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December 2015

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

‘Playing into the Hands of ISIS’? American elites take a perverse view of what ISIS is really after. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on December 15th, 2015

‘Playing into the hands of ISIS” is the new Beltway mantra. The finger-shaking by the administration and its supporters warns Americans not to give in to their supposedly natural biases against Muslims.

Never mind that FBI statistics show that Jews in this country are the objects of hate crimes at nearly four times the rate of Muslims. It is mysteriously never reported who are the main perpetrators of hate crimes against Jews. In any case, when the administration alleges Islamophobia, it assumes that if it did not, ISIS might announce to Muslims worldwide, “We told you so,” to confirm its suspicions of American prejudices toward Islam.

But according to Obama’s own logic, his constant suggestions that Americans are prejudiced against Islam would themselves strengthen ISIS by providing them a rationale or justification for their anti-American terrorism. Would they not think, “If President Obama himself is constantly worried that his own people are anti-Muslim, then surely they must be — even though statistics do not support that charge”?

Or are we to think that ISIS reasons along the following lines: “Even after 9/11, Americans let in hundreds of thousands of Muslims, and yet hate crimes against them are far rarer than against Jews. Therefore Americans are our friends, and we will refrain from attacking them”?

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The New Normal Douglas Murray….see note please

By on December 15th, 2015

This is a pithy comment left by a reader of Standpoint “But Israel’s normal has become Europe’s normal — a fact that is difficult to accept.” Difficult to accept, but easy to understand. Both regions are enriched by the Religion of Peace. That was inevitable in Israel’s case, but came about in Europe because of the treachery of our politicians, media and academics, who ignored the wishes of the electorate and insisted that only ignorant racists and xenophobes could object to huge numbers of people moving to Europe from the Third World. What could possibly go wrong, you plebs?”

This is how it happens these days, isn’t it? Last February it was during an interval at the theatre, turning on my mobile phone to find a text from a friend in Copenhagen saying the bullets had just missed her but that she was alive. A few weeks earlier, it had been a broadcaster asking for reaction on Paris before I had heard anything about it or whether any friends had been killed. This time it was a text from a close family member at a dinner in Paris I had chosen to miss in order to try to finish my book on Islam and Europe. They said there had been shooting nearby but they were fine. I texted back that perhaps they should get the bill and go home. Soon the phone began to ring and snapshots of the horror in Paris began to flood in.

The crazy ring-arounds have become a feature of modern European life. Then the lucky ones have the stories of the near-misses: friends who left before the attack, those who survived because they chose to drop their bag off at home before heading to the restaurant. Facebook has a new feature where people can signal themselves “safe” after a major incident anywhere. There is something comforting and horrifying about this. It’s not a surprise to me because I know this is normal life in Israel. But Israel’s normal has become Europe’s normal — a fact that is difficult to accept.

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London Must Learn From Paris Daniel Johnson

By on December 15th, 2015

New York and Washington 2001; Madrid 2004; London 2005; Mumbai 2008; Toulouse 2012; Brussels 2014; Paris 2015; Copenhagen 2015; Sousse 2015; Sinai 2015; Beirut 2015. And now Paris again. Last month’s attack, even more devastating than January’s, has not broken French resistance: reports that Parisians were “gripped with fear” were false. But President Hollande’s declaration of war may be just an escalation in rhetoric.

How much havoc do the jihadis have to wreak before Europe and America resolve to tackle the source of the evil: the ideology of Islamism itself? How many have to die or be maimed — some 500 people in the Paris atrocity alone — before Western leaders recognise that the self-proclaimed Caliph Ibrahim, alias Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and his butchers of Islamic State wish to kill us — all of us, “Jews and crusaders” alike — not because of what we do but because of who we are?

