RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Paramilitary forces from Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard have held a war game simulating the capture of Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque from Israeli control,” the Associated Press reports.

…thousands of members of the Basij, the paramilitary unit of the Guard, participated in Friday’s exercise outside the holy city of Qom in central Iran.

The symbolic operations were backed up by Guard helicopters, drones and Tucano planes that bombed hypothetical enemy positions before ground troops captured the replica of the mosque set up at the top of a mountain….

Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who heads the Guard’s aerospace division, said his force deployed Shahed-129, or Witness-129, drones during the war games. The drone, unveiled in 2013, has a range of 1,700 kilometers (1,050 miles), a 24-hour nonstop flight capability and can carry eight bombs or missiles.

AP then informs us that it’s not really anything to worry about:

Even so, the exercise appeared to be largely for show. Iranian commanders have not said how they would be able to deploy large numbers of forces against Israel, located 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) away, or overcome Israel’s powerful and technologically advanced military.

Actually, there are ways that they can do that. One is to use the immense windfall they stand to reap from last July’s nuclear deal, in the form of lifted sanctions and boosted trade and oil sales, to build up their capabilities. Another is to create a land bridge westward to the Mediterranean, something they’re striving to do at all times.

And another is to rely on the Western preoccupation with the Islamic State, and increasing tendency to treat Iran as a strategic ally and stabilizing force, to keep pursuing their plans relatively untrammeled.

Ehud Yaari, a veteran Israeli Middle East analyst, takes Iran’s aims seriously enough that he devoted a long analysis to them called “How Iran Plans to Destroy Israel.” “The Islamic Republic of Iran,” Yaari notes, “has been committed for the past 36 years to a doctrine aimed at wiping Israel off the map. Statements to this effect still pour out of Tehran almost daily.”

“After all, killing the ‘kafirs’ [non-believers of Islam] was a ‘good deed’. They were told ‘their place in heaven was guaranteed.’ Just like ISIS gangs… and that they would also take their relatives in hell to heaven.” — Sabri Atman, Assyrian Genocide and Research Center.

When ISIS invaded Mosul in August, 2014, Christian families were told by ISIS: “We offer [Christians] three choices: Islam; the dhimma contract — involving payment… if they refuse this, they will have nothing but the sword.”

“There is a great parallel between 1915 and what is going on in the Middle East today. … The most effective way to prevent future slaughter is to condemn past slaughter. Denying such a big crime means its continuation. The wish for genocide still exists in the Middle East.” — Sabri Atman.

“The Turkish authorities let a few Assyrians stay to show Europe and the world how good-hearted and tolerant Turkey and Islam are. … And they say, ‘Assyrians lead their lives so happily thanks to this great tolerance!'” — Sabri Atman.

The recent invasions and massacres committed by the Islamic State (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda terrorists in Iraq and Syria have brought a persecuted but mostly forgotten people to the attention of the world: the Assyrians.

The Assyrians, a native people of Mesopotamia, have been exposed to massacres before — throughout history, in fact.

Sometimes, especially in humankind’s most urgent matters of life and death, truth may emerge through paradox. In this connection, one may usefully recall the illuminating work of Jorge Luis Borges. In one of his most ingenious parables, the often mystical Argentine writer, who once wished openly that he had been born a Jew, examines the bewildering calculations of a condemned man.

Approaching desperation, this unfortunate soul, upon suddenly remembering that expectations rarely coincide with reality, intentionally imagines and re-imagines the circumstances of his own impending death. By completing this process, the doomed prisoner’s final reasoning quickly becomes quite simple. Because these circumstances have already become expectations, he calculates, death (at least for the present) will have to find someone else. For now, at least, his own mortality can be gratefully pushed aside. By thinking the worst, he will actually be saved.
With this complex lesson, Borges illustrates, by deploying both indirection and inference, the unanticipated benefits of deliberately “negative” thought. Oddly, perhaps, but not incorrectly, he leads us to understand, in certain life-threatening contexts, that actively imagining worst-case outcomes can be life-extending. Although starkly counter-intuitive, such easily discarded forms of understanding can still have unanticipated strategic benefits.

In Erdogan’s usual Sunni supremacist language, he accused the victims of jihad rather than the jihadists.

“New tragedies will be inevitable,” Erdogan said, “if the rising racism in Europe and other countries is not stopped.” Yet Erdogan willingly ignores the rising racism, xenophobia, and anti-western, jihadist sentiments that increasingly command the hearts and minds of his fellow Turks.

How should Erdogan fight Islamic terror — something he does not believe exists? One of Erdogan’s famous remarks is, “there is no Islamic terror.” But he thinks that “just like fascism,” Zionism is a crime against humanity.

It is so funny that the free world cannot see that its ally in fighting the jihadists is another jihadist.

Racism is bad, no doubt. But it cannot be the reason why jihadists kill “infidels,” including fellow Muslims in Muslim lands. Sadly, the free world feels compelled to partner with the wrong country in its fight against Islamic terror.

