RUTHFULLY YOURS

In view of the prospect that US money will soon go to Hamas personnel via the PA, the US Congress has every right to stop that financial aid. We still think, however, that it would be smarter to condition such aid money on a Palestinian commitment to remove all the rockets from Gaza under international supervision. Getting rid of those rockets would revolutionize the prospect of advances in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Imagine the prestige that would accrue to Secretary of State John Kerry if, within his term of office, the US succeeded in removing rockets from Gaza as well as chemical weapons from Syria.

A previous article pointed out that the new Palestinian “unity government,” since it rules Gaza as well as the West Bank, has made itself responsible for the existence of thousands of rockets in Gaza that are aimed at Israel. At the very least, the article argued, all aid money going to the Palestinian Authority [PA] should now be made conditional on a commitment of that government to surrender all those rockets to international control. The elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons provides an obvious model.

Now it has emerged that the entire personnel of the Hamas regime in Gaza is about to be put on the PA payroll. According to a report in YNet News:

Mofid al-Hasayneh, a minister in the Palestinian unity government, announced that a meeting had been held in Ramallah to discuss the issue of salaries of 40,000 officials who had been working under the Hamas government in Gaza. He said that the government is developing a system to pay these salaries before the beginning of Ramadan in two weeks.

“As soon as the mechanism is ready, we will announce the date for payment of salaries,” he said, adding that in order to highlight unity, the new government wanted to hold a special meeting in Gaza, but that Israel was preventing it from taking place.

This should surprise nobody. Ever since the unity government was formed, Hamas has been emphasizing that its support will be withdrawn if its operatives are not henceforth paid by the PA. The reason for this is also simple and well known: Hamas itself can hardly pay them any longer, since funds from Iran were cut after Hamas began supporting the anti-Assad forces in Syria, while the new Egyptian regime closed down the tunnels through which other funds were being smuggled into Gaza.

The most important issue is the proposed mosque’s patronage by Tablighi Jamaat [TJ], a group based on the radical doctrines of the Deobandi sect, which inspires the Taliban and other terrorist groups.

Deobandis, the progenitors of TJ, have been fighting for control of the British Muslim Community. TJ has made clear that its interest is not that of serving the Muslims’ spiritual needs, but of creating a Western European base.

Since the time of the Prophet Muhammad, Muslims who emigrate to non-Muslim lands have been called on to accept the laws and customs of the country to which they move. British Muslims have stood up in the past against the proposed TJ mega-mosque; they have a duty to protect their community and the broader society in which they live by repudiating all extremist doctrines, and by repairing conflicts with their non-Muslim neighbours.

Anti-radical Muslims must break their silence to oppose the revived for building a Tablighi Jamaat [TJ] mega-mosque in the West Ham neighbourhood of London. Mobilisation against the mega-mosque should include Muslims of all interpretations who are moderate, traditional, conventional and even conservative, in all locations where TJ is active. TJ cadres are mainly present in South Asia, the United Kingdom, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and North America.

The mega-mosque proposal had been perceived as ruled out of consideration after Newham Council, which governs the borough in which West Ham is located, rejected the application for its construction in December 2012. The previous year, Newham Council had heard and turned down a petition for placement of a mosque at the site.

Nevertheless, the mega-mosque supporters were later granted a temporary right to occupy the property for two years, according to the local Newham Recorder. During that period, about 3,000 congregants used the location as a mosque. That permission has now expired.

Newham Council’s Strategic Development Committee in 2012 found that the TJ mosque concept was too grandiose and would generate too much local traffic. The TJ mega-mosque promoters called for a structure that would accommodate 9,000 people at prayer, and, as detailed by the Newham Recorder, “a segregated space for nearly 2,000 women, a library, dining hall, visitors’ centre, and eight flats for imams and guests, along with tennis courts, football pitches, a garden, and a riverside walk along Abbey Creek.”

“Who is the head of the Muslim peace movement,” journalist Chris Plante asked of my Facebook friend Saba Ahmed at a recent, nationally notorious exchange at a Heritage Foundation panel.

Despite Ahmed answering with a willingness to lead any such movement, her past provokes deeply disturbing questions about oft-sought “moderate Muslims” and their ability to counter aggressive Islamic agendas.

