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Ruth King

The Anti-Israel Money Trail By Bret Stephens

Earlier this month, Harvard law student Husam El-Quolaq posed a question at a public conference to Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister. “How is it that you are so smelly?” Mr. El-Quolaq wanted to know. “It’s regarding your odor—about the odor of Tzipi Livni, very smelly.”

Harvard went out of its way to try to keep the questioner’s identity a secret, including by deleting the comment from its video of the event—a privilege, one suspects, the school would not have afforded a student asking a similar question of a black speaker. And Mr. El-Quolaq, who is active in a Harvard affiliate of Students for Justice in Palestine, or SJP, later offered an anonymous apology “to anyone who felt offended.”

Yet the exchange is another reminder of the anti-Israel, and increasingly anti-Semitic, environment students now experience on American campuses. That’s the doing of several groups, including some nominally Jewish ones. But none is so prominent as SJP, which has more than 100 chapters nationwide and has been canny in pairing itself with left-wing or minority student organizations to sponsor anti-Israel events, heckle pro-Israel speakers, and agitate for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolutions on campus.

SJP’s self-declared goal is to end Israel’s “occupation and colonization of all Arab lands” while “promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.” That’s another way of saying destroying the Jewish state. CONTINUE AT SITE

Yet as prominent as SJP and the wider BDS movement have become, less is known about the sources of their funding. That changed last week after testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee by Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Mr. Schanzer, a former Treasury Department official and terrorism-finance expert, notes in his testimony that a prominent backer of SJP and like-minded groups is an organization called American Muslims for Palestine, based in Palos Hills, Ill., and led by UC Berkeley lecturer Hatem Bazian, who also happens to be one of SJP’s founders. AMP claimed to have spent $100,000 on anti-Israel campus activities in 2014, including to SJP. An AMP conference that year at a Chicago Hyatt invited participants to “come and navigate the fine line between legal activism and material support for terrorism.”

FDD discovered that many of AMP’s leading members were previously active in some dubious former charities. The most prominent, the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation For Relief and Development, was shut down in 2001 by the federal government for providing millions in funds to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas; five Holy Land officials eventually were convicted to prison terms and two others fled the country.

Today, AMP’s leaders include at least three Holy Land alumni. One of them is Milwaukee furniture salesman Salah Sarsour, who last year told Al Jazeera that an AMP conference he chaired “aims to keep up with and support the Palestinian people’s continuous intifada.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Robert Kaplan: ‘Europe Was Defined By Islam. And Islam Is Redefining It Now.’ Is it really Europeans who need to compromise? Hugh Fitzgerald

Robert Kaplan, a contributing editor to The Atlantic, has just published a piece on Islam and the future of Europe. He claims, startlingly, that Europe “was essentially defined by Islam,” by which he means that before Islam swept across North Africa, Europe consisted of a single civilization, on both banks of the Mediterranean — that of the Roman Empire — and that Islam’s arrival severed “the Mediterranean region into two civilizational halves.” It is true that Muslim conquerors swept across North Africa in the seventh and eighth centuries, but not quite true, pace Kaplan, that they “extinguished Christianity there.” Millions of Coptic Christians remained a majority in Egypt until the 14th century (that is, for at least 700 years after the time that Kaplan claims Muslim armies “virtually extinguished Christianity” in North Africa). And while it is true that the Roman Empire was sundered, it was not only by the forces of Islam, as Kaplan appears to believe: before the Arab armies arrived, others had been seizing territory from Roman control, including the Visigoths in Spain and the Vandals, who conquered the Roman province of Africa in 433 and held it till 539.

Kaplan quotes with evident approval Jose Ortega y Gasset that “all European history has been a great migration toward the North.” Is that true? The Roman Empire fell because of a great migration of the Germanic tribes from the north and northeast to the South; it was they, the Barbarians, who beat down the steady Roman legions and seized Rome in 476 A.D., with the Germanic warrior Odoacer placed on the throne. And even before the Fall of Rome, the Roman Empire had divided into Eastern and Western Empires, one ruled from Rome, the other from Constantinople. Surely that split was just as significant, for the future of European civilization, with the Western empire embracing Latin Catholicism, and the Eastern empire Orthodox Christianity, as the loss of North Africa to Islam.

