http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3951/german-elections-eu-islam German voters already know that whichever party wins September’s election will only bring more of the same: more restriction of German sovereignty. It is therefore no surprise that, at least for indigenous Germans, the turnout is expected to be low. The Islamic immigrants, however, hope that by turning out massively, they will be able […]
http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2013/08/oslo-twenty-years-on/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=f1eb931452-Mosaic_2013_8_27&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-f1eb931452-41165129
Next month the world will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the most famous handshake in modern history, that legendary moment when Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat stood face to face on the White House lawn and acknowledged each other’s existence. The fact that Oslo’s anniversary comes just as John Kerry revives Israeli-Palestinian peace talks gives special urgency to that favorite question of Middle East pundits—why did the peace process fail?
If history is any guide, most analysts will invoke the same hackneyed narrative of Palestinians who had unequal bargaining power at Oslo and Israelis who, backed by imperial America, cleverly “co-opted” the PLO in order to obstruct any possibility of a viable Palestinian state.
The problem with this narrative isn’t necessarily the allegation of PLO inequality, it’s the failure to recognize this inequality—if it in fact existed—as both natural and downright just. More problematic, however, is that the Oslo Accords actually seem to have been slanted far more in the other direction.
Let’s assume for a moment that the critical account is correct and that the Palestinians had unequal power at Oslo. Should anyone be surprised? When Rabin and Arafat shook hands in 1993, Rabin ran a sovereign state with a recognized territory, a democratic population, and a representative government. Arafat, on the other hand, ran a muddled and murderous revolutionary movement based in Tunisia. The PLO was no nascent state; it was a loose coalition of terrorist factions, a nominal bureaucracy, and a loud-mouthed press office. It held no land, no democratic mandate, and no presence in the territories it claimed to represent.
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001384.html
CONTENTS
1. The west’s record of appeasement in dealing with evil
2. Israel: Chemical weapons were fired by Assad’s brother’s unit
3. Syrian child refugees now number over one million, with 2 m. more inside Syria
4. A map of the 23 places the U.S. may bomb if there’s a Syria no-fly zone
5. Report: 31 Palestinians killed in Syrian chemical strike
6. Extremists slit throats of 44 in Northeast Nigeria
7. Washington Post staff trapped as Egyptian-Americans denounce them
8. The Middle East explained in a letter to The Financial Times (last Friday)
9. British MP on Iranian TV blames Israel for Assad’s chemical attack
10. Letters to God cleared from Western Wall as Jewish New Year approaches
Rockets Hit Israel from Lebanon – UN tells Israel to Maximize Restraint
At the United Nations, self-defense for Israel has long been a theoretical right. Every time it is actually used, it’s a problem. Last Thursday, four rockets from Lebanese territory targeted northern Israel, one of them falling close to a home occupied by Holocaust survivors. Israel responded the following day by specifically targeting and bombing a terrorist base in Lebanon. So what did the UN do? Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement in which he said, on the one hand, “the firing of rockets” – no name, no perpetrator, no use of the word terrorist – was a violation of Security Council resolution 1701. And, on the other hand, Israel’s “retaliatory strikes” drew this: “The Secretary-General…condemns any and all violations of resolution 1701… He urges all concerned to exercise maximum restraint and cooperate with UNIFIL, in order to prevent an escalation. The parties must fully adhere to resolution 1701 (2006) and respect the cessation of hostilities agreement.”
There should have been no other hand. There should have been “thank you Israel for responding quickly to the attempt by terrorists to broaden the Syrian conflict, divert attention from recent horrors there, and for demonstrating to real enemies that democracies are not all feckless weaklings cowering from the responsibility of defending freedom.”
OMG. President Obama May Decide to Act on Syria Without the UN
U.N. chemical weapons experts are now in Syria to investigate three purported chemical attacks that took place months ago. Allowing the investigators into the country took months of negotiations between the U.N. and the Assad government. And even then, their mandate “is limited to those three sites…and it is only charged with determining whether chemical weapons were used, not who used them.” So after the most recent alleged chemical weapons attack, will President Obama wait for UN inspectors to gain access to one more site? Will he depend on the UN to find whether chemical weapons were used, but not who used them? And where would the rudderless White House go from there? After all, the UN is Obama’s go-to authority – as he pounded should have been the case on Iraq. So if the UN gang can’t get in, or won’t say whodunnit, the man just might have to make a decision for himself.
UN In Full Spin Mode Over Camp Jihad
UNRWA-backed summer camps for Palestinian children are indoctrination centers for antisemitism and the promotion of violence. Watch the disturbing spectacle of how children are taught intolerance, a thirst for blood, envy and greed.
Camp Jihad
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Drawing pictures of all of Israel as Palestine, and chanting ‘from the river to the sea,’ this summer another batch of Palestinian youth has been programmed to make war and to murder their Jewish neighbors. Where are all the phony UN human rights experts and delegations and investigators and high commissioners and councils and commissions and reporters? The enablers are nowhere to be seen. Now imagine if the teachers and campers were Israeli.
Under fire after the video’s release, UNRWA issued a statement denying wrongdoing by saying in part that some of the video was “a third party’s activities inside what is indeed an UNRWA installation.” This is the UN’s standard response to all of its intense anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activities conducted on a global scale: it is merely a shell with no responsibility for what transpires inside the belly of the beast. But if any Jewish organization committed to combating antisemitism were to try to book the same UNRWA facility – in an effort to detoxify Palestinian children – it would be unavailable. There is no chance that every single UNRWA employee was blissfully ignorant about what was going on in their facilities. And obviously, UNRWA’s installations are built and maintained with UNRWA funds. This isn’t guilt by association. It’s just plain guilt.
