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Ruth King

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End Abbas’s ‘Pay for Slay’: Pass the Taylor Force Act Both Palestinians and Israelis will benefit if we stop rewarding terrorists. By Douglas J. Feith & Sander Gerber

By on May 3rd, 2017

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority (PA) is scheduled to call this week on President Trump. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress is considering the Taylor Force Act, which would require Abbas to either dismantle his government’s system of rewards for terrorists or forfeit American financial aid. The proposed law is controversial largely because the PA presents a confusing picture of itself.

To much of the world, the PA represents hope for a consensual resolution of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. Created by the 1993 Oslo peace accords, it is widely recognized as the Palestinians’ representative body. Its leader was popularly elected. President Obama and other leaders have described the PA as moderate, committed to peace, and opposed to anti-Israeli violence. What seems to confirm its reputation for moderation is its rivalry with Hamas, the extremist Islamist group that the U.S. government rightly designates as terrorists. The PA’s security forces cooperate with the Israeli Defense Forces against Hamas.

All of that is on the one hand. On the other, the PA is a nightmare of bad leadership.

It is anti-democratic. Its officials are notoriously corrupt. It’s a source of torrential anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish propaganda. Though it helps Israel fight those terrorists who oppose both Israel and the PA, it actively foments anti-Israel terrorism in its own domain through its formal legislative and bureaucratic system of professional and cash benefits for Palestinians who commit knifings, axe-murders, shootings, and car-rammings.

Abbas was elected to a four-year presidential term in 2005. Popular dissatisfaction with the PA’s pervasive corruption put his reelection in doubt, so no new elections were scheduled. He simply remains in power.

Abbas says that he supports peace, but the Israeli government offered him a generous deal in 2008. The Israelis had just handed all of Gaza over to the PA. They offered him virtually all the West Bank, with unprecedented concessions on Jerusalem. He nevertheless scorned the deal.

Abbas and his PA colleagues are bound and determined to perpetuate the conflict with Israel. Their personal interests require it. If the conflict ended, they would lose foreign aid, which makes their lucrative corruption possible. They would stop receiving invitations to the White House and other gratifying diplomatic attention. They would cease to be the leaders of a longstanding and proudly uncompromising national struggle, forfeiting their self-respect and prestige, especially in the Arab and Muslim worlds. For them, peace would be hell.

But peace could enormously benefit the Palestinian people. It could open a path to greater freedom and prosperity for them and save their children from the fatal lure of “martyrdom.” Those interests, alas, don’t influence PA policy.

The PA pays lump sums and lifetime salaries to terrorists and their families. The size of the payments correlates to the number of their victims and the severity of the harm inflicted on them.

As Abbas heads for Washington, U.S. officials should understand that at the heart of the Palestinian–Israeli problem is the conflict of interests between Palestinian leaders and their own people. That’s the context in which Congress should consider the Taylor Force Act.

Of all that’s wrong with the way the PA operates, nothing is more harmful than the elaborate apparatus it has created to push its people to become terrorists. It’s known as “pay for slay.” The PA has created two (two!) ministries specifically for this purpose, with combined budgets exceeding $330 million in 2016. The PA pays lump sums and lifetime salaries to terrorists and their families. The size of the payments correlates to the number of their victims and the severity of the harm inflicted on them. The payments dwarf the average monthly salaries of ordinary working inhabitants of the West Bank.

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David Singer: United Nations’ Fabricated Arab Narrative Deceives Academics

By on May 3rd, 2017

The United Nations publication “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem 1917-1988” (“Study”) has deliberately misrepresented the actual wording of General Assembly Resolution 181 passed on 29 November 1947 – deceiving many academics who have disseminated the Study’s false message.

The Study has been published by the Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat for, and under the guidance of, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.

The offending statement in the Study misleadingly declares:

“After investigating various alternatives the United Nations proposed the partitioning of Palestine into two independent States, one Palestinian Arab and the other Jewish, with Jerusalem internationalized.”

The actual wording of Resolution 181 stated:

“Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in Part III of this Plan, shall come into existence in Palestine….”

The Study omits to mention that 78 per cent of Palestine had already become an independent Arab State in 1946 and been renamed the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan.

The Study’s claim that Resolution 181 called for an “independent Palestinian Arab State” was not accidental but deliberately done to deceive and mislead.

Resolution 181 had denied the existence of any distinctly identifiable Palestinian people in 1947.

The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine had also only spoken of the “existing non- Jewish communities in Palestine” in 1922.

“Palestinians” were first defined in the 1964 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Charter to mean Arab citizens normally resident in Palestine in 1947 and their descendants. Jewish and non-Arab Christian residents were excluded under this racist and apartheid definition.