Back to the Ethic How do we restore the vigor and greatness of Western civilization? Mark Tapson

The collapse of the West is accelerating. The secular, leftist, multiculturalist elites have subverted Europe so successfully that the clash of civilizations is ending not with a bang, but with a whimper. The continent’s leaders have imported a violent, virulently anti-Western horde in the form of mass male Muslim migration; a rape culture and terrorist mayhem are becoming the new normal; and the best self-defense the Europeans can muster is ragtag bands of vigilantes. Here in America the cultural decay is less dramatic but gathering momentum as the radical left’s half-century war on American exceptionalism takes its toll.

As the West commits slow-motion suicide, and fundamentalist Islam advances, the questions arise: what can we do to recover our cultural self-confidence? How can we restore the vigor and greatness of Western civilization? How do we revive the unique values of our culture and push back against the barbarians at (and within) the gate?

A new book from Canadian publisher Mantua Books addresses these urgent concerns: Back to the Ethic: Reclaiming Western Values, by Diane Weber Bederman. Bederman is a multi-faith endorsed, hospital-trained chaplain who contributes regularly to CanadaFreePress and the Times of Israel, as well as maintaining her own blog.

Back to the Ethic is both a personal memoir and a broader cultural prescription. From the author’s own death-defying struggle with illness and depression to her meditations on a secularized culture that itself is mortally ill, the book stresses our need to return to the Judeo-Christian ethical monotheism that is at the root of Western civilization’s success.

Bederman begins by simply stating what I noted at the outset of this review – that “our belief systems are under attack.” Those belief systems, she writes, derive from our “foundational story,” the Bible. “The Hebrew Bible, filled with these teachings, the Gospels, and the New Testament make up the backbone of the Judeo-Christian ethic as practiced today in the Western world.”

Ethical monotheism, the 3500-year-old value system that began with Moses and the Israelites wandering in the desert, spread outward from that humble beginning to transform the earth. “And the world’s greatest transformation,” claims Bederman, “has been the knowledge that we humans are individually accountable for our actions.” It taught us that “we each have intrinsic value – we matter because we exist.”

Attack of the 90 Foot Islamic Virgins Creating an Islamic heaven on earth. Daniel Greenfield

Ibrahim Barda’aya had turned 54 and he was still single so he decided to go out and kill some Jews. But Ibrahim wasn’t just a violent anti-Semitic racist. He was also lonely. According to his Imam, he wanted to die and get his 72 virgins in the afterlife. And he had stayed single to avoid the temptations of earthly women so that he could enjoy the 72 virgins who are 90 feet tall and so “white” that you can see the “marrow of their bones,” who never urinate or menstruate, get pregnant or complain.

In Pakistan, an arrested suicide bomber last year when asked if he wanted to marry, retorted that he wanted to die. “72 virgins are waiting for me in paradise, so why I should prefer only one here?”

Muslim men are encouraged to view their marriages to Muslim women as temporary. A Hadith has the Houri virgin admonishing the Muslim wife, “Do not annoy him, may Allah ruin you. He is with you as a passing guest. Very soon, he will part with you and come to us.” That is what Muslim terrorists strive for.

According to Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Munajid, the 90-foot-tall Islamic virgins are vastly preferable to actual Muslim women. “Whereas the women of this world may suffer, for days and nights, from menstruation, from blood for 40 days after childbirth, from vaginal bleeding and from diseases – the women of Paradise are pure, unblemished, menstruation-free, free of feces, urine, phlegm, children.”

Also they are “restricted to tents” and “locked up” so, like the ideal Saudi woman, they never leave the house. They are “hairless” and never get older than their “tender age.” Their skin is so “bright that it causes confusion” and actually doubles as a mirror so that “one can see one’s image in her cheek.”

Unsurprisingly for a death cult, Islamic scholars appear to be obsessed with the bones of these giant women and assure Jihadists that “the marrow of the bones of their legs” of their promised virgin brides “will be seen through the bones and the flesh.”

Sliding Down Euthanasia’s Slippery Slope By Douglas Murray

Every age preceding ours sanctioned acts that we find morally stupefying. So it is reasonable to assume that there are at least some things we are presently doing — possibly while flush with moral virtue — that our descendants will regard with exhalations of “What were they thinking?” Anyone interested in our age should wonder what these modern blind spots might be — those things akin to slavery or the Victorians’ shoving children up chimneys. As an entry into this category, you could do worse than consider the case of Nathan (born Nancy) Verhelst.

This was a Belgian who as a little girl felt that her brothers were favored over her. In adulthood she chose to “transition” into a man. She underwent hormone therapies as well as surgical operations. These were insufficiently successful for Nancy’s liking and left considerable scarring. Nathan — as he then was — became depressed. In September 2013, when Nathan was 44 years old, the Belgian state killed him by lethal injection because of his “unbearable psychological suffering.”

