RUTHFULLY YOURS

Hamas and Abbas have turned Palestinian journalists into weapons in their internecine war. Palestinian journalists are now being targeted not only for expressing their views and reporting in a way that angers their leaders; they are also arrested and tortured in the process of the settling of scores between Abbas and Hamas.

The Palestinians indeed live under two dictatorial regimes, where freedom of expression and freedom of the media are violated on a daily basis.

By taking journalists hostage, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas have demonstrated that they are operating more as militias than as governments. We have before us a preview of the deadly drama of any future Palestinian state.

Palestinian journalists have once again fallen victim to the continuing power struggle between the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has jurisdiction over parts of the West Bank, and Hamas, the Islamist movement that is in control of the entire Gaza Strip.

Neither the PA nor Hamas is any champion of human rights, especially freedom of the media. The two parties regularly crack down on their critics, including journalists who do not toe the line or dare to report on issues that are deemed as reflecting negatively on the PA or Hamas.

The past few weeks have been particularly tough for Palestinian journalists. In this period, several journalists found themselves behind bars in PA and Hamas prisons, while others were summoned for interrogation and had to spend hours in interrogation rooms facing and detention centers.

To make matters even worse, a new Cyber Crime Law passed by the PA paves the way for legal measures against Facebook and Twitter users who post critical or unflattering comments about President Abbas and his senior officials. Critics say the law is a grave assault on freedom of expression and it will be used as a tool in the hands of Abbas and his henchmen to silence their critics or throw them into prison. In addition, the PA has blocked more than 20 news websites that are affiliated with Hamas and Mohammed Dahlan, an ousted Fatah leader who has long openly challenged Abbas.

The PA-Hamas war is hardly a secret. The two entities use every available method to bring each other down. Abbas’s PA has not hesitated to take extreme measures against the two million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. These measures include depriving the Gaza Strip of medical supplies, electricity and fuel, as well as forcing thousands of PA civil servants into early retirement and cutting off salaries to thousands of others.

Hamas’s retaliatory capacity towards the PA for these punitive steps is limited — by Israel. Fortunately for Abbas and the PA, Israel is sitting in the middle between the West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Had Israel not been so situated, Hamas and its Gaza Strip followers would have marched into the West Bank and taken over Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority, and overthrown Abbas’s PA.

The attempt in the West to impose a strict set of rules about what one is allowed to think and express in academia and in the media — to the point that anyone who disobeys is discredited, demonized, intimidated and in danger of losing his or her livelihood — is just as toxic and just as reminiscent of Orwell’s diseased society.

The main facet of this PC tyranny, so perfectly predicted by George Orwell, is the inversion of good and evil — of victim and victimizer. In such a universe, radical Muslims are victimized by the West, and not the other way around. This has led to a slanted teaching of the history of Islam and its conquests, both as a justification of the distortion and as a reflection of it.

Thought-control is necessary for the repression of populations ruled by despotic regimes. That it is proudly and openly being used by self-described liberals and human-rights advocates in free societies is not only hypocritical and shocking; it is a form of aiding and abetting regimes whose ultimate goal is to eradicate Western ideals.

Political correctness (PC) has been bolstering radical Islamism. This influence was most recently shown again in an extensive exposé by the Clarion Project in July 2017, which demonstrates the practice of telling “deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them in order to forget any fact that has become inconvenient” — or, as George Orwell called it in his novel, 1984, “Doublespeak.”

This courtship and marriage between the Western chattering classes and radical Muslim fanatics was elaborated by Andrew C. McCarthy in his crucial 2010 book, The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

Since then, this union has strengthened. Both the United States and the rest of the West are engaged in a romance with forces that are, bluntly, antagonistic to the values of liberty and human rights.

To understand this seeming paradox, one needs to understand what radical Islamism and PC have in common. Although Islamism represents all that PC ostensibly opposes — such as the curbing of free speech, the repression of women, gays and “apostates” — both have become totalitarian ideologies.

The totalitarian nature of radical Islamism is more obvious than that of Western political correctness — and certainly more deadly. Sunni terrorists, such as ISIS and Hamas — and Shiites, such as Hezbollah and its state sponsor, Iran — use mass murder to accomplish their ultimate goal of an Islamic Caliphate that dominates the world and subjugates non-Muslims.

The attempt in the West, however, to impose a strict set of rules about what one is allowed to think and express in academia and in the media — to the point that anyone who disobeys is discredited, demonized, intimidated and in danger of losing his or her livelihood — is just as toxic and just as reminiscent of Orwell’s view of a diseased society.

These rules are not merely unspoken ones. Quoting a Fox News interview with American columnist Rachel Alexander, the Clarion Project points out that the Associated Press — whose stylebook is used as a key reference by a majority of English-language newspapers worldwide for uniformity of grammar, punctuation and spelling — is now directing writers to avoid certain words and terms that are now deemed unacceptable to putative liberals.

Alexander recently wrote:

“Even when individual authors do not adhere to the bias of AP Style, it often doesn’t matter. If they submit an article to a mainstream media outlet, they will likely see their words edited to conform. A pro-life author who submits a piece taking a position against abortion will see the words ‘pro-life’ changed to ‘anti-abortion,’ because the AP Stylebook instructs, ‘Use anti-abortion instead of pro-life and pro-abortion rights instead of pro-abortion or pro-choice.’ It goes on, ‘Avoid abortionist,’ saying the term ‘connotes a person who performs clandestine abortions.’

