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BOOKS

The Palestinian Victimhood Narrative as an Obstacle to Peace: Dr. Eran Lerman

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The false Palestinian narrative of one-sided victimhood is a major hindrance to all efforts in the direction of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Global actors need to help the Palestinians move beyond wallowing in self-pity and rituals of bashing Israel, and towards difficult compromises with Israel.

The speech delivered by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas at the UN General Assembly last week was proof, once again, that the Palestinian “narrative” of victimhood has become a threat to any practical prospect for peace. Palestinian leaders consistently advance an interpretation of history which is at odds not only with the facts but also with their people’s best interests.

At the core of Abbas’ plaintive narration is the notion of the Palestinians as innocent victims, whose right to statehood and independence has been taken away and brutally ignored for much too long. In this telling of history, the Palestinians deserve to be backed by coercive intervention, as soon as possible, so as to impose on Israel a solution which would implement their “”rights.”

This would include implementation of “all relevant UN resolutions” – meaning UN General Assembly resolution 194 (the so-called “right of return”) as well as the Arab (mis)interpretation of resolution 242 as demanding withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 lines.

EVELYN GORDON: THEY MYTH THAT ABBAS FIGHTS TERROR

While Palestinians were killing four Israelis in back-to-back terror attacks last week, I received an email lauding Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for his vital role in fighting such terror. This email was parroting a very popular myth: that Abbas deserves the credit for the past several years of relative calm. Yet in reality, Abbas had nothing to do with producing this calm and little to do with maintaining it. And a simple year-by-year breakdown of the very numbers his cheerleaders cite to praise him is enough to prove it.

The myth relies on one completely true fact: Israeli fatalities have fallen dramatically since the height of the second intifada, from 452 in 2002 to 6 in 2013. But those who seek to credit Abbas for this development overlook two crucial details. First, almost three-quarters of this drop occurred even before Abbas replaced Yasser Arafat as PA president in November 2004. Israeli fatalities fell from their 2002 peak of 452 to 208 in 2003 and 117 in 2004; a cumulative decline of 74 percent. Yet during those years, Arafat was still in charge.

DISPATCHES FROM TOM GROSS

“Hung up on Israel: An explanation for the sincere” (& New Al-Quds rally tomorrow)
CONTENTS
1. Students honor a murderer
2. An email to Bard
3. Rare pro-Israel articles by non-Jewish writers
4. “Hung up on Israel: An explanation for the sincere” (By Jay Nordlinger, National Review, Oct 19, 2015)
5. “Animal Spirits: Israel and its tribe of risk-taking entrepreneurs” (By Luke Johnson, London Sunday Times, Oct 4, 2015)

Jamie Glazov Moment: What a Woman in Hijab is Really Saying to You

http://jamieglazov.com/2015/10/10/jamie-glazov-moment-what-a-woman-in-hijab-is-really-saying-to-you/

In this new Jamie Glazov Moment, Jamie discusses What a Woman in Hijab is Really Saying to You, unveiling the terrifying truth about what it really signifies.

Don’t miss this special Jamie Glazov Moment:And make sure to watch the special Jamie Glazov Moment in which Jamie discussed The “Not All Muslims Do That” Suicidal Charade, unveiling how a leftist malicious ploy masquerades as humanitarianism but deceives and destroys.

The Warsaw ghetto uprising: Armed Jews vs. Nazis By David Kopel

““If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first,” says the Talmud. [Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, folio 72a.] That is the best response to mass murderers — in 1943, today and always.”

During World War II, 30,000 Jewish partisans fought in Eastern Europe, in their own combat units. In Western Europe, where anti-semitism among the conquered gentile population was less severe, Jews were able to participate as individuals in the national resistance, rather than having to fight in separate units. For example, in France, Jews amounted to less than one percent of French population, but comprised about 15 to 20 percent of the French Resistance. One of the most successful battles of the Jewish resistance was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Nearly every Jew who participated was eventually killed — but they were going to be killed anyway. By choosing to stand and fight, the Warsaw Jews diverted a significant amount of Nazis resources from battlefields elsewhere, thus hastening the Nazi defeat.

The following is a based on my forthcoming book “The Morality of Self-Defense and Military Action: The Judeo-Christian Tradition,” which will be published in 2016 by Praeger.

Before the war, about 10 percent of Poland’s population was Jewish. In the Middle Ages, Poland had been a welcoming, tolerant and free nation, and many Jews emigrated there. But when Poland regained its independence in 1919, thanks to the Versailles Treaty, the nation degenerated into a military dictatorship which encouraged anti-semitism.

A Dismal Anniversary—50 Years of the Immigration Act of 1965 John Derbyshire

On October 3rd, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Immigration Act.

