RUTHFULLY YOURS

SCHIPHOL, the Netherlands—Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders went on trial for discrimination and inciting hatred, in a case that could have far-reaching consequences for the political discourse in the Netherlands ahead of general elections.

The weekslong trial, which formally began on Monday, comes as Mr. Wilders is expected to become a front-runner in the March vote amid a rise in populist movements across Europe. His trial will address a fundamental question: Is the right of free speech for politicians absolute, or should it be restricted to protect against discrimination?

Mr. Wilders is being charged over comments he made during local elections in 2014. At a party rally in The Hague, he asked supporters if they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in the country. The crowd responded by chanting: “Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!” Mr. Wilders replied: “Well, we’ll take care of it then.”

More than 6,400 people filed complaints with the police after the speech was broadcast on national television, including many citizens of Dutch-Moroccan origin who accused the politician of sowing hatred and fueling ethnic tensions.

“Parliamentarians have great freedom to say what they stand for,” Dutch prosecutors said. ”However, it does not exempt them from the responsibility of complying with the law.”

Mr. Wilders, who didn’t attend the opening of the trial, has argued that he was only talking about specific problems and that he didn’t want all Moroccans to leave the country.

“This trial is a farce,” he said according to a statement read out by his lawyer. “Political statements should be discussed in parliament and not in court.”

On the first day of the trial, which took place in a high-security courtroom close to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, the court sought to establish the events surrounding the speeches and the validity of the complaints.

If he is convicted, Mr. Wilders could theoretically be sent to jail, although he is more likely to receive a fine or a community-service sentence. The trial will take more than three weeks and a ruling is expected in December.

Mr. Wilders, 53 years old, is one of Europe’s most prominent and controversial anti-Islam politicians. He has described the religion as a fascist ideology that should be removed from Dutch society.

In his one-page election manifesto he calls for a “de-Islamization” of the Netherlands. He wants to ban the Quran, shut mosques and close the borders to migrants from Islamic countries. An average of polls shows his Party for Freedom is slightly behind the center-right Liberal Party of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

It is the second time Mr. Wilders has faced prosecution on hate-speech charges. In 2011, a court acquitted him on the grounds that freedom-of-speech laws protected such rhetoric in the Netherlands. Dutch prosecutors say the latest charges are different because this time “an entire population group is now lumped together.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Europe’s descent into a new kind of anti-Semitism hit a new low last week in, of all places, the Palace of Westminster. There, at an event in the House of Lords, Jews were blamed for the Holocaust, Israel was compared to Islamic State and Zionists were said to have power over Parliament.

Jenny Tonge, a baroness and former member of parliament who hosted this showcase of anti-Semitic lies on behalf of the Palestinian Return Center lobby group, was launching a campaign to press Britain to apologize for the Balfour Declaration. The centenary of this historic promise to create a home for the Jewish people in Palestine will be marked next year.

One unidentified speaker blamed the “heretic” American Rabbi Stephen Wise for having “antagonized Hitler over the edge” with calls for a boycott of Germany in 1935. He quoted Wise’s 1905 statement that there were “six million bleeding and suffering reasons to justify Zionism” and made special note of the number. This is a classic trope of Holocaust denial, suggesting the number of the Nazis’ victims has been fabricated to match this earlier number.
Not only did Ms. Tonge fail to interrupt or dispute this speaker: she responded by demanding a boycott of Israel. The baroness’s reputation as an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist has earned her notoriety but never ostracism. Six years ago she suggested that Israel’s humanitarian mission to Haiti was harvesting the organs of disaster victims. This modern version of the medieval blood libel was tolerated by her center-left party, the Liberal Democrats.

Even after last week’s event was publicized by the Israeli embassy in London, the baroness was merely suspended from the party. She has since resigned, blaming Israel for manipulating British politics: “They like to be in control of things.”

The precincts of Westminster ought never again be desecrated by anti-Semites acting on behalf of Islamist lobbyists. The Conservative floor leader of the House of Commons, David Lidington, has protested on behalf of the government. Free speech doesn’t require turning Parliament into a safe space for Holocaust denial. It is now for members of Britain’s upper chamber to put their house in order.

But an avalanche of such propaganda can be expected, as Palestinians and the left exploit next year’s anniversary to mobilize support for their delegitimization of Israel. The Balfour Declaration plays a crucial role in their mendacious narrative depicting Zionism as a form of imperialism.