“Words related to terrorism are sanitized in the AP Stylebook. Militant, lone wolves or attackers are to be used instead of terrorist or Islamist. ‘People struggling to enter Europe’ is favored over ‘migrant’ or ‘refugee.’ While it’s true that many struggle to enter Europe, it is accurate to point out that they are, in fact, immigrants or refugees.”

Though members of the anti-Donald Trump camp would die before admitting ‎it, they are in a state of exhilaration over his presidency. Every time he opens ‎his mouth, they feel vindicated in their opposition to his election and justified ‎in their personal loathing of him. The same goes for Israeli Prime Minister ‎Benjamin Netanyahu’s detractors.‎

I know exactly what they are going through, as this is how I experienced the ‎eight years of former U.S. President Barack Obama’s tenure. When Obama ‎was inaugurated in January 2009, I wept both tears of sadness and joy. I was ‎upset that this radical Saul Alinskyite with an anti-Semitic pastor was about to ‎take the helm of the most important position in the world. I was amused, ‎however, that he had emerged out of nowhere to swipe the Democratic ‎candidacy out of the clutches of Hillary Clinton, who was promised by her ‎party that she was a shoo-in. But mainly I was relieved, as a columnist, to be ‎able to spend the next several years calling the powers-that-be to task, rather ‎than having to defend them. ‎

In general, it is much easier to be a critic than a champion, because all ‎positions are flawed in some way. This is especially true where our preferred ‎politicians are concerned. Those we elect to represent our worldview not only ‎have faults; we are lucky if any of them are even capable of understanding the ‎debate, let alone articulating it. So we end up having to do that on their behalf. ‎

To be effective in this endeavor, we have to be clever, and that takes work. It’s ‎hard always having to preface support for an idea by acknowledging its ‎blemishes — as Winston Churchill did when describing democracy as the ‎‎”worst form of government … except for all those other forms.” Imagine how ‎trite and pathetic that sentence would have sounded had its order been ‎reversed.‎

Indeed, to put up a good defense, we have to anticipate the ‎prosecutorial argument of our adversaries and head it off at the pass by ‎presenting its merits, even when we don’t really wish to see any. Members of ‎both the Left and the Right who fail to do this come off as fanatics or fools. ‎

In contrast, being on the offensive requires little more than hurling darts at the ‎heart of a matter. Which is why I so frequently go after Palestinian Authority ‎President Mahmoud Abbas, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the ‎Iranian regime and all their apologists in the West. ‎

Far trickier is defending Trump and Netanyahu, both of whom I voted for and ‎still support, in spite of valid reasons to have qualms about each.‎

The Taliban vowed to create “a graveyard for the American Empire” with “lofty spirits” after President Trump didn’t heed their lobbying for a withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In unveiling an Afghanistan strategy at Fort Myer outside D.C. on Monday night, Trump said that “perhaps it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan,” a continuation of the Obama-era policy that kept the door open to negotiations with the terror group and categorized them as armed insurgents.

The Taliban killed two U.S. soldiers in a suicide bombing earlier this month and claimed responsibility for the death of a U.S. soldier in July. They also claimed an Afghan military recruit who killed three U.S. soldiers in June was one of their fighters who had infiltrated security forces.

“America will continue its support for the Afghan government and the Afghan military as they confront the Taliban in the field,” Trump said. “Ultimately, it is up to the people of Afghanistan to take ownership of their future, to govern their society, and to achieve an everlasting peace. We are a partner and a friend, but we will not dictate to the Afghan people how to live, or how to govern their own complex society. We are not nation-building again. We are killing terrorists.”

Trump noted that “the American people are weary of war without victory” and said that despite his “original instinct” to pull out his advisers convinced him that “the consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable.”

In a statement from spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid released in print and on video, the Taliban said, “It seems America is not yet ready to end the longest war in its history. Instead of trying to understand ground realities, they still arrogantly believe in their force and might.”

“So long as a single American soldier remains in our homeland and American leaders continue treading the path of war, we shall also sustain our jihad against them with lofty spirits, absolute determination and additional firmness,” Mujahid vowed, calling it “our religious obligation and national duty — we shall remain true to this duty so long as souls remain in our bodies.”

“America should have thought about withdrawing their troops from Afghanistan instead of continuing the war,” he added. “As Trump stated ‘Americans are weary of the long war in Afghanistan’, we shall cast further worry into them and force American officials to accept realities. The Afghan Mujahid nation is neither tired nor will it ever get tired in pursuit of winning their freedom and establishing an Islamic system. If America does not withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, the day will not be far when Afghanistan shall transform into a graveyard for the American Empire and the American leaders can understand this concept.”

Ahead of last Friday’s Camp David meeting at which Trump discuss Afghanistan strategy with his team, the Taliban issued an open letter to Trump telling him that if the U.S. military hasn’t won the peace so far “you shall never be able to win it with mercenaries, notorious contractor firms and immoral stooges.” CONTINUE AT SITE