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Pro-Palestinian Jew-Hate in Europe A continent lacks the courage to take a stand. Joseph Puder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/pro-palestinian-anti-semitism-europe-joseph-puder/

Violent anti-Semitic eruptions in Europe following the outburst of hostilities between the Gaza-based Hamas terrorists and Israel have become common and repeated occurrences. The European governments have done little to prevent the largely Muslim and some local anti-Semites from initiating violence against European Jews. It is particularly true of the German government and its leader, Angela Merkel. Chancellor Merkel invited over a million migrants into Germany, mostly Muslims from the Middle East and Africa. Their inculcated hatred for Israel and Jews has resulted in the desecration of Jewish cemeteries, Holocaust memorials, and attacks on synagogues. To assuage Jewish concerns, Merkel and the German government pay lip-service to the unacceptability of anti-Semitism in Germany due to Germany’s role in perpetrating the Holocaust in which Six Million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany. In reality, few of the perpetrators are punished, and certainly not with long prison terms or deportation. 

The New York Times reported (May 19, 2021) that rocks were thrown at doors of a Synagogue in Bonn. Israeli flags were burned outside a synagogue in Munster. Pro-Palestinian rallies took place in Berlin, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, and Leipzig. “In Germany, where historical memory runs especially deep because of the Holocaust, pro-Palestinian rallies have been held in cities across the west of the country and in the capital, Berlin. Several have descended into violence, including anti-Semitic chants, calls for violence against Israel, desecration of memorials to Holocaust victims, and attacks on at least two synagogues.”

The German Interior Minister Horst Seehoffer threatened to crackdown on anti-Semitism at pro-Palestinian protests. He stated, “We will not tolerate the burning of Israeli flags on German soil and attacks on Jewish facilities.” He added, “Anyone who spreads anti-Semitic hatred will feel the full force of the law.” We have heard these immaterialized threats before, but then, political correctness appears to cause German officials to fold rather than deal forcibly with violent Muslims, many of them new migrants. European White Guilt, particularly toward Third World people, accompanied by the loss of national pride, and the will to defend its own traditional values, is allowing a violent minority to perpetuate anti-Semitic violence.

Something is Sinking, and It’s Not Just the Dead Sea Fake News and Jew-Hate in Europe and the Media by Naomi Linder Kahn

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17511/fake-news-jew-hate

The Palestinian Authority (PA) uses European funding to cultivate more and bigger tracts of Israeli state land every year, a well-known… loophole in the Ottoman Land Law (still in force in these territories) that grants rights to anyone who uses land for agricultural purposes for a period of several years, whether they own it or not.

[T]he question should be, how was this water allocation determined, and how are the actual water needs of this population determined? …. [H]ow much water does each Palestinian in this region need, and how many people are we talking about?

The PA invests untold millions of European taxpayer-funded “humanitarian aid” to initiate massive, unsustainable agricultural projects in desert areas under Israeli jurisdiction… to take control, physically, of ever-expanding swaths of territory. It goes to tremendous lengths to pad “population statistics” — allowing people born abroad who have never set foot in the Middle East to register as residents… failing to remove deceased persons from the rolls, and double-counting people who live in other areas.

The allocation of water to Palestinian residents under Israeli jurisdiction was determined in the framework of the Oslo Accords according to population size. Simply put, there would be no water crisis if Europe and the PA would not have orchestrated a large-scale migration of people…. for political purposes.

Israel provides approximately 70 million cubic meters (MCM) per year of water to the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) alone… even though the Water Agreement signed in the Oslo framework allocates a much smaller quantity of only 23.6 MCM/year…. If the PA so desired, the residents of the “village” of Kardala could easily be living in Bardala and enjoying sufficient water supplies.

Similarly, the housing needs of all Palestinians currently living in illegal structures on Israeli state land throughout Area C [under Israeli jurisdiction] could easily be met if the PA invested its resources in development and construction in [the Arab jurisdiction] areas A and B — where there is no threat of demolition, confiscation of equipment or materials, and no need for Israeli permits.

[O]ver 60% of land resources under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction remain available. Rather than using its resources to improve the lives of its people, the PA instead chooses to divert all its resources into illegal, politically motivated projects that are designed to wrest control of as much land as possible away from Israeli jurisdiction.

Agenda-driven journalism is not journalism. It is propaganda….

The recently-aired episode of ABC Australia’s “Foreign Correspondent” program, titled “The Sinking Sea,” presents visually stunning images that convey a sense of loss of a major geographic feature of the Middle Eastern landscape. The video documentary by Eric Tlozek, ABC’s outgoing Middle East correspondent, focuses on the demise of the Dead Sea caused by the diminished supply of its tributary waters.