Having previously met, the veiled Ahmed smiled to me in the audience during the first panel of a June 16 seminar on the September 11, 2012 attack upon America’s Benghazi, Libya, consulate.

“How can we fight an ideological war with weapons?” was Ahmed’s not particularly pertinent audience question for the panel.

Ahmed argued that “we portray Islam and all Muslims as bad” while 1.8 billion followers of Islam remained unrepresented on the panel. Agreeing with Ahmed’s emphasis on ideology, Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney’s response distinguished between personally pious Muslims and a faith-based political agenda of brutal sharia law.

That Ahmed “stood there to make a point about peaceful, moderate Muslims” while showing no interest in the panel’s discussion of a lethal attack against Americans, however, irritated national security activist Brigitte Gabriel.

“We are not here to bash Muslims… I am glad you are here,” Gabriel stated before asking to a standing ovation, “but where are the others speaking out?”

Gabriel cited intelligence estimates from various countries rating 15-25 percent of Muslims worldwide as radicals, a group perhaps as large as the American population.

“Most Germans were peaceful, yet the Nazis drove the agenda,” Gabriel argued in describing the outsized influence of a militant minority such as jihadists. Just as the peaceful majority were irrelevant in imperial Japan and Communist dictatorships such as in China and the Soviet Union.

“It is time that we take political correctness and throw it in the garbage where it belongs” Gabriel announced to cheers.

Monday, the Commonwealth Fund released a report claiming the U.S. has the worst health-care system in the developed world, and Great Britain has the best. But a closer look reveals serious problems with the report’s methodology: The criteria seem deliberately designed to elevate socialized health care while ignoring the strengths of the U.S. system – in particular its high survival rates. For example, a woman diagnosed with breast cancer in the U.S. has an 89 percent chance of surviving it, higher than anywhere in Europe.

The Commonwealth Fund’s dubious conclusion ordinarily wouldn’t deserve comment. But Commonwealth’s work is partly to blame for our current predicament, struggling with Obamacare. Earlier versions of the report issued in 2004, 2006, and 2007 bamboozled some members of Congress into believing that health care is better in countries where government calls the shots. For example, in October of 2009, Senator Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) pointed to a large blue chart during a Finance Committee meeting showing the United States in last place in health performance. “All of these countries have much lower costs than we do,” Conrad said, “and they have higher-quality outcomes than ours.”

Commonwealth gives heavy weight to “equity,” meaning equal access to care, so on this measure countries with government-run systems by definition come out on top. Another criterion gives countries points when doctors say “it’s easy to print out lists of patients by diagnosis.” And countries are rewarded when patients are “routinely sent computerized reminder notices for preventive or follow-up care”; the U.S. lost points because it is more common here to telephone patients than e-mail them. Never mind that American women have a better chance of getting regular mammograms than do women in most other countries, a reason for America’s top breast-cancer survival rate.

Justin Amash is Rated +2 by AAI, indicating pro-Arab pro-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – It is easy to confuse the incumbent with the insurgent in Michigan 3rd Congressional District race.

Brian Ellis, challenging two-term GOP incumbent Justin Amash, has picked up endorsements from three business organizations that backed Amash in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles.

The rumored revolt of the West Michigan business community against the congressman they had backed in two previous elections became fact in the ides of June.

The Michigan Farm Bureau, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and even Amash’s hometown Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce PAC came out in favor of Ellis in mid-June.

However, beyond being a wake-up call for the incumbent — and a source of new campaign financing — perhaps political endorsements are not much more than the sound and fury that should be expected from the foundations of the political establishment.

And if the politician is an anti-establishment candidate, even if that politician would seem to be a two-term member of the establishment, perhaps those endorsements can be spun in the politician’s favor.

But still, for those at the eye of this Republican hurricane, the fact that the business establishment says it has more faith in the challenger than the incumbent is news.

“Brian is a business leader who will advance solutions to grow our economy, encourage job creation, and create more opportunities for job providers in West Michigan and across the state to succeed,” said the president and chief executive officer of the Michigan Chamber, Rich Studley.

Forget the “Arab Spring” that never was. We are now in a “Jihadi Spring” that is very real. That murderous Al Qaeda spinoff the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), known locally as DAASH, has already taken control of large parts of Syria and Iraq and yesterday seized a transit point with Jordan.

