RUTHFULLY YOURS

Hamas needs cannons and cannon-fodders to attack Israel. Hamas cannons came from a variety of sources, some as contributions from other Islamist regimes, such as Iran and Sudan. Smuggled weapons come through the Sinai and are sometimes hidden in containers of goods allowed into Gaza. Hamas has also taken advantage of building materials delivered for the endless reconstruction of Gaza and has been developing its own rockets and tunnels into Israel.

The local talent needed to produce the rockets is found in the Hamas-controlled Gaza school system. So is the fodder for Hamas attacks against Israel, Gaza’s school children, who receive growingly violent indoctrination and detailed instructions on how to attack and murder Israelis.

The Western media has been shocked shocked by ISIS videos showing how it trains children wearing the terrorist group’s black uniforms to sever heads of infidels. But, Hamas training of Gaza’s children wearing Hamas uniforms to slit the throats of Israelis, did not lead to the condemnation of Hamas.

Last month’s celebrations of the annual Palestine Festival for Childhood and Education in Gaza, offer a good example.

The Festival was celebrated throughout the Gaza school system, most of which are operated and funded by UNRWA, and most of the teachers are members of the Hamas Teachers’ Union. The events included young veiled girls and boys wearing military uniforms simulating stabbing attacks on Israelis, killing IDF soldiers and releasing Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails.

Sponsors of these events included the Ramallah-based Bank of Palestine, the Hamas-controlled University College of Applied Sciences in Gaza, whose funders include the World Bank and the European Commission, sponsored the events, as has the London-based, Interpal Fund, which has been designated as terrorist by Israel and US, but not in Britain.

“The displays put on by the children during the Annual Palestine Festival for Childhood and Education show that the sponsorship and support Interpal allegedly provides for worthy causes, is in reality also used to increase hatred for Israel and to indoctrinate violence (in both the formal and informal educational systems in the Gaza Strip). Moreover, funds donated by countries and various groups in Western Europe to further formal educational are also exploited to encourage hatred and terrorism.”

Within a week, Britain’s Labour party leadership was forced to suspend one of its newest MPs and one of its oldest grandees — and both for the same reason.

Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Livingstone both say that they condemn anti-Semitism. They always tend to add that they also condemn “Islamophobia and all other forms of racism,” a disclaimer that always seems a deliberate attempt to hide a hatred of Jews under the skirts of any and all criticism of Islam. What is most fascinating is that all the while they are saying this, they stoke the very thing they claim to condemn.

They pretend that the Jewish state does such things for no reason. There is no mention of the thousands of rockets that Hamas and other Islamist groups rain down on Israel from the Gaza Strip. The comment turns a highly-targeted set of retaliatory strikes by Israel against Hamas in the Gaza Strip into a “brutal” attack “on the Palestinians” as a whole. While mentioning those death-tolls, Livingstone has no interest in explaining that the State of Israel builds bunkers for its citizens to shelter in, while Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields and useful dead bodies for the television cameras, to help Hamas appear as an aggrieved “victim.”

It is the narrative of the “left” on Israel that is causing the resurgence of anti-Semitism. It is not coming from nowhere. It is coming from them. If the left wants to deal with it, they first have to deal with themselves.

Every time anyone thinks Britain’s Labour party has reached a new low of anti-Semitism, entirely new depths seems to open. In September, I wrote here about how the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour party constituted a “mainstreaming” of racism in the UK. Although Mr. Corbyn claims he does not have any tolerance for any hatred of anyone, he is a man who has spent his political life cosying up to anti-Semites and terrorist groups that express genocidal intent against the Jewish people. He has worked closely with Holocaust deniers, praised anti-Semitic extremists and described Hamas and Hezbollah as his friends.

“Why are your bishops silent on a threat that is yours today as well? Because the bishops are, like you, raised in political correctness. But Jesus was never politically correct, he was politically just! The responsibility of a bishop is to teach, to use his influence to transmit truth.” — Jean-Clément Jeanbart, the Melkite Greek Catholic archbishop of Aleppo, Syria.