Somali Refugee Stabbed 8 Women in Germany While Shouting “Allahu Akbar” Sun Jun 27, 2021 Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/06/somali-refugee-stabbed-8-women-germany-while-daniel-greenfield/

Obviously, the authorities are blaming “psychiatric” problems.

Three women were killed and five others were seriously injured after a 24-year-old man who is also a Somali immigrant attacked the women in Wuerzburg. 

The attack began in a store when the attacker asked where the business kept its knives, regional police president Gerhard Kallert said.

He then stabbed and killed the saleswoman and two other people in the store before running out on the street and stabbing five more women as well as a child.

Regional Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said authorities are investigating an Islamic motive for the attack as witnesses claim the attacker yelled “Allahu akbar” before the rampage.

The suspect, allegedly named Abdirahamn J, was another refugee whose application was denied, but never left Germany. German media sources suggest that there was ISIS material in the homeless shelter where he was staying.

 Abdirahamn, who came to Germany from Mogadishu, began stabbing women at a Woolworth store, as part of his Jihad.

The “Bild” newspaper reported, with reference to an internal notice from the authorities, that the accused had said when he was arrested that he had carried out his “jihad” with the attack. Investigators at the press conference confirmed that the word “jihad” had been used. 

That’s what happens when countries enable Jihad migration.

How George Floyd Got Into British Panties Marks & Spencer launches a range of new – and peculiar – underwear. Katie Hopkins

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/how-george-floyd-got-british-panties-katie-hopkins/

“This is not just any cheesecake; this is a Marks & Spencer cheesecake.”

Or so the advertising bods at the British High Street bastion of retailing would have you believe.

Marks & Spencer (fondly known as M&S) is as British as a cup of tea, as old as my knees feel, a place of comfort for women of a certain age who know what they like and like what they know. Some might say it’s dependably dull or, as my 72-year-old mother would say, perfectly British.
M&S is also the UK market leader in bras and knickers. If you don’t buy your underwear from M&S, you are a woman of poor standing in my mother’s eyes. And when my own daughters needed their first bras, where else would instinct lead us than Marks & Spencer?

However, in the Age of Madness that we are currently enduring, not even this British stalwart is safe from the squid-like tentacles of Black Lives Matter. After a century and a half of being as reliable as a Ford pickup, the red mist has descended and Marks & Spencer has just launched a range of underwear inspired by — you guessed it — George Floyd.

And here it is for your viewing pleasure:
M&S director of lingerie Laura Charles said:

“The global conversation on racial inequality, following the horrific death of George Floyd, spurred us to go faster in creating a better, more inclusive range. . . .From the product offer to the names, to the marketing, we’ve worked hand in hand with our colleague Culture & Heritage network to deliver a campaign we’re proud of and an underwear range that provides more colors, more sizes and more choice so that all of our customers have the freedom to complement or contrast with their individual skin tone in a way that suits their own personal style.”

Well, isn’t that just lovely? Because of the death of George Floyd, we now have bras and panties in colors that avoid words like tobacco and tan and sound altogether more jazzy: Opaline, Rich Amber, Rose Quartz and Topaz.

In the West, ‘Incorrect’ Speech Is Increasingly Treated as Blasphemy By Lois McLatchie

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/06/in-the-west-incorrect-speech-is-increasingly-treated-as-blasphemy/

Europe’s ‘hate-speech laws’ have taken the core principles of ‘blasphemy laws’ and dressed them up in a watered-down Western packaging.

Freedom of speech is one of the most fundamental American values. This value was brought all the more sharply into focus recently when my fellow expat, Prince Harry, quite royally offended his host nation by calling the First Amendment “bonkers” on the California-based Armchair Experts podcast. Even as a Brit, I could still detect the irony of the blood descendent of King George III complaining about constitutional rights in the land of the free.

But Prince Harry’s ability to speak freely about his beliefs might not have fared so well in other countries that were formerly under the Crown. Take Pakistan. Last week, advocates supported by human-rights group ADF International celebrated a victory for free speech at the High Court in Lahore, Pakistan. A couple was accused of sending an offensive message about the Prophet Mohammed and the Qur’an in English in 2014. Never mind that they don’t speak English. Never mind that the wife’s phone had been missing for a full month before the inflammatory text was sent. Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar are Catholic, illiterate, and entirely innocent. The couple, parents of four, were sentenced to death in 2014. In a landmark ruling, the High Court has now thrown out the case. The SIM card from the phone in question had not been sent for a forensic test, and therefore was deemed inadmissible as evidence, undermining the case of the prosecution.

