RUTHFULLY YOURS

Think of the Korean Peninsula turned upside down.

Imagine if there were a South Korean dictatorship that had been in power, as a client of the United States since 1953.

Imagine also that contemporary South Korea was not the rich, democratic home of Kia and Samsung. Instead, envision it as an unfree, pre-industrialized and impoverished failed state, much like North Korea.

Further envision that the U.S. had delivered financial aid and military assistance to this outlaw regime, which led to Seoul’s possessing several nuclear weapons and a fleet of long-range missiles.

Next, picture this rogue South Korean dictatorship serially threatening to incinerate its neighbor, North Korea — and imagine that North Korea was ruled not by the Kim dynasty but by a benign government without nuclear weapons.

Also assume that the South Korean dictatorship would periodically promise to wipe out Chinese cities such as Shanghai and Beijing. The implicit message to the Chinese would be that the impoverished South Koreans were so crazy that they didn’t care whether they, too, went up in smoke — as long a dozen of their nuclear-tipped missiles could blow up Chinese cities and paralyze the second-largest economy in the world. Assume that these South Korean threats had been going on without consequences for over a decade.

Finally, in such a fantasy scenario, what if the United States falsely claimed ignorance of much of its South Korean client’s nuclear capability and threats? America instead would plead that it regretted the growing tension and the reckless reactions of China to the nuclear threats against it. Washington would lecture China that the crisis was due in part to its support for its North Korean ally.

For effect, the United States would occasionally issue declarations of regret and concern over the situation — even as it warned China not to do anything to provoke America’s provocateur ally.

In such a fantasy, American security experts and military planners would gleefully factor a roguish nuclear South Korea into U.S. deterrent strategy. The Pentagon would privately collude with the South Korean dictatorship to keep the Chinese occupied and rattled, while the U.S. upped shipments of military weaponry to Seoul and overlooked its thermonuclear upgrades.

The American military would be delighted that China would be tied down by having an unhinged nuclear dictatorship on its borders, one that periodically threatened to kill millions of Chinese. South Korea would up the ante of its bluster by occasionally test-launching missiles in the direction of its neighbor.

Question: How long would China tolerate having weapons of mass destruction pointed at its major cities by an unbalanced tyrannical regime?

In response, would Beijing threaten a nuclear Seoul with a preemptory military strike, even though the Chinese would know that Seoul could first do a lot of nuclear damage?

Would China conclude that the United States was the real guilty party because it tacitly sanctioned South Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons?

Would China then warn the U.S. to pressure Seoul to disarm?

Would Beijing cease all trade with America?

Would China boycott, embargo or blockade South Korea?

The sixteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks came and went with minimal recognition on the part of the media, a dreadful pity but not a surprise. Mark that slaughter and, well, people might be reminded of Islam’s intolerance, rather than the evil of the ‘no’ campaign on gay marriage

Americans and Israelis remember 9/11 yesterday, today and always. In Australia, by contrast, the sixteenth anniversary went by with barely a mention of the terror attack by Al-Qaida, which took 2996 lives and inflicted $10 billion in damages.

In Australia on the anniversary we were bombarded instead with sermons about the alleged necessity, no, the moral imperative, to vote ‘Yes’ on gay marriage. There were few mentions of the 16th anniversary of that most vile, inhuman and devastating attack by radical Islam on our way of life.

Doesn’t such a calamity deserve an honorable mention at least? Or is our collective attention so consumed by the inanity of the same-sex marriage campaign’s aggressive ‘yes’ advocates that there is simply no grey matter left to contemplate the atrocity that changed everything. Actually, make that should have changed everything.

How much effort have we put into forgetting how the Twin Towers were hit, how they burned and then tumbled, entombing those who gave offense to Islam simply by reporting for work in a high-rise office complex? Have we forgotten those heart-stopping images of human beings flinging themselves from the upper floors, choosing to die by impact rather than flames, perhaps in the hope that their bodies would be found and identified so families could bury them and find some sort of closure? Have we forgotten the bravery of ordinary Americans who found themselves on a hijacked plane and fought back? Have we forgotten the brotherhood and tenacity of the New York’s police and firefighters, ordinary men and women engulfed by calamity but rising resolutely to extend the helping hand?

Have we forgotten? Or is that we simply wish to forget?