The PLO also claimed that Palestine was the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people – even though Resolution 181 clearly did not.

That the Study deliberately changed the actual wording of Resolution 181 to advance these fictitious PLO claims – or perhaps others unknown – for spurious reasons – is scandalous.

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EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Death of Facts by Douglas Murray

By on May 3rd, 2017

Needless to say, none of this is true. Nowhere has Heather Mac Donald suggested that black people or any other type of person has “no right to exist”. The accusation is levelled without evidence. But as with all anti-free-speech activists today, the line is blurred not merely between actual words and violence, but between wholly imagined words and violence.

Every week in America brings another spate of defeats for freedom of speech. This past week it was Ann Coulter’s turn (yet again) to be banned from speaking at Berkeley for what the university authorities purport to be “health and safety” reasons — meaning the health and safety of the speaker.

Each time this happens, there are similar responses. Those who broadly agree with the views of the speaker complain about the loss of one of the fundamental rights which the Founding Fathers bestowed on the American people. Those who may be on the same political side but find the speaker somewhat distasteful find a way to be slightly muted or silent. Those who disagree with the speaker’s views applaud the banning as an appropriate response to apparently imminent incitement.

The problem throughout all of this is that the reasons why people should be supporting freedom of speech (to correct themselves where they are in error, and strengthen their arguments where they are not) are actually becoming lost in America. No greater demonstration of this muddle exists than a letter put together by a group of students at Claremont McKenna College earlier this month to protest the appearance on their campus of a speaker with whom they disagreed.

Heather Mac Donald is a conservative author, journalist and fellow of the Manhattan Institute in New York. Her work has appeared in some of the world’s most prestigious journals. Of course, none of that was enough to deter students at Claremont from libelling her as much as possible in advance of her speech and then preventing her speech from taking place. At Claremont McKenna College, where Mac Donald was due to speak about her recent book, The War on Cops, angry students surrounded the building, screamed obscene words and banged on the windows. Mac Donald ended up giving the speech to a mainly empty room via live video-streaming and then fleeing the university under the protection of campus security. As recent events, such as the hospitalisation of a professor at Charles Murray’s recent speech at Middlebury College have shown, intimidation and violence are clearly regarded by today’s North American students as legitimate means to stop people from speaking.

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France: What is the Presidential Campaign Really About? by Yves Mamou

By on May 3rd, 2017

The result of this mess is that France as one country no longer exists.

People who voted for Le Pen seem to feel not only that they lost their jobs, but that they are becoming foreigners in their own country.

Macron, for many analysts, is the candidate of the status quo: Islamists are not a problem and reforming the job market will supposedly solve all France’s problems.

The French presidential race is the latest election to shake up establishment politics. The Parti Socialiste and Les Républicains, who have been calling the shots for the past forty years, were voted out of the race. The “remainers” are Emmanuel Macron, a clone of Canada’s Prime Minster Justin Trudeau; and Marine Le Pen, whom many believe will not win.

France is a fractured country. As in the US and the UK, the rift is not between the traditional left and right. Instead, it reflects divisions — cultural, social, and economic — that came with globalization and mass migration. A map released by the Ministry of the Interior after the first round of the presidential campaign illustrates the new political scenery.

Blue represents the parts of France where Le Pen heads the list; pink, the areas supporting Macron. The blue areas coincide with old industrial areas, deeply damaged by globalization and industrial relocation. Many blue-collar workers are on welfare; and the antagonism between Muslims and non-Muslims is high. People who voted for Le Pen seem to feel not only that they lost their jobs, but that they are becoming foreigners in their own country.

The areas in pink (Macron), represent the big cities and places where the better jobs are. It also represents the areas where the “upper classes can afford to raise invisible barriers between themselves and the ‘other’, immigrants or minorities,” explains Christophe Guilluy, geographer, and author of Le crépuscule de la France d’en haut (The Twilight of Elite France).

The result of this mess is that France as one country no longer exists. One half the population (in blue-collar areas, small towns and rural areas) is shut out by the other half of the population (white-collar workers) who live in the big cities.

Guilluy adds:

“The job market has become deeply polarized and mainly concentrated in big cities, squeezing out the middle classes. For the first time in history, working people no longer live in the places where jobs and wealth are created.”

