Displaying the most recent of 90930 posts written by

Ruth King

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Victory for left wing thuggery: Rallies in San Fran and Berkeley cancelled By Rick Moran

By on August 28th, 2017

Two rallies planned in San Francisco and Berkeley this weekend were cancelled after Antifa and other groups threatened rally participants.

In San Francisco, a free speech demonstration planned by the group Patriot Prayer was cancelled by organizer Joey Gibson because of threats demonstrators had received online and the attitude of the city’s Democratic politicians who, although allowing the demonstration to take place, walled off the park where it was to be held, thus preventing anyone from hearing what the group had to say.

Another rally in Berkeley never got a permit but was going to be held anyway until more threats from Antifa forced its cancellation too.

The hysteria ginned up about white supremacists and Nazis resulted in Patriot Prayer being branded a “hate group” and Democratic politicians pretending that they were. This despite the Southern Poverty Law Center – not known for their tolerance of conservative and religious groups – stating on their website:

“At his most recent rally, in Seattle on Aug. 13, Gibson openly denounced white supremacism and neo-Nazis. In subsequent interviews, he has taken lengths to explain that he now works to actively exclude them. There were no visible signs of white-nationalist members at the Seattle rally.”

Earlier rallies organized by Gibson featured some uninvited guests – white supremacists and Nazis who started melees with counterprotesters. The inexperienced activist did not know how to exclude the extremists. He appears to be getting better at it, but that hardly mattered to the far left Democratic authorities in San Francisco.

ABC News:

“They’re definitely doing a great job of trying to make sure my message doesn’t come out,” Gibson said.

San Francisco officials closed the park where Gibson had planned a news conference after cancelling the rally at Crissy Field. City officials surrounded Alamo Square park with a fence and sent scores of police officers — some in riot gear — to keep people out. Mayor Ed Lee defended the city’s response.

“If people want to have the stage in San Francisco, they better have a message that contributes to people’s lives rather than find ways to hurt them,” Lee said. “That’s why certain voices found it very difficult to have their voices heard today.”

Gibson later spoke in suburban Pacifica with a handful of supporters that included African Americans, a Latino and a Samoan American. Several said they support President Donald Trump and want to join with moderates to promote understanding and free speech.

More than a thousand demonstrators against Patriot Prayer still turned out around Alamo Square park waving signs condemning white supremacists and chanting, “Whose streets? Our streets!” Hundreds of others took to the streets in the Castro neighborhood.

“San Francisco as a whole, we are a liberal city and this is not a place for hate or any sort of bigotry of any kind,” Bianca Harris said. “I think it’s a really powerful message that we’re sending to people who come here to try to spew messages of hate that it’s just not welcome in this city.”

Benjamin Sierra, who organized counter protesters, said the demonstration had become a “victory rally.”

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Protests Turn Violent in Berkeley; 13 Arrested Right-wing events in the Bay Area failed to materialize but sparked left-wing marches By Ian Lovett and Patience Haggin

By on August 28th, 2017

BERKELEY, Calif.—A mass protest opposing a right-wing rally that had been planned here turned violent on Sunday, as black-clad activists clashed with a handful of conservative demonstrators.

The protest, which drew thousands of people chanting anti-fascist slogans and denouncing white supremacists, was the second major action in the Bay Area by left-wing groups this weekend.

Several thousand protesters also gathered in San Francisco on Saturday, in response to a conservative group’s plans to hold a rally there. Both right-wing rallies were ultimately canceled, with organizers citing fears of violence against their supporters.

While Saturday’s events were mostly peaceful, they turned violent Sunday, leading to several arrests in Berkeley.

Protesters dressed in black, some carrying shields, attacked Joey Gibson, organizer of the conservative group Patriot Prayer, on Sunday according to videos posted online. Mr. Gibson, who had canceled a Saturday event in San Francisco, appeared to have been arrested later Sunday, according to videos posted online.

The Berkeley police said 13 people were arrested on Sunday afternoon but the department couldn’t confirm the names of those arrested.

