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The New “European Zionism” and Viktor Orban’s Hungary David Goldman

By on October 20th, 2024

https://www.newsweek.com/new-european-zionism-viktor-orbans-hungary-opinion-1969603

“Zionism for the nations of Europe,” wrote Dutch anti-immigration crusader Geert Wilders in Breitbart this month. “The Europeans should follow the example of the Jewish people and safeguard the sovereignty of their nation-states.” Wilders’ party took first place in Holland’s national elections late last year, a portent of the so-called shift to the Right that propelled nationalist parties to electoral success this year in Germany, France, Austria, and the Czech Republic. But the first European “Zionist” and the inspiration for many European conservatives was Hungary’s long-serving Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Hungary is a small nation that is determined to survive the demographic winter that has crept across the industrial nations. It devotes nearly a tenth of its budget to support for families, but even more important than family subsidies is a renewed national spirit and resistance to the European Commission’s attempt to homogenize the nations of Europe into a supranational blur.

“Humans are about to enter a new era of history. Call it ‘the age of depopulation. For the first time since the Black Death in the 1300s, the planetary population will decline. But whereas the last implosion was caused by a deadly disease borne by fleas, the coming one will be entirely due to choices made by people,” economist Nicholas Eberstadt Oct. 10 in Foreign Affairs.

That’s a death sentence for Europe’s smaller nations. When Orban came to office in 2010, government demographers gauged the total fertility (number of live births in a lifetime) for Magyar women at just 0.83, then the lowest in the world. Since then, Hungary’s TFR has roughly doubled to about 1.6, and a surge in the marriage rate portends further improvement.

Orban became a figure of controversy in 2016 when he refused to open Hungary’s borders to the millions of Middle Eastern migrants fleeing the Syrian civil war and other conflicts, defying migrant quotas assigned by the European Commission. It also put Orban in conflict with the world’s wealthiest Hungarian, George Soros, whose Open Society Foundation promotes free migration.

European nationalists look to Israel as a beacon of hope. It’s the only high-income country with a fertility rate above the 2.1 breakeven level—so far above breakeven at three children per female that its working-age population will more than double from today’s 4.5 million to 11 million by the end of this century, according to UN demographers. The same UN projections show that the working-age population of Turkey and Iran will fall by about half, and by three-quarters in Taiwan and South Korea.

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128 U.S. Orthodox Jews Are Barred from Lufthansa Flight By Susan Quinn

By on October 18th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/10/128_u_s_orthodox_jews_are_barred_from_lufthansa_flight.html

Ever since the end of World War II and the Holocaust, the Germans have made a show about fighting anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, like the nation’s fairly recent passage of strict laws against hate speech, detailed below:

The German penal code prohibits publicly denying the Holocaust and disseminating Nazi propaganda, both off- and online. This includes sharing images such as swastikas, wearing an SS uniform and making statements in support of Hitler.

It also places strict limits on how social media companies must moderate and report hate speech and threats. These hate-speech laws were, after three far-right terror attacks in 2019 and early 2020 prompted German authorities to warn of increasing extremism.

But anti-Semitism has a long history in Germany, and in 2022, we learned of an anti-Semitic incident on Lufthansa Airlines that demonstrates its persistence, which has now resulted in a $4 million fine by the U.S. Department of Transportation, a penalty incurred from allegations that Lufthansa Airlines had discriminated against a large group of Jewish passengers. The situation was mishandled in so many ways that we have to wonder if there was an underlying zeal for acting assertively against a large group of Orthodox Jews.

The passengers were traveling from New York to Budapest, Hungary for an annual memorial event for an Orthodox rabbi. Although there were 128 Jewish passengers, they were not traveling as a group. There are inconsistencies in the stories about what instigated the passengers’ removal after they disembarked in Frankfurt and then were not permitted to reboard to continue their trip to Budapest, but here’s what an article at CNN reported:

The misbehavior detailed in the [airline] report includes 60 passengers onboard ‘repeatedly disregarded’ safety and public announcements from flight attendants and the flight deck. The crew said that some passengers obstructed flight attendants in economy class from its on-board food and beverage service, ‘inconvenienced other passengers’ and argued with the crew about wearing masks.