The attacks against European civilization by Muslim colonizers come from many directions. One of which is the rise in infectious diseases imported with many colonizers.

Including HIV.

Breitbart reports that the World Health Organization (WHO) director for Europe has stated that Europe now has the highest rate of new HIV infections ever seen on the continent. And while infection rates are directly tied to IV drug use and sex between men, the director also noted that newly arrived “migrants” have a particularly high rate of infection. Although “migrants” comprise a fraction of the total population, they (and non-native Europeans) account for one third of all new HIV diagnoses in Europe.

One might be surprised to hear a director from WHO speak truthfully on this matter since the authorities tend to gloss over anything bad about Muslim “refugees.”

The director blamed the high rate of HIV infection among migrants on the “social exclusion” many of them feel – exclusion that increases the likelihood of them engaging in risky behavior.

And there you have it. The rationale for Muslims behaving badly.

In February President Obama said, a little carelessly, that climate change is a greater threat than terrorism. Next week he will be in Paris, a city terrorized yet again by mass murderers, for a summit with other world leaders on climate change, not terrorism. What precisely makes these world leaders so convinced that climate change is a more urgent and massive threat than the incessant rampages of Islamist violence?

It cannot be what is happening to world temperatures, because they have gone up only very slowly, less than half as fast as the scientific consensus predicted in 1990 when the global-warming scare began in earnest. Even with this year’s El Niño-boosted warmth threatening to break records, the world is barely half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than it was about 35 years ago. Also, it is increasingly clear that the planet was significantly warmer than today several times during the past 10,000 years.

Nor can it be the consequences of this recent slight temperature increase that worries world leaders. On a global scale, as scientists keep confirming, there has been no increase in frequency or intensity of storms, floods or droughts, while deaths attributed to such natural disasters have never been fewer, thanks to modern technology and infrastructure. Arctic sea ice has recently melted more in summer than it used to in the 1980s, but Antarctic sea ice has increased, and Antarctica is gaining land-based ice, according to a new study by NASA scientists published in the Journal of Glaciology. Sea level continues its centuries-long slow rise—about a foot a century—with no sign of recent acceleration.

Friday, Nov. 27, was the 48th Palestinian Arab rage day of the 2015 calendar year. That’s because this last Friday of November is the fourth to last Friday of 2015.

By the end of the day, the Israeli security cabinet decided to allow for full closures on Palestinian Arab villages. This decision allows military commanders to impose a closure without having to first wait for approval by the full government.

By 7:30 a.m. Friday, there had already been a ramming attack just outside of Jerusalem. An Arab driver rammed his car into Israeli Defense Forces soldiers in Kfar Adumin. After ramming the soldiers, the driver, allegedly jumped out of his car holding a knife, but he was shot and killed by a nearby pedestrian. The terrorist was later identified as Fadi Hassib, 30, from Al-Bireh, which is near Ramallah,

Two soldiers were wounded when Hassib drove his car into them.

My friend Professor Sharon is one of Israel’s most distinguished historians and one of the very few Israelis who understood that the Arab wars against Israel were a jihad. Here is a most prescient chapter from his book so apposite today to what is happening in Europe. This is Chapter 6 of Moshe Sharon’s book Jihad: Islam Against Israel and the West, kindly translated for Outpost by Mrs. Sharon.) Published in February 2014

http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/muslim-europe-in-the-making-by-moshe-sharon.html

In 1683 the armies of Islam besieged Vienna for the second time. The first time was a century and a half earlier. The great Islamic Empire of the period, the Ottoman Empire under the long reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, was then at its zenith. It had extended its borders on the Danube far to the west of Budapest and was poised to capture Vienna, which stood between its armies and Western Europe. Suleiman regarded himself at that time as the ruler of the world, and treated the great kings of Europe as his subjects. The actual subjugation of the rest of Europe was, as far as he was concerned, only a matter of time.

