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Is Iona Community Sabotaging Itself by Embracing Kairos? by Denis MacEoin

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

At the heart of its call for peace and justice, however, lies a profound imbalance. We might say that Ionians, like Quakers and many other Christian groups, are naïve innocents let loose in the real world. There is a role for idealists in limited situations. But problems arise when such do-gooders do not properly understand what lies behind mutual hatred, enduring antagonism between people, and conflicts in the name of one cause or another. And here, the Iona Community falls down spectacularly.

Kairos is built on an Islamic, not a Christian narrative. Under Islamic law, territory once conquered by Muslim armies becomes sacrosanct and can never be forfeited to non-believers. If non-Muslims take control of formerly Muslim land (for example, Spain or Portugal), then Muslims are bound to reconquer it through renewed military action.

Kairos, significantly, does not refer to the fact that Jews lived in and ruled in the region long before the Arab conquests.

When Christians choose to ignore the rights of Jews, they deny their own origins in the land. Jesus was a Jew. The first Christian community was made up of Jews who adhered to Jewish law. All Christian churches recognize the Jewish Bible as part of their own scriptural, and the New Testament is a clear record of Jewish existence in the first Christian century.

There never was a “historic Palestine”, and it is disturbing to find a Christian community buying into the modern Islamic narrative. and the “Palestinian” inhabitants of the Mandate are a combination of the descendants of the 7th-century Arab invaders.

In Israel, Jewish, Arab, Christian, Druze and other citizens, regardless of race or religion or any other circumstance, have exactly the same rights under law to form political parties, serve in parliament, seek employment. Why does the Iona Community single Israel out?

Why is the Iona Community seemingly uninterested in the fate of their fellow Christians in the Palestinian territories yet determined to accuse Israel of enormities, when in fact, Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population, instead of diminishing, has grown since the establishment of the state?

Why, then, does the Iona Community join forces, not with the people who support Christians but with Palestinian Muslims who seek to destroy Israel and who will, in due course, treat the Christians as badly as they are treated in other Arab Muslim states?

The Israelis have never stalled in the peace process: they have made offers and the Palestinians have turned them all down. There has never been peace because Israel has no partners for peace. That a so-called Christian organization should misrepresent history in this way is an appalling dereliction of truth and honesty on its part.

When will the Iona Community come to terms with its far-left bias, its anti-Semitism, its own reputation, and the harm it is doing to any real hope in the Holy Land for peace?

The Iona Community is a famous ecumenical Christian community with three centers in Scotland, two on the island of Iona in the beautiful Inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland and another on the nearby Isle of Mull. But the community is also a far-flung body, with members across the globe. These include people from many denominations, from Presbyterians and Anglicans to Lutherans, Roman Catholics and Quakers, not forgetting members who do not belong to any church.

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FROM GATESTONE EUROPE

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

Watch! Migrants chant “Allah Akbar!” as they approach European coastline
by Timon Dias

Hungary stands its ground on migration despite taking heat
by Vincent van den Born

Swedish cop now under investigation for inciting racial hatred after Facebook post
by Vincent van den Born

Syrian immigrant rapes two underage Swedish girls, gets away with two-month sentence
by Vincent van den Born

ECB President Draghi contradicts himself: ‘France can’t leave the euro, but Italy can’
by Willem Cornax

Leaked report: ‘Salafism in Belgium spiralling out of control’
by David Frankenhuis

Study: ‘Majority of Europeans support Muslim immigration ban’
by Vincent van den Born

92% of German ‘anti-fascist’ protesters still live with their Mum
by Benjamin de Wolf

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DISPATCHES FROM TOM GROSS

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

1. Saudi columnist Siham Al-Qahtani: Jews should no longer collectively be blamed for all disasters throughout history
2. “No Jewish plot against Arabs, without Arab knowledge”
3. Muhammad Al-Sheikh: Only political ignoramuses advocate armed resistance; the two-state solution is the only feasible option
4. Al-Sheikh criticized by Al-Jazeera presenter
5. Prominent Saudi Journalist: West Jerusalem is part of Israel; moving the U.S. embassy there as part of a peace agreement could herald the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
6. Kuwaiti journalist: I support relocating the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem
7. Saudi Cleric Awadh Al-Qarni: 9/11 was “fabricated”
8. Assad welcome in London, Trump not?

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BARRY SHAW: THE DOOR IS CLOSING ON “PALESTINE”

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

At a time when the leaders of Arab-controlled Ramallah continue their rejection of the Jewish State and their civil society enemy in Gaza has launched more missiles at Israel and been deprived of yet another terror cell in Hebron they continue to refuse to sit and negotiate a permanent peace agreement. They think they can weaken and destroy Israel is stages by applying the alternative strategy of force and diplomatic pressure.