Another description from other passengers, via an item at The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, doesn’t appear to confirm these comments:

On the first leg of the flight, some passengers said they were told by the crew to wear face masks and not to stand in the aisles. The passengers said they didn’t see anyone that didn’t comply. Lufthansa at the time required passengers to wear a face mask, while U.S. and German law prohibit passengers from assembling in aisles or galley areas during a flight.

The captain of the flight informed a Lufthansa security manager of misbehavior by passengers traveling on to Budapest. No specific passengers were identified, according to the Transportation Department. Still, the airline put a hold on more than 100 passengers’ tickets. 

Finally, a press release sent out by Lufthansa:

In a press release, the airline said the incident ‘resulted from an unfortunate series of inaccurate communications, misinterpretations, and misjudgments throughout the decision-making process’ and that these actions, ‘although regrettable, do not support any finding of discrimination and the department’s findings in this case.’

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‘Pure Genocide’: Christians Slaughtered in Nigeria and the Great Press Cover-Up by Raymond Ibrahim

By on October 18th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21033/christians-slaughtered-in-nigeria

Muslim militants slaughtered 16,769 Christians [in Nigeria] in just the four years between 2019 and 2023. That comes out to 4,192 Christians killed on average per year—or one Christian murdered for his/her faith every two hours. — Report, Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa, August 29, 2024.

The violence has reached the point, the report says, that many traumatized Christian children sleep in trees to try to avoid being butchered during the night, when Fulani are most prone to attack.

[I]n 2014, there were 1.1 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Nigeria; as of 2023, there are 3.4 million. — “NO ROAD HOME: Christian IDPs displaced by extremist violence in Nigeria,” Open Doors, September 1, 2024.

Behind all these misleading euphemisms, the facts remain: the murderers are Muslim and their victims are overwhelmingly Christian.

When Muslim terrorists slaughtered nearly 200 Christians last Christmas, the Associated Press failed to mention the identities of the assailants and their victims. Rather, it presented the atrocity, as so many now do, as a regrettable byproduct of climate change — which is, ostensibly, forcing “herders” (Muslims) to encroach on the lands of “farmers” (Christians).

In another AP report on the 2022 Pentecost Sunday church bombing that left 50 Christian worshippers dead, the words “Muslim” and “Islam” — even “Islamist” — never appear. Rather, readers were told, “It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack on the church.”

“Muslim” and “Islam” — even “Islamist” — never appear. Rather, readers were told, “It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack on the church.” To maintain this ambiguity, the AP failed to mention that Islamic terrorists have stormed hundreds of churches and slaughtered thousands of Christians “for sport” over the years in Nigeria….

“It’s tough to tell Nigerian Christians this isn’t a religious conflict since what they see are Fulani fighters clad entirely in black [like ISIS], chanting ‘Allahu Akbar!’ and screaming ‘Death to Christians.'” — Sister Monica Chikwe, cruxnow.com, August 4, 2019.

“Removing Country of Particular Concern status for Nigeria will only embolden the increasingly authoritarian government there.” — Sean Nelson, Legal Counsel for Global Religious Freedom for Alliance Defending Freedom International, catholicnewsagency.com, November 23, 2021.

For the mainstream media and politicians, Christian lives taken by Muslims apparently do not matter.

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Islamic Militias in the Central African Republic by Uzay Bulut

By on October 17th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21030/central-african-republic-islamic-militias

The Central African Republic is a tragic case of what happens when Islamic radicals take over a nation.

The UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) and government security forces have also not been able to exert effective control beyond the capital city.

