RUTHFULLY YOURS

Yesterday it was Sydney. Today it is Peshawar. Yesterday a coffee shop. Today a school. Yesterday a lone gunman. Today a gang of them. If anybody wondered about the global and diffuse nature of the challenge that Islamic fundamentalism poses, the last 24 hours have given another demonstration of the problem.

Yet what is amazing, after all these years, is how unconcerned many people remain with working out what is going on. How could the Taliban have chosen to attack a school in Peshawar? Why did Boko Haram steal the Nigerian schoolgirls? Why did the Sydney attacker fly that flag? Why do Isis fly theirs? The Western world in particular seems to be made up of not only exceptionally slow, but actually reluctant, learners.

This week there is a new book out by the renowned scholar of Islam, Patrick Sookdeo (I have had the honour of writing the introduction). It is called ‘Dawa: the Islamic strategy for reshaping the modern world’. It not only lays out what Islamic fundamentalists around the world are trying to do, but how a coalition of Muslims and non-Muslims can come together to defeat them. It is, I would suggest, fairly vital reading to educate people about what is going on. But that brings me to one other point.

A considerable – and growing – number of people worldwide now recognise that Muslims and non-Muslims are involved in a war against the literalists and fundamentalists within the Muslim religion. It is a war that is likely to continue for many decades to come, and the propaganda war, as much as the actual war, matters.

Which brings me to this morning’s Daily Mail front page. Last week the Democrat party in the US issued a deeply uninformed and damaging report which they appear to have hoped would damage the previous Republican administration. In fact this wildly misjudged report turns out simply to have done what anybody outside the Democrat high command could have predicted it would do – and done incalculable damage to the United States.

Jihadist Child-Sacrifice – on The Glazov Gang
Unveiling the mindset of the Islamic terrorists who killed over 130 children in Peshawar.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/jihadist-child-sacrifice-on-the-glazov-gang/

BY Moshe Phillips, president and Benyamin Korn , chairman of the Religious Zionists of America, Philadelphia.

During an old controversy involving Martin Indyk, then the U.S. ambassador to Israel, one Israeli political official invoked a particularly nasty historical analogy. Indyk reportedly had been contacting individual Israel cabinet ministers to demand they support making more concessions to the Arabs. “Ambassador Indyk needs to be reminded that he is not the British High Commissioner,” said the chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

Not many Israelis today remember when a foreign power ruled Eretz Yisrael through the proclamations of an absolute dictator, nor how oppressive it was to live under his rule. But prior to Israel’s independence in1948, Jews living in the Holy Land could not shape their own fate. Outside powers – in this case, the British ruling authorities – called the shots, with their High Commissioner deciding what was best for the Jews.

Martin Indyk also acts as if he knows what’s best for the Jews. As President Obama’s special envoy, he declared in an August 2010 New York Times op-ed that Israel should “withdraw from at least 95 percent of the West Bank and accept a Palestinian capital in Arab East Jerusalem.”

In one job or another, Indyk has spent the last two decades trying to bring this about. First as part of the State Department’s Middle East team under President Bill Clinton, then as ambassador to Israel (twice), and more recently as President Obama’s envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Indyk has always pursued his goal of forcing Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians.

Indyk’s passion for his imposed solution is so strong that he has at times even come close to justifying Palestinian violence against Israel. On May 2 of this year, an unnamed “senior U.S. official” told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot: “The Palestinians are tired of the status quo. They will get their state in the end – whether through violence or by turning to international organizations.” Three days later, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Indyk was the official who said it.

That remark recalled a statement made by “a senior U.S. official” to the Jerusalem Post on June 22, 1997, that recent Palestinian rioting against Jews was “a plausible safety valve” which “lets the Palestinians vent their anger.” At the time, Indyk was the U.S. ambassador in Israel.

A mosque in the disputed territories town of Mughayer near Ramallah suffered severe fire damage back in November. The word out immediately was that Jews were responsible. Not just any Jews, of course, but those evil extremist “settlers.”

The mayor of Mughayer, Faraj al-Nassan, told the Associated Press that the Jews were to blame for the fire.

“Only Jewish settlers would do this,” he said.

