RUTHFULLY YOURS

Like math and the Midwest, ISIS confuses progressives. It’s not hard to confuse a group of people who never figured out that if you borrow 18 trillion dollars, you’re going to have to pay it back. But ISIS is especially confusing to a demographic whose entire ideology is being on the right side of history.

Raised to believe that history inevitably trended toward diversity in catalog models, fusion restaurants and gay marriage, the Arab Spring led them on by promising that the Middle East would be just like Europe and then ISIS tore up their Lonely Planet guidebook to Syria and chopped off their heads.

But ISIS also believes that it’s on the right side of history. Its history is the Koran. The right side of its history is what Iraq and Syria look like today. It’s also how parts of Europe are starting to look.

Progressive politicians and pundits trying to cope with ISIS lapse into a shrill incoherence that has nothing to do with their outrage at its atrocities and a lot to do with their sheer incomprehension. Terms like “apocalyptic nihilism” get thrown around as if heavy metal were beginning to make a comeback.

Can Jews just pick up and move?

Last Saturday, Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein opened fire during an event on “Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression” at a cultural center in Copenhagen, killing one attendee and wounding three police officers. The following day, he shot and killed Jewish security guard Dan Uzan and wounded a number of policemen outside the Great Synagogue, during a bat mitzvah celebration.

These attacks in Denmark were eerily similar to those that took place in Paris last month. First the terrorist targeted “infidels” who dare offend Muslims by expressing their views freely, and then he went after the Jews.

While the events in Copenhagen were unfolding, a cemetery in France was discovered to have been desecrated days earlier, with some 250 headstones vandalized and overturned.

Islamist criminal and terrorist networks overlap for a simple reason: both involve the same sort of individuals doing the same sort of things. European governments know this, because they operate in the common ground between crime and Jihad. Declarations by European officials to the effect that Jihadi terrorists are really violent criminals in search of a pretext are a particularly revolting sort of hypocrisy. Possibly the most disgusting thing I have read in a publication that purports to be mainstream is Andrew Higgins’ Copenhagen dispatch in yesterday’s New York Times.

[Copenhagen terrorist Omar Abdel Hamid] Hussein’s journey from drug-addled street thug to self-proclaimed jihadist declaring loyalty to the Islamic State has stirred soul-searching in liberal-minded Denmark over whether Islam, in fact, was really a prime motivator for his violence, or merely served as a justifying cover for violent criminality.“This is a very difficult question to answer,” said Manu Sareen, the minister for integration and social affairs, who shortly before the attacks began a program to combat radicalization through outreach to parents, schools and other efforts.….Often the attackers invoke Islam. But just as often, well before they had found religion, the professed jihadists built up long track records as violent criminals. Though many have become radicalized in prisons, they often seem determined to find an outlet for their violence.

Moshe Phillips is president and Benyamin Korn is chairman of the Religious Zionists of America, Philadelphia, and both are candidates on the Religious Zionist slate (www.VoteTorah.org) in the World Zionist Congress elections.
The campaign against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress has reached a new low, crossing the line that divides criticism of Israel from the darkest antisemitic canards.
We do not use the term “antisemitism” lightly. Criticism of individual Israeli leaders or specific Israeli government policies is of course perfectly legitimate. But every sober-minded observer understands that criticism of Israel is sometimes just a thin mask for promoting anti-Jewish stereotypes and conspiracy theories.
The campaign of whispers, leaks and rumors against Prime Minister Netanyahu this week dropped that mask and began promoting one of the ugliest anti-Jewish canards: that Israel is trying to control the United States government.
A full-page ad in The New York Times on Feb. 19 featured photos of a smiling President Obama and a scowling Prime Minister Netanyahu, under the headline: “Who is our Commander in Chief?”
The message could not have been more clear: the Israelis –the Zionists, the pro-Israel lobby, the Jews– are trying to turn Israel’s prime minister into America’s commander in chief.

Even now, after many years of unwavering Iranian commitment to “the bomb,” Washington still refuses to give up hope on diplomacy. Soon, however, President Barack Obama and his supporters will finally understand that Iran’s posture on nuclear “negotiations” has always been a contrivance. Then, when even the most residual military options will already have been forfeited, Israel’s only remaining hope for long term survival will likely have to rest upon certain indispensably complementary strategies for nuclear deterrence and ballistic missile defense.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands that Israel can never rely too heavily upon anti-missile defense systems. Inevitably, such systems would have “leakage.” Like it or not, therefore, Israel will have to depend upon some form of “coexistence” with an already nuclear Iran. Although an eleventh-hour preemption against Iranian nuclear assets and infrastructures might still seem appropriate in some circles, it could no longer be undertaken without incurring genuinely overwhelming costs.

This post is a analytical explanation of a film produced by Al-Hayat Media of the Islamic State, which portrays the ritual slaughter of 21 Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya, in the film “A Message Signed with Blood to the Nation of the Cross”. Words in blue are from the film, either in the form of titles or sub-titles, or as narration. Text in red is for the words of Muhammad or the Qur’an. This is Part 2 of a paid of posts about this film. Part 1 is Bearing the cross: a letter to the Islamic State. This post has also appeared on Lapido Media.

The Coast of Wilāyat Tarābulus [in the region of Tripoli] by the Mediterranean Sea

The people of the cross, the followers of the hostile Egyptian Church

The opening scenes show the 21 men being led along the coast towards the camera, each one held by a hooded captor.

This is the first of a two-part post on the 21 Egyptian martyrs killed in Libya. This first part is a reflection, as a Christian, on aspects of this event and reactions to it. The second part, ‘A message signed with blood to the Nation of the Cross’ consists of explanatory notes on the texts – spoken and written – which were part of the Islamic State’s film of their ritual beheadings. This post has also appeared on Lapido media.

The Islamic State sent me a letter this week. This letter was in the form of a short film produced by the Islamic State’s Al-Hayat Media centre. This was not addressed to me personally, but to all Christians everywhere. Its title was A Message Signed with BLOOD to the Nation of the Cross. This was a video of the ritual slaughter of the 21 Egyptian Christians. Their blood flowing in the ocean waves was the ‘signature’ at the end of the video.

As I write this it is Ash Wednesday. This is the start of forty days of Lent, a period of fasting and contemplation for Christians all over the world. For many centuries it has been a custom of Christians to receive a mark of the cross in ash upon the forehead as a sign of repentance.

As I received this mark of the cross today I was thinking of the 21 Egyptian Christian martyrs. Copts permanently bear the sign of the cross, tattooed on their wrists, as a sign that they will refuse to renounce their beliefs.

Alfred Lord Tennyson once wrote: “In the spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” On this winter day, awakening to a temperature reading of minus one degree, this old man’s thoughts turned toward global warming (or climate change, as it is now termed), and its relative importance in a world in which one third of the population lives amidst poverty and/or disease, and one in which Islamic extremists have barbarically assaulted Western culture.

Climate change has become a big and emotional political football. Both sides festoon their respective positions. Some on the Right are deniers, as are some on the Left. The former claim that man has had little impact on the environment, despite evidence that carbon emissions are rising. The latter state that if man simply eliminated his carbon imprint the planet would revert to the status quo. The Left, especially, uses embellishment to further their cause. They speak of polar bears disappearing off melting ice floes and forecast that whole communities will disappear into rising seas. Mainstream media news coverage, laced with alarm, furthers their cause.

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2015/02/19/if-only-germany-had-solved-its-unemployment-problem-in-1933-germans-wouldnt-have-become-nazis/?print=1

If Only Germany Had Solved Its Unemployment Problem in 1933, Germans Wouldn’t Have Become Nazis By David P. Goldman

Officially, the election on March 17 is among Israelis. Depending on how we vote, either Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will remain in office and form the next government led by his Likud party, or Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni will form a government.

But unofficially, a far greater electoral drama is unfolding. The choice is not between Netanyahu and Herzog/Livni. It is between Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama.

As the White House sees it, if Herzog/Livni form the next government, then Jerusalem will dance to Obama’s tune. If Netanyahu is reelected, then the entire edifice of Obama’s Middle East policy may topple and fall.

Secretary of State John Kerry made clear the administration’s desire to topple Netanyahu last spring during his remarks before the Trilateral Commission. It was during that memorable speech that Kerry libeled Israel, claiming that we would automatically and naturally become an apartheid state if we didn’t give Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria to the PLO, Jew free, as quickly as possible.

Despite Israel’s venality, Kerry held out hope. In his words, “if there is a change of government [in Israel], or a change of heart, something will happen.”