Perhaps we can leave the ethics of trying to turn women into men for another day. But it seems likely that any future civilization will look back on the practice of euthanasia in the Western liberal democracies in the early 21st century and sense an awesome moral chasm: “Let me get this right, the Belgian health service tried to turn her into a man and then killed her?” Strangest of all might seem the fact that this killing was done in a spirit not of malice or cruelty, but of kindness.

Several advanced Western countries now practice some form of euthanasia. The State of Oregon allows a version that was much cited in the United Kingdom last year, when there was an unsuccessful attempt to introduce a euthanasia bill in the parliament. But nothing yet equals the practice of euthanasia in the two most liberal democracies of Western Europe: Belgium and Holland. In both countries, deciding (or, in cases of dementia, having decided for you) the date of your death has become, in the eyes of euthanasia advocates, a positive — indeed a liberal — act. The generation of Baby Boomers in the Low Countries that led the way in advancing the rights of sexual and other minorities are the same generation that then advanced the “right” to die. For them, it is the last right. As with some other rights arguments, the case puts the rights of the individual over those of the community irrespective of the impact this may have on wider society.

Even so, no other “right” can be said to have anywhere near the implications of this last one. The “right to death” makes every other right look like a plaything by comparison, because enjoying the right to death changes almost everything about the way a society views not only death but also life and the very purpose (or otherwise) of existence.

How to Steal a State: Governor McAuliffe Expands the Criminal Vote for Democrats By Hans A. von Spakovsky & Roger Clegg

In what is likely an unconstitutional state action seemingly calculated to ensure that the purple state of Virginia goes blue in the November election, Governor Terry McAuliffe (D.) signed an order on Friday restoring the voting rights of 206,000 ex-felons in Virginia, including those convicted of murder, armed robbery, rape, sexual assault, and other violent crimes. The order also restores their right to sit on a jury, become a notary, and even serve in elected office.

McAuliffe believes that ex-felons can be trusted to make decisions in the ballot booth and the jury box but apparently not to own a gun. He draws the line at restoring their Second Amendment rights; that would be a bridge too far. His order specifically does not restore their “right to ship, transport, possess, or receive firearms.” And while his order requires that felons complete probation and parole before enjoying restoration of their rights, it applies regardless of whether they have paid any court fines or restitution to victims.

What McAuliffe entirely dismisses is the principle that if you won’t follow the law yourself, you can’t demand a role in making the law for everyone else, which is what you do when you vote. Restoring a felon’s right to vote should be done not automatically, as soon as he has completed his sentence, but carefully, on a case-by-case basis, after he has shown that he has really turned over a new leaf. The unfortunate truth is that many people who walk out of prison will be walking back in; recidivism rates are high. We have both testified before Congress and written about this problem. Governor McAuliffe may be happy as long as the ex-felons who can now vote just don’t walk back into prison before November.

Having a waiting period, examining each ex-felon’s application for restoration of rights carefully and individually, and differentiating between violent and nonviolent crimes is exactly the system that Virginia had — at least until Friday’s order. In a three-page summary released by the governor’s office, McAuliffe asserts that any claim that he doesn’t have the authority to grant a blanket restoration of rights is “far-outside the weight of constitutional authority across the nation and would read into the text of the Virginia Constitution words that simply are not there.” This is just legal gibberish — the weight of constitutional authority “across the nation” has no bearing on interpreting the Virginia constitution. McAuliffe is reading into that constitution authority he does not have.

Obama: ‘Isolate’ North Korea for ‘Continuous, Provocative Behavior’ By Bridget Johnson

President Obama said alongside Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany today that the United States is “still analyzing and assessing with precision the activities that North Korea engaged in over the last several days” before elaborating on any potential response.

South Korea, meanwhile, said Saturday’s submarine-launched ballistic missile launch in the Sea of Japan is an “open provocation” that requires a response, while North Korea called the launch one more demonstration that it can strike the U.S.

“We will take necessary steps in close cooperation with related countries,” South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck said today. “Regardless of whether the test was a success or not, it is a clear violation of UNSC resolutions.”

“The government has warned on various occasions that the North would face stronger and more stern responses from the international community in the event of its additional provocation,” Cho said. “We will further strengthen our efforts to increase pressure on the North through the faithful implementation of the UNSC sanctions resolution and international cooperation.”

The UN Security Council said in a statement today that members “would continue to closely monitor the situation and take further significant measures in line with the council’s previously expressed determination.”

Obama said he’d “let the Pentagon and our intelligence community debrief everyone once we have precise information.”