He neglected to mention any other possibility, including the actual one, the electrical malfunction of a space heater.

Nassan made the statement to the AP, which dutifully reported it, and then the unverified rumor ossified firmly into fact, showing up in dozens of media sources throughout the world.

Yahoo! News posted an AP photograph of an Arab man holding a heavily burned Quran, describing the fire as having resulted from “an attack” against the mosque which “ignited a fire that destroyed its first floor.” The Yahoo! caption included the village’s mayor “blaming Jewish settlers for the attack.”

It wasn’t only an understandably distraught town mayor who blamed the Jews. Reports from villagers blaming Jews were not mere suppositions, they were stated as fact.

The fire in Mughayer took place during a spate of terrorist attacks against Israelis. Many media outlets happily invoked a standard trope known as the “cycle of violence,” where harm to anyone or anything on both sides are presented as similarly motivated acts of hatred.

But as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) revealed on Tuesday, Dec. 16, an investigation of the Mughayer mosque fire conducted by Israeli firefighters determined that “the cause was actually an electrical malfunction.”

I love Chanukah, particularly in New York City. The days are short and by late afternoon the city glows with Christmas lights, menorahs, and enticing shop windows with extravagant displays. I love crispy potato fritters (latkes) with apple sauce and exchange of presents with my kids and grandchildren. It is a happy holiday with a very serious side.

First: It is a happy holiday which celebrates the miraculous lasting of oil for the candles. We see that today as we celebrate the emergence of energy independence in America and Israel with vast supplies in both nations of domestic sources of fuel.

Second: It is a serious holiday that celebrates the triumph of faith and principles against wicked tyrants and faithless coreligionists who worshipped Hellenist idols and profaned the Torah.The word Chanukah actually means “rededication.”

In our great nation we are beset by modern “Hellenists” who profane democracy by worshipping and promoting cults and falsehoods such as man made global warming; the so called war on women; the politically correct notions of root causes for savage behavior; prescriptives for peace that enable enemies; domestic “compassionate” agendas that enslave citizens with perpetual gripes and entitlements; total hypocrisy, confusion and double standards in judging allies such as Israel; and finally, a disdain for and perversion of our great founding principles.

I pray for an American Chanukah- a rededication in America to capitalism, entrepreneurship, academic freedom and all the blessings of democracy for all our citizens….rsk

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/ferguson-and-an-arsonist-in-chief-on-the-glazov-gang-2/

This week’s Glazov Gang was guest-hosted by Michael Finch, the president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He was joined by Morgan Brittany, Conservative TV and Movie Star, Nonie Darwish, author of “The Devil We Don’t Know” and Mell Flynn, the president of Hollywood Congress of Republicans.

The Gang gathered to discuss Ferguson and an Arsonist-in-Chief, analyzing how and why Obama emboldened the thuggery, chaos and violence (starting at 7 minute mark). The episode also focused on Feinstein’s Destructive Torture Charade, dissecting the reasons the Democratic Senator chose to humiliate her country and endanger its citizens’ lives.

Torture is one of those topics that often overwhelm sober reason with lurid emotion. Even people who usually are clear-eyed and rational sink into sloppy thinking and incoherent argument when it comes to torture. Peggy Noonan’s recent Wall Street Journal column about the Senate report on the CIA’s interrogation techniques illustrates this phenomenon perfectly.

Noonan is usually an astute analyst, but her column on the report is riddled with received wisdom and unexamined assumptions. For Noonan, the “important lesson” of the report is not that progressives, as usual, are shameful hypocrites and partisan hacks who will damage their country’s interests for ideological or political advantage. It is not that when fighting a brutal enemy who obeys no laws of war, things are done we’d rather not do in order to save lives. No, her “lesson” is that the enhanced interrogation techniques, “torture” in her view, are “not like us” or “part of the American DNA,” and that, quoting John McCain, such techniques damage “our reputation as a force for good in the world.” These assertions, however, are based on simplistic psychology and flawed reasoning.