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Michael Danby The Kurdish Antidote to ISIS

By on December 15th, 2015

Sentiment in the West remains opposed to putting ‘boots on the ground’, which is understandable. Much harder to comprehend is the civilized world’s tardiness in supporting the forces that have beaten ISIS and continue to do so
The Bush/Rumsfeld doctrine of sending a heavy American army (then backed by Australia) to drive Saddam out of Iraq is now widely seen as a mistake. But more than that, it has become a convenient straw man for the isolationists who support passivity in the Middle East. Opposition to ‘boots on the ground’ is the catch cry of both those on the isolationist right and what might be termed the Mike Carlton/John Pilger left, which leverages the West’s understandable weariness of military involvement in the Middle East.

But the question is not ‘boots on the ground’. The real question is, ‘whose boots on the ground?’

In the last few weeks Turkey has supposedly sealed its borders against ISIS infiltrators going backwards and forwards. Ankara’s Islamist leadership has a lot to answer for the backing of fundamentalists in Syria and Iraq, the resultant disasters, and concomitant refugee outflows of millions of desperate Sunni Muslims.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Now She Tells Us: Multi-Kulti a ‘Sham’ Says Mutti Merkel By Michael Walsh

By on December 15th, 2015

In other words, the entire scheme was simply to get more bodies into the aging German work force and hope like hell, in less than a single generation, Muslims from the ummah would become post-Christian Germans. Good luck with that:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policy has attracted praise from all over the world. Time magazine and the Financial Times newspaper recently named her Person of the Year, and delegates applauded her for so long at her party’s convention on Monday that she had to stop them.

The speech that followed, however, may have surprised supporters of her policies: “Multiculturalism leads to parallel societies and therefore remains a ‘life lie,’ ” or a sham, she said, before adding that Germany may be reaching its limits in terms of accepting more refugees. “The challenge is immense,” she said. “We want and we will reduce the number of refugees noticeably.”

Although those remarks may seem uncharacteristic of Merkel, she probably would insist that she was not contradicting herself. In fact, she was only repeating a sentiment she first voiced several years ago when she said multiculturalism in Germany had “utterly failed.” “Of course the tendency had been to say, ‘Let’s adopt the multicultural concept and live happily side by side, and be happy to be living with each other.’ But this concept has failed, and failed utterly,” she said in 2010.

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Feminist Academics Join Destroy-Israel Movement By P. David Hornik

By on December 15th, 2015

The National Women’s Studies Association has voted by a huge majority to join the worldwide Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

Their annual conference passed the measure by a 653-86 vote, and their full membership of 12,000 will vote on it in the next two months.

That means the NWSA is on the verge of becoming the fifth American academic association to boycott Israel since April 2013. It began then with the Association for Asian American Studies, and since that time the American Studies Association, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, the American Anthropological Association, and now the NWSA have joined in.

The BDS movement is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and other radical and terror-supporting groups. Its aim is to “solve” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by putting an end to Israel. Its leader are quite explicit about that.

For example, As’ad Abu Khalil: “Justice and freedom for the Palestinians are incompatible with the existence of the State of Israel.” Or Ahmed Moor: “OK, fine. So BDS does mean the end of the Jewish state…. In other words, BDS is not another step on the way to the final showdown; BDS is The Final Showdown.”

None of this, of course, deterred the women’s-studies scholars from signing-on to the movement. Considering that the vote was initiated by a group called Feminists for Justice in/for Palestine, the nature of BDS was undoubtedly an added attraction for many.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

United Arab Emirates declares December 24 holiday: ‘Mohammed’s birthday’ By Thomas Lifson

By on December 15th, 2015

I checked, and this does not appear to be an Onion-like spoof. Emirates 24/7 appears to be a legitimate news site based in Dubai, with stories like “New hospitals in Dubai: Meraas Healthcare launched” and “New UAE rules on import of pesticides.”

It reports:

Hussain bin Ibrahim Al Hammadi, Minister of Education, and Chairman of the Federal Authority for Government Human Resources, has declared Thursday, December 24, an official holiday for the public sector to mark the birth anniversary of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), postponed from December 23.

A circular issued by the Minister of Education stated that the decision is in implementation of the provisions of Paragraph 5, Article 100 of the Cabinet Resolution No. 13 of 2012 and regulations of the decree of Federal Law No. 11 of 2008 on human resources in the federal government and its amendments, which defines the public holidays of ministries and federal authorities in the country.

