Displaying posts categorized under

WORLD NEWS

The Karaoke State of Palestine by Nidra Poller

Palestine

The very word is so tasty. Just saying it-the State of Palestine-is enough to bring into being this imaginary state with neat little houses on tree-lined streets, municipal buildings, bus stations, a brand new airport, and the capital in “East” Jerusalem, the imaginary holy land, the Jerusalem of Palestine, a cut-and-paste of Their Jerusalem. But without Them.

The simple recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel-officially declared by Congress in 1995, confirmed by geographic and geopolitical realities, and now consummated by President Trump-unleashes a torrent of disapproval and threats. The disciples of international law chant promises of violence, stamped with the moral authority of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s Rouhani.

Unilateral declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel? It’s blasphemy! Shameful disrespect for international law. It’s reckless! Putting the cart before the horse, tossing a match into the powder keg, and pouring oil on the fire! Is Trump out of his mind? He’s destabilizing the delicate balance of the shaky Middle East. What’s become of the table where the promised talks should be held? The peace process was almost nearly ready to resume, and now it’s doomed! And so it goes: the revisionists are busy reconstructing the past with shopworn lies, and the multilateralists have decreed the irreversible isolation of the United States, guilty as charged.

One thing is certain: all hell will break lose. In fact, the shababs, by tens and by twenties, went back to their old game, complete with keffieh-face masks, sling shots and rocks, flaming tires, stereotyped theatrics. They go round in circles, scatter in the jet stream of water cannons, cry in clouds of tear gas, do their act, and run back home.

Reality

Israeli sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem is a reality. The two-state-solution with “East” Jerusalem as capital of Palestine is a fake proposal. But there is a real proposal facing off with the Jewish Jerusalem. It’s an Islamic Jerusalem.

“Court Jihad”: How the French Justice System Assists Islamists by Yves Mamou

“Yves Mamou, author and journalist, based in France, worked for two decades as a journalist for Le Monde. He is finishing a book about “Collaborators and Useful Idiots of Islamism in France,” to be published in 2018.”

In France, all the circumlocutions for the word “terrorist” appear to have the same goal: to deny that Islamist terrorism is a coordinated movement and that Islamist warriors are mainly French citizens engaged in a war against their own country.

If you deny that terrorism is a war, you also logically have to deny that terrorists are supported, sheltered, transported and financed by a grey zone of supposedly peaceful French citizens.

In France today, the result of the denial of war is the “anti-racism” movement. Anyone who dares to question Islam or Islamism in its relation to violence and terrorism risks being hauled into court and tried as a “racist.”

When members of a small French far-right nationalist group, Génération Identitaire, occupied a mosque under construction in Poitiers in 2012 and said they were celebrating the anniversary of the battle of Poitiers (732 AD), in which Charles Martel defeated the army of the Ummayad Caliphate, thereby routing the Arab invasion of France, the prosecutor of the Republic of France launched an immediate investigation for “incitement to racial hatred.” Five of the activists were arrested, indicted, and this month, sentenced to one-year suspended prison sentences. The court sentenced four of them to deprivation of their civic rights (such as the right to vote in elections) for the next five years. In addition, the Génération Identitaire organization had to pay a fine of 10,000 euros, and the four activists had to pay a fine of 24,000 euros to the organization “Muslims of France” (“Musulmans de France”), which is the owner of the mosque and the legal representative in France of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement. If the fine is not paid, the activists will go to jail.

The lawyer for Génération Identitaire, Frederic Pichon, said he was “flabbergasted by the severity of the sentence” and that the decision was “political”. “I cannot help comparing it with the incredible impunity that… Femen received when it burst into the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris,” he said.

Pichon was referring to a 2013 incident, in which members of the feminist group Femen had burst topless into Notre Dame Cathedral, were accused of damaging a bell, and in 2015, were acquitted by the Paris court of appeals. Two of the security officers who drove the perpetrators received fines.

The heavy sentence against far-right activists of the Génération Identitaire, however, should not have come as a surprise. The French judicial system is simply applying a policy which claims that the new enemy of the society is not Islamism, but the traditional fascism of the extreme right. This policy, elaborated by the Ministry of Justice and applied by prosecutors, is based on two assumptions. The first is that — despite the fact that since 2012 more than 250 people have been murdered in France by Islamic terrorism — there is supposedly no Islamist war against France or any other non-Muslim country. Islamists killers are presumably only “lone wolves” or “mentally ill”. The second assumption is that if there is no Islamist war against non-Muslims, all critics of Islam and Islamism are not exercising freedom of speech but expressing racism.

Europe’s Tolerance for Terrorists The outrage in Amsterdam continues. Daniel Greenfield

Saleh Ali was one of 64,000 Syrian refugees living in the Netherlands. The vast majority, like Ali, are young men. And the largest number of these migrants spend their days idling in Amsterdam.

On Thursday morning, Saleh Ali took a walk to trendy Amstelveenseweg while wearing a keffiyah and waving a terrorist PLO flag. He stopped in front of a Jewish restaurant, shouted “Allahu Akbar” and began smashing the windows. The Amsterdam police stood by and watched quizzically until he was done. Then when he entered the restaurant, they finally called him out and arrested him.

And in two days he was back on the street.

Amsterdam is a very tolerant place. Not just of drugs or prostitution, but of Islamic violence.

Saleh Ali had lied about his past to get his temporary residence permit while claiming to be a refugee. He had combat training and had fought with Jihadists in and out of Syria. He told the police that he had been prepared to die in the attack on the restaurant and that he will continue engaging in violence.

But this information was kept secret until an anonymous source in the police department leaked it. The lawyer for HaCarmel, the restaurant that had been assaulted by the Islamic terrorist, issued a statement expressing outrage that the attacker who had pledged to commit more attacks was back on the street.

“It is incomprehensible and shocking that this man with a terrorist background, who claims to be prepared to commit violence, has been released,” wrote Herman Loonstein, a lawyer and Jewish civil rights activist. He warned that the attacker poses “a serious danger to society.”

And the prosecutor’s office took immediate action by filing a complaint against the restaurant’s lawyer. The Chief Officer of the Public Prosecution Service objected that, “sharing of information from the police interrogation report is ’inappropriate’”. It’s inappropriate because it revealed that Saleh Ali should never have been in the Netherlands and that the authorities had stood around watching while a trained terrorist attacked a Jewish restaurant and then let him go even after he vowed to launch further attacks.

While the prosecutors went after the restaurant for exposing the terrorist past of the attacker, the attacker was headed back to court for an appearance before a three judge panel.

Saleh Ali wore camouflage to court. According to Matthys van Raalten, a conservative commentator, he told the court that, “he feels like a volcano that is waiting to erupt”. He had already informed an officer that “the attack on the kosher restaurant was only the “first step” and that a next step would come.

He refused to discuss what the next step would be.

So of course they let him go a second time.

The international community and the liberal media Caroline Glick

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley glared at her colleagues at the UN Security Council Monday as she cast the lone nay vote against a draft resolution presented by Egypt to nullify US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. http://carolineglick.com/the-international-community-and-the-liberal-media/

Haley then berated her UN colleagues for their assault against US sovereignty and for their prolonged efforts to delegitimize Israel and blame the Jewish state for the absence of peace. In her words, “The United States refuses to accept the double standard that says we are not impartial when we stand by the will of the American people by moving our US embassy, but somehow the United Nations is a neutral party when it consistently singles out Israel for condemnation.”

The liberal media, led by The New York Times chastised her.

“Punctuating America’s increasing international isolation, the United Nations Security Council demanded on Monday that the Trump administration rescind its decisions to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to put the United States Embassy there,” the Times wrote in a purported news article.

While attacking Trump and Haley for isolating the US, the Times and its colleagues failed to explain what an international community-aligned US foreign policy looks like.

