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WORLD NEWS

AYAAN HIRSI ALI WARNS OF ISLAMIC ANTI-SEMITISM By Janice Arnold,

https://www.cjnews.com/

“Ali described “Islamist-driven anti-Semitism as the reigning anti-Semitism of the day,” and said that it’s distinct from the “classic” European variety, or today’s white supremacy movement.“Little attention is paid (to it) and that is a pity because it is the most zealous, most potent Jew hatred,” she said. “It both condemns Jews wholesale and seeks to destroy the State of Israel.”

Islamic anti-Semitism is of a “scale and scope” that most people in the West do not understand and is therefore all the more insidious, the controversial critic of the Muslim religion, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, told a capacity audience at the Jewish Public Library (JPL) in Montreal on May 13.

The Somali-born Ali, 49, grew up being told that Jews were evil and reflexively hated them, even though she had never met one. In her teens, she joined the Muslim Brotherhood, in which she was indoctrinated to believe that Jews were a sub-human enemy and that their state occupies Muslim lands and must be destroyed.

After fleeing to avoid a forced marriage, Ali found refuge in the Netherlands, where her views were transformed. She became an activist for Muslim women’s rights and was elected to the Dutch parliament.

She wrote the short, but incendiary, 2004 film Submission, a critique of Islam’s subjugation of women, whose director, Theo van Gogh, was murdered by a Muslim fundamentalist.

Antisemitism, migrants and integration We asked interviewees their opinion about the statement that Jews cannot be trusted. By Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/23863

In the six countries we conducted the survey , approximately 45% of Muslims agreed with this claim. Among non-Muslims it was eight percent.

Manfred Gerstenfeld interviews Ruud Koopmans

“Antisemitism in the Netherlands has grown in the past 10-20 years like in other countries in Europe. It is difficult to prove the spread of verbal antisemitism which can hardly be quantified. The rise of social media has increased this type of abuse. It aims at many targets, including Jews, Zionists and Israel. I do not give much weight to it.

“A stronger and more severe form of antisemitism is threats and violence. We know that this violence has also grown in Europe. Sometimes it is even lethal.”

Dr. Ruud Koopmans was born in the Netherlands in 1961. In 1992 he received his Ph.D in sociology at the University of Amsterdam. He is professor of Sociology and Migration Research at the Humboldt University of Berlin and director of the research unit “Migration, Integration and Transnationalization” at the WZB Berlin Social Center.

Koopmans says: “I have done some research on antisemitism. In 2015, I studied religious fundamentalism in six European countries including the Netherlands. One question asked interviewees their opinion about the statement that Jews cannot be trusted. In the six countries concerned approximately 45% of Muslims agreed with this claim. Among non-Muslims it was eight percent.

‘Both in the Netherlands and in Germany there is good data about punishable antisemitic acts. Statistics are however rather vague about the perpetrators’ origins. The situation in Germany is even worse than in the Netherlands. It is impossible to obtain data about the share of migrants in various crimes.

Why Palestinians Oppose Economic Prosperity by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14236/palestinians-oppose-economic-prosperity

To advance his goal, Ashraf Jabari recently announced the establishment of a new party that calls for focusing on economic prosperity for Palestinians. The Reform and Development Party seeks to solve the economic problems of the Palestinians, particularly high unemployment, he said. “We have an army of university graduates who are unemployed. We’ve reached a situation where a young [Palestinian] man holding a Master’s degree in law has to work as a street vendor because he can’t find work.”

Instead of giving Jabari a chance to carry out his initiative, Palestinians have waged a massive smear campaign against him, with many denouncing him as a “traitor” and “collaborator” with Israel and Jews. Some Palestinians have even gone as far as calling for his arrest or execution.

The upcoming peace plan, according to various reports, talks about giving the Palestinians billions of dollars and raising money for them from wealthy Arab countries. Yet, as Jabari’s case makes clear, the Palestinians are less invested in gaining economic stability than they are in hating Israel.

For Palestinians, the financial aid is a cynical attempt to lure them away from their struggle against Israel — and no Palestinian leader has the stomach to face the threats that Jabari is currently confronting. So, far from any “deal of the century,” the Palestinian leaders long ago struck a dirty deal of their own: they put their stock in Israel-hatred rather than in their own people.

