RUTHFULLY YOURS

Israelis on the left continue to flagellate Israeli settlements in biblical Judea and Samaria as the primary obstacle to the peace.
In two articles within the past week, Nahum Barnea, respected columnist for Yedioth Ahronoth and winner of the Israel Prize for his distinguished writing, has lacerated Israel for diplomatic failure in the recent collapse of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. “A radical minority,” he claimed, “is helping turn Israel into an apartheid state.” Repeating the outrageous recent warning from Secretary of State John Kerry that Israel would soon emulate South Africa if it did not follow his advice, Barnea claimed (ynet news, April 29) “to speak on behalf of another population groaning under an occupation — the Israelis.”

Barnea rejected the inescapable conclusion that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas once again fled the diplomatic scene rather than recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Instead, he focused blame on the favorite target of the Israeli left: Jewish settlers. The major contribution to the diplomatic failure, he asserted, came from the “settler lobby.” Whenever negotiations “showed signs of life,” new settlement construction plans were revealed by Housing Minister Uri Ariel, who “sabotaged, undermined and detonated” the peace process without Prime Minister Netanyahu lifting a finger to stop him.

With the announcement of new construction in Gilo, a community of 40,000 Jews located within the Jerusalem Municipality (and a site of Israelite settlement since 1200 BCE), Abbas abandoned diplomacy. This was another victory for the “radical and reckless” settlement lobby that has the power to “shape the face of Israel.” The Jewish state, Barnea predicted, will become an apartheid state, boycotted and besieged internationally. Then “the world will force Israel to become a binational state, a state of all its citizens,” terminating its existence as a Jewish state. All because authorization was granted for the construction of 1,200 new apartments in a Jerusalem neighborhood.

Barnea’s doomsday scenario turned out to be a warm-up exercise for further castigation of Israel. Three days later, in an article (ynet.news, May 2) that quickly went viral, he revealed the content of his exclusive interview with unnamed “senior American officials” who explained “the real reason” for the collapse of negotiations. Their disclosure “is the closest thing to an official American version of what happened.” Lest the Americans be suspected of hostility to Israel, Barnea pointedly noted, “Israel is very dear to them, but the wounds are deep.”

To be sure, there had been no agreement to freeze settlement construction for the duration of the negotiations. (The Israeli government had learned the lesson of a ten-month settlement freeze during a previous round of talks that went nowhere.) Nonetheless, his American sources asserted, Israeli ministers had used construction plans to “sabotage the success of the talks.”

This David, like his namesake King David, refused to back down. Some days ago in Hevron he was taunted, heckled, pushed and shoved by Arab tormentors.
They kept taking pictures. They win either way. If he fights back, hello The New York Times! That image makes front page over there and all over the Internet as proof of Israeli “aggression.”

If he cuts and runs, the terrorists and their leftist enablers get a good laugh watching yet another Jew so easily made defenseless and helpless.

Just like “the good old days.”

Just like that terrified boy in that famous Holocaust picture who is being shoved along by the Nazis.

Just like that humiliated grandmother who is shown in another famous image trying to deflect fistfuls of blows from the same Nazis…as they smirk and laugh.

But this David fought back, and it wasn’t even a fight. He merely cocked and aimed his weapon when he’d had enough from the bullies.
About a year ago we had pretty much the same story involving Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner. See here as he too refused to be a patsy and what happened? He got himself in trouble with the IDF brass.

This David making headlines is a soldier attached to the Nahal Brigade and we do know his real name, but don’t need it here to compound whatever trouble he faces from his commanders. As we get the story, though he was alone in Hevron when he faced the mob, he allegedly overstepped the IDF’s rules of engagement.

A video sharply critical of Islam and Mohammed, “Innocence of Muslims”, was first posted to the Internet in July 2012. Two months later, still a week prior to the anniversary of the attacks in America on 9-11, there had still been little reaction within the Islamic world.

But on the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in New York, armed militants stormed a “diplomatic outpost” in Benghazi, setting the building on fire. Ambassador Stevens, computer specialist Sean Smith, and CIA security contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, both former Navy SEALs, were killed over the course of two battles that night.”

