RUTHFULLY YOURS

Lichfield, England-perhaps most famous as the birthplace of Dr Samuel Johnson, is a pretty city in the English Midlands. It’s the location of a medieval cathedral, notable for its unusual feature of three spires.

And it is on the premises of that cathedral that a conference (plus related book sale) is to be held over the weekend of 7-9 October (hat tip: Ian G).

As seen at left, the title of the conference is “Holding Palestine in the Light,”which reflects the despicably one-sided nature of the enterprise, for the overwhelming majority of the speakers are notable, to a greater or lesser degree, for their antipathy towards Israel.

That sad fact reflects the prejudices of the apparent driving force behind the conference, the Dean of Lichfield.

Explains the conference’s website:

“The weekend is hosted by the Very Revd. Adrian Dorber: Dean of Lichfield and Diocesan Co-ordinator for the Friends of the Holy Land, with longstanding connections to Palestine & Israel where he led both Pilgrimages and study tours.”

Dorber has held the post of Dean since 2005. Before that, we learn here,

“he was Director of Ministries and Training in the Durham Diocese, Senior Chaplain and Lecturer at Portsmouth University and served in parishes in Reading and Bracknell. He is a Trustee of the Foundation for Church Leadership, a Governor of Staffordshire University, Chairman of Governors of Lichfield Cathedral School and a member of the Lichfield Festival Board. He serves on the West Midlands Training Partnership and chairs the Diocesan Local Ministry Governing Body. He is deeply interested in the impact cathedrals have on Church and nation and how cathedrals can use their unique opportunities for mission and regeneration. Adrian was co-opted onto the AEC Executive in March 2011 and elected in June 2011. He was appointed as Chairman in July 2015. In addition to chairing the AEC, Adrian leads on cathedrals-related research”.

Below, in bold type, is the list of speakers as given on the conference website:

Professor Ilan Pappé: Israeli born leading historian at Exeter University. He has written many books on the conflict.

If there is one participant in the conference who surely doesn’t require an introduction it is the reprehensible Pappe. His topic is “‘Palestine is Still an Issue’ – why Palestine is a central issue affecting global events”.

The outrageous One State Declaration that he co-authored in 2007 is indicative of his vile attitude.

Comments below each bold typed profile, and not in bold type,are my observations.

Ahmed Masoud: is a Palestinian writer, director and academic based in the UK; he has written plays and a debut novel set in Palestine and Gaza.

At the “literary dinner” on Friday, 7 October entitled ‘Gaza in Literary Fiction” that opens the conference, Ahmed Masoud and Hannah Khalil will mention their published works. The session will include a film, “Britain in Palestine 1917-1948”.

Hannah Khalil: born of Palestinian/Irish parents, she has written a number of plays promoting the cause of Palestinians and other Arabs.

That Friday dinner will be followed on Saturday, 8 October with one of only two free sessions on the conference programme. Here’s how it’s billed:

Sumud Exhibition, with sale of goods from the Holy Land including hourly screenings of: ‘Britain in Palestine 1917-1948’ and ‘The Suffering Church’

Read about ‘Sumud’ here: it is clear that this session will consist entirely of anti-Israel pro-Arab propaganda.

On 9/11 Americans recalled the 15th anniversary of the vicious al Qaeda attack on the United States that took 2800 lives. It was yet another day in infamy. Although largely forgotten in the public memory bank, the Taliban of Afghanistan harbored the terrorists and assisted in the planning of the attack. President George W. Bush’s final act of retaliation was to strike back at the Taliban.

For 15 years U.S. troops have been on Afghan soil, albeit numbers have dwindled to about 8,000 from 150,000. What is revealing at this time is that the Taliban have launched an offensive to take a major provincial capital, a move, if successful, that would mark the most significant Taliban victory since the U.S. invasion. This is merely a rehearsal for Taliban troop movements, including the swallowing of large swaths of territory in Helmand province, a place where hundreds of NATO troops died.

A loss of provincial capitals would be catastrophic for the U.S. backed Afghan government. Moreover, if the Taliban gain effective control of the country – a not implausible scenario – extremist groups such as ISIS and al Qaeda can reconstitute their Afghan sanctuaries spreading death and destruction in the region.

The question is what will the Obama administration do about the deteriorating situation. The answer, “nothing”. President Obama is intent on the withdrawal of American troops from the region however precarious the withdrawal may be. As the president has noted, we are no longer fighting wars in the Middle East. That is true, as far as it goes. But the wars continue with or without the U.S.. American interests are now in the hands of putative enemies.

While many will say “good riddance,” this isolationist temptation also means we will be obliged to fight terrorists another day on terms favorable to them. Covering one’s eyes to the horrors in the region doesn’t make them go away. Yet this is the policy the president has outlined as his legacy.

