RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14237/algeria-russian-influence

Vladimir Putin agreed to write off Algerian debt in 2006, on condition that Algiers purchase industrial goods, including military equipment, from Moscow. Since then, Algeria has become Russia’s largest arms importer in Africa.

Until now, due to the 1999 Leahy Law, the “State Department and Defense Department are barred from providing military assistance to countries with a history of human rights violations.” Algeria has an extremely poor record in this realm.

Today, however — only if such an unacceptable situation changes significantly — the United States might follow it closely and act accordingly.

The recent uprising in Algeria, which culminated early April in the end of Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s 20-year reign, is being touted as the North African nation’s belated “Arab Spring.”

The outcome of the bloodless military coup, backed by the country’s growing population of disenfranchised youth, remains to be seen. But the United States should be paying close attention to how Russia, with its increasing moves on Africa in general and Algeria in particular, now proceeds.

Moscow, which had enjoyed close relations with Bouteflika, is observing the unfolding events in Algeria with caution, hoping that the changing political landscape in Algiers will not affect the defense cooperation that has been going on for decades, and which sharply increased in 2006. That was the year when Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to write off Algerian debt, on condition that Algiers purchase industrial goods, including military equipment, from Moscow.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14248/guilt-by-association

During the speeches one of the representatives from ‘Jewish Voice for Labour’ (a shell organisation set up to defend Jeremy Corbyn from accusations of anti-Semitism) claimed that Jews are ‘in the gutter’. Nothing was particularly noteworthy in all of this — except for one interesting fact, spotted by the British-based ‘Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’. This organization, having attended the march to monitor it, noticed a number of extremely interesting attendees. According to the ‘Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’, these included a man called Tony Martin, who is the leader of a neo-Nazi organisation called the National Front. This is not an organisation that is called ‘neo-Nazi’ or ‘fascist’ as some sort of rhetorical colouring required to win a debating point. It is described as that because that is what it is.

Perhaps we can cut out the middle man and just call all the members of the Parliamentary Labour party who attended the May 11 march ‘neo-Nazis’, ‘far-right’ and ‘fascist’. It is hard to see why not. By their own standards and tactics they eminently qualify for the description. Perhaps they will embrace the terms. Or perhaps they will begin to recognise that the stick they have been using to take out perfectly innocent opponents for political gain is in fact a boomerang that can just as easily come right back at them.

One of the favourite tactics of the far-left in the West today is to carry out hit-jobs by utilising the tool of ‘adjacency.’ This is the new only slightly fancy term for what has usually been known as ‘guilt by association’. Where there was once an agreement that people should be held responsible for their own views, now they can apparently be held responsible for the views of anyone beside whom they once stood.

So for instance, last month Jordan Peterson was denied a visiting fellowship at Cambridge University because he had once been photographed (at a post-speaking event meet-and-greet) with somebody wearing a T-shirt saying ‘I’m a proud Islamophobe’. Activists who wish to take decent people out of the parameters of legitimate discussion no longer merely smear them by trying to claim that their opponent is an extremist. Instead, they hint that even if their opponent might not be an extremist, here – for instance – is a photograph of him standing beside someone better able to be described as an extremist. Thus has the smear machine found a happy pastime and a fairly useful tool in its game of political warfare.

This tactic is rarely used by the right against many on the left. Or if it is, its legitimacy is denied. For instance when the British Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, for instance, is endlessly pictured with Islamist extremists or a whole range of anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, it is agreed that he is not ‘adjacent’ to these people, but merely to be pursuing his often strangely uncredited role as the international community’s informal peace-keeper-in-chief. His proximity to the worst people is never evidence of ‘adjacency’: merely of saintliness at best, and bad luck at worst.

This week Felix Klein a German official warned against wearing the Jewish kippah in some public places.

Oh Puleez! What’s new?

Early in 2015 there was a backlash against Jewish council leader Dr Josef Schuster after he warned German Jews to “look less Jewish” when walking through predominantly Moslem neighborhoods in Berlin.