Federal authorities arrested Khalil Abu-Rayyan of Dearborn Heights, Michigan, an ISIS supporter who had planned to carry out an attack on a 6,000-member Detroit church. Abu-Rayyan allegedly had guns and a large knife, and told an undercover FBI agent that he “tried to shoot up a church one day … If I can’t do jihad in the Middle East, I would do my jihad over here. … It is my dream to behead someone.”

In Pakistan, a disabled Christian man sentenced to death for blasphemy said that he was forced into admitting to the charges in order to stop his wife from being tortured… Emmanuel and his wife were found guilty of insulting the Muslim prophet Muhammad in text messages to a local imam in 2013, and sentenced to death. The conviction came despite the fact that the poor Christian couple are illiterate.

As opposed to their Western counterparts, Christian leaders who live in the Middle East continued expressing their frustration at the West’s indifference and worse. Jean-Clément Jeanbart, the Melkite Greek Catholic archbishop of Aleppo, during an interview, asked “Why are your bishops silent on a threat that is yours today as well? Because the bishops are, like you, raised in political correctness. But Jesus was never politically correct, he was politically just! The responsibility of a bishop is to teach, to use his influence to transmit truth. Why are your bishops afraid of speaking? Of course they would be criticized, but that would give them a chance to defend themselves, and to defend this truth. You must remember that silence often means consent.”

The archbishop also criticized the migration policies of Western countries: “The egoism and the interests slavishly defended by your governments will in the end kill you as well. Open your eyes, didn’t you see what happened recently in Paris?”

The first opinion-poll results on President Obama’s intervention in the Brexit debate since he left London for Germany and the EU summit have now been published. They show two things of interest: a small movement toward the Leave campaign, and a clear majority of voters who disapproved of the president’s intervention.

Of four polls, all four shifted toward Leave, by between one and four percentage points. That still left Remain ahead in two polls, and Leave in the other two (but by smaller numbers, in or close to the margin of error). Probably the fairest interpretation is that Remain is slightly ahead but Leave is closing a small gap and that Obama helped to close it further.

Disapproval of Obama’s intervention is far clearer, however. Majorities of 55 and 60 percent were critical. This popular response was expressed in a cartoon of Obama seated opposite the Queen at a Palace dining table, saying airily, “She’ll have the fish” — as the Queen winces and the butler staggers back in horror.

But Obama is popular in Britain, and this reaction was not very harsh. It seems to have focused on his arrogance in telling the Brits that if they left the EU and wanted a separate U.S.-U.K. trade deal, they would have to go to the back of “the queue.” That word is a Britishism that commentators immediately cited as evidence that the speech had been written in Downing Street. It wasn’t personal arrogance so much as calculated pressure from both governments.

That episode illustrates one of the oddest elements in this referendum campaign. Though it’s quite common in modern politics (see Trump, passim) for outsiders and dissidents to denounce the overwhelming influence of “elites” or “establishments,” this is a rare occasion when the elites and establishments boast about it themselves.

ISIS released a new video today reminiscent of the “nasheed” song threats preceding and succeeding the Paris and Brussels attacks.

The new twist this time? Children — aka ISIS “cubs,” as the terror group calls them — doing the singing, making threats in French translated into English.

The video features more images of President Obama than the one or two that are usually dropped into most ISIS videos and publications. With a backdrop of a child in ISIS garb wandering through a bombed neighborhood, superimposed images show Obama speaking at the United Nations, Obama shaking hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a bilateral meeting, Obama and Putin as well as Obama and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at last November’s G20 summit in Turkey, and Obama again at the UN in two different scenes.

Secretary of State John Kerry is shown exchanging pleasantries with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Putin is also shown shaking hands with French President Francois Hollande.

