Displaying the most recent of 90799 posts written by

Ruth King

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

West Side Highway Jihadist Indicted for Murder in Aid of Racketeering The killer has been indicted on terrorism-related charges that would support a death sentence. By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on November 26th, 2017

The jihadist who killed eight New Yorkers and wounded twelve others in a truck attack along the West Side Highway’s pedestrian path has been indicted on potential death-penalty charges by a federal grand jury in lower Manhattan.

Highlighting the 22 charges announced by the Justice Department on Tuesday are eight counts of murder in aid of racketeering, each of which carries a potential death sentence. There are, in addition, twelve counts of attempted murder in aid of racketeering, each having a ten-year maximum prison term. The indictment further alleges that Saipov provided material support to the Islamic State (ISIS), a designated terrorist organization under federal law. That charge carries a potential sentence of life imprisonment because Saipov’s material support resulted in murders. Finally, there is also a charge of violently damaging an automobile with reckless disregard for human life.

The indictment, as expected, is a marked improvement on the complaint that supported Saipov’s federal arrest three weeks ago. The complaint did not charge the racketeering offenses and relied heavily on the problematic vehicle-damage charge. As I explained at the time:

The criminal complaint is only the first step in the case, really just a means of keeping Saipov detained without bail, not the formal indictment on which he will ultimately be tried. When that indictment is filed, I am hopeful it will include charges of murder in aid of racketeering. This offense (section 1959) is a capital crime, prohibiting murder (as well as other violent crimes) committed “for the purpose of gaining entrance to” a racketeering enterprise. ISIS clearly qualifies as such an enterprise under federal law (under section 1961, it is a group of individuals associated in fact — even though not a legal entity — and it engages in acts of murder, among other depravities). Further, even if Saipov was not a member of ISIS before his killing spree, he was patently seeking entry into the network . . . and he succeeded in getting it. ISIS branded him “one of the caliphate soldiers” in its claim of responsibility.

Prosecutors from the Southern District of New York (SDNY) are now relying on this potentially capital offense. It is important to note, however, that they have not yet filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Power, Sex, and Politics By Angelo Codevilla

By on November 26th, 2017

Power,” Henry Kissinger observed, “is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” Men, but mostly women, have been trading erotic services for access to power since time began.https://amgreatness.com/2017/11/24/power-sex-and-politics/

The ruling class’s recent carrying on over a supposed epidemic of powerful grabbers and gropers runs counter to common sense and experience. If Henry, who resembled less a prince than a frog even in his youth found his connections with power and wealth sufficient to satisfy his longings, so can anyone similarly placed.

Nor is there any evidence of a sudden increase in morality or restraint having cut into the supply of the willing. There is even less reason to believe that the very same arbiters of public behavior who, increasingly, penalize advocacy of restricting sex to men and women married to one another have become defenders of female modesty.

What, then, is the fuss about? It seems as the ruling class’s leadership experiences a major turnover, it is making a minor shift in tactics and in its list of enemies. Herewith, I try to explain.

Washington’s Trade-Offs
First, the basics. During my eight years on the Senate staff, sex was a currency for renting rungs on ladders to power. Uninvolved and with a hygroscopic shoulder, I listened to accounts of the trade, in which some one-third of senators, male senior staff, and corresponding numbers of females seemed to be involved. I write “trade,” because not once did I hear of anyone forcing his attention. Given what seemed an endless supply of the willing, anyone who might feel compelled to do that would have been a loser otherwise unfit for survival in that demanding environment.

This, I wager, is not so different from others’ experiences in Washington. Senior female staffers were far more open than secretaries in describing their conquests of places up the ladder, especially of senators. There was some reticence only in talking about “relationships” with such as John Tower (R-Texas) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) because they were the easiest, and had so many. The prize, of course, was Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.)—rooster over a veritable hen house that was, almost literally, a “chick magnet.” Access to power, or status, or the appearance thereof was on one side, sex on the other. Innocence was the one quality entirely absent on all sides.

In the basic bargain, the female proposes. The power holder has the prerogative to say “no,” or just to do nothing. By a lesser token, wealthy men need not offer cash to have female attention showered on them. Money is silver currency. Power is gold. A few, occasionally, get impatient and grab. But taking egregious behavior as the norm of the relationship between power and sex willfully disregards reality. Banish the grabbing, and the fundamental reality remains unchanged.