When a Free Society Becomes a Police State For 26 years, the pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily was a thorn in Beijing’s side. This week, the paper closed for good. What its death means for Hong Kong — and for us all. Bari Weiss

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/when-a-free-society-becomes-a-police?token=

By my lights, the most important news event of this past week was not the New York mayoral primary (my condolences to Andrew Yang). It wasn’t Bitcoin dropping below $30,000. And it certainly wasn’t the new bipartisan infrastructure deal announced by President Biden.

It was the forced closure of Apple Daily, a pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong.

You may not have heard of Apple Daily. I knew of it, but only vaguely. It is — or rather, it was — Hong Kong’s version of the New York Post combined with William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator. A tabloid, yes. But also: a voice for freedom. 

Ever since it began publishing in 1995, Apple Daily has been a thorn in the side of the Chinese Communist Party. Its commitment to democracy and freedom had everything to do with its founder, Jimmy Lai.

It’s not possible to do Lai’s whole story justice in a column — someone should make a blockbuster — but here is the cliffsnotes version: Lai fled mainland China at 12 years old as a stowaway on a fishing boat. He found a job in a Hong Kong sweatshop and eventually worked his way up in the garment trade (or, as we in the Jewish community call it, the shmata business.)

Along the way, he encountered fellow garment workers in New York who introduced him to free-market theorists like Frederick Hayek, Karl Popper and Milton Friedman, with whom he later developed a close relationship. “This is a guy who didn’t have any formal schooling past the age of maybe eight,” Mark Simon, who has been Lai’s right hand for the past two decades, told me in an interview this week. “Those books started his real political awakening.”

“Beat, Raped, and Left for Dead”: The Persecution of Christians, May 2021 by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17504/persecution-of-christians-may

The boy eventually met up with his mother, and they went searching for Pastor Thomas. According to the wife, “As we continued doing the search, we found my husband in a pool of blood, beheaded and his tongue removed.” His tongue was likely cut out as punishment for “speaking against Islam.”

Although Azerbaijan claims to be repairing the damage it caused the cathedral, subsequent pictures and video footage suggest that they are defacing it more…. In the same area of Shushi where the cathedral is being profaned, Azerbaijan is preparing to build a “victory” mosque…. Finally, Azerbaijan is using gravestones from Armenian Christian cemeteries as building material.

Muslim men raped a Christian child and molested another. On May 2, Muhammad Awais, “beat, raped, and left for dead” Anum Bibi, an 8-year-old Christian girl, after he caught her trying to retrieve water with her 9-year-old brother. — Pakistan.

A group of Muslims attacked a Christian family and destroyed their home in an effort to seize their farmstead. “Muslims destroyed our mud house,” the mother explained. “They stole our tin roof, took the rice, food, everything of value. They also beat me and my husband with a stick, even my children.”… As a result, police failed to respond or make any arrests and instead asked for money from the victims. — Bangladesh.

The following are among the abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of May 2021:

The Slaughter of Christians

Uganda: On May 3, hours after Pastor Thomas Chikooma engaged in a public debate about Islam and Christianity, Muslims severed his tongue and beheaded him. The well-known pastor, father of 11, had planted 50 churches in eastern Uganda. During the open-air event, to which Muslims had invited him, he used the Bible and Koran to make his points. He won over several people — including six Muslims, who went on to convert to Christianity — prompting angry Muslims in the crowd to cry “Allahu Akbar,” prompted the pastor and his young son to rush away from the event.

“Two motorcycles carrying two Muslims each and dressed in Islamic attire speedily bypassed us,” his son, a minor, later explained. “When we were 200 meters to reach our house, the two motorcycles stopped at the junction opposite Nalufenya primary school and the road near our house.” The pastor told his son to wait while he went to confront the four men. “Immediately some commotion began as the men started talking about the open-air debate, and soon one of them slapped my father,” said his son. “I got scared and fled … and arrived at home.” The boy eventually met up with his mother, and they went searching for Pastor Thomas.

Iran: Black Turban Follows White Turban by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17503/iran-ebrahim-raisi-black-turban

[T]o see Raisi as a cleric heading a clerical regime would be a mistake. He is as much of a cleric as Saddam Hussein was a Field Marshal. It would also be a mistake to see him, as some American “liberals” have done, as more “open to the world” because he claims a PhD.
However, to see Raisi as a mere puppet playing Judge Blood could also be misleading. Raisi has been created by a network of Mafia-like interests linked to the military-security apparatus that has embraced the Iranian-nation, sucking its vial energies, as a poison ivy that could kill a towering oak with a tight embrace.
Raisi’s victory is the victory of a coterie that cares neither for Iran nor for revolution as long as it can advance its position of power and protect its ill-gained assets. Khamenei is the apprentice wizard that helped create this monster….
Paradoxically, the concentration of power in the hands of the faction of which Khamenei is the face could mean that Tehran may be more likely to bend now than it ever was. If things go wrong domestically, as they are bound to if current policies remain in place, the clique won’t be able to blame it on the “New York Boys”.

