RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

Vast sums are spent on public education, yet the dividend is a galloping ignorance which refuses to recognise that effect flows directly from cause. Our leaders’ politically correct fantasy that the defeat of ISIS will end Islamist violence extends that folly by mistaking symptom for disease.
It was the nineteenth-century French poet Charles Baudelaire who first remarked that “the devil’s best trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.” This maxim resonates when I think of ISIS. First, pairing the Devil and ISIS seems apropos as a general principle. But, second, ISIS has a disappearing trick too in its kitbag. In this case it works to persuade the ninnies in the West to think that terrorism will somehow disappear if only ISIS can be routed.

Almost all terrorist attacks these days are linked to the influence of ISIS. Ergo, where ISIS goes so does terrorism. Wrong, ninny, this is a non sequitur. The real instigator of terror existed long before ISIS and will exist long after ISIS is just a fetid memory.

I don’t care what anybody says about the vast amounts of money now being spent on education. Under the corrupting influence of political correctness, the general IQ and good old-fashioned common sense of people in the West is, and has been for some time, clearly plummeting. With a brave few exceptions, this is particularly evident among the political elite, academics, Christian church leaders, and those in the media.

Toeing the post-modern line, we sheep are meant to accept that Captain Cook ‘invaded’ Australia, presumably with cannons a-blazin’ against the well-fortified positions of the indigenous inhabitants; that gay marriage is only about equality; that ‘husbands and wives’ is an exclusionary concept; that all cultures are equally valuable (ahem, except our own); that those of European heritage are heirs to a history of bloodlust and exploitation; that bringing in millions of people with starkly different cultural values will produce a feel-good multicultural nirvana; that individuals can be whatever gender or ethnicity they would personally like to be; that ninety-seven per cent of climate scientists accept the alarmist global warming thesis (after all, in a post-modern world, a fiction repeated often enough will become true).

I could go on but I find it so mentally taxing and enervating that the apparition of death appears as a welcome release. But the debilitating effects of the above sophistries, all put together, will be as nothing if political correctness continues to obfuscate the blood-spattered trail between cries of Allahu Akbar and butchery.

A document leak known as the “Panama Papers” on Sunday pulled back the curtain on the secret financial dealings of the world’s rich, powerful and, in some cases, allegedly corrupt.

The papers were leaked to Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung and combed through in cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and other publications. They purport to document the dealings of the Mossack Fonseca law firm, which appears to have helped wealthy clients establish shell companies in Panama, a rare remaining bastion of bank secrecy.

Other media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, have investigated over the years the sources and disposition of the wealth of some of the individuals and families mentioned in these reports. But this leak offers a rare, comprehensive view and could yield new insights into global financial flows.

The scale is eye-popping. Longtime friends and associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin channelled $2 billion through Panama over the years, ICIJ says in its report on the documents. A Kremlin spokesman described the report as “Putinphobia.” A family member of Chinese President Xi Jinping allegedly has a Panama connection, as do the Saudi king and the son of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. Mr. Xi’s brother-in-law and the Saudi government declined to comment to ICIJ, while Mr. Najib’s son told the group he had used a Panamanian company “for international business.”

Some Western leaders also are mentioned in the leaks, including Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, and several former British members of Parliament as well as the deceased father of Prime Minister David Cameron. ICIJ says it has found evidence that some 140 leaders and politicians, and potentially hundreds of other individuals, established companies in Panama over the nearly 40 years for which it has obtained records. CONTINUE AT SITE

In a statement that reveals yet again how out of touch the administration is, Josh Earnest, White House spokesman, said that the massive suicide bombing in Lahore, in which 70 people were killed and about 300 injured, didn’t simply target Christians since many Muslims were victims as well.

Yet the terrorist organization that launched the attack and is a Taliban splinter group, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, said it specifically targeted Christians celebrating Easter in the park. The same militant group also took responsibility for the twin bombings of a Christian church in Lahore last year. Christians account for two percent of Pakistan’s total population.

Admittedly most of those killed were Muslims, and the loss of innocent life whether Muslim or Christian, is to be lamented. However, the U.S. State Department did not respond to the aftermath of the attack as one specifically targeting Christians.

This attack underscored the precarious position of Pakistan’s minorities and the significant fact that, despite increased military vigilance, extremists are still capable of staging wide-scale assaults. Prime Minister Sharif announced recognition of holidays celebrated by Pakistan’s minorities – the Hindu festival of Holi as well as Easter. Unfortunately, if the Taliban members got the message, they chose to ignore it.

Speaking to the bereaved who lost a son in battle during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln noted, “I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the alter of freedom.”

