Across Europe, cartoonists, artists and writers are forced to live under police protection, and also often face criminal prosecution — all for the “crime” of offending Islam. “‘Respect’ means, for them, submission.” It starts with censoring cartoons… Here is Gatestone Institute’s Giulio Meotti in our latest video:
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‘Uneaten birthday cakes next to pools of blood’
An Israeli parliamentarian who arrived on the scene of Wednesday night’s Palestinian terrorist attack in Tel Aviv summed up in a phrase what terrorism is all about.
“Uneaten birthday cakes next to pools of blood,” is how Likud MK Amir Ohana described what he encountered in the immediate aftermath of the shooting spree at the Max Brenner chocolate shop and cafe in the Sarona shopping complex.
No matter how precisely witnesses describe the attacks Israelis experience on a regular basis — the fear, the screams, and the killings — it is rare for words to capture carnage so well.
Yes, “uneaten birthday cakes next to pools of blood” tells us everything we need to know about the setting and its significance in the twisted, brainwashed minds of young people in the Palestinian Authority. It is precisely what the two young men, relatives from the village of Yatta near Hebron who brought makeshift assault rifles with them to an eatery on a summer’s eve, had envisioned. It was exactly their goal to slaughter Jews, some of them in casual dress and flip-flops, enjoying a respite from the oppressive heat of the day, others dressed to the nines, celebrating personal milestones.
Indeed, “uneaten birthday cakes next to pools of blood” says it all. It is a reminder of the funerals that will soon take place and the devastation entire families will feel for the rest of their lives; the months of physical rehabilitation and trauma awaiting those who were injured; and the tears of mothers, fathers, sons and daughters praying at bedsides.
“You never get used to it,” said a surgeon from the Sourasky Medical Center, where the wounded — among them one of the two terrorists — are being treated.
The rest of us in Israel, meanwhile, will be treated by the international community to reprimands about the need for peace, just as we are already being bombarded on local talk shows with the urgency for “an agreement with the Palestinians.” Like the terrorist attacks themselves, these pronouncements are repeated virtually without let-up.
The difference this time is the addition of the discussion about how Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s new defense minister, who assumed his role only last week, is going to meet the challenge, particularly as a proponent of the death penalty for terrorists, which the Jewish state does not have. Natch.
This is something the Arabs in Judea and Samaria, east Jerusalem and Gaza are keenly aware of, along with the knowledge that if they engage in particularly gruesome violence, they will be hailed as heroes by their society and leaders. Those who are killed while murdering Jews can look forward not only to paradise in the afterlife, but being martyrs after whom sports arenas, cultural events and streets are named.
Thankfully, Lieberman — whose alleged first order of business over the weekend was to strike terrorist bases in Syria — did not talk politics. Instead, he gave a brief press conference at the scene of the attack with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu had just landed in Tel Aviv from a two-and-a-half-day trip to Russia, ostensibly to mark the 25th anniversary of the establishment of full diplomatic relations with Moscow, but really to cement growing ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is the sad but necessary upshot of the Obama administration’s attitude toward Israel in particular and the Middle East in general.
This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents The Michael Cutler Moment with Michael Cutler, a former Senior INS Special Agent.http://jamieglazov.com/2016/06/09/michael-cutler-moment-obamas-refugees-illegal-aliens-and-the-tsunami-of-deadly-diseases-in-america/
Mr. Cutler discussed Obama’s Refugees, Illegal Aliens and the Tsunami of Deadly Diseases in America, unveiling the lethal violation of the nation’s most basic public health protocols.
Don’t miss it!
And make sure to watch The Michael Cutler Moment: Obama’s Pathway to the “Borderless World,” in which Mr. Cutler unveiled how the Radical-in-Chief is opening America to Islamic terrorists and transnational criminals.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump harshly condemned on Thursday the recent bloody terror attack in Tel Aviv, citing the teachings of anti-Israel hatred rampant in Palestinian society as a driving force behind the violence.
“I condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the outrageous terrorist shootings that took the lives of at least four innocent civilians and wounded at least twenty others in Tel Aviv yesterday,” he said in a statement. “The Israeli security forces’ investigation is ongoing, but some facts have already emerged — and they are grim.”
On Wednesday, two Hamas-affiliated terrorists, dressed in black business suits, entered the popular Max Brenner chocolate bar/cafe at the Sarona Market shopping complex. After sitting down and ordering food, the terrorists — who it was later determined hail from the village of Yatta near Hebron — opened fire. Before being neutralized by security guards, they managed to kill four people — two men and two women — and wound many more.
Trump slammed Gaza-based Hamas for its celebration over the attacks and the terrorists themselves. “Just as fast as the condolences arrive from the civilized world is the praise arising out of the uncivilized one. Hamas praised the attack, calling the attackers ‘heroes.’ Reports out of Hebron indicate that residents of the terrorists’ hometown lit up the night sky with celebratory fireworks,” he stated, adding that it was “despicable” that one Palestinian “news organization” called the attacks a “Ramadan treat.”