But what do they really have in mind? It’s not that hard to guess. Frank Lamb, a man bizarrely sympathetic to DAASH/ISIS (a group that likes to lop off people’s heads!) and in contact with their leadership, writes at a website called muslimvillage.com [1]that their dual goal is to establish a Sunni caliphate and, naturally, “liberate” Palestine:

With respect to events surrounding its takeover of Mosul and other social media broadcast exhibitions of mass brutality, ISIS claims it was done for a purpose, the same purpose that other state and non-state actors have used over the past two decades and that is for 90% of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims (Sunni) to free themselves from the oppression of the 10% (Shia).

Several reasons were given as to why Palestinians should hold out hope for ISIS succeeding in their cause when all other Arab, Muslim, and Western claimed Resistance supporters have been abject failures and invariably end up benefiting the Zionist occupation regime terrorizing Palestine. “All countries in this region are playing the sectarian card just as they have long played the Palestinian card but the difference with ISIS is that we are serious about Palestine and they are not. Tel Aviv will fall as fast as Mosul when the time is right”, a DAASH ally explained. Another gentleman insisted, “DAASH will fight where no one else is willing.”

If I were Benjamin Netanyahu, I would take them seriously — and I imagine he does.

Debkafile [2] is not always a reliable source, but in this instance I have a suspicion they are onto something:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu posted notes Friday, June 20, to President Barack Obama, King Abdullah of Jordan and Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, DEBKAfile’s exclusive sources in Washington and Jerusalem reveal. They dealt with the rapid advances made by Al Qaeda-related Sunni Islamist fighters in Iraq, now heading towards the Iraqi-Syrian-Jordanian border intersection and how they bore on the security of Israel, the Palestinians and Kingdom of Jordan just next door.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is bleeding members. Between 2000 and 2013, almost 765,000 members left the organization, a loss of nearly 30%. Last week the church’s leadership met in Detroit for crisis talks.

No, not about the emptying-pews crisis. The Israel-Palestinian crisis.

On Friday, in a close vote (310-303), the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)—the largest of several Presbyterian denominations in America—resolved to divest the organization’s stock in Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions. The church’s Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment said the companies have continued to “profit from their involvement in the occupation and the violation of human rights in the region,” and have even “deepened their involvement in roadblocks to a just peace.” Israel’s counterterrorism and defense measures have included razing Palestinian houses (with Caterpillar equipment), operating Gaza and West Bank checkpoints (with Hewlett-Packard technology), and utilizing military communications and surveillance (with Motorola Solutions technology).

The church signaled its antipathy for Israel earlier this year by hawking a study guide called “Zionism Unsettled” in its online church store. In the 76-page pamphlet, Zionism—the movement to establish a Jewish homeland and nation-state in the historic land of Israel—is characterized as a “a struggle for colonial and racist supremacist privilege.”

In a postscript to “Zionism Unsettled,” Naim Ateek, a Palestinian priest and member of the Anglican Church, explains the meaning of the charges in the pamphlet. “It is the equivalent of declaring Zionism heretical, a doctrine that fosters both political and theological injustice. This is the strongest condemnation that a Christian confession can make against any doctrine that promotes death rather than life.”

In one response, Katharine Henderson, president of New York’s Auburn Theological Seminary, said in February that the “premise of the document appears to be that Zionism is the cause of the entire conflict in the Middle East,” in essence “the original sin, from which flows all the suffering of the Palestinian people.” And amid intense criticism of the study guide from the Anti-Defamation League and other groups, the church’s General Assembly declared on Wednesday that ” ‘Zionism Unsettled’ does not represent the views of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).” But the assembly didn’t bar the church from continuing to distribute and sell it.

Albert Spratte, the sergeant-at-arms of the National Border Patrol Council Local 3307 in the Rio Grande Valley, says there are two types of illegal immigrants crossing the border: those whom Border Patrol catches and those who catch Border Patrol. While driving along a remote stretch of road next to the Rio Grande River south of McAllen, Texas, Spratte points at various paths and identifies which type of immigrant traffic uses each one.

