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Sweden and the explosive consequences of multiculturalism Ivar Arpi on why Sweden’s crisis of integration can no longer be ignored.

Posted By on November 27th, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/26/sweden-and-the-explosive-consequences-of-multiculturalism/

Where did it all go so wrong for Sweden? The nation once known for ABBA, IKEA and its social-democratic welfare state has now become a byword for gangland killings and grenade attacks. Crime has soared to unprecedented levels. Grenade attacks have become an unwelcome feature of suburban life. Islamism is spreading unchecked. Even some on the Swedish left have been forced to acknowledge that multiculturalism is unravelling and that the state has failed to integrate vast numbers of migrants.

Swedish journalist Ivar Arpi joined Brendan O’Neill on the latest episode of The Brendan O’Neill Show to discuss all this and more. What follows is an edited extract from their conversation. Listen to the full thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: Sweden has found itself in the middle of a global battle between liberalism and Islamism. There have been frequent violent clashes over Koran burnings, as well as a terrorist attack on Swedes in Brussels last month. How are Swedish people navigating this?

Ivar Arpi: Right now the majority opinion in Sweden is that you shouldn’t be able to do things like burn the Koran. And, like in much of the West, the response of the Swedish media and political class to any Islamist terror attack is to immediately consider the feelings of Muslims who might now face discrimination.

In the past, we’ve seen prominent figures in Sweden saying things like: ‘Now remember, all Islamists are Muslim, but not all Muslims are Islamists.’ That shift in focus away from the actual victims takes place almost immediately. This was definitely the case after Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October.

But there are also many people in the public sphere, such as journalists and academics, who are waking up to the fact that they were wrong about Islamism and multiculturalism. It’s been an ongoing development, but it’s visible.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

VIDEO: Amazing Israeli women saved a community By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on November 27th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/11/video_amazing_israeli_women_saved_a_community.html

When you suddenly get innumerable emails from people wanting you to see the same story, you know it’s an important one. In this case, it’s the story of the young women who, with three tanks, fought a 17-hour-long furious battle against Hamas terrorists, saving an entire community through their actions. Their triumph is an important counterpoint to the women who were ignored in the lead-up to the October 7 attack. Some are blaming sexism, but I have another theory.

The tank battle took place at Yated, a community that sits near the Egyptian and Gaza borders at the southernmost end of the Gaza Strip. This video shows the women explaining how they responded to the attack and what they did. They are matter of fact, saying that they were completely focused on the task at hand, which was to fight the terrorists swarming into Israel:

It’s worth noting that, even as the women are getting the respect they deserve for their impressive military feat, there is a story emerging that part of the reason Israel was caught unprepared was that commanders ignored warnings from female “spotters,” many of whom died on October 7, saying that they saw unusual Hamas activity along the border.

The current narrative is that this failure resulted from command sexism. That’s possible. Israel is the most enlightened country in the Middle East, with full women’s rights and innumerable strong women. Still, many people in Israel are the descendants of the approximately 900,000 Jews expelled from Arab lands after Israel’s creation. Unlike the Zionist Europeans who moved to Israel before and after the modern state’s creation, all of whom were very modern in their attitudes towards women, these emigrants came from conservative countries and might have reflected those values and passed them to their children.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden administration under fire after Pentagon requests $114 million for diversity, equity House Republicans declare “focus on progressivism over war fighting continues to exacerbate the military recruiting crisis.”

Posted By on November 27th, 2023

https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/biden-administration-under-fire-after-pentagon-requests-114-million

The Biden administration is under fire after the Pentagon requested $114 million for diversity and equity initiatives, an increasingly controversial topic that critics say is politicizing the armed forces.

The Defense Department’s fiscal year 2024 budget request shows the federal agency’s emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion, including “ensuring accountable leadership with continued emphasis and investments in sexual assault and harassment prevention, suicide prevention, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA), and Insider Threat Programs.”

The DOD document shows that DEI is at the forefront of DOD policy.

“The Department will lead with our values – building diversity, equity, and inclusion into everything we do,” the report said.