“Scholar and activist”????? The man is an oaf but quite comfortable in the Democrat party….rsk
Donald Trump is reviled by Democrats, but they give Trump-like figures such as Israeli’s defense minister a pass, complained scholar and activist Cornel West, before the Democratic Party’s platform committee.
“Trump-like figures in Israeli life” should be treated by Democrats just like Trump, said West, a member of the committee, during a hearing on foreign policy.
The otherwise sleepy hearing was the second in a two-day session that started on June 8. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders selected West and four others to represent him on the committee, and West’s comments reflected Sanders’s wish that the party raise the profile of Palestinian suffering and rights in its language on the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
“Why can we focus on xenophobes here, and seem to be so reluctant to call out xenophobes in Israel and other places?” asked West, who is known as a critic of Israel. He went on to inquire whether “if there were a Palestinian occupation of Jewish brothers and sisters would we respond the same way?”
He took issue with strongly pro-Israel testimony given by former Florida congressman Robert Wexler, asking him to agree to include of the term occupation in the party’s platform. America’s commitments to its allies, West said, “can never be predicated on occupation.” He then asked members to “agree that life of Palestinian baby is just as valuable as Jewish baby.”
But he did so in much more forceful way than articulated by the Vermont senator, accusing the Democratic Party of being “beholden to AIPAC,” the pro-Israel lobby, “for too long.”
The failure of France’s “peace” conference, on the one hand, and the success of Netanyahu’s fourth visit to Moscow on the other hand, were poetic bookends of the week.
There was something poetic about the events that bookended the past week of diplomacy. This week began with French President François Hollande’s “peace” conference and ended with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s state visit to Moscow.
From the perspective of both substance and style, the contrast between the two events couldn’t have been more striking.
France hosted yet another anti-Israel diplomatic pile-on. Hollande had hoped to show that France was stepping into the void left by the US’s abandonment of its position as world leader. But all the confab served to do was show how irrational and self-destructive France – and Western Europe – has become.
Neither Israeli nor Palestinian representatives were present at the conference which aimed to dictate Israel’s final borders. Their absence made the event seem like a throwback to the era of European colonialism. It was as if Hollande wanted to reenact France’s glory days in Syria and Algeria.
In his opening remarks, Hollande recycled the tired claim that the way to defeat jihad is by forcing Israel to give Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to Islamic terrorists. The document the French Foreign Ministry circulated among participants ahead of the conference recommended setting a timetable for forcing Israel to give the PLO Judea, Samaria and large swaths of Jerusalem, for the benefit of global security.
The French planned their event before the mobs in Ramallah, Hebron, Jerusalem and Gaza publicly celebrated the cold-blooded massacre of Israeli diners at Tel Aviv’s Sarona Market on Wednesday night. But the latest massacre wasn’t necessary to show the absurdity of France’s plan to defeat jihad by empowering jihadists at Israel’s expense.
After all, Israel surrendered Gaza to the Palestinians 11 years ago. Far from ameliorating the problem of jihad – in Europe and throughout the world – the scourge of Islamic war has grown geometrically in the past decade.
Harry Truman is now rated as a great president by both parties.
In the book Dear Bess: The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 1910-1959 reveals how much classified material the President revealed to his beloved wife.
From Berlin, at the Potsdam Conference on July31, 1945:
He opines ……after adding “Kiss my baby. Lots and lots of love,” he ends with “I’ve got to lunch with the Limey king when I get to Plymouth”
When President Harry Truman picked up his “Washington Post” early on December 6, 1950, to read a review of his daughter Margaret Truman’s singing performance, he was livid. Though conceding that Miss Truman was “extremely attractive,” Paul Hume, the “Post’s” music critic, stated bluntly that “Miss Truman cannot sing very well” and “has not improved” over the years. The president wrote the following letter to the 34-year old Hume, whom he compared to the columnist Westbrook Pegler (“a rat,” in Truman’s view).
Harry S. Truman to Music Critic Paul Hume
Mr Hume:
I’ve just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an “eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.” It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for it shows conclusively that you’re off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work.
Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!
Pegler, a gutter snipe, is a gentleman alongside you. I hope you’ll accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry.
Harry S. Truman
James A. Lyons, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations. He is a Member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi
China’s determined efforts over the past two decades to seize control of almost the entire South China Sea is nothing short of classic aggressive imperialism. What’s remarkable is that it has been done without basically firing a shot, using the Chinese People’s Liberation Army concept of “military soft power.” This tactic is designed to defeat the enemy without fighting. Make no mistake: China views the United States as the enemy. Under President Obama’s strategy to fundamentally transform America, our country doesn’t confront our enemies, it embraces them. China has the perfect enemy.
