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Ruth King

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

France: Muslims In, Jews Out by Giulio Meotti

By on November 15th, 2017

Suburbs have become transformed into one of the most visible signs of the Islamization of France. Anti-Semitism is devouring the French Republic.

While Jewish symbols disappear from France, Islamic symbols proliferate, from burkinis on the beaches to veils in the workplace. Jews who have not fled France are trying to become “invisible”.

France’s suburbs are rapidly becoming apartheid societies. Hatred of Jews has become the gateway to “la France soumise” — the submission of France.

Suburbs (“banlieues”) — distant from the affluent boulevards and bistros of Paris — form the “other France”. They are the “peripheral France”, (“La France Périphérique”) as the geographer Christophe Guilluy calls them in an important book. They are where “living together” between communities has really been tested.

In the last 20 years, these French suburbs have not only become “concentrations of poverty and social isolation”, but have gone from being some of France’s most densely-populated Jewish areas to “lost territories of the Republic”, according to the great historian Georges Bensoussan, in his book, Les territoires perdus de la République.

These suburbs have become transformed into one of the most visible signs of the Islamization of France.

Anti-Semitism has returned as one of Europe’s worst diseases. France hosts Europe’s largest Jewish community, and Jews have been fleeing the suburbs to either emigrate or move to gentrified districts of the cities, where they feel more protected. What happens to the Jews will have a seismic impact on the entire continent.

In the Parisian suburb of Bagneux, someone recently vandalized the memorial plaque for Ilan Halimi, a young Jew who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by a “barbarian gang” in 2006, just for being a Jew. At the time, it was France’s first case of murderous anti-Semitism in many years. After it, Islamists murdered Jews at a school in Toulouse and a kosher supermarket in Paris.

As Le Monde reported in a chilling new inquiry, anti-Semitism now knocks daily at the doors of the French Jews. It has been creating a serious migratory trend: French Jews have become “internal refugees”.

French Jews are now not only threatened in their synagogues and schools, but in their homes. A Jewish family was recently held hostage, beaten and robbed in their home in the suburb of Seine Saint-Denis. Before that, a retired Jewish doctor and schoolteacher, Sarah Halimi, was beaten and thrown to her death from her balcony, in the Belleville district of Paris. The man who murdered her, while yelling “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is Greater”), was a Muslim neighbor. Two Jewish brothers were recently attacked on a Paris street by men wielding a hacksaw and shouting “You dirty Jews! You are going to die”.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe’s Collusion in Palestinian Illegal Land Grab by Ruthie Blum

By on November 15th, 2017

It takes particular gall for European Union representatives to express “humanitarian” outrage at Israel for razing illegal structures in the West Bank — while the EU is in league with Palestinian criminals who have been brazenly stealing Arab-owned land.

There has been massive “behind-the-scenes” Palestinian construction, the goal of which is “to create irreversible facts on the ground,” and completely encircle Jerusalem. Once the buildings – which “do not meet even the most minimum standards required by engineers, architects and housing planners” – are erected, the apartments are sold cheaply ($25,000-$50,000), to guarantee they are purchased and populated quickly.

If there is any debt to pay here, it is not Israel’s to Europe, but the other way around. Belgium and the rest of the EU should be embracing its natural ally, the democratic Jewish state, against all forces that support and perpetrate violence, while rejecting peace.

In what is being called an “unprecedented move,” eight European countries — members of an initiative called the West Bank Protection Consortium — recently announced that they had drafted a formal letter to the Israeli government, demanding the reimbursement of €30,000. According to Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Luxembourg, Ireland and Denmark, this was the sum spent by the Consortium on materials provided for two structures (modular classrooms equipped with solar panels) erected for Palestinians and Bedouin in the West Bank, and dismantled by Israel at the end of August.

What these EU countries failed to mention, however, is that the structures were illegal, and therefore should not have been built in the first place. Instead, in its letter, the Consortium accused Israel of causing “suffering to Palestinian civilians,” through its “practice of coercive measures such as demolitions and confiscations of humanitarian supplies as well as infrastructure for schools,” and of “contradict[ing] Israel’s engagement according to the international point of view…”

This is worse than disingenuous. Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, signed on the White House lawn between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, in the presence of US President Bill Clinton, Area C of the West Bank is under Israeli military and civil jurisdiction, and only Israel has the authority to build or approve building there.

Oslo II, which created the Palestinian Authority (PA), divides the West Bank into three geographical sections – Area A, Area B and Area C — and specifies which government controls each. Area C is under the military and civil jurisdiction of Israel alone.

