RUTHFULLY YOURS

A German regional court has ruled that an attempt by three Muslims to burn a synagogue was motivated by ‘anti-Israelism’, not anti-Semitism. The perpetrators will not be jailed.

The ruling is akin to a “carte blanche for attacks on Jews,” and is itself anti-Semitic, according to the European Jewish Congress. The organization reacted with “outrage and disbelief” to the decision.

The German court in the city of Wuppertal, affirming a lower court decision, ruled that a violent attempt to burn the city’s synagogue in 2014 was a justified expression of criticism of Israel’s policies in Gaza. The attack took place on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, a Nazi pogrom which left almost a hundred Jews dead and where over 1,000 synagogues – including the original synagogue in Wuppertal – were burnt and destroyed.

“It is unbelievable that attempts to burn a synagogue have been equated with displeasure of Israeli government policies,” said Dr. Moshe Kantor, President of the EJC. “This court decision equates to open season on Jews.”

The local Wuppertal court panel said in its original 2015 decision that the three Muslims wanted to draw “attention to the Gaza conflict” with Israel. The court deemed the attack not to be motivated by anti-Semitism, and handed down suspended sentences for the three.

“This court decision can also lead to anarchy across Germany,” said Kantor, “because it provides a legal justification for the targeting of any minority, religion and nationality on the basis of a conflict that they could be in some way connected to because of religious or national ties. Is it possible that when Arabs are targeted by far-right groups, it could be claimed they are reacting to the bloodshed and violence in the Arab world? That of course would be absurd, but like in many other areas, there appears to be a separate rule when it comes to Jews and anti-Semitism.”

German politician Volker Beck, a leading Green Party MP, agreed. “This is a mistaken decision as far as the motives of the perpetrators are concerned,” he was reported to have said. He noted that the burning of a synagogue in Germany can only be defined as anti-Semitism.

“What do Jews in Germany have to do with the Middle East conflict? Every bit as much as Christians, non-religious people or Muslims in Germany, namely, absolutely nothing. The ignorance of the judiciary toward anti-Semitism is for many Jews in Germany especially alarming,” said Beck.

When just about every other magazine in the free world fails to uphold the values of free speech and the right to caricature and offend, who could expect a group of cartoonists and writers who have already paid such a high price to keep holding the line of such freedoms single-handed?

Most of the people who said they cared about the right to say what they wanted when they wanted, were willing to walk the walk — to walk through Paris with a pencil in the air. Or they were willing to talk the talk, proclaiming “Je Suis Charlie.” But almost no one really meant it.

If President François Holland and Chancellor Angela Merkel had really believed in standing up for free expression, then instead of walking arm in arm through Paris together with such an inappropriate figure as Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, they would have held up covers of Charlie Hebdo and said “This is what a free society looks like and this is what we back: everyone, political leaders, gods, prophets, the lot can be satirised, and if you do not like it then you should hop off to whatever unenlightened hell-hole you dream of.”

The entire world press has internalised what happened at Charlie Hebdo and instead of standing united, has decided never to risk something like that ever happening to them again.

For the last two years we have learned for certain that any such tolerance is a one-way street.

This new submission to Islamist terrorism is possibly why, in 2016, when an athlete with no involvement in politics, religion or satire was caught doing something that might have been seen as less than fully respectful of Islam, there was no one around to defend him.

The 7th of this month marked two years to the day since two gunmen walked into the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and murdered twelve people. This period also therefore marks the second anniversary of the period of about an hour during which much of the free world proclaimed itself to be “Charlie” and attempted, by walking through the street, standing for moments of silence or re-tweeting the hashtag “Je Suis Charlie” to show the whole world that freedom cannot be suppressed and that the pen is mightier than the Kalashnikov.

So two years on is a good time to take stock of the situation. How did that go? Did all those “Je Suis” statements amount to anything more than a blip on the Twitter-sphere? Anyone trying to answer such a question might start by looking at the condition of the journal everyone was so concerned about. How has it fared in the two years since most of its senior editorial staff were gunned down by the blasphemy police?

“[U]nlike America, Europe is inherently anti-Semitic. This anti-Semitism is spread more or less evenly across the political spectrum and, therefore, it translates into widespread hostility to Israel. Europeans hate the Jews. Consequently, they hate the Jewish state.” — Robin Shepherd, A State Beyond The Pale: Europe’s Problem With Israel.

No “Palestinian” leader has publicly disavowed jihad against Jews. Instead, every aspect of engagement by “Palestinians” with Jews and Israelis is considered an obligation for advancing this jihad until its final expected objective of pushing the Jews out of “Palestine” has been reached.