The Sins of Others
What, then, are our powerful rulers’ claims of zero tolerance for sexual harassment or sexual commerce about? First, they do not involve the ruling class giving up any of their privileges, never mind what are effectively their harems. They are confessions—not of their own sins, but of the sins of others. The others whose sins they confess are not the friends of those doing the confessing—at least, not their current friends. Yet again, they implicitly validate their own behavior by signaling their own virtue vis à vis others.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Time to Drain the Swamp – Also in Europe by Geert Wilders

By on November 26th, 2017

Our democracies in the Western half of Europe have been subverted. Their goal is no longer to do what the people want. On the contrary, our political elites often do exactly the opposite. Our parliaments promote open-door policies that the majority of the people reject. Our governments sell out sovereignty to the EU against the will of the people. Our rulers welcome ever more Islam, although the majority of the people oppose it.

Our democracies have become fake democracies. They are multi-party dictatorships, ruled by groups of establishment parties…. The establishment parties control everything, not just the politicians in their pay, but also the top brass of the civil service, the mainstream media, even the courts…. They call us “populists” because we stand for what the people want. They even drag us to court.

We need to show that Europe’s streets are our streets, that we want to stay who and what we are, and do not want to be colonized by Islam. Europe belongs to us!

Next month, I will be visiting Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. I have been invited to speak to a group of Czech patriots. The Czechs are a freedom loving people. In 2011, on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan, they named a street in Prague after this great American president and freedom fighter.

This fact reminded me of a shameful event in my home town of The Hague, the seat of the Dutch Parliament and the government of the Netherlands. Look for a Ronald Reagan Street in The Hague and you will find none. A proposal in 2011 to name a street in The Hague after Reagan ran into fierce political opposition. Leftist parties, such as Labor, the Greens and the liberal D66 party, argued that naming a street in honor of Reagan would “do the image of the city no good.” The whole affair ended in a disgraceful political compromise. Last year, a short stretch of a local bicycle path was named the “Reagan and Gorbachev Lane”.

This anecdote is indicative of the difference between East and West in Europe. We can see the same difference in the attitude of their ruling elites towards Islam, the new totalitarianism that is threatening Europe today. In the East, political leaders oppose Islam; in the West, they surrender.

Islam has already gained a strong foothold in Western Europe. Its streets have come to resemble the Middle East, with headscarves everywhere. Parts of Western Europe, such as the Schilderswijk district in The Hague, the Molenbeek borough in Brussels, the banlieues [suburbs] of Paris, Birmingham in Britain, the Rosengård area in Malmö, Sweden, and many other neighborhoods, have become hotbeds of Islamic subversion.

Islam’s totalitarian nature cannot be denied. The command to murder and terrorize non-Muslims is in the Koran. Islam’s prophet Muhammad was a mass murderer and a pedophile. Those who leave Islam supposedly deserve death. And everyone who criticizes Islam and exposes what it actually says, ends up like me: on an Islamic death list.

In the past decades, Islam has entered Western Europe with the millions of immigrants from Islamic countries. Now, the European Union wants to distribute third-world immigrants over all the 28 EU member states. The nations in Central and Eastern Europe reject the EU plans to impose permanent and mandatory relocation quotas for all EU member states. They warn about the dilution of their identity, which is not Islamic, but Judeo-Christian and humanist — rooted in the legacy of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome; not Mecca.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has denounced the EU’s pro-immigration agenda as a means to eradicate the culture and Christian identity of Hungary. Czech President Miloš Zeman is an outspoken opponent of immigration and the Islamification of the Czech Republic. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has said that “Islam has no place in Slovakia” and warns that “migrants change the character of our country.” Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło staunchly defends Poland’s refusal to accept the EU-imposed immigration quotas. “We are not going to take part in this madness,” she says. In the Eastern part of Europe, anti-Islamification and anti-mass migration parties see a surge in popular support.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians vs. Trump: The Battle Begins by Bassam Tawil

By on November 26th, 2017

Although the full details of the proposed plan have yet to be made public, the Palestinians have already made up their mind: Whatever comes from Trump and his Jewish team is against the interests of the Palestinians.

The Palestinians’ rhetorical attacks on the Trump administration are designed to prepare the ground for their rejection of the proposed “ultimate solution.”