Soon, a man comes out of the brush and walks toward Spratte’s nondescript green truck to surrender. The man says he’s traveled 15 days from El Salvador and is headed to California to do some remodeling work. He says he’s been to the United States before and adds that he still has the paperwork of his order to appear in court from several years ago.

Spratte calls Border Patrol to report the man’s apprehension and gives him some Gatorade and water. The man says he’s traveling alone, but Spratte isn’t buying it. He says people traveling in large groups have characterized the sharp spike in OTM border traffic — OTM meaning “other than Mexicans.” A group of nearly 300 Central Americans recently turned themselves in to American officials, he says.

“Next week 300 is going to be nothing,” Spratte says. “It’ll be 500 or 400 until they make the decision to start enforcing our immigration laws and deporting people.”

When a Border Patrol official arrives, the surrendering man voluntarily walks to the back of the vehicle and climbs in. He’s headed to a local Border Patrol station but likely won’t be there very long. Instead of being sent back home, he will probably be let go within the U.S., with an “order to appear” at a later date. If he fails to appear, he will be deported in absentia, but he almost certainly will not be pursued unless he commits another crime.

Zury Arrita, a 25-year-old Honduran woman, says she and her daughter were detained for four days before they were released at the McAllen bus station. From there she made her way to the nearby Sacred Heart Catholic Church, where volunteers provide food, clothing, medical attention, and temporary shelter.

These days, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing strong criticism from an unlikely corner. In a private meeting this past May, the leaders of several settlements accused him of stymieing the settlement enterprise. His response, that Israel had to “consider international constraints,” was not well received.

Soon after the meeting, on May 29, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics issued a report that supported the settlers’ claims. In the first quarter of 2014, the bureau reported, the Israeli government had approved only 232 residential units for construction in the area that Israelis commonly call Judea and Samaria and most people know as the West Bank. That rate is roughly half that of the last decade, which saw an average of 1,687 units built each year. And given that existing settlements currently house roughly 350,000 Israeli citizens — who have an annual birthrate of about four percent — this slower rate of construction can hardly sustain even natural population growth. The community leaders who met with Netanyahu last week know that better than anyone.

A geographic analysis of the data, moreover, suggests that the settlers have an additional reason to worry: under Netanyahu’s current government, construction outside the so-called major settlement blocs — the areas most likely to remain part of Israel in a final peace settlement — has steadily decreased. Over the past five years, the number of homes approved for construction in the smaller settlements has amounted to half of what it was during Netanyahu’s first premiership in 1996–99. Moreover, the homes the government is now approving for construction are positioned further west, mostly in the major blocs or in areas adjacent to the so-called Green Line, the de facto border separating Israel from the West Bank. The 1,500 units that Israel announced plans for earlier this month were also in the major blocs and in East Jerusalem, continuing the pattern.

Mañana is here

Much has changed, obviously, since I published Mexico: chaos on our doorstep [Hardback, Paperback: 232 pages, Madison Books (July 24, 1989), ISBN-10: 0819172960, ISBN-13: 978-0819172969, Amazon, $13.17].

. As so often has happened, my timing was bad. The book’s research identified a problem prematurely and the title raised hackles among some Latin American specialists, most of whom had a more optimistic view.

But what led me to write the book may still be as relevant. It was my “discovery” of the startling fact that the 1500-mile U.S. Mexican border was the only land frontier between what in those days was called The Third World, pre-industrial, poverty-stricken, and unstable societies,.and the First World of a few “developed” European and North American countries, Australiasia and Japan. Ultimately, I argued, that was bound to lead to a security crisis for Washington.

The prediction has been a long time in coming and we may still not be there yet – but recent events on the border suggest we are very near at least.

I couldn’t but be struck these past few days with the familiarity of “the children crisis” on the Texas border. In my reporting for the book in Mexico and in the U.S., particularly among Mexican Americans, the head of Los Angeles’ medical services told me his budget was coming apart because pregnant illegal Mexican women increasingly were using his facilities. They accomplished two purposes: they got free medical services not then available in Mexico except to the rich. But more important, they established the American birthright of their offspring who might in later years claim citizenship for their families. But his complaint was that in order to meet this additional drain on his facilities he was having to reduce his postnatal care extension service.

Substitute the nationalities of the current children and accompanying parents and pregnant women now producing “a humanitarian crisis” and you see trends haven’t changed.