realism.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

The cult of the keffiyeh How pitying Palestine and hating Israel became the ultimate luxury belief. Brendan O’Neill

By on December 21st, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/12/20/the-cult-of-the-keffiyeh/

This is an extract from Brendan O’Neill’s book, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation. You can buy it on Amazon now.

Whatever happened to the sin of cultural appropriation? This ideology of rebuke held sway on university campuses for years. The idea was that no member of the majority group should ever appropriate the cultural habits of a minority group. It’s offensive, apparently. It’s racial theft. It’s parody disguised as authenticity. White men wearing their hair in dreadlocks, white women in kimonos, gay men twerking or using black slang – all of it was damned as ‘stealing’, the co-option of the culture of the powerless by the powerful. And yet today, visit any campus in the West and everywhere you look you’ll see white youths dressed as Arabs.

Keffiyeh chic is all the rage. You’re no one unless you have one of these black-and-white scarves that are widely worn in the Palestinian territories. Student radicals, celebrities, Guardian-reading dads on their way for a macchiato – everyone has a keffiyeh draped over their shoulders. It has become the uniform of the politically enlightened, the must-have of the socially aware. They’re ‘all over Europe’, as one writer says; every time there’s a ‘pro-Palestine’ demo you’ll be confronted by ‘a sea of these garments’. Even the mega-rich are getting in on the act – Balenciaga once made a high-end keffiyeh that will set you back £3,000. But then, you can’t put a price on virtue-signalling.

Is this cultural appropriation? If Beyoncé wearing a sari and Kim Kardashian styling her hair in braids can induce a frenzy of censure among social-justice warriors – as both of those things bizarrely did – then why not bourgeois Westerners pulling on a scarf that has its origins among the nomadic Bedouin tribes of the Arab peninsula? If a student who dons a Mexican sombrero can be branded ‘culturally indifferent’, then why not a student who wraps himself in Arab cloth? As Julie Burchill has wondered, ‘In an age when putting on a sombrero for 60 seconds during a drunken night out at an all-you-can-eat taco bar can be taken as proof of conquistador-level evil… why do these same students swan around wearing the keffiyeh?’.

The keffiyeh wearers will say their scarves are about solidarity, not stealing. They’re showing their support for a political cause, not purloining Palestinian culture. The reason this scarf is ‘worn by non-Palestinians across the world’ is ‘as a sign of solidarity and allyship’, insists Salon. But since when did solidarity involve fancy dress? The 1960s students who protested against the Vietnam War did not wear bamboo conical hats in mimicry of the Vietnamese peasants who so often felt the heat of America’s bombs and napalm. Western supporters of the Quit India movement were not known for wearing white dhotis in the style of Mahatma Gandhi. Solidarity was expressed with words and actions, not imitation of style.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Another Islamic terror attack on a European Christmas market By Andrea Widburg

By on December 21st, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/12/another_islamic_terror_attack_on_a_european_christmas_market.html

This is becoming an ugly Christmas tradition, with the real question being whether Europeans will continue to put up with this madness.

Since the early 2000s, whenever there was a terrorist attack, a meme circulated showing a South Park newscaster saying some variation of “…and it’s Islam.” The point, of course, was that no matter how the media tried to hide it, the greater likelihood was that the attacker was Muslim.

What’s interesting about today’s mass terror attack on a German Christmas market is that the German authorities immediately announced that it was an Islamic terrorist attack. Maybe Europeans are finally realizing that the viper they’ve nursed at their bosom needs to be expelled.

A little background is helpful to understand today’s attack:

After WWII, Germany and Japan were completely flattened. However, this time, the Allies had learned their lesson. They were not going to let Germany become an economic basket case, out of which another Hitler could rise. America, the last great nation standing at war’s end, worked to rebuild both Germany and Japan as modern, democratic, free nations. In both cases, America was aided by the fact that these countries had cultures that were built around meticulous hard work.

As well as rebuilding its former enemies, America instituted the “Pax Americana,” which saw it spearhead the Cold War against communism and generally exert itself around the world to put out fires. This Pax Americana created a global economic boom unlike any seen before in history.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Thank You, Israel, for Saving the World, Defending Freedom and Reshaping the Middle East by Majid Rafizadeh

By on December 21st, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21234/israel-saving-the-world-defending-freedom

When it comes to national security, appeasement is not an option. Bribing aggressors only finances their militaries for attacks on the West in the future. Israel’s approach to combating terrorism has always been characterized by thoroughness and determination — for which is usually put through the tortures of hell by the very countries it is working to save.

With a vision of ultimately fostering peace, harmony, security and prosperity throughout the region, as in the Abraham Accords, Israel expanded its military operations beyond Hamas… reshaping the Middle East into a region free of the grip of terror… Make Persia Great Again!

So long as Iran’s regime remains in power, brutalizing its people and making plans for global expansion, there can be no chance for peace in the region.

Removing the regime… would bring lasting security and prosperity to the Middle East and beyond…. One could then set about subduing Turkey and its terrorist proxies in Syria.

After Hamas carried out its horrific October 7, 2023 massacre by invading Israel, murdering hundreds of people and kidnapping individuals from various countries, Israel reached a breaking point. This act of terrorism ignited a wave of decisive actions across the Middle East that catalyzed remarkable developments, aimed at countering and eliminating terror networks.

For decades, the region has been plagued by violence and instability, but Israel’s response marked a significant turning point, showcasing its resolve to confront terrorism head-on and help usher in a new era of security.

Israel has consistently demonstrated its commitment to thorough and resolute action. When it comes to national security, appeasement is not an option. Bribing aggressors only finances their militaries for attacks on the West in the future. Israel’s approach to combating terrorism has always been characterized by thoroughness and determination — for which is usually put through the tortures of hell by the very countries it is working to save.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Walter Duranty Would Be Proud Of How The Press Covered For Biden

By on December 21st, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/12/21/walter-duranty-would-be-proud-of-the-way-the-press-covered-for-biden/

Five years too late, the Wall Street Journal finally reports – when it no longer matters – what journalists knew all along but covered up: Joe Biden was not mentally fit to be president.

The mainstream media’s disservice to the public ranks right up there with Walter Duranty’s New York Times reporting, in which he fed Soviet Union propaganda to the U.S. as news and helped cover up the hellscape that was Stalin’s Russia. (The New York Times never returned the Pulitzer Prize that Duranty won for his lies.)

Except in this case, it wasn’t one reporter halfway around the world in a closed society. It was a legion of reporters inside the White House.

The Journal report reads as though it’s the result of hard investigative work. “This account of how the White House functioned with an aging leader at the top of its organizational chart is based on interviews with nearly 50 people, including those who participated in or had direct knowledge of the operations,” it says.

Bullsh-t.

The Journal’s story is just a catalog of what reporters knew – or must have known – all along but refused to tell the public.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Wai Wah Chin A Win for Merit in New York City’s Schools The Panel for Education Policy passes a contract preserving the specialized high schools’ admissions exam.

By on December 21st, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-win-for-merit-in-new-york-citys-schools

After 11 p.m. on December 18, the New York City Department of Education’s Panel for Education Policy (PEP) voted to approve the contract for administering the specialized high schools admissions test (SHSAT): the final tally was 14 for, two against, with four abstentions. By then, many SHSAT supporters, especially the children, who had arrived before the 6 p.m. meeting began, had left and missed the roll-call vote. All are grateful to PEP for retaining the test.

A public comment period preceded the vote. The real issues of debate concerned not the contract’s cost—$17 million over five years, a mere speck of the city Department of Education’s $200 billion five-year budget—but questions of race and merit.

Many of the SHSAT supporters in attendance were immigrants of Chinese origin. In thick accents, they told their stories of hard work, sacrifice, and achieving the American dream. There was also a Bangladeshi (a member of one of Stuyvesant High School’s fastest-growing groups) and several people with Russian accents. But tribalism was not the point—this was about merit. From these specialized schools have come 15 Nobel Prizes in the sciences, awarded for inventions and discoveries with broad applications that have benefited humanity.

The SHSAT’s supporters spoke for all future students of any hue. The opposition responded with thinly veiled racism against the Asians in attendance: they’re protecting a system that favors them, they only show up for their own causes. 

In fact, Asians are not looking for special favors or preferential treatment. In the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York’s lawsuit against changes to the specialized high schools’ admissions policy, the plaintiffs did not seek preferential treatment, such as racial set-asides or the implementation of Asian studies curricula. Instead, they sought a colorblind admissions process: equal rights for all.

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