From the report:

Leaders at all levels are responsible for fostering a climate of inclusion that supports diversity, is free from problematic behaviors, and does not tolerate retaliation or reprisal against those filing complaints. Ultimately, recruiting and retaining a force with diverse backgrounds, thought, experience, expertise, and education enhances DoD’s global joint warfighter capabilities fundamental to all DoD activities. The DoD has taken a number of actions to strengthen its antidiscrimination posture and advance diversity and inclusion throughout the Department. Notably, DoD expanded endeavors historically known as diversity, equity, and inclusion to include a distinct focus on accessibility to highlight the importance of an accessible workplace and further ensure equal opportunity for all. Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA).

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dems Are Getting Mugged By Reality, Often Literally

Posted By on November 27th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/11/27/dems-are-getting-mugged-by-reality-often-literally/

Some Democrats are waking up and noticing that the policies they’ve been cheerleading have produced violent crime waves, a massive migrant crisis, and genocidal antisemitism. One would hope the public at large is catching on as well.

Just over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a spate of headlines about lefty, soft-on-crime Democrats attacked on the mean streets they’ve helped create.

A Secret Service agent opened fire on would-be car thieves who tried to break into an unmarked SUV in the ritzy Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Turns out, the agents were assigned to one of President Joe Biden’s granddaughters. As one poster on X noted: “It’s pathetic that the Naomi Biden incident was the catalyst for the MSM to finally acknowledge the severity of the D.C. crime crisis.”
In early October, Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, was carjacked at gunpoint in the Navy Yard area of Capitol Hill. “I was just coming into my place,” he said. “Three guys came out of nowhere and they pointed guns at me.”
Later that same month, Jason Williams, a George Soros-backed district attorney in Orleans Parish, Louisiana, and his mother were carjacked by thieves pointing rifles at them. Williams, whose 2020 campaign benefited from $220,000 in Soros contributions had promised to “end the use of Louisiana’s stringent habitual offender laws, never transfer juveniles to adult court, and become much pickier about accepting cases for prosecution.”
In September, Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party official Shivanthi Sathanandan – who three years earlier declared “We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department. Say it with me.” – suffered a broken leg, lacerations, cuts, and bruises from carjackers who beat her in front of her two young children. She changed her tune after getting mugged by reality. “We need to … catch these young people who are running wild creating chaos across our city, and HOLD THEM IN CUSTODY AND PROSECUTE THEM,” she posted on X.
Earlier this year, Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., was assaulted in the elevator of her Washington, D.C., residence by a 26-year-old man. One of Craig’s former staffers was hip-deep in the “defund” movement, at one point calling for people to “Burn. It. All. Down” in 2020 in response to police-involved deaths in New York.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Hamas Holds Everyone Hostage The terrorists traffic in human beings to achieve their bloody aims.

Posted By on November 27th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hamas-holds-everyone-hostage-war-gaza-israel-biden-truce-694318db?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The civilized world is rejoicing at the release of hostages by Hamas, especially the sight of young children reunited with parents after seven weeks of hell. But that relief shouldn’t blind us to the way the jihadists are manipulating human sentiment to achieve their terrorist aims.

The killers are releasing a dozen or so hostages each day in return for three times the number of Palestinians released by Israel. Hamas snatched innocent Israelis and others in a deliberate act of terror. The released Palestinians were arrested or convicted of crimes under the law.

Now Hamas is using the hostages to play on Western respect for human life. Hamas knows its strategy is dividing Israeli opinion between those who prioritize the release of the hostages and those who want Hamas defeated so it can never again slaughter 1,200 people.

Hamas is also manipulating the world, including the Biden Administration. President Biden said Sunday he hopes the initial four-day military truce can be extended so more hostages will be released. That includes the unknown number of Americans held in who-knows-what condition underground. Hamas released the first U.S. hostage on Sunday, a 4-year-old American-Israeli girl, Abigail Edan, whose parents were murdered in front of her.

But every day the truce lasts the more time the jihadists have to regroup, slip out of Gaza, rearm, or plan more ambushes against Israelis. And the longer it lasts the more odds increase of an extended cease-fire, which is what Hamas really wants. The onus will fall on Israel to end the truce, though Hamas is unlikely ever to release all hostages, who are its only source of leverage.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Don’t Give Gaza to the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party is no better than Hamas. It has celebrated the Oct. 7 attacks. By Eugene Kontorovich and Itamar Marcus

Posted By on November 27th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-give-gaza-to-the-palestinian-authority-terrorism-anti-semitism-israel-fatah-68aa2ba8?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

The Biden administration wants Israel to bring in Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party to rule Gaza when the war is over. Fatah controls the Palestinian Authority, which governs much of the West Bank. Uniting Gaza and the West Bank under a common government is a necessary step in the Biden administration’s seemingly unshakable goal of creating a Palestinian state sandwiching Israel.