Take careful note: these warning shots may well be translated into yet another intifada against Israel under the fabricated pretext that the Americans and Israelis, with the help of some Arab countries, seek to strip the Palestinians of their rights. One wonders when the world will wake up to the fact that those rights have already been stripped from the Palestinians — by none other than their own brainwashing, inciting and corrupt leaders.

Over the past year, the Palestinians have managed to keep under wraps their true feelings about US President Donald Trump and his Middle East envoys and advisors. In all likelihood, they were hoping that the new US administration would endorse their vision for “peace” with Israel.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas ensured that his spokesmen and senior officials spoke with circumspection about Trump and his Middle East advisors and envoys. The top brass of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah felt it was worth giving Trump time to see if he was indeed gullible enough to be persuaded to throw Israel under the bus and fork over their demands.

Well, that bus has long passed.

The Palestinians are now denouncing Trump and his people for their “bias” in favor of Israel. Even more, the Palestinians are openly accusing the Trump administration of “blackmail” and of seeking to “liquidate the Palestinian cause.” To top off the tone, the Palestinians are insinuating that Trump’s top Jewish advisors and envoys — Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman — are more loyal to Israel than to the US.

The Palestinians’ unprecedented rhetorical attacks on the Trump administration should be seen as a sign of how they plan to respond to the US president’s plan for peace in the Middle East, which has been described as the “ultimate solution.” Although the full details of the proposed plan have yet to be made public, the Palestinians have already made up their mind: Whatever comes from Trump and his Jewish team is against the interests of the Palestinians.

Continue reading →
IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why America Can’t Lower Child-Poverty Rates Allowing millions of low-skilled immigrants into the U.S. every year swells the ranks of the poor. Kay S. Hymowitz

By on November 26th, 2017

Articles about America’s high levels of child poverty are a media evergreen. Here’s a typical entry, courtesy of the New York Times’s Eduardo Porter: “The percentage of children who are poor is more than three times as high in the United States as it is in Norway or the Netherlands. America has a larger proportion of poor children than Russia.” That’s right: Russia.

Outrageous as they seem, the assertions are true—at least in the sense that they line up with official statistics from government agencies and reputable nongovernmental organizations like the OECD and UNICEF. International comparisons of the sort that Porter makes, though, should be accompanied by a forest of asterisks. Data limitations, varying definitions of poverty, and other wonky problems are rampant in these discussions.

The lousy child-poverty numbers should come with another qualifying asterisk, pointing to a very American reality. Before Europe’s recent migration crisis, the United States was the only developed country consistently to import millions of very poor, low-skilled families, from some of the most destitute places on earth—especially from undeveloped areas of Latin America—into its communities, schools, and hospitals. Let’s just say that Russia doesn’t care to do this—and, until recently, Norway and the Netherlands didn’t, either. Both policymakers and pundits prefer silence on the relationship between America’s immigration system and poverty, and it’s easy to see why. The subject pushes us headlong into the sort of wrenching trade-offs that politicians and advocates prefer to avoid. Here’s the problem in a nutshell: you can allow mass low-skilled immigration, which many on the left and the right—and probably most poverty mavens—consider humane and quintessentially American. But if you do, pursuing the equally humane goal of substantially reducing child poverty becomes a lot harder.

In 1964, the federal government settled on a standard definition of poverty: an income less than three times the value of a hypothetical basic food basket. (That approach has its flaws, but it’s the measure used in the United States, so we’ll stick with it.) Back then, close to 23 percent of American kids were poor. With the important exception of the years between 1999 and 2007—following the introduction of welfare reform in 1996—when it declined to 16 percent, child poverty has bounced within three points of 20 percent since 1980. Currently, about 18 percent of kids are below the poverty line, amounting to 13,250,000 children. Other Anglo countries have lower child-poverty rates: the OECD puts Canada’s at 15 percent, with the United Kingdom and Australia lower still, between 11 percent and 13 percent. The lowest levels of all—under 10 percent—are found in the Nordic countries: Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Finland.