This is something that the EU acknowledged, as recently as last year, in a statement on its official website:

“Israel retains almost exclusive control over law enforcement, planning and construction in Area C.

“In line with the recommendations of the EU Foreign Affairs Council Conclusions, the European Union works in Area C on two fronts: humanitarian assistance and development.

“The EU provides humanitarian assistance to communities in need in Area C in accordance with the humanitarian imperative. At the same time, the EU works with the Palestinian Authority to develop Area C and support Palestinian presence there…”

Yet, for years, there has been non-stop building in Area C, on land between Israel and Jordan as far south as Gush Etzion, in a transparent effort to populate Area C with Arabs by building “irreversible facts on the ground.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Free speech professor fired from UCLA warns: No one is safe Mark Mcgreal

By on November 15th, 2017

A former UCLA communications professor known for his staunch defense of free speech who was recently fired by the university offered a sobering message to a room full of conservative- and libertarian-leaning students enrolled there.

“If they can get rid of a professor like me for speaking his mind, what is stopping them from doing the same thing to all of you,” Keith Fink asked the Bruin Republicans.

“We are in the middle of another Red Scare,” said Fink, an attorney and longtime lecturer who was terminated by the university earlier this year despite his popularity among students. His classes, which focused on free speech rights, often garnered waiting lists with 200-plus students.

He made the comments during his speech Wednesday for the GOP campus club. During his talk, called “UCLA’s Dirty Tricks Against Conservatives,” Fink said of UCLA’s leadership: “They twist the rules, they distort the rules, they ignore the rules.”

As for his performance review, Fink said he was told to submit two lists to the administration for peer evaluations: one list with names of individuals he felt were biased against him and another set of individuals he felt could accurately critique his class. Ultimately, no one from Fink’s list of accurate critiquers was chosen, he said.

Greg Bryant, the communication department’s vice department chair, was asked to critique the class. Fink said he did not believe that Bryant was qualified to evaluate his class because he “is not a litigator. He teaches a class about communicating with dolphins!”

Bryant wrote a two-page evaluation of the class that attacked Fink and his teaching style, calling Fink’s class “unwelcoming.” However, Thomas Miller, a UCLA communications professor, was also sitting in the class and wrote a five-page report applauding the class, Fink told the students.

Fink also wrote a 48-page response to Bryant’s evaluation, a response he said “tore Bryant’s paper to shreds.” Bryant’s evaluation was later thrown out and not mentioned by the administration after Fink’s response, he said

Fink was fired over the summer after he did not pass a performance review, one he said was biased against him. He told students the current communications department chair, Kerri Johnson, “despised” him and wanted him gone.

He called Johnson “very far to the left,” putting her in direct contrast with Fink, who said he doesn’t believe in “safe spaces or microaggressions.”

Fink acknowledged to students that his classes did get intense from time to time. He said that the socratic dialogue was inherently confrontational, and, as someone who mocks safe spaces, being politically correct was never a goal of Fink’s. Fink said that if students didn’t want to be challenged then they should “go take the dolphin class.”

Asked if he would ever come back to UCLA, he said: “I could teach many, many places. I want to teach here.”

After Johnson took over as department chair, Fink said his classes were targeted. First, she capped enrollment into his popular classes, leaving dozens of empty seats and frustrating many students, he said.

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EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Newly obtained documents show anti-Israel professors ‘covertly’ took over major academic group: lawsuit Matthew Stein

By on November 15th, 2017

Including the infamous Steven Salaita and Jasbir Puarhttps://www.thecollegefix.com/post/38942/

After four professors beat back the American Studies Association’s attempt to get their lawsuit dismissed this spring, they discovered a trove of evidence that confirmed their fears about the power and reach of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

Nearly 17,000 documents belatedly turned over by current and former ASA leaders show that BDS supporters waged a campaign to “covertly” take control of the ASA and use it to support the BDS movement, according to a revised version of the lawsuit submitted Thursday.

The plaintiffs – current and former ASA members – told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia they have new claims for breach of contract and “acts in violation of specific [ASA] bylaws,” and have added “discrete counts and detailed factual allegations” in response to the court’s March ruling.

They also added four new defendants who serve on the “Organizing Committee and/or Advisory Committee” of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, known as USACBI.

Two have national reputations: Steven Salaita (inset), who was ousted by the University of Illinois before he was formally hired owing to his “venomous” anti-Israel tweets, including one that “liked” an offhand death threat to a Jewish journalist; and Jasbir Puar, a Rutgers University “queer theory” professor who has accused Israel of conducting scientific experiments on Palestinians and harvesting their organs.

