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Iran’s European Hit Squads The European Union looks unserious about a real internal threat.

Posted By on October 31st, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/irans-european-hit-squads-1540939557

One of President Trump’s most controversial foreign-policy initiatives—withdrawing from President Obama’s nuclear-arms deal with Iran—is heating up again.

On Tuesday Denmark announced it had interrupted an Iranian plot to carry out assassinations of Iranian dissidents on Danish soil. This comes as the Trump Administration is planning to announce wider sanctions against Iran next week.

Recall Europe’s reaction after Mr. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the nuclear deal in May. The European Union not only denounced Mr. Trump’s decision but has vowed since to restore its economic relationship with Iran. Europe’s Iran policy is looking other-worldly.

In July, Germany foiled another Iranian plot to bomb dissidents in Paris. Press reports said then that Western intelligence services were concerned about the possibility of Iran stepping up terrorist attacks in Europe and the U.S.

Denmark wants the EU to impose new sanctions on Iran. Federica Mogherini, the EU’s pro-Iran foreign-policy chief, replied blandly that “we are following events.”

Even as Iranian hit squads are setting up shop across the Continent, the European Union is displaying a fundamental lack of seriousness about a country uninterested in distinctions between bombs, missiles and assassinations.

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Birthright Citizenship and Its Allies By Pedro Gonzalez

Posted By on October 31st, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/30/birthright

In 1989, an illegal alien being escorted back to the border gave birth in an Immigration and Naturalization Service van. That child was an American, thanks to our granting citizenship to children born on U.S. soil—a generosity that also extends to children born on any one of 15 islands between the Philippines and Hawaii.

Our promiscuity with citizenship, however “generous” it may seem, effaces the salience of an institution central to the concept of nationhood. That is doubtless what President Trump had in mind when he told reporters from Axios that he intends to sign an executive order that would put a stop to America’s birthright citizenship policy.

The United States and Canada are the only two “developed” countries that retain unrestricted birthright citizenship laws. While many Latin American and Caribbean nations also maintain lenient naturalization laws, it is important to understand them in their historical context. Those laws came about not out of a liberal exigency to bestow citizenship onto foreigners, but rather as a mechanism of empire-building designed subdue indigenous populations by growing the number of Europeans in their midst. “The birthright laws in South America have remained due to low immigration numbers,” explains John Skrentny, a sociologist at the University of California, San Diego.

In other words, if Scots-Irish Americans began caravanning to Mexico, demanding jobs and welfare, and driving up crime rates, odds are good that Mexico would turn “nativist” and amend its constitution to decrease the liberality of their naturalization laws. Indeed, every other Western country that has experienced mass immigration has amended or repealed their naturalization laws in response.

The British did so beginning in 1962, responding to the mass migration of Indians, Poles, and Ukrainians. Parliament in 1981 passed the British Nationality Act, which made it “necessary for at least one parent of a United Kingdom-born child to be a British citizen, a British Dependent Territories citizen or ‘settled’ in the United Kingdom or a colony (a permanent resident).”

Similarly, the French responded to mass migration of Muslim North African immigrants by changing the law to require French-born children of immigrants to apply for citizenship before their 18th birthday. The law has since been eased somewhat thanks to liberal policymakers, but the French still restrict citizenship to children of foreign parents who, at the age of 18, have lived in France for five of the previous seven years.

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Pittsburgh comes together to mourn victims, and protesters turn their backs on Trump Yahoo News Christopher Wilson WILSON

Posted By on October 31st, 2018

PITTSBURGH — As the Jewish community of Squirrel Hill began to bury its dead Tuesday from the massacre in the Tree of Life synagogue Saturday, President Trump paid his respects, in a visit few had requested and many opposed. His motorcade was greeted by a demonstration of hundreds marchers calling to one another to “turn your back” on the president.

A line stretched far down the block for the funeral of Dr. David Rabinowitz, one of the 11 killed by a gunman whom police have identified as a 46-year-old man, whose social media posts indicate he was enraged by what he perceived as Jewish support for immigration. Rabinowitz, 77, was known for his compassionate treatment of AIDS victims. The service for brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal also drew a large crowd a mile and a half away. There was a heavy police presence outside the Jewish Community Center where Rabinowitz’s service was held, with officers from the Pittsburgh Police Department and nearby Carnegie Mellon University surrounding the facility.

