RUTHFULLY YOURS

A defense official confirmed today that high-level discussions are under way to decide whether U.S. forces will be pulled out of the Sinai peninsula because of the danger posed by ISIS.

About 700 troops are currently part of the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) mission in the region established by the 1979 peace deal.

Joint Staff Vice Director for Operations Rear Adm. Andrew Lewis told reporters at the Pentagon today that reports stating two outposts outside the northern camp in the Sinai had been closed were incorrect.

“Operationally, we have people there that are committed to the mission. And my focus is making sure that they have the force protection measures in place and we have increased the force protection measures in MFO Sinai, to ensure their maximum safety,” Lewis said.

The admiral said there are no plans in place, but “those discussions are happening…whether to pull them out or not” within the U.S. government and the governments of Israel and Egypt. “And on those discussions are happening at the very highest levels,” he added.

ISIS claimed responsibility for taking down a Russian airliner over the desert on Halloween, and later published in Dabiq magazine photos of what ISIS says was the bomb — constructed out of a soda can.

Boko Haram reinforced their year-ago pledge of allegiance to ISIS, urging self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to have “steadfastness, steadfastness, and patience, patience” to achieve victory.

The video opens with pickups driving through the brush carrying masked jihadists wielding an ISIS flag. Front license plates were also replaced with ISIS flags.

A few more camera angles are used of the jihadists than the usual single, straight-on shot frequently seen in Boko Haram statements. The terrorist in the center juggles a couple pieces of paper as he reads the statement.

“The enemies of Allah the Almighty hold conferences and meetings to come up with a solution for the hole into which they fell, thinking that they can rescue their proxies and allies from the assault of the soldiers of the Caliphate,” the speaker says.

“They gave statements and threatened on television screen that they will defeat the monotheists who proved, by the grace of Allah the Almighty, the extent of their firmness and the harm they inflicted upon their enemies and the losses in terms of lives, wealth, and weapons, whether in Nigeria, the Niger border, Cameroon, or Chad,” he continued.

“Those people were shocked by what they saw, and they were surprised by the steadfastness of the monotheists in front of their Crusader campaigns, despite their alliance and cooperation with their henchmen from among the apostates and the Rafidhi [Shi’ite] militias. The monotheists have realized that victory is from Allah.”

“The march,” they vowed, will continue until jihadists “purify the land from the filth and defilement of the polytheists.”

“As usual, the disbelievers and apostates have for ages, when they feel hopeless to stop the spread of the truth, rush to scheme and sow rumors and lies against the mujahideen,” the speaker lamented.

The curtain was just closing on president Obama’s benefit performance on behalf of the billionaire Castro family in Havana last month when another curtain opened on an adjacent stage.

Accompanied by a chorus of idiotic media hype The Rolling Stones arrived in Havana three days after Obama departed the island amidst a similar chorus of idiocies. Despite the insufferable media blather both sets of performers were helping further enrich the Castro family for one reason: their “legacies.”

You see, amigos: Cuba’s entire economic infrastructure is owned almost lock stock and barrel—not only by the Stalinist regime’s military and secret police sectors (the only people in Cuba with guns, in case you’d forgotten)—but more specifically by the Castro family itself. In Congressional testimony a few years ago, Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Simmons, a recently retired Defense Intelligence Agency Cuba specialist, explained the issue in detail. He showed how through a corporation named GAESA, Raul Castro’s military owns virtually every corporation involved in Cuba’s tourism industry, among the Stalinist regime’s top money-makers lately.

Internet manipulation of readers’ comments in response to articles published on overtly anti-Israel and anti-Jewish web sites is allowing those web sites to spew out their venom unchecked and uncontrolled.

Freedom of speech on these web sites is non-existent – and its absence is playing a large part in influencing the opinions of those who visit these sites and see no readers’ comments that act as a counterbalance or rebuttal to the article published or readers’ comments supporting such articles.

Such manipulation has until now taken either of the following forms:

1. Simply not publishing a reader’s comment.

The editor can claim to exercise editorial control of what appears on his web-site – and there is nothing you can really do about it.

I received this treatment when seeking to comment on the decision by McGraw Hill to trash the remaining copies of a text book, Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World – after four maps of “Palestine” in 1946, 1947, 1948-1967 and 2000 were subsequently determined by McGraw Hill to be inaccurate and misleading.

My comment detailing why McGraw Hill’s decision was justified was not published.

This rejection motivated me to write an article “Palestine – Internet Intifada Denies Free Speech” – which was published on many web sites – and subsequently went viral.

2. Publishing readers’ comments – overwhelmingly anonymous – that do not address the subject matter of the article but comprise general comments repeated over and over again – such as “ethnic cleansing”, apartheid” and “stealing Palestinian land” – denigrating and delegitimising both Israel and Jews.