Mr. Gibson didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The events echoed similar protests that turned violent in Berkeley on March 4 and April 15.

Police had braced for a potentially violent showdown in San Francisco this weekend between left- and right-wing activists, but any direct conflict was largely muted by the cancellation of several of the planned right-wing events. Several thousand protesters marched through streets in the city on Saturday.

Mr. Gibson had organized a “Freedom Rally” to take place in San Francisco’s Crissy Field, which is operated by the National Park Service. On Friday, Mr. Gibson canceled the event, citing fears of violence from left-wing protesters, and said he would instead hold an event in a San Francisco public park.

But police closed the park off entirely on Saturday morning. Left-wing protesters then took over a nearby block and marched through the streets with a police escort, aiming their ire at President Donald Trump as well as the right-wing groups.

“We’re going to deny space to Nazis,” said Mike Selden, a member of Democratic Socialists of America’s San Francisco chapter. “The idea is to get them to cancel. This is an ideal outcome. No one had to get violent, and we showed we’re not going to accept fascism.”

Mr. Gibson blamed local and federal authorities for his decision to cancel the events. In a video posted on his Facebook account, he said the city’s actions “felt like a setup.” He said police told him they would allow about 50 of his supporters into the public park, while other supporters would remain outside, where they risked enduring violence from left-wing protesters and anarchists. CONTINUE AT SITE

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

To the Left, “Ignorance IS Strength” Edward Cline

By on August 28th, 2017

On August 19th, Pamela Geller revealed the questions asked by Pro Publica’s Lauren Kirchner before Kirchner got Geller’s PayPal account terminated.

I am a reporter at ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative newsroom in New York. I am contacting you to let you know that we are including your website in a list of sites that have been designated as hate or extremist by the American Defamation League or the Southern Poverty Law Center. We have identified all the tech platforms that are supporting websites on the ADL and SPLC lists.

We would like to ask you a few questions:

1) Do you disagree with the designation of your website as hate or extremist? Why?

2) We identified several tech companies on your website: PayPal, Revcontent, Disqus, and Newsmax. Can you confirm that you receive funds from your relationship with those tech companies? How would the loss of those funds affect your operations, and how would you be able to replace them?

3) Have you been shut down by other tech companies for being an alleged hate or extremist web site? Which companies?

4) Many people opposed to sites like yours are currently pressuring tech companies to cease their relationships with them – what is your view of this campaign? Why?

Our deadline is 5pm EST today.

Thank you,

Lauren Kirchner

“She had asked me, ‘Have you been shut down by other tech companies for being a hate site?’ I mean, you have to love the assumption that I’m a hate site because I cover jihad terror-related news and sharia. That’s the focus of the website,” Geller said.

And these were loaded questions. When did you stop beating your wife? A question no modern prosecutor would dare ask a witness, especially not a Muslim.

Is the campaign to shut down sites that purportedly express “hate speech,” or “racism,” or the alleged defamation of Islam and Muslims, censorship for the sake of wielding censoring power, or is it to keep the public in the dark, to enforce ignorance, to create and sustain a dead silence? “Ignorance is Strength”? Whose strength? Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four worked in Minitru producing “fake news.” In the film and in the novel, a Party superior compliments Smith for his “elegant” rewriting of news in Newspeak (although how one can lend “elegance” to Newspeakis beyond my ken).

Is their purpose to make the electronic ether as barren of information as Mars is as barren of boxwoods and roses?

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Swamp Report Card: Grading Enemies and Friends by Linda Goudsmit

By on August 28th, 2017

Dear Mr. President,
I am sending the current swamp report card for your review.
Most sincerely,
Linda Goudsmit
http://goudsmit.pundicity.com

Swamp Creature Report Card:

Navy Admiral James “Ace” Lyons shocked the nation with his candid remarks at the Center for Security Policy “Defeat Jihad Summit” held in January, 2015. Admiral Lyons calmly and plainly stated that Obama was deliberately and unilaterally disarming the military. The Admiral further warned that the Muslim Brotherhood has already penetrated every one of our national security security agencies including our intelligence agencies.