The doublespeak of the Palestinian leadership made no difference within the UN. Since the June 1967 war, the UN began to tilt away from being fair and balanced toward Israel, and extended support to Arabs of the “occupied” West Bank and Gaza as an indigenous “Palestinian” people supposedly wronged by Jews.

“The long march through the UN has produced many benefits for the PLO. It has created a people where there was none; an issue where there was none; a claim where there was none. Now the PLO is seeking to create a state where there already is one.” — Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S. ambassador to the UN (1981-85).

All of this occurred with the complicity of member states of the once-Christian West in the UN against one single and much maligned Jewish state, Israel, surrounded by hostile Arab and Muslim states in the Middle East.

The passage of the UN Security Council Resolution 2334 just before Christmas 2016, with the United States abstaining, was an IED-wrapped Chanukkah gift that lame-duck President Barack Hussein Obama delivered to Israel. It was another signal to Palestinians that they may continue their “rejectionism” of Israel, and stage another round of jihadi terrorism providing the UN the excuse to deliver pre-packaged condemnations of any Israeli reaction to the maiming and murder of Jews in the so-called “occupied” territories.

The U.S. abstention was an appalling betrayal of a people wrongly maligned by a sitting American president who for the past eight years went about assuring American Jewry, especially liberal Jews loyal to his party, that he was the most pro-Israel occupant of the White House. Instead, Obama’s decision, as a parting shot before he left office, not to veto Res. 2334 lifted the veil over the unspoken animus that he not only harbors within himself but also one that still stirs many within Western nations against Israel despite their solemn public denunciations of anti-Semitism.

This is evident in the language of Res. 2334. It exclusively condemns Israel stating: “settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has [sic] no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation of international law”. It also effectively revokes Security Council Res. 242 of 22 November 1967.

There was no pretense in Res. 2334 to be fair, and hold Palestinian Authority (PA) and with Hamas equally responsible for inciting terrorist violence against civilians within Israel, thus poisoning any diplomatic effort required for a negotiated settlement between the parties. The adoption of Res. 2334 was a “gang up” by France, Eurabia, the US and the 57 countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) against Israel. It was reminiscent of the long, shameful history of Jews as a minority people, abused and tormented by the majority among whom they resided.

For the past half century, Res. 242 was the keystone in the UN framework for peace in the Middle East. It laid out the process envisaged in the “land-for-peace” formula between parties in conflict following the June 1967 war. And on the basis of this formula Israel reached peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan in the aftermath of the October 1973 war.

But Res. 2334, instead, categorically states, the UN “will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations.” In other words, the demand is on Israel to return to the 1949 armistice lines an outcome pre-determined by Res. 2334.

If Israel cannot now trade “land-for peace”, since land held after June 1967 war is deemed “illegal,” then there is no further reason for any negotiated settlement.

Israel cannot simply accept a status quo ante bellum that would be untenable for Israel’s security — Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Abba Eban called then the “Auschwitz borders” — and the PA, with backing of the UN.

Res. 2334 is then a formula for continued terrorist violence by Palestinians against Israelis. The adoption of Res. 2334 — not unintentionally — has driven a nail into the promise of the “two-State solution.” The Security Council was warned ahead of the December 23 vote by President-elect Donald Trump that the United States under his administration will not accept this blatantly anti-Israel resolution.

It needs to be asked — political correctness set aside — of the other four permanent members of the Security Council (Britain, China, France, and Russia): Why, at this time — when the situation in the Middle East has gone from bad to worse — has the Security Council decided to weigh in against Israel, the only democracy and oasis of sanity in the region that has imploded through an excess of Arab-Muslim bigotry and fanaticism?

And, why did the Security Council, whose record in the Middle East is one of abysmal failure in providing “peace and security” to people most in need — the beleaguered Christians, Yazidi, and Kurdish minorities of Iraq and Syria — decide to revoke the long-standing Res. 242 on the patently false excuse of “salvaging the two-State solution”, when the Palestinian leadership has continually refused to engage with Israelis in direct negotiations?

These questions require credible answers, but none can be given.

UNSC Res. 2334 is an act of political aggression against foundation of the Judeo-Christian civilization and should be treated as such. The Jewish nation has every right to consider this attack as an act of war against it.

President Obama sometimes seems to have an indifference to historical truth that often borders on antagonism. Obama has again tried to re-write history by claiming that Greece, with the help of the winners of World War I, was an aggressive and imperialistic state that cared only to re-build its Empire against the Turks.