In most normal societies, a businessman who seeks to improve the living conditions of his people by boosting the economy and creating job opportunities for the unemployed — including a host of jobless university graduates — is treated with respect. The Palestinians, however, do not seem to belong to those societies.Ashraf Jabari is a 45-year-old businessman from the West Bank city of Hebron. A member of a large Palestinian clan in the city, Jabari believes in economic cooperation and peaceful coexistence with his Jewish neighbors, including settlers living in the West Bank.

Right from wrong: Bringing Iran to its knees By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-from-wrong-Bringing-Iran-to-its-knees-589934

On January 12, 2016, a year before US President Donald Trump entered the Oval Office, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seized American patrol boats that had entered Iranian territorial waters in the Persian Gulf. Although the US sailors explained that they had drifted into the area by mistake, their IRGC captors spent the next 15 hours terrorizing and humiliating them at gunpoint.

Footage shot by the IRGC showed the 10 sailors – nine men and one woman – on their knees with their hands behind their heads, while their documents, electronic devices and weapons were being confiscated. Under interrogation by the Iranian thugs, nine of the sailors reportedly spilled sensitive data about their ships and gave their abductors their cellphone and computer passwords. For this “violation of the naval code of conduct” they would subsequently be investigated, and two of them would be relieved of their command.

The response on part of the powers-that-be in Washington was to spend nearly an entire day trying to persuade Tehran that the incident had occurred due to a mechanical or navigational error, and therefore the sailors should be let free. To this end, then-US Secretary of State John Kerry phoned his counterpart, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, during the day and throughout the night to plead for the Americans’ release.

By morning, Zarif was exhausted in general, and weary of listening to Kerry’s voice in particular. Since the act of bringing the “Great Satan” literally and figuratively to its knees had been milked enough in the meantime, and filmed for future propaganda purposes, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator was able, finally, to liberate the crew and catch some sorely needed sleep.

Peaceful-Coexistence in the Middle East? Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/2LYX0p4

“The Middle East and North Africa have a well-deserved reputation for being a region plagued by war and conflict. Every decade since the end of WW2 has seen at least one interstate conflict; it has also witnessed 25 types of intrastate war, including insurgencies, civil wars and protracted terrorism. In the same timeframe, 2.3 million citizens have died as a result of political violence – 40% of the global total of battle-related deaths, although the region accounts for 5% of the world’s population…. 25 of these [intrastate] conflicts have claimed 1.5 million victims – 64% of the region’s total war deaths…. ” (Florence Gaub, Deputy Director, European Union Institute for Security Studies, October, 2017).

Middle East inter and intra-Arab/Muslim conflicts – some of them 1,400 year old – have been largely intractable, defying Western conventional wisdom, which has been dominated by the well-meaning pursuit of peaceful-coexistence, conflict-resolution, democracy and improved standard of living.

According to Dr. Daniel Pipes and Prof. Gunnar Heinsohn, some 11 million Muslims have been killed in wars from 1948-2007, only 35,000 of them in Arab-Israel wars – 0.3%!

According to Dr. Daniel Pipes and Prof. Gunnar Heinsohn, some 11 million Muslims have been killed in wars from 1948-2007, only 35,000 of them in Arab-Israel wars – 0.3%!Middle East inter and intra-Arab/Muslim conflicts – which preceded the 1948 establishment of Israel – have exposed the oversimplification of conventional Western wisdom, which has approached the Arab-Israeli conflict as if it were “the Middle East conflict.”

French Socialism Has Failed By Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/06/03/french-socialism-has-failed/

‘Free’ government services in France are unsustainable and anything but progressive

One of Charles de Gaulle’s most notorious moments of public wit came when he was asked at a press conference whether “Europe” wasn’t the solution to France’s problems. After a long defense of his policies, he exclaimed: “Of course, people can jump up and down on their chairs like mountain goats and shout ‘Europe! Europe! Europe!’ but it means nothing and leads nowhere.” It seems that when it comes to health-care reform in the U.S., progressives often think it’s enough to jump up and down like mountain goats and shout “France! France! France!” But it’s not. I am proudly French, and I have seen the problems of socialism in my nation firsthand.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: Yes, the French health-care system is, at the moment, almost as amazing as they say. Taking my frighteningly sick daughter to Necker, the main children’s hospital in Paris, made me proud to be a French taxpayer. Not only was the building gleaming and everything in it high-tech, but the staff was first-class, efficient, and, above all, kind, a world away from bureaucratic cliché. When, on my way out, after my daughter had recovered, I asked whether I had to pay for anything, the staff looked at me as if I’d just flown in from Mars.