Notably, just such a policy and its consequences were the subject of a 15,000-word investigative report published Monday morning by Politico.

“The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook,” by Josh Meyer, detailed how in the interest of advancing a policy supported by the international community, then president Barack Obama imperiled US public health, national security and its allies.

As Meyer recalled, Obama entered office in 2009 promising to turn over a new leaf with Iran.

By promising to turn over a new leaf in US-Iran relations, Obama signaled his belief that the sorry state of those relations was America’s fault. Because if it wasn’t America’s fault, then no American president could change the situation.

Obama’s assumption was entirely wrong.

Israel Rejects U.N. Vote as Palestinians Hail It Netanyahu highlights absentions on vote rebuking U.S. for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital By Rory Jones

Thursday’s United Nations vote admonishing the U.S. move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital underscored the overwhelming international support for the establishment of a Palestinian state, and dealt a blow to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But the voting pattern on the resolution, with nine objections and 35 abstentions, also highlighted pockets of diplomatic support for Israel. The result was less unanimously against Israel than the vote on many other U.N. resolutions on Israel.

“Israel completely rejects this preposterous resolution,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement. “But I do appreciate the fact that a growing number of countries refused to participate in the theater of the absurd.”

Mr. Netanyahu has said countries around the world are changing their attitudes toward Israel due to its offers of intelligence sharing and technology cooperation. Even Arab states with which Israel has no diplomatic relations are willing to work with his government in private, Mr. Netanyahu has said.

Publicly, Arab states have indicated they will engage with Israel diplomatically only after the establishment of a Palestinian state. Thursday’s resolution, introduced by Turkey and Yemen, was co-sponsored by many other Arab and Muslim governments, underscoring their support for a two-state solution.

The vote proved a diplomatic coup for Palestinian officials after the U.S decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announce a plan to move its embassy there from Tel Aviv. Palestinian officials have said they would boycott the Trump administration’s effort to launch peace talks and seek greater support for their own state from bodies such as the U.N. CONTINUE AT SITE

U.N. Vote Rebukes U.S. for Jerusalem Move General Assembly votes overwhelmingly in favor of resolution despite Trump’s threats of consequences By Farnaz Fassihi

UNITED NATIONS—The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Thursday for a resolution effectively rebuking U.S. President Donald Trump for recognizing the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and pledging to move the U.S. embassy there.

The vote came despite threats by Mr. Trump and U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley that the U.S. would take punitive measures, such as reducing foreign aid and cutting contributions to the U.N., against countries voting in favor of the resolution.

The General Assembly resolution didn’t explicitly refer to the U.S., instead asserting that unilateral decisions such as Mr. Trump’s have no legal effect and must be rescinded. In the vote, 128 countries voted in favor and 9 against, with 35 abstaining.

“The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation,” Ms. Haley said during the debate, adding Mr. Trump’s decision to move the embassy would not be affected.

“We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations,” she said, appearing visibly angry and leaving the chamber after speaking.

President Trump’s plan to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem is a calculated gamble, running the risk of stirring up protests and violence. WSJ’s Gerald F. Seib explains why Mr. Trump thinks now is the time to act, when past administrations made similar promises but decided not to. Photo: AP

It remained unclear immediately after the vote precisely what the U.S. would do in retaliation for the vote. Neither Ms. Haley nor the White House spelled out specific responses.

Many U.N. diplomats said Thursday that while they valued their alliance with the U.S., their own longstanding policies on the status of Jerusalem are in line with international law and U.N. resolutions that don’t recognize the city as the capital of Israel in the absence of a peace deal.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu denounced the approach taken by Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley, who said in an email to representatives of more than 180 countries a day earlier that the U.S. would take down the names of those who vote against it. CONTINUE AT SITE

Canada: Obsessed with “Islamophobia” by Judith Bergman

The current government seems not to believe that Islamic terrorism in Canada even exists.