The administration issued no statements on the launch over the weekend.

“What is clear is that North Korea continues to engage in continuous, provocative behavior; that they have been actively pursuing a nuclear program, an ability to launch nuclear weapons. And although more often than not they fail in many of these tests, they gain knowledge each time they engage in these tests. And we take it very seriously. And so do our allies, and so does the entire world,” Obama said.

EPA Budget Cuts Lung Cancer Program, Ups Climate Change Funding By Nicholas Ballasy

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle criticized the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed budget for cutting clean water funding and eliminating a lung cancer prevention program.

The Obama’s administration’s $8.3 billion EPA FY2017 budget request increases climate change-related funding to $235 million, which includes money for its Clean Power Plan.

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) argued the administration should be putting that money into existing programs instead since the Supreme Court placed a stay on the Clean Power Plan.

“The EPA has testified before this committee that they have done no modeling on whether the rule [Clean Power Plan] would have any impact on global temperature change,” he said during a committee hearing on the EPA budget. “The president is intent on picking winners and losers in the energy economy.”

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) asked EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy how she justifies cutting water infrastructure funding after incidents like lead poisoning in Flint, Mich., occurred. Cardin said he is “perplexed” by the $413 million reduction.

“There are obviously constraints that we have. One is we have to respect the levels that were established in the bipartisan budget agreement and our choice was how do we use the money that is allocated to us in the best way that we can,” McCarthy told Cardin.

The Forgotten Genocide: Why It Matters Today By Raymond Ibrahim

April 24 marks the “Great Crime,” that is, the Armenian genocide that took place under Turkey’s Islamic Ottoman Empire, during and after WWI. Out of an approximate population of two million, some 1.5 million Armenians died. If early 20th century Turkey had the apparatuses and technology to execute in mass—such as 1940s Germany’s gas chambers—the entire Armenian population may well have been annihilated. Most objective American historians who have studied the question unequivocally agree that it was a deliberate, calculated genocide:

More than one million Armenians perished as the result of execution, starvation, disease, the harsh environment, and physical abuse. A people who lived in eastern Turkey for nearly 3,000 years [more than double the amount of time the invading Islamic Turks had occupied Anatolia, now known as “Turkey”] lost its homeland and was profoundly decimated in the first large-scale genocide of the twentieth century. At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000…. Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, eyewitness accounts, official archives, photographic evidence, the reports of diplomats, and the testimony of survivors, denial of the Armenian Genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present.

Indeed, evidence has been overwhelming. U.S. Senate Resolution 359 from 1920 heard testimony that included evidence of “[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death [which] have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages.” In her memoir, Ravished Armenia, Aurora Mardiganian described being raped and thrown into a harem (which agrees with Islam’s rules of war).

Unlike thousands of other Armenian girls who were discarded after being defiled, she managed to escape. In the city of Malatia, she saw 16 Christian girls crucified: “Each girl had been nailed alive upon her cross, spikes through her feet and hands, only their hair blown by the wind, covered their bodies.” Such scenes were portrayed in the 1919 documentary film Auction of Souls, some of which is based on Mardiganian’s memoirs.

‘Far-Right’ Anti-Immigration Candidate Leads in First Round of Austrian Elections By Michael Walsh

Well, well, well:

Austria’s far right made big wins in the latest round of voting in the country’s presidential election. Norbert Hofer, candidate of the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPOe), took home almost 37 percent of the vote out of five candidates in Sunday’s polls.

The election will now go to a runoff that will take place on May 22, when Hofer will face either Green Party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen, who gained 19.7 percent of the vote this round, or independent candidate Irmgard Griss, who won 18.8 percent. For an all-out win a candidate must obtain more than 50 percent of votes to become the country’s head of state, which is a largely ceremonial role.

But the results do reflect Austrians’ frustration with their leaders’ response to Europe’s refugee crisis, and mean that, for the first time since 1945, Austria will not have a president from either the center-left Social Democrats or the center-right People’s Party. Hofer sailed past the candidates from those two parties — the Social Democrats and the People’s Party – who gained only 11.2 percent of the vote each.

Sunday’s results were the biggest victory that Hofer’s Freedom Party has seen since the party’s inception after World War II.

Guilt and the Immigrants

Angela Merkel’s chickens — which she generously distributed up and down the European continent in her suicidal attempt to change the very nature of Europe itself — are coming home to roost.

Hofer, who says he almost always packs a Glock in order to protect himself from refugees, is considered by German media to be the friendlier face of the Freedom Party over its more aggressive leader, Heinz-Christian Strache.