For the past few decades, British authorities have been caught up in the pervasive meme of multiculturalism — the falsehood that all cultures are equal and that to believe otherwise is to commit the worst modern day offense — to be “racist.”

Under this fallacy, the British government in 2001 introduced a series of restrictive speech codes that criminalized criticism of Islam, followed by a Racial and Religious Hatred Bill imposing fines and even imprisonment for speech that “incited hatred against a person for their religious or racial background.”

These laws have victimized a number of Britons. Hoteliers Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang were prosecuted for “insulting” a Muslim guest. Liberty Great Britain party chairman Paul Weston was arrested on suspicion of racial harassment after publicly reading a passage critical of Muslims from Winston Churchill’s The River War. Dr. Vladislav Rogozov, a Czech-born, UK cardiac anesthesiologist, is being investigated by Sheffield’s Royal Hallamshire Hospital for giving an online interview about his 2013 confrontation with a Muslim surgeon who refused to replace her blood-specked hijab with the proscribed, operating-theater headgear.

In this context and political climate, with racism conflated with religion – one specific religion – it is easy to see how government and public service employees would fear professional and legal repercussions (up to seven years in prison) merely for speaking up about criminal behavior by Muslims who justify their actions citing the Koran. In this way, teachers, police, child care workers, government officials and others have been silent about the growing menace of Muslim gangs who sexually groom and exploit children in the UK.

In his riveting book, Easy Meat: Inside Britain’s Grooming Gang Scandal (World Encounter Institute/New English Review Press, 2016. 328 pp., $17.20) author Peter McLoughlin explains how multiculturalism-inspired political correctness along with its companion, willful blindness concerning Islamic doctrine, has jeopardized the safety and well-being of children. McLoughlin posits that, since 1988, this nationwide sexploitation has resulted in the shattering of lives of between 100,000 to 1 million girls. The author documents how the fear of being deemed racist and facing criminal charges, dismissal or even threats of violence, has led to suppression of information and a stunning lack of intervention on behalf of young victims. In essence, an extensive, insidious operation that targets children for sexual grooming and enslavement has been covered up because of political correctness and fear of Muslim retribution.

“There have been more blasphemy cases and convictions during the Sisi era than during the Morsi era.” — Ibrahim Eissa, Muslim television host in Egypt.

Their crime was to have made a 20-second video on a mobile phone mocking the Islamic State — an act interpreted as mocking Islam. In the video, the boys appear laughing and joking, as they pretend to be ISIS members praying and slitting throats. “The judge didn’t show any mercy. He handed down the maximum punishment [five years].”

Egypt is becoming more like Pakistan. Although that nation also prohibits the defamation of all religions, only Christians and moderate Muslims are targeted and imprisoned; some, such as Asia Bibi, a 50-year-old Christian woman and mother of five, are on death row. Conversely, Muslims who openly defame Christianity — and they are many — are regularly let off.

Despite Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s many pluralistic words and gestures, which have won him much praise from the nation’s Christians and moderates, he appeases the Islamist agenda in one very clear way: by allowing the controversial defamation of religions law, colloquially known as the “blasphemy law,” to target Christians and moderates in ways arguably worse than under the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi.

Last month three Christian teenagers were jailed for five years for breaking the defamation of religions law. A fourth defendant, 15, was given juvenile detention for an indefinite period. [1] Earlier, they were detained for 45 days and subjected to “ill-treatment,” according to a human rights group.

Their crime was to have made a 20-second video on a mobile phone mocking the Islamic State — an act interpreted as mocking Islam. In the video, the boys appear laughing and joking, as they pretend to be ISIS members praying and slitting throats. The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, an independent rights group, confirmed that the four teenagers were performing scenes “imitating slaughter carried out by terrorist groups.” Even so, according to their defense lawyer, Maher Naguib, the Christian youths “have been sentenced for contempt of Islam and inciting sectarian strife…. The judge didn’t show any mercy. He handed down the maximum punishment.”

Ahead of Tuesday’s Wisconsin presidential primaries, U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was in Israel, the destination he chose for his first foreign trip since assuming his post at the end of October.

In meetings with Israeli leaders — and in an interview with Times of Israel editor David Horovitz — Ryan reaffirmed his commitment to the Jewish state and his opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran. He also stated, in no uncertain terms, that — contrary to increasing rumor and pressure — he is not going to end up becoming the Republican nominee at what threatens to be a contested GOP convention. Nobody really believes he means it, however, because he had been equally adamant about not wanting the position he is currently occupying.

But, while distraught Americans from both parties are obsessing over whether Donald Trump can win the nomination — and if he does, whether he can beat likely Democratic rival Hillary Clinton — the Obama administration is being given a free pass to get away with murder, figuratively. More literally, it is enjoying the benefit of the doubt caused by the distraction of the public away from the havoc the White House and State Department are continuing to wreak, which is enabling the actual death of a lot of people in the present, and a whole lot more in the future.