“This case is about the illegal, hostile takeover of a non-profit, academic association by leaders of an anti-Israel group,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Jennifer Gross of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights under Law, whose mission is to fight antisemitism on college campuses.

She said in a Thursday press release that the USACBI activists violated ASA’s own rules to get and abuse “positions of trust” so they could “exploit the assets of the ASA to advance the agenda of the BDS movement.”

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Peter Smith Terror Incognito

By on November 15th, 2017

Marathon runners in Boston, Orlando revellers, strollers on the Promenade des Anglais, pop concert patrons in Manchester and, most recently, New York cyclists are victims of Islamic terror. They are also victims of politicians and media enablers who refuse to acknowledge the blindlingly obvious.

Evil has many faces. The recent mass shootings in Las Vegas and in the church in Sutherland Springs in Texas are stark reminders of that. The motives of Stephen Paddock and Devin Kelley remain unclear at this stage. Whether they will ever be brought to light in a conclusive way I don’t know.

The explanation of mental illness is often a first port of call in these kinds of cases. For the most part, that seems to me to be superficial. Anyone who callously murders men, women and children as though they are vermin is undoubtedly unbalanced. This is true whether or not they’ve ever been treated or incarcerated for mental illness. The question to be answered is what else is going on?

Sometimes, the ‘what else’ is clear. When the IRA planted bombs in public places no-one was in doubt about motive, even if those culpable were certifiable maniacs. Motive is central to closure as it is often to prevention.

Motive can come down to personal aggrievement. Disturbingly, that might have been the case for Paddock and Kelley. That remains to be unravelled. What did not require unravelling was the motive of IRA bombers. They openly stated their motive. Equally, those who massacre in the name of Allah are not shy about their motive. And here perspective is required to confound the news cycle.

Those who kill for idiosyncratic personal reasons are in a quite different and much less threatening category than those who systematically kill for a cause. Kelley’s church shooting on November 5, in which he killed 26 people and injured another 20, is horrific on any scale. However, it should not at all supplant in our minds Sayfullo Saipov mowing down cyclists in a rented truck in Lower Manhattan on October 31, killing eight and injuring eleven.

The reason is clear. Saipov’s crime is one of over 30,000 similarly motivated crimes since 9/11. All of these crimes are acts of Islamic terrorism. All form part of a global jihad committed to the establishment of a global Islamic caliphate. This is international serial killing on steroids.

It requires no unravelling of motive. Simply read the Koran. What it requires is resolute combatting. But how? Our political leaders are quislings. Most of them anyway.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Fake News: 53 Pastors Didn’t Endorse Roy Moore After the Sexual Assault Allegations By Tyler O’Neil

By on November 15th, 2017

Contrary to numerous media reports, 53 pastors didn’t just endorse Roy Moore after the sexual assault allegations against him. Conservative Christians are very divided over whether or not to continue their support. That did not stop quite a few outlets from portraying Christian leaders as utter hypocrites, however.

“A group of 53 Alabama pastors signed onto a letter pledging their support for alleged child molester and Senate candidate Roy Moore,” Newsweek’s Carlos Ballesteros began his report. “The letter, first posted on Moore’s wife’s personal Facebook page, describes the embattled candidate as a friend to religious conservatives and a staunch opponent of the ‘Washington establishment.'”

The Newsmax report also said the letter came out Monday. “Fifty-three Alabama pastors on Monday released a letter of support for Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore despite multiple accusations of sexual misconduct on his part,” that story read.

Even conservative outlets like The Washington Examiner and RedState reported this fake news. AL.com, HuffPost, and the The Daily Caller also originally reported this lie.

What actually happened? Moore’s wife Kayla reposted an old letter … from August 15! Here’s the letter she posted:

Pastor’s Letter

Dear friends and fellow Alabamians,

For decades, Roy Moore has been an immovable rock in the culture wars – a bold defender of the “little guy,” a just judge to those who came before his court, a warrior for the unborn child, defender of the sanctity of marriage, and a champion for religious liberty. Judge Moore has stood in the gap for us, taken the brunt of the attack, and has done so with a rare, unconquerable resolve.