The US administration was quick to blame the July video for the rioting in such places as Cairo, Istanbul and Rome that preceded the attacks in Libya, as US facilities and embassies were set on fire and attacked across Northern Africa and in the Middle East. And despite major evidence then available to the contrary from the American intelligence and diplomatic sources on the ground locally, the Libyan attacks were initially and through much of the next weeks still described by senior members of the administration as a spontaneous demonstration that got out of hand implying that as such they could not have been anticipated and thus prevented.

Now nearly two years later, the video release continues to be blamed for the riots of September 8-11, 2012 that occurred in Yemen, Egypt, and in Istanbul and Rome, although the attacks in Benghazi are now determined to have been a planned terrorist assault. But this narrative is wrong headed.

We have seen this all before, however, and that is a pattern of the US first not understanding the terrorist attacks against us and then falling victim to a serial attempt to find excuses for Islamic terrorism as related primarily to perceived grievances of the Muslim world against America.

For example, on September 30, 2005, a series of cartoons, some depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist with an atomic bomb, were published by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. One report concluded that few people outside the Scandinavian nation took notice at the time. A group of Danish Muslim organizations brought the issue to the attention of Danish authorities but failed to get any action. By the end of 2005, any violent reaction in the Islamic world to the cartoons being published was virtually non-existent.

In one of the latest examples of the inability of writers, the media and politicians to clearly define our current enemy, Nick Cohen, writing for “The Observer” makes an impassioned plea for the safety of some two hundred and twenty Nigerian girls, seized by one of the more current and infamous forward elements of Islamic Jihad, Boko Haram. For starters, these girls are Christian and from a predominately Christian village in northeast Nigeria, called Chibok.

What I will agree to is the insulting, narrowly focused Obama Administration which has bent over backwards, seeking asylum for children and families of Islamic origin while unconscionably ignoring the plight of beleaguered Christians in places like Homs, the Coptic villages of Egypt and now, Christians once again being brutalized by the Devil’s forces in Nigeria.

By the end of the Observer piece, Cohen quotes a Peter Singer who allegorically describes an apathetic world community, unwilling to secure the safety of a drowning child for fear of ruining expensive clothing. For Cohen, the self-involved and well-dressed, neer-do-well stranger in the allegory, is the collective westernized cultures who are not willing to fund organizations which purport to be helping these people.

He also misses a salient point; the name “Boko Haram”, translates as “Western Education is Sinful”, ie, everything western is tainted and sinful because most western cultures are not Islamic. So, he castigates westerners for not giving western funds to largely, western charities, to transfer to a region ostensibly controlled by Boko Haram fighters who, by their very name, denigrate – and hate Westerners. It is probably also lost on him and others that these children were taken, largely, for dabbling in western cultural ideas…like giving.

Let me clear this up for him and anyone else listening who is similarly confused; It isn’t that people don’t want to help. It is, however that people don’t trust the true abilities, competency and veracity of those claiming to help – especially, governments. It has been proven, over and over again that these organizations which have been established for the reported purpose of aiding the afflicted, waste money at a rate slightly less than our infamous governing body in Washington DC. To add insult to injury, they are headed by CEO’s or even committees stripping those donated funds to feather their grossly incongruous incomes and retirement packages.

CAROLINE GLICK WHOSE BOOK “THE ONE STATE SOLUTION” MISSES HERE. RAND PAUL IS BAD FOR THE GOP. TO FIND REAL AND STEADFAST SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL CHECK OUT THE CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEN WHO ARE PRO LIFE, PRO GUN, PRO KEYSTONE PIPELINE, ANTI OBAMACARE- ALL ISSUES THAT ARE A MIXED BAG FO JEWISH VOTERS. THEN COMPARE THAT TO THE TEPID, MOSTLY NEUTRAL AND OFTEN NEGATIVE ATTITUDES TO ISRAEL AMONG SO MANY OF THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS. THE NEXT PRESIDENTIAL CONTENDER IN THE GOP WILL COME FROM ONE OF THE REALLY SUCCESSFUL GOVERNORS….NOT RAND PAUL WHO IS A TOTAL TYRO IN FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY….RSK

Republican Senator Rand Paul is an isolationist. This ought to make him a natural ally for appeasers like Steve Walt and John Mearshimer and the whole blame Israel first crowd.