The idea behind the strategy has a long history. Fatah is a secular, Arab nationalist party that occasionally claims to want peace with Israel, albeit on terms that would make Israel’s existence as a Jewish state untenable. Yet for many diplomats this makes it an attractive alternative to the terrorists who perpetrated the Oct. 7 attacks. But Fatah is a junior-varsity version of Hamas. Both have lethal policies when it comes to Israel. The Palestinian Authority sponsors the “pay to slay” salary program that provides financial rewards to terrorists, who get more lavish payouts for crimes that result in longer imprisonment. As recently as Oct. 2, an official Palestinian Authority TV broadcast showed Mr. Abbas saying: “Our martyrs, prisoners and wounded are the most sanctified that we have. . . . Our martyrs have a right to this money.”

Fatah has celebrated and glorified the Oct. 7 orgy of torture and murder. The party has boasted that its members directly participated in the invasion, crossing into Israel and brutalizing civilians. A video shown on a West Bank-based Telegram channel that has been repeatedly cited by official Fatah sources shows terrorists with the yellow headbands of Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade firing Kalashnikovs while assaulting an Israeli kibbutz. One terrorist proclaims, “Today we broke in the military post Nahal Oz [a civilian kibbutz] and we hit what we hit.” The terrorists brag that they “stepped on their heads,” and shows footage of them stomping a dead Israeli.

Other videos on Fatah channels boast of their participation, proclaiming that Fatah is “fighting with the rest of the resistance groups in ‘the Al Aqsa Flood’ battle,” using Hamas’s operational name for the massacre. On Oct. 7, death notices appeared on Telegram announcing the funerals (or “weddings,” as they put it) of Fatah members who died that morning in the attack on Israel.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Campus Dysfunction Easy To Recognize, Difficult To Cure Peter Berkowitz

Posted By on November 26th, 2023

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/11/26/campus_dysfunction_easy_to_recognize_difficult_to_cure_150112.html

Machiavelli observes in “The Prince” that politics presents challenges akin to those physicians sometimes face: “… in the beginning of the illness it is easy to cure and difficult to recognize, but in the progress of time, when it has not been recognized and treated in the beginning, it becomes easy to recognize and difficult to cure.” So too for higher education in America: At this late date, our universities’ dysfunction – and the damage to the nation it has wrought – has become easy to recognize, but curing the dysfunction has become difficult.

The Hamas jihadists’ Oct. 7 atrocities in southern Israel may have provoked a watershed moment for higher education in America. Student and faculty expressions of solidarity with the mass murderers, university administrators’ initial confusion and missteps, and the eruption of antisemitism on campus compelled many who have long averted their eyes to confront our universities’ role in fanning the flames of division and discord. However, since most university administrators, professors, wealthy donors, left-of-center commentators, and politicians of both parties have allowed the dysfunction to progress for decades without calling higher education to account or warning the public, only dramatic and costly interventions provide hope at this point of remedying the cluster of pathologies ravaging America’s universities.

Evidence that it is now permissible to speak in polite society about the dire state of our universities comes from the New York Times opinion page. Since Oct. 7, the Times has published several pieces declaring that our universities have gone badly astray and proposing measures to repair them.

These opinions are welcome, but tardy by several decades. They fail to identify the chief problem. They ignore the principal obstacles to reform. They propose reforms that provide the equivalent of band-aids for gaping wounds and shattered limbs.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Election of Milei, Wilders and Cogswell Has the Left Worried The people are awakening By Roger Kimball

Posted By on November 26th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/11/26/election-of-milei-wilders-and-cogswell-has-the-left-worried/

Is there a disturbance in the force? I think there might be. In just the last week, the chainsaw-wielding “anarcho-capitalist” Javier Milei won the presidential election in Argentina, the Freedom Party of Islamo-realist Geert Wilders trounced its opponents in the snap general election in the Netherlands, and, here at home, a Republican was elected mayor of Charleston for the first time since 1877. The Zeitgeist would seem to be awake and on the move. What is it waking from? I agree with those who say it is waking from wokeness.

