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Ruth King

Who Is Stealing Palestinian Land? by Khaled Abu Toameh

The lands that once housed Jewish settlements were supposed to transform the Gaza Strip into the Middle East’s Singapore.

Instead, all the grandiose and ambitious plans went down the drain when Hamas seized control over the Gaza Strip in 2007. Since then, the entire Gaza Strip has been transformed into a base for various Islamist groups, which have used Gaza to launch terror attacks against Israel and threaten Egypt’s national security.

By stealing their people’s land and distributing it among their followers, Hamas and Fatah are further undermining the Palestinian dream of establishing a proper state based on the principles of democracy, accountability, transparency and the rule of law.

The beleaguered Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, has found an original way to solve its financial crisis. The movement is now planning to pay its unpaid civil servants with former Israeli settlement land in the Gaza Strip.

Abandoned by Israel in 2005 as part of the “disengagement” from the Gaza Strip, the land was supposed to provide a solution to the severe housing crisis in the Palestinian-controlled area. Back then, there was much talk about building new housing projects for thousands of Palestinian families in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli “disengagement” prompted some oil-rich Arab countries to propose plans to help solve the severe housing crisis in the Gaza Strip. The lands that once housed Jewish settlements were supposed to transform the Gaza Strip into the Middle East’s Singapore.

CHRIS CHRISTIE ON IMMIGRATION AND FOREIGN POLICY

Christie: Muslim Americans are ‘Not Nearly That Sensitive’ on Syrian Refugee Issue By Nicholas Ballasy
Republican presidential candidate Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) criticized President Obama for standing on foreign soil and belittling governors across the country over the Syrian refugee issue, arguing that Obama does not listen to the majority of the American people.

“It is true today as well that we have a president who I believe no longer listens. He listens to a very small, insular group of people around him, and I’ve said this publicly before and I’ll say it again, that when I look back on this presidency I think it will be marked by one phrase more than anything else: often wrong but never in doubt. That’s a dangerous thing to have in a president of the United States,” Christie said at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“The president’s huge blunder, in my view, is going overseas and criticizing folks here at home who have raised genuine concerns about the safety and security of America under this policy,” he said, referring to the president’s determination to allow Syrian refugees in the United States.

A recent poll revealed that the majority of Americans oppose admitting Syrian refugees into the U.S.

Christie said the right path forward on the issue is clear.

“When the FBI director stands up and says that he cannot assure the American people that Syrian refugees can be effectively vetted, that ends the conversation for the moment. We cannot allow ourselves, at a time of great peril, to put ourselves voluntarily at even greater risk just because there are some folks who believe that it will make our country look better here around the world,” he said.

Syed Farook’s Workplace Wasn’t the Target of Violence – the Christmas Party Was By Bridget Johnson

As analysts hand-wring over why Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik chose colleagues as a target — thus stoking assumptions of a “mixed” terrorism motive that included being sparked by some disagreement or grudge with Farook’s co-workers — the reason for the location of Wednesday’s massacre could simply be linked to terrorists’ focus on the holiday.

Al-Qaeda and ISIS have encouraged attacks on Christmas Day and at Christmas-themed events to take advantage of vulnerable crowds and to strike at the heart of a Christian holiday.

Farook’s division at the San Bernardino County health department rented out the auditorium at the Inland Regional Center, a complex that provided aid to the developmentally disabled, for their annual Christmas party. It was part meeting, part banquet for the environmental health office, an event that police said Farook had attended the previous year. Police said there was a Christmas tree in the room and all of the tables were decked out in decorations; some of the deceased and injured were guests of county employees.

It’s Not the Guns, It’s the Evil The West disarmed itself, hoping evil would do the same. By J. Christian Adams

These are confusing times, as a generation unfamiliar with the nature of evil senses a gathering storm. It’s easy to blame guns when you don’t understand that the West is engaged in a multi-front struggle for existence with evil.

What is happening in San Bernardino, in Paris, in small Coptic churches, and on the streets of London isn’t about guns, knives, and high-capacity magazines. It’s about an experience familiar across the ages: when evil starts to march.

These horrors are the experiences of individuals across history, when the very existence of domestic tranquility is jeopardized. Instead of fleeing our village for the safety of the next, we simply don’t go shopping or out to dinner — at least for now.

Hillary Urges Caution on Judging Islam, Haste on Assailing Second Amendment By Stephen Kruiser

These people are wearisome, and not serious.

“We don’t know yet everything about this specific attack,” Clinton said. But regardless of the couple’s reasons for the murders, something needs to be done to prevent gun violence, she added.

“The vast majority of Muslim-Americans are just as concerned and heartbroken about this as anyone else and, no matter what motivation these killers, these murderers had, you can say one thing for certain: They should not have been able to do this,” Clinton said, transitioning into impassioned comments on gun control.

The reflexive narrative-protection instinct of the Democrats is not only nauseating, it’s dangerous. This woman wants to be commander in chief yet she is more inclined to protect Democrat policy talking points than American lives.

Since Obama gave Nidal Hasan a free pass in 2009 with his “workplace violence” nonsense, terrorists have known that the purported leaders of this country were going to be easy to dupe from time to time because they would never really be looking at the problem clearly. If you’re walking around barefoot on a bed of glass but attribute the pain in your bleeding feet to chapped hands, all the lotion in the world isn’t going to prevent the further slicing of your feet as you move forward.

San Bernardino Shooting Suspect Tashfeen Malik Passed DHS Counterterrorism Screening By Debra Heine

Shooting suspect Tashfeen Malik passed a DHS counterterrorism screening as part of her vetting for a K-1 fiancee visa last year, but barring any criminal or terrorist background there was little chance DHS would have been able to detect whether she had become radicalized.

Syed Farook, the other half of the terror duo, reportedly got engaged to 27-year-old Pakistani national Malik during a trip overseas in 2014.

Via the Los Angeles Times:

Co-workers recalled Farook telling them that he met his wife online and was making a trip to Saudi Arabia to marry her.

He spent nine days in Saudi Arabia in the summer of 2014, according to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C.

When Farook returned to the U.S. in July 2014, he brought Malik on a so-called fiancee visa, law enforcement officials said. They subsequently married and she was granted a conditional green card last summer.

In order to obtain the green card, the couple “had to prove that their marriage was legitimate, and Ms. Malik had to provide her fingerprints and pass criminal and national security background checks using F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security databases.”

On Israel, no daylight between Trump and Obama By Lev Tsitrin

A few months ago, overhearing some ladies in the audience of a pro-Israel lecture trash Donald Trump, and clearly sensing that they were Obama fans, I turned to them and said, “At least he will be a huge improvement over the current inhabitant of the White House.” They were greatly displeased.

But after reading this account of Mr. Trump’s views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I think I owe those ladies an apology.

It turns out, after all, that Mr. Trump’s views on the Middle East conflict are a carbon copy of Mr. Obama’s. For one, Mr. Trump believes that it is up to Israel to make peace happen. He is apparently unaware of Palestinians’ outright rejection of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. Secondly, Mr. Trump believes that solving the conflict is a central challenge, and so he promises to jump on it right at the onset of his presidency – as did Mr. Obama, having thought it was the key sore point that ruins the world’s universal happiness.

Rahmbo’s Murdergate Scandal By Daniel John Sobieski See note please

Rham Emanuel was very close to the Clintons and in 1993, he was appointed as Assistant to the President for Political Affairs and as the Senior Advisor to the President for Policy and Strategy where he served until 1988…..rsk
There is a reason Chicago mayor and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel earned the nickname “Rahmbo”. He is ruthless and relentless in acquiring and preserving power, and has no reservations about throwing people under the political bus to protect himself or his clients. He was a master at protecting President Obama’s political backside and is now busily protecting himself.

Chicago police chief Garry McCarthy, appointed by Emanuel, resigned Tuesday under pressure from Emanuel who claimed McCarthy had lost the trust of those he had pledged to serves, with Mayor Emanuel making the announcement with typical political double-speak:

“This morning I formally asked Supt. McCarthy for his resignation,” Emanuel said at a news conference announcing a newly-formed task force on police accountability. He said while he was grateful for McCarthy’s service, it is an “undeniable fact that the public trust in the leadership of the department has been shaken and eroded.”

But that public trust in a crime-fighting policy that focused on controlling guns and not gangs at Emanuel’s direction had long ago eroded long before the video was released that showed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald being shot 16 times by Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke in October 2014. Chicago, under the leadership — if that’s the right word — had watched its children being slaughtered by gang bangers, from Demario Bailey, murdered for his Chicago Bull’s jacket, to Hadiya Pendleton, shot blocks from President Obama’s Chicago residence, to the latest horror, the murder by gang member of 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee in a Chicago alley as he begged for his life.

Expanding Beyond Nigeria, Boko Haram Threatens Region Impoverished Niger particularly vulnerable to attacks by Islamic State affiliate By Yaroslav Trofimov

NIAMEY, Niger—Just over a month ago, Ibrahim Foukori’s home village of Baroua in eastern Niger was a bustling farming community of 3,000 people. Now, it is burned to the ground and abandoned.

The villagers, like hundreds of thousands of others in the region, have escaped the advances of Boko Haram—the West African affiliate of Islamic State that is infamous for its unrestrained butchery and enslavement of hundreds of teenage schoolgirls.

“Every man took their children and wives and just ran for their lives,” said Mr. Foukori, who represents the area on the western shores of Lake Chad in the parliament of Niger. “Boko Haram first pillaged everything, and then came back to torch what was left of my village.”

Boko Haram—which is usually translated as “Western education is forbidden”—started out as radical Islamist sect in northern Nigeria’s Borno province more than a decade ago. For most of the time since then, it focused on battling the Nigerian state, which it considers illegitimate.

This year, however, Boko Haram dramatically expanded its campaign of killings and bombings far beyond Nigeria’s borders. It attacked the three other countries in the Lake Chad area—the former French colonies of Niger, Cameroon and Chad.

The Motive in San Bernardino Obama blames guns, but some evidence points to sudden jihad.

The killers in San Bernardino hadn’t even been identified Wednesday before President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and the rest of Progressive America had blamed the murders on the lack of “common-sense gun safety laws.” The motives of the shooters apparently didn’t matter. But now that more details about the two killers are dribbling out, motive may turn out to be relevant in a way that Mr. Obama and the left won’t find so politically congenial.

Law enforcement officials haven’t made judgments about the motives of Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, for opening fire with semiautomatic weapons on a meeting of county employees. This restraint is more admirable than Mr. Obama’s rush to political judgment. Perhaps Farook had long seethed with animosity toward his work colleagues, or he had some personal feud or mental illness.

But the couple had certainly prepared for more than a single act of revenge. They came armed with pipe bombs with a remote trigger, which didn’t detonate, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Police say they found 12 more “pipe bomb type devices” and material to produce IEDs at the couple’s home. These are the tools of the modern jihadist.