They’ve got it wrong. They have misread us. In the Bible they called us “a stiff-necked people” and today this stiff-necked people are saying enough is enough!

It’s time to reclaim our land. It’s been out there dangling as a reward for Arab pragmatism, recognition of our rights, and peace, but the olive branch has been knocked out of our hand by their lethal ideology of a world without the Jewish State.

It has left us no other option but to make a loud statement of intent that in the face of rejection, threats, violence and non-compliance with signed agreements, Judea & Samaria not only exists, it’s about to get stronger.

Since 1967 instead of accepting our generous concessions they thought they could play an end game that would leave us weaker and more vulnerable to a double sucker punch of terror and international pressure which would take them along the path to what they call the final solution of the Jewish problem in the Middle East.

All the evidence is there for the compliant diplomats who have been dragging the dead carcass of a two-state solution for decades even as they rip out the three thousand year beating heart of Judaism from our grasp by calling it “illegally occupied Palestinian territory.”

Has anyone except me worked out why Mahmoud Abbas refuses to call Israel “the Jewish State”? He plays into the Arab manual of deconstructing Israel in stages. Their argument is that Israel was wrongly and illegally created in 1948 on Palestinian land, that there is no such thing as an Israeli Arab, they are “Palestinians of the Interior” or “Palestinians of ’48.” In other words they are Palestinians waiting to be liberated inferring that the Jews have no claims to nationhood anywhere, that Palestinian Arabs are the indigenous people and their rights will be honored by their liberation. That is why the Palestine Liberation Organization still exists with important relevance to their leadership. Their charter still calls for liberating “every inch of Palestine,” and to think that we play into that narrative with our blind concessions.

On February 6, 2017, the Israel Knesset passed an historic law that legalizes our thousand homes and opens the way for Israel to claim long awaited sovereignty over a part of Judea & Samaria known as Area C which, in the signed Oslo agreement falls under the civil and security purview of Israel.

To the failing two-state diplomats allow me to inform you that there are several valid alternatives to your failed vision. But let me put it bluntly. It is way past time for diplomatic dancing. Let’s call the Palestinian spade the bloody shovel that it is. Our generosity has been rejected and perceived as weakness. It is time for Israel to reverse out of the blind alley we have been forced into by an international community unable to see they have become willing hostages to a Holocaust denier in Ramallah and a radical Islamic terror regime in Gaza.

In this dangerous neck of the woods strength rules and you get devoured when you display weakness. Liberal niceties have little place in this murderous region. The time has come for Israel to assert its legitimate and God-given rights and the world be damned for not acknowledging them.

The door is closing on Palestine. They had their chance and they blew it.

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CIA That Funded the ‘Moderate Muslim Brotherhood’ Narrative Opposed to the Group’s Terror Designation By Patrick Poole

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

According to our late PJ Media colleague Barry Rubin, the CIA paid for the research and travel expenses for then-Nixon Center researcher Robert Leiken and his younger colleague Stephen Brooke to travel around the Middle East and Europe meeting with Muslim Brotherhood leaders. They reportedly met with Muslim Brotherhood members in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Tunisia, the UK, Spain, and elsewhere.

This resulted in a still-classified paper commissioned by the National Intelligence Council and, according to Barry Rubin, paid for through a CIA contract. Barry Rubin was hired to write the rebuttal to the Leiken/Brooke paper.

This became the basis for an article by Leiken and Brooke in the March/April 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs entitled, “The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood.” This one article became the basis for virtually every single talking point in support of the Muslim Brotherhood parroted by the “smart set” and the media.

At the time, I wrote a three-part criticism of the Leiken/Brooke Foreign Affairs article. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

There is proof of Barry’s claim about the U.S. intelligence community’s role in hyping the “moderate Muslim Brotherhood” narrative, namely the admission by Leiken himself.

With their Foreign Affairs article in hand, Leiken and Brooke were tasked to push compliance with this narrative throughout the Bush administration agencies.

A June 2007 New York Sun report by Eli Lake tells of an event Leiken hosted by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research that reveals:

Earlier this year, the National Intelligence Council received a paper it had commissioned on the history of the Muslim Brotherhood by a scholar at the Nixon Center, Robert Leiken, who is invited to the State Department meeting today to present the case for engagement.

[…]

Mr. Leiken’s Foreign Affairs paper and classified study for the National Intelligence Council has gotten the attention of senior National Security Council officials and Secretary of State Rice, according to two administration officials.

