VICTOR SHARPE: WHAT IS DHIMMITUDE?

Ask people in the United States what a dhimmi is and perhaps a handful might know. In Europe, and as far as India and the far east, the number would be higher because of latent memories of battles fought against invading Moslem armies across the span of centuries.

For a while there was the specter of triumphant Islam building a giant mosque mere yards from Ground Zero in New York City where Islamic fanatics, in the name of Allah, destroyed the World Trade Center and brought the two magnificent towers down in a cascade of horror.

The mosque would have risen to thirteen or more stories and overlooked the blasted hole in the ground that was once a symbol of America’s freedom and technical ingenuity.

If this outrage had been built, it would not have been a symbol of Muslim outreach to non-Moslems; it would have been a sickening insult to the victims of Islamic barbarism and a tangible rallying cry to millions more jihadists who would see it as Islam’s victory over a vanquished United States of America.

RUTHIE BLUM: NEPAL AND THE PALESTINIANS

Ruthie Blum is the web editor of Voice of Israel talk radio (voiceofisrael.com).
According to Wafa, the news agency that serves as the mouthpiece for the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas extended his condolences to the people and government of Nepal on Sunday, and affirmed his willingness “to provide all possible help.”

This statement of sympathy from Abbas on the day after the massive earthquake struck Nepal went largely unnoticed for two reasons. The first is that countries across the world were already mobilizing to send actual help to the scene of the disaster, in which the death toll has now surpassed 4,000 and is still rising. Indeed, assistance of all kinds is being dispatched to the area, including medical supplies and personnel, governmental and volunteer search-and-rescue teams, equipment, food, clothing, blankets and money.

The second reason that Abbas’ words of solace for the quake victims have been drowned out is that his actions are speaking far louder. While Israel is tirelessly trying to locate all of its own citizens in Nepal (to bring both bodies and survivors back home) — and engaged in saving everyone else — the PA is busy promoting and abetting terrorism inside Israel.

Obama’s Last Red-Line: Blockade of Iranian Weapons to Yemen: Mark Langfan

The all-too realistic scenarios that will follow if Obama fails to set a red line
for Iranian arms supply to the Houthis.

President Obama has ordered the USS Theodore Roosevelt Aircraft carrier battle group to the shores of Yemen to interdict likely Iranian attempts to resupply their Shiite proxies in Yemen, the Houthis. It has been reported that the Saudi Air campaign has very effectively destroyed over 80% of the Houthis’ weapons supply in a very short time. In respect of the Saudi bravery, Sunni Yemen army elements have begun to side with the Saudis.

After Failing to Preempt: Israel, Iran and Nuclear war By Louis Rene Beres

Back in January 2003, the Project Daniel Group advised prime minister Ariel Sharon on the issue of Iranian nuclearization. In its then-confidential final report to Sharon, titled “Israel’s Strategic Future,” the group underscored a significant core conclusion: allowing Iran to become a nuclear power can never be construed as an acceptable option. To further support this position legally, as well as strategically, the group referenced a very basic or “peremptory” national right under international law. This prerogative, we counseled, is known formally as “anticipatory self-defense.”

Our jurisprudential message was loud and clear: international law is never a suicide pact. Under no circumstances can a state ever be expected to become complicit in its own annihilation. Indeed, following the authoritative 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, a country may even maintain a limited right to use nuclear weapons.

DIANA WEST: WHO IS TO BLAME?

The Blame Game is not a game. It is serious business, particularly at this point of implosion. We still have the capabilities to think and speak and even act, but they should no longer be regarded as an open-ended proposition.

At this perhaps precious moment, then, it is important not to waste the opportunity to assess blame (and, best case scenario, regroup) in yet another aerobic exercise of venting at the Left (self-congratulation). Especially not when we — our side, not the Left — are to blame.

MAY 2015 MIDEAST OUTPOST

Outpost
Editor: Rael Jean Isaac
Editorial Board: Ruth King, Rita Kramer

Outpost is distributed free to Members of Americans for a Safe Israel

In Memoriam: Beverly Bar Illan

AFSI mourns the death of Beverly Bar-Illan, author, editor and staunch proud Zionist. Her love of Israel, expressed in her columns, culminated in her conversion to Judaism and subsequent Aliyah with her husband David, the late pianist, editor of the Jerusalem Post and chief of information and planning for Benjamin Netanyahu during his first tenure as Prime Minister. We offer deep condolences to her sons Tony and Brian and her many friends and admirers in Israel and America.

Next AFSI Mission to Israel: June 2-10, 2015

Join us for an extraordinary, eye-opening experience.
Learn about the real Israel.
Reservations now being taken.

