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Palestinians Exploiting Children to Fight Israel Where is the international outrage? Noah Beck

Originally written for the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

The new Palestinian curriculum for grades 1 to 4 “is significantly more radical than previous curricula,” concludes a new study by Hebrew University’s Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se). It “teaches students to be martyrs, demonizes and denies the existence of Israel, and focuses on a ‘return’ to an exclusively Palestinian homeland.”

In response to pressure from President Trump, Israel reportedly is preparing a series of concessions to Palestinians in a bid to re-launch peace talks. Trump may want to consider pressuring the Palestinians for parallel gestures, including correcting educational policies that are antithetical to peace.

Indeed, the IMPACT-se study warns that the “educational system has created a Palestinian nationalism that absolutely rejects the Other and is therefore incompatible with Israel’s existence.” Even more alarming, the report notes that the “Struggle against Israel and its disappearance is the main theme,” and “The 1974 PLO’s Phased Plan for the conquest of the Land of Israel/Palestine is taught. The curriculum reflects a strategy of violence and pressure in place of peaceful negotiations.”

The “Palestinian school curricula are inspected by the international donors who finance the Palestinian Authority and, by extension, its public education system,” the Times of Israel reported.

That includes huge investment from Britain, the Daily Mail reported, money that 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.”

Incredibly, European countries pressure Israel to freeze settlement growth and take other steps towards peace, while funding pro-war messages targeted at future generations of Palestinians.

Islam is not used as a radical political tool in grades 1–4, but the educational message “includes biases towards non-Muslims,” the IMPACT-se study says. And, in grades 11-12, “Religion is clearly abused…to foment hate amid calls for eternal war in the Levant.”

The Palestinian curriculum of violence and hate highlighted by the IMPACT-se study is just one of the many ways in which Palestinian leaders have forced their violent agendas onto children.

Sentenced to Death for “Insulting Islam” by Majid Rafizadeh

Can you imagine making a joke and facing death as a result?

“During his interrogation, Sina was told that if he signed a confession and repented, he would be pardoned and let go,” said the source in an interview with CHRI on March 21, 2017. “Unfortunately, he made a childish decision and accepted the charges. Then they sentenced him to death.” “Later he admitted that he signed the confession hoping to get freed,” said the source. “Apparently the authorities also got him to confess in front of a camera as well.” — Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).

When the Islamists gain power, they immediately create their own “judiciary system” in order to “legitimize” their implementation of sharia law. In fact, the judiciary system is used less as a tool for bringing people to justice, and more as a tool to suppress freedom of speech and of the press.

To radical Islamist groups, Islam is not a religion which all are free to pursue; it is a weapon. It is the most powerful tool that can be wielded with manipulative skill to control entire populations. Beneath their fierce rule, every aspect of daily life is dictated. What is worn, what is eaten, what you say and what you write are all scrutinized; violations of these stringent laws are met with extreme punishments. Can you imagine making a joke and facing death as a result? Can you imagine the constant fear of doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing, when you have seen people beaten, stoned, or killed in the street for nothing more than a mild transgression?

Freedom of speech and press are the Islamists’ top enemies. They are targeted on a regular basis, making it difficult or impossible for the truth to be revealed to the world. While others may take their privacy for granted, the people living under this kind of tyranny must think about everything they say and do. Sometimes even the bravest of souls turn away in the face of such intimidation. Can it really be as restrictive as described? Yes, and far worse than you can imagine.

Sina Dehghan, 21, for example, was arrested by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) when he was 19 for “insulting Islam”. Charges were brought against him for insulting the Prophet Muhammad on the messaging app LINE.

According to the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI):

“During his interrogation, Sina was told that if he signed a confession and repented, he would be pardoned and let go,” said the source in an interview with CHRI on March 21, 2017. “Unfortunately, he made a childish decision and accepted the charges. Then they sentenced him to death.” “Later he admitted that he signed the confession hoping to get freed,” said the source. “Apparently the authorities also got him to confess in front of a camera as well.”

Such a sentence may seem like madness, but in fact there is a cold and calculated pattern to these actions. When extremist Muslims gain power, they immediately create their own “judiciary system” in order to “legitimize” their implementation of sharia law. This judiciary system is, in fact, used less as a tool for bringing people to justice, and more as a tool to suppress freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Once this silence is ensured, they are able to oppress the entire society, restrain any budding opposition, imprison and torture innocent people and sentence thousands to death.

David Singer: European Union Declares Diplomatic War on Israel

Ambassadors to Israel representing 28 European Union States (EU) behaved most undiplomatically in ambushing the recently appointed Director of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and former Ambassador to Australia – Yuval Rotem – at a meet and greet function Rotem had organised at the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv last week.

Instead of the pleasant banter over drinks and canapes usually associated with such events on the diplomatic cocktail circuit the function erupted into an explosive EU protest against Israel’s plans to evict Arab squatters from 42 structures that had been illegally erected between Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem at the strategically narrowest point in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) known as E1.

Lars Faarburg-Andersen – the EU Ambassador to Israel – took the opportunity to read out to Rotem the following one-page document which had been approved by the EU political-security committee – in which all 28 member states are represented.This gauche and uncivilised behaviour was certainly uncalled for and not conduct that one would ever expect to come from refined and cultured Europeans.

Reading this carefully-crafted statement at the function was a cavalier action aggravating the already strained relationship between the EU and Israel following the EU’s introduction on 11 November 2015 of labelling requirements for goods produced in Judea and Samaria entering Europe.

The statement revealingly exposes the hypocrisy of the EU for the following reasons:

1. It was presented as a “demarche” – a diplomatic or official initiative – a protest normally delivered through diplomatic channels – not at a cocktail function.

U.S. Unleashes 59 Tomahawk Missiles on Syrian Airbase Pinpointed as Origin of Sarin Attack By Bridget Johnson

WASHINGTON — Declaring “no child of God should ever suffer such horror” as the “Black Tuesday” neurotoxin attack on a Syrian neighborhood, President Trump ordered a flurry of cruise missiles fired at the airbase from which the Assad regime planes that struck Khan Shaykhun originated.

Fifty-nine Tomahawks from two U.S. warships in the Mediterranean, the USS Ross and USS Porter, targeted Shayrat Airfield in Homs province at 4:40 a.m. local time. Defense officials reportedly used radar tracking to pinpoint the base as the originating location of the planes bearing an agent that produced symptoms consistent with sarin.

Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said the missiles “targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars.”

“As always, the U.S. took extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties and to comply with the Law of Armed Conflict,” Davis said. “Every precaution was taken to execute this strike with minimal risk to personnel at the airfield.”

“The strike was a proportional response to Assad’s heinous act. Shayrat Airfield was used to store chemical weapons and Syrian air forces. The U.S. intelligence community assesses that aircraft from Shayrat conducted the chemical weapons attack on April 4. The strike was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again.”

Defense officials informed Russia ahead of time about the planned airstrike time and location, citing their previous deconfliction agreement to improve flight safety after near-misses as the Russians flew missions with Assad forces against Assad’s opposition and the U.S. flew missions against ISIS. “U.S. military planners took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield,” Davis said.

The Pentagon is assessing the results of the strike, but “initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian government’s ability to deliver chemical weapons,” Davis said.

“The use of chemical weapons against innocent people will not be tolerated,” he added.

Pentagon sources told CNN that they believe Russians were at the airfield when the sarin attacks were launched earlier in the week. Arab reports tonight indicated Hezbollah were among the casualties at the base. CONTINUE AT SITE

Tensions Rise Between U.S. and EU Officials Over Visa-Free Travel Transatlantic spat comes as Trump administration seeks to ramp up security checks at U.S. borders By Valentina Pop

BRUSSELS—Tensions between senior U.S. and European Union officials escalated over the prospect of limiting visa-free travel for EU citizens due to U.S. security concerns.

European Migration and Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos on Thursday rebuffed comments made by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly about possibly reconsidering visa-free travel for EU citizens. The transatlantic spat comes as the Trump administration is seeking to ramp up security checks at U.S. borders, while the EU has just expanded its visa-free regime to Ukraine and its 45 million people.

Testifying before the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, Mr. Kelly suggested that the so-called Visa Waiver program allowing citizens from nearly all EU countries to travel to the U.S. without a visa could be reconsidered because of the potential risk that terrorists with EU passports could enter the U.S. unchecked.

He said that some 10,000 European citizens are fighting for Islamic State and could hop on a plane and travel visa-free to the U.S., because of borderless travel in Europe and the fact that “in many cases the countries where they’re citizens don’t know that they’ve been out of the country fighting in Syria.”

“That doesn’t keep me up at night too much but it does keep me up, so we’re looking at Visa Waiver,” Mr. Kelly said.

Mr. Avramopoulos, who recently met Mr. Kelly to discuss moving in the opposite direction and extending visa-free travel to all EU countries, reacted with surprise to this statement.

“We should be careful when using numbers. We estimate that around 5,000 EU citizens traveled to Syria and Iraq—not 10,000. But not all will come back: We estimate that about half of them are still there, many have died in fighting, some of those have returned to Europe,” Mr. Avramopoulos said. “We know who is back, and they are under very close scrutiny by national security services, flagged in security databases and monitored.”

He added that as of April 7, all travelers, be they EU citizens or not, will have their passports checked against security databases upon entering and leaving the bloc. Until now, EU citizens were exempt from such checks at the borders.CONTINUE AT SITE

U.S. Airstrikes on Syria Divide Middle East Saudi Arabia and Israel cheer the missile strikes; Iran condemns them By Rory Jones and Margherita Stancati

Syria’s staunchest foes in the Middle East—Saudi Arabia and Israel—cheered the U.S. missile strikes on a Syrian air base early Friday, saying they sent a clear message that the international community wouldn’t tolerate chemical weapons.

However, Iran, which is a key military and financial backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, condemned the attack as a move that would deepen the chaos in Syria and strengthen armed opposition groups.

“Tehran considers using this excuse to take unilateral measures dangerous, destructive and a violation of international laws,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

The U.S. military launched dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles overnight against the Shayrat air base near the city of Homs in Syria, following this week’s suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town. The U.S. strikes were intended to cripple the base’s airfield and other infrastructure, and to indicate that the chemical attack was unacceptable to the U.S.

Saudi Arabia, which an important ally of the Syrian anti-government opposition, declared its full support for Washington’s operation.

“The Syrian regime brought this military operation upon itself,” said a statement attributed to a foreign ministry official and carried by the official Saudi Press Agency. “The brave decision taken by the U.S. president in response to these crimes should be hailed at a time when the international community has been unable to put a stop to such actions by the Syrian regime.”

Riyadh and other Gulf monarchies have long pushed for more decisive U.S. action against forces loyal to Mr. Assad, who is backed by Tehran—Saudi Arabia’s rival for regional influence.

“Everyone was waiting for the U.S. to act against Bashar al-Assad,” said Ibrahim al-Marie, a retired Saudi colonel and security analyst based in Riyadh. “The Trump administration is also saying: we will be a big player in Syria, not like the Obama administration.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Trump Shows He Is Willing to Act Forcefully, Quickly President demonstrates comfort with military action in ordering missile strikes in Syria By Carol E. Lee and Louise Radnofsky

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.—President Donald Trump’s decision to order military strikes in Syria sets his presidency on a new and unpredictable course that is likely to shape his time in office.

Faced with his first major foreign-policy test—a moment that confronts every new president—Mr. Trump demonstrated a comfort with military action and a flexibility in approach that saw him change course not only on comments he made in the campaign but also on his policy toward Syria in just 48 hours after seeing gruesome photographic evidence from the Asssad regime’s chemical-weapons attack Tuesday.

His decision drew support from Republican and Democratic lawmakers who have long called for stronger U.S. action in Syria.

But with his message delivered both in missiles and in a presidential address from behind a podium at his private resort in Florida, Mr. Trump faces the difficult choice his predecessor and other world leaders have grappled with for years: Now what? It’s the question that repeatedly led President Barack Obama to decide against deeper military involvement in Syria.

Just three months into his presidency Mr. Trump will have to find his own answer. He has to confront a litany of risky unknowns.

It is unclear how the Assad regime, or its allies Russia and Iran, will react. It is unclear whether Mr. Trump intends to move the U.S. more forcefully into the Syrian conflict—committing the U.S. military to greater engagement in the Middle East—or whether he plans to hold back beyond sending a signal that the use of chemical weapons won’t be tolerated by the White House.

One message was clear: Mr. Trump is willing to use force and to make decisions swiftly when he is moved to act.

“Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow, brutal death for so many,” Mr. Trump said in a national address. “No child of God should ever suffer such horror.” CONTINUE AT SITE

French Presidential Campaign: Part 2 Nidra Poller

Part 1 can be found here – click.

The Interior Minister sniffles, Valls gives Macron a peck on the cheek, France 2 throws Fillon into the lion’s den, a book spills the beans on Hollande… And: whither the Jewish vote

Sniffles

The last time we saw acting Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux he was at Orly airport, solemnly declaring the “suspect had tried but failed” to get the soldier’s gun. This was followed shortly by a photo in the Figaro of the dead suspect lying on the floor with the Famas assault rifle still slung across his chest. Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/french-presidential-campaign-part-1#ixzz4cpgeSljr Deliberately misleading? Honestly misinformed? No one seemed to care publicly. But LeRoux was forced to resign last week…for a different reason.

How, in the absence of any discernible competence, did the deputy get to be Interior Minister? Musical chairs. François Hollande waited to the last minute to announce he would not be running for re-election, Prime Minister Manuel Valls could finally resign and throw his hat into the Primary ring, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve was bumped up to the PM slot, and Le Roux became a low-key Interior Minister in the twilight Hollande government.

Last week Le Roux went out in a sniffle. Looking like the fall guy meant to knock over François Fillon. Deputy Le Roux hired his teenage daughters as parliamentary assistants over a 7-year period with 24 different temporary contracts for a total salary of €55,000. Cross-checkers produced damning evidence. Not only were the teenies overpaid, they were apparently moonlighting for their father while simultaneously holding other jobs, studying, traveling, etc. Of course le Roux was allowed to deny any wrongdoing before resigning. The Greek chorus media chanted “Le Roux resigned why not Fillon?”

Valls pecks Macron on the cheek.

Defeated in the primaries, the former PM, who has shown integrity and valor in some of the worst moments of jihad violence, had nowhere to go. He could not decently respect the good sport promise to defend the victor, Benoît Hamon, one of the “frondeurs,” an informal caucus of far Left deputies that persistently hounded the Hollande-Valls government. Hamon’s last ditch socialism is outplayed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s eloquent extravagance. The centerpiece of Hamon’s primary campaign was a shiny universal salary promise, based on a post-employment theory: in our modern economy, jobs don’t need people, people don’t need jobs, so the government will give them salaries and their purchasing power will boost the economy. No one ever asked him why a small businessman or a CEO would work days, nights and weekends to produce the wealth that would be distributed like Care packages.

Hamon had gadflied the socialist party; Mélenchon opted out years ago and created a far Left conglomerate that repeatedly splinters and regroups. Today he runs on his personal ticket -La France Insoumise. The “insoumise [= that does not submit] has nothing to do with the Islamic concept of submission; it’s about the 99% not submitting to the 1%. Reeking of authenticity, dressed in corduroy casual, the earthy showman makes outworn class struggle rhetoric seem new. But pollsters say he gets only 13% of the working class vote, with 51% going to Marine Le Pen. Mélenchon delights in punishing the privileged classes. Under his regime, doctors won’t be allowed to apply surcharges (paid, it should be noted, by the patient). The GP that takes €50 for a consultation today would have to be satisfied with the health system rate of €25. (

Mélenchon’s solution for world peace is to exit NATO and the “logic of war.” The people’s army he intends to create by reestablishing the draft is more a public works project than a defense measure. Awkward attempts by Hamon to create a united Left by swallowing up Mélenchon’s candidacy have failed miserably, as Mélenchon’s fortunes rise and Hamon’s sink

Be Very Careful Before Beating the War Drums in Syria Russia’s involvement in the conflict raises the stakes of any U.S. action. By David French

War has consequences. Callous incompetence has consequences. The world is watching those consequences unfold in Syria today. No one can look at images of children dead from gas attacks and not be moved.

Let’s stipulate two things: First, there were never any easy American choices in Syria. Second, the Obama administration got virtually every hard choice wrong. Or, to be more precise, the choices it did make did nothing to either stop the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the new century or block our enemies and rivals, Iran and Russia, from exerting their will in Syria.

The result is the Syria we have today, a patchwork quilt of competing zones of control that in some ways looks more complicated than it is. Let’s make sense of the map below:
syria-battle-map.jpg

The red, government-controlled areas represent the most populated and economically consequential sections of the country. This is where Russia and Iran have asserted their will, and this is where Assad is spilling the blood of innocents to expand and maintain his grip on power. Yes, he’s still opposed by rebel groups, but they’ve been decimated, and many of the groups that remain are dominated by jihadists.

In the north, our Kurdish allies are on the move, but not against the regime — against ISIS. In other words, Assad has beaten his main foe and is leaving the United States, the Kurds, and assorted other allies to deal with our main foe, ISIS. After the battle for Raqqa, Syria is likely to be effectively partitioned, with American-backed forces controlling the north, the Russian-backed regime controlling the west, and some small forces still battling it out on the borders.

As we confront the Assad regime’s gas attack — which is just one of its countless violations of the law of war, and hardly its most deadly — we also have to confront this core reality: Our leading geopolitical rival — a traditional great power and a nuclear superpower — has quite obviously decided that the survival of a friendly regime in Damascus is a core national interest. It acted decisively while we dithered, and it has boots on the ground.

Thus, we now face a quandary. Retaliate against Syria so strongly that it truly punishes and weakens Assad, and you risk threatening Russia’s vital interests. Respond with a pinprick strike that Russia effectively “permits,” and you do nothing important. Assad has demonstrated that he cares little about his own casualties and may (like many other American enemies before him) actually feel emboldened after “surviving” an American strike.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Told-You-So Moment The Israeli leader could be opportunistic and vulgar in pressing his case against the Iran deal. He was also right. By Sohrab Ahmari

Benjamin Netanyahu will never be popular in America’s major newsrooms. Or among most of the think-tankers who set the tone and parameters of foreign-policy debate. His name is a curse on college campuses. So it’s worth asking whose vision of the Middle East has held up better under the press of recent events.

His or theirs?

The question comes to mind as Western governments confront this week’s chemical atrocity in Syria, and as footage of children’s bodies convulsing in agony once more unsettles the world’s conscience. Even President Trump, who generally lacks a moral language, was moved, though whether he will act remains to be seen.

His predecessor had a rich moral vocabulary and a coterie of award-winning moralizers like Samantha Power on staff. But President Obama refused to act when Bashar Assad crossed his chemical red line. He wanted to extricate Washington from the region, and he saw a nuclear deal with Mr. Assad’s Iranian patrons as the exit ramp.

Such a deal came within grasp when Hassan Rouhani launched his presidential campaign in Iran four years ago this month. The smiling, self-proclaimed “moderate” was the Iranian interlocutor the Obamaians had been waiting for. Mr. Netanyahu posed the main obstacle.

The Israeli prime minister warned that Mr. Rouhani didn’t have the power to moderate the regime even if he had the will. He reminded the world of Mr. Rouhani’s role in Iran’s repressive apparatus and his history of anti-American rhetoric. He insisted that Iranian regional aggression wouldn’t relent if sanctions were removed. Iran, he predicted, would pocket the financial concessions, then press ahead in Syria and elsewhere.

The Israeli could be opportunistic, given to hyperbole and not a little vulgar in pressing his case. He was also right.

It’s instructive now to compare his account of the regime with the baseless euphoria in the Western media that greeted Mr. Rouhani’s election in June 2013 and marked coverage of the nuclear deal over the next four years.

Start with Iran’s role in Syria. Writing in September 2013, the New York Times editorial board suggested that Iran’s intentions “could be tested by inviting its new government to join the United States and Russia in carrying out the recent agreement to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons. It seems like a natural convergence: Iranians know well the scourge of poison gas.”

Well, apparently they didn’t know the scourge well enough to restrain their chief Arab client from systematically gassing his own people, even after the Russian-brokered chemical deal. CONTINUE AT SITE