RUTHFULLY YOURS

I am in awe of The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain. Author Dario Fernandez-Morera, a Northwestern University Professor and Harvard PhD, argues that elite scholars are peddling a myth – that Islamic Spain, c. 711 AD -1492 AD, was a paradise. Fernandez-Morera’s job is to expose historical realities. The main text is 240 pages. There are 95 pages of notes, a bibliography and an index. It was published in February, 2016 by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

This book is an intellectual boxing match. The author shreds not just one opponent, but a series of intellectual bigots, prostitutes and manipulators of the common man. Fernandez-Morera’s biceps gleam as his lightning footwork and peerless preparedness dazzle. Our hero risks much, from hate mail to non-person status.

The reader is plunged into vast landscapes, international intrigue, arcane customs, and timeless heroism. One envisions veiled women and bejeweled slave girls, the smoking ruins of churches, enslaved, whipped Christians forced to carry their cathedral bells to be melted down to embellish mosques, heartbreaking suffering and eventual victory.

Fernandez-Morera allows the propagandists enough rope to hang themselves. All he has to do is quote them. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, The University of Chicago, Boston University, Sarah Lawrence, Rutgers, Indiana University, Cambridge, Oxford, The University of London, NYU, Norton, Penguin, Routledge, Houghton Mifflin, the Pulitzer Committee, Tony Blair, Barack Obama, Carly Fiorina, children’s textbooks, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, PBS, The New York Review of Books, First Things all are in the dock, tripped up in their own false testimony. The inclusion of First Things might surprise; it is a Catholic publication. In it Christian C. Sahner praises Muslims who “exhibited a surprising degree of religious flexibility” because they waited a few decades before razing the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Damascus, rather than destroying it immediately upon arrival. Really.

What is the propagandists’ motive?

Follow the money. See, for example, Giulio Meotti’s “Islam Buys Out Western Academia” See also the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University. Or the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies at Cambridge University. Or the Alwaleed Centre at Edinburgh University. Or the Abdallah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilization at Yale. Or the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown. The whorehouse cash register overflows with petrodollars.

Follow the pitchforks and torches. In 2008, Sylvain Gouguenheim, a French medievalist, published Aristotle at Mont Saint-Michel, arguing that the West is not in debt to Islam for awareness of Ancient Greek texts; most of those texts were preserved, translated, passed on and used by Christians. For that rather modest claim, Gouguenheim was subjected to an “academic exorcism.”

Much has been written about the nefarious motives behind the anti-Semitic Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as well as its primary campus sponsor, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). An exhaustive and authoritative account tracing the movement’s history, its radical roots and maximalist goals was authored by Dan Diker for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and is a must read for anyone wishing to gain further insight into the inner workings of BDS.

Of perhaps greater concern however, is the terror link between BDS and the Hamas terrorist organization. As outlined by Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) at a Joint Hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the connections are deeply rooted and masked by a labyrinth of various entities and subgroups.

Particular interest centers on two pro-BDS groups, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and its fiscal sponsor, Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation (AJP). Though AMP is a not-for-profit corporation, it does not possess 501c3 tax-exempt status and is not required to file IRS form 990 thus shielding the organization from scrutiny. The AMP however receives tax-exempt contributions from the AJP, which is a 501c3. The two organizations share officers and maintain the same offices but under the law, they are deemed to be two separate and distinct entities.

If this sounds confusing, that’s because it is and those responsible for forming these entities were likely trying to circumvent transparency laws for reasons set forth below.

According to research conducted by the FDD, the AMP is extremely active on college campuses and one of the driving forces of the BDS movement. The organization provides training, funding and propaganda material for SJP campus groups across the United States. In 2014, the group spent $100,000 on campus activities, the bulk of which was channeled into anti-Israel, pro-BDS causes.

Even more disquieting is the fact that several current members of the AMP or individuals who are otherwise tied to the AMP were former members of groups that were shut down or held civilly liable by the United States for funneling money to the Hamas terrorist group. That figure includes three individuals who had previously belonged to the now defunct and notorious Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), the Hamas front group that according to the U.S. Treasury Department sent approximately $12.4 million overseas to fill the Hamas coffers.

The Obama administration did not characterize Monday’s brutal slaying of a USAID worker as terrorism on Tuesday despite al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent taking credit for the crime.

Xulhaz Mannan, 35, and Mahbub Tonoy, 25, were in their apartment in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Monday at about 5:30 p.m. when attackers posing as delivery couriers gained entry. They were attacked with machetes by men in their 20s who yelled “Allahu Akbar” on their way out the door.

The attack followed the pattern of AQIS attacks that began in February 2015 with the machete murder of an American citizen, writer Avijit Roy, on a Dhaka street. Roy ran a blog featuring atheist, humanist and nationalist writers.

AQIS, which formally launched in 2014 after al-Qaeda brought various militant groups from India to Bangladesh and Myanmar under its umbrella, has explicitly detailed why they’ve picked certain writers and activists as their targets — those they believe have insulted Islam and stand in the way of submission to Shariah law. ISIS has tried to adopt this method of ambushing intellectuals or atheists, though Bangladesh denies fighters allied to the Islamic State are active in the country.

Mannan was an LGBT activist before going to work at the U.S. Embassy as a protocol officer. He later worked for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and founded the magazine Roopbaan, which was going to hold a Rainbow Rally earlier this month that was canceled due to death threats.

On Sunday, April 17, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (“Bibi”) convened a cabinet meeting on the Golan Heights stating that the “time has come for the international community to finally recognize that the Golan Heights will remain under Israel’s sovereignty permanently.” He spoke these words from Ma’aleh Gamla, next to the ruins of the historic Gamla, a Judean city to which the Romans laid siege in 67 CE during the Great Revolt (also known as the First Jewish/Roman War) (66-73 CE). In this battle, Roman soldiers slaughtered 4,000 Jews, while another 5,000 perished having “thrown themselves down” a ravine to their deaths in either an attempt to flee or in a mass suicide (Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, 4:1:9:80).

Bibi’s statements at Gamla followed reports that the United States and Russia were working on a draft peace resolution to the Syrian Civil War that would label the entire Golan Heights as Syrian territory. On April 19, U.S. State Department John Kirby stated “The US position on the issue is unchanged…Those territories are not part of Israel and the status of those territories should be determined through negotiations.” The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Arab League, Syria, and Germany rejected Netanyahu’s comments.

Despite most of the world seemingly poised to throw Israel under the bus over this issue, Israel should continue to assert its sovereignty over the Golan. Israel has a stronger claim to the Golan than Syria does, the Golan is of essential strategic value to Israel and the free world, and given increased threats and development of the land, that value has only appreciated.

Israel has a Stronger Claim to the Golan than Syria

Israel gained control of two-thirds of the Golan Heights following Syria’s defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War. (Israel later applied Israeli law to these territories in a de-facto annexation in 1981.) Syria gained independence in 1945. Before that, the Golan was part of the French Empire (1923-1945), jointly administered between the British and French Empires (1917-1923) and part of the (Turkish) Ottoman Empire for approximately 400 years preceding 1917. So, Syria had control of the Israeli-administered part of the Golan for 22 years (1945-1967), while Israel has had it for 49 years (1967 to the present). Israel has a stronger claim to the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan, given that it has been Israeli longer than it has been Syrian.

The Great Strategic Value of the Golan…