Trump, who spent three and a half hours in the city, including a visit to a pop-up memorial to the victims and to wounded police officers recovering in the hospital, had been asked by Mayor Bill Peduto to delay the trip until all the services were concluded. City councilor Erika Strassburger, who lives near the Tree of Life and drives past the building every day, said her constituents had contacted her to oppose the trip.

“There are many, many constituents who’ve reached out to me by phone and email concerned that the president’s visit today will add to the trauma of the community and many community members,” said Strassburger early Tuesday afternoon before Trump’s arrival. “I won’t say that necessarily speaks for every single person in my district, that’s just what I’ve heard.”Strassburger’s constituents weren’t the only ones against Trump’s visit. Local officials — Peduto, county executive Rich Fitzgerald, Gov. Tom Wolf, and Sen. Bob Casey and Sen. Pat Toomey (all Democrats save for Toomey) — declined to join. Trump also failed to convince congressional leadership from either party to take the trip. Trump spoke with family members of at least one victim, according to Dr. Donald Yealy, but others reportedly rebuffed offers from the White House to meet the president, who has been blamed by commentators for inspiring violence with his anti-immigrant rhetoric and his demonization of “globalists,” a word that has been historically associated with anti-Semitism. His remarks shortly after the shooting that the gunman could have been deterred by an armed guard were also controversial. (Four police officers were injured in the apprehension of the shooter.)

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Pittsburgh shows two faces after synagogue shooting By Ethel C. Fenig

Posted By on October 31st, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/10/pittsburgh_shows_two_faces_after_synagogue_shooting.html

No, I haven’t attended the vigils, the interfaith prayer services, the gatherings, or other feel-good manifestations of hand-holding kumbaya after the recent carnage in Pittsburgh. Or those of other slaughters in black churches, schools, workplaces, outdoor concerts, or wherever. It is not because I’m not appalled at the loss of innocent life there. I am. But the attendees leave, feeling they did something, resume their lives…’til the next time. For some, it is a form of healing.

But the gooey statements of mindless clichés that condemn the evil, preaching a form of artificial unity while condemning the inanimate weapon or mental illness for the horrendous deed, evading the issue of the hatred prevalent in some individuals and communities alienates me. Also, the leeching groups and individuals who latch on to the incident to promote their agenda – gun control, dislike of a political figure – desecrate the victims and diminishes the evil.

For example, on Monday, Pittsburgh’s mayor Bill Peduto (D) spoke movingly about the consequences of hatred.

Peduto took the microphone, speaking passionately about the Pittsburgh community and combating hatred.

“We come together tonight to mourn, and it’s the right thing to do. We lost eleven of our neighbors, and we’re here to mourn the way that they were taken from us. We’re here to mourn the fact that we live in a society where something like this could even exist. We’re here to mourn the attack upon our Jewish community. We’re here to be supporters. We’re here to make sure that those victims’ families have what Pittsburghers do, the understanding that we are all here for them and we will help them through this horror that they are living. We are here to recognize the officers and the two members of the congregation who are still suffering, and to let them and their families know, we’re here for you because we’re Pittsburghers and that’s what we do. We care and take care of those in need and we show it as a community of one.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Synagogue Massacre: We Guard What We Value By David Stolinsky

Posted By on October 30th, 2018

http://www.stolinsky.com/

We guard what we value. Our political leaders? Of course. Our money? Absolutely. Our children or our houses of worship? Not so much.

My wife and I often visit a nearby mall. The Rolex store and the Louis Vuitton store have very large men in dark suits standing near the door to inhibit shoplifting. The mall is large enough to require three armored-car services to remove the cash. We see the armored-car guards walking briskly, with the money bag in one hand and the other hand hovering near their holstered pistol.

When we go to the bank, we see the tellers behind thick sheets of bullet-resistant glass. Other banks employ armed guards. Money is obviously valuable, and we go to great pains to protect it. Perhaps that is why Los Angeles no longer has the distinction of being the bank-robbery capital of America.

But when we pass schools – elementary, middle, or high schools – we see young people and teachers, and an occasional elderly crossing guard. But we never, literally never, see an armed guard, much less a police officer. Yes, we know that Los Angeles, like many cities, has a school police force. We know that there may be an officer somewhere in the high school. But we also know that he or she is there to try to enforce some semblance of discipline, which teachers and principals are no longer willing or able to do. But protect the young people from attackers? Not really.

