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No, Mr. President — Values Are Not Universal by P. David Hornik

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

The telling example of Palestinian death cult.

“An attack on all of humanity and the universal values we share,” was what President Obama called the Paris terror attack. As commentators have pointed out, it’s unfortunately not so; Western values, even including the sanctity of life, are not shared by all of humanity and do not necessarily prevail in some parts of the world.

Here in Israel, where we’ve been under an assault variously dubbed the Knives Intifada or the Children’s Intifada for two months, it’s impossible not to be aware of a lack of universality of values. Many, but not all, of the examples I give below (which, of course, are far from comprehensive) are taken from Palestinian warfare.

Combatants and noncombatants. This is a Western distinction that is often conspicuously lacking in other parts of the world. While Palestinians sometimes attack Israeli security personnel, they more often attack Israeli civilians. Age and gender, of course, are of no consequence; the concept of the “enemy” is tribal and includes any and all Israeli Jews at any and all times. The principle of tribal assault applies, of course, in surrounding countries as well. The only reason Israelis are not massacred on the same scale as Syrians, Iraqis, Sudanese, and others is Israel’s military and security capability. What happened in Paris was a Middle Eastern tribal assault, not just an attack by lone “terrorists.”

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Trump and His Fans Are Stuck Inside a Feedback Loop By Charles C. W. Cooke

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

On Meet the Press this morning, Donald Trump insisted that:

he was “100 percent right” when he said he saw thousands of Muslims in Jersey City, New Jersey, cheering the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, even though fact-checkers have debunked his assertion.

In a phone interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Trump said he has heard from “hundreds of people that agree” that there were televised Muslim celebrations of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which he used as evidence to show his remarks were true.

“I saw it. So many people saw it,” said Trump, who, in the race for the November 2016 election, has been among the most vocal of the Republican candidates in expressing skepticism about Muslims in the United States. “So, why would I take it back? I’m not going to take it back.”

When NBC anchor Chuck Todd suggested the people Trump heard from are supporters and might want to agree with him, Trump interrupted to note the “huge Muslim population”

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Inside a Campus Protest A look inside the current wave of student disobedience. By Josh Gelernter

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

Infantile college kids all over the country are protesting human-right violations like Halloween costumes and free speech, the honoring of Woodrow Wilson and the placidity of students studying in libraries. A few years ago, an early member of the new wave of student disobedience gave me a look inside the protesters’ scattered brains.

In February 2009, President Obama had just taken his oath of office, and I was a freshman at NYU. On the evening of February 18, a group of about 60 NYU students, and a few students from other schools, assembled in the NYU student-center cafeteria. They said that they were a group called Take Back NYU, and that they were occupying our cafeteria until a grab-bag of eleven non-sequitur demands were met.

Their first, courageous demand was that none of them be punished. Their second was that “all employees whose jobs were disrupted during the course of the occupation” receive “full compensation.”

Third, they demanded that NYU’s budget and endowment be made public. Fourth, that “student workers” and teaching assistants be allowed to bargain collectively. Fifth, “a fair labor contract for all NYU employees at home and abroad.” Sixth, they demanded “a Socially Responsible Finance Committee that will immediately investigate war profiteers and lifting of the Coke ban.” (NYU had recently overturned a silly “All University Senate” decision to ban Coke from our vending machines and cafeterias; rumors about abusive labor practices by the Coca-Cola Company turned out to be lies. But I’m not sure which war profiteers they had in mind.)

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The Yale Problem Begins in High School by Jonathan Haidt

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

A month before the Yale Halloween meltdown, I had a bizarre and illuminating experience at an elite private high school on the West Coast. I’ll call it Centerville High. I gave a version of a talk that you can see here, on Coddle U. vs. Strengthen U. (In an amazing coincidence, I first gave that talk at Yale a few weeks earlier). The entire student body — around 450 students, from grades 9-12 — were in the auditorium. There was plenty of laughter at all the right spots, and a lot of applause at the end, so I thought the talk was well received.

But then the discussion began, and it was the most unremittingly hostile questioning I’ve ever had. I don’t mind when people ask hard or critical questions, but I was surprised that I had misread the audience so thoroughly. My talk had little to do with gender, but the second question was “So you think rape is OK?” Like most of the questions, it was backed up by a sea of finger snaps — the sort you can hear in the infamous Yale video, where a student screams at Prof. Christakis to “be quiet” and tells him that he is “disgusting.” I had never heard the snapping before. When it happens in a large auditorium it is disconcerting. It makes you feel that you are facing an angry and unified mob — a feeling I have never had in 25 years of teaching and public speaking.