If there is to be an American “recovery” in the next administration, it will have to be based on a foundation of national trust. Afghan leaders have seen a rise and a fall in the U.S. commitment to their nation. They remain unclear about U.S. policy. There are, presidential precautions about the terms of engagement against the enemy. There is also the president’s distemper over any disagreement in policy.

Israel this week signed a historic agreement with Jordan to supply the energy-starved kingdom with natural gas from its Leviathan gas field. The deal is worth a reported $10 billion and has instantly transformed the Jewish state into an energy exporter. In addition to the obvious pecuniary benefits to the Israeli economy, the agreement promotes regional stability by creating an energy and economic interdependence.

Israel is now looking to sign energy deals with two other regional players of import, Greece and Cyprus. Israel’s energy minister plans on traveling to Athens on Wednesday to cement agreements. The Israeli plan centers on laying a network of pipes so that natural gas can be shipped to these nations as well as other European countries. Currently, much of Europe relies on Russian gas and an alternative source would be welcome. Even Turkey, which recently exchanged ambassadors with Israel after a long hiatus, has expressed interest in cooperating with Israel in the energy sector.

Israel currently operates and lays claim to four gas fields off its coast. Two small ones are located off the shores of Ashkelon while the two larger ones – called Tamar and Leviathan – are located in the north, approximately 90 miles west of Haifa.

Leviathan should be fully operational within a few years while the other fields are already supplying Israel with natural gas. Israel derives approximately 60 percent of its electricity needs through natural gas. Energy officials estimate that since the gas began flowing just over a decade ago, Israel has saved approximately 35.5 billion shekels which translates to $9.6 billion.

The welcome news however, comes with cost. Lebanon, which is controlled by Hezbollah, which in turn receives its marching orders from Iran, has laid claim to Israel’s energy finds. Lebanon’s maritime and territorial claims are wholly without merit and it is a virtual certainty that they were made at the behest of either Hezbollah or Iran or both.

While Lebanon’s navy is negligible and poses no threat to Israel and its off-shore gas platforms, Hezbollah does pose a more significant threat. Hezbollah possesses a number of Chinese C-802 radar guided anti-ship missiles. A missile of this type damaged an Israeli corvette, the INS Hanit, during the 2006 Lebanon War (the ship was repaired and returned to service 3 weeks later) and sunk a civilian Egyptian ship cruising some 37 miles from shore.

The police in the German city of Cologne recently arrested Mohammad J., a 16-year-old Syrian asylum seeker. He and his parents arrived in Germany in January 2016 and applied for asylum there – along with more than one million other aslyum seekers, most of whom were from the Middle East and North Africa. In Internet chats Mohammad J. expressed his “unmistakable willingness” to carry out a bombing attack, Klaus-Stephan Becker from Cologne’s Criminal Police claimed.

A chat partner from abroad gave him “clear hints” on how to make a bomb, Becker said. Yet no further preparations had been made by the arrested terror suspect. The Cologne police discovered that the suspect’s cell phone showed that he received instructions from “a person with links to ISIS who is living abroad.” This person succeeded in recruiting the 16-year-old Syrian asylum seeker.

Mohammad J. was not the only Syrian asylum seeker who was arrested quite recently. The well-informed German newspaper Bild reported on September 13, 2014, that the German anti-terror unit “GSG9” arrested three Syrian “refugees” in North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony (near Hamburg). They were 26-year-old Mohammed A., 18-year-old Ibrahim M. and 17-year-old Mahir al-H. The German federal prosecutor said that these three young Syrians arrived in Germany in November 2015, either with a pre-planned mission or waiting for further instructions.

Bild also quoted Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Hermann who said: “Meanwhile, we know now that ISIS deliberately profited from lapses in our security system and smuggled terrorists disguised as asylum seekers into Europe.” And German Interior Minister Thomas de Mazière said, according to Bild, that the three arrested Syrian asylum seekers were linked both to ISIS and to the ISIS terror cell that struck in Paris in November 2015. “They could have been a sleeper cell,” De Mazière said. He referred to so-called “Hit-Teams” smuggled into Europe by ISIS. “This is what happened when ISIS struck in Brussels and Paris.”

Mohammed A., Ibrahim M. and Mahir al-H. had first left Turkey on a boat loaded with refugees bound for Greece and subsequently followed the so-called “Balkan route” entering Germany in November 2015, Bild writes. They were assisted by exactly the same migrant trafficking organization that assisted the ISIS terrorists who struck in Paris last November. Their forged Syrian passports were also from the same forger in the Middle East.