How does immigration affect those post-1964 American child-poverty figures? Until 1980, it didn’t. The 1924 Immigration Act sharply reduced the number of immigrants from poorer Eastern European and southern countries, and it altogether banned Asians. (Mexicans, who had come to the U.S. as temporary agricultural workers and generally returned to their home country, weren’t imagined as potential citizens and thus were not subject to restrictive quotas.) The relatively small number of immigrants settling in the U.S. tended to be from affluent nations and had commensurate skills. According to the Migration Policy Institute, in 1970, immigrant children were less likely to be poor than were the children of native-born Americans.

Continue reading →
MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Darkest Hour – A Review By Marilyn Penn

By on November 26th, 2017

Call it a case of unfortunate timing, but there are three scenes of Churchill, as played by Gary Oldman, behaving in a way that we are now calling sexual harassment of an employee. The first shows his young, pretty secretary (Lily James) ushered into his bedroom where he dictates to her from his bed; upon finishing, he throws back the covers and tosses his bare legs up in the air as he propels himself out – the camera moves to her shocked reaction. The second has him dictating to her in what looks like a dressing room – we see his bare legs exiting the bathroom as he announces that he is coming out of his shower in a state of nature – she hurries away. The third has him taking a seat next to her at her desk and staring at her intensely; after a few moments she squirms uncomfortably and asks if anything is wrong – he states that he is just looking at her.

There have been three Churchills released within a few months of each other – John Lithgow in The Crown, Brian Cox in Churchill and now Oldman who has received the most praise. He is the least recognizable, having been outfitted in major prosthetic get-ups and ample padding and he plays the man as louche, drunk and unforgivably cantankerous. Although there may be biographical justification for some of this, it is played so broadly and noisily that we see too little of the calm, controlled statesman and heroic leader whom many consider the outstanding figure of the twentieth century. I can only assume that this is what director Joe Wright had in mind since Oldman has proven to be a talented actor in the past and the one-dimensional portrayal he gives us here may be due to editorial decisions in the cutting room. Both Darkest Hour and Churchill show Winston as an outlier challenging the conventional political and military advice for the evacuation at Dunkirk and the landing in Normandy. Both show his stubborness, his persuasiveness and his ability to summon his talent for oratory to instill enormous courage in his constituents Of the three, only Lithgow achieves the dignity that is missing from the other two characterizations.

Darkest Hour offers the most disturbing portrayal of a man subject to depression, addicted to alcohol and tobacco and temperamentally unable or unwilling to control his outbursts. The film reminds us of his parentage – Winston’s father died of tertiary syphillis and his beautiful mother was undoubtedly “too much loved.” The decibel level of this movie is high, Oldman’s performance is histrionic in the extreme and we leave the theater wondering how to forgive him his excesses when they have filled the screen for more than two hours. Though it’s worth seeing Darkest Hour for its historic content, I prefer the more controlled performance by Brian Cox and urge you to see Churchill to and judge for yourself.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL….MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on November 26th, 2017

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Repairing severed spinal cord. Scientists at Israel’s Technion Institute and Tel Aviv University have reconnected severed spinal cords of rats. Previously paralyzed rodents were implanted with cells induced into a neural phenotype, and regained motor control. It could lead to major advances in treating spinal cord injury.
http://www.sagol.tau.ac.il/en/prof-dani-offen-israeli-scientists-make-paralyzed-rats-walk-again/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2017.00589/full

Predicting diabetes. (TY Atid-EDI) I reported previously (twice) on Israel’s Medial EarlySign and its blood test for early detection of colon cancer. Now Medial has developed an algorithm with a 64% success rate for identifying which of 645,000 prediabetics were at risk of becoming diabetics within 12 months.
http://earlysign.com/news-and-events/medial-earlysign-machine-learning-algorithm-predicts-risk-prediabetics-becoming-diabetic-within-1-year-2/

Hope for bone marrow failure patients. Israeli biotech Pluristem has opened clinical centers in Israel and extended the trial of its stem cell treatment for insufficient hematopoietic recovery following hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). HCT is performed when bone marrow fails for reasons including cancer treatment.
http://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/following-approval-of-israels-ministry-of-health-pluristem-extends-its-trial-of-plxr18-to-treat-20171026-00612

Managing chronically ill patients. (TY Atid-EDI) I reported previously (Nov 2012) on Israel’s Vaica and its system for reminding individuals to take their meds. Vaica has now launched Capsuled – a personally customized medication adherence solution.
http://www.vaica.com/vaicas-complete-solution/ https://www.youtube.com/embed/GYbcNnfm8fE?rel=0