And indeed, he has taken positions, like opposing additional sanctions on Iran that placed him in their camp.

But Paul is a mixed bag.

Last week, following the PLO’s unity deal with terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Paul introduced the Stand With Israel Act. If it had passed into law, Paul’s act would have required the US to cut off all funding to the Palestinian Authority, including its security forces. The only way the administration could have wiggled out of the aid cutoff would have been by certifying that the PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad had effectively stopped being the PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Paul’s conditions for maintaining aid would have required the President to certify to Congress that the PA – run jointly by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the PLO –formally and publicly recognized Israel as a Jewish state; renounced terrorism; purged all individuals with terrorist ties from its security services; terminated all anti-American and anti-Israel incitement, publicly pledged not to engage in war with Israel; and honored previous agreements signed between the PLO and Israel.

As the 50th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution approaches some of the former students who participated in its Red Guard terror have been trying to make amends to their victims. If China’s former leftist fanatics feel some remorse for the atrocities they participated in, the same can’t be said of their American counterparts.

Even as the Cultural Revolution was dying down in China, it flared up in the United States. The Weather Underground drew inspiration from China’s Red Terror. Their founding manifesto cited the Red Guard as a model for a “mass revolutionary movement.”

Bill Ayers, among others, had signed a letter, “Long live People’s China. Love live Comrade Mao.”

The American counterparts of China’s Red Guard remain largely unrepentant because here the Cultural Revolution never ended. Instead it went mainstream. Its members were never disavowed and their acts of terror continue to be celebrated and whitewashed by a left that finds them alternately embarrassing and thrilling.

The terrorists became celebrities and the radicals became part of the system and set the rules. There was less violence, but more authoritarianism. Instead of carrying on a futile campaign of bombings and bank robberies, the radicals used the vast wealth and power of the system to train the next generation of the Red Guard. And that next generation did the same thing.

Each wave of the Cultural Revolution in the United States has eroded civil rights and illiberally undermined a liberal society. Though the Red Guards chose to work within the system, they are animated by an unmistakable contempt and hatred for the country and its institutions.

Their endgame has not changed. Only their tactics have.

Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau recently made a video in which he taunted the mothers of the girls he kidnapped and bragged, while praising Allah, how he will sell them on the market.

Frontpage editors have decided to shed light on the Islamic context of Shekau’s barbaric acts and words by reprinting a segment of an interview from our November 23, 2007 issue, in which Dr. Bill Warner discussed the inspiration and sanctioning that Muslims find in Islam for slavery and rape:

*Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Bill Warner, the director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI) and spokesman for politicalislam.com. CSPI’s goal is to teach the doctrine of political Islam through its books and it has produced an eleven book series on political Islam. Mr. Warner did not write the CSPI series, but he acts as the agent for a group of scholars who are the authors. The Center’s latest book is The Submission of Women and Slaves, Islamic Duality.

FP: Bill Warner, welcome back to Frontpage Magazine. This is the second part in our two-part series with you on the Center’s most recent book. In the first part we discussed Islam and its doctrine on the submission of women. In this second and final part we will discuss the matter of slavery.

Warner: It is a pleasure to work with Frontpage.

FP: So tell us in general where Islam stands on slavery.

Warner: Islam’s stand on slavery is based on its political principles of submission and duality. The principle of submission could not be clearer. By definition a slave is the most submissive of all people. You become a slave only when you have no more choices. A slave has completely submitted to a master.