Baltimore Burns While Obama Plots By Matthew Vadum

Baltimore is burning because community organizers and various thugs are tearing the city apart in the aftermath of the strange death of a young black man who was in the custody of police — and President Obama is trying to make things worse.

In an incredible non-coincidence the rioting follows a weekend rally by the Occupy Wall Street-like Baltimore Peoples Assembly. There also was a first wave of rioting over the weekend. Outside activists have been flooding into Baltimore, according to reports. Police and civilians have been injured. A CVS store was looted and set on fire. Rioters chopped up fire hoses to prevent firefighters from doing their job. Criminal gangs have declared open season on cops. Rioters have been throwing cinder blocks, bricks, and other objects at police. And there aren’t enough cops to go around. Baltimore police are begging police officers in other states to come to Baltimore to help out. Schools are closed Tuesday.

Bikinis Not Burqas:By Bari Weiss…..A Review of Mona Eltahawy’s Book “Headscarves and Hymens-Why the Middle East Needs Sexual Revolution”…see note please

Mona Eltahawy is no Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan or Ayaan Hirsi Ali…… She is an inveterate Israel/Jew basher and apologist for Jihad…..As the reviewer points out….

“The sloppy thinking in “Headscarves and Hymens” reflects an unfortunate tendency in Ms. Eltahawy’s political advocacy. In 2012, after publicizing her plans on the Web, she was charged with vandalism for defacing with pink spray paint a controversial subway ad reading: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” She compromises her credibility especially on the subject of Israel and anti-Semitism: In 2011, for example, she claimed that “not one anti-Israeli or anti-American sentiment was expressed” during the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. As a writer so passionate about women’s rights, Ms. Eltahawy may want to look more closely at the one country in the Middle East where women have been elected prime minister and wear bikinis on the beach.”
Everyone should know the name of Genet Girma, who wore a placard on her wedding reading: ‘I am not circumcised, learn from me.’

If you are cursed to be born a girl in Egypt, there is a 90% chance you will have your genitals cut in the name of purity. In Yemen, there is a 55% chance you will never learn to read and a 79% chance you will never work. And in the United Arab Emirates, your father or husband can beat you and remain fully compliant with the law so long as he leaves no mark.

Yet Muslim women who decry this appalling reality are often branded traitors to their culture and handmaidens to the imperialist forces of Dick Cheney. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji and Asra Nomani have all been dismissed as attention-seeking contrarians or unsophisticated bigots who perpetuate stereotypes about Muslims and the Arab world.

A Double-Standard Windfall for the Clintons By Shannen W. Coffin And Michael J. Edney

Mr. Coffin and Mr. Edney, both former senior lawyers with the George W. Bush administration, are partners in the international law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLP.
Corporate gifts to foreign charities have been treated as illegal bribes—resulting in million-dollar penalties.
Consider these facts: The chairman of a Canadian company named Uranium One reportedly donated $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. At the same time the company was seeking U.S. government approval to sell a 51% controlling stake to Rosatom, the state-owned Russian nuclear agency. Meanwhile, a Russian investment bank with close ties to the Kremlin paid former President Bill Clinton a half-million dollars to speak in Moscow.

Anything worth investigating here? Not according to the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer, President Barack Obama, whose spokesman announced Friday that the allegations were little more than the discredited musings of “a conservative author,” unaccompanied by “any evidence” and apparently unworthy of further discussion.

But imagine if similar payments, under similar circumstances, were made by a U.S. company to a charity closely associated with, say, the Nigerian foreign minister. The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission would be banging on that firm’s doors, asserting serious violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

BRET STEPHENS: HILLARY’S CYNICAL SONG OF SELF

The Clintons are counting on America to digest their ethical lapses the way a python swallows a goat.

Recently I wrote a column about Hillary Clinton’s method of lying: bald deceit sold to liberals with a wink-and-nod as the price of advancing a progressive agenda in this bigoted country of ours. Several readers wrote me to object that the mendacity I ascribed to Mrs. Clinton applied equally to Republicans.

Maybe. But what was striking about these critics is that none of them bothered to rebut the point that Mrs. Clinton is a habitual liar who treats truthfulness in politics the way a calorie-counting diner might treat hollandaise sauce on steak: to be kept strictly on the side or dribbled on in measured doses. Her lying has become as much a given in the liberal mind as Bill Clinton’s womanizing: He does his thing, she does hers.

Get over it.

All of which means that Mrs. Clinton’s presidential bid is an exercise in—and a referendum on—cynicism, partly hers but mainly ours. Democrats who nominate Mrs. Clinton will transform their party into the party of cynics; an America that elects Mrs. Clinton as its president will do so as a nation of cynics. Is that how we see, or what we want for, ourselves?