Medical solutions for disasters. The Israeli pavilion at MEDICA 2017 in Dusseldorf, showcased specialized emergency medical services products for intensive care, respiratory, cardiac, central nervous system and trauma. Israeli companies presenting included Inovytec, Medisim, CardiacX and Guide in Medical.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-firms-display-life-saving-tech-in-dusseldorf/

Preparing Toronto hospital for disasters. A team of experts from Israel’s Rambam hospital shared their knowledge with Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children on how to prepare for disasters, such as mass casualties. As the city gets larger, the Canadian hospital needs to prepare for taking many casualties at one time.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-team-trains-torontos-sick-kids-hospital-on-disaster-preparedness/

Treating children in Georgia. Twice a year, for the past five years, doctors from Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center have traveled to capital city of Tbilisi to perform operations on local youngsters with serious congenital defects. The delegation consists of pediatric surgeons, anesthesiologists and intensive care specialists.
http://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Rambam-doctors-operate-on-children-in-Georgia-514601

The most teenage volunteer EMTs. (TY Hazel) 60 percent of the volunteer Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) staff of Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency-response network, are teenagers – the highest percentage in the world. 11,000 Israeli teenagers work voluntary shifts on MDA ambulances throughout Israel.
https://www.israel21c.org/why-israel-has-worlds-highest-percentage-of-teenage-emts/

Israeli MS treatment featured on UK TV. The normally anti-Israel UK TV Channel4 aired a rare positive feature about Mark Lewis and the trial stem cell treatment he received for Multiple Sclerosis at Israel’s Hadassah hospital. https://www.thejc.com/search-for-a-miracle-cure-follows-patient-31-mark-lewis-as-israeli-medics-develop-ms-treatment-1.448893
http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/miracle-in-jerusalem-mark-lewis-seeks-out-a-revolutionary-ms-cure/

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Call of Freedom Giving thanks for the world’s most powerful idea By Matthew Continetti ****

By on November 26th, 2017

“From the Berlin Wall, to Vietnamese and Cuban boat people, to the DMZ, the prisoners of communism run in only one direction: toward liberty and self-government, toward the bounty of the marketplace and the possibilities of representative democracy.”

On November 13, a 24-year-old North Korean soldier, known only by his surname Oh, commandeered a jeep and sped toward the De-Militarized Zone that for 64 years has separated his communist homeland from the democratic capitalist south.

As he approached the border, the young man abandoned the vehicle and scrambled on foot toward the line of control. North Korean soldiers began firing on him. He was hit five or six times before collapsing onto South Korean ground. Transported to a hospital in Suwon, near Seoul, doctors performed emergency surgery. They discovered and extracted parasitic worms from his small intestine. Diagnosed with tuberculosis and hepatitis B, he is nonetheless expected to recover.

Oh risked everything to live in freedom. He has joined the ranks of other defectors, refugees, and exiles that fled oppression for the chance of a life free of tyrannical control. From the Berlin Wall, to Vietnamese and Cuban boat people, to the DMZ, the prisoners of communism run in only one direction: toward liberty and self-government, toward the bounty of the marketplace and the possibilities of representative democracy.

Many did not—many do not—make it. They die imprisoned, like the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, or do not survive the crossing, like Peter Fletcher, murdered by the Border Troops of the German Democratic Republic at the age of 18.

And there are millions more still who, having been born and raised in democratic capitalist societies, do not fully recognize or appreciate the novelty and blessing of their lives. The story of Oh is not only a reminder that the call of freedom persists. It is a rebuke to those who ignore freedom’s song.

For it has become fashionable, on both left and right, to downplay or ignore or deprecate the idea of freedom, to blame individualism, self-determination, and choice for inequality, pollution, corruption, immorality, decline, and other tragic aspects of the human condition. The fact that all of these pathologies flourish in autocratic, socialist, and communist societies as well as in our own seemingly escapes the notice of the intellectual critics of freedom.