Our mass media, I believe, ignored 9/11 attack on the the buildings that symbolised in the eyes of Islamist savages the success and confidence of the West. To be reminded that the most ardent elements of a militant creed detest us for what we are just will not do! That goes too for the hate Islamists shower on us for celebrating the equality of women and, yes, to the tolerance extended to homosexuals long before activists seized upon the same-sex marriage push as a handy tool for stroking egos and garnering look-at-me attention. The approved narrative says that we are all tiles in the gorgeous mosaic of multiculturalism, that all cultures are equal, so let’s not think about the intolerance one of those tiles represents.

That silence, it evokes the reason proponents of the SSM did everything they could to stop the national plebiscite endorsed by popular vote at the last election. Advocates were terrified that the “great unwashed” would not vote as they were told by their betters. The virtual refusal of our media to even mention the 9/11 anniversary is, I believe, a further manifestation of contempt for those whose opinion is deemed not to matter, not to the media and not to so many politicians. Remind the public of that day when almost 3000 people perished and it would prompt thoughts of Islam and how problematic it is to integrate it with Western life and norms. Any frank discussion of burqas, female genital mutilation, firebrand imams and a refusal to assimilate would be, as the media likes to put it, “Islamophobic”.

That 9/11 is remembered in Israel should come as no surprise. Israel knows the horror of Islamic terrorism on an ‘up close and personal’ basis. That is why Israelis do not delude themselves that terror attacks somewhere else are not their concern. It is. They make it so.

Some time ago, when Israelis were suffering from an incessant terror assaults, the rest of the world was indifferent to their suffering, believing it not their concern. The spread of global terrorism is a consequence of this indifference. The Jews are, indeed, the ‘canaries’ in the world’s mine – they suffered the terrorist onslaught first and learned how to fight back and survive. They have learned several lessons.

Anti-Zionism delays having to face the threats to world peace and human rights presented by Muslim supremacism.

“One girl had boiling water held over her throat: another had her tongue nailed to a table.” — Peter McGloughlin, Easy Meat: Inside Britain’s Grooming Gang Scandal.

Muslims who spoke in opposition to the grooming behavior learned that no one outside their community had their back. Clearly, some form of displacement is going on. Jews are safe to criticize; jihadists are not.

One of the most troubling aspects about “peace and justice” activism in the current era is that the very same institutions that condemn Israel so vociferously have had a difficult, if not impossible time confronting the terrible misdeeds of the Assad regime in Syria, ISIS in Iraq and Boko Haram in Nigeria with the same force with which they assail the Jewish state.

Yes, they issue condemnations, but their statements are lamentations that really do not approach in ferocity of the ugly denunciations these institutions target at Israel. In the United States, the problem is most pronounced in liberal Protestant mainline churches such as the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church USA and the United Methodist Church, denominations that have to varying degrees of intensity support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that singles Israel out for condemnation — in a transparent effort to eradicate the country by economic means — while remaining shamefully silent about the genocide of Christians in the Middle East.

We also see a tendency in institutions such as the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches and to my dismay as a Catholic, the Vatican and other parts of the Roman Catholic Church, to assail Israel while remaining silent about the problem of jihad.

The Catholic Church, which has condemned anti-Semitism in a document called Nostra Aetate in 1965, also has a difficult time dealing with the problem of Muslim anti-Semitism and anti-Christian hostility in Muslim communities and the religious sources they hold dear.

One source of the problem is that it is simply a lot easier and safer to speak out about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians than it is to confront the violence against Christians in the rest of the Middle East.

If you fly to Israel, you can participate in a protest against the IDF at the security barrier in the morning and be eating in a nice restaurant in Tel Aviv that afternoon without having to worry about getting shot. Protesting against ISIS or the misdeeds of the Iranian government, which puts Westerners in jail, is another, rather more courageous, thing altogether.

The Arab-Israeli conflict has a theme park for many peace activists: Israel. American clergy go on a tour organized by an anti-Israel group like Sabeel then go back home and give PowerPoint presentations about how they protested the security barrier.

Another factor is fear — fear of Islam. The threat of violence that comes with confronting the impact of Sharia law and jihadism on human rights and national security has been significant, but it has remained doggedly unstated in the witness of churches in the United States. Condemn Israel unfairly or engage in Jew-baiting and you get a letter from CAMERA, the ADL or the local Board of Rabbis. Offend the sensibilities of jihadists and you might get killed.

On this score, it is important to note that anti-Zionism really started to manifest itself in the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) — the church where the anti-Israel divestment movement got its start in the U.S. — with the election of a former missionary by the name of Benjamin Weir as moderator of the denomination’s General Assembly in 1986.

Prior to his election as moderator, Weir, kidnapped while working as a missionary, spent a year as a hostage held in Lebanon by Hezbollah.

If the United States in 2015 had received the same proportion of asylum seekers as Sweden, in relation to its population, the US would have taken in 5.2 million of them.

The survey covered the period 2011 to 2016 and concerned more than 10,000 reported crimes relating to sexual offenses.

That traditional Swedish bathhouses in Sweden today are associated with rape and sexual abuse was something unthinkable before the migration crisis in 2015. Both the Boston Globe and alternative media should please stick to statistics and facts.

Recently, The Boston Globe’s Astead W. Herndon wrote an article criticizing U.S. President Donald Trump’s ways of gathering support for his statements and proposals. While it is basically true that politicians should not only rely only on the media, Herndon’s understatement Sweden’s problems is dishonest at best.

If one mentions problems in Sweden relating to migration, it is important to describe what is really happening. Sadly, Sweden’s refugee policy has made Sweden less secure. In 2015, Sweden received 163,000 asylum seekers. The same year, the United States received about 70,000 asylum seekers. Sweden, however, has a population of ten million, while the United States has approximately 323 million. If the United States in 2015 had received the same proportion of asylum seekers as Sweden, in relation to its population, the US would have taken in 5.2 million. Would it have threatened U.S. security to host 5.2 million new asylum seekers in one year? Probably. That is what happened in Sweden.

The US already has a rigorous vetting process, but Sweden has a weak one — only slowly improving. In addition, because many “unaccompanied refugee children” lie about their age when they reach Sweden, the National Board of Forensic Medicine (“Rättsmedicinalverket”) has been instructed by the government to do medical age-assessments. These are made at the request of the Swedish Migration Agency (“Migrationsverket”), this, after the asylum seekers’ consent. The National Board of Forensic Medicine began performing these age-assessments in March; reporting on their activities on September 4, they found that in 83% of cases, the investigated person was not a minor, but 18 or older.

The problem of asylum seekers lying about their age is that these adults of unknown backgrounds have been sent to primary schools and high schools with children and placed in different homes with them. Sweden’s liberal migration policy has jeopardized the safety of Swedish children.

As a result of the migration crisis, since 2015 Sweden has been forced to introduce border controls. This activity, along with deporting illegal migrants and violent disputes in asylum accommodations, has claimed a large part of the resources of the police. In June 2016, the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, surveying fires at asylum accommodations, found that only 11% of the fires were started from outside the asylum home. The resource-crisis of the Swedish police has resulted in more municipalities forced to hire private security companies. In spring 2017, Radio Sweden sent a survey to Sweden’s 290 municipalities. 200 responded, and of these, 140 stated that their security costs had increased, and of these, 35 responded that their costs had increased directly because of the lack of police officers.

In 2005, Sweden enacted a new law concerning sexual offenses, that broadened, under Swedish law, what was considered rape. In 2013, this law was extended even further to include even a passive response as a rape.

While the increase in the number of reported rapes should not be interpreted as Sweden having a “rape epidemic,” in June 2017, for example, Sweden’s public broadcasting television reported that in just a little over a year, 15 unaccompanied migrant boys from Afghanistan were convicted of gang-rapes of other boys in Sweden. In a police report published in 2016, dealing with sexual assaults, the police stated that:

“In cases where the crimes were committed by perpetrators in a larger group in public places and in swimming pools, the perpetrators were mainly young people seeking, or recently receiving, asylum in Sweden”.

In the same report one can also read that:

“All investigations in Stockholm and Kalmar from 2014 and 2015 have been closed down due to difficulties with identification or lack of evidence.”

Israel has conducted approximately 100 strikes inside Syria in the six years of civil war, not to change the course of battle or support one side over the other, but to eliminate weapons and facilities deemed unacceptable threats to Israel — including missile factories, a nuclear reactor and now a chemical weapons factory.

Guterres, Kushner and Greenblatt focused on the narrowest threat in the Middle East — the possibility that the Palestinians will continue to make low-level warfare against Israel. They ignored the role of Iran and its proxies. In effect, they performed the role of Nero with his fiddle.

If you have not been paying attention, the last thing you heard was that Syria had used sarin gas attack on civilians in 2013. President Obama’s “red line” was washed pink in an agreement with Russia to remove the weapons and destroy them at sea. The U.N. Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) special coordinator Sigrid Kaang, in a remarkably precise statement, said 96% percent of Syria’s declared chemical weapons were destroyed. Not 95% or 87% or 43.5%, but 96% on the nose. Secretary of State Kerry said: “In record time, even amid a civil war, we removed and have now destroyed the most dangerous chemicals in the regime’s declared stockpiles.”

It was good PR, but as a solution to a deadly violation of international law, it was a huge, gaping failure. The word “declared” is the giveaway — Syria was allowed to tell inspectors what it had and where, and the inspectors were allowed only to touch those sites. It you think they cheated, you are right.

This week, the Israel Air Force destroyed a “research center” in Syria, one that “researched” chemical weapons. The attack came the morning after U.N. investigators said the Syrian government was responsible for a sarin gas attack in April 2017. Israel has conducted approximately 100 strikes inside Syria in the six years of civil war, not to change the course of battle or support one side over the other, but to eliminate weapons and facilities deemed unacceptable threats to Israel — including missile factories, a nuclear reactor and now a chemical weapons factory.

Here is the lesson. Focus on the real regional threats and push off peripheral issues.

Iran and its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas — oddly enough, Shiite Iran is Sunni Hamas’s biggest backer both militarily and financially. There are more than 100,000 rockets and missiles in southern Lebanon, controlled by Hezbollah and aimed at Israel.

Iran and its occupation of Syria, as the Russians seek to nail down their bases but prefer to exercise influence from Moscow without a large military presence in the country. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last week that Israel’s interests in Syria “would be taken into account,” but with Russia hoping to leave and Iran planning to stay, Russia’s leverage is questionable.

Iran and its unconventional weapons – it was Iran that facilitated the Syrian chemical weapons program, and Iran and North Korea that built the nuclear facility in Syria that Israel destroyed in 2007.

Iran’s physical presence in the Sunni areas of Iraq in pursuit of a land-bridge from Iran to the Mediterranean Sea. Iran’s harassment of U.S. and other ships in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, encircling Saudi Arabia in the south and potentially cutting off Israel and Jordan’s access through the Bab el-Mandeb Straits to the Indian Ocean. The “Shiite Crescent” is a “Shiite Encirclement.”

See a pattern?

A debate rages among American Jews as to whether right-wing or left-wing anti-Semitism poses the greater danger. Germany has come up with a novel solution to this dilemma that will undoubtedly delight denialists of the left-wing version: Simply redefine Jew-hatred as a “politically motivated right-wing extremist crime,” and by definition, you’ve eliminated all other kinds of anti-Semitism. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/anti-semitism/germany-redefines-anti-semitism-existence/

Last week, the German Interior Ministry released a report on anti-Semitism which stated that during the first eight months of this year, a whopping 92 percent of anti-Semitic incidents were committed by right-wing extremists. That sounded suspicious for two reasons, which I’ll get to later, but since I don’t speak German, I couldn’t scrutinize the report for myself. Fortunately, the German dailyDie Welt found the results equally suspicious, and this week, Benjamin Weinthal of the Jerusalem Post reported on some of the problems it flagged.

Weinthal explained that in a federal report on anti-Semitism issued by the German government earlier this year, “the crime of ‘Jew-hatred’ is classified in the category of ‘politically motivated right-wing extremist crime.’” But once Jew-hatred has been declared a right-wing crime by definition, most of its perpetrators will inevitably be classified as far-right extremists, even if they shouldn’t be.

Die Welt cited one particularly blatant example from summer 2014 when Israel was at war with Hamas in Gaza. The war sparked numerous anti-Israel protests, and during one, 20 Hezbollah supporters shouted the Nazi slogan “Sieg Heil” at pro-Israel demonstrators in Berlin. Hezbollah supporters are Islamic extremists, not neo-Nazis, even if they chose to taunt German Jews by hurling Nazi slogans at them. Nevertheless, the incident was classified as a far-right extremist crime, thereby neatly removing a case of Islamic anti-Semitism from the statistics.

There are two good reasons for thinking the linguistic acrobatics, in this case, represents the rule rather than the exception. First, a 2014 study of 14,000 pieces of hate mail sent over a 10-year period to the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the Israeli embassy in Berlin found that only three percent came from far-right extremists. Over 60 percent came from the educated mainstream–professors, PhDs, lawyers, priests, university and high-school students. And these letters were definitely anti-Semitic rather than merely anti-Israel; they included comments such as “It is possible that the murder of innocent children suits your long tradition?” and “For the last 2,000 years, you’ve been stealing land and committing genocide.”

Sending hate mail is an anti-Semitic incident in its own right, even if it’s not reported to the police (as most of these letters undoubtedly weren’t). Thus unless you want to make the dubious claim that Germany’s educated mainstream–unlike that of other Western countries–consists largely of far-right extremists, it’s clear that far-right extremists aren’t the only people actively committing anti-Semitic acts.