RUTHFULLY YOURS

Islamic terrorism has had a banner few weeks, with 49 Americans gunned down in Orlando, 45 travelers killed in Istanbul, 20 diners butchered in Dhaka, and more than 200 Iraqis blown up in Baghdad.

Oh, and some Israeli settlers were killed, too. But they’re not quite in the same category, right?

In November, after Islamic State’s massacres in Paris, John Kerry offered some unscripted thoughts on how the atrocity differed from others. “There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that,” he said, referring to the January 2015 attack on the satirical French newspaper. He continued:

“There was a sort of particularized focus [to the Hebdo attack] and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of—not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, okay, they’re really angry because of this and that. This Friday [in Paris] was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn’t to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people.”

Mr. Kerry’s remarks again betrayed the administration’s cluelessness about ISIS, which aims to annihilate anything it doesn’t consider . . . Islamic. Understanding its takfiri version of Islam, with its sweeping declarations of apostasy, is essential to understanding how it thinks and operates.

But no less telling was Mr. Kerry’s view that not all terrorism is fundamentally alike; that some acts of terror have a rationale “you could attach yourself to.” The comment is striking not for being unusual but for being ordinary, another formulation of the conventional wisdom that terrorism, like war, is politics by other means. From such a view it’s a short step to treating some acts of terror as legitimate, or nearly so.

Which brings me to the case of Hallel Yaffe Ariel, a 13-year-old Israeli girl who on Thursday was stabbed to death in her sleep by a 19-year-old intruder named Mohammad Tra’ayra. It’s difficult to imagine any act as evil or as cowardly as murdering a child in her sleep. But Hallel lived with her family in the West Bank Israeli town of Kiryat Arba, making her a settler, while Tra’ayra, who was shot dead on the scene, came from a nearby Palestinian village.

What happened to Hallel has happened to countless settlers: five members of the Fogel family, butchered in their beds in 2011; the three teenage boys who were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas in 2014; the rabbi who was shot and killed on Friday on a West Bank road while driving with his wife and two children. Yet their deaths are supposed to be different from those of other terrorism victims, since they were all “occupiers” whose political crimes rendered them complicit in their own tragedy. That’s how much of global public opinion has long treated terrorism when the target is Israel. It has a rationale. It’s understandable, if not justifiable. It’s Israel’s problem, Israel’s fault, and has no bearing on the rest of us.

For many years, the Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan made common cause with Hamas. Israeli officials have accused Turkey of hosting a Hamas command center—a key point of contention in Jerusalem’s efforts to reconcile with Ankara—and Mr. Erdogan has repeatedly met with Hamas leader Khaled Mashal, including just days before last month’s airport attack.

The Turkish people deserve full sympathy for that atrocity. But no sympathy is owed a Turkish potentate who has been sympathetic to terrorists as long as they aimed their fire at Israel or other convenient targets. All the more so since until recently Mr. Erdogan’s attitude toward Islamic State matched ambivalence with indifference, to put it diplomatically.

What’s true of Turkey goes for other recent victims of terrorism. Pakistan has long played a double game with terrorists, supporting groups that hit civilian targets in Afghanistan and India, only to be shocked when the same groups, or their cousins, turned against the mother country.

Saudi Arabia’s former interior minister, the late Prince Nayef, was for years the head of the Saudi Committee for Supporting the Al Aqsa Intifada, in which capacity he distributed millions to “the families of martyrs.” As late as November 2002, he blamed 9/11 on a Zionist plot, only to be disabused of the view once al Qaeda began attacking Saudi Arabia directly. CONTINUE AT SITE

The findings of this inquiry have now been published and amazingly the Labour party has found itself innocent.

In British left-wing politics, you cannot even clear yourself of accusations of anti-Semitism without having an outbreak of it right there and then.

Readers who have followed the UK Labour party’s recent travails will be surprised to hear the results of the party’s latest inquiry into its own behaviour. After a slew of anti-Semitic comments emanated from a Member of Parliament, a number of councillors and a member of the party’s executive committee, party leader Jeremy Corbyn finally ordered an inquiry into anti-Semitism in the party. The findings of this inquiry have now been published and amazingly the Labour party has found itself innocent. But even that has not gone down without incident.

The Labour party’s anti-Semitism problem began to be exposed at the start of this year when stories of routine anti-Semitism emerged from a junior wing of the party — specifically the Oxford University Labour Club. That scandal involved a number of resignations, and revelations of the use of anti-Semitic language as routine and commonplace among Labour students at Britain’s most prestigious university. An inquiry into these events, ordered by the party and conducted by Labour’s own Baroness Royall, promptly found “no evidence” of “institutional anti-Semitism.”

Then came the scandal of Naz Shah MP, who was suspended from the party pending an investigation into messages on social media, as well as the suspension of a number of Labour councillors for posting anti-Semitic content on Facebook and other sites.

Kerosene was promptly thrown onto this smouldering fire by National Executive Committee member, Ken Livingstone. The former Mayor of London used the opportunity of an anti-Semitism row to go on the BBC and talk about which early policies of Adolf Hitler’s he thought the Jewish people had agreed. The resulting firestorm culminated in Mr Livingstone locking himself in a disabled lavatory at the BBC while journalists shouted questions about Hitler under the door. Sensing that his party was in difficult public-relations waters, Jeremy Corbyn ordered an inquiry into the Labour party’s anti-Semitism problem, and asked left-wing campaigner Shami Chakrabarti to conduct the inquiry. Chakrabarti promptly joined the Labour party and started work.

On June 27, 1976, Air France Flight 139, in route from Tel Aviv to Paris, had a layover in Athens. There four terrorists, two from a German group and two from the Palestinian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, hijacked the plane. After a stop in Benghazi, Libya, the flight continued to the airport in Entebbe, Uganda.

One hundred forty-eight non-Israeli and non-Jewish passengers were separated in a process hauntingly familiar to the hostages and were released in two separate groups. Ninety-four passengers and the 12 crew members remained. The four hijackers were joined by three more, and demands were made for the release of 40 terrorists from Israeli prisons and 13 from other incarceration.

Israel’s policy of non-negotiation with terrorists was well known, but understandably, the families of the Israeli hostages begged for Israel’s leaders to comply with the hijackers’ demands.

On July 3, four C-130 Hercules jumbo planes left Israel with 190 elite troops plus 20 non-combatants to execute the most daring rescue operation in modern history. In six amazingly short days from the hijacking, the Israeli Defense Force assembled a crack team, collected intelligence from the released hostages and the Israeli construction firm that built the airport, quickly devised a complex plan, repeatedly rehearsed the rescue to precision, and argued the risks and mechanics of the rescue. Israeli officials entered into negotiations with the terrorists to buy much needed time.

The first C-130 landed at 1:00 AM at the Entebbe airport. Imitating Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, who had visited the hostages, a black Mercedes with soldiers in blackface rolled out of the plane and toward the terminal with the hostages. As they pulled up to the terminal, the soldiers burst in, yelling in Hebrew and English for the hostages to remain on the ground. They quickly found and killed all of the hijackers and within six minutes were escorting the hostages out of the terminal to the additional planes that had just landed, precisely as planned.

Three hostages were killed in the crossfire: Jean Jacques Maimoni (19), Pasco Cohn (55), and Ida Borochovitch (56). A fourth, Dora Bloch (75), had been taken to a hospital and was killed by Ugandan soldiers after the raid. Ten hostages were wounded.

Soldiers from the additional planes engaged Ugandan soldiers, killing over thirty, and destroyed eleven Mig jets on the ground. Five soldiers were wounded, and only one was killed by a sniper in the terminal tower: Yonatan (Yoni) Netanyahu, brother of Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The planes took off with the soldiers and hostages 58 minutes after arrival. In spite of the wounded and the losses, the rescue force was prepared for much worse, and the operation was considered a remarkable success.

It seems that either al-Qaeda, with or without the Islamic State, has been linking up with Bangladesh’s indigenous radical networks.

If the Hasina government cannot restore a sense of normalcy, the booming Bangladeshi economy is likely to stagnate, Western corporate investment may dry up, and liberal technocrats probably will seek security elsewhere. If this happens, Bangladesh’s minorities will feel even further isolated.

“They believe that we are all going to hell, and no matter how they treat us, that they will all go to heaven.” — Former Catholic seminarian.

Friday’s Islamic terrorist attack in the swankiest section of the Bangladesh’s capital of Dhaka, in which 20 people were murdered, had been expected by the country’s law enforcement services. When this attack took place, the government had been in the midst of a nationwide crackdown on known terrorist sympathizers. The police had made hundreds — some reports claim thousands — of arrests. They had also seized explosives, firearms, machetes and jihadi tracts. Most of the arrests consisted of members of indigenous, outlawed jihadist groups such as the Jamaatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Harakat-ul Jihad-al Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B), and Ansarullah Team.

Three men have been jailed for a string of sexual offences against a teenage girl in Oxford.

The victim was plied with drink and drugs between the ages of 13 and 15 and passed around “like a piece of meat”.

The offences included rape and indecent assault. On one occasion the girl was taken to woodland and told she would have her neck snapped.

She was in the care system when the abuse started and it continued between 1999 and 2007.

The defendants, charges, and sentences:

Assad Hussain, 35, was found guilty of five counts of rape, two counts of indecent assault, and one count of making a threat to kill – 12 years
Anjum Dogar, 33, was convicted of one count of rape and one count of indecent assault – 10 years
Akhtar Dogar, 35, was convicted of one count of indecent assault, two counts of rape, and one count of making a threat to kill – 10 years

Prosecutors said the crimes took place in wooded areas around Oxford and private addresses.

In sentencing, Judge Ian Pringle said: “This victim was perfect prey for those who wanted to sexually exploit her. There was clearly never any consent given.”

He said Akhtar Dogar had been the “principal player” in the “shocking” threats to kill, saying that he “used friendly companionship and turned it into an opportunity to serve his sexual desires”.

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

The Religion of Peace recently distinguished itself by hacking
a Buddhist leader to death, shooting a Christian priest in the
head, murdering a Hindu temple worker, and slaughtering
a 13-year-old Jewish girl… all in less than 24 hours!
Still think all religions are the same?

Islamic State claimed responsibility for a massive car bomb that exploded overnight in the heart of one of Baghdad’s busiest commercial areas, killing 72 people and wounding at least 150 others, Iraq’s interior ministry said.

The explosion in the upscale central neighborhood of Karrada went off around 1:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, setting nearby buildings ablaze as young people and families packed the streets, reveling after sundown and the breaking of the Ramadan fast. It was the terror group’s first major attack on the heavily patrolled area since May 2015.

Islamic State, a Sunni militant group, said in a statement distributed online that it had targeted a gathering of Shiites. It and other Sunni extremists reject Shiism, calling it polytheism.

Civil defense teams worked through the night pulling bodies from the debris. Families of those missing gathered in the street, looking for their relatives and shouting and cursing at security forces they said had failed to keep the area safe.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi toured the site hours after the explosion, promising to punish those responsible, according to a statement from his office. Angry crowds there jeered him, calling him a thief.

“Leave, leave, don’t let him stay here,” they said.

Mr. Abadi has faced months of political uncertainty partly caused by frequent attacks on Baghdad and other cities that have exposed gaps in Iraq’s security infrastructure. A protest movement this year questioned his leadership and called for immediate government reform.

Minutes after the Karrada bombing, an improvised explosive device detonated in the crowded east Baghdad neighborhood Al Shaab, killing four people and wounding 16 others, the interior ministry said. It targeted young Iraqis who were out shopping for the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr, which begins this week.

No group has claimed responsibility for the second attack.

Islamic State in May claimed a series of bombings that left 88 people dead across Baghdad, one of the deadliest days of insurgent violence in the country’s history and a stark reminder that the government had failed to uproot the extremist group despite dealing it a number of recent setbacks on the battlefield.

The Iraqi army reclaimed full control of Fallujah from Islamic State on June 26. The Anbar province city some 40 miles west from Baghdad had served as a command center for the terror group, and was one of its last major strongholds in Iraq following losses in Ramadi and the northern city of Sinjar. CONTINUE AT SITE

A new generation of Biafrans is now peacefully advocating for an independent Biafra. Muhammadu Buhari, the Muslim president of Nigeria, is fighting the nascent independence movement with military force.

“I saw one boy trying to answer a question. He immediately raised his hands, but the soldiers opened fire …” — Witness to the shootings, to Amnesty International.

As for IPOB’s leader, Nnamdi Kanu, director of London-based Radio Biafra, he was arrested in October 2015 and has been held since, illegally, despite meeting bail conditions.

It is noteworthy that a peaceful situation, such as that of the pro-Biafra movement, apparently requires a “military option”, whereas a lethal terrorist group, such as the Muslim Fulani herdsmen, who murder innocent civilians, does not. This tactic furthermore brings into question whether Buhari’s efforts at curbing Boko Haram in the country are genuine or merely a play he puts on half-heartedly for the benefit of the international community.

On paper, the plight of Biafrans — whose state in what is today southeastern Nigeria, lasted for only three years, 1967-70, before the Nigerian authorities ended it with a genocide against them — should, for the international community, be an open-and-shut case.

Journalists, human rights activists, social justice warriors on campuses throughout the West, and organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union, all ostensibly claim to care deeply about human rights, especially for people whom the Europeans once colonized.

Biafra constitutes a textbook example of British colonization. The country’s brief existence was cut short by the Nigerian government’s genocide, which crushed all hopes for independence and self-determination. Biafrans, today, are denied their fundamental rights of assembly and free expression — rights that are guaranteed by the Nigerian constitution. The Nigerian government continues murderously to oppress them and their movement for sovereign freedom.

The international community, headed by the UN, which preaches the gospel of human rights and self-determination, persistently ignores their national aspirations.

The territories that constitute present-day Nigeria came under colonial occupation as British protectorates around 1903. Nigeria is essentially an artificial construct, created as a colony by Great Britain in 1914, when it merged the protectorates. The country is made up of a number of different indigenous African peoples, among them the Biafrans, who are ethnically predominantly Igbo.

After Nigeria’s independence from Great Britain in 1960, Biafra seceded from Nigeria, and in 1967 declared its own state. The Nigerian government refused to accept the secession and responded by launching a war on Biafra. The assault included a blockade of the nascent state, and resulted in the murder of more than two million Biafrans, many of whom were children who starved to death because of the blockade.

The Biafrans, watching the dissolution of their young state, surrendered to Nigeria in January 1970. They realized, perhaps, that the world’s abandonment of them did not warrant any future for their cause.

Unlike others at that time, such as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Biafrans did not engage in hijacking and bombing airplanes, taking hostages and other forms of terrorist attacks against innocent civilians to further their cause. The international community responds obediently to terrorism. Whereas the PLO has now become the Palestinian Authority (PA) and is among the world’s largest per capita recipients of international foreign aid, with a plethora of “human rights activists” championing its cause (as well as a UN body, UNRWA, exclusively for Palestinians), it would be hard to find a diplomat at the UN who even knows how to pronounce “Biafra”.

The question inevitably comes to mind, why the ostensibly anti-racist, pro-self-determination international community of opinion makers and human rights advocates has neither the political goodwill, nor the treasure to spare for the Biafrans.

Although the genocide effectively ended Biafran independence, a new generation of Biafrans is now peacefully pressing for an independent Biafra again. In an example of extreme hypocrisy, Muhammadu Buhari, the Muslim president of Nigeria, has declared himself fully committed to a Palestinian state, while his military fights the Biafran movement for self-determination with brutal force.

On May 30, Biafrans commemorated Biafra Heroes Remembrance Day. According to Amnesty International, the only major human rights organization that has interested itself in Biafra,

We are ecstatic to announce our 500th Episode Celebration and we are immensely grateful to all of our fans for their help in keeping the show going — since the Glazov Gang is a fan-generated program and could not exist without you.
To mark this special anniversary we are running the highlights of our episodes that dealt with our main focus, that our government and media won’t dare discuss: the truth about the Left and its alliance with Islamic Jihad.
http://jamieglazov.com/2016/07/02/the-leftist-islamic-alliance-exposed-on-the-glazov-gang-2/

Life’s tough for a warmist think-tank. Look what just happened in Germany (via the great Andrew Bolt):

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) are warning that Europe may be facing “a mini ice age” due to a possible protracted solar minimum.

The news comes from the Berliner Kurier, which adds:


That’s the conclusion that solar physicists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research reached when looking at solar activity. For an institute that over the past 20 years has steadfastly insisted that man has been almost the sole factor in climate change over the past century and that the sun no longer plays a role, this is quite remarkable.

The Berliner Kurier reports that the PIK scientists foresee a weakening of the sun’s activity over the coming years. That means that conversely it is going to get colder. The scientists are speaking of a little ice age.

According to the PIK scientists, the reduced solar activity will, however, not be able to stop the global warming and only brake the warming up to 2100 by 0.3°C.

This warmist hotbed is admitting that solar activity drives climate so strongly that, even sticking to their models as accurate forecasts, they see only a 0.3-degree change by the next century. As Andrew Bolt prompts us:

Remember when we were warned it could be 6 degrees – and at least 3 degrees?