Similarly, when we pass synagogues, we see no security officers. The only exception is that on the High Holidays, we may see traffic officers to help with the congestion and parking. The same is true for churches on Christmas and Easter. But protect worshippers from attackers? No, not really.

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Dead Jews–What else is new? By Joan Swirsky

Posted By on October 30th, 2018

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/swirsky/181030

This past Saturday morning, 11 Jews were shot to death in a Pittsburgh synagogue by one of the millions of Jew haters who contaminate our world.

To Jews like me, who know and appreciate Jewish history as I do, this is no surprise. Tragic, yes; shocking, no.

We are a tiny, indeed microscopic, people, only 15 million in a world of nearly eight billion. That ratio equals the proverbial grain of sand on the vast beaches of life, only one drop in the immense oceans that cover most of our globe.

But Jew hatred is very powerful, written about in thousands of books and articles by erudite scholars who posit theories ranging from resentment that God selected Jews as his “chosen people,” to the myth that the Jews killed Jesus, to the accusation that Jews are either greedy capitalists or cruel communists, to the grievance that Jews run the world.

My own take is that when you peel back every layer of the onion of anti-Semitism, the root cause is that the anti-Semites among us are obsessively jealous. How can it be, they wonder, that this tiny people – dispersed in a diaspora for the last 5,000 years to far-flung communities all over the world where they landed with no language skills, no money, no resources, no nothing and in the process survived the Jew-targeting Inquisition, Crusades, pogroms, concentration camps, and pandemic outbreaks of anti-Semitism – managed to flourish and rise to prominence wherever they went?

Here in America, we have living proof that the green-eyed monster is alive and well, Exhibit No. One being the execrable “Reverend” Louis Farrakhan – one of Barack Obama’s buds – who little more than a week ago spoke before a smiling, nodding, applauding audience as he called Jews “termites” and “stupid.”

Did I mention his glowing admiration for Hitler? “The Jews don’t like Farrakhan,” he said some years ago, “so they call me Hitler. Well, that’s a good name. Hitler was a very great man.” Last May, this Nation of Islam leader – who has been manically obsessed with Jews his entire life – spoke of “Satanic Jews who have infected the whole world with poison and deceit.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

In dramatic move, PLO pulls out of all agreements ‎with Israel ‎

Posted By on October 30th, 2018

http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/10/30/in-dramatic-move-plo-pulls-out-of-all-agreements-%e2%80%8ewith-israel-%e2%80%8e/

Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central ‎Council suspends recognition of Israel until Israel acknowledges an independent Palestinian state, severs security and economic ties • Decision is nonbinding, but PA President Abbas says he is inclined to endorse it.

The Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central ‎Council declared that it was suspending its ‎recognition of Israel until Israel agrees to acknowledge an ‎independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders ‎and with east Jerusalem as its capital, Ramallah’s Wafa news agency reported Monday.‎

The council further decided to suspend all security ‎and economic ties with Israel, as outlined in the ‎‎1994 Paris Economic Protocol.‎

The decision, announced after a ‎two-day meeting ‎in Ramallah, is declarative and nonbinding, the ‎report said.‎

According to the report, the PLO essentially wants ‎to cease compliance with the 1993 Oslo Accord, on ‎which the Israeli-Palestinian peace ‎process is founded. ‎

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Ending Birthright Citizenship Is No Panacea By Reihan Salam

Posted By on October 30th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ending-birthright-citizenship-donald-trumps-immigration-plan/

According to Axios, President Trump is gearing up to sign an executive order that would, in their words, “remove the right to citizenship for babies of non-citizens born on U.S. soil.” There is some ambiguity in this formulation. Will the executive order in question limit birthright citizenship to the children of U.S. citizens, or will it extend citizenship to the children of lawful permanent residents, as in the case of most market democracies that have revised their birthright citizenship rules in recent decades? It is not clear from the video clip provided by Axios on HBO.

In truth, Trump’s response to reporter Jonathan Swan’s question seems rather off the cuff. At first, the president explains that while he once thought bringing an end to automatic birthright citizenship — presumably for the children of any class of non-citizens born in the U.S., whether legally present or otherwise — would require a constitutional amendment, he has since been persuaded that a statute would do, or even an executive order. Pressed by Swan as to whether such an executive order was in process of being drafted, Trump confidently replied that “it’s in the process, it’ll happen.” Will it happen, though? I’m skeptical.

