RUTHFULLY YOURS

Much (and much junk!) has already been written about the most recent wave of terrorism that shook Israel. While random Israeli Jews were being stabbed and shot in the street, much of the Western media was busy, as usual, trying to put a ‘pro-Palestinian’ spin on the ‘story’. This tendency manifested itself, among other things, in a keen effort to discover ‘reasons’ for terrorism. That in itself may not be a bad idea; but for so many of today’s lazy, talent-less and politically regimented ‘journalists’, the term ‘discover’ does not mean ‘investigate’, but rather ‘speculate’. To Israeli ears, such attempts to present ‘reasons’ sound very much like finding justifications for terrorism.

That’s what Yair Lapid – a former Finance Minister who now leads one of Israel’s opposition parties – told BBC presenter Stephen Sackur, who was interviewing him for a programme entitled HARDTalk. Sackur had said:
“The Palestinians are quite clear, as Mahmoud Abbas has said, ‘we are living’, he says, ‘under unbearable conditions’. And when that is the case, you get the kind of desperation, particularly among nihilistic young people, who see no future, that results in violence on your streets.”After Lapid accused him of justifying terrorism, Sackur countered:
“You use the word ‘justification’; I never used that word. I’m trying to place what is happening in a context, trying to maybe explain it, not justify it.”Sounds logical, doesn’t it? He wasn’t justifying terrorism; just placing it in context, ‘explaining’ it. Nothing wrong with that, surely? Well, two things are very wrong with that, actually.
Firstly, such valiant attempts to use European logic in order to ‘explain’ Middle Eastern terrorism are only ever made when Israelis are its victims. Mr. Sackur would not use a similar ‘logic’ to ‘explain’ 9/11, or 7/7. When Muslim terrorists killed a random British soldier outside his barracks, no one at BBC ‘explained’ the act as “desperation, particularly among nihilistic young people, who see no future…”

For ten years, I’ve spent the Jewish holidays in Jerusalem, joining multitudes from all over Israel and abroad who flock here to celebrate. It is a period of festivity, with concerts and events throughout the city. From my apartment outside the Old City, I watch Jews streaming to the Western Wall as generations before them have done, and Christian tourists who come to celebrate the Feast of the Tabernacles.

This year, the holiday begins with the usual exuberance, but events take a dark turn as streets turn into murder scenes, and paranoia grips the city.

Exhorted by their leaders to defend Islam’s holy sites, Palestinians are fed lies about marauding Jews planning to take over the Al-Aqsa mosque. President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel’s purported peace partner, calls on Palestinians to prevent Jews from “defiling” the Temple Mount “with their filthy feet.” He promises that “every martyr will be placed in Paradise.” His call is repeated by political and religious leaders on TV and social media, illustrated with graphic images of bloody knives.

A letter-to-the-editor published in today’s (Friday’s) print edition of the influential British newspaper the Guardian by a group of renowned British figures, among them Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, denounces boycotts of Israel that other cultural figures in London have advocated.

The letter, signed by 151 members of the U.K.’s cultural and political elite, including 14 members of Parliament, reads as follows:

In February 2015 you published a letter from UK artists announcing their intention to culturally boycott Israel.

On Monday evening, a Palestinian terrorist stabbed an Israeli soldier at the central bus station in Beersheba, then stole his rifle and began shooting randomly at commuters.

The soldier died of his wounds in the hospital; the terrorist was killed on location by security forces. About a dozen other people were injured — some seriously, some lightly — and many more left traumatized for life.

In the chaos of the attack, a 29-year-old Eritrean who worked at a plant nursery was mistakenly fingered as a terrorist, and he was shot by a security guard.

As if this weren’t tragic enough, after Habtom Zarhum was shot and “neutralized,” an angry mob began to beat him with anything they could get their hands on.

1. Moody’s investors service (Oct. 7, 2015): “Israel’s resilient growth model, effective governance and steadily improving debt metrics underpin its A1 government bond rating and stable outlook…. Israel’s economic growth has outpaced that of most advanced industrial economies over the past decade, supported by a competitive high-tech export sector, substantial spending on research and development and a well-educated labor force…. Israel is one of the few advanced countries that have a lower debt-to GDP ratio….” Bloomberg (Aug. 2): “Israel’s workforce participation rates have reached the targets set by the government for 2020…. In the age group 25-64, the labor force participation rate was 77.2% for the first half of 2015….“

2. The US content solution giant, Pro Quest, acquires Israel’s Ex Libris for $500mn (Globes, Oct. 8).

During a speech yesterday (10/20/15) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appropriately decried the “apologetics” which have minimized the role played by ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin el-Husseini (1895-1974)—founder of the modern Palestinian Muslim movement—in fomenting genocidal Islamic Jew-hatred. Netanyahu made these simple, irrefragable points, demonstrating how from the 1920s through (in particular) the World War II era, the father of the Palestinians at that time, with no [Jewish] state and no so-called “occupation,” no territories and no settlements, already sought, through systematic incitement, to annihilate the Jews. Regrettably, Hajj Amin el-Husseini is still a venerated figure in Palestinian society, he appears in study books and is exalted as the father of the nation, and this incitement that began then, incitement to kill Jews, continues.