Just coincidentally upstaging Christmas. And putting the holiday on the Gregorian calendar used by the West, not on the lunar calendar used by Islam.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Professor at Christian college wearing hijab during Advent By Carol Brown

By on December 15th, 2015

Apparently standing with fellow Christians being slaughtered in the Middle East is less important

Larycia Hawkins is a political science professor at Wheaton College, a Christian college in Illinois. On Thursday, she announced on her Facebook page that she will wear a hijab throughout Advent as a symbol of solidarity with Muslims. She plans to wear it everywhere: to work, to class, to church, and on the plane ride home for the Christmas holiday. The Christian Post reports:

“I don’t love my Muslim neighbor because s/he is American. I love my Muslim neighbor because s/he deserves love by virtue of her/his human dignity…I stand in human solidarity with my Muslim neighbor because we are formed of the same primordial clay, descendants of the same cradle of humankind — a cave in Sterkfontein, South Africa that I had the privilege to descend into to plumb the depths of our common humanity in 2014.”

Hawkins…further asserted that not only are Muslims her neighbors but they also “worship the same God.”

“I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book. And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God”….

“As part of my Advent Worship, I will wear the hijab to work at Wheaton College, to play in Chi-town, in the airport and on the airplane to my home state that initiated one of the first anti-Sharia laws (read: unconstitutional and Islamophobic), and at church.”….

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BDS lies when it calls brave IDF soldiers ‘war criminals’ By Barry Shaw

By on December 15th, 2015

BDS lies when they call our brave soldiers “war criminals” and accuse the IDF of “war crimes.” So let me introduce non-Israel, non-Jewish neutral experts to give their opinion.

The High Level Military Group, 14 international former chiefs of staff and senior military officers reviewed the 2014 Gaza conflict from both the IDF and Hamas operations.

They visited Israel both during and after the conflict. They interviewed soldiers from the regular foot soldiers to unit commanders all the way up to the highest ranks of the IDF. In their fact finding missions they also spoke with military intelligence personnel.

While conducting in-depth analysis into Operation Protective Edge they received unprecedented access to the IDF and to government officials up to the Prime Minister that, together with their impeccable military expertise, enabled them to produce a fair and factual report, which they released in early December 2015.

They began by admitting that Israel’s military efforts were entirely necessary and justified in the defense of Israel’s national security as a result of the aggressive and offensive operations conducted against Israeli civilian centers by Hamas and their other terror affiliates in support of Palestinian Hamas actions initiated against Israel.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Looking Down on the American Voter Whining about Donald Trump’s support instead of trying to grab it.By William McGurn

By on December 15th, 2015

Can the American people be trusted?

We’ll find out the Republican answer in a few hours, when their presidential contenders take the stage in Las Vegas for their first post-Paris, post-San Bernardino debate. It promises to be a boisterous night, given how they are already mixing it up offstage. Their challenge will be to get out from under the rhetoric of both President Obama and Donald Trump.

Mr. Obama does not trust the American people. We saw this earlier this month, when he used an Oval Office address about the carnage in San Bernardino to lecture the rest of us about tolerance. Once again he refused to call Islamist terror by its rightful name, perhaps because he is not sure how Americans he once described as clinging to “guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them” might react if he were to speak honestly.

Today Mr. Obama has become our most politically correct president, with nothing real to say on the threats we face. No surprise, then, that the chief beneficiary would be our most politically incorrect candidate, Mr. Trump.
Because when Mr. Trump speaks about suspending Muslim immigration or “bombing the s—t” out of oil fields controlled by Islamic State, what supporters hear is this: I won’t let political correctness stand in the way of keeping America safe. And when Republicans respond by tut-tutting about how distasteful they find him—instead of showing why his argument is full of holes—they too come across as condescending, implicitly sharing the president’s belief that the knuckle-dragging American public just can’t handle the truth.

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