Thankless in Obamaland

Daniel Greenfield

This is one Thanksgiving weekend which finds Americans with little to be thankful for. The economy is sliding badly and the dollar is endangered, which could potentially wreck the nation's economy long after Obama is gone. Flying was a more unpleasant experience due to the TSA's aggressive insistence on harassing American fliers, rather than Muslim terrorists. Then there's the worldwide chaos, which now threatens to open up a whole new war in Asia. With a political beating in the midterm elections and a confused administration, even liberals seem to have little to be politically thankful for. But even mentions of Thanksgiving seem inevitably accompanied by historical revisionism which reduces the contact between specific groups of European settlers and certain Indian tribes to a one-sided narrative whose goal is to delegitimize the very existence of the United States. Everyone from PETA to indigenous activists to Michelle Obama's fat insanity has tried to have a go at it.

Thanksgiving is problematic for many on the left because it provides a positive view of American settlement and the interaction between European settlers and Native Americans. Which is why liberals will try to subvert the story of Thanksgiving by depicting the settlers negatively. This is almost universally common on television nowadays. And for those activists obsessed with what people eat, Thanksgiving with its obligatory heavy turkey dinner, is also a major target. So we get HRH Michelle Obama telling Americans what they can and can't eat for dinner. The difference is that Americans eat their own food. Unlike Michelle and her husband who eat at taxpayer expense.

The protests over the TSA have also failed to lead to a serious dialogue about what we should be doing to fight terrorism. Instead junk catchphrases and people stripping to their underwear while flying have turned media coverage of the situation into a series of running gags. Drudge forced media coverage of the backlash, but he steered it into freakshow areas. The media responded by running stories to pick up some of the traffic, but the stories they ran were more about the publicity stunts, while their above board coverage defended the Obama Administration and the TSA. It's a ridiculous situation when people can Tweet that they're going to fly in their underwear and get major news organizations to go and film them, that does nothing to address the problem. Instead it quickly leads to viewer fatigue and disinterest. And that means the policies will stay in place.

Too much of the backlash has focused on what people don't want, rather than what they do want. That has allowed the Obama Administration to frame it as a choice between security and privacy. When it's actually a choice between good security and bad security. That isn't entirely accidental. Too much of the coverage was led by sources who don't think that there even is such a thing as terrorism. Drudge and other blogs linked to content from 9/11 Truther Alex Jones and Prison Planet. This was Jones' most successful effort to embed himself among conservatives to date. For those such as Jones or Ron Paul, there is no terrorism. The whole thing is a government conspiracy. The way they fed the story, was the way it got told. And an opportunity to actually reform airline security was missed.

And so what should have been an upbeat time, a harvest festival and a reunion with friends and family, instead is tinted in haze. And that seems par for the course under Obama.

In the UK there's controversy over radical left faux artist Banksy's gallery promoting a picture of the 7/7 bombing by Mark Sinckler, a Muslim who moved from metro vandalism to poorly done collages. All the attention paid to this just means mission accomplished for Banksy, who has successfully ridden and ridiculed an art world, where the only coin that matters is notoriety, not talent.

The entire thing is hopelessly cynical. Sinckler's Age of Shiva is a cynical parody of British sensibilities over the 7/7 massacre. Cynically marketed by Banksy's Marks and Stencils gallery, which was also set up to mock art galleries and public sensibilities, it's the work of emotionally dead people who believe that by mocking everything that other people value, they remain above it. As always the joke is on the average person, the bourgeois, the same type of person who was riding a bus when it was blown up.

The controversy will move up Banksy and Sinckler further up the ladder. The careers of both derive from vandalism and end there. First vandalism of public spaces and then vandalism of public faith and public values.

Meanwhile in Israel, Netanyahu once again finds himself in another Wye situation, caught between signing on to what Obama wants and betraying his country, or resisting and standing up to Obama. It's not a pleasant situation to be in. Last time around Netanyahu failed the test when he gave in to Clinton. It seems as if he may be failing it again this time. (Latma has their usual scathing take on it.)

Meanwhile Turkey's Islamist thug Erdogan "the minarets are our bayonets" is at it again, amping up the rhetoric and threatening war. This after the latest document releases suggest that Erdogan's Turkey helped Al Qaeda. This shouldn't be too much of a shock as Erdogan's AKP party has Al Qaeda ties. Which shouldn't be shocking either, as it's funded by Saudi money.

Erdogan's "Support Hezbollah" visit to Lebanon was met with Armenian riots. In the past Erdogan had threatened to ethnically cleanse Armenians from Turkey. (hap tip Joshua Ivens)

Erdogan is now making common cause with Islamic terrorists and he's sabotaging Turkey's ties to Israel and America, in order to fulfill his goal of integrating it with the Muslim world. In particularly those Middle Eastern countries which have funded his takeover of the media by his business partners and political allies. Ranting about standing up to Israel with "Allah's Grace" shows how low Turkey has fallen from a formerly secular country that understood that the greatest threat to Turkish nationalism came from Islam.

His trip to Lebanon was full of that kind of Caliphate prep work, for example

"although we are talking different languages in this vast geography, we should not forget that we have one history, one culture and similar values. We have given a shape the history together. Be sure that we will give a shape to the future altogether.

Erdogan said Turkey mutually removed visa requirements with Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Jordan. "We have not lost anything or met any problem. On the contrary, when we removed the visa requirements, we clearly saw that they were meaningless. We have not removed the visa requirements; we have removed a century old yearning among our people."


Whether Turks are actually yearning to import crime and unskilled labor from the Arab world is debatable, but that doesn't really matter. What it means is that if Turkey joins the EU, Muslim terrorists and criminals from across the Arab world will have no trouble getting in.