Nonetheless, the French system offers virtually no lessons applicable to the United States.

Progressives either dislike private insurance or want to ban it outright; the French system relies on private insurance. Health-care wonks left and right agree that the biggest problem of the U.S. system is that it is employer-based. French health care? Also employer-based.

Seventy-five Years Later, Hungary Still Hasn’t Come to Terms with its Role in the Holocaust written by Anna Porter

https://quillette.com/2019/05/15/seventy-five-years

On the 75th anniversary of the extermination of most of Hungary’s Jews—including the Auschwitz deportations, which began in May, 1944—we should also take note of the Hungarian government’s apparent determination to distort the country’s historical record. In some circles, this effort includes even the rehabilitation of Miklós Horthy, the longtime Hungarian Regent who governed Hungary during the Holocaust.

A former admiral and adjutant to the Habsburg Emperor-King, Horthy entered Budapest in dramatic style with his army on November 16, 1919, astride a white horse. His army defeated the ragtag Bolshevik forces that had imposed 133 days of “Red Terror” upon the country, but also inflicted its own “White Terror,” in some ways more brutal than its communist predecessor. Early during Horthy’s rule, Hungary enacted some of Europe’s first 20th-century anti-Jewish laws. Jews were capped at 6% of university admissions, and subsequent measures limited Jewish participation in elite professions to the same benchmark.

MAY CONFIRMS PLAN FOR DEPARTURE

Theresa May has confirmed she will announce a date for her departure next month – regardless of whether she has delivered Brexit or not.

The Prime Minister has agreed to meet with the executive of the 1922 committee, the powerful backbench committee of Tory MPs, at the beginning of June, when they will “agree a timetable for the election of a new leader”.

In a joint statement issued this afternoon, the committee and Mrs May announced that they will meet again in the week beginning 3 June, following the second reading of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill in the House of Commons.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/05/16/brexit-latest-news-theresa-may-set-showdown-meeting-senior-tories/

It comes after Mrs May was told last night that she would face a vote of no confidence unless she agreed to set out a clear timetable for her departure.

The Justice System and Cardinal Pell: Peter Smith

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/05/the-justice-system-and-cardinal-pell/

While recently away in the UK I read the “best-selling” book The Secret Barrister (2018) authored by, well, a secret barrister. The barrister in question is apparently a junior barrister specialising in criminal law in England and Wales. I figure it’s a man (and will use ‘he’ where applicable) but the forward blurb disguises this by disconcertingly using the pronouns ‘they’ and ‘their’ for a singular person. Most annoying. Why not use the awkward ‘he or she’ rather than butcher the language? Just asking.

The book is a damning indictment of the British criminal justice system, at least as it applies in England and Wales. From amateur magistrates to sloppy gathering of evidence to missing evidence to poorly-funded legal aid and much, much more, the secret barrister provides an alarming picture of the law gone wrong and justice at grave risk. The Observer described the account of the justice sytem as “terrifying.”

My impression is that the situation simply can’t be as shambolic as described. Nevertheless, if you were falsely accused of a criminal offence (providing, perhaps, it is not child abuse) it might be best to be in Australia rather than in Britain; I hope anyway. On the other hand, the guilty might have a better chance of the incriminating evidence being mislaid in Britain. So, it evens out in an Alice in Wonderland kind of way.

Heroes and Villains: A Talk with Vladimir Bukovsky, Part IV By Jay Nordlinger

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/heroes-and-villains-a-talk-with-vladimir-bukovsky-part-iv/

We are talking over the waterfront — or a good deal of the waterfront — here on the back patio in Cambridge. But, as I’ve mentioned, I also talked by phone with Vladimir Bukovsky last September. At that time, I asked him about Crimea: Putin’s swallowing of.

He said that Putin “did it for his own internal reasons.” He wanted to show Russians, along with the world, that “he doesn’t care about anyone or international law.” He is a big, strong man. He is “playing on people’s emotions.”

Crimea is a test, said Bukovsky. There has long been a principle about the changing of international borders. Putin has broken a taboo. He rubbed the nose of the West in the annexation of Crimea, to show that he is a criminal and that he can do whatever he wants, without anyone standing in his way.

From here on out, instability — including the changing of borders — becomes easier. That’s the game.