Bild refers to security sources who claim that the German Federal Crime Agency (BKA) is now checking information about more than 400 ISIS or Al-Nusra extremists among the refugees in Germany. Lothar de Mazière said that preliminary proceedings have been initiated against 60 persons.

When Maryam Monsef was installed as Canada’s Minister of Democratic Institutions last November, she was the poster-child for refugee advocates.

President Barack Obama even spoke of her in favorable terms during his address to the Canadian House of Commons in June of this year:

The girl who fled Afghanistan by donkey and camel and jet plane and who remembers being greeted in this country by helping hands and the sound of robins singing, and today, she serves in this chamber and in the cabinet because Canada is her home.

All was fine and dandy in this little fairy tale until Robert Fife of the Globe and Mail committed journalism on September 22 by publishing an earth-shaking article that revealed how Monsef’s story about being born in Afghanistan was inaccurate. She was actually born in Iran:

Democratic Reform Minister Maryam Monsef, whom the Liberals have championed as this country’s first Afghan-born MP, says she was actually born and lived most of her early life in Iran before arriving with her mother and two younger sisters in Canada as refugees.

This revelation contradicts a key narrative that Ms. Monsef has built ever since she entered public life as a local politician in Peterborough, Ont., and when she ran for Parliament in the 2015 election.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, “[t]he Prime Minister’s Office said it had no idea that such a fundamental feature of Ms. Monsef’s life story was wrong. Officials scrambled to put together a detailed timeline of her family’s life in Iran and Afghanistan and the journey to Canada.”

Scramble to put together a detailed timeline of a key governmental Minister? What could possible go wrong? The national security failure on the part of the Trudeau government was breathtaking:

When asked why security vetting for cabinet posts didn’t uncover this error, an official said “we learned of this information about Maryam Monsef’s place of birth when it was brought to us recently by the The Globe and Mail.”

In other words, the government of Canada’s leadership only learned that their “Minister of Democratic Institutions” was born in the Islamofascist authoritarian nation of Iran through reporting in a national newspaper nearly one year after Monsef’s appointment.

Oh Puleez! May Peres rest in peace…the peace that his policies and appeasement made impossible. Oslo is unraveling because it was a sham. As soon as the ink was dry on the agreement, vermin Arafat began an uninterrupted terrorist spree that killed hundreds of civilians…in a pizzeria in Tel Aviv where the carnage included mangled strollers with babies, at a passover celebration in Netanya, in markets, on buses….thousands were injured…..rsk

TEL AVIV—More than two decades ago, Shimon Peres negotiated agreements that laid out steps toward an independent Palestinian state and peace with Israel. Today, upon his death at 93, the statesman’s life-defining work appears to be unraveling.

Problems with the peace process and the agreements known as the Oslo Accords are manifold. Israel and the Palestinian leadership can’t agree to meet for talks. The Palestinian national movement is divided between the two main factions, Fatah and Hamas, which vows Israel’s destruction. The international community can’t decide how to revive talks and reach a fully fledged peace deal.

“Only a dishonest man or woman would conclude that the Oslo process was a success,” said Aaron David Miller, vice president at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars and a former peace negotiator for the State Department during the Oslo negotiations.

Mr. Peres, who died early Wednesday morning, initiated and negotiated the Oslo peace agreements in the 1990s. In 1993, he flew to Oslo in Norway in secret to meet with Palestinian negotiators. That step led later that year to the famous handshake on the White House lawn between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat—an image that symbolized shared Israeli and Palestinian hopes to end decades of conflict. BLAH BLAH AND MORE BLATHER

Why has the philosopher, Michel Onfray, become so popular among the French jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq? Journalist David Thomson, a specialist in jihadi movements, explained that “Onfray is translated into Arabic and shared on all pro-ISIS sites.”

Onfray recognizes that we are at war. But this war, to him, was started by George W. Bush. He “forgets” that 3,000 Americans were killed on September 11, 2001. If you remind him that “ISIS kills innocent people”, Onfray will reply: “We have also killed innocent people.” It is the perfect moral equivalence between ISIS and the West. Barbarians against barbarians! With his moral relativism, Onfray opens the door to Islamist cutthroats.

The French intellectual Thomas Piketty, after the massacres in Paris, pointed at “inequality” as the root of ISIS’s success. Another well-known German philosopher, Peter Sloterdijk, claimed that the September 11 attacks were attacks were just “small incidents”.

Famous representatives of European culture also embraced Adolf Hitler’s dream. Their heirs now justify jihad as the ultimate punishment for Western freedoms and democracy.

After September 11, 2001, the cream of European intellectuals immediately started to find justifications for jihad. They evidently were fascinated by the Kalashnikov assault rifle, “the weapon of the poor”. For them, what we had seen in New York was a chimera, an illusion. The mass killings were supposedly the suicide of the capitalist democracy, and terrorism was the wrath of the unemployed, the desperate weapon of a lumpenproletariat offended by the arrogance of Western globalization.

SHIMON PERES, THE LAST OF ISRAEL’S FOUNDING FATHERS, DIES

Shimon Peres, the former president and prime minister of Israel, and in recent years the country’s elder statesman, died this morning at age 93, after suffering a severe stroke two weeks ago.

Peres was born in what was then Poland (now Belarus) and escaped to what would become Israel in the 1930s. His family that remained behind were murdered in the Holocaust.

For seven decades (since 1946 when Ben Gurion put Peres and Moshe Dayan in charge of making arms purchases for the Haganah), he held senior positions in Israeli military and political life.

His most important achievement (in my view) was his key role in helping Israel to gain a nuclear deterrence in order to make much less likely the possibility of a second Holocaust of the Jewish people. It is the nuclear deterrence that has helped allow Israel to take significant risks for peace in recent decades, moves that Peres was at the forefront of and for which he was awarded the Nobel peace prize.

Both U.S. President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton have confirmed they will attend Peres’ funeral in Jerusalem on Friday.

The leader of Boko Haram is apparently pretty hard to kill.

Abubakr Shekau was reported to have been killed by forces fighting the Nigerian terror group in 2009, 2013, 2014 and 2015 — all followed by audio or video of the terror leader proclaiming he was still alive.

Last month, the Nigerian Air Force said they mortally wounded the terror leader in airstrikes.

On Sunday, Shekau released a new video declaring, “I am alive and healthy.”

“But you should know that were my days of living over, you wouldn’t have seen me here,” he added. “So many people live even when they are wanted dead, and so also people die when they should have lived. Prophet Muhammad had been tested with similar hatred because of the religion of Allah.”

He told the Nigerian government to “keep doing all your evil planning” and stressed “we are not sociologist, we are Quranists, and we follow the Hadith and those who came before us.”

“We are fools as people but the Quran is what is guiding us and that is why you couldn’t defeat us and we are sure of that.”

Shekau accused Nigerians of thinking “democracy is a religion” and said President Muhammadu Buhari is “worshipping cows.”

“What we believe in is the Quran and we do not know anything apart from that. Anytime we say Allah, all of you will not live in peace,” he said.

The terror leader warned the Muslim president, “Continue and see, one day you will not even be able to go to the toilet …but if you repent, then you are a brother. Repent and follow the Quran.”

Shekau added a dig at the 898-day Bring Back Our Girls campaign focused on the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram.

“People of Chibok, let me tell you today, you still have to prepare for a longer Bring Back Our girls campaign,” he said. “If you want your girls, bring back our brothers.”

I have been to your church several times this week in an effort to engage with people over the ‘you cannot pass today’ exhibition. The Church decided to use a replica of an Israeli security checkpoint to deliver a message about ‘bringing down walls’.http://david-collier.com/?p=2305

Last night I was also at the circle discussion, that spoke about building bridges between the communities. I always try to reach out, try to understand. My learning process doesn’t include vocally arguing my case, but rather engaging and listening to others, absorbing their message (without confrontation) and trying to build a picture of what it is I see. There are three central points I would like now to get across:
The humanitarian safari park

The exhibition came about because one of the people involved with the church, Katherine Fox, had recently returned from a three-month humanitarian mission in Bethlehem.

Katherine did not go to Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan nor Libya. The reason she did not go to these places is because it is generally too dangerous and there is no similar industry to any of these life threatening areas. Only inside Israel does this type of tourism occur. It is safe to view the humanitarian situation in Israel precisely because it does not involve the dangers that exist elsewhere. I have written on this subject before.

If you had listened to Katherine speak last night, you would hear she was instructed to propagate the information. To return from the safari park and record events as if she had been into a jungle. It is part of the process, part of the industry. You get to go, provided on your return, you hold ‘x’ number of events that perpetuate the myths and convert others to the cause.

You also only get to see what they want you to see. You are on a journey with a clearly laid out path. If for example Katherine had spent three months in Ramallah, she’d be wondering what all the fuss is about . These trips are well choreographed. Your hand is held from the time you arrive to the time you leave.

So the question then becomes, is ‘bringing down the wall’, a message of peace or one of war. Is the church assisting those who seek a peaceful solution, or inadvertently helping to perpetuate a conflict, assisting in spreading the hatred?
The greatest straw man of all

The entire discussion always circles around one single straw man argument. Some suggest that the attack on Israel is dripping with antisemitism, and the offended humanitarians argue in response that they are not antisemitic.