“The NIC asked me to provide an analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood and I was happy to oblige,” Mr. Leiken said.

The intelligence community has not always been so sold on the Muslim Brotherhood’s so-called moderation.

After 9/11, a joint U.S.-European intelligence analysis on the Muslim Brotherhood that raised concerns about the organization’s global goals was obtained by reporters Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, then at Newsweek :

As the spread of Islamic radicalism began to accelerate a few years ago, a team of U.S. and European intelligence agency officials collaborated on a secret study of a sensitive subject: the global operations of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Their classified report highlighted what its authors saw as disturbing trends. Founded by fundamentalists in Egypt in 1928, the Brotherhood has grown rapidly in recent years and established beachheads in over 70 countries, including virtually every major nation in Europe and the Middle East, as well as many parts of Africa. According to the report, a copy of which was obtained by NEWSWEEK, the group’s members “frequently communicate and meet in secret” and appeared to have access to hundreds of millions of dollars.

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Pity the Children of the Islamic World By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

In April 2016, a video by Hamas was exposed showing “hysterical children in the company of exorcising preachers. It is a humiliating and invasive rite practiced at the Al-Nil School in Gaza City.” It is, however, hardly a surprise for people who have followed this never-ending child abuse, as this video exhorts the children to become “warriors” in the jihad or holy war against Israel and the infidels.

These children are taught to hate. Yet, when the French historian of Moroccan heritage, George Bensoussan, stated that “[i]t is a shame to deny this taboo, namely that in the Arab families in France, and everyone knows it but nobody wants to say it, anti-Semitism is sucked with mother’s milk” he was put on trial for saying this.”

As Khaled Abu Toameh explains “[Palestinian] children do not dream about becoming doctors, pilots or engineers; an entire generation of Palestinians, particularly those in the Gaza Strip, has been raised on the glorification of suicide bombers and anyone who kills a Jew.”

In fact, “what is happening to the Palestinian people, who have forever been led by leaders who care nothing for their well-being, is a tragedy of national proportions.” And, of course, the first victims are the children.

Since 1996, the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), under the direction of Itamar Marcus, has exposed the schoolbooks and propaganda material used to brainwash Palestinian children. In 2015 a report issued by PMW highlighted the Palestinian Authority’s teaching its children to “reject Israel’s right to exist, encourag[ing] them to view Jews as evil and direct[ing] them to embrace terrorist murderers as role models. This report exposes a world of demonization, incitement and hate that Palestinian children are urged to adopt.”

When shown the hateful material emanating from the PA, then Senator Hillary Clinton “condemned the PA’s messages to children and stated that the official PA TV broadcasts were ‘a clear example of child abuse.'” In fact, the textbooks “do not give Palestinian children an education; they give them an indoctrination. When viewed . . . in combination with other media that these children are exposed to, we see a larger picture that is disturbing… because it basically profoundly poisons the minds of these children.”

Common themes running through the hate-filled messages include:

Israel has no right to exist.
Israel will disappear and be replaced by Palestine.
Violence — “armed struggle” — is legitimate to fight Israel.
Muslims must fight an eternal Islamic war against Israel.
Killers of Israelis are heroes and role models.
Martyrdom or death for Allah is the utmost honor.
Jews are “monkeys and pigs.”
Jews are “enemies of Allah.”
Jews are the “most evil of creations.”

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Michael Galak :The Fountainhead of Trump’s Philosophy

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

Dr Michael Galak and his family came to Australia as refugees from the Soviet Union in 1978
The global Left rants, raves, riots and wears pink hats in its ongoing refusal to accept that Hillary Clinton isn’t president. No doubt they revel in the perverse pleasure of putting their anger and impotence on display, but they would learn more of their enemy by reading Ayn Rand.
Donald Trump’s first actions as POTUS continue to trigger unprecedented worldwide hysterics, vapours and hissy fits in progressivistas who did not get the president they had banked on seeing installed in the White House. These often grotesque convulsions bring to mind — to my mind, at any rate — the body movements of laboratory mice with electrodes implanted in the pleasure centres of their brains. The mice son learn that the simple act of pressing a lever produces the dopamine that results in uninterrupted sexual pleasure, so they press those levers to the exclusion of anything else. They don’t eat, they don’t sleep, they don’t drink. They do nothing but pleasure themselves.