After the first dozen questions I noticed that not a single questioner was male. I began to search the sea of hands asking to be called on and I did find one boy, who asked a question that indicated that he too was critical of my talk. But other than him, the 200 or so boys in the audience sat silently.

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Hillary Still Doesn’t Get It on the ISIS Threat By Fred Fleitz

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

The ISIS Threat Represents a Clash of Civilizations, and Hillary Won’t Admit It

Has Hillary Clinton separated herself from President Obama by taking a tougher and more realistic position on the threat from ISIS? That’s what many in the news media are saying based on some of her recent foreign-policy statements, such as her remarks in a November 19 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations:

ISIS operates across three mutually reinforcing dimensions: a physical enclave in Iraq and Syria; an international terrorist network that includes affiliates across the region and beyond; and an ideological movement of radical jihadism. We have to target and defeat all three, and time is of the essence.

This portrayal of the ISIS threat sounds like an improvement over the awkward rhetoric used by President Obama to discuss what he insists on calling ISIL or Daesh, and his refusal to use words such as “jihad” and “jihadism.” But Hillary’s rhetorical improvements were offset by caveats indicating that she actually has not moved very far from the president and has a worldview that is just as incoherent.

For example, Clinton criticized “the obsession in some quarters [meaning Republicans] with a clash of civilizations.” Clinton also echoed Obama’s frequent claims that the United States is not at war with Islam when she said, “I don’t think we’re at war with all Muslims. I think we’re at war with jihadists.”

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Victoria Kincaid Islam and Sexual Slavery

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

Islamist terrorism is not a consequence of the West’s failure to accommodate ‘cultural differences’. As Christian and Yazidi women raped by captors who simultaneously recite the Koran can attest, the problem is Islam itself
The continual attempts of the Islamic State (IS) to systematically annihilate the non-Islamic world have striking similarities. Texts such as the Koran and Hadith boast close to two hundred verses advocating jihad, and lay out specific guidelines for waging this “holy war”. Beheadings and suicide bombings are commonplace, and Westerners are primed by the media to see these atrocities as the defining features of Islamic radicalism. However, a recent development in the IS terror trend that remains distinct is the newly reinstated practice of sex slavery.

Regardless of the constant professing of IS that they act in the name of Allah and the Islamic faith, there is a strong tendency of Western left-wing ideologues to deny the religiosity of the agenda. Such vehement refusal to criticise the religion itself continues to be as baffling as it is frustrating—augmented by the paranoia of the Left that any criticism of Islam amounts to bigotry. More to the point, the lofty attitude of these self-deprecating Westerners does nothing to support the cause of the “unbelievers” enslaved and violated by IS.

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Rep.John Lewis (D-Ga. District 5): Black Lives Matter Movement ‘Must Understand’ the Way of Peace By Nicholas Ballasy

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said the Black Lives Matter movement “must understand” the way of peace and nonviolence.

Lewis, one of the “Big Six” civil rights leaders, said many young people are using his series of March books on the Civil Rights Movement as a guide.

“I think many of the young people all over America, high school students, college students and even elementary school students, are reading the book and they are able to associate the story, my story, my involvement in the Civil Rights Movement with what is happening in America today,” Lewis told PJM at the National Press Club Book Fair in Washington. “It is teaching people the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence and this young man, [co-author] Andrew Aydin, had the idea that we should do this book.”

Lewis provided his assessment of how the Civil Rights Movement compares with the Black Lives Matter movement of today.

“When we first got involved, before we had gone on the sit-in of the freedom ride, before the March on Washington or March from Selma, we studied the way of peace, the way of life, the way of nonviolence and we accepted nonviolence as a way of life, as a way of living. So the young people involved in the Black Lives Matter movement must understand, and many of these people are reading this book and using it as a guide,” Lewis said.

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Rubio Vows to Restore Intelligence Programs Restricted by Obama- Exclusive Interview by Roger Simon

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

With our president running off to Paris not in response to the recent terror attacks, but to deal with what he considers our greatest national security threat — climate change — 2016 is more than ever a foreign policy election.

Not surprisingly, however, Republican candidates are emphasizing this continued spread of radical Islamic terrorism. Few have been more focused on the issue than Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. PJ Media’s Diary of a Mad Voter sent Senator Rubio six questions in the crucial area of foreign policy, which he has been gracious enough to answer. Among his responses below, Rubio has promised to restore overseas intelligence programs Obama has restricted.

Part of an ongoing series, these questions are not meant to be “gotchas,” but an opportunity for the candidates to explore their views at length, which we feel they don’t always get to do during the televised debates. Previously, Senator Ted Cruz answered a similar series of foreign policy questions for us. Readers can find his answers here.