For additional responses see here.
Ban Ki-moon backtracks on Israel comments
Ban Ki-moon Backtracks On Bias Against Israel Claim
Only last week, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon admitted to Israeli students while in Jerusalem – in response to a question – that there was bias against Israel at the UN. Apparently, such an admission didn’t sit too well with his UN handlers and the anti-Israel majority that drives the bias at the General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Commission on the Status of Women, the International Labor Organization, the World Health Organization…etc etc So on Monday, Ban added a “not” after reporters asked him to explain the statement. Ban said: “No, I don’t think there is discrimination against Israel at the United Nations.” There isn’t any other way to say it. The Secretary-General of the United Nations is a liar.
The brainwashing of Palestinian kids
Camp Jihad Teaches Palestinian Kids to Hate Israel
The UN is supporting summer camps for Palestinian children that teach them how to jump rope, paint watercolors, and hate Jews. A chilling documentary entitled “Camp Jihad” is now exposing the antisemitism that runs through the fabric of today’s UN. UNRWA-backed camps not only teach Palestinian children to hate, but to turn that hate into a thirst for violence. As one of the teachers in the film states: “(w)ith God’s help and our own strength we will wage war. And with education and Jihad we will return to our homes!” The camp’s indoctrination of these children is simple but effective: 1) concoct a fairy tale image of Palestine before the Jews – one of beaches, cars, boats, and villas, 2) describe the story of the creation of the state of Israel as a “Nabka” – or catastrophe – in which they were robbed of their homes in Israel, and 3) inspire them to yearn to return by Jihad to their “ancestral” villages. The director of the camp, Amina Hinawi, is profuse in her thanks specifically for the support of UNRWA in making this camp possible.
Unfortunately, thanks should also go to the United States and the American taxpayer – the largest single donor to UNRWA. The excuses for funding the next generation of Palestinians who hate Israel and want war have to stop.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/carbon-dioxide-the-gas-of-life?f=puball It’s amazing that minuscule bacteria can cause life-threatening diseases and infections – and miraculous that tiny doses of vaccines and antibiotics can safeguard us against these deadly scourges. It is equally incredible that, at the planetary level, carbon dioxide is a miracle molecule for plants – and the “gas of life” for most living […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/liberal-wmd-hypocrisy-in-iraq-and-syria/print/ In a response with clear echoes to the beginnings of the Iraq War, Obama has refused Syria’s offer to open its chemical weapons sites to United Nations inspectors as coming too late to be credible. For the worst half of a decade, liberals were either urging us to give the UN inspectors more time […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/david-solway/fiddling-while-washington-burns-2/print/ [Illustration by Frontpage’s cartoonist Amir Avni]. In an August 20, 2013 article for FrontPage Magazine, Howard Rotberg deplores the “growing cultural emphasis on fun” which, in the midst of the current crisis brought on by fiscal irresponsibility and by Islam’s war against the West, distracts us from understanding the various forces that threaten our […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/colin-flaherty/concealing-racist-black-violence/print/ Black mob violence is now so frequent and intense that even big city editors can’t keep it out of the news anymore. The latest high-profile story, now familiar to many, is the recent beating and killing of the 88-year-old World War II veteran Delbert Belton at the hands of two black people in Spokane. […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/humberto-fontova/who-lost-cuba/ Much of what’s called “McCarthyism” started with the debate over “Who Lost China.” A similar debate regarding Cuba — and involving an amazingly similar cast of protagonists and antagonists—erupted when Fidel Castro came out of the closet in late 1960 as a Communist. Given that Fidel Castro (twice and wantonly) brought the world to the brink […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/a-new-muslim-leaf/
“What distinguishes Akkari from some of us, however, is that he embraces – indeed, seems to cling to, as if to a life raft – the distinction, which some of us (myself included) find spurious, between “Islam” and “Islamism.” Islamism, he says, “the Quran and Muhammad’s life as the foundation for rituals, rules, and outlooks.” Islamists “assume that every word in the Koran is the law, and that every source provided by Muhammad is the basis for a law.” Islamists insist, moreover, “that they are in possession of the truth and nothing but the truth.”To me, this sounds like Islam, pure and simple. If it’s Islamism, then what, in Akkari’s view, is Islam? The answer’s not clear. He does acknowledge that the majority of Muslims are, by his definition, Islamists: Islamist thought, as he puts it, “has infected most ordinary Muslims, who…can not imagine reading texts in other ways without feeling that they’re offending against God.” Yet he is – or wants to be seen as – one of that tiny minority of Muslims who assert that their faith, although rooted in a manual of hate and in the life story of a tyrannical, murderous pedophile, can somehow be turned into something entirely different from what it’s been since its inception.”
He was the main instigator of the wave of Danish Muslim mischief that arose in reaction to the 2005 Muhammad cartoons and that resulted in riots, embassy burnings, an international boycott of Danish products, and over a hundred deaths.
Now, he says, he’s changed his mind – not just about the Muhammad cartoons, but about Islam itself. And about Denmark, too, for which he now professes the deepest affection and gratitude. In an August 22 op-ed for the Danish newspaper Politiken, in a lecture given at the Free Press Society, and in dozens of TV, radio, and print interviews in recent days, Ahmed Akkari has described his ideological journey from passionate jihadist to lover of liberty.
