RUTHFULLY YOURS

Despite the “official” surveys taken among Palestinians, which show support for Hamas, the residents of the West Bank are terrified that Hamas will gain control and destroy our lives and property, the way they did in the Gaza Strip.

The BDS organizations are trying to boycott products made in the West Bank, which only throws masses of Palestinians out of good jobs in an effort to force Israel into a hasty withdrawal that has no chance of taking place. The Israelis and everyone else remember all too well that the last Israeli withdrawals — from southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip — led to the terrorist takeover of the vacuums created.

Ikrima Sabri, the former Mufti of Jerusalem, often said that Palestinians were better off with the Jews in charge of Al-Aqsa mosque and Jerusalem, because in the future they could be removed and killed off, but if the Crusaders returned to Jerusalem — such as an international commission headed by the French — it would be harder to get rid of them.

During a visit to Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Israel’s Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu that now is not time to move forward with the “two-state solution” and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Merkel, evidently seeing Israel as a dam protecting Europe from Islamist extremists, told Netanyahu that while the Germans recognized the terrorist threat faced by Israel, and that a peace process had to be advanced based on two states for two peoples, now was not the right time to take big steps.

Since 2006, when Bruce Bawer wrote his illuminating book entitled While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, the situation has worsened tenfold. Not surprisingly, when his book was first published, Bawer was accused of Islamophobia. Yet as early as 1998, Bawer noted the widening divisions between the liberal and democratic policies of the Netherlands and the fact that “Dutch Muslims kept that society at arm’s length, despising its freedoms[.]”

In the late 1990s, Bawer and his male partner decided to live in Amsterdam because it seemed to him to be “the one place [he’d] ever been where homophobia really seemed to have disappeared.” He felt that the Netherlands had moved from the “foolishness of [American] fundamentalism,” and although he loved America “not because of its wealth or power, but because of its culture and values,” he wanted to really know what it meant to be an American by living elsewhere as a means of contrast.

Once in the Netherlands, Bawer began to appreciate “American virtues” that he’d always taken for granted – most importantly a “belief in the future.” He found that while he enjoyed the culture of Europe, he also saw that much of Western Europe was “bound up with a stifling conformity, a discomfort with excellence and an overt disapproval of those who strove too visibly to better their lot” – in short, “mediocrity.” He saw that France and Germany were “plagued by low growth and rising unemployment, a direct consequence of welfare state policies.” He also realized that Europeans “had been fed a zero-sum understanding of economics.”

In addition, he perceived that “fundamentalist Muslims were on the march and their numbers and power were large and growing rapidly – and the ultimate objective was far more than a ban on abortion or gay marriage.” A sea change was overtaking Europe that involved female genital mutilation, viewing women as property, and subsidies from the Dutch state as well as from Islamic governments that taught hatred of Jews, Israel, America, and the West. The very countries that these Muslims were living in were to be scorned, since they were meant to be replaced by a Muslim caliphate governed according to sharia law.

But surely, Bawer believed, this could not be permitted. He naively presumed that such contempt for pluralism, open-mindedness, democracy, and sexual equality would not be tolerated. Instead, political correctness, spineless leaders, and Islamic intimidation worked their magic so that in 1998, “Europeans were clueless” as to what was occurring under their very noses.

European Council President Donald Tusk appealed to economic migrants to stop coming to Europe, saying they shouldn’t try to risk their lives at the hands of smugglers as the path into the European Union constricts.

He was meeting on Thursday with leaders in Greece and Turkey, two countries that are playing a key role in the bloc’s efforts to stem the tide of migrants.

“I want to appeal to all potential illegal economic migrants wherever you are from: Do not come to Europe. Do not believe the smugglers. Do not risk your lives and your money,” Mr. Tusk said after meeting with the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Athens. “It is all for nothing. Greece or any other European country will no longer be a transit country.”

Balkan countries and Austria are restricting their borders, moves that have left huge numbers stuck at the Greece-Macedonia border. In the Greek town of Idomeni, more than 10,000 people are stranded at a camp built for 1,500 and more than 30,000 are stuck throughout the country.

Mr. Tsipras said his country would continue to try to help migrants, just not at any cost.

“Greece will not leave anyone helpless,” he said. Greece would “create centers for temporary hospitality,” but the country won’t become “a warehouse of souls.”

Greek authorities are trying to reduce the crush at the border with Macedonia and prepare new camps further south with the aim to distribute those stranded all over Greece. But many migrants say they fear they may be detained indefinitely in the new camps. CONTINUE AT SITE