First, I should stipulate that I have in the past argued for an amnesty for the long-settled unauthorized-immigrant population that would be accompanied by a constitutional amendment that would do two things: (a) grant Congress the authority to revise the rules around automatic birthright citizenship and (b) allow naturalized U.S. citizens who are otherwise eligible to serve as president. I’ve since changed my mind.

Though an amendment along these lines would have a hard time clearing the high hurdles we rightly put in the way of new constitutional amendments, it struck me as a tough-minded but ultimately fair way to address a serious and legitimate concern often raised by critics of an expansive amnesty: that such an amnesty would encourage further unauthorized inflows, future unauthorized immigrants would form families in the U.S. (including native-born citizen children), and these mixed-status households have long been among the most sympathetic cases, as most Americans are, for good reason, reluctant to divide families. If mixed-status households are a barrier to stringent enforcement, revising the rules around automatic birthright citizenship seemed like a legitimate solution — indeed, a solution that has in the past appealed to partisans of more open borders.

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Can Trump End Birthright Citizenship by Executive Order? By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on October 30th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/donald-trump-end-birthright-citizenship-by-executive-order/

On substance, I believe President Trump is right on birthright citizenship — the 14th Amendment does not require it. I do not believe, however, that the president may change the interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which has been in effect for decades, by executive order, as he is reportedly contemplating.

My friend John Eastman explained why the 14th Amendment does not mandate birthright citizenship in this 2015 New York Times op-ed. In a nutshell, the Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The highlighted term, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was understood at the time of adoption to mean not owing allegiance to any other sovereign. To take the obvious example, if a child is born in France to a married couple who are both American citizens, the child is an American citizen.

I won’t rehash the arguments on both sides. With due respect to our friend Dan McLaughlin (see here), I think Professor Eastman has the better of the argument. As I have observed before, and as we editorialized when Donald Trump was a candidate (here), this is a very charged issue, and it is entirely foreseeable that the Supreme Court (to say nothing of the lower federal courts teeming with Obama appointees) would construe the term jurisdiction differently from what it meant when the 14th Amendment was ratified.

For today, the more narrow question is: Assuming arguendo that the 14th Amendment does not require birthright citizenship, is our practice of conferring it merely an executive policy that the president has the power to change by executive order?

I don’t think so.

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The Electronic Committee of Public Safety By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 30th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/megyn-kelly-halloween-costumes-social-media-controversy/

Modern-day Robespierres send counterrevolutionaries to the virtual chopping block. They should recall his fate.

Celebrities, politicians, and almost anyone of influence and wealth are always an incorrect or insensitive word away from the contemporary electronic guillotine. Regardless of the circumstances of their dilemmas, the beheaded rarely win sympathy from the mob. Coliseum-like roars of approval greet their abrupt change of fortune from their past exalted status.

So, for example, perhaps few feel sorry for anchor Megyn Kelly, recently all but fired by NBC and now walking away with most of her $69 million salary package as a severance payout.

Kelly was let go ostensibly for making a sloppy but not malicious morally equivalent comparison between whites at Halloween dressing up in costumes as blacks, and blacks likewise appearing as whites. But she sealed her fate by uttering the historically disparaging word “black face” as some sort of neutral bookend to her use of “white face.” Her fatal crime, then, was insensitive thought and speech and historical ignorance.

For someone so familiar with the rules of our electronic French Revolution and the felonies of speech and thought, Kelly proved surprisingly naïve in a variety of ways.

First, she should have known that there are revolutionary canons surrounding victimization indemnities. And for all her success, she is actually protected by few of them, given that she is fabulously well paid, attractive, still young, white — and at one time conservative and a former Fox News anchor person.

So when Kelly said something historically dense and insensitive, she should have grasped that she, despite being an emancipated coastal female, was immediately (and ratings-wise) expendable, even if expensively expendable.

Had Kelly been unapologetically progressive (especially one deemed vital to the cause), like Elizabeth Warren, who fabricated and profited from an entire minority identity, then she might well have survived the incident. Perhaps had she been a minority, such as Sarah Jeong, and written (rather than spoken off the cuff) far more racially offensive things about whites, she would have kept her job — as did Jeong on the New York Times editorial board after her racist tweets surfaced, such as this, from 2014: “Dumbass f****** white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.”