RUTHFULLY YOURS

Less than 24 hours after the Abbas-Trump meeting in Bethlehem, in which Abbas promised Trump and his representative, Jason Greenblatt, to cease all forms of incitement against Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA) government in Ramallah resumed its vicious rhetorical attacks on Israel.

The Palestinian denial of Jewish ties and history to the land also continues full blast, despite Abbas’s pledge to Trump that Palestinians are not in conflict with Jews or Judaism.

Hard on the heels of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’s assurances to US President Donald Trump that he is raising Palestinians on a “culture of peace,” he continues to glorify terrorists who have Jewish blood on their hands.

Abbas, who met with Trump in Bethlehem on May 23, told reporters that he was committed to working with the new US administration to achieve a “historic peace deal with Israel.” Abbas also announced his readiness to become a “partner in the war on terrorism in our region and the world.” He claimed that he and his Palestinian Authority have been promoting “tolerance and coexistence, and spreading a culture of peace and renouncing violence.”

Abbas’s sweet talk, however, did not last long. Just hours after Trump left the region, Abbas and his PA returned to their anti-Israel incitement. This stands in blinding contrast to what Abbas told Trump and his Middle East envoy, Jason Greenblatt, with whom Abbas met 48 hours after his get-together with Trump in Bethlehem.

At a meeting of Fatah leaders in Ramallah on May 25, Abbas described Palestinian prisoners held by Israel as “heroes.”

Just last month, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the United Nations Security Council that the era of letting North Korea call the shots was over. Commenting on a record in which North Korea has carried out five nuclear tests since 2006, two of them just last year, Tillerson said: “For too long the international community has been reactive in addressing North Korea.” He added, “Those days must come to an end. Failing to act now on the most pressing security issue in the world may bring catastrophic consequences.”

Yet here we are, with Reuters reporting, based on a news conference held Friday in Beijing by senior State Department official Susan Thornton, that the U.S. is “looking at discussing with China a new Security Council resolution on pre-negotiated measures to reduce delays in any response to further nuclear tests or other provocations from the North.”

In other words, the U.S. is waiting to react to North Korea’s next nuclear test, which North Korean officials have already threatened to carry out, and for which preparations have been visibly underway.

With the variation that the diplomatic response (providing China agrees) would be “pre-negotiated,” this sounds disturbingly similar to the ritual that President Obama’s administration dolled up under the fatuous label of “strategic patience.” The result, on Obama’s watch, was that North Korea carried out four of its five nuclear tests to date, and accelerated its missile program to include over the past three years — as The Wall Street Journal reported recently — the launches of “more major missiles than in the three previous decades combined.”

The Obama ritual went like this: North Korea would carry out a forbidden nuclear test (in 2009, 2013, and two in 2016). The U.S. would turn to the UN Security Council, which after a period of closed-door wrangling would respond by approving yet another sanctions resolution, which would then be advertised by the U.S. as tough… tougher… toughest. Whatever.

Recall America’s former ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, declaring after the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2270 in March 2016 (in response to North Korea’s fourth nuclear test) that “this resolution is so comprehensive, there are many provisions that leave no gap, no window.” That resolution was followed last September by North Korea’s fifth nuclear test, to which the UN responded by adding to the gapless, windowless sanctions resolution #2270 the even more gapless and windowless resolution #2321.

One might reasonably ask: Why reserve all those ever tougher sanctions for North Korea’s next nuclear test, or the one after that? If gapless, windowless sanctions have yet more holes that need plugging, why not do it all now?

If I might hazard a guess, the obstacle is not solely that veto-wielding permanent Security Council members China and Russia have no serious interest in trying to throttle North Korea’s Kim regime. Even when they vote for those ever tougher UN sanctions, they have been, to put it generously, highly casual about enforcing them. On the evidence, China — despite its public expressions of disapproval and disappointment over each North Korean nuclear test — has nonetheless, for decades now, allowed North Korea to proceed. It is past time to ask quite seriously whether Beijing (never mind its public posturing) reached a quiet decision quite some years ago that China can live comfortably enough with a nuclear-armed North Korea that dedicates itself to bedeviling such leading democracies as South Korea, America and Japan.