PJM: Once deemed a “jayvee team” and then “contained” by President Obama, events (Paris, Sinai, Beirut) have shown ISIS very much alive, growing and dedicated to their goal of a global caliphate under Sharia. Furthermore, the attack in Mali has demonstrated the supposedly quiescent al Qaeda also remains active. Making matters worse, a new Pew Poll reveals upwards of 287 million of those polled in 11 Muslims countries viewed ISIS favorably or were “neutral” to it. Given the horrific situation, what specific concrete steps would a Rubio administration take starting day one to put an end to these and similar groups militarily and ideologically?

SENATOR RUBIO: As the Paris attacks demonstrate, our first priority must be to shore up our defenses. I would begin by working with regional partners to prevent jihadists from traveling between their homes and the battlefield. I would also boost domestic efforts to detect potential “lone wolf” attackers, and I would stop the flow of Syrian refugees to the U.S. for now—not because we don’t want to help those in need, but because it is currently impossible to verify their identities or intentions. I would also bolster the Visa Waiver Program’s security screening to ensure that those entering the country are not a threat. Most importantly, my administration would lift the limits on overseas intelligence collection put in place by President Obama and restore the intelligence programs required to keep America safe. The terrorists that attacked Paris reportedly relied on sophisticated technology to communicate, and we need every constitutionally available tool to uncover future plots.

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The Real Lesson of the Paris Attacks by Douglas Murray

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

What if the terrorists had been targeting “just Americans,” or “just diplomats” — would that be “understandable terrorism” in John Kerry’s thinking?

“If we should stop drawing cartoons, should we also stop having synagogues? Should they be converted into something else? Should we ask the Jewish people to leave?” — Organizer of a targeted fee speech event, in response to the question if they had brought the attack on themselves.

Much of the world may only have been just bragging or emoting in saying, “Je Suis Charlie” or “Je Suis Juif” in January. But it turns out not to matter: the terrorists of ISIS think we are all cartoonists and Jews anyway.

Since we cannot live with ISIS and similar groups, we had better do whatever it takes to speed up an end of our choosing before they speed up an end of their choosing.

When the truth is revealed, it can be not merely unpleasant but often accidental. There have been several striking examples of this since the massacre in Paris earlier this month. In the days immediately after the attack, The Times of London interviewed residents of Paris. Referring to the latest attacks, one 46-year old resident also referred back to the attacks in January on the offices of Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket. “Every Parisian has been touched by these attacks,” she said, referring to the latest attacks. “Before it was just the Jews, the writers or cartoonists.”

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Israel’s Blindness to Jihad – The Blight unto the Nations Ruth King

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion proclaimed: “History did not spoil us with power, wealth, nor with broad territories or an enormous community: however, it did grant us uncommon intellectual and moral virtue, and thus it is both a privilege and an obligation to be a light unto the nations.”

These are hollow words from Ben Gurion who ordered the June 20, 1948, attack on the Irgun ship Altalena where sixteen Zionist patriots were killed and scores of other injured. But that’s another story for another time .

The self-righteous notion that it is Israel’s “privilege and obligation to be a light unto the nations” inspired Israel’s early stifling socialism and a pathetic and decidedly immoral policy of self-criticism, appeasement, and abrogation of its religious and historic patrimony.It also contributed to Israel’s blindness to Islamic jihad. For it was easy to reason that the “enlightened” people who had been persecuted for their own religion could not possibly impugn another religion.

Nonetheless, while refusing to blame Islam for the unrelenting vitriol and hatred of Arab/Moslem nations, Israelis blandly accepted descriptions of patriotic and observant settlers as “ultra-orthodox messianic fanatics.”

In spite of the fact that Israel has been the frontline of Islam’s thirst for a world caliphate, Israel’s pundits, like those in the West, avoid blaming, even naming, Islam.

As Andrew Bostom, author of The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History, the essential text in the study of Islamic hatred of Jews, commented:

“This is reflected in the present inability, political, journalistic, and scholarly alike, to recognize the importance of the factor of religion in the current affairs of the Muslim world…If our political, journalistic, and scholarly ‘elites’ ever arrive at this understanding, perhaps they will grasp the accompanying vocabulary of the Muslim combatants and their spokespersons, in the context of the jihad against Israel. ‘Resistance’ means a genocidal jihad, whose ‘justice’ amounts to the violent restoration and forcible maintenance of dhimmitude for those surviving Jews (and Christians) in a vanquished Israel.”