Even so, we are told that free will is a delusion, that we are better off being “nudged” by our cognitive and moral superiors, that freedom and democracy are like rubber bands that snap back when stretched to the limit. “We are drowning in freedom,” says one editor. Tell that to Oh.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

#14 The Humanitarian Hoax of Unconditional Love: Killing America With Kindness by Linda Goudsmit

By on November 26th, 2017

The humanitarian hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Unconditional love is the Holy Grail for millennials. They talk about it, dream about it, want it, need it, and are outraged if anyone dares to question its value. Unconditional love is, after all, “settled” science among millennial “experts” whose opinions are accepted and observed with religious conformity by their devotees.

Wikipedia defines unconditional love as “affection without any limitations or love without conditions.” The current demand for unconditional love is consistent with the left-wing liberal campaign to value feelings over facts and effort over achievement as metrics for what is good in society. So, let’s examine unconditional love.

First, an appropriate season for unconditional love exists during infancy and early childhood. Parents accept anything and everything that babies do – we love them for just being. Babies and young children lack the ability for any self-control so we do not expect standards of behavior – anything goes. Unconditional love separates the individual from his/her behavior which is entirely appropriate for infants and young children. When the demand for unconditional love is extended into adulthood the individual inappropriately demands to be loved without regard for his/her behavior in the same way an infant is loved.

Relationships are structured with written, spoken, and unspoken rules and standards of behavior. Family relationships, social relationships, business relationships, professional relationships, sexual relationships are all organized on some level by rules that participants are expected to follow. Societies are similarly organized by their infrastructure of rules/laws that citizens are expected to observe. What makes infancy and early childhood so exceptional is its distinguishing “no rules” formula. Society temporarily accepts the separation of the individual from his/her behavior. What happens when a society refuses adulthood and instead strives for permanent childhood?

When the no rules formula is protracted and adulthood is rejected the result is an infantilized population and social chaos. Consider the societal implications of adults who refuse to abide by laws – traffic laws, property laws, environmental laws, civil rights laws, family laws. All rules and regulations are considered anathema to chronological adults living in the subjective reality of “no rules” infancy including college campuses that no longer respect Constitutional guarantees of free speech. Fragile infantilized students require safe spaces and trigger warnings to protect them from ideas that they disagree with. College students have historically been considered future leaders. How can a leader be a leader in a pluralist society if he/she cannot even listen to an opposing point of view?

Continue reading →
HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

South Florida Muslim Leader Posts Video in Order to “Beat the F**king Jews” How long will Crime Stoppers and Citizens’ Crime Watch continue to harbor Sofian Zakkout? Joe Kaufman

By on November 24th, 2017

Sofian Zakkout, President of the Miami, Florida-based American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), likes to air out his extremist view in public, regularly posting his bigoted and radical provocations onto social media. This month has been no exception, as he has taken to Facebook to belittle the members of the Jewish community with a post that refers to them as “fucking Jews.” Though many of Zakkout’s Muslim colleagues and acquaintances may sympathize with him, this should be alarming to the people who serve with him on local anti-crime boards.

On November 10th, AMANA President Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout promoted on his personal Facebook page a video with the following description in Arabic: “The opening of the al-Aqsa Mosque after pressure on Israel. Praise be to Allah. Spread the video to beat the fucking Jews.”

Israeli authorities had restricted access to the mosque, following the July 14th murder of two Israeli police officers by three Palestinian gunmen, at the entrance to the mosque. In late July, the mosque was reopened to all Palestinians.

Zakkout had taken the video from a Facebook page, which goes under the name ‘Campaign for the Victory of al-Aqsa Mosque.’ The site actively promotes Hamas and glorifies knife and vehicle-ramming attacks perpetrated by Palestinians against Israeli civilians. It publishes Hamas announcements of terrorist attacks and features a large number of Hamas-related images, including different photos of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin, Hamas suicide bomber Reem Riyashi, and toddlers dressed in Hamas garb.

The site also features much anti-Semitic content. One photo on the site depicts three Orthodox Jewish men sitting and reading; a description on the side in Arabic labels the three “the descendants of the Jewish pigs.” Another photo portrays a Hamas member waving a flag with the statement next to him in Arabic, “Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews, Muhammad’s army will return.” The threatening slogan is in reference to the Saudi Arabian city of Khaybar, where Muhammad’s disciples attacked and enslaved the city’s Jewish inhabitants, in the year 629.

It makes perfect sense that Zakkout would share a video from this particular site, as he too embraces both Hamas and anti-Semitism.

Continue reading →