In this context, it is not irrelevant to point out that Donald Trump, who has consistently been leading in almost all GOP polls since the 2024 election campaign began, has surged even further ahead. As I write, an Emerson poll has Trump ahead of his competition by 64 to 8 for DeSantis, and 9 for Nikki Haley. The hoary meme of conventional wisdom cautions that even if Trump wins the nomination it won’t matter because he is unpopular with the American people. Alas for that scrap of anti-Trump prognostication, the former president has also pulled ahead of his likely opponent Joe Biden. Some earlier polls had Trump tied or ahead by a fraction of a point. The current polls have him ahead in the general election by some 4, 6, or more points.

Are these phenomena related? I say yes. They are all part of a growing revulsion against the real-world, reality-show version of The Camp of the Saints, the dystopian novel, originally published in French,  about what happens when mass immigration from the third-world overwhelms Europe and America. I will not be giving anything away when I note that the result is the collapse of civilization. If you look up “Camp of the Saints” on Wikipedia, you will be told that the book has been criticized “for conveying themes”—odd locution—of “racism, xenophobia, nativism, monoculturalism, and anti-immigration.” “The novel,” we read, “is popular within far-right and white nationalist circles.” It is popular with me, too. But good luck, if you don’t already know the book, finding out for yourself. Camp of the Saints has been out of print for years and efforts to prise loose the rights from its publisher have been for naught. Currently, a paperback copy of the English version sells for about $200 on Amazon; the hardcover will set you back $4,155.15. (I think the 15¢ is a nice touch).

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden About To Betray Israel? by Con Coughlin

Posted By on November 26th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20177/hostage-deal-hamas

Seven weeks into Israel’s military offensive to destroy Hamas as a military and political entity, the Biden administration now seems to be adopting a very different stance, one where it appears ready to scale down its commitment to supporting Israel’s right to self-defence, and destroying Hamas, in favour of a ceasefire deal that would essentially gift victory to Hamas.
Netanyahu has made no secret of his personal reservations about the hostage deal, arguing that any pause in Israel’s military offensive would simply allow Hamas to regroup. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), in particular, had been opposed to the deal because they wanted to maintain the pressure against Hamas on the ground in Gaza.
Indeed, Washington’s willingness to impose ceasefires on Israel when its forces have clearly established a military advantage on the battlefield against their enemies has been a constant feature throughout Israel’s 75-year existence.
The Israelis will certainly be concerned at the role played by Qatar, which is one of Hamas’s main military backers, in the negotiations. While the Qataris like to claim that they are simply using their contacts with Hamas to defuse tensions, the fact that Ismail Haniyeh, who masterminded the massacres, directed the attacks from his five-star hotel in Qatar, where he has been granted a safe haven, means the Israelis have every reason to be wary of Qatar’s motives.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Don’t Dismiss Trump II by Amir Taheri

Posted By on November 26th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20176/trump-ii

Judging by what advisers are preparing on the Middle East, Trump II will focus on “closer ties” with allies, including Israel, and no more “favors” to the Islamic Republic in Iran and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey unless he is back in line.
Trump thinks that Marxists and other “crazy leftists” have seized control of US universities and are brainwashing whole generations thanks to tax-exempt private donations and public funding.
So far the Democrats continue to mock Trump and refuse to take him seriously. This could cost the Democrats dearly. For even if the solutions that Trump suggests appear weird the problems he raises are real.

“He is dangerously close to getting re-elected!” This is how, in a recent issue, the London weekly The Economist presented Donald Trump’s chances of returning to the White House next year. This was based on a few polls indicating that, if nominated, Trump would have a chance of winning next November.

One must always be careful about predictions, especially by the press.

The Economist put Indonesian’s ruler General Suharto on its cover and predicted he would emerge as the most powerful leader in Asia. Less than a year later, Suharto was swept away by a popular uprising.

However, let us not dismiss the magazine’s prediction about a second presidential term for Trump because, even if he fails to win the nomination, he has already had a lasting impact on American politics.