The principle of duality is shown by the fact that Islam does not enslave Muslims, only kafirs (non-Muslims). Since only kafirs are enslaved, it assures that more of the world submits to Islam.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-war-against-the-jews?f=puball

Nearly seventy years after the end of the Holocaust and its recent commemoration, Jews frequently recite the pledge of “Never Again”; yet, the war against the Jews continues and with the exception of a few lone voices, no one within government, Jewish leadership, the media, or authority is responding.

The war against the Jews did not end with the defeat of Nazi Germany. While there may have been a respite for a few decades, it has raised its ugly head once again, and presently threatens European Jewry, Israel, and increasingly North American Jewry. From Western European capitols to Ukrainian cities in the east, anti-Semitism is on the rise, while we in North America are witnessing an ever increasing climate of anti-Semitic hate on college campuses and the Internet.

The Nazi uniform of yesterday has been replaced by young Muslim men hiding under their keffiyehs (terrorist scarves) chanting “death to the Jews” and “death to Israel”. Under the guise of freedom of speech, they terrorize Jewish youth on the streets of Paris, American campuses or as in NYU, their dormitories. The Muslim Student Association, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, with over 1000 chapters across our college campuses is permitted to incite and wreck havoc upon young Jews that would never be permitted against Muslims or Blacks. During Israeli Apartheid Week, young Jews are called Nazis, racists and baby killers. Where are the cries of the righteous among us? Where are the voices of the Chancellors, the Presidents, Board of Directors, and the faculties in the halls of academia? Their eerie silence speaks volumes and their tolerance of evil is a moral failure that will haunt their universities for time to come.

Israel, the only Jewish state, with half of the Jewish population has been earmarked for destruction by those who wish for a Judenrein Middle East. While Muslims have a majority in 49 countries with an Arab land mass of over 5 million square miles, Jews with a sliver of land to call their own are begrudged the right to self-determination, a right allotted to all other nations. Condemnation for the Jewish ancestral homeland is a favorite pastime at the United Nations, the European Union, and this American administration. On April 25th of this year, John Kerry, warned Israel at a meeting with world leaders that “Israel will become an apartheid State if it doesn’t make peace soon.” Note that this warning was not directed at the “Palestinians” who refuse to even recognize a Jewish state, but at a Jewish democratic ally who has traded land for peace, only to receive acts of terror in return.

There is much more than meets the eye to those little labels proclaiming foodstuffs fit to be consumed by the Prophet’s dutiful adherents. Much more than statements of religious purity they represent a concerted and organised attempt to further Islamic influence in the West.

“As Islamic violence, increasingly macabre, rages throughout the Middle East and Africa and sporadic attacks occur in too many other areas to mention, as Christians are abused, murdered and their churches destroyed in foreign lands, Australians are being encouraged to purr over the concept of “halal ecosystems” and halal-approved “freshness”; and purr the writer of this Monash article certainly did. Had journalistic curiosity been a factor, the article might have asked about “endangered or over-fished” Middle East Christians, or whether the knives of the Prophet’s head-lopping militants are kept very sharp and in full accordance with halal requirements.”

The Byron Bay Cookie Company must have been shocked by the number of angry comments on its Facebook page regarding “halal-certified Anzac biscuits”. The company had cheerfully declared that it would be “sending cookies to the Australian troops stationed overseas for Anazc day. If you would like to send them a special message, please comment on this post and we’ll collate all your messages.” No mention was made of the halal certification, but the word was out, courtesy of the sleuths at Boycott Halal in Australia.

The comments ranged from bafflement to fury at the company’s alleged betrayal of Australian values — “Halal certified cookies which finance the spread of the very ideology that motivates the killers of our sons and daughters? Your moral compass needs a serious re-adjustment”, ” for example. There were vows never again to buy Byron Bay Cookie Company products, as well as expressions of support for Australian troops and their sacrifices. The company responded that it was trying to be “respectful and inclusive”, which drew further lashings of ire.