There is a difference, though, between these two groups of dopamine lovers. Where pleasure-fixated mice endlessly push their laboratory levers, progressives are embracing their Trumpian pain to attain the consolation of a self-righteous and politically correct collective orgasm. Masochism? Quite probably, but drawing a perverse pleasure from displays of public agony is the only way they have left to re-assert a feeling of control over a world turned upside down, a world they can grasp but simply cannot accept. On November 7 their universe was as they thought it should be. They dominated the public pulpit, the media and universities, set and policed the topics that might be discussed and dictated how they must be discussed. Then came Trump and their comfortable intellectual environment evaporated. The satisfaction drawn from the fury of their protests is the palliative of the uncomprehending.

Angry accusations of racism, misogyny, political bullying, plus all the other deadly sins thrown at the new president, have two main sources. These people do not know how, or do not wish, to think for themselves; they depend for their opinions on the ‘authority’ of well-placed and influential intellectual gurus. This explains the cognitive dissonance sen o often on the Left; without it, how can you protest Trump’s sexism while making common cause with Islamic groups, whose sexism is wovn into their very fabric. The impending loss of this pre-programmed pattern of approved and endorsed intellectual functioning frightens and angers them. What we see, operating at a physiological or gut level, is a Pavlovian mass reflex.

And there is another source, a philosophical one, which represents the profound, fundamental and irreconcilable difference in the weltanshauunung between the progressivistas — ‘dependents’, as I call them — and creative people like Donald Trump. This source has a name, a well-formulated philosophy, a body of literature and, what’s more, a substantial following. This particular philosophy and its followers were derided, denigrated and, as often as not, prohibited by the totalitarian regimes of both the Soviets and the Nazis. Needless to say, it was hated by progressives all over the world, who accused its followers of lack of empathy, of egotism and of a refusal to follow the directives of the Politburo.

I am talking about the ‘objectivist’ philosophy founded and formulated by Ayn Rand. It appears that that author’s ideas have a staunch adherent, a man who now happens to be the President of the United Sates of America.

I strongly suspect this consideration will need to be taken into account when Australia’s relationship with the new US administration has to be re-formulated. And make no mistake, reformulated it will have to be, as the near-disastrous Turnbull phone call to Trump demonstrated with all too obvious clarity. This is not such a profound thought. However, it is a key to predicting and understanding Trump’s thinking. I speak, of course, of Ayn Rand and her philosophy, which Trump is said to regard as one of his main vectors in life.

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British Parliament Gives Brexit Go-Ahead Commons votes 494 to 122 in favor of U.K.-EU divorce talks By Jason Douglas and Nicholas Winning

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

LONDON—Members of the British Parliament’s lower house overwhelmingly gave Prime Minister Theresa May a green light to begin the country’s formal withdrawal from the European Union, leaving the government on course to begin Brexit as planned by the end of March.

The House of Commons voted 494 to 122 on Wednesday to approve a government bill authorizing it to start the divorce process. The proposals now must go before the unelected upper house, which is also expected to pass it.

“We are a democracy and we are going to do what the people voted for,” said John Penrose, a Conservative lawmaker who initially favored staying in the EU, referring to a June referendum in which Britons decided, 52% to 48%, to leave the bloc.
A parliamentary vote was once seen as so potentially contentious that the government fought against holding it, acquiescing only after the Supreme Court so ordered in a case brought by anti-Brexit activists.

But the political landscape has shifted considerably since that lawsuit was filed in July, with strong U.K. economic growth and public support for Mrs. May’s plans for a decisive break from the EU. She has said she intends to trigger exit negotiations next month.

A poll published by YouGov PLC in January found 55% of Britons broadly supported Mrs. May’s Brexit objectives. Another YouGov survey earlier this month found that Mrs. May’s Conservatives would get 40% of votes in a general election, compared with 26% for the main opposition Labour Party.

Mrs. May’s position has been strengthened by the performance of the British economy, which ended 2016 as the fastest-growing member of the Group of Seven advanced countries, defying predictions that a vote for Brexit would damp growth.

Wednesday’s win for Mrs. May in the House of Commons followed months of sparring between the government and those who oppose Brexit or want Mrs. May to cut a deal that keeps the U.K. more closely tied to the continent and the EU’s single market.

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Who’s Afraid of Student Journalists? The American Association of University Professors likens reporting on campus to ‘witch hunts.’ By John J. Miller

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

Mr. Miller is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College, a writer for National Review, and the founder and executive director of the College Fix.

Riots last week at the University of California, Berkeley stopped Milo Yiannopoulos, a right-wing provocateur who contributes to Breitbart News, from speaking on campus. The violence forced the cancellation of his event and inflicted $100,000 in damage to school property, according to administrators. Then it spread to New York University, where police arrested 11 protesters who tried to halt the libertarian comedian Gavin McInnes from talking to students.