The RCMP guide is premised on the belief that radicalization occurs because of perceptions of “injustice” (not because of perceptions of jihad). Islamic groups are not mentioned. The message is that terrorism is “diverse” and has nothing to do with Islam. However, Public Safety Canada’s list of terrorist entities contains 54 terrorist groups, 46 of which are Islamic terrorist groups.

Meanwhile, the war on free speech in Canada grinds on: Ottawa Public Library cancelled the screening of “Killing Europe”, a documentary about, ironically, among other things, the death of free speech in Europe. Ottawa Public Library deemed this content not suitable for Canadians — apparently snowflakes, not allowed to know about the rise of migrant rape crime, anti-Semitism, far-leftist violence and other irritants in Europe.

While worried about graffiti, Canadian authorities appear far less concerned about deterring Canadian imams from preaching jihad, Jew-hatred and the murder of Jews to their Muslim congregations, despite Jews being approximately twelve times more likely to be targeted for hate crimes than Muslims are. For anti-Muslim graffiti, you go to jail for five months, but inciting an entire congregation to kill Jewish citizens does not even merit prosecution.

In September, the Canadian parliament began its study on how to combat “Islamophobia” as decided upon in the M-103 motion. A parliamentary committee, the M-103 committee, was established for that very purpose. Although motion M-103 was not binding, Samer Majzoub, a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate of the Canadian Muslim Forum, tellingly advertised:

“Now that Islamophobia has been condemned, this is not the end, but rather the beginning… so that condemnation is followed by comprehensive policies.”

Majzoub’s statement presumably meant that the next steps would be to make M-103 binding.

Part of the problem, however, with any study of “Islamophobia”, as with any motions about it, is that it is never clearly defined.

Now fresh statistics released at the end of November 2017, showed that in Canada, hate crimes against Muslims actually fell in 2016, but those against Jews increased:

Hate crimes against Muslims:

2015, there were 159
2016, there were 139

Hate crimes against Jews:

2015, there were 178
2016, there were 221

In Canada, with a population of 36 million people, approximately 330,000 are Jews and slightly more than 1,000,000 are Muslims.

‘Paris is the Capital of France. Jerusalem is the Capital of Israel’ By Steve Lipman

London, Paris, Rome—cities that are familiar to most Americans. And even if you can’t find them on the map, you know that it only takes a few clicks to learn all you need to know about them. (Buckingham Palace, where the Queen lives. The Eiffel Tower, completed in 1889. Three coins in the Trevi Fountain.)https://amgreatness.com/2017/12/20/jerusalem-is-the-capital-of-israel/

If you do look at the map—Siri has probably found one for you by now—you’ll notice that all three cities are the capitals of their respective countries.

You may wonder how cities get to be capitals. Stop. Don’t ask Siri. It’s very simple. The countries just pick a city, and the word out gets out. That’s it. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Unless the city is Jerusalem. Yes, Jerusalem is Israel’s capital city. It’s not something new, and it has nothing to with anything President Trump said. Remember the rule: A country gets to name its capital. No other country or individual has any say in the matter. Pretty simple, right?

But if you find it surprising, you’re in good company. Israel chose Jerusalem as its capital almost 70 years ago. Yet most of the press and political leaders worldwide are just now getting up to speed.

To his great credit, President Trump was not constrained by whatever handicap prevented so many others from stating the obvious. “Israel is a sovereign nation with the right like every other sovereign nation to determine its own capital,” said Trump

In May 1948, the State of Israel declared its independence, and Israel’s founding fathers chose Jerusalem to be the fledgling state’s capital. It was an easy choice. In fact, it was a fait accompli. When you have a city that was good enough to be the capital for King David some 3,000 years earlier, and that city is where Solomon chose to build the Holy Temple, you don’t need to look elsewhere.

As clear a choice as this was for Israel, it didn’t go over well with most countries, including the United States. They had their reasons: bad ones. But, of course, nothing really mattered. The choice was Israel’s to make, and Israel would not be deterred.