On June 30, 1922, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States unanimously endorsed the “Mandate for Palestine,” confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine—anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The Congressional record contains a statement of support from New York Rep. Walter Chandler which includes an observation, about “Turkish and Arab agitators . . . preaching a kind of holy war [jihad] against . . . the Jews” of Palestine. During this same era within Palestine, a strong Arab Muslim irredentist current—epitomized by Hajj Amin el-Husseini—promulgated the forcible restoration of sharia-mandated dhimm­itude for Jews via jihad. Indeed, two years before he orchestrated the murderous anti-Jewish riots of 1920, that is, in 1918, Hajj Amin el-Husseini stated plainly to a Jewish coworker (at the Jerusalem Governorate), I. A. Abbady, “This was and will remain an Arab land . . . the Zionists will be massacred to the last man. . . . Nothing but the sword will decide the future of this country.”

Teach kids colours, numbers and their ABCs and they’ll embrace life and adulthood. Teach killing, nihilism and AK-47s and they’ll embrace death and the afterlife. Palestinian children are brainwashed right from the start. Rejectionism and the cult of death are at the core of their culture

Today’s column is brought to you by the letter ‘J’ for jihad and number 72 for virgins in paradise.

Once upon a time there was a little mouse called Farfour [Mickey’s copyright infringing twin], star of a children’s show called Tomorrow’s Pioneers on Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV. Farfour loved to tell all the boys and girls about world Islamic supremacy and how an AK-47 assault rifle would one day ”liberate all of Palestine”.

And the children squealed: “Oh Jerusalem, it’s the time of death and we will fight a war!” Farfour squeaked his last in a touching season finale, which saw him “martyred” at the hands of Israeli soldiers while “defending his land”.

CAIR’s foundation was built upon anti-Israel activists seeking to tear apart Western society. Today’s CAIR is no different. A current hotspot for CAIR extremism is in Orlando, Florida, where CAIR-Florida just held an annual fundraising banquet and just hired a coordinator to take the place of a recently arrested sexual predator. The days of Orlando only being about theme parks and tourism are over. Now, residents and tourists have something else to look forward to – the threat radical Islam.

CAIR or the Council on American-Islamic Relations was established in June 1994 as being part of the American Palestine Committee, a terrorist umbrella group headed by then-global head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook. The people who founded CAIR, including present National Executive Director Nihad Awad, were previously leaders of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), a now defunct organization that was at the time the American propaganda wing of Hamas and also one of the groups that made up the Palestine Committee.

CAIR-Florida, like those who established its parent organization, is made up of anti-Israel radicals.

CAIR-Florida Executive Director Hassan Shibly has referred to Hezbollah as “basically a resistance movement” and “absolutely not a terrorist organization” and, in August 2014, tweeted, “Israel and its supporters are enemies of G-d…” In December 2010, CAIR-Florida CEO and Statewide Regional Operations Director Nezar Hamze, repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas, when given numerous chances to do so, stating “I’m not denouncing anybody. I’m not getting involved in the politics.”

France’s plan to use its position at the UN Security Council to bring about the deployment of international monitors to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem has been condemned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers as biased, unhelpful and detached from reality.

Certainly it is all those things. But France’s decision to use its diplomatic position to advance a plan which if implemented would end Israeli sovereignty over Judaism’s holiest site is first and foremost a French act of aggression against the Jewish state.

Contrary to what the French government would have us believe, France’s Temple Mount gambit is not an effort to quell the violence. French protestations of concern over the loss of life in the current tempest of Palestinian terrorism ring hollow.

France doesn’t really oppose Palestinian terrorism.

If the world is lucky, nothing of greater substance than delegates’ hotel bills will emerge from the upcoming catastropharian confab in the City of Light. And if things go badly for common sense? Well, Malcolm Turnbull will be tickled even pinker and the rest of us left poorer
This December’s annual UN Conference of the Parties in Paris — known as COP 21 — takes place in the context of 18-plus years of global temperature stability. Many scathing remarks have been made about previous meetings, especially the 2009 Copenhagen gathering which Kevin Rudd attended with a 114-strong delegation, expecting to forge an agreement that would deliver the greenhouse gas abatement commitments he and others had promoted.

Since then, five subsequent annual meetings also have failed to bring agreements on binding commitments. This has been much to the relief of those who consider that human-induced climate change is non-existent or trivial and that to counter it would cripple national economies and, indeed, the world economy.

The ghost of the “pause” in temperature increases is, however, hardly haunting the upcoming meeting. The impetus for action this year is particularly strong. President Obama has made an agreement into a “signature” policy that will define the success of his Presidency, saying, “My definition of leadership would be leading on climate change, an international accord that potentially we’ll get in Paris.”[1]. The President also has argued that climate change has contributed to the rise of ISIS and Boko Haram[2], and his national security adviser, Susan Rice, swears that the world faces disaster unless we stop climate change [3].