The terrorism of the Islamic State group is only a tiny part of this, though it seems to be the only jihadist organization that gets a rise out of Westerners, whom it makes no bones about targeting for mass murder. Indeed, as the suicide bombings in Brussels on March 22 indicated, Europeans and Americans only wake up when a lot of people with whom they can identify get slaughtered senselessly. That this kind of thing is going on routinely everywhere else in the world barely elicits a yawn.

But as evil as ISIS is, it is still small fry compared to the Islamic Republic of Iran, the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism, with tentacles reaching far and wide. And now, thanks to the Obama administration, it also has multibillions of dollars at its disposal with which to build its nuclear arsenal. Nor does it hide its ambitions to wipe Israel off the map and its loathing for America, the “great Satan.”

Why, throughout its history, have the Palestinians been the victims of so many irresponsible leaders who harm their own constituents?

Historically, the Palestinian “liberation organizations” have had no ideology or motivation beyond the destruction of the State of Israel. They are proxies of the countries funding them, instead of acting in the authentic national interests of the Palestinian people.

Instead of bringing jobs, water and better education — as they promise when they stand for election — some Arab Israeli legislators sell out their people for a few crumbs of headline attention. They parrot the Iranian line, with no regard for the needs of their voters. Iran just wants to get its foot in the door.

With the generous “help” of our Palestinian leaders — and especially with the “help” of the treacherous Europeans who keep on enabling them — any real help for the Palestinians, and the top of our mountain, look more distant than ever.

We Palestinians, as a new people on the stage of history, have not yet learned from the experience of those who preceded us. We always seem to be motivated by factors working against us, and let ourselves be manipulated by foreign countries who use us as proxies to further their own interests.

We are making mistakes again, one after another. We do damage to the Palestinian national interest and instead of propelling ourselves forward, we push ourselves back. We work against our own best interests by constantly lying. We all know, for instance, that there is no truth to the claim that Jesus was a Palestinian, or when we say that the Jews have no historic links to Jerusalem. We just make ourselves look ridiculous. Whoever makes such claims not only attacks Christianity but also represents the entire Palestinian narrative as a blatant lie.

The Palestinian leadership continues to destroy every chance the Palestinians might have of becoming a genuine, internationally recognized nation by insisting on demands they know the Israelis will never meet. These include the right of return for more than 11 million Palestinians to a country of eight million, and refusing to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The Israelis correctly understand both demands not as a desire to have a Palestinian state, but as a desire to have Israel’s state. That impression can only be confirmed every time anyone looks at a map of Palestine: by pure coincidence, of course, it is identical to the map of Israel, only the names are different

In 1948, when we could easily have established a Palestinian state in the large territories offered by the UN, and instead joined with five Arab armies in an attempt to destroy Israel and erect Palestine in its place.

Between 1949 and 1967, we could have established a Palestinian state in the West Bank while it was still under Jordanian control, and in the Gaza Strip governed by Egypt.

During the 1970s, instead of thanking Jordan’s King Hussein for taking in Palestinian refugees, Yasser Arafat and the PLO tried to overthrow him. The result was a civil war and the expulsion of the Palestinian leadership from Jordan to Lebanon.

Once in Lebanon, we set about creating a terrorist state-within-a-state, bent on subverting Lebanese sovereignty and attacking Israel. The Israelis consequently entered south Lebanon, and with the support of the Shi’ites there, we were expelled once again, this time to Tunisia.

Under Palestinian influence, Tunisia then became a hotbed of crime and international conspiracies, again endangering our hosts.

Iran held “elections” late last month. Headlines across the Western media loudly declared a victory for “moderate” electoral forces, with the implicit strapline that there is no longer an ethical case against doing business in Iran. This is music to the ears of would-be profiteers — and their would-be partners in Tehran — who are keen to get their teeth into the Iranian market.

The truth remains, however, that Iran is ruled by one of the world’s most evil regimes, and these “elections” do nothing to alter that fact. From day one of the “Islamic Revolution” in 1979, various factions of Western political elites have practiced willful self-delusion when it comes to Iran, insisting that “moderates” or “reformists” exist and are only an election cycle away from fundamentally changing everything. But this has always been a lie, and one which becomes more transparent and more farcical every time it is told.

Why “Elections” in Scare Quotes?

There were ballot papers, of course. But who was on them, and how did they get there?

The answer to that question tells you everything you need to know about democracy, Iran-style. Every single candidate running in these “elections” was vetted and pre-approved by a committee of six clerics and six sharia judges, all of whom are appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

When more than half of the initial 12,000-plus parliamentary hopefuls are disqualified for insufficiently zealous loyalty to the regime, and when over 600 of the 800 candidates running for the 88-seat Assembly of Experts are purged for the same reason, the term “election” seems inappropriate in this context.