The savagery of Erdogan’s Turkish enforcers in Washington, whom many observers viewed as thugs, reflects a new dimension in carrying his message to any potential leader who may host him in the future: We treat peaceful dissent abroad as we treat it in Turkey.

Turkey probably was protesting the United States for not giving President Erdogan’s men a license to kill.

According to the official narrative, U.S. President Donald Trump was hosting in Washington the leader of a long-friendly country and historic ally. In typical diplomatic niceties, Trump mentioned Turkey’s role as a pillar in the Cold War against Soviet expansion, and Turkey’s legendary courage in fighting alongside American soldiers in the Korean War in the 1950s. Trump also said, speaking of the present, that he looks forward to “working together with President Erdogan on achieving peace and security in the Middle East, on confronting the shared threats, and on working toward a future of dignity and safety for all of our people.” Facts on the ground, however, are frequently less pleasant than Kodak-moment niceties.

The fundamental incompatibility between Trump and Erdogan was too apparent from the beginning of what looks like a largely transactional, pragmatic but problematic relationship. Erdogan’s political ideology is deep-rooted in an often-aggressive blend of Sunni Islamist supremacy and neo-Ottoman, Turkish nationalism. Erdogan, disregarding Saudi Arabia and other possible contenders for the title, claims to be the protector of Sunni Muslims across the Middle East, and does not hide his ideological kinship with groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, of which Trump is not a great admirer. In contrast, Trump hit out at Muslims during his campaign and proposed both a “Muslim travel ban” and a “Muslim registry”. It was only too predictable: in response, Erdogan, in June 2016, called for Trump’s name to be stripped from the Trump Towers in Istanbul.

Erdogan’s Washington, DC visit, apart from Trump and Erdogan agreeing to disagree on more essential issues, will be remembered as a Turkish excess, with scenes of the bloodied faces of peaceful protestors beaten up by Erdogan’s bodyguards in front of the Turkish ambassador’s residence. Although these unpleasant incidents caused an uproar in America, such brutality should have come as no surprise.

Slightly over a year ago, Erdogan and his team were in America on another visit, with the Turkish president scheduled to speak at the Brookings Institution. His security guards harassed and physically assaulted journalists trying to cover the event; they also forcibly attempted to remove several journalists, although they were on the guest list. According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Brookings staff prevented them from ejecting the reporters. One Turkish journalist was removed from the building while checking in. But that was not the entire show. An American reporter attempting to film the harassment was kicked in the chest. The National Press Club was outraged. “We have increasingly seen disrespect for basic human rights and press freedom in Turkey,” said the president of the Club, Thomas Burr. “Erdogan doesn’t get to export such abuse”.

Europe still has not realized that the terror which struck its metropolis was a war, and not the mistake of a few disturbed people who misunderstood the Islamic religion.

We are apparently not ready to abandon our masochistic rules of engagement, which privilege the enemy’s people over our own.

It appears that for Europe, Islamic terrorism is not real, but only a momentary disruption of its routine. We fight against global warming, malaria and hunger in Africa. But are we not ready to fight for our civilization? Have we already given up?

This long and sad list is the human harvest of Islamic terrorism on Europe’s soil:

Madrid: 191. London: 58. Amsterdam: 1. Paris: 148. Brussels: 36. Copenhagen: 2. Nice: 86. Stockholm: 4. Berlin: 12. Manchester: 22. And it does not take into account the hundreds of Europeans butchered abroad, in Bali, in Sousse, in Dakka, in Jerusalem, in Sharm el Sheikh, in Istanbul.

But after 567 victims of terror, Europe still does not understand. Just the first half of 2017 has seen terror attacks attempted in Europe every nine days on average. Yet, despite this Islamist offensive, Europe is fighting back with teddy bears, candles, flowers, vigils, Twitter hashtags and cartoons.

Candles and flowers left behind following an evening vigil on May 23, 2017 in Manchester, England, held after a suicide bombing by an Islamic terrorist who murdered 22 concert-goers the night before. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

After 9/11 and 2,996 victims, the U.S. under George W. Bush rose to the fight. The United States and a few brave European allies, such as the UK, Italy and Spain, proved themselves “the stronger horse”. Islamic warriors were thrown on the defensive; Jihadist recruits dropped off and dozens of terror plots were disrupted. But that response did not last. Europe quickly retreated into its own homefront, while the Islamists carried the war onto Europe’s soil: Madrid, London, Theo van Gogh…

Since then, the situation has only become worse: a simple calculation shows that we went from one attack every two years to one attack every nine days. Take just the last six months: Berlin, London, Stockholm, Paris and now Manchester.

Abedi was part of an Arabic-speaking “clique” during his time at the school, The Times reports.

He is believed to have been part of a group of teens that became upset when one of their teachers brought up the topic of suicide attacks.

The teacher “asked what they thought of someone who would strap on a bomb and blow people up”, according to a source quoted by the paper.

The source said the boys then went to their RE teacher and lodged a complaint, telling them it was “Islamophobic”.

The source added: “[Abedi] was a silly boy, not very serious. He was not smart enough to be a mastermind of anything like that.”

A spokesperson for Burnage Academy said yesterday: “We feel the pain that Manchester feels. We stand shoulder to shoulder with our fellow Mancunians against terrorism in all forms.”

Pals of the evil killer yesterday revealed his wild youth of booze and drug-taking – and how he was nicknamed “Dumbo” because of his big ears.

Pictures show him grinning in a bar with three student friends and on a beach in Libya, before he is thought to have been indoctrinated.

Pals described the brainy Manchester United fan as “very jolly”.

But over the past two years he is said to have changed completely after a number of trips to Libya to visit his family.

His parents are even said to have confiscated his passport amid fears he was being radicalised.

This week it was claimed Abedi called his family in Tripoli 15 ­minutes before the attack.

His mother Samia Tabbal, 50, and father Ramadan, 51, a security officer, were born in the Libyan capital.

They emigrated to London before moving to Manchester.

Manchester-born Abedi is believed to have regularly travelled to see his family, who moved back to Tripoli following the fall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

One friend said: “He became silent and withdrawn after a trip a ­couple of years ago. Before then he was a happy-go-lucky kid and always did well in school.

“We used to party together. He loved being around his friends and wasn’t a strict Muslim at all.

“He even used to drink alcohol and loved smoking weed, he never mentioned religion.

The prime minister of Poland has launched a blistering attack on the “political elites” of Europe in the wake of the Manchester terror attack, warning the continent must put in place “strong politicians” willing to tackle the threat or risk “crying over your children”.

Speaking in the Polish Parliament on Wednesday, Beata Szydło seized the moment to launch an excoriating attack on European Union leaders following the Manchester attack which, among others, claimed the lives of a Polish couple, leaving their two daughters as orphans.

“We are not going to take part in the madness of the Brussels elite,” she railed. “We want to help people, not the political elites.

“Where are you headed Europe?” she demanded. “Rise from your knees and from your lethargy or you will be crying over your children every day.

“If you can’t see this – if you can’t see that terrorism currently has the potential to hurt every country in Europe, and you think that Poland should not defend itself, you are going hand in hand with those who point this weapon against Europe, against all of us.

“It needs to be said clearly and directly: This is an attack on Europe, on our culture, on our traditions.”

Addressing the people of Europe, she asked: “Do we want politicians who claim we have to get used to the attacks, and who describe terrorist attacks as incidents, or do we want strong politicians who can see the danger and can fight against it efficiently?”

Szydło’s Government is currently locked in a battle with Brussels over Commission plans for every member state who is signed up to the Common European Asylum System to take in a quota of migrants from Greece and Italy as a solidarity measure.

The previous Polish Government agreed in 2015 to take in 4,500-5,000 migrants, the commitment increased by the EU to 6,200, but Szydło’s administration reversed that decision upon taking power and has promised instead to give aid to people in refugee camps in the Middle East.

Brussels has responded by issuing threats of sanctions if no migrants are taken by June. The same threat has been made to Hungary, which also has yet to take any migrants in under the quota system.

Following the terrorist attack in Manchester that left at least 22 people dead and dozens injured, many of them children, President Donald Trump referred to terrorists as “evil losers in life.” As expected, a number of liberal pundits mocked the president’s unrefined language. So jejune, you know?

Inadvertently or not, Trump landed on a plain-spoken stinging moniker that happens to be true. No matter how many people the next Salman Abedi ends up killing, theocratic dead-enders are losers in every societal, ideological, and historical sense. Perhaps some blunt language will lead to some clearer thinking on the issue.

Now, it’s debatable whether it matters very much to would-be terrorists what unpleasant names Trump has in store for them. How we talk about terrorism, on the other hand, is important. Over the past eight years (at least), the topic has been obscured by clinical euphemisms and feel-good platitudes for the sake of winning hearts and minds. How’s that going?

If unkind words about Islam – Trump’s rhetoric on immigration, for instance — offer “aid and comfort” to the Islamic State group or compel more Muslims to blow up pressure cookers filled with nails to kill infidel children, that illustrates what might be a terrible truth about the state of Islam, not about American society.

Leaders in Western nations have gone out of their way to craft rhetoric that circumvents Islam completely when speaking about terrorism. We’re hooked on platitudes, such as “man-caused disaster,” treating terrorism as some kind of spontaneous criminal event, rather than a tactic used predominantly by one ideology. At the same time, the Left has been transforming tolerance into a creed that means accepting illiberalism. Their overcompensation to imagined backlashes has given real-life excuses to ignore the pervasive violence, misogyny, homophobia, child abuse, tyranny, anti-Semitism, bigotry against Christians, etc., that exist in large parts of Islamic society. Saying, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” as President Obama did, makes every critic a hater.

After every Manchester or Paris or Nice, we are immediately instructed to watch our language and tone. Because love is love. You might remember former attorney general Loretta Lynch telling an LGBT group on the heels of the mass Islamic killing at a gay club in Orlando, Fla., that the “most effective” weapon Americans have to fight terrorism is love.

The Manchester suicide bomber used taxpayer-funded student loans and benefits to bankroll the terror plot, police believe.

Salman Abedi is understood to have received thousands of pounds in state funding in the run up to Monday’s atrocity even while he was overseas receiving bomb-making training.

Police are investigating Abedi’s finances, including how he paid for frequent trips to Libya where he is thought to have been taught to make bombs at a jihadist training camp.It comes as Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, said detectives had made “immense progress” in dismantling Abedi’s terror network.

In further developments, a barber shop in Manchester was raided with one theory that Abedi may have obtained hydrogen peroxide – a chemical used in the hairdressing industry but which can also be used to construct bombs – from the salon.

Abedi’s finances are a major ‘theme’ of the police inquiry amid growing alarm over the ease with which jihadists are able to manipulate Britain’s welfare and student loans system to secure financing.

One former detective said jihadists were enrolling on university courses to collect the student loans “often with no intention of turning up”.

Abedi was given at least £7,000 from the taxpayer-funded Student Loans Company after beginning a business administration degree at Salford University in October 2015.

It is thought he received a further £7,000 in the 2016 academic year even though by then he had already dropped out of the course. Salford University declined to say if it had informed the Student Loans Company that Abedi’s funding should have been stopped.

Separately, the Department for Work and Pensions refused to say if Abedi had received any benefits, including housing benefit and income support worth up to £250 a week, during 2015 and 2016. It would only say he was not claiming benefits in the weeks before the attack.

Abedi, 22, never held down a job, according to neighbours and friends, but was able to travel regularly between the UK and Libya.

Abedi also had sufficient funds to buy materials for his sophisticated bomb while living in a rented house in south Manchester.

Six weeks before the bombing Abedi rented a second property in a block of flats in Blackley eight miles from his home, paying £700 in cash.

He had enough money to rent a third property in the centre of Manchester from where he set off with a backpack containing the bomb.

Egypt’s military launched six airstrikes in eastern Libya late Friday in response to an attack by unidentified gunmen who killed 28 Coptic Christians in an ambush south of Cairo earlier in the day, the military said in a video statement.

The Egyptian military said the strikes were conducted after it determined the attack on the Coptics originated with militants trained in Libya.

The strikes, the first Egypt has launched in Libya since 2015, came as President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi addressed the nation in a televised speech and vowed an aggressive response to the attack on a bus carrying Coptic pilgrims to a monastery in Minya, about 190 miles south of Cairo.

“As I address you now, a very strong airstrike has been carried out against those camps,” Mr. Sisi said, referencing camps where the unknown perpetrators of Friday’s attack allegedly trained. “Egypt will never hesitate to conduct airstrikes against terrorist camps anywhere, inside or outside Egypt.”

While Mr. Sisi didn’t mention Libya, security officials told the MENA state news agency that the airstrikes targeted militant sites near the Libyan city of Derna.

It was an unusually swift response to an incident that has so far not been claimed by any group and Egyptian authorities didn’t publicly identify any suspects.

Egypt last struck Derna in February 2015 after Islamic State militants released a video showing the execution and beheading of a group of Coptic Egyptian laborers on a beach in Libya. At the time, Islamic State had taken control of Derna, but the group has since been driven out.

The Sharia Council of Britain determines the fate of women by undermining the laws of the land.

British politicians seem have become intoxicated by the propaganda of those who prefer to term any action to limit Islamic extremism or terrorism “Islamophobia.”

These human rights abuses are linked to the Islamic ideology, the end product of which often shows itself as violence against homosexuals, non-Muslims and other marginalized communities. It appears that most of these jihadists were radicalized through local mosques and madrassas.

England, which once was a jewel of both East and West, today symbolizes the degeneration of Europe, the continent which has turned its back on the threat Islamist terrorists are posing. England has increased its terror threat level from “severe” to “critical”; counter-terror measures include employing the British army in key public locations as well as stepped-up counter-intelligence, and raids against suspected terrorists.

It seems, however, that British politicians have simply put the whole nation in a loop of feed, kill, repeat; meanwhile acting as if they haven’t a clue as to what has stricken the lovely country.

Prime Minister Theresa May, in her public statement after the blast, stated:

“We struggle to comprehend the warped and twisted mind that sees a room packed with young children not as a scene to cherish but as an opportunity for carnage…. But we can continue to resolve to thwart such attacks in future. To take on and defeat the ideology that often fuels this violence.”

May was careful to avoid naming the ideology.

Ironically, the terror spree caught the United Kingdom in the midst of its election season. Nonetheless, neither the Tories nor the Labour Party are offering any solid plans to counter the menace. It seems these politicians have decided to sleep on the issue, while leaving their poor citizens at the mercy of terrorists, protected only by the brave law enforcement personnel who are also targets.

British politicians seem have become intoxicated by the propaganda of those who prefer to term any action to limit Islamic extremism or terrorism “Islamophobia.” When the government decides to look the other way, it allows many malpractices to flourish under the skin of British Muslim communities, among whom any action to protect the country would be stigmatized by apologists as “Islamophobic.”