First, with very few isolated exceptions, none of the interrogation techniques meets the U.S. Code’s legal definition of torture, which requires the intent to cause severe suffering “other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions,” in the words of the statute. Noonan may think the EITs are “what I believe must honestly be called torture.” But what Noonan, or I, or anyone else “believes” does not trump what the law actually says, and it is the law (Title 18, Part I, Chapter 113C, § 2340) that our officials must follow, not subjective perception or even international laws that conflict with our own. As I said before, if people disagree with the law, then there is a political process for changing it.

The begged question that the EITs are torture undermines by itself the rest of Noonan’s argument. But it suffers from other problems as well. She also makes the fuzzy but simplistic statement that it “won’t help us fight it [war against jihadism] to become less like ourselves and more like those we oppose.” This is a version of the progressives’ mantra since 9/11 that the “terrorists win” if we do certain things that the critics believe are immoral or contrary to our “values”––as if our crisis of national identity is more important than destroying the enemy, the only way we “win.”

The Obama administration is shamelessly outsourcing the United States’ historic leadership in facilitating negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel of a workable, secure two-state solution to the United Nations and European governments. In putting its trust in these two centers of anti-Israel sentiment, the Obama administration refuses to say categorically that it would veto a UN Security Council resolution setting some sort of deadline for the creation of a Palestinian state and Israeli withdrawal to the pre-June 1967 lines.

In the words of an unnamed senior U.S. State Department official quoted by Reuters, “These things are all very much in flux, it’s not as if we’re being asked to take a position on any particular Security Council resolution right now. It would be premature for us to discuss documents that are of uncertain status right now.”

Any Security Council resolution the Obama administration would agree to, which imposes pressure only on Israel to make more unilateral concessions for an illusionary “peace,” will serve to legitimize a United Nations timetable for Israel’s surrender to forces that wish to destroy it. The Gaza debacle following Israel’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza in 2005 and give the Palestinians a chance to build a prototype Palestinian state illustrates the danger Israel would face from being pressured into more withdrawals at this time.

The Palestinian Authority leadership is pressing for action on just such a Security Council resolution as early as this Wednesday, according to a Palestine Liberation Organization official and Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour. The Palestinian resolution, to be sponsored by Jordan (a non-permanent member of the Security Council), would reportedly set a two year deadline for complete Israeli withdrawal from all “occupied” territories, although Jordan’s UN ambassador told reporters it was news to her that any action to vote on the resolution would be taken as soon as the Palestinians are demanding. There is some speculation amongst UN insiders that a vote on a Palestinian resolution could be put off until early in the new year. The Security Council makeup will then be even more inclined towards the Palestinian position, because Malaysia will be replacing South Korea as a non-permanent member of the Security Council.

Small Business Administration (SBA) Abuses Lending Programs “The findings (re: OpenTheBooks.com report) are certain to spur new oversight of the SBA program on Capitol Hill.” The Washington Times | December 1, 2014     “We must never demonize success,  but we don’t need to subsidize it either.” SBA’s Welfare to the Wealthy Click here to read our editorial […]

The Democrats, suddenly shocked by the CIA’s tactics, dishonor the people who died on 9/11.

New York — I personally pledge to purchase for the Central Intelligence Agency as much Kleenex as needed so that those whom it waterboards can dry their noses after detailing their plans to exterminate Americans. This signals how little I am bothered by the “torture” alleged in Senate Democrats’ borderline-treasonous “report” on the CIA’s post-September 11 interrogation techniques.

Democrats’ highly convenient collective amnesia has erased their memories of being briefed on these probes. As a giant hole replaced the World Trade Center and Americans feared follow-on attacks, top congressional Democrats did not wail that interrogations of al-Qaeda suspects “are a stain on our values and our history,” as Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) now moans. Instead, top Democrats told the CIA to squeeze these scum even harder.

As the December 9, 2007, Washington Post explained, congressional leaders from both chambers and parties — including then-House Democratic boss Nancy Pelosi of California — received “graphic and detailed” updates on the CIA’s questioning efforts, including waterboarding, as early as September 2002. While then-representative Jane Harman (D., Calif.) counseled caution, the overwhelming response was applause.

“Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing,” Porter Goss, former House intelligence chairman and then director of Central Intelligence from 2004 to 2006, told the Post. “And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement.”

According to an American official who attended these sessions, “The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough.” One official also observed that “there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, ‘We don’t care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.’”