…

“But social issues are not the only determinant of the populist vote. Identity is also essential, linked as it is to the emergence of a multicultural society, which feeds anxiety in working-class environments. At a time of fluctuating majorities and minorities, amid demographic instability, the fear of tipping into a minority is creating considerable cultural insecurity in developed countries. Unlike the upper classes, who can afford to raise invisible barriers between themselves and the ‘other’ (immigrants or minorities), the working classes want a powerful state apparatus to protect them, socially and culturally. So, the populist surge is re-activating a real class vote.”

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New Hamas Charter: No Destruction of Israel, Just Seizing All Israeli Lands By Bridget Johnson

By on May 3rd, 2017

Hamas unveiled at a press conference Monday an updated charter that dropped their Muslims Brotherhood ties and call for Israel’s destruction — while still refusing to recognize Israel or the Jewish state’s right to exist, and advocating the duty of jihad against it.

The Gaza rulers, who are designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, first tried to hold their presser at the Intercontinental hotel in Doha, Qatar, but the venue called off the event after warnings that they could be found in violation of sanctions for hosting Hamas. The terror group then found a home for their news conference at the U.S.-owned Sheraton hotel chain.

Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashal claimed to reporters that “Hamas’ struggle is not with Jews or their faith, but is a struggle against Zionism and its aggressions,” and that the group would not “recognize the Zionist entity,” meaning Israel.

Hamas, Mashal said, “will not give up any parcel of Palestinian land and strives to liberate all of the Palestinian lands,” which they consider to include all of Israel, and they are “willing to negotiate a sovereign and independent state with Jerusalem as its capital” while demanding full right of return for Palestinians.

“Opposition to the occupation through any means is a basic right that includes an armed struggle,” he said, sanctioning and encouraging continued attacks on Israel.

Hamas timed the announcement to coincide with Israel’s independence day, Yom Ha’atzmaut.

And Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas will be welcomed to the White House by President Trump on Wednesday as the latter is eager to forge a Mideast peace deal.

“Hamas is attempting to fool the world but it will not succeed,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. “Daily, Hamas leaders call for genocide of all Jews and the destruction of Israel. They dig terror tunnels and have launched thousands upon thousands of missiles at Israeli civilians. Schools and mosques run by Hamas teach children that Jews are apes and pigs. This is the real Hamas.”

The new Hamas charter says “Palestine is a land whose status has been elevated by Islam” that “was seized by a racist, anti-human and colonial Zionist project” and carries “the sublime objective of liberation.”

The goal of Hamas “is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project. Its frame of reference is Islam, which determines its principles, objectives and means.”

“By virtue of its justly balanced middle way and moderate spirit, Islam – for Hamas – provides a comprehensive way of life and an order that is fit for purpose at all times and in all places. Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. It provides an umbrella for the followers of other creeds and religions who can practice their beliefs in security and safety. Hamas also believes that Palestine has always been and will always be a model of coexistence, tolerance and civilizational innovation,” the terror group continues.

They make clear that they will not accept a divided Jerusalem in a two-state solution, emphasizing the city “is the capital of Palestine.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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2 US B-1 bombers complete joint drill over Korean Peninsula

By on May 3rd, 2017

As tensions continue to rise between the U.S. and North Korea, so has American military presence in the region.

The Air Force says two U.S. B-1 bombers completed a joint drill with South Korea and Japan over the Korean Peninsula on Monday. In a separate drill, two other bombers flew over South Korea on April 26th.

CNN is reporting that both missions were long planned, and that the U.S. wanted to keep the drills low profile.The North, however, says the U.S. is intentionally starting a military provocation. A state-run broadcaster in North Korea says American actions are getting to a point close to nuclear war.

South Korea says the U.S. bombers were put in place as a response to the North’s nuclear missile threat.

This comes a day after President Trump said he would be open to meeting with Kim Jong Un under the right circumstances.

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Conservative Student Speaks Up About Campus Intimidation By Tom Knighton

By on May 3rd, 2017

When Anne Coulter, Milo Yiannopoulos, or Charles Murray is blocked from a speaking engagement at a liberal university due to a riot, the incident makes headlines.

But these protests aren’t the only cases of intimidation being used to silence non-Leftist speech on campus, however. Not by a long shot. Steven Glick, editor-in-chief of the student newspaper Claremont Independent, shares his experiences:

I began writing for the Claremont Independent — a student-run conservative paper at the Claremont Colleges — and became a vocal opponent of political correctness.

My classmates — as well as my former employer on campus — grew upset with my coverage of the over-the-top PC-policing and began to think up ways to silence me. I was frequently reported to the deans, and a petition even circulated asking the administration to expel me and my staff.

Part of what makes this culture so troubling is the number of double standards it engenders. “Marginalized” students perversely pursue “equality” by pulling groups perceived as privileged down. “Privileged” students are chastised for committing “microaggressions” against their marginalized peers, while marginalized students are free to commit blatant acts of racial or gender bias against those they deem privileged.