This devastating war and its consequences need more media coverage. Why are activists and human rights groups concerned only with the Middle East? The horrific situation in CAR and elsewhere should also serve as an urgent warning about what happens to nations when Islamic radicals are not vetted or held accountable.

The Central African Republic is a tragic case of what happens when Islamic radicals take over a nation.

Much of the international community, human rights groups and media have ignored it, but the Central African Republic (CAR) has been struggling with an ongoing war launched by Seleka, an alliance of Islamic militias fighting against the country’s Christian and officially secular government.

Most of the country is today occupied by armed groups (both from within the country and foreign fighters), all of whom appear responsible for human rights abuses.

Russian mercenaries from The Wagner Group also arrived in the CAR after President Faustin-Archange Touadéra asked for help to tackle rebel groups in 2018. Wagner has since been fighting on the side of the CAR military against the Islamic militias and, while “protecting” the gold mines, has, at least for the time being, delivered “peace.” However, according to the BBC:

“Ms [Nathalia] Dukhan [a senior investigator at The Sentry investigative group] says the mercenaries are waging a ‘campaign of terror’ and are responsible for widespread human rights abuses including extrajudicial killings, torture and rape…. Wagner has taken advantage of weak institutions and a weak army to perfect ‘a blueprint for state capture.'”

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The Return of the Black Flags The conditions that first produced ISIS have been left to fester as part of a wider malign neglect toward the Muslim Middle East in the aftermath of the Iraq war. Brian Stewart

By on October 15th, 2024

https://quillette.com/2024/10/10/the-return-of-the-black-flags-isis-iraq-syria/

We seem to have reached a hinge moment in the long-running battle against the Islamic State. In recent months, the jihadist outfit has been mustering forces in Syria’s Badiya desert, recruiting and training a new band of holy warriors to resurrect its dream of ruling a caliphate. The rallying of jihadist forces and the corresponding outburst of violence have not been out of the ordinary in this vast ungoverned space, but they may yet prove combustible enough to engulf Syria and parts of Iraq.

This year, the number of attacks in Syria and Iraq has doubled. The primary targets of the growing insurgency have been US garrisons in Syria and units of the Syrian Democratic Forces, Kurdish-led troops whom the US helped to defeat the militant group five years ago. The jihadists’ immediate objective has been to curtail counter-terrorism patrols and free thousands of their confederates from jail, where they have languished since the SDF and US-led coalition recaptured the Islamic State’s last bastion.

Since laying waste to the caliphate in 2019, the US has maintained a small but robust military presence in Syria and Iraq, conducting a largely surreptitious campaign to suppress the remnants of IS. US warplanes carry out airstrikes and provide live aerial surveillance to SDF ground forces conducting raids on suspected Islamic State cells. Occasionally, American commandos undertake missions of their own to kill or capture senior Islamic State leaders. In 2024, the SDF has reportedly captured 233 Islamic State fighters in 28 operations while American aircraft have conducted three strikes on Islamic State targets in Syria and one in Iraq. This level of kinetic activity mirrors 2023, when the US carried out four strikes against Islamic State. 

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Anti-Semitism? What anti-Semitism? The ‘anti-racists’ seem desperate to ignore the Jew hatred in our midst. Tom Slater

By on October 15th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/14/anti-semitism-what-anti-semitism/

“The silence of the ‘anti-racists’ since 7 October won’t have surprised anyone who has been paying attention. But it must deprive the woke set of the moral high ground for good. After years of raging against cultural appropriation, microaggressions and inanimate objects, they clammed up when genocidal terrorists achieved the most deadly assault against Jews since the Holocaust, and anti-Semitic marches became part and parcel of British city life. They showed once and for all that they don’t care about racism, particularly when it’s levelled against Jews. Never let them forget it.”

If you take the mainstream media’s word for it, Britain and much of the West have been gripped in recent years by a long-overdue reckoning with our racist past and present. 2020 – the year Black Lives Matter went global – was supposedly a high watermark for ‘anti-racist’ activism, which was only bristled against by bigots or dumb proles oblivious to their own privilege.

None of that was true, of course. As was clear even at the time, the BLM convulsions had nothing to do with a bottom-up backlash against racism and everything to do with a top-down attempt to mainstream woke racial identity politics – an ideology that is by turns divisive (carving people up along racial lines) and trivial (insisting that the existence of a statue in Bristol was among the primary obstacles to black British success).

But if you were still labouring under the misconception that our cultural elites are now all dogged anti-racists, entitled to indulge in their incessant moral preening, witness their stony, silent reaction to the sulphurous re-emergence of anti-Semitism over the past year. Following Hamas’s pogrom in Israel, Jew hatred has made a devastating comeback on Britain’s streets, and the knee-takers have had bugger all to say about it.

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Canada’s woke Stasi An elderly school trustee who questioned trans ideology has been subjected to a legal witch-hunt.

By on October 13th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/13/canadas-woke-stasi/

Under other circumstances, former school trustee Barry Neufeld may have retired as one of your curmudgeonly, albeit amusing, elderly neighbours, equipped with a brash sense of humour, a glass of wine and a cigarette. Had he not introduced himself at a recent panel event I spoke on in Victoria, British Columbia (BC) about the harms of gender-identity ideology, I would never have pegged him as a supposed hate-monger. He seemed rather jovial, in fact. Yet the Canadian media and some of Canada’s most powerful unions see things differently. They have made Neufeld their nemesis.

Neufeld is now in his seventies. His troubles began in 2017. This was when he discovered a new gender-identity curriculum for kids coming down the pike in his school district of Chilliwack, BC. This was the year that the SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) 123 programme was implemented in public schools across the province, with the aim of making classrooms more ‘inclusive’ for LGBT-identified kids. That same year, Bill C-16 was passed by the national parliament, adding ‘gender identity’ to the list of protected characteristics under the Canadian Human Rights Act. Both pieces of legislation were introduced with little public debate and most Canadians were completely unaware of what was even happening.

But Neufeld noticed and spoke out on Facebook, criticising SOGI 123 for instructing ‘children that gender is not biologically determined, but is a social construct’. ‘At the risk of being labelled a bigoted homophobe’, he wrote, ‘I have to say that I support traditional family values and I agree with the [American College of Pediatricians] that allowing little children to choose to change gender is nothing short of child abuse’.

After facing backlash, he apologised a couple of days later ‘to those who felt hurt’ by his opinion. He explained that ‘I am critical of an educational resource, not individuals. Those who have worked with me for over 24 years know that I do believe in inclusion and a safe learning environment for all of our students.’ Yet he didn’t relent, adding: ‘SOGI 123 resources need to be reviewed by engaging parents and teachers in conversation… before full implementation.’

This didn’t happen, of course. This is never how the trans issue has been handled by the Canadian government and its state-funded institutions. Rather, gender-identity policy and legislation have been slipped in under the radar. By the time most of the Canadian public noticed, it was far too late.

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United Nations’ Material Support for Terrorism: Allegedly Gave $1.3 Billion to Hamas in Cash, Presumably for Weapons Corruption and Bias Have Reduced the UN to Irrelevance by Con Coughlin

By on October 13th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21013/united-nations-terrorism

Gavriel Mairone, the attorney who is representing the plaintiffs, argues that these shocking allegations demonstrate that, for more than a decade, UNRWA’s aid distribution network was involved in widespread fraud and corruption. The lawsuit claims this scheme not only enriched Hamas but also funded terrorism, playing a pivotal role in the October 7 attacks.

The first damning evidence of the UN’s complicity in the worst terrorist atrocity committed in Israel’s history emerged after Israel’s military reported that 450 workers employed by UNRWA were “military operatives from Hamas and other armed groups” and has shared this intelligence with the United Nations.