https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-chapman/admiral-lyons-obama-s-strategy-it-s-anti-american-pro-islamic-it-s-pro

Instead of heeding this dire warning Mr. President, your government continues to be informed and advised by Obama legacy staffers who remain in government advancing Obama’s anti-American, pro-Islamic, pro-Iranian, and pro-Muslim Brotherhood agenda. Whether uninformed, misinformed, or disinformed the Obama leftovers threaten our national security with their skewed information because those are the people who are briefing you daily. Islam is not a religion like any other. Islam is a comprehensive socio-political ideology with military (jihadi), educational (mosques/cultural centers), and religious (imams) wings. Islam is an expansionist movement seeking world dominion. There is no separation of church and state in Islam. Islam is a comprehensive ideology governed by supremacist religious sharia law. Islam seeks conquest and submission. Islam is spread through population jihad, educational jihad, religious jihad, military jihad including terrorism, and stealth jihad that relies on taqiyyah – lying in the service of Islam.

Mr. President you were exactly correct when you said that open borders is a Trojan Horse – it is the vehicle for population jihad against the host country. Identifying your friends and identifying your enemies in your administration, the military, and among national security staffers is an urgent matter. It does not matter if they are uninformed, misinformed, or disinformed. Any advisor or staffer who refuses to utter the words radical Islamic terror does not belong in your administration. If staffers embrace sharia law, promote Islam, are apologists for Islam, are members of the Muslim Brotherhood or CAIR and support Obama’s purging of materials that implicate Islam, they are your enemies and must be removed. You are being surrounded by Obama leftovers who will continue to disinform you so that your decisions will tilt toward Obama’s failed globalist policies. Mr. President you are being dragged into the swamp you were elected to drain.

McMaster was recommended for the position of National Security Advisor (NSA) director by #2 swamp creature John McCain. Under McMaster’s leadership the people who have the courage to speak out and expose the existential danger of Islam are being purged from the military and from the national security staff. Those who have the courage to support the initiatives of your America-first candidacy are being eliminated while the Obama globalist leftovers remain.

Trump loyalists Michael Flynn, K.T. McFarland, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, Derek Harvey, Rich Higgins, Adam Lovinger, Steve Bannon, and Sebastian Gorka are all gone. Obama loyalists Dina Habib-Powell, Allison Hooker, Fernando Cutz, Andrea Hall, Rear Admiral David Kriete, Jessica Cox, Stephanie Morrison, Heather King, and Robert Wilson all remain. McMaster’s indefensible defense of Obama loyalist Susan Rice allowed her to retain her security clearance. McMaster claimed Rice did nothing wrong unmasking the identities of Trump transition aides and leaking the transcripts of Mr. Trump’s phone conversations with foreign leaders. REALLY?

McMaster being a member of International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) for eleven years 2006-2017 is problematic. IISS is an English think tank funded by profiteer George Soros that promotes globalism. In 2010 the Bahraini royal family began secretly donating funds to IISS – $31.6 million – approximately one third of its revenues. Huge sums of money are not donated without the expectation of influence. McMaster’s association for eleven years with IISS explains his globalism and opposition to your commitment to American sovereignty. McMaster should never have been chosen to serve in your administration because he is ideologically opposed to your vision even if he served with distinction in Afghanistan.

McMaster’s association with a think tank that publicly endorsed and defends the anti-American Iran deal is even more problematic. Iran is the single greatest fomenter of terrorism in the middle east and Obama’s deceitful Iran deal enriched and resupplied an ailing Iran that was suffering under Saudi pressure.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why the Left Can’t Let Go of Racism Liberals sell innocence from America’s past. If bigotry is pronounced dead, the racket is over. By Shelby Steele

By on August 28th, 2017

Is America racist? It used to be that racism meant the actual enforcement of bigotry—the routine implementation of racial inequality everywhere in public and private life. Racism was a tyranny and an oppression that dehumanized—animalized—the “other.” It was a social malignancy, yet it carried the authority of natural law, as if God himself had dispassionately ordained it.

Today Americans know that active racism is no longer the greatest barrier to black and minority advancement. Since the 1960s other pathologies, even if originally generated by racism, have supplanted it. White racism did not shoot more than 4,000 people last year in Chicago. To the contrary, America for decades now—with much genuine remorse—has been recoiling from the practice of racism and has gained a firm intolerance for what it once indulged.

But Americans don’t really trust the truth of this. It sounds too self-exonerating. Talk of “structural” and “systemic” racism conditions people to think of it as inexorable, predestined. So even if bigotry and discrimination have lost much of their menace, Americans nevertheless yearn to know whether or not we are a racist people.

A staple on cable news these days is the “racial incident,” which stands as a referendum on this question. Today there is Charlottesville. Yesterday there were the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and others. Don’t they reveal an irrepressible racism in American life? At the news conferences surrounding these events there are always the Al Sharpton clones, if not the man himself, ready to spin the tale of black tragedy and white bigotry.

Such people—and the American left generally—have a hunger for racism that is almost craven. The writer Walker Percy once wrote of the “sweetness at the horrid core of bad news.” It’s hard to witness the media’s oddly exhilarated reaction to, say, the death of Trayvon Martin without applying Percy’s insight. A black boy is dead. But not all is lost. It looks like racism.

What makes racism so sweet? Today it empowers. Racism was once just racism, a terrible bigotry that people nevertheless learned to live with, if not as a necessary evil then as an inevitable one. But the civil-rights movement, along with independence movements around the world, changed that. The ’60s recast racism in the national consciousness as an incontrovertible sin, the very worst of all social evils.

Suddenly America was in moral trouble. The open acknowledgment of the nation’s racist past had destroyed its moral authority, and affirming democratic principles and the rule of law was not a sufficient response. Only a strict moral accounting could restore legitimacy.

Thus, redemption—paying off the nation’s sins—became the moral imperative of a new political and cultural liberalism. President Lyndon Johnson turned redemption into a kind of activism: the Great Society, the War on Poverty, school busing, liberalized welfare policies, affirmative action, and so on.

This liberalism always projects moral idealisms (integration, social justice, diversity, inclusion, etc.) that have the ring of redemption. What is political correctness, if not essentially redemptive speech? Soon liberalism had become a cultural identity that offered Americans a way to think of themselves as decent people. To be liberal was to be good.

Here we see redemptive liberalism’s great ingenuity: It seized proprietorship over innocence itself. It took on the power to grant or deny moral legitimacy across society. Liberals were free of the past while conservatives longed to resurrect it, bigotry and all. What else could “Make America Great Again” mean? In this way redemptive liberalism reshaped the moral culture of the entire Western world with sweeping idealisms like “diversity,” which are as common today in Europe as in America.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN SEE NOTE PLEASE

By on August 27th, 2017

A tiny country surrounded by implacable enemies and an international hate machine in the media and the academies contributes more to the welfare of the entire world than any single nation in the hostile and hypocritical European nation….amazing indeed! Thanks to my e-pal Michael Ordman for compiling this weekly list….rsk
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
Detecting cancer early via hyper-MRI. Researchers at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center have made a breakthrough in non-invasive scanning. Using high-power MRI imaging they illuminate nuclei of Phosphorus atoms in body tissues. It reveals tissue pH (acidity) levels that can indicate the early formation of tumors.
http://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/A-Hadassah-hospital-world-first-503372

Cause of rare children’s disease discovered. Dr Orly Elpeleg of Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center has identified the genetic mutation responsible for a rare and devastating pediatric neurological disease that has baffled doctors for years. Discovery of the DNA flaw can help early diagnosis and treatment development.
http://nocamels.com/2017/08/rare-children-disease-gene-mutation

A bracelet to monitor vital signs. Israel’s BiPS Health is developing a medical bracelet that constantly monitors blood pressure, blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), respiration rate and heart rate. The bracelet incorporates two short inflatable finger cuffs with sensors. It will benefit both nurses and patients.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-startup-looks-to-develop-blood-pressure-wrist-monitor/

Preventing kidney damage during surgery. Israel-founded biotech Quark has announced success in a Phase II trial of its treatment for preventing kidney damage during open-heart surgery. 300,000 such operations are performed annually in the US alone. Quark is now in Phase III trials to use the treatment in kidney transplants.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-quark-reports-positive-kidney-treatment-trial-1001199311

Brain center dedicated. I reported previously (Mar 2013) on the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Brain Sciences Center. Construction is now complete and the $58 million building, scheduled to open in October. Another $92 million has been allocated for future research projects.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/hebrew-university-to-dedicate-new-brain-research-center/

Emergency medical training for Gap Year students. Thanks to United Hatzalah, Israel gap year students can now participate in Israel’s first officially recognized NREMT (national registry for emergency medical technicians) program – the most recognized accreditation for medical first responders in the United States.
https://israelrescue.org/campaigns/NREMT

First transplant using lab-grown bone. Medical history was made at Emek Medical Center in Afula when semi-liquid live human bone tissue grown in a lab from a 40-year-old patient’s own fat cells was transplanted into the patient’s arm by injection. The early-stage trial used technology by Israel’s Bonus Bio (see here)
https://www.israel21c.org/in-world-first-israeli-man-gets-lab-grown-bone-tissue-injected-in-arm/

More innovative Israeli bandages. (TY Hazel) Israeli border police medics have been testing Israeli-made Woundclot bandages that clot the blood fast (even on stomach and artery wounds) and then dissolve in a week.
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=44695
Also, Dr Amir Bakar (co-founder of Israeli startup Nurami) explained his post-brain-surgery patches on ILTV. https://www.youtube.com/embed/i6_hK0SUyBw?rel=0 (See also 5th Feb newsletter)

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

Forms of anti-Semitism are steadily increasing in higher education by Helene Meyers

By on August 27th, 2017

This article contains explicit and potentially offensive terms that are essential to reporting and commenting on the topic.

The white supremacist participating in the “Unite the Right” march who claimed that Charlottesville, Va., is “run by Jewish communists and criminal niggers [1]” clarified that anti-Semitism and racism are the hateful intersectional bedfellows of the so-called alt-right. The events in Charlottesville should make it harder to deny that white Jews as well as people of color, immigrants, Muslims and LGBTQ people are the targets of those who clamor for a white ethno-state. The omnipresence of Nazi symbols, the chants of “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us,” along with the intimidation and threats leveled against a synagogue in Charlottesville [2], make it clear that anti-Semitism is a real and contemporary danger.

But not all forms of anti-Semitism are as crude and explicit as those on display in Charlottesville earlier this month. Soft forms of anti-Jewish sentiment are steadily becoming part of our culture, even and especially in higher education. And sometimes the most seemingly ordinary academic rituals unwittingly reveal the slow creep of anti-Semitism or, at the very least, an imperviousness to that particular form of hate and ignorance.

For instance, although I’m a literary critic by trade, I don’t generally read catalog changes all that closely. Nor do I usually consider them a canary in the coal mine. But a curriculum discussion that started last year about an Introduction to Judaism course at my Texas liberal arts college, Southwestern University, is beginning to look like a harbinger of a disturbing academic and national trend: the disappearing Jew.

Catalog changes are usually pro forma. By the time they reach the faculty at large, all invested parties have been consulted, and we simply approve the list of changes at a spring faculty meeting. Although I regularly teach Jewish literature and film courses, I had no idea that Introduction to Judaism was on the chopping block until an email that listed catalog changes showed up in my inbox.

University rules about the catalog, budget cuts and personnel changes were all offered as reasons for this curricular change once I started a public discussion about it. Ultimately, the elimination of this course ended up being deferred.

Except, apparently, it wasn’t. Through what has been framed as a bureaucratic mishap, the faculty decision not to delete the course was not officially communicated to the records office, and the course was deleted from the catalog. When the issue came up for discussion again this year with the curriculum committee, the religion department affirmed its unanimous decision to get rid of the course. Since the course had already been mistakenly deleted from the catalog, it wasn’t considered a catalog change, so it wasn’t reported to the faculty at large.

So now the following introductory religion courses are regularly offered at my national liberal arts university: Introduction to Christianity, Introduction to Islam, Introduction to Hinduism, Introduction to Buddhism and Introduction to Native American Traditions. I celebrate the religious diversity of such course offerings, but it eludes me that Introduction to Judaism no longer has a place at this multifaith table. Academically, it simply doesn’t make sense. As one alumna put it, “How do you study Abrahamic traditions without Judaism?” Another affirmed that her study of Judaism was essential to her understanding of Christianity and Islam. Teaching Christianity and Islam without Judaism in the mix is curricular supersessionism. Although I’m not surprised that replacement theology is advocated by hate groups such as Vanguard America [3], it’s chilling to discover that progressive academics are, perhaps unintentionally, developing their own brand of replacing Jews.

When this curricular saga first started, it seemed like a local story. My inquiries to the American Academy of Religion and the Association of Jewish Studies confirmed that the disappearance of Intro to Judaism courses was not a thing. However, I now think that the disappearance of Introduction to Judaism on my campus is mirrored by extracurricular activities on college campuses across the country as well as by events in the public square. And it is precisely that mirroring that makes this curricular change so troubling.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Christians Who Libel Israel: The Iona Community by Denis MacEoin

By on August 27th, 2017

“Why Gaza does not have bomb shelter[s]? Hamas took control of Gaza Strip in 2005 following Israeli withdrawal. However, hostilities never ended… Had Hamas built bomb shelters, the causalities would have been reduced. It seems Hamas does not pay much attention to the number of dead Palestinians.” — Abdulateef Al-Mulhim, journalist, Arab News, 2014.

Israeli soldiers do not set out to kill Palestinian children. Palestinian terrorists, however, knowingly and with malice aforethought, shoot, blow up, and slit the throats of Israeli children. You come from a Christian community, yet you appear to show compassion only for Palestinian children. If you do have feelings for Jewish children, I have never heard you say so.

Israeli children are never taught to hate and kill Palestinians. Their schools inculcate peace-making and the Jewish ethic of tikkun olam, “repairing the world,” making it a better place. No international body has ever shown otherwise. But there is a vast body of evidence showing that Palestinian teachers and leaders do the exact opposite. British and other foreign aid money paid to the Palestinian Authority goes “into Palestinian schools named after mass murderers and Islamist militants, which openly promote terrorism and encourage pupils to see child killers as role models.”

You have close connections to the Palestinian people and ought to have influence on them, to preach a Christian message of love and brotherhood. Are you willing to tackle them on their destructive use of children as cannon fodder and their educational system that turns little boys and girls into Jew-hating fanatics? Will you have the humility to apologize to the Jews of Israel for your unjustified accusations, to speak with them, to meet senior officers in their military, and to learn at first-hand how they work for eventual peace, however many times their efforts to bring it are thwarted by Palestinian rejection? I think you owe them that.

The Iona Community, about which I have written here before, is an ecumenical Christian fellowship in Scotland. Its headquarters are in Glasgow, but its main activities take place on the island of Iona in the Inner Hebrides, which is seen as a place for spiritual retreats. It has an international reputation for preaching love, a spiritual vocation, and fellowship among Christians. To me however it is also deeply anti-Semitic through its extreme hatred for the state of Israel and its one-sided support of the Palestinian narrative – according to the definitions of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and the US State Department.

The Abbey of the Iona Community, on the island of Iona, Scotland. (Image source: Akela NDE/Wikimedia Commons)

Earlier this year, Sammy Stein, chairman of Glasgow Friends of Israel, complained to the group about remarks made at a meeting addressed by Iona’s Leader-Elect, Dr. Michael Marten. Marten had argued[1] more than once that Israeli soldiers routinely and deliberately shoot Palestinian children, while knowing that they are children. In a reply[2] to Mr. Stein, Marten and the Reverend Peter Macdonald, the community leader, asserted that Marten’s statement had been true, and tried to back up their vilification by referencing a number of media and UN reports, including anti-Israel NGOs such as B’Tselem and Electric Intifada. I was asked to respond to their diatribe; the result is the letter below. Will Macdonald and Marten, take in what it says and find a more honest way to express Christian concern, not just for the children of Gaza and the West Bank, but for Jewish children murdered in their beds and at school by Palestinian terrorists?

Dear Rev. Macdonald and Dr. Marten,

Earlier this year, you co-signed a letter to Mr Sammy Stein, Chairman of Glasgow Friends of Israel, in which you cited sources and made statements regarding the belief that “Israeli military forces routinely attack children”, regularly shooting and killing them. Mr Stein has asked me to respond to your letter, which I believe to be anti-Semitic under the most widely accepted definition of the term, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Definition, signed by and accepted by 32 countries, including the UK and the European Parliament, and therefore having force in the jurisdiction in which you live and act. I am not Jewish, but for most of a long life I have defended Israel as the only safe haven for Jews and Middle East Christians, faced on all sides by violent enemies and by the rapid recrudescence of vicious anti-Semitism across Europe as well as a centuries-old hatred of Jews across the Islamic world.

I would ask you not to make a knee-jerk dismissal of my arguments before you come to them, and I ask you to reflect on what I have to say and to pray about it. For I hope to show how far you stand as Christians from a fair, honest, and compassionate understanding of the sufferings endured by the people of Israel, whether they be Jews, Muslims or Christians. I say that because Israel is quite literally the only country in the Middle East and far beyond that provides freedom of religion and equal rights for all its citizens. As a former lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies, a Middle East historian, and the holder of a doctorate in Iranian Studies, I make that statement in the firm understanding that it is true.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Barcelona Terror Imam’s Familiar Path From Prison to ISIS Soldier by Patrick Dunleavy

By on August 27th, 2017

In the wake of the horrific terror attacks in Barcelona that killed 15 people and injured as many as 120, including 7-year-old Julian Cadman, authorities are trying to understand how a group of young Moroccan men went from football teammates who occasionally smoked marijuana together to radical Islamic terrorists.

The man who has emerged as the leader of the group and most influential in their radicalization is the imam from the Annur Islamic mosque in Ripoll, a small Spanish town near the French border.

Abdelbaki Es Satty was hired by the Annur Islamic Community in 2016. But before that, authorities have learned, he was an inmate in the Spanish prison system, convicted in 2012 for smuggling hashish from Morocco into Spain. People who knew him then said that he was not religious and occasionally smoked marijuana. Then he met several al-Qaida members in prison, including Rachid Aglif. Also known as “The Rabbit,” Aglif was serving an 18-year sentence for his part in the 2004 Madrid train bombing that killed 190 people and injured more than 1,000.

It was there in prison where Abdelbaki Es Satty was believed to have been radicalized. Authorities from the Annur Islamic mosque said that they were unaware of Es Satty’s criminal history and admitted that they did not properly vet him. They simply examined his knowledge of the Quran and felt that was sufficient.

They also seemed unaware that Es Satty became known to counterterrorism officials during an investigation into radical Islamic influences in the small seaside towns surrounding Barcelona. The investigation, dubbed “Operation Jackal,” resulted in thearrest and conviction of five radical Islamists for attempting to send young men to Iraq to fight alongside ISIS.

So, two important themes in understanding radical Islamic terrorists are surfacing again, prison radicalization and someone “known to authorities.” There is a third: Immigration. Following his release from prison, Spanish authorities attempted to deport Es Satty back to Morocco. An order for his expulsion from Spain was issued in April 2014 citing his criminal history as a narcotics trafficker. Spanish immigration law subjects any foreign national who is sentenced to a year or more in prison to deportation.

Es Satty argued that deportation violated his human rights and won an appeal.