And the United States and other nations, what did they do? They took a very diplomatic approach: they punted . . . all the way to Tel Aviv. Nice city—restaurants, beaches. But it wasn’t Israel’s capital.

That’s why, just the past week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a “read my lips” moment, had to state the obvious to the visiting French President Emmanuel Macron: “Paris is the capital of France. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.”

The Great Brain Drain by Mark Steyn

According to a 2007 study by the Rockwool Foundation, after ten years in the Danish school system, two-thirds of students with an Arabic background remain functionally illiterate. In Bradford, Yorkshire, 75 per cent of Pakistani Britons are married to their first cousins, many of whom are themselves the children of first cousins. In the new west, why even bother worrying about IQ? Professor Bates says he wants to get to the bottom of the “why” and the “what”. But as I wrote eleven years ago in America Alone:

Stick a pin almost anywhere in the map, near or far: The “who” is the best indicator of the what-where-when-why.

Which is why a gay bathhouse got nixed in Luton: The mosque has more muscle.

And the more demographic transformation transforms, the more ill-advised it becomes to mention it. Before 9/11, even the BBC was happy to discuss whether the resurgence of rickets in the United Kingdom is due to Muslim dress. Sixteen years later, when UKIP bring it up, it’s cited as proof they’re a laughingstock. A question for Professor Bates and his colleagues is whether a society in which more and more subjects are ruled out of public discourse should expect its measures of intelligence to do anything other than head south – for native and non-native alike. Thus:

The quality of what we called the student “clientele” had deteriorated so dramatically over the years that the classroom struck me as a barn full of ruminants and the curriculum as a stack of winter ensilage… The level of interest in and attention to the subjects was about as flat as a fallen arch. The ability to write a coherent English sentence was practically nonexistent; ordinary grammar was a traumatic ordeal. In fact, many native English-speakers could not produce a lucid verbal analysis of a text, let alone carry on an intelligible conversation, and some were even unable to properly pronounce common English words.

Several Injured as Driver Deliberately Plows Into Melbourne Crowd More than a dozen people were injured By Robb M. Stewart in Melbourne and Rob Taylor in Canberra

A man rammed a car into pedestrians and Christmas shoppers in a bustling area of Australia’s second-largest city on Thursday, injuring more than a dozen people, in an act that police said was deliberate.

Police in Melbourne said they arrested the male driver of the vehicle at the scene, along with another man, and that several of those injured were in critical condition.

“At this stage we believe that it was a deliberate act. However, we do not know the motivation,” Commander Russell Barrett of Victoria Police told reporters.

Witnesses said a white sport-utility vehicle accelerated after running a red light and plowing into pedestrians at high speed adjacent to Flinders Street Station, one of Melbourne’s busiest transportation hubs.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/car-plows-into-pedestrians-in-central-melbourne-1513842409?cx_testId=17&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=related?cx_campaign=poptart&mod=cx_poptart#cxrecs_s

The incident occurred near the location of a similar incident in January, when a driver plowed through a pedestrian mall, killing four people and injuring 20 others. That incident wasn’t terrorism-related.

The January incident, coming after terrorist attacks in Europe and the U.K. in which attackers used vehicles to mow down pedestrians, prompted Australia’s government and police countrywide to strengthen defenses in an effort to guard against vehicle-based attacks. Concrete or metal poles were erected at popular locations and more armed police have been patrolling the nation’s streets.

Earlier this month, police in Sydney began patrolling with military-style rifles for the first time. Other deterrent measures have included fences and additional installations of CCTV cameras, as well as improved screening procedures across the country.

Heavily armed officers had parts of central Melbourne locked down after Thursday’s incident, which occurred at the start of rush hour at about 4:30 p.m. local time, during the busy Christmas shopping period.

An ambulance-service spokesman said at least 13 people had been transported to hospitals, while two others were being assessed by paramedics at the scene.

“The intersection was full of pedestrians and he just plowed through,” one bystander, who gave his name only as Jim, told Australian television, describing the car as a white Suzuki traveling fast. CONTINUE AT SITE