The dossier of “a UN crime against humanity” and its demonization of Israel is too long to list, but one can get a glimpse of it…

A better idea, given the body’s recent woeful record on its handling of the Middle East, would be to demolish the entire infrastructure of this corrupt and institutionally biased body.

Accusations that the United Nations funded Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure by transferring $1.3 billion to the organisation, some of which was used to finance the purchase of weapons used in last year’s October 7 attacks, will only add to the view that the UN is no longer fit to fulfil the role for which it was originally intended.

A lawsuit filed in US Federal Court by victims of the October 7 Hamas attacks makes damning accusations against the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) that it was involved in orchestrating a large-scale money laundering operation from which the terrorist organisation benefitted.

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Cold Comfort from Norway Rachael Kohn

By on October 12th, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/the-middle-east/cold-comfort-from-norway/
Norway’s pride in its democracy has been tainted by the May recognition of Palestine

Norway, the home of the Oslo Accords and the Nobel Peace Prize, is proud of its democracy. Every May 17, as the country emerges from its long dark winter, the capital is alive with marching bands and colourful parades of young and old dressed in their elaborate national costumes, to mark the day in 1814 when the country’s constitution was passed. It also signalled the end of 434 years of Danish rule, which by all accounts was so benign that most Norwegians did not seek independence. (Even then, Norway was given as a prize to Sweden, which attacked and defeated Denmark for backing Napoleon, but that’s another story that lasted until 1905.) Ten years ago the bicentenary of the 1814 constitution was a huge affair.

Not to let Norway’s political pride fade, in May 2024 an even greater celebration was mounted to commemorate 750 years of the country’s democratic origins. How it jumped from 1814 back to 1274 is a story briefly told on a series of billboards that stand in front of the Parliament (Storting) in Oslo. In this version, the Landslov, Norway’s first nationwide code of law, issued by King Magnus VI between 1274 and 1276, established a centralised authority for the first time over a population of perhaps 500,000, scattered across a land divided by high mountains, deep rivers and long dark winters. Consisting of four regional law books and covering marriage, property and inheritance, as well as the rules of royal succession and Christian laws, the Landslov attempted to exert control over the isolated farms and impoverished hamlets which were still vulnerable to the remnants of Viking overlords whose rule had formally ended in 1066.

How the Landslov is construed as the origin of Norwegian democracy comes down to the notion that everyone was effectively under the same law, which emphasised the qualities of “justice, truth, peace and grace, as opposed to fear, monetary gifts, hostility or alliances”. What is excluded from the narrative erected in front of the Parliament is that the Landslov attributed these virtues to the Christian laws it promulgated, which contained a prologue that emphasised the Christian faith and reflected the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed and the Fourth Lateran Council. The Landslov would be administered through what had been local assemblies that were then turned into courts of law enforcing the new law code.

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The Islamization of Bangladesh by Muhammad Yunus – Backed by Obama, Soros, Clintons by Keya Mukherjee

By on October 11th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21007/islamization-of-bangladesh

Meanwhile, it appears as if Yunus is waiting for the result of the November 5 presidential election in the US. A victory by Kamala Harris could pave the way for him to remain in power indefinitely and complete the process of Islamizing Bangladesh.

“New Delhi is getting increasingly concerned that banned militant outfits like Jamaat-e-Islami and even radical organisations like Hizb ut Tahrir may soon enter mainstream politics in Bangladesh, thereby posing security challenges not just for India but for the entire South Asian region…” – The Anandabazar Patrika, September 14, 2024.

Yunus is already under pressure to lift the ban imposed on Hizb ut Tahrir by Sheikh Hasina’s previous government in 2009.

“Delighted to see an old friend of my father and the foundation, Nobel Prize winner @professormuhammadyunus, interim leader of Bangladesh, who stepped in to lead Bangladesh towards a peaceful future based on equity and fairness.” — Alexander Soros, Instagram, October 2, 2024.

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