…

That’s true both outside and inside the classroom. The faculty at Pomona is incredibly unbalanced ideologically. Unsurprisingly, the curriculums are severely biased with dissenting views unwelcome. The number of class offerings shrinks dramatically for anyone unwilling to fully toe the progressive line. Several of my friends and I decide which classes to take based not on the course content or reading material, but instead based solely on which professors seem least likely to let political or racial biases affect classroom discussion and grading.

Two weeks ago, I tried to produce a video in which my peers would explain their opposition to Heather Mac Donald and describe the reasons they did not believe she should be allowed to speak on campus.

I stayed at the protest for nearly an hour, talking to as many students as I could. But students involved in the protest refused to answer any of my questions. Instead, they blocked my camera, pushed me and formed a wall around me to restrict my movement.

That is only a small sampling of Glick’s experiences, but it’s a glimpse into the fascist opposition to vocal right-leaning students on American college campuses.

Despite claims of “tolerance,” of wanting to have a “conversation” about race, sexuality, income inequality, or any number of issues, their behavior shows they want the precise opposite.

For most Americans, we can step away from that. We can spend time with like-minded friends, or just step away from politics completely for a time.

But for students like Glick looking to develop skills required for a journalism career, there is no escape. The mistreatment is a driving force in their lives, something they have to plan everything around in order to get a fair shake from their college experience. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Hijab-Wearing Journalist Awarded for Being Hijab-Wearing Journalist by Robert Spencer

By on May 3rd, 2017

She then preemptively claims victim status.

Sawsan Morrar, says the Washington Post, is “a multimedia journalist at the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism,” and “was chosen as a 2017 White House Correspondents’ Association Scholar.” She also wears a hijab. And that is no doubt why she was chosen as a 2017 White House Correspondents’ Association Scholar.

The White House Correspondents’ Association, which is overwhelmingly made up of Leftist journalistic propagandists who hate President Trump and will stop at little or nothing to bring him down, quite clearly chose her to tweak the president for his supposed “anti-Muslim bias.”

There is just one problem: Sawsan Morrar doesn’t want people to see her as a symbol.

She doesn’t appear to realize that the Left, for all its preening about tolerance and multiculturalism, couldn’t care less about her as a person. But she senses something is wrong, and so is falling back on that tried-and-true response that so many Muslims in the U.S. have employed before: she is claiming victimhood.

Victimhood status is currency these days. If you’re a victim, all manner of doors open to you that might otherwise have remained closed: doors to the adulation of the Left; doors to free passes from scrutiny (legal or otherwise) that you might otherwise have received; doors to a privileged status that elevates you above ordinary non-victim folk. And few, if any, groups are more skilled and indefatigable at pursuing victim status than U.S. Islamic advocacy groups.

They have successfully established in the public discourse the wholesale fiction that Muslimas who wear hijab are routinely insulted, harassed, and brutalized in the United States.

Her piece in the Washington Post is an extension of that endeavor, sans (as always) evidence of the insults, harassment, and brutalization.

This award-winning, hijab-wearing journalist, award-winning solely because she is hijab-wearing, writes:

Those who tune in to watch this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday will hear my name called as I take the stage to accept a journalism scholarship. They won’t see my portfolio of work, and they will likely forget my name. But they’re sure to notice and remember one thing about me: my headscarf.

Maybe so. But isn’t that the idea?

She continues:

And as I prepare to attend, I know some at the event may not perceive me as a fellow reporter who, like them, relishes the thought of meeting journalists I admire. Muslims don’t have the luxury of being a fusion of their achievements, interests and uniqueness. Rather, in the eyes of others, we are only Muslim.

On what does she base this claim? Nothing whatsoever, of course.

But this is the Washington Post during the Trump administration, so anything goes for Muslims wishing to claim victim status. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Al-Qaeda to Muslims: An American ‘at Your Doorstep’ Is ‘a Test to Your Faith and Loyalty’ By Bridget Johnson

By on May 3rd, 2017

As ISIS is losing territory in Iraq and Syria but al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula maintains its strength, AQAP’s chief stressed that all jihadists “pious and immoral” are considered their “brothers” in the face of the common enemy, America and its allies.

Qasim al-Raymi, the 38-year-old leader of the Yemeni terror group, began the interview, distributed in English online, with AQAP’s Al-Malahem Media talking about the January raid by U.S. forces on one of their compounds, which he said confirmed “we are confronting a spiteful, criminal and crusade enemy.”