Three years ago on January 20th 2016, the headline was:

“German Jews ‘no longer safe’ due to anti-Semitism and ‘deteriorating security’ Some Jews have talked about ‘packing their bags’ after rise in hate crime.”

(https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/german-jews-no-longer-safe-due-to-anti-semitism-and-deteriorating-security-a6823216.html)

Anti-Semitic manifestations in Germany can be traced to the Left’s obsessive and vicious criticism of Israel, National Socialist racism, and Muslim faith driven hatred of Jews.  It can’t be ignored or controlled.

“Auf Wiedersehen” a German song composed in 1950 by Eberhard Storch, has lyrics in English by John Parson and John Turner : ” This lovely day has flown away, The time has come to part”

German Jews have a choice. They can leave or stay and risk the chance that they will hear “Geh Raus Yude!” or اخرج! Alyahudi!

RSK

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/anti-semitism-europe-muslim-immigrants/

Downplaying the role of Muslim immigrants distorts the truth.

The latest news about the surge of anti-Semitism in Europe may not surprise people who worry about the rise of European populist parties. The populists opposing European unity and globalism are easily identified with the old Right in many countries. Many of their supporters — whether the right-wing AfD in Germany, the National Front in France led by Marine Le Pen, or the conservative ruling parties in such countries as Poland and Hungary — are also identified with traditional anti-Semitic attitudes.

So when a German federal official recently advised Jews to avoid wearing a kippah or religious head covering in public so they wouldn’t be targeted for violence, most foreign observers concluded that it was right-wing anti-Semites who have been attacking Jews, given that right-wingers have been making gains in elections, including in the recent European Parliament election.

The official, Felix Klein, Germany’s first “Commissioner for Jewish life in Germany and the Fight Against Anti-Semitism,” was criticized by many, including Israeli president Reuven Rivlin, for surrendering to the forces of hate. The outrage inspired the newspaper Der Bild to publish a cutout version of a kipah for readers to wear in solidarity with Jews.

Earlier this month, a New York Times Magazine story titled “The New German Anti-Semitism” reported that “police statistics attribute 89 percent of all anti-Semitic crimes to right-wing extremists.” But the same article went on to question that statistic. According to the Times, when German authorities can’t directly attribute a motive for an attack on a Jewish target (and they often cannot), they ascribe it to the Right. But a European Union survey of German Jews conducted last year showed that a plurality of Jews who say they experienced anti-Semitic harassment said the perpetrators were Muslim extremists. Yet, as the Times noted, the German government has been insisting that country’s anti-Semitism problem has not been imported from the Middle East.

https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/05/27/in-solidarity-with-jews-german-daily-prints-cutout-of-kippah-on-front-page/

Days after Germany’s anti-Semitism czar lamented that Jews would be ill-advised to wear kippot in public because of anti-Semitism in the country, one of the nation’s leading dailies printed a “do-it-yourself kippah” cutout on its front page on Monday, as an act of solidarity with the Jewish community.

Ahead of the publication, which occupied about a quarter of the front page, Editor-in-Chief Julian Reichelt wrote: “If only one person in our country cannot carry [a] kippa without endangering himself, the answer can only be that we all wear a kippah. The Kippa belongs to Germany!”

In an open letter printed next to the cutout, Reichelt called on Germans to embrace their Jewish compatriots. The online site of the paper also included a video of how to cut out the paper kippah.

The gesture came in reaction to anti-Semitism commissioner Felix Klein’s interview from Saturday, in which he warned that it was probably too risky to wear a kippah in public.

“My opinion has unfortunately changed compared with what it used to be on the matter,” Klein said. “I cannot recommend to Jews that they wear the skullcap at all times everywhere in Germany.”

He did not elaborate on when and where he thought doing so might be risky.

The remark has drawn mixed reactions in Germany and in Israel.

President Reuven Rivlin said on Sunday that he was “shocked” by the statement.