The American Association of University Professors has said nothing about this coastal turmoil. Yet it has condemned what it apparently regards as a greater threat: students who provide accurate reports on the shouted-down speakers in their auditoriums and the left-wing biases in their classrooms.

In a 1,000-word statement released last month, the AAUP bemoaned “new efforts by private groups to monitor the conduct of faculty members,” which it likened to “witch hunts.” Then it named names: Professor Watchlist, Campus Reform and the College Fix.

I know a little about the first two groups and a lot about the third: I founded the College Fix seven years ago. Every day the website publishes articles by student journalists, who work with our professional editors to tell true stories about campus politics and culture. Our goal is to create compelling and original content, while identifying a new generation of promising writers and editors before they make the mistake of going to law school.

In recent days, the Fix has carried accounts of the disturbances at Berkeley and NYU. Our writers also have covered Barnard College’s proposal to require attendance at workshops on “inclusion and equity,” plus Pepperdine University’s decision to remove a statue of Columbus, whose presence has became too “painful,” according to the school’s president, Andrew K. Benton.

The Fix also brings readers into classrooms, as it did last fall when professors turned their lecterns into bully pulpits. One article described how Bruce Conforth, a music lecturer at the University of Michigan, began an election-eve class by urging students to vote for Hillary Clinton because she favors abortion rights, a higher minimum wage, and tuition-free college. Readers who questioned the article’s accuracy could watch an accompanying video of Mr. Conforth’s stump speech.

Professors who proclaim their own partisanship are bad enough, but some even turn their classrooms into semester-long re-education camps. Last fall at the Colorado Springs campus of the University of Colorado, history lecturer Jared Benson and sociology instructor Nicholas Lee taught a course titled “Resistance and Revolution.” In expletive-laden lectures, these self-styled Marxists called America’s founders “terrorists,” compared the Sons of Liberty to the Westboro Baptist Church, and ridiculed “the taxation-without-representation argument” as “asinine” on the grounds that American revolutionaries were rich men who didn’t want to pay their fair share. They also insisted that Ronald Reagan had little to do with the demise of the Soviet Union and that Martin Luther King Jr. was a secret communist (which they meant as a compliment). CONTINUE AT SITE

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Banning The Muslim Brotherhood By Rachel Ehrenfeld

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

President Trump is considering designating the global Muslim Brotherhood organization as terrorist. It’s about time.

Two days before he signed the Executive Order on “Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals, the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) began organizing nationwide protests against the anticipated order, which the mischaracterized the suspension of U.S. visas to Muslim refugees and travelers from only seven out of fifty Muslim-majority countries, as a “ban.” CAIR was immediately joined by progressive Left organizations that protested the election of Donald Trump as President. Thus Left-leaning ill-informed organizations, CEOs of tech companies (How many of their employees are immigrants, or Work-Visa holders from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen?) and Democratic-run-States joined forces with MB-affiliated groups to undermine the power of the President and the security of the nation.

On October 28, 2005, President George W. Bush denounced IslamoFascist movements that call for a “violent and political vision: the establishment, by terrorism, subversion, and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom.” The Muslim Brotherhood was not on his list.

On June 6, 2006, this author proposed, in FrontOageMag to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood. The article concluded: “In the interest of preserving freedom in the U.S. while advancing it globally, it is time for our government to thoroughly investigate the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots and consider designating it as a terrorist organization.

In the same vein, the U.S should not allow foreign donations to U.S. educational, and public organizations and institutions from Islamic countries that prohibit religious freedom.”

These suggestions, however, were dismissed on grounds that the MB is a “reformist” organization. It took years for many in the West to realize the MB has fooled them into endorsing the oxymoron of “Political Islam.” It took the Muslim Brotherhood, first in Tunisia and Egypt, and with other radical Islamist groups in Syria, Libya, and Iraq to destabilize the Middle East. Only after the MB globalized their murderous ideology and threatened Muslim nations in the Middle East, several Arab countries banned the organization. More recently concerned groups in the West have been considering banning the MB and its affiliates

Below is a version of the June 6, 2006, FrontPageMag article:

The Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimun)[2] also known as the Ikhwan is a good example of what resident Bush described on October 28, 2005, and what we must protect the U.S. against.

The Muslim Brotherhood (“MB”) organization describes itself as a political and social revolutionary movement; it was founded in March 1928 in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna, who objected to Western influence and called for the return to original Islam.[3]