“What America is doing in the era of Trump is a clear sign of their accumulated failure in the American administration,” al-Raymi said. “Consecutive administrations have failed and continue to fail in confronting mujahideen.”

SEAL Team 6 led the operation in a Yaklaa district compound soon after President Trump took office. U.S. officials said 14 enemy fighters were killed, including some women. One Navy SEAL was killed — Chief Special Warfare Operator William “Ryan” Owens, 36, of Peoria, Ill. — and three were wounded, and one MV-22 Osprey was destroyed by a U.S. strike after it crash-landed during evacuation.

Yemenis said there were multiple civilian casualties, including the 8-year-old daughter of late al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen born in New Mexico. A U.S. Central Command review team “concluded regrettably that civilian non-combatants were likely killed in the midst of a firefight” during the raid, and “casualties may include children.”

The administration said significant intelligence was retrieved during the raid; al-Raymi dismissed the claim as “just mere attempts to cover their failure.”

As is customary for al-Qaeda, al-Raymi said they reviewed the details and results of the raid to compile some new unclassified guidance for jihadists: “Not less than two people in a shift” for guard duty. Planning ahead for nighttime defensive scenarios. “No one should leave his stationed place during combat, as planes above him could detect him. One should fight in his stationed place,” he added.

The leader also advised “planting bombs and mines in a circular motion and away from the place of keeping guard, the station and away from shelter,” and “leaving the enemy to advance until he reaches the place of ambush and sphere of combat.”

“There is no Muslim who sees America violating sanctity, killing children and women and yet hesitates in fighting them,” al-Raymi added. “If an American comes at your doorstep, that is by all means a test to your faith and loyalty. Therefore, this is a golden chance to avenge your fellow Muslims by this American soldier who practices crime against the Muslim nation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and among other Islamic countries… the mujahideen do not let the crimes of America pass by without consequences.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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The left attacks the New York Times By Peter Skurkiss

By on May 3rd, 2017

The liberal left is in an uproar. And no, the howls are not coming from the childlike snowflakes on campus, who shut down speakers, or the even from the anarchists. This time, it is coming from the intellectual arm of the left, like the New Republic magazine, Vox, and the readership base of the New York Times.

What has incurred this wrath? Nothing the president has done. It’s that the New York Times has hired Bret Stephens, until recently a deputy editor and columnist at the Wall Street Journal, to add his voice to the Gray Lady’s op-ed page.

Stephens can be best described as a run-of-the-mill establishment conservative from the neocon camp. During this past year or so at the WSJ, he stood out for his hysterical ravings over Donald Trump’s campaign and then his presidency. Of course, being a vociferous anti-Trumper is not what has the liberal base upset at the Times hiring Stephens. It was his first column (and some of the non-Trump-related things he said in the past) that has the liberals on the warpath.

What precipitated this kerfuffle was Stephens’s debut column of April 28 at the Times. There, he had the temerity to question the 100-percent certainty of the proponents of man-made global warming.

And please note: Stephens is not what the left would call a climate denier. In interviews, he says he actually believes in man-made global warming (or maybe it’s man-made climate change now). In his NYT column, Stephens merely questioned the certainty liberals demand that society place in their global warming hypothesis.

That was bad enough, but what got the liberals down on their knees chewing the rug was how Stephens led off his column. It went like this:

“When someone is honestly 55 percent right, that’s very good and there’s no use in wrangling. And if someone is 60 percent right, it’s wonderful. it’s great luck, and let him thank God.

But what’s to be said about 75 percent right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100 percent right? Whoever says he is 100 percent right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worse kind of rascal.”

– An old Jew of Galicia

Essentially, Stephens was saying the radical Greens are fanatics and thugs (all true) – in the pages of the liberal mothership, no less.

To the liberal mind, Stephens committed a high sacrilege, for next to abortion, man-made global warming is most sacred dogma of the left. To have even a hint of doubt on the certainty of this proposition raised in the op-ed pages of the New York Times is akin…well, akin to the supreme ayatollah burning a Koran in the center of Mecca at high noon.

Take Sarah Jones of the New Republic as one example. She unloads, writing that Stephens is the least of the problems at the Times, as the newspaper “is awash in out-of -touch, medicare columnists who are badly out of sync with the era in which we live.”

Over at Vox, Jeff Stein voices the same complaint against Stephens as did Ms. Jones. And to show what a narrow bubble these liberals are in, he writes:

The Times’s editorial page is a bit like the Supreme Court: Its opinions set the framework for the national debate, and its members tend to stay there for decades. so Stephens’s beliefs are about to have a big impact on the national discourse.

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