The 1965 Act did two big things, and a multitude of small ones.ustoadmit

The first big thing it did: abolish the old National-Origins quotas, established in 1921, revised in 1924 and 1929. The idea of the quotas was to maintain demographic stability by limiting settlement from any European country to some fixed percent of that country’s representation in a recent census.

The 1921 Act used the 1910 census as its benchmark. The 1924 Act used the 1890 census in order to reduce the quota numbers on South and East Europeans, who it was thought did not make as good citizens as north and west Europeans. The 1929 revision went to the 1920 census.

To present-day sensibilities it all sounds very horrible: “Whaddya mean, an Italian or a Pole doesn’t make as good a citizen as a German or Irishman? Whoa!”

But that was then and this is now. And personally, I decline to join in the screaming and fainting. I take the old-fashioned view that a nation has the right to admit for settlement whomever it pleases, on any grounds at all, rational or otherwise. It’s up to the people of that nation and their legislators to say who they want to settle. It’s not up to foreigners.

If, when I applied for U.S. citizenship in 2001, the immigration authorities had said: “Sorry, pal, we don’t like the look of your teeth, and we have enough Brits anyway,” it would not have occurred to me that I had any grounds for complaint. I might have wheedled and pleaded a bit—”Come on, just one more won’t hurt, and I’ll find an orthodontist, I promise”— but if they’d sent me back to Blighty at last I would have understood. This country belongs to Americans. It’s for them and their legislators to say who they want joining them.

‘The New York Times’ Goes Truther on the Temple Mount By Liel Leibovitz|

The newspaper settles the ‘explosive historical question that cuts to the essence of competing claims to what may be the world’s most contested piece of real estate’

Was the White House ever in Washington, D.C.? Can we ever really know for sure? Not unless we dig under the existing structure and find indisputable archaeological evidence of the original structure, which British general Robert Ross is said—by some sources—to have torched in August, 1814.

If you find everything about the previous paragraph patently ridiculous, you are clearly not a reporter or an editor for The New York Times. This morning, the paper of record published a piece about Jerusalem’s Temple Mount , questioning whether or not it was the site of, you know, the Jewish Temple. “Historical Certainty,” the article’s headline reads, “Proves Elusive at Jerusalem’s Holiest Place.” Capping the piece is a quote from Jane Cahill, who the paper notes is not only an archaeologist but also a practicing lawyer and therefore, presumably, an expert on incontrovertible evidence. Did the ancient Jewish temple stand where the Dome of the Rock now stands? “The answer might be ‘yes,’ if the standard of proof is merely a preponderance of the evidence,” Cahill is quoted as saying, “but ‘no’ if the standard of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt.”

New York Times Gives Credence to Muslim Claims of No Jewish Temples Ever on Temple Mount

http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/10/09/new-york-times-gives-credence-to-muslim-claims-of-no-jewish-temples-ever-on-temple-mount/ The New York Times is now “evenhanded” about historical facts. Maybe Jewish history that has been continuously accepted for thousands of years and supported by overwhelming evidence is right, maybe the Muslims who are trying to destroy all evidence of Jewish history for political purposes are right. It is a mystery: Historical Certainty Proves […]

Suspected ‘honor killing’ stokes German fears about customs, crimes of Middle Eastern refugees By Benjamin Weinthal

BERLIN – The alleged “honor killing” last month of a young pregnant woman who fled Syria after being gang raped is the latest case to leave Germans horrified by the crimes and customs of some of the refugees pouring in from the war-torn Middle East.
The woman, identified only as Rokstan M., fled Syria in 2011 after being gang-raped by Syrian soldiers and found work as an interpreter. After authorities in the small, eastern city of Dessau discovered her body, stabbed and buried behind a housing complex for Syrian refugees Friday, suspicion has focused on her father and brothers, who prosecutors believe may have killed her because the gang rape left her “unclean.”

How Obama Ushered in the New Age of Christian Martyrdom by Raymond Ibrahim

“Do you realize what you have done?” — Vladimir Putin, President of Russia

Everywhere that U.S. leadership helped Islamic jihadis topple secular autocrats in the name of “democracy and freedom,” indigenous Christian minorities are forced either to convert to Islam or die.

Many are accepting death.

Most recently, on August 28 near Aleppo, the Islamic State (IS or ISIS) tortured, mutilated, publicly raped, beheaded and crucified 12 Christians for saying they “would never renounce Christ” for Muhammad.

The jihadis took one group in front of a large crowd. They cut off the fingertips of a 12-year-old boy, who steadfastly refused to submit to Islam. They “severely beat him, telling his father they would stop the torture only if he, the father, returned to Islam.” He refused, so they “also tortured and beat him and the two other ministry workers. The three men and the boy then met their deaths in crucifixion.”