It is vital to put the record straight: Israel is not and never has been a colonial enterprise, but—in the words of Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour in his “declaration,” which was actually a public letter to Baron Rothschild—a “national home for the Jewish people.” Zionism is the political expression of the legitimate aspiration of Jews to have their own state. CONTINUE AT SITE

If Abbas is unable to make peace inside his own Fatah faction, how will he ever be able to end the dispute with Hamas? And the more crucial question: How can Abbas ever be expected to make peace with Israel when he cannot even control his own Fatah loyalists? The Palestinian political situation, plagued with anarchy on all fronts, is deteriorating on a daily basis.

Israel and the rest of the world are currently facing two Palestinian camps: one (Hamas) that does not want to make peace with Israel because it believes Israel ought not to exist, and the second (Fatah) that cannot make peace with Israel because it is too weak to do so. The next US administration, whatever political persuasion it may be, would do well to mark this reality.

This has become predictable. Given two minutes of breath, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas resorts to the old tactic of courting Hamas as a way of hiding from the disaffection of his own Fatah faction. The overtures towards Hamas are a smokescreen for what many Palestinians are beginning to perceive as the beginning of a revolt against Abbas.

Last week, Abbas held a surprise meeting in Qatar with Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal. The meeting reportedly considered ways of ending the longstanding dispute between Fatah and Hamas and achieving “national reconciliation.”

Abbas aides said the meeting also dealt with the possibility of forming a Palestinian “national unity” government and holding long-overdue presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The unexpected meeting was held under the auspices of the rulers of Qatar, a country that has long been the Number One sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood organization, of which Hamas is an offshoot.

“Idiots, since when have non-Muslims been wished to rest in peace?” — Tweet after the death of a Jewish businessman in Turkey.

All of this history and narrative makes one ask: What is a radical Muslim and what is a moderate Muslim? Is “being radical” only about being an armed militant? Can Muslims who do not engage in violent action but who have extremely hate-filled and murderous speech be considered “moderate”? Or would their supremacist or even genocidal speech be enough to name them as “radical?”

What then is the difference between armed Islamic State terrorists who threaten Jews with massacres, and unarmed Turkish Twitter users who celebrate Jewish deaths and call for massacring more Jews?

Two important Jew have lost their lives lately: Shimon Peres, the ninth President of Israel, and Ishak Alaton, a Jewish businessman from Turkey.

Upon receiving the news of the deaths of these two men, many Turks rushed to Twitter proudly and openly to show off their hatred of Jews, according to the Turkish news site, Avlaremoz, which covers Jewish affairs.

Some of the Tweets posted after Peres’s death on September 28 included:

“Shimon Peres died, there is now one fewer Jew. I wish the same for other Jews and their sperm…”
“Shimon Peres died. One fewer Jew. The world has got rid of one more piece of dirt.”
“Shimon Peres, you’ll get a nice tan there. May your hellfire be fierce. Jewish dog.”
“It would be great if we do salah [Islamic prayer] of thankfulness every time a Jew drops dead.”
“Hellfire is calling you, Jewish dog Shimon Peres.”

During the first six months of 2016, migrants committed 142,500 crimes, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office. This is equivalent to 780 crimes committed by migrants every day, an increase of nearly 40% over 2015. The data includes only those crimes in which a suspect has been caught.

Thousands of migrants who entered the country as “asylum seekers” or “refugees” have gone missing. They are, presumably, economic migrants who entered Germany on false pretenses. Many are thought to be engaging in robbery and criminal violence.

Local police in many parts of the country admit that they are stretched to the limit and are unable to maintain law and order.

“Drug trafficking takes place right before our eyes. If we intervene, we are threatened, spat on, insulted. Sometimes someone whips out a knife. They are always the same people. They are ruthless, fearless and have no problems with robbing even the elderly.” — Private security guard.

According to Freddi Lohse of the German Police Union in Hamburg, many migrant offenders view the leniency of the German justice system as a green light to continue delinquent behavior. “They are used to tougher consequences in their home countries,” he said. “They have no respect for us.”

“It cannot be that offenders continue to fill the police files, hurt us physically, insult us, whatever, and there are no consequences. Many cases are closed or offenders are released on probation or whatever. Yes, what is happening in the courts today is a joke.” — Tania Kambouri, German police officer.

The rape of a ten-year-old girl in Leipzig, the largest city in Saxony, has drawn renewed attention to the spiraling levels of violent crime perpetrated by migrants in cities and towns across Germany — and the lengths to which German officials and the media go to censor information about the perpetrators of those crimes.

The girl was riding her bicycle to school at seven o’clock in the morning on October 27 when a man ambushed her, threw her to the ground and raped her. The suspect is described as being in his mid-thirties with short brown hair and a stubble beard.