Now what? This is the question Iranians ask these days as they try to absorb the shock of the latest elections which has propelled another turban into the presidency of the Islamic Republic.

Leaving aside the first two whose ephemeral career was too short to merit attention, the Islamic Republic has had five presidents.

Of these, only one, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, did not pretend to be a man of the cloth. Of the remaining four two, Hashemi Rafsanjani and Hassan Rouhani, wore white turbans that designated them as “common folk” (aam in Arabic) while two others, Ali Khamenei and Muhammad Khatami, donned black turbans and the title of “sayyed” which in Persian designates the descendants of the Prophet through his daughter Fatimah az-Zahra, thus regarded as “special”.

Iran’s New President: A Mass Murderer Mullah by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17502/iran-president-ebrahim-raisi

Many people boycotted the elections and protesters called on US President Joe Biden to stop trying to return to the nuclear deal.

“The government is telling people to vote… We are not going to vote in order to show the world that we Iranians are frustrated with this clerical establishment. We do not support a government that shoots down a passenger plane… that lies repeatedly, and that kills and tortures its own citizens.” — Soraya, a student at Tehran University, to Gatestone Institute, three days before the election.

At the age of 24, Raisi was appointed as deputy of the Revolutionary Court Prosecutor’s Office. There, as a member of the “Death Commission”, he would be known for, and implicated in, one of the world’s largest mass executions, in which more than 30,000 people were executed, including children….

The Biden administration — instead of enriching and empowering these tyrants — need to stand with the Iranian people, who for decades have been suffering under Iran’s brutal and predatory regime.

The Iranian regime ran a sham election to make its favorite mullah candidate, Ebrahim Raisi, linked with mass executions, become the next President of the Islamic Republic. Will the European Union and the Biden administration at least condemn the Iranian regime and stop the West’s appeasement policies with the ruling mullahs?

How China Sees It by Pete Hoekstra

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17501/how-china-sees-it

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has much to lose, both domestically and internationally, if the truth comes out. A muddled debate about the origins of the virus serves China just fine. Evading accountability — and suffering no little negative fallout — for unleashing a pandemic on the world that killed millions of people is not a bad outcome. And the economic results may even be better for China than for the rest of the world, thereby strengthening the CCP further.

And now, in response to China’s obfuscation, the international community seems unable to go beyond the empty threat of calling for the World Health Organization (WHO) to follow up its original investigation, which was abysmal, with another probe.

For the West to maintain the WHO as the agency of record is embarrassing. It was a puppet of China the first time around and will be again.

China has been soundly condemned by the U.S. and others for practicing genocide against the Uyghurs. No consequences. China has been cheating ever since it was invited to join the World Trade Organization in 2001. No consequences. See a pattern? If you don’t, you can bet that the Chinese do. They expect that spreading misinformation and hiding the facts about the pandemic will lead to the same fate, no consequences.

It seems that the European Union and the United States are now calling for a renewed investigation into the origins of the coronavirus. They are “urging” China to cooperate fully and provide “complete access.” Them’s fightin’ words! The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) must be quaking in its boots — especially after President Joe Biden’s national security advisor stated that the consequences of not cooperating would be international “isolation.” This half-hearted approach will not get the job done. It’s long past the time to get serious with China, and we all know it.

Why will this “powerful” unified initiative by the U.S. and its allies fail? From the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, China has been totally uncooperative. It has evaded accountability and responsibility for its actions. It has gone beyond just hiding the facts and conducted a massive disinformation campaign. This strategy has been successful. Regardless of increasing doubts about the origin of the virus, there is no reason for China to change its cover-up strategy and reverse course. Why mess with success?

In fact, China has prepared for the day when it might come under more pressure and scrutiny. By April 2020, reports forwarded to me from European sources indicated that the Chinese intelligence apparatus had already successfully purged all traces of evidence of the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s connection to a bio-weapons division operating at the facility. It had also eliminated any evidence about its connections to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Information that the virus was a result of a lab leak had been eliminated.

Not only has China been deceitful, it has also been operating a massive global disinformation/influence operation. Beginning in roughly March 2020, sources indicated that the Chinese Communist Party had organized an operation of more than 2,000 people with at least $3 billion in financing to control the narrative. Key messaging included ensuring that the theory that the virus had developed naturally would prevail, and that the lab leak theory would be totally debunked. A second primary message was that China had effectively controlled the virus inside of China and was a leading player in minimizing the impact globally. Finally, it sought to portray the U.S. — and especially President Donald Trump — as bumbling and ineffectual in responding to the threat.