Erdogan then proposed an Islamic EU, a Schengen, to bridge the gap to the Caliphate.

Via Desert Conservative, an interesting piece on a forgotten massive pre 9/11 terrorist plot in Canada.

Toronto’s terror plot of 1991 (pre September 11) has been forgotten and become a lost memory to Canadians.

The terror plot was planned by five black Muslims who were followers of Jamaat Al Fuqra, a Pakistani movement. They were acquitted of planning to kill 4,500 people within two buildings in Toronto. The attacks were to be done one after the other.

At the time of the attack, it was seen as an isolated case but now after a series of planned attacks in Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto it has been associated with a series of attacks by Islamist terrorists.

...

Just two years before the first World Trade Centre bombing, and a decade before the 9/11 attacks Toronto was the potential terror plot destination of North America where thousands of people would have died had the terrorists not been on the radar beforehand.

The terror plot was set to blow out during the Hindu festival of Diwali at two separate locations one after the other. The first spot was the India Centre cinema on Gerrard Street with a 500 people capacity (most commonly occupied by Sikhs and Hindus) and the second spot was the Vishnu Hindu Temple, which has a capacity of 4000 (occupied by Hindus) in Richmond Hill.


What is disturbing about this is not just the scale of the planned attacks, but a reminder that Muslim ethnic cleansing and racism is being exported by Muslim immigrants and converts. The Muslim world has committed genocide against non-Muslims numerous times. And it's at it again in Europe and in Canada.

In the roundup, Phyllis Chesler tackles the PA's latest attempt to Islamize the world's holiest Jewish site

The Muslims (not the Islamists, but the Muslims) mean to take over every Jewish site in Jewish Israel. And the United Nations means to assist them.

Long before a sovereign Jewish state ever existed, Muslims massacred the Jews of Hevron in 1929. Surviving Jews returned, but were then forced to flee again during the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939. This burial chamber of our Jewish ancestors is a cave whose purchase is carefully and exhaustively reported in the fifth parasha (portion) of the Torah. According to Jewish religious sources, this purchase took place in approximately 1677 BCE.

Please remember: In 1929, when the Muslims massacred the Jews of Hevron, there were no Jewish “settlements” in “occupied Palestinian land.” There was no Muslim “Palestine” and no sovereign Jewish state. In 1996, under the Wye Accords, Jewish Israel surrendered most Jewish access to this Cave to the Waqf.

Today, Jews can pray there in an outer, small chamber only under heavy guard and only a few times a year in the main prayer chamber. Muslims took the lion’s share of the main prayer hall because, as they claim, Abraham is also their forefather.


Of course if Abraham were around today, he'd be boycotted in London and beheaded in Gaza.

The whole thing still reminds me of my old post, "Muslims announce 5 New Holy Sites". Considering that this was written in Feb of 2007, a day after Obama announced he was running, one section proved to be unfortunately prescient.

The White House

Mohammed HTFBUH (High Tax Fees Be Upon Him) reportedly visited the White House as a guest of President Millard Fillmore, slept in the Lincoln Bedroom (which was then called, the 'Give Me A Bribe and You Can Spend the Night Bedroom) and tried to molest some of the President's carriage horses.

As such the highest authorities in Islam (three blind clerics who live in Cairo and still think it's 1922 and want an end to British colonial rule) have announced that the White House from now is to be off-limits to non-Muslims unless they're there to serve incoming President, Barack Hussein Obama.


Elder of Ziyon does some fact checking of the language being used about the Temple Mount.

Israel Matzav asks about the Tea Party position regarding Israel. Using a New York Times article as a starting point is always a bad idea. Since we're talking about a grass roots movement composed of different organizations, there's no official position. But demographically most of the Tea Party people are conservative and opposed to Muslim terrorism. Its focus is on domestic, not international politics.

The Times uses Rand Paul as a prototype of a Tea Party candidate, which is a terrible idea, because he doesn't have all that much in common on many issues with actual TP candidates. Paul, like his father, is basically a secessionist and conspiracy theorist, who shares the left's view on national security issues. It's doubtful that he could have won under a Republican President. But under Obama, enough people have been willing to overlook the things he's said, like comparing the US Army to Hitler.

Compare Paul to Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachman, Mark Rubio, etc and you see the huge gap opening up.

The American Thinker has an interesting piece by James Lewis, who views the entire TSA mess as part of a racist revenge fantasy by Obama. I don't know that I agree with him. I don't believe that this is a plan, but the disdain with which complaints have been met, may be. That makes it more of a Shirley Sherrod situation, in which the situation itself is not created out of racism, but the neglect of those who are suffering and the favorable treatment meted out on the basis of race is. This has been a too common pattern in government. But it's been practiced more commonly by white liberals, than by black people. But Obama may arguably fall into the former category, as much as into the latter one.

Finally on the Thanksgiving theme, the Daily Beast has some interesting historical background for the origins of the holiday.

We can also restore the meaning of early Thanksgivings in New England by coming at it from another angle, equally authentic. We find it in Judaism and the Hebrew scriptures.

If you were English, and you wished to express gratitude to God, you would turn to one majestic Biblical text before any other. It speaks about the wilderness of the Sinai, about danger and deliverance, about the journey of the Israelites across the Red Sea, and about the duty to give thanks when the exodus is complete. The text is Psalm 107. In the reign of Elizabeth I, when the realm survived a plot, a plague, or the Spanish Armada, her subjects went to church and gave thanks to the Almighty, using the same psalm: “We will offer unto him the sacrifice of Thanksgiