RUTHFULLY YOURS

Internet manipulation of readers’ comments in response to articles published on overtly anti-Israel and anti-Jewish web sites is allowing those web sites to spew out their venom unchecked and uncontrolled.

Freedom of speech on these web sites is non-existent – and its absence is playing a large part in influencing the opinions of those who visit these sites and see no readers’ comments that act as a counterbalance or rebuttal to the article published or readers’ comments supporting such articles.

Such manipulation has until now taken either of the following forms:

1. Simply not publishing a reader’s comment.

The editor can claim to exercise editorial control of what appears on his web-site – and there is nothing you can really do about it.

I received this treatment when seeking to comment on the decision by McGraw Hill to trash the remaining copies of a text book, Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World – after four maps of “Palestine” in 1946, 1947, 1948-1967 and 2000 were subsequently determined by McGraw Hill to be inaccurate and misleading.

My comment detailing why McGraw Hill’s decision was justified was not published.

This rejection motivated me to write an article “Palestine – Internet Intifada Denies Free Speech” – which was published on many web sites – and subsequently went viral.

2. Publishing readers’ comments – overwhelmingly anonymous – that do not address the subject matter of the article but comprise general comments repeated over and over again – such as “ethnic cleansing”, apartheid” and “stealing Palestinian land” – denigrating and delegitimising both Israel and Jews.

For the past few decades, British authorities have been caught up in the pervasive meme of multiculturalism — the falsehood that all cultures are equal and that to believe otherwise is to commit the worst modern day offense — to be “racist.”

Under this fallacy, the British government in 2001 introduced a series of restrictive speech codes that criminalized criticism of Islam, followed by a Racial and Religious Hatred Bill imposing fines and even imprisonment for speech that “incited hatred against a person for their religious or racial background.”

These laws have victimized a number of Britons. Hoteliers Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang were prosecuted for “insulting” a Muslim guest. Liberty Great Britain party chairman Paul Weston was arrested on suspicion of racial harassment after publicly reading a passage critical of Muslims from Winston Churchill’s The River War. Dr. Vladislav Rogozov, a Czech-born, UK cardiac anesthesiologist, is being investigated by Sheffield’s Royal Hallamshire Hospital for giving an online interview about his 2013 confrontation with a Muslim surgeon who refused to replace her blood-specked hijab with the proscribed, operating-theater headgear.

In this context and political climate, with racism conflated with religion – one specific religion – it is easy to see how government and public service employees would fear professional and legal repercussions (up to seven years in prison) merely for speaking up about criminal behavior by Muslims who justify their actions citing the Koran. In this way, teachers, police, child care workers, government officials and others have been silent about the growing menace of Muslim gangs who sexually groom and exploit children in the UK.

In his riveting book, Easy Meat: Inside Britain’s Grooming Gang Scandal (World Encounter Institute/New English Review Press, 2016. 328 pp., $17.20) author Peter McLoughlin explains how multiculturalism-inspired political correctness along with its companion, willful blindness concerning Islamic doctrine, has jeopardized the safety and well-being of children. McLoughlin posits that, since 1988, this nationwide sexploitation has resulted in the shattering of lives of between 100,000 to 1 million girls. The author documents how the fear of being deemed racist and facing criminal charges, dismissal or even threats of violence, has led to suppression of information and a stunning lack of intervention on behalf of young victims. In essence, an extensive, insidious operation that targets children for sexual grooming and enslavement has been covered up because of political correctness and fear of Muslim retribution.

“There have been more blasphemy cases and convictions during the Sisi era than during the Morsi era.” — Ibrahim Eissa, Muslim television host in Egypt.

Their crime was to have made a 20-second video on a mobile phone mocking the Islamic State — an act interpreted as mocking Islam. In the video, the boys appear laughing and joking, as they pretend to be ISIS members praying and slitting throats. “The judge didn’t show any mercy. He handed down the maximum punishment [five years].”

Egypt is becoming more like Pakistan. Although that nation also prohibits the defamation of all religions, only Christians and moderate Muslims are targeted and imprisoned; some, such as Asia Bibi, a 50-year-old Christian woman and mother of five, are on death row. Conversely, Muslims who openly defame Christianity — and they are many — are regularly let off.

Despite Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s many pluralistic words and gestures, which have won him much praise from the nation’s Christians and moderates, he appeases the Islamist agenda in one very clear way: by allowing the controversial defamation of religions law, colloquially known as the “blasphemy law,” to target Christians and moderates in ways arguably worse than under the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi.

Last month three Christian teenagers were jailed for five years for breaking the defamation of religions law. A fourth defendant, 15, was given juvenile detention for an indefinite period. [1] Earlier, they were detained for 45 days and subjected to “ill-treatment,” according to a human rights group.

Their crime was to have made a 20-second video on a mobile phone mocking the Islamic State — an act interpreted as mocking Islam. In the video, the boys appear laughing and joking, as they pretend to be ISIS members praying and slitting throats. The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, an independent rights group, confirmed that the four teenagers were performing scenes “imitating slaughter carried out by terrorist groups.” Even so, according to their defense lawyer, Maher Naguib, the Christian youths “have been sentenced for contempt of Islam and inciting sectarian strife…. The judge didn’t show any mercy. He handed down the maximum punishment.”

Ahead of Tuesday’s Wisconsin presidential primaries, U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was in Israel, the destination he chose for his first foreign trip since assuming his post at the end of October.

In meetings with Israeli leaders — and in an interview with Times of Israel editor David Horovitz — Ryan reaffirmed his commitment to the Jewish state and his opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran. He also stated, in no uncertain terms, that — contrary to increasing rumor and pressure — he is not going to end up becoming the Republican nominee at what threatens to be a contested GOP convention. Nobody really believes he means it, however, because he had been equally adamant about not wanting the position he is currently occupying.

But, while distraught Americans from both parties are obsessing over whether Donald Trump can win the nomination — and if he does, whether he can beat likely Democratic rival Hillary Clinton — the Obama administration is being given a free pass to get away with murder, figuratively. More literally, it is enjoying the benefit of the doubt caused by the distraction of the public away from the havoc the White House and State Department are continuing to wreak, which is enabling the actual death of a lot of people in the present, and a whole lot more in the future.

The terrorism of the Islamic State group is only a tiny part of this, though it seems to be the only jihadist organization that gets a rise out of Westerners, whom it makes no bones about targeting for mass murder. Indeed, as the suicide bombings in Brussels on March 22 indicated, Europeans and Americans only wake up when a lot of people with whom they can identify get slaughtered senselessly. That this kind of thing is going on routinely everywhere else in the world barely elicits a yawn.

But as evil as ISIS is, it is still small fry compared to the Islamic Republic of Iran, the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism, with tentacles reaching far and wide. And now, thanks to the Obama administration, it also has multibillions of dollars at its disposal with which to build its nuclear arsenal. Nor does it hide its ambitions to wipe Israel off the map and its loathing for America, the “great Satan.”

Why, throughout its history, have the Palestinians been the victims of so many irresponsible leaders who harm their own constituents?

Historically, the Palestinian “liberation organizations” have had no ideology or motivation beyond the destruction of the State of Israel. They are proxies of the countries funding them, instead of acting in the authentic national interests of the Palestinian people.

Instead of bringing jobs, water and better education — as they promise when they stand for election — some Arab Israeli legislators sell out their people for a few crumbs of headline attention. They parrot the Iranian line, with no regard for the needs of their voters. Iran just wants to get its foot in the door.

With the generous “help” of our Palestinian leaders — and especially with the “help” of the treacherous Europeans who keep on enabling them — any real help for the Palestinians, and the top of our mountain, look more distant than ever.

We Palestinians, as a new people on the stage of history, have not yet learned from the experience of those who preceded us. We always seem to be motivated by factors working against us, and let ourselves be manipulated by foreign countries who use us as proxies to further their own interests.

We are making mistakes again, one after another. We do damage to the Palestinian national interest and instead of propelling ourselves forward, we push ourselves back. We work against our own best interests by constantly lying. We all know, for instance, that there is no truth to the claim that Jesus was a Palestinian, or when we say that the Jews have no historic links to Jerusalem. We just make ourselves look ridiculous. Whoever makes such claims not only attacks Christianity but also represents the entire Palestinian narrative as a blatant lie.

The Palestinian leadership continues to destroy every chance the Palestinians might have of becoming a genuine, internationally recognized nation by insisting on demands they know the Israelis will never meet. These include the right of return for more than 11 million Palestinians to a country of eight million, and refusing to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The Israelis correctly understand both demands not as a desire to have a Palestinian state, but as a desire to have Israel’s state. That impression can only be confirmed every time anyone looks at a map of Palestine: by pure coincidence, of course, it is identical to the map of Israel, only the names are different

In 1948, when we could easily have established a Palestinian state in the large territories offered by the UN, and instead joined with five Arab armies in an attempt to destroy Israel and erect Palestine in its place.

Between 1949 and 1967, we could have established a Palestinian state in the West Bank while it was still under Jordanian control, and in the Gaza Strip governed by Egypt.

During the 1970s, instead of thanking Jordan’s King Hussein for taking in Palestinian refugees, Yasser Arafat and the PLO tried to overthrow him. The result was a civil war and the expulsion of the Palestinian leadership from Jordan to Lebanon.

Once in Lebanon, we set about creating a terrorist state-within-a-state, bent on subverting Lebanese sovereignty and attacking Israel. The Israelis consequently entered south Lebanon, and with the support of the Shi’ites there, we were expelled once again, this time to Tunisia.

Under Palestinian influence, Tunisia then became a hotbed of crime and international conspiracies, again endangering our hosts.

Iran held “elections” late last month. Headlines across the Western media loudly declared a victory for “moderate” electoral forces, with the implicit strapline that there is no longer an ethical case against doing business in Iran. This is music to the ears of would-be profiteers — and their would-be partners in Tehran — who are keen to get their teeth into the Iranian market.

The truth remains, however, that Iran is ruled by one of the world’s most evil regimes, and these “elections” do nothing to alter that fact. From day one of the “Islamic Revolution” in 1979, various factions of Western political elites have practiced willful self-delusion when it comes to Iran, insisting that “moderates” or “reformists” exist and are only an election cycle away from fundamentally changing everything. But this has always been a lie, and one which becomes more transparent and more farcical every time it is told.

Why “Elections” in Scare Quotes?

There were ballot papers, of course. But who was on them, and how did they get there?

The answer to that question tells you everything you need to know about democracy, Iran-style. Every single candidate running in these “elections” was vetted and pre-approved by a committee of six clerics and six sharia judges, all of whom are appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

When more than half of the initial 12,000-plus parliamentary hopefuls are disqualified for insufficiently zealous loyalty to the regime, and when over 600 of the 800 candidates running for the 88-seat Assembly of Experts are purged for the same reason, the term “election” seems inappropriate in this context.

Vast sums are spent on public education, yet the dividend is a galloping ignorance which refuses to recognise that effect flows directly from cause. Our leaders’ politically correct fantasy that the defeat of ISIS will end Islamist violence extends that folly by mistaking symptom for disease.
It was the nineteenth-century French poet Charles Baudelaire who first remarked that “the devil’s best trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.” This maxim resonates when I think of ISIS. First, pairing the Devil and ISIS seems apropos as a general principle. But, second, ISIS has a disappearing trick too in its kitbag. In this case it works to persuade the ninnies in the West to think that terrorism will somehow disappear if only ISIS can be routed.