Disillusionment with Barack Obama coupled with concern that his legacy could help put Donald Trump in the White House has now entered respectable European political discourse. The notion reflects profound doubts at Europe’s core about a country with both a president who broke his word and failed to attack Syria for its use of poison gas—damaging American credibility as the West’s ultimate recourse to justice by military intervention—and a leading candidate for the White House whose campaign resounds with brutality, bigotry and ignorance of the world.

Norbert Roettgen, chairman of the German Bundestag’s foreign-affairs commission, pointed to a possible Obama-begets-Trump link last week. Mr. Roettgen, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party, said the situation meant U.S. allies in Europe and elsewhere were right to express their serious concern about America.

“Paradoxically, Trump is completely inward-looking,” Mr. Roettgen told me. “But he touches on a question of American pride. It’s there that many voters, in terms of the U.S. role in the world, feel that the country has lost considerable ground under Obama. What they see is Obama’s weakness. For example, his allowing the Russians to militarily establish the upper hand in Syria.”

Although polls late last year showed strong French support for sending ground troops within an international coalition to fight Islamic State, and Mrs. Merkel has said “military efforts” are needed as the first step in defeating the Islamist terrorists, Mr. Obama hasn’t dealt convincingly and head-on with the challenge.

“The damage is done,” said a senior European security official during an hour’s conversation after the murderous March 22 terrorist attacks in Brussels. Over these past years, he made clear to me, America’s credibility as a reliable guardian against chaos has been broken.

“The United States’ relative power has decreased in relation to Russia and China,” the official said. “You can only play the American [guardian’s] role when you have communality at home. But I’m not sure the United States is ready to restore this or is able to. Vladimir Putin is present at the places where America and Europe are weak.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Among young European Muslims, support for suicide bombings range from 22% in Germany to 29% in Spain, 35% in Britain and 42% in France, according to a Pew poll. In the UK, one in five Muslims have sympathy for the Caliphate. Today more British Muslims join ISIS than the British army. In the Netherlands, a survey shows that the 80% of Dutch Turks see “nothing wrong” in ISIS.

Even if these polls and surveys must be taken with some caution, they all indicate a deep and vibrant “gray zone,” which is feeding the Islamic jihad in Europe and the Middle East. We are talking about millions of Muslims who show sympathy, understanding and affinity with the ideology and goals of ISIS.

How many Muslims will this ISIS virus be able to infect in the vast European “gray zone”? The answer will determine our future.

In the 1970s and ’80s, Europe was terrorized by a war declared by Communist armed groups, such as the Germany’s Baader Meinhof or Italy’s Red Brigades. Terrorists seemed determined to undermine democracy and capitalism. They targeted dozens of journalists, public officials, professors, economists and politicians, and in Italy in 1978, even kidnapped and executed Italy’s former prime minister, Aldo Moro.

The big question then was: “How deep is the ‘gray zone’?” — the sympathizers of terrorism in the industrial factories, labor unions and universities.

In the last year, the Islamic State’s henchmen slaughtered hundreds of Europeans and Westerners. Their last assault, in Brussels, struck at the heart of the West: the postmodern mecca of NATO and the European Union.

Saturday marked one year since the framework agreement for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—the nuclear deal with Iran—was announced. At the time, President Obama said this agreement would make “the world safer.” And perhaps it has, but only in the short term and only when it comes to Iran’s nuclear-weapons proliferation.

Sadly, behind all the talk of change, the Iran we have long known—hostile, expansionist, violent—is alive and well, and as dangerous as ever. We wish it were otherwise. In the United Arab Emirates, we are seeking ways to coexist with Iran. Perhaps no country has more to gain from normalized relations with Tehran. Reducing tensions across the less than 100-mile-wide Arabian Gulf could help restore full trade ties, energy cooperation and cultural exchanges, and start a process to resolve a 45-year territorial dispute.

Since the nuclear deal, however, Iran has only doubled down on its posturing and provocations. In October, November and again in early March, Iran conducted ballistic-missile tests in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

In December, Iran fired rockets dangerously close to a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz, just weeks before it detained a group of American sailors. In February, Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan visited Moscow for talks to purchase more than $8 billion in Russian fighter jets, planes and helicopters.

In Yemen, where peace talks now hold some real promise, Iran’s disruptive interference only grows worse. Last week, the French navy seized a large cache of weapons on its way from Iran to support the Houthis in their rebellion against the U.N.-backed legitimate Yemeni government. In late February, the Australian navy intercepted a ship off the coast of Oman with thousands of AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. And last month, a senior Iranian military official said Tehran was ready to send military “advisers” to assist the Houthis. CONTINUE AT SITE