When the United States withdrew its forces from the Philippines in 1992, this created a vacuum, which presented China with an unprecedented opportunity to expand its influence and territorial objectives. In 1993, China announced its illegal claims to almost the entire South China Sea as part of its territorial waters. The claim is based on China’s questionable Nine-Dash Line maritime claim and includes large sea areas of internationally recognized economic zones belonging to Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan and Japan.
There is no question that what China has accomplished over the past two decades – both economically and militarily – has been remarkable. When I took the first U.S. Navy Task Force back to mainland China on Nov. 3, 1986, 37 years after the Communists seized power in 1949, its navy was nothing more than a coastal navy, and not a threat to anyone. However, since then, China – with a double-digit increase in its military budget – has dramatically modernized its military forces and specifically built a navy designed to confront the U.S. Navy. More recently, Chinese President Xi Jinping is in the process of transforming China’s military force’s mission from just a defensive posture and regional power to one that will potentially be capable of challenging the United States globally.
As we have seen, China has instituted an aggressive reclamation program, creating man-made islands out of shallow reefs and inlets to reinforce its South China Sea claims. Since 2014, China has reclaimed more than 3,200 acres. Airfields and other permanent facilities have been built on these islands. The islands, in effect, have become stationary aircraft carriers. China has already deployed significant air, naval and missile forces to its newly reclaimed stationary carriers.
For some years now, the Obama administration has worked on developing a “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE) strategy. Its goals: to be proactive in stopping terrorists from radicalizing and recruiting followers, and to address the factors that allow such actions to occur in the first place. Last week the result of some of these deliberations — a twelve-page strategy fronted by the State Department and USAID — was published.
In its foreword, Secretary of State John Kerry lists some of those countries affected by “violent extremism” (“from Afghanistan to Nigeria”) as well as the identity of violent extremist groups (“Da’esh . . . al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Shabaab, and Boko Haram”). The focus then, seems clear: countries with a significant Muslim population and Islamist terrorist groups. Yet here is where the strategy takes a turn for the surreal, because from the content of the actual strategy, you would not realize any such thing — the document is just that opaque, obfuscatory, and, ultimately, unhelpful.
Regarding why violent extremism takes root, the reader is treated to a variety of possibilities. They include “individual psychological factors . . . community and sectarian divisions and conflicts.” Other explanations are corruption, insufficiently robust courts, and a lack of tolerance among different ethnicities.
Apparently not even worthy of discussion is Islam or Islamism, words that are not mentioned once. This is no accident. There has been a concerted attempt to scrub any religious aspect from the actions of ISIS and al-Qaeda: That is why phrases like “violent extremism” even exist. (First mainstreamed by the British government, “violent extremism” was dreamed up as a way to avoid saying “Islamic” or “Islamist” extremism in the months after the July 2005 suicide bombings in London. The phrase swiftly traveled across the Atlantic and into the U.S. government’s vocabulary.)
When I was a kid, I didn’t have any more appreciation for those “We Had It So Hard” stories you get from your parents and your grandparents than any other callow schoolboy does. But one of them stuck with me.
The elderly, highly regarded gentleman in question had moved to West Texas with his parents in the 1920s where they lived under what were essentially pioneer conditions, hunting rabbits for meat and foraging what other food they could, sometimes even eating green tumbleweeds. If you don’t know what the wind is like in West Texas, it will sound absurd, but, at one point, their house literally was blown away. There was no high school where they were — the place was called Sand — but there was one in a town 15 miles away, so he walked there and went to work at a filling station, a job he kept through high school. He was later accepted as a student at Texas Tech, the campus of which was a little more than 60 miles away. Again, he walked, not knowing where or how he’d live when he got there. The only business he knew was running a filling station, so he and another student started one, and he later used some of the money he made to open a movie theater. What followed was a successful business career and then a career in politics, culminating with his election as Texas governor Preston Smith.
We Americans have always been in motion. The pilgrims in their ships, the pioneers in their wagons, the Okies bound for California however they could get there, Preston Smith and his much-used shoes. It isn’t always great. But it isn’t all that bad, either, especially when you are young: I am sure that many of you reading this have had the experience of moving into an apartment you’ve never seen because you didn’t have the money to go scouting when relocating for a new job. Sometimes it’s better than expected, sometimes not—but it is always a surprise.
I am not among those who believe that poverty builds character — I can do without that kind of character — but I do sometimes almost feel sorry for those friends of mine who’ve always had it a little too good, who don’t have any funny stories about roadside misadventures caused by having a crappy 22-year-old car, the semester they spent semi-homeless, the people they met working on a farm or doing day labor. I don’t want to have those kinds of adventures now, and I didn’t want to have them at the time, either, but sometime between then and now I became glad that they had happened.
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