As a consequence of his unwavering faith in God and his immovable convictions for Biblical principles, he was ousted as Chief Justice in 2003. As a result, he continued his life pursuit by starting the Foundation for Moral Law, which litigates religious liberty cases around our Nation. After being re-elected again to Chief Justice in 2012, by an overwhelming majority, he took another round of persecution for our faith as he stood up for the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

The Media That Cried Wolf By Tom Trinko

By on November 15th, 2017

In a week in which CNN cried wolf when there was no wolf by falsely condemning Trump for poor fish-feeding habits, is it surprising that decades-old charges of sexual impropriety being leveled against Judge Roy Moore aren’t being unquestioningly accepted by voters?

We can all remember a number of times when the media has proclaimed a wolf was present when we later discovered they were wrong.

There is Global Warming… err, Climate Change where we were told that by now the world would be doomed but somehow that hasn’t happened.

We were told that the black man shot in Ferguson was holding his hands up to surrender.

In the last century the media informed us that overpopulation would lead to mass starvation. Of course, that was bogus.

We were told that many women had been assaulted by Trump but the fact that they all apparently disappeared after the election makes reasonable people wonder if there was a wolf.

The media can’t stop talking about Russian colluding with Trump even though after months and months of investigation absolutely nothing has been found.

Clearly a reasonable person would hesitate before assuming that salacious charges raised weeks before a contentious election by a highly biased news source is true. The media has cried wolf so often when there was no wolf that sane people reserve judgement until there’s more proof.

That attitude is exacerbated by the fact that when wolves do appear the media often fails to mention them.

We know that none of the major networks have mentioned the fact that for more than two months a Democratic senator has been on trial for accepting bribes.

We know that the media ignored a credible claim that Bill Clinton raped a woman.

We know that the media ignores the fact that thousands of blacks are shot each year in Democrat-run cities.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

A political reality moment at the NYT By David Zukerman

By on November 15th, 2017

New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, in his November 13 column, “Democrats, Don’t Be Fooled By Victory,” reflected on Democratic election wins, particularly the re-election of a Democrat as governor of Virginia.

Leonhardt noted: “The reality is, the Democratic victories occurred almost entirely in areas that had voted for Hillary Clinton last year. In Trump country, Democrats continued to struggle.” Leonhardt went on to cite Virginia, cited the study of “Patrick Ruffini, a savvy conservative pollster,” that of the 15 legislative districts that flipped from Republican to Democrat, “only a single one of those 15 districts had voted for Trump.” Leonhardt also pointed out that Ralph Northam, Virginia’s governor-elect, did worse than the current governor, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, “outside of the big metropolitan areas,” having “fared worse” than McAuliffe in 89 of Virginia’s 133 counties and cities.

Leonhardt advised Democrats “to get the white working class to focus on the working-class part of their identity rather than the white part.” This, however, would require first, that Democrats put an end to disparaging white voters and, second, that they shift their campaign pitch from demonizing President Trump to finding ways and means of seeking common ground with his voters.

An exchange on ABC’s “This Week,” November 12, between Martha Raddatz and Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez indicates that a Democratic shift away from the politics of Trump-hate will not be easy for the left:

RADDATZ: OK. In our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, 61 percent of Americans say Democratic leaders are mainly criticizing Trump, not presenting alternatives. Is the Democratic message too much about Trump and not enough about your vision?

PEREZ: Oh, we were leading with our values in Virginia and elsewhere. And, again, we talked about health care a lot, because health care is a right for all, not a privilege for a few. And the number one issue for voters in Virginia was health care. They understand that the Republicans are trying to take their health care away.

RADDATZ: Let’s go back to President Trump again — and again, 61 percent of Americans say Democratic leaders are mainly criticizing Trump. You say that’s not true. Billionaire Tom Steyer, he’s the single biggest donor to the Democratic Party in the last two election cycles, put millions of dollars behind an ad calling for President Trump’s impeachment.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Middle East’s Problems Are Really Our Problems By Shoshana Bryen

By on November 15th, 2017

It’s our problem, actually, and we’ve made it theirs.

It is the West that simultaneously wants “the Arab Spring” and “stability.” Democracy and strong government control. Honest government and stable kleptocrats.

Check out our split-brain reaction to the Palestinian Authority. By rights, the U.S. should have nothing to do with people who venerate and pay for terror against civilians; teach their children that their country is “from the (Jordan) River to the (Mediterranean) Sea; rob donors and international agencies blind; jail people for their Facebook posts; hold office eight years after the end of a single elected term; refuse to seat an elected parliament; and refuse to acknowledge the permanence and legitimacy of America’s ally, Israel. And yet the U.S. treats Palestinian leaders as if they were diplomats, declines to close the PLO “embassy” in Washington, trains their police, maintains the functional equivalent of an embassy in eastern Jerusalem for them – while declining to do the same for the State of Israel in western Jerusalem, and gives priority to the so-called “peace process” over security for our democratic ally.