Multiculturalism, that brilliant policy by which people in all Western countries, that is, all developed nations, were to enjoy “unity in diversity” and become “strong” by means of non-discriminatory and fast-paced immigration (in Kate Lundy’s earnest but hilarious words, “One of the reasons I believe Australians are so good at sport is because we are so culturally diverse”) appears not to be producing another iteration of the post-World War II immigration boom’s “New Australians” so much as as a re-made Australia. It hardly needs to be said that deep divisions are appearing in the overall population on which the policy was imposed.

Even some of the most ardent “tolerance and diversity” enthusiasts are becoming uneasy about the ever-burgeoning demands by Muslim arrivals, whose more enterprising members have found ways not only to extract expensive privileges to do with “religious requirements” (prayer rooms, special Muslim officers in councils, and so on) but also to promote the halal-certification business.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2014/05/rubbish-history-books-national-curriculum/

The National Curriculum’s Bogus History

Gross errors of fact, ideologically tinted misrepresentations of the past, the mis-identification of historical figures — welcome to the tosh being fed to schoolchildren by the educational establishment. If Johnny can’t grasp how the past shapes the present and future, blame his textbooks.

Since Christopher Pyne announced the review of the national curriculum in January this year, the national curriculum has been a topic of heated debate, and no area of the curriculum has received more attention than history.

On the one hand, proponents of the history curriculum — many of whom were directly involved in the drafting process — have accused Pyne of “politicising history” and have claimed the existing document is somehow immune to bias and is entirely objective. On the other hand, critics of the national curriculum have maintained that the existing curriculum is biased in many respects, and that it denigrates Australia’s Western heritage and reflects a distinctly socialist and materialist view of history.

While the debate rages on, Labor’s history curriculum has already been rolled out into many Australian classrooms. A number of history textbooks that closely reflect the contents of the curriculum are appearing on booklists everywhere,.

We came across the some of these textbooks while writing our critique of the national curriculum at the Institute of Public Affairs. These books contain so many outrageous statements and factual errors that they were worthy of a critique on their own.

The errors and distortions in these textbooks are not just problematic for their own sake: they reveal the fundamental ideological biases of the national curriculum itself. Most schools across Australia are now using at least one of them for Year 7 to 10 history classes. Especially popular are the Jacaranda History Alive books (or the equivalent Retroactive series in New South Wales), the Oxford Big Ideas—History books, and the Pearson History series.

We took a sample of history textbooks from all the major publishers. The sample included the Year 7 Pearson, the Year 8 Macmillan, the Year 8 Cambridge, the Year 9 Jacaranda, and the Year 10 Nelson/CENGAGE Learning. We also had a look at the Oxford Year 7, 9 and 10, because these books most closely reflect the contents of the national curriculum and were written by some of the academics who were involved in the drafting process.

Not everything about these textbooks is bad. The best of them are glossy, colourful, filled with bright and interesting images, and pleasant to leaf through. Some are much better than others. The content and quality of some sections is also excellent. Usually, they provide very good—if somewhat superficial—introductions to the two world wars, and generally they provide some excellent content on technological advances and economic changes during the Industrial Revolution. Nevertheless, these history books are notable for their factual errors, controversial statements and unwarranted generalisations.

Just a brief survey of the Pearson Year 7 chapter on “Ancient Rome” reveals some of the fundamental problems that pervade most of the textbooks. My short assessment of this thirty-nine-page chapter found sixty-one obvious factual errors. These errors are not statements that are debatable or contested in scholarship, although there were many of these as well; there are sixty-one factual errors that can be refuted swiftly with easily available evidence.

Some errors were as basic as confusing “BC” and “AD” or citing the wrong dates. For example, the textbook claims that the Romans built the main part of the Appian Way in 32 BC. The correct date is 312 BC, around the time Rome established control over Italy. It also says that Cicero became consul in 63 AD. The correct date is 63 BC, before the Republic collapsed. It also says in a timeline on page 222 that Caesar became consul in 50 BC and invaded “France, then Britain”. In fact, Caesar was consul in 59 BC, and after his consulship ended he led campaigns in Gaul, Germania and Britannia from 58 to 50. He returned to Italy and crossed the Rubicon in 49, thus beginning the Civil War. Once again, the chronology in the textbook is wrong.