The notion that ancient non-Muslim nations are occupiers in their own lands, is repeated in the UN Resolution 2334.

Historically, Muslim forces began invading Syria in 634, and ended by conquering Constantinople in 1453. They invaded not only all of Turkey — obliterating the great Christian empire of Byzantium — but then went on to conquer all of North Africa, Greece, southern Spain, parts of Portugal and eastern Europe.

President Obama apparently did not learn about the Trojan War in school; he apparently never read Homer to know that the inhabitants of the Bosporus and much of Asia Minor were Greeks — just as he apparently never read the Bible, or the Greek and Roman historic records of the Jewish people and their capital, Jerusalem.

The US and the UN are not who determine what is historically true and what is not. These shameful votes should be reversed immediately; if not, all funding should be withdrawn from the United Nations. They are now, to paraphrase the words Vladimir Lenin, “paying for the rope with which members of the UN will hang them.”

If US President Barack Obama were uneducated, if his staff consisted of people who had never been taught history at school, if the government consisted of savages who have just emerged from the Amazon jungle, we could somehow “justify” their ignorance about the history of the Mediterranean and the Middle Eastern people.

But that is not what is going on. This ambush against Israel in UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which considers the Jewish people “occupiers” in their own ancient capital and the holiest part of it, is an act of jihad and an act of political violence – perpetrated by governments to achieve political goals.

This resolution did not randomly emerge from a historical moment, or as the result of political choices based on reasonable criteria to provide peace and stability in the region. It does not help either the Arabs living in the disputed territories — Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip – or the Israelis in any peace process. It is an act of vengeance against the foundations of Judeo-Christian civilization and should be treated as such. The Jewish nation has every right to consider this attack an act of war against it. It certainly is an act of war against the history of the Jews and the freedom, democracy, human rights, pluralism and rule of law that Israel represents in the Middle East.

President Obama and his government at the beginning of their service eight years ago turned against the history of the Greek nation with the same political aggression. Obama had a chance to do that when he went to the Turkish Parliament, on April 6, 2009.

Sadly, he did not acknowledge the genocide of the Greeks by the Turkish army under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Between 1913 and 1923, millions of Greeks who had lived in Turkey since before the great Christian Byzantine empire, were either slaughtered or driven out. According to some Greek historians, between 800,000 and 1,200,000 Greeks were slaughtered during this period; every year on September14, the State of Greece officially honors the memory of those who died in Asia Minor.

Instead, Obama gave political cover to what the Turks did by saying at the Turkish Parliament on April 6, 2009: “You freed yourself from foreign control, and you founded a republic that commands the respect of the United States and the wider world”.

The “foreign control” to which President Obama refers is the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, where the League of Nations was established. [1]

President Obama, in evident his enthusiasm to flatter the ego of Turkey’s current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “forgot” to mention some important events of that era. President Obama “forgot” all about the genocide of Greeks and Christians in Asia Minor by Mustafa Kemal’s Ataturk Turkish. Barack Obama methodically “murdered” historical truth, by ignoring the fact that the Greek army, after the end of World War I in 1918, was sent to Asia Minor under the instructions of the great powers and the winners of the war, to protect Christian populations from persecution, murders and rapes of Muslim Turkish. The Greek army did not go as an occupier but as a protector of human life and human rights.

Espionage story, family story, incredible story — that’s the essence of Victor and Frances Metianen’s journey from the cricket-club social scene of suburban Sydney in the 1930s to the dark world of what they believed in their fervent innocence to be Stalin’s workers’ paradise.

When “Sally” met “John” she was wearing a green headscarf and her shoes, European size 36, were new. Carefully positioned, “on the left hand side of the bosom”, was a white brooch. The place was Eighth Avenue, New York, in late August 1943. The first words they exchanged were passwords, crafted for them in Moscow.[1] She was an illegal, a spy about to begin living in New York as an American citizen. He was her contact with the Soviet Naval GRU, or military intelligence, based in Washington. Since the previous December coded cables, planning her voyage from Moscow to Vladivostok, then to San Francisco and onwards to the “Big Town”, had been volleying back and forth between Washington and Moscow. The American-based operatives asked her shoe size so that she could be outfitted with suitable local footwear. In the cables, tantalising parts of which were decoded in the Venona project, she was called the Australian Woman and Sally.

Behind the two cover names the Venona investigators found an Australian-born Soviet woman. Her real name, they suggested, was Francia Yakil’nilna Mitynen—“exact spelling not verified”. FBI information claimed she had been known as Edna Margaret Patterson and had remained in America until she disappeared in 1956.[2] In the cables there is no indication of what her operational objectives had been. Until the highly secret Venona transcripts were made public, few outside the intelligence world had known that the Soviets operated a Naval GRU. At that point the story generally comes to a stop. Suggesting an unsuccessful search by ASIO, a security file, now in the National Archives of Australia, has the Venona spelling of her name on the cover, but she is not mentioned in the few pages it holds.[3]

The reason for the lack of progress in the Australian search may simply be in the confusion of the spellings of her family name. It is highly likely the Australian Woman was Frances Metianen, born at 85½ Morehead Street, in the Sydney suburb of Redfern on January 31, 1914.[4]

Frances was the second daughter of James and Julie (as they were known in Australia) Metianen, an émigré Russian family who arrived in Australia before the revolution, and returned to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, straight into Stalin’s mincing machine.

Interesting as it is, the Venona spy story is a part of an extraordinary family story.

Metianen’s parents had arrived in Sydney on a Japanese liner from Nagasaki with their two-year-old-son Victor in May 1912.[5] Her elder sister Leonore (Lena) was born the following year, though there does not appear to be an Australian birth certificate, and was followed by Frances in 1914.[6] At the time of her birth, James claimed to have been born in St Petersburg in 1886 and married in Siberia in 1906. In the years they lived in Australia none of the family appears to have taken out Australian citizenship. When they left the country in the 1930s they probably travelled on laissez-passers without the return visas which may have offered some slight protection against the Stalin purges, or not.

James was employed as a fitter in the Eveleigh railway workshops. Perhaps there had been a political motive for leaving Russia, for after the 1917 revolution and coup he actively supported the Bolshevik dictatorship. On a Sunday in 1919, amidst the public speakers in Sydney’s Domain, he was arrested for selling an illegal communist newspaper, the Brisbane-published Knowledge and Unity. He was sentenced to a fine of five pounds, or one month imprisonment. Presumably he paid the fine.[7]

Past and present, Muslim militants continue relying on the same inhumane tactics to terrorize “infidels.” The devastating effects of one of these occurred last August in Turkey: a child “recruited” by the Islamic State blew himself up in a suicide attack that left at least 51 people—mostly fellow children—dead.

This child was one of countless, nameless, faceless children seized, beat, and indoctrinated in Islam, until they become willing “martyrs” and executioners. Known as the “cubs of the caliphate,” they are graduates from “schools [established by ISIS] to prepare hundreds of children and teenagers to conduct suicide attacks.” The Islamic State is fond of showcasing these abducted children turned criminals.

A few days ago, it posted a video of its “cubs,” most who appear to be about 10 years of age, walking around an abandoned amusement park, where they savagely execute hostages tied to rides. One child, reportedly only four years old, shoots five rounds into a tied up victim while screaming “Allahu Akbar!” Another little boy slits the throat of his victim next to a kiddie train before planting the knife in his back. Last November ISIS posted another video of four children—one Russian, one Uzbek, and two Iraqis, aged between 10 to14—executing civilians.

One Christian clergyman explained the Islamic State’s strategy: “They dislocate the families, they take the newborn babies, and they put them in Islamist families,” where they are indoctrinated in jihad, or what is called in the West, “terrorist activities.”

Children who managed to escape ISIS say they were repeatedly beat and fed “endless propaganda,” including that they must kill their non-Muslim parents: “We weren’t allowed to cry but I would think about my mother, think about her worrying about me and I’d try and cry quietly,” one little boy said.

Seizing and indoctrinating children for the jihad is hardly limited to ISIS. Over the last three years, Boko Haram, the Islamic jihadi group terrorizing Nigeria, has kidnapped, enslaved, beat and indoctrinated more than 10,000 boys—some as young as 5 years of age, and many from Christian backgrounds—into becoming jihadis/terrorists.

“They told us, ‘It’s all right for you to kill and slaughter even your parents,’” said a former captive who witnessed a beheading on the day he was enslaved. Other boys held down the victim and explained: “This is what you have to do to get to heaven.”

Girls were kept in a separate camp and raped, often by captive boys, as a way to show the latter the boons of becoming warriors for Allah (the deity that permits his slaves to enslave and rape “infidel” women). An escaped girl, Rachel, now 13 and pregnant by rape, told of how dozens of boys from her village tied up a kidnapped man and beheaded him. They told the younger children watching not to “have feelings about it.” “If you go there [Boko Haram training camps], you can see 12-year-olds talking about burning down a village,” said another escaped girl, adding “They have converted.”