RUTHFULLY YOURS

“The fiercest arguments we have in parliament are over Israel.” These words, spoken by the chairman of the Dutch Foreign Affairs Committee, startled me. But they failed to faze the other committee members from the both the left and right. On the contrary, they all readily agreed. In the end, only I displayed surprise.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Your country is in economic crisis, tens of thousands of refugees are massing on your borders, and the EU may be unraveling, and yet the issue that most occupies you is…Israel?”

My hosts unanimously nodded. However shocking, the conversation was by no means unusual. As chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee in Israel’s Knesset, I frequently meet with European legislators.

Whether Dutch or Belgian or German, they all report the same phenomenon. Israel—more than security, more than refugees, and the economy—sparks their bitterest debates. And each time I hear this, I find myself astonished. At stake, I realize, is not Israel’s identity but the Europeans’. For them, the Jewish State is exactly that, a state of Jews against whom the West is once again defining itself.

So it has been for more than two thousand years. The ancient Hellenic and Roman worlds, challenged theologically by a Judaism that rejected their polytheism and the divinity of kings, and threatened demographically by burgeoning Jewish populations, designated the Jews as the ultimate Other.

The first large-scale pogroms and expulsions took place in Rome and Alexandria well before the birth of Christianity. “How could one consider admitting such a people to citizenship or allowing them political rights?” Apion, a first century anti-Semite, wrote. “The Alexandrians were right in detesting the Jews.” By the early second century, Alexandria’s Jewish community, once a million-members strong, had all but vanished.

It is hard to expel junior members for crimes no worse than those committed by the leader of their party.

That two anti-Semitic incidents had occurred at the launch of this whitewash — one from Corbyn himself in which he seemed to compare Israel with ISIS, and another in which a Jewish Labour MP felt bullied into leaving — apparently was just the tip of the problem.

It is finished. The last attempt to instil a portion of decency into the party of the British left is over. The party of the UK left — the Labour party — has now returned to precisely the position it was in before its recent racism row. It has investigated itself, found itself innocent and now reappointed the figure who kicked the whole row off.

Gatestone readers have been able to follow this from the start. After Jeremy Corbyn’s shock election as Labour party leader last year, in November we covered the “new racism” that came — and would increasingly come — from a party that had just elected a man who has called Hamas and Hezbollah ‘friends’ and who has spent a lifetime palling up with the worst anti-Semites and anti-Western bigots on the planet. The election of such a man, we predicted, would have consequences.

Then in February of this year, when the Labour Club at Oxford University turned out to be overrun by barely disguised and largely open anti-Semitism, we suggested that the rot of this party had surely started “from the top.” It is hard to expel junior members for crimes no worse than those committed by the leader of their party.

In March we covered the growing tolerance within the party for the spread of anti-Semitic tropes and the dominance of anti-Semitic types. Parliamentary candidate Vicky Kirby had previously been suspended from the Labour party for tweeting about Jews having “big noses” and about Adolf Hitler being the “Zionist god” and similar less-than-attractive outpourings. Under Mr Corbyn’s leadership, Ms Kirby was reinstated and became the vice-chair of her party’s local chapter.

Then in May came the beginning of the big scandal — the one that looked finally, perhaps, even likely to move Jeremy Corbyn from his position. At the end of April, a string of scandals had occurred all in precisely the same area. Naz Shah — an MP for Bradford — was found to have spread anti-Israel and anti-Semitic messages on Facebook and other social media. These included a suggestion that the Jews of Israel all be forcibly deported and sent to America. At the same time, Labour MP Rupa Huq appeared to try to justify, and then swiftly step back, from endorsing such sentiments and a set of Muslim Labour councillors were suspended for anti-Semitic outbursts.

The Obama Era opened with his Cairo speech, in which he embraced Muslims in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular. He planned to depose the secular dictators and replace them with the Muslim Brotherhood. Thus Gadhafi, Mubarak and Assad were marked for removal in that order. The EU was on board.

After supporting the takeover of Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood headed by Mohamed Morsi, he backed the takeover of Syria by the Muslim Brotherhood in collaboration with the newly Islamist Turkey, headed by Recep Tayyid Erdogan, extolling him as his best friend.

Simultaneously, beginning in 2009, he reached out to Iran. He wanted to embrace it as an ally rather than to designate it as an enemy. His efforts culminated in the disastrous Iran Deal, which provided a tail wind to Iran’s hegemonic ambitions. He overlooked the fact that Iran was a long standing ally of Assad’s and was fighting to resist his removal, which was Obama’s stated goal.

Obama’s reach exceeded his grasp.