In the name of “stability.”

We’re not much better in the rest of the Arab world. Knocking off the Taliban in 2002 and Saddam Hussein in 2003, the U.S. installed governments presumed to be based on American-style democratic norms. The Taliban is thoroughly resurgent, while American casualties rise. Iraq ended up with ISIS, Iranian and Iranian-sponsored militias, and a Baghdad government beating on our Kurdish allies. The 2011 “Arab Spring” was supposed to be the harbinger of Arab governments that honored Western education, free speech, civil society, women’s rights, regular elections, and tolerance of minorities and minority opinion. That was supposed to be Libya after we ousted Gaddafi in 2012 and how it was going to be when the CIA-armed “moderate Syrians” ousted Bashar Assad. How’s that working out?

Over the weekend, in a joint statement, President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump agreed that “[t]here is no military solution to the conflict in Syria.” In the official communiqué produced on the margins of the conference in Da Nang, the two presidents “[c]onfirmed that the ultimate political solution to the conflict must be forged through the Geneva process pursuant to UNSCR 2254. They also took note of President Asad’s recent commitment to the Geneva process and constitutional reform and elections as called for under UNSCR 2254.”

Assad wins with our blessing. Never mind the 500,000-plus Syrian casualties, the 4.8 million Syrians who fled to camps in the region, the 6.6 million internally displaced, and the million who have requested asylum in Europe. Maybe it was just an effort to show increasing “stability” in the region, but it is an example of how willing countries – including Russia – are to dissemble so as not to admit that Iran and its militias have no intention of leaving Syria and are, in fact, building a permanent base less than 30 miles from Israel’s border. There will be no stability.

Now we’re dissembling on Lebanon – and on Saudi Arabia – neither of which was stable when the media suddenly discovered them.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

ISRAEL :THE WEST’S VITAL STRATEGIC ASSET

By on November 15th, 2017

One of the many things the west fails to grasp about the State of Israel is how important it is to the security of the west, as well as the role that the Jews of that land have played in helping defend western lives since before Israel was reborn.http://www.melaniephillips.com/wests-vital-strategic-asset/

Col Richard Kemp, Britain’s former commander in Afghanistan, has written a greatpiece about this that should be essential reading. Here’s a flavour:

“For many years Western nations have depended heavily on Israeli intelligence, and the civil war in Syria and the rise of the Islamic State have even further increased the West’s reliance on Israeli intelligence… Of a far more sensitive and of course highly classified nature, Israel makes a major contribution to Western nuclear defences. On the homeland security front few Europeans are aware that Israeli technology safeguards such iconic symbols as Buckingham Palace, Heathrow Airport, the Eiffel Tower, and the Vatican.

But as we who have worked in the intelligence world know, action is premised on more than capability. Israel is not a vital strategic asset because of capability alone. Intent is equally important.

Why did the farmers and scouts of Hanita take such risks and make such sacrifices for the British in 1940? Neither they nor their fellow Jews who sustained and fought for the Eighth Army were under any obligation to do so. But nevertheless in the 1940s the Jews of Palestine contributed much more to the Allied war effort than all of the Arab nations combined who between them had over 50 times the resources of the Jews.

… Why do European countries exploit Israel’s capabilities with one hand and stab her in the back with the other? One word sums it up: appeasement. Every European country has a large and growing Muslim population and an increasing fear of Islamic terrorism. Political leaders believe that a harsh approach toward Israel will give electoral advantage in respect of their Muslim populations and also discourage Islamic terrorists from attacking at home.

A much longer-standing target of their appeasement is the Arab world itself and concern about the negative impact that their dealings with Israel will have on their relations with other countries in the Middle East.

But the balance has been shifting and European diplomacy has struggled to keep up.For many years Israel has had close strategic relations with two of its main Arab neighbours. And today in the face of a growing fear of Iran and the rise of radical jihadism, other Arab countries are increasingly, if cautiously and quietly, looking toward Israel for protection and assistance.

The Arab world will not suddenly fall in love with the Jewish State, but the sands are shifting and in their own security interests, Western states also now need to re-evaluate their relationships with Israel and appreciate what is the balance of cost and benefit to them.

… A modern day Balfour Declaration could be recognition of the strategic value of the Jewish state in today’s global struggle in the form of full membership of a reformed NATO, which would benefit all of our strategic interests and serve also to undermine international efforts to isolate Israel.”

Bravo.

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