A new poll of British Muslims found that a majority hold views with which most British people would disagree. For instance, 52% of British Muslims think that homosexuality should be made illegal. An earlier poll found that 27% of British Muslims have “some sympathy for the motives behind the attacks” at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last year.

Whenever opinion poll results come out, nearly the entire Muslim community, including nearly all Muslims in the media and all self-appointed groups of “Muslim community leaders” try to prove that the poll is a fraud.

If I had always known my “community” harboured such views, and a poll revealing this truth came out, I would be deeply ashamed. But when such polls emerge about the opinions of British Muslims, is that there is never any hint of introspection. There is no shame and no concern, only attack.

If there were indeed a “moderate majority,” when a poll comes out saying that a quarter of your community wants fundamentally to alter the law of the land and live under Sharia, the other 75% would spend their time trying to change the opinions of that quarter. Instead, about 74% of the 75% not in favour of sharia spend their time covering for the 25% and attacking the polling company which discovered them.

One often hears about the “moderate Muslim majority.” ‘After any terrorist attack, politicians tell us that, “The moderate majority of Muslims utterly condemn this.” After any outrage, commentators and pundits spring up to say, “Of course the vast majority of Muslims are moderate.” But is it true? Are the vast majority of Muslims really “moderate”?

A number of factors suggest perhaps not — most obviously the problem repeatedly revealed by opinion polls. Time and again, the results of opinion polls in the Western world, never mind in the Middle East or North Africa, show a quite different picture from the “moderate majority” aquatint.

True, such polls can often show that, for instance, only 27% of British Muslims have “some sympathy for the motives behind the attacks” at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last year. True, that is only between a quarter and a third of British Muslims sympathizing with the blasphemy enforcement squad. On other occasions, such as recently in Britain with a new ICM poll commissioned by Channel 4, they find that a majority of Muslims hold views with which most British people would disagree. So for instance, the recent ICM poll found that 52% of British Muslims think that homosexuality should be made illegal. That’s a striking figure. Not 52% of British Muslims saying homosexuality is “not their cup of tea” or that they are “not entirely on board with gay marriage,” but 52% of British Muslims thinking that homosexuality should be made a crime under the law.

On April 18 Abd al-Hamid Abu Spour, a 19 year old Palestinian Arab, destroyed two public transportation buses in Jerusalem. There were numerous injuries, two of whom remain hospitalized, one with severe burns. This was the first bus attack during the 7+ month long intifada being waged against Israelis, which has resulted in at least 34 deaths to date.

The one person killed in the attack was the perpetrator himself. All Palestinian factions welcomed the attack. In the eyes of many Muslims, dying while committing a terror attack means Abu Spour is a “shahid,” or martyr for Allah.

His family has lashed out saying he acted in “self-defense,” and “only you Israelis are guilty.” Such inflammatory rhetoric while disturbing, is not unusual from many Arab Muslims. However in this case reaction to the attack has gone beyond the family. It has taken on an official flavor.

On Monday, a week after the attack, a gathering took place at the UNRWA refugee camp in Aida, near Bethlehem. The location has a huge monument of a lock and key, symbolizing the defiant goal that the Palestinian Arabs will one day root out the Jews and take over the land they believe belongs to them.

The “festivities of the martyrs” event took place under the aegis of UNRWA (United Nations Relief Works Agency). To think the official body representing the world’s community of nations is celebrating terrorism is bad enough. However, that is not the worst of it. The number 1 financial donor to UNRWA is the US, by far. The EU and UK are #2 and #3 in financial support. Their combined total represents over 50% of UNRWA’s donor support.

Virtually no media coverage

US and UK citizens should ask themselves how they feel about having their hard earned taxes paying for events that honor terrorists.

Aside from this there is another troubling element to the UNRWA sponsored event.

One might think a public event honoring terrorism sponsored by a branch of the United Nations would be widely covered by the media. Yet, when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict most of the world’s media seems to come under a spell of double standard. The abnormal becomes normal, the unacceptable turns into acceptable, and the victim is often seen as the bully.