Libya, sans Gadhafi, is in chaos. The Egyptian military under Gen al Sisi is in power. He indicted Morsi for treason and banned Muslim Brotherhood again. Obama called his takeover of power a coup thus preventing the US from supporting him. Russia and Saudi Arabia have moved in to take up some of the slack.

Even though Turkey, the Gulf States and the Muslim Brotherhood shared his goal of removing Assad, they have not succeeded due entirely to Obama’s lack of leadership and unwillingness to fight. His removal of the last of the US military forces in Iraq and his willingness to have Iran manage Iraq gave rise to ISIS. Turkey and the Gulf states in different ways supported ISIS, which was Sunni and was seen as a proxy to stop Iran expansionism and topple Assad. The US over time began to see ISIS as a bigger threat than Assad and began to support the Kurds, who they originally shunned, so that they would fight ISIS. They did this even though Turkey was adamantly opposed.

Obama announced that if Assad used chemical weapons, that he would be crossing America’s red line. Rather than enforce that red line, he seized on a lifeline that Russia offered, namely, to work to remove the chemical weapons with the cooperation of Assad. This was a major turning point in the war, as Russia proceeded to take on a greater role in the fighting with America’s blessing, thereby enabling Syria to stabilize and go on the offensive. Russia was not so much interested in defeating ISIS as they were in stabilizing Assad and taking back some territory.

Meanwhile Obama’s plan to have the Muslim Brotherhood with the backing of Turkey replace Assad is no longer operative. The Muslim Brotherhood as a player in Syria is no longer discussed, let alone active. Turkey, who started out with grandiose ambitions to recreating the Ottoman Empire and assuming the mantel of Sunni leadership, has abandoned such ambitions and is working to contain the self-inflicted damage its policies have caused.

Erdogan’s embrace of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood has strained relations with Egypt, who has banned them and is actively fighting them. Egypt is also partnering with Israel to neutralize and contain Hamas in Gaza and all insurgents in Sinai.

Obama’s bellicose statements and actions regarding Cyprus have resulted in new alliance between it and Israel based on their mutual interest in defending and developing their new found gas reserves. Greece too has joined that alliance.

Erdogan has enraged the Russian bear by shooting down one of its fighter planes. As a result, Russia has imposed sanctions on Turkey and is supporting the Kurds who are an anathema to Turkey.

Erdogan started out trying to reconcile with Turkey’s Kurdish population but ended up fighting them instead, in addition to fighting the Syrian Kurds that the US was supporting. Along the way they alienated ISIS, who they were supporting. Now both ISIS and the Turkish Kurds are committing terrorist atrocities against them.

All this has given rise to a new Middle East.

A widely-publicised Iftar dinner, intended to show that Malcolm Turnbull gets what it means to be inclusive, ended badly after he was advised that one of his guests, Sheikh Shady Alsuleiman, had taught that Islam prescribes death for adulterers, and homosexuals spread diseases. No rogue maverick, Australian-born Alsuleiman is the elected national president of the Australian National Imams Council.

Although insisting that “mutual respect is absolutely critical,” Turnbull subjected this prominent Muslim leader to public humiliation. He regretted inviting him to dinner and counselled the sheikh “to reflect on what he has said and recant.” In the middle of an election, wanting to limit fallout from the dinner-gone-wrong, held only days after the Orlando massacre, Turnbull stated that his no-longer-welcome guest’s views are “wrong, unacceptable, and I condemn them.”

Well, Mr. Turnbull may deplore Alsuleiman’s teachings, but the real challenge is that these were not merely his personal views. The sheikh’s teachings on homosexuality and adultery reflect the mainstream position of Islam, preached by many a Muslim scholar around the world today. Telling a sheikh to reject the sharia is like telling a pope to get over the virgin birth.

Western leaders pretend that the objectionable teachings of Muslim faith leaders are personal faults.

Many Australian Muslims will be disappointed at the treatment meted out to Sheikh Alsuleiman. An event designed to honour the Muslim community ended up providing a platform to denigrate one of their most respected leaders for promoting Islamic doctrines. Several Australian Muslim leaders have since dug in their heels to affirm support for the sharia position on homosexuals. So much for recanting.

While Turnbull refused to pass judgement on Islam itself, saying “there are different views of different issues, as there are in all religions,” he also sent a message that he is prepared to disparage Australian Muslims’ religious beliefs. It was a bitter pill for Muslims to swallow that this came in the form of a humiliating invite-to-disavow game of bait-and-switch, conducted during a pre-election media storm.

The cognitive dissonance is startling.

You only really know Paris when you know the Métro. When you recognise the Roma rapping on La Ligne 13, when you know without needing to look which stations let the sleeping bags in at night, when you get that instinctive feel for the hour the homeless beggars do their rounds up and down the carriages — “Mesdames, Messieurs.”

You only really know Paris when you know the spots where women look behind themselves at night. Get out quickly from the tunnels at Stalingrad — watch out for your bag, they say, that’s where the Eritreans are sleeping. Don’t get yourself a commute on La Ligne 13, they joke, it may be light blue but it goes from Romania to the banlieue end of hell. And with this ticket this is where I am going. I have to see the new France for myself to ask: is this country in danger? This is not just any old question to me. This is about my family.

My aunt lives on La Ligne 13. She, like most of my family is French. French and Jewish. She lives in the Paris that the tourists think can never change. But this is not the France we knew. Outside her apartment on the pavement someone has spray-painted in black “Too Many Arabs”, while inside our family has been arguing. Le Bataclan, les banlieues, Marine Le Pen, burnt police cars, jihadi assassinations, the HyperCacher — do we smell smoke?

If we get one more failed president then Marine Le Pen will win the presidency, says my uncle. My aunt wants a British passport. This is hysteria! Let’s be calm, tuts my cousin. But the killings have already started, says his wife. Round and round it goes. Optimists, turning into pessimists, and back again. Are we paranoid? I am on the Métro to find out.

A swirl of purple and blue light glows out of the rose windows of the cathedral of Saint-Denis and spills mystery over the silence of the nave. I am standing in a sacred necropolis: the burial place of the kings of France. Tombs surround me. Carved out of limestone, their faces calm, they look as ifthey are sleeping. The crypt holds their bones, from Dagobert I all the way to Louis XIII. This is the line of the Sun King. A man lies here who was not a king: Charles Martel, the Frankish warrior who Gibbon believed had saved Christendom by defeating the Arab invasion of France on the battlefield near Poitiers in 732.

Two hundred metres away, it is time for Friday prayers. The mosque is overflowing. Every week 3,000 believers come to pray here on Rue de la Boulangerie, in a dingy space that cannot hold more than 1,800. In tracksuits, jubbah, and the white tunics of Islamists it overflows. The road is crowded, blocked, as around a hundred fall to their knees towards Mecca. These hardline mosques are building a parallel Paris: segregated by faith.

I am only 20 minutes from my aunt’s flat on Ligne 13. This is Sunday morning. At the cathedral I count scarcely 500 faithful at Mass. They are almost all black. “This is a black church,” says the old white priest as I leave. Imagine Westminster Abbey in Tower Hamlets, a Tower Hamlets without jobs, which makes it more of a Bradford. This is the banlieue of Seine-Saint-Denis. In a country where ethno-religious statistics are illegal, this is seen as a Muslim-majority territory. To mention Saint-Denis is to start arguing about France’s greatest tension: Islam and the Republic.

Bradford upsets the British less than Saint-Denis does the French. France has a far more virulent rejection of Muslim multiculturalism. The majority even find Islam itself incompatible with the values of French society. The word communitaire is only used with sharply negative connotations. This is because Saint-Denis clashes with the underlying French ideology — La République, the enlightenment scheme whereby there should be nothing between the will of a uniform, secular state and its citizens. No priests, no imams, no community elders.

Last week one of the cathedral’s priests was savagely beaten here, thugs mistaking a long thin book for an iPad. Then they bolted, leaving him with a bleeding nose on the square. My notebook fills with stories like this: of thieves, hoodlums and pickpockets. This is nothing like poor London.

The streets of Saint-Denis talk as if the authorities have lost their grip. Jihadists are waging a dirty war on the Republic, recruiting intensively in these banlieues. Since 2012, stabbings, shootings and car rammings have taken place every few months, punctuated by slaughters such as Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan.

It was here after the Bataclan massacre that the police stormed the hideout of the terrorist mastermind, firing 5,000 rounds. Three jihadis were shot dead, minutes from the cathedral. Their stated ambition was to start a civil war.

The odd woman circumvents France’s ban on complete face coverings, by wearing a little anti-bacterial facemask under tight-fitting hijab. The Catholic faithful drifting out of the cathedral are uncomfortable. “Everything has changed,” says Maria, a 62-year-old cleaner. “Immigration changed everything. The people changed. You can just see it for yourself. The French have all left Saint-Denis. Look around you.” She has lived here for 37 years. “The real French have left. I’m a Portuguese immigrant, and I want to leave too. It’s their own fault they let themselves get screwed like this. But now France is no longer France.”

The square is full of drug pushers, hustling in broad light. They are brazen in a way unthinkable in London. Dishevelled Arab men hawk parsley and fennel out of cardboard boxes where the escalators grind out from the Métro. A Roma beggar without one arm but instead three deformed fingers sprouting from her shoulder stump, chimes “Salaam Aleikum” at the hijabis outside a poky Islamic clothes shop.

The West has developed reasonable-sounding rationales for not acting in the face of what is clearly aggression by big powers. That inaction has bought peace, but the peace has never been more than temporary.

Officials in Beijing and Moscow believe their countries should be bigger than they are today. Faced with little or no resistance, China and Russia are succeeding in redrawing their borders by force.

Should we be concerned by a nuclear-armed, hostile state falling apart? Of course, but we should be more worried by a hostile state launching nuclear attacks on the Baltics, as the Kremlin has repeatedly threatened to do.

The Chinese and Russians may be villains, but it is we, through inaction, who have permitted them to be villainous. The choice is no longer risk versus no risk. The choice is which awful risk to assume.

Speaking in April at the Aspen Security Forum in London, Douglas Lute, Washington’s permanent representative to NATO, said:

“So essentially there is a sense that, yes, there is a new more assertive, maybe even more aggressive Russia, but that fundamentally Russia is a state in decline. We have conversations in NATO headquarters about states in decline and arrive at two fundamental models: states in rapid decline which typically lead to chaos and breakdown, and states in gradual decline. Then we ask ourselves: Which of these two tracks would we rather have our nearest, most militarily capable neighbor, with thousands of nuclear weapons, move along? To many, trying to manage Russia’s decline seems more attractive than a failed state of that size and magnitude right on the border of NATO.”

Lute explained why the West adopted clearly inadequate measures to stop Russia after its seizure of Crimea and portions of Donbass. As the thoughtful diplomat explains, “it may not make sense to push further now and maybe even—and maybe accelerate or destabilize that decline.”

If we do not act because Russia is weak, then how do we explain the West’s China policies? China, in the estimation of almost all policymakers and analysts, is not on the way down. On the contrary, they believe it is ascendant.

By now, they also know that Beijing is increasingly aggressive. China grabbed Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines four years ago. Since then, it has attempted to seize another South China Sea feature, Second Thomas Shoal, also from Manila, and the Senkaku Islands, in the East China Sea, from Japan. The Chinese military has, without justification, closed off portions of the international waters of, and airspace over, the South China Sea. Chinese authorities, virtually without consultation, declared an air-defense identification zone, which included the sovereign airspace of Japan, over the East China Sea. China’s generals have repeatedly sent their troops deep into Indian-controlled territory at various spots in the Himalayas.

And our response? That has been to continue “engagement” of the Chinese regime, helping to strengthen its economy and institutions and integrate it into multilateral organizations. The concept is that, at some point, Beijing will enmesh itself into the international community and accept global norms. Most everyone believes that if China has a stake in the world, it will help defend the existing system.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 5-day tour of east Africa this week was judged to have been a resounding success both in Africa and Israel. Netanyahu visited Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia, but the presidents of other African countries including South Sudan and Zambia and the foreign minister of Tanzania especially flew into meet him.

Sources also reveal that several Muslim-majority countries in Africa that don’t have official diplomatic ties with Israel, including Somalia, Chad and Mali, are now forging close links with the Jewish state, and that Somalian President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud secretly met with Netanyahu in Tel Aviv earlier this year. As I have discussed before on this list, a number of Sunni Arab countries that officially have no diplomatic relations with Israel are also forging links with the Netanyahu government (several persons connected to Sunni Arab governments also now subscribe to this email list), while central Asian Muslim countries that do have ties, such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are growing closer to Israel. Turkey also restored relations with Israel last week.

Netanyahu was accompanied to Africa by a delegation of 80 Israeli business leaders from 50 companies, as well as other Israelis of note, and diplomatic, economic, cultural and strategic ties were strengthened. (Israel supplies everything from agricultural seeds, state-of-the-art sprinklers and irrigation pipes, to CCTV cameras and counter-terrorism equipment to the many African states that have suffered Islamic fundamentalist terrorism).

While Netanyahu was on his tour, several African governments invited Israel to be given “observer status” at the 54-member African Union, a significant diplomatic breakthrough for Israel, meaning it will be involved in pan-African consultations. (The Palestinian Authority already has this status.)

African countries (including Muslim ones) significantly strengthen ties with Israel .

“Salaam. I am so excited to be here. My delegation is excited to be here. My wife is excited to be here. And I want to recognize three outstanding members of our parliament who are also excited to be here, though they’ve been here before: Member of Knesset Avraham Neguise; former Member of Knesset Pnina Tamano-Shata; and our ambassador here in Addis Ababa, Belaynesh Zevadia.

I am absolutely thrilled to be the first prime minister of Israel to visit Ethiopia ever. Well, what took you so long? And the answer is: I don’t know, but I’m already planning the next visit.

Ethiopia is a resplendent land, rich in history, diverse in culture, pregnant with promise. The Prime Minister said today in our meeting, he said something that is so true. He said Israel has a place in the hearts of Ethiopians and Ethiopia has a place in the hearts of Israelis, in the hearts of the Jewish people. I bring you greetings from Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people, the place where I grew up and the place where the Queen of Sheba met King Solomon 3,000 years ago.

One of the most beautiful streets in Jerusalem, in the heart of the city, is a street called Ethiopia Street, and in my youth, I would pass, I would walk past the majestic Ethiopian church on it. And I felt always that it was just one expression of the enduring bonds between our peoples – bonds of history, bonds of values, and increasingly bonds of interests.

Our historical bond continued from the Solomonic era through the rise of Christianity to this day. Our values, I think the bonds of history gave rise to the bonds of values. The birth of the Jewish people is interwoven with the birth of our freedom, the story of the exodus. We were brought from slavery to freedom to our land, the land of Israel.

You in Ethiopia, you fought for your freedom. You maintain your freedom throughout the centuries. For millennia, your nation has proudly fought for and maintained its independence. We respect you for it. We admire you for it. You resisted foreign rule and live as a free people in your ancestral homeland. And we too live as a free and independent people in our ancestral homeland. The struggle for freedom unites our two nations, as does the second value we share, which is nation-building.

Our return to the land of Israel was just the beginning. We then needed to build our state, a dynamic state, a powerful state. We recognized early on that the diversity of our citizens would be a source of great bonding. Today we draw upon the skills and wisdom of all our citizens – Arabs, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druze and Jews from Ethiopia. Thousands of Ethiopian Jews serve in our army, participate in our politics, take part in our economy, in our culture. They help enrich Israeli society every day and in every way. They act as a human bridge between our two peoples.

On the way here, I spoke to two young flight attendants of Ethiopian descent. They are proud to be Israelis and they’re proud of their Ethiopian heritage. And one of them is seeing her family here for the first time in seven years. What excitement! It’s the excitement we all feel in coming here and rekindling our friendship.

The reforms are unlikely to end Germany’s migrant rape epidemic.

When it comes to immigration, political correctness often overrides the rule of law in Germany, where many migrants who commit sexual crimes are never brought to justice, and those who do stand trial receive lenient sentences from sympathetic judges.

“Every police officer knows he has to meet a particular political expectation. It is better to keep quiet [about migrant crime] to avoid problems.” — Rainer Wendt, head of the German police union.

“It is unacceptable that asylum seekers are trampling on our society at the same time that they are here seeking our protection.” — Prosecutor Bastian Blaut.

The German parliament has approved changes to the criminal code that expand the definition of rape and make it easier to deport migrants who commit sex crimes.

Under the bill, also known as the “No Means No” (“Nein heißt Nein”) law, any form of non-consensual sex will now be punishable as a crime. Previously, only cases in which victims could show that they physically resisted their attackers were punishable under German law.

The changes, which were prompted by the sex attacks in Cologne, where hundreds of women were assaulted by mobs of mostly Muslim migrants on New Year’s Eve, is being hailed as a “paradigm shift” in German jurisprudence.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/baghdad-bombing-death-toll-nears-300-1467896428
Death Toll From Sunday Baghdad Bombing Nears 300
Attack by Islamic State, targeting Shiite Muslims, wounded more than 200 others

The death toll from the deadliest single car bombing in Baghdad since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 has reached at least 292 people, Iraq’s health ministry said Thursday.

The attack by Islamic State, which also wounded more than 200 others, struck the Iraqi capital’s busiest commercial areas early Sunday as shoppers and diners crowded the streets following the daily dawn-to-dusk fasting that marks the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. On Monday, authorities said 151 people had been killed in the blast.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/dozens-killed-in-shia-shrine-suicide-attack-in-iraq-1467966263
Dozens Killed in Shia Shrine Suicide Attack in Iraq
Islamic State claims they carried out the attack on the shrine north of Baghdad

Islamic State suicide bombers and gunmen stormed a Shiite Muslim shrine north of Baghdad overnight, killing 36 people, military and hospital officials said on Friday.

The shrine in the Balad district of Salahaddin province, some 80 miles north of Baghdad, is typically visited by Shiite pilgrims and worshipers.