Almost all terrorist attacks these days are linked to the influence of ISIS. Ergo, where ISIS goes so does terrorism. Wrong, ninny, this is a non sequitur. The real instigator of terror existed long before ISIS and will exist long after ISIS is just a fetid memory.

I don’t care what anybody says about the vast amounts of money now being spent on education. Under the corrupting influence of political correctness, the general IQ and good old-fashioned common sense of people in the West is, and has been for some time, clearly plummeting. With a brave few exceptions, this is particularly evident among the political elite, academics, Christian church leaders, and those in the media.

Toeing the post-modern line, we sheep are meant to accept that Captain Cook ‘invaded’ Australia, presumably with cannons a-blazin’ against the well-fortified positions of the indigenous inhabitants; that gay marriage is only about equality; that ‘husbands and wives’ is an exclusionary concept; that all cultures are equally valuable (ahem, except our own); that those of European heritage are heirs to a history of bloodlust and exploitation; that bringing in millions of people with starkly different cultural values will produce a feel-good multicultural nirvana; that individuals can be whatever gender or ethnicity they would personally like to be; that ninety-seven per cent of climate scientists accept the alarmist global warming thesis (after all, in a post-modern world, a fiction repeated often enough will become true).

I could go on but I find it so mentally taxing and enervating that the apparition of death appears as a welcome release. But the debilitating effects of the above sophistries, all put together, will be as nothing if political correctness continues to obfuscate the blood-spattered trail between cries of Allahu Akbar and butchery.

A document leak known as the “Panama Papers” on Sunday pulled back the curtain on the secret financial dealings of the world’s rich, powerful and, in some cases, allegedly corrupt.

The papers were leaked to Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung and combed through in cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and other publications. They purport to document the dealings of the Mossack Fonseca law firm, which appears to have helped wealthy clients establish shell companies in Panama, a rare remaining bastion of bank secrecy.

Other media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, have investigated over the years the sources and disposition of the wealth of some of the individuals and families mentioned in these reports. But this leak offers a rare, comprehensive view and could yield new insights into global financial flows.

The scale is eye-popping. Longtime friends and associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin channelled $2 billion through Panama over the years, ICIJ says in its report on the documents. A Kremlin spokesman described the report as “Putinphobia.” A family member of Chinese President Xi Jinping allegedly has a Panama connection, as do the Saudi king and the son of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. Mr. Xi’s brother-in-law and the Saudi government declined to comment to ICIJ, while Mr. Najib’s son told the group he had used a Panamanian company “for international business.”

Some Western leaders also are mentioned in the leaks, including Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, and several former British members of Parliament as well as the deceased father of Prime Minister David Cameron. ICIJ says it has found evidence that some 140 leaders and politicians, and potentially hundreds of other individuals, established companies in Panama over the nearly 40 years for which it has obtained records. CONTINUE AT SITE

In a statement that reveals yet again how out of touch the administration is, Josh Earnest, White House spokesman, said that the massive suicide bombing in Lahore, in which 70 people were killed and about 300 injured, didn’t simply target Christians since many Muslims were victims as well.

Yet the terrorist organization that launched the attack and is a Taliban splinter group, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, said it specifically targeted Christians celebrating Easter in the park. The same militant group also took responsibility for the twin bombings of a Christian church in Lahore last year. Christians account for two percent of Pakistan’s total population.

Admittedly most of those killed were Muslims, and the loss of innocent life whether Muslim or Christian, is to be lamented. However, the U.S. State Department did not respond to the aftermath of the attack as one specifically targeting Christians.

This attack underscored the precarious position of Pakistan’s minorities and the significant fact that, despite increased military vigilance, extremists are still capable of staging wide-scale assaults. Prime Minister Sharif announced recognition of holidays celebrated by Pakistan’s minorities – the Hindu festival of Holi as well as Easter. Unfortunately, if the Taliban members got the message, they chose to ignore it.

Speaking to the bereaved who lost a son in battle during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln noted, “I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the alter of freedom.”