He then was granted asylum, which gave him the right to travel throughout the European Union. He used this privilege to make several trips to Belgium, spending three months in a Brussels suburb called Vilvoorde in early 2016. That town has seen its share of radical Islamic influences, with as many as 30 young men leaving to fightwith ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Just after Es Satty left Vilvoorde, two coordinated terrorist attacks took place in Brussels that left as many as 35 dead and 300 injured. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Abdelbaki Es Satty became an imam at the Ripoll mosque after returning from Belgium and began to draw young men to the jihadi cause. The process took at least a year. Small groups met in a van, and sometimes in Es Satty’s sixth-floor apartment. When group members attended the local mosque, they took precautions to mask both their radical beliefs and their intimate relationship with each other.

Two months before last week’s the attacks, Es Satty told the mosque he was returning to Morocco.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

“It’s a War on Christians”: Muslim Persecution of Christians, April 2017 by Raymond Ibrahim

By on August 27th, 2017

“The shopkeepers returned, trapped him in his home, set the room on fire and locked it. They stayed outside the room and did not allow any of the family members or local residents to unlock the room to save Ameen’s life.” The man was burned alive. — Pakistan Christian Post.

Mike said that five uniformed railway transport officers stood by idly watching the attack. According to a local Orthodox priest, “There are gangs of these young fellows of Muslim background who have been harassing people they identify as Christian… You don’t hear about it because no one’s reporting it.” — Sydney, Australia.

According to a new study, 59% of Indonesians who responded to a survey have carried out acts of intolerance against non-Muslim minorities, and religious radicalization is on the rise. Only 11% of Indonesians are strongly opposed to an Islamic nation that governs according to strict Islamic law, Sharia. Around 11.5 million Indonesians are “spiritually” ready to make radical fundamental changes in Indonesian society. “They want to adopt laws inspired by Sharia, and their demands will become more and more radical,” said a spokesperson for the statistical study. — Indonesia.

As in former years, Easter was under attack in various Muslim nations, most spectacularly in Egypt. On April 9, two Coptic Christian Orthodox churches packed with worshippers for Palm Sunday Mass, which initiates Easter holy week, were attacked by Islamic suicide bombers. Twenty-seven people—mostly children—were killed in St. George’s in Tanta, northern Egypt. “Where is the government?” an angry Christian there asked AP reporters. “There is no government! There was a clear lapse in security, which must be tightened from now on to save lives.” Less than two hours later, 17 people were killed in St. Mark’s Cathedral in Alexandria. Since the original building, founded by the Evangelist Mark in the first century, was burned to the ground during the seventh century Muslim invasions of Egypt, the church has been the historic seat of Coptic Christianity. Pope Tawadros, who was present—and apparently targeted—emerged unharmed. About 50 Christians were killed in the two bombings, 126 wounded and many mutilated. (Graphic images/video of aftermath here).

A few days earlier, on April 1, 3,000 fatwas [opinions by Islamic authorities] inciting the destruction of churches in Egypt had been circulated throughout Egypt. A number of Egyptian Christians interviewed after the twin bombings said that government-funded mosques regularly incite hatred and violence for Christians over their loudspeakers. In other mosques, according to Michael, a middle-aged Christian, “there are prayers to harm Christians. “They incite to violence, youths are being filled with hatred against us and acting on it. It concerns us all. It leads to terrorism and to Christians being targeted.”

Separately a Christian woman said, “The problem starts at school where children are treated differently. In school some refused to speak to me because I was a Christian.”

In Nigeria, Muslim Fulani herdsmen randomly opened fire on a Christian village. According to Bishop Bagobiri, “The attack came when the people were in the church for the Easter Vigil celebration.” The Muslim gunmen killed “at least 12 persons on the spot, with many injured,” including women and children. Instead of celebrating Easter Sunday, the bishop and a local priest presided over the burial of “at least ten Catholics.” The bishop publicly accused the local governor, a Muslim, of complicity with the perpetrators and bias against their victims.

In Pakistan, a “major terrorist attack” targeting Christians during Easter celebrations was foiled, according to the nation’s military. An Islamic militant was killed and four soldiers injured during the raid. Among the Muslim terrorists arrested was a female second-year medical student who said she was preparing to “martyr” herself as part of a suicide attack on a church during Easter Sunday. Last year in Lahore, an Easter Day Islamic attack left more than 70 people dead.

Continue reading →