Fortunately for the world of Christianity, when the Moslem armies attempted to besiege Vienna for the second time, some 117 years after Suleiman’s death, the Ottoman Empire was already on the decline, its expansion westwards had been checked, and the bastions of European Christianity could then begin threatening the Muslim Empire rather than being threatened by it.
Yet for the Ottomans, the Christian countries of Europe remained Dar al-Harb -– “the Land of War” – the term used by the Muslims for all territories not yet under Islamic rule. The term is both legal and political, and is charged with religious belief and emotional fervor.
Legally speaking, it defines the relations between the lands of Islam and the lands of the infidels. Infidels – in Arabic Kuffar (singular: kafir) – are all those who are not Muslims, mainly Jews and Christians. They are, therefore, regarded to be, both theoretically and effectively, in a state of war with the Muslims. This war does not have to be declared, since from the Muslim viewpoint, it is the only possible state of affairs between the two parties. Moreover, it is part of the divine plan. For after Allah sent Muhammad “with the guidance and the religion of truth” there was no other way but that “he may uplift it above every religion.” (Koran, surah 9 verse 33) In other words, Allah made it incumbent on the Muslims, the Community of the Faithful, to subjugate the whole world and bring it under the rule of Allah.
The fire of jihad, Holy War, must burn in the heart of every Muslim. It is a collective and personal duty; and every Muslim leader, particularly the head of the Muslim Empire, is obliged to pursue this duty ceaselessly. Legally therefore, the appellation of “The Land of War” to Europe is understandable. Every Christian coming from the Land of War – dar al harb – has the status of harbi. This is different from being a dhimmi, the status imposed on Christians and Jews tolerated to live under Islamic rule as a third-class subjects. The harbi is simply an alien, an enemy of Islam, even when no acts of war are in progress between the two sides. This legal outlook reflects the religious obligation to keep the Holy War alive. Since no one can abolish this duty that is enshrined in the words of God in the Koran, it remains an open-ended condition. Similarly the Land of War cannot change its status until it is conquered by the Muslims and becomes part of the Land of Islam.
The emotional aspect of this religious obligation is an integral part of the way by which the relations between the Muslims and the kuffar were defined. The Koran and Islamic tradition taught the Muslims that their Community of Faithful is “the best nation ever brought forth to men,” (Koran, surah 3 verse 110) and that the truth of their religion is the only perfect truth, and that they, as believers, are always on the right side, and the infidels are always wrong.
Europe, more than any other part of the world, personified the land of war. It was the natural place against which the Jihad was to be waged. It was, after all, the major enemy of Islam from its very inception. But Europe proved to be a difficult enemy. It was an enemy that fought back successfully. In the Middle Ages the Crusades brought the Europeans into the heart of the Islamic lands, but Islam somehow recovered from this success of the infidels, which placed the Muslims for the first time in a defensive position, and tormented them with doubts about Allah’s support.
But Islam did not recover from the loss of Spain (“the Jewel in the Islamic Crown”). Once Islam conquered Spain, it became an Islamic land. Its re-conquest by the infidels seemed to be a reversal of history for it negated the rule which says that once an Islamic land, always an Islamic land. To this very day, Spain, which the Arabs insist on calling Andalus, is regarded as a lost Islamic territory, the recovery of which is a religious and political objective and duty, more than a dream.

As was the case in the wake of January’s attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine and a Jewish supermarket in Paris, it was remarkable how quickly the narrative about the latest terror rampage in the city became less focused on the appalling details of the attacks themselves, and more about reporting on — and celebrating — the public’s response to the attacks.

After the January attacks it was #JeSuisCharlie and cartoons of broken pencils that were going viral. This time it was Eiffel Tower peace signs doing the rounds, along with more fatuous tweets (#TerrorismHasNoReligion, etc.) and montages of national landmarks lit up in red, white, and blue.

And, of course, that guy playing “Imagine” on a piano. They invoke Allah, and we invoke John Lennon.

As in January, this narrative has been crafted by politicians and the mainstream media, and embraced by millions in France and around the world, especially by liberals. It’s a narrative that justly celebrates the resolve of the French people, but which also allows millions with no connection to the horrific events in Paris to join in vicariously. And it enables liberals to indulge in their favorite pastime of virtue signalling and to congratulate themselves on how downright tolerant they are.

Rather than address the consequences of a multiculturalism it promoted as signifying nothing more than happy-clappy falafels and exotic costumes, our political class prefers to decry the public’s alleged intolerance. The next election might bring quite a surprise
The enemy is within, and it is not only gun-toting, bomb-wearing sociopathic jihadists that Australians must worry about — it is their vast anti-Western ideological and institutional support system that must be confronted. This ideological support is essential to the jihadists, as it provides a ready-made justification for their murderous rampages. It also shapes the utterances of their fellow travellers and useful idiots amongst the political elite, in academia, the news media, social media, the ABC, the Human Rights Commission, and NGOs as they trot out the cliché-ridden rationalizations for mass-slaughter in the name of Allah and demand that the West accept responsibility for the attacks upon it.

The most recent glaring example of this ideological mindset is the now infamous statement made by the Muslim Grand Mufti, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, about the Paris atrocities. His Muftiness’s worldview is obviously indebted to the anti-Western post-colonial theory that dominates our universities and serves as the basic ideological paradigm of the Greens and the far left. Consequently, he indulged in a classic case of ‘blaming the victim’, declaring that the murder of the innocents in Paris had been prompted by “causative factors”, whose origins lie solely within the imperialist and oppressive West, including “racism, Islamophobia, curtailing freedoms through securitisation, duplicitous foreign policies and military intervention”. It is the policies of Western nations, allegedly directed against innocent Muslims, that are the cause of all the trouble. As Andrew Bolt recently observed, “So clearly did the Mufti’s statement read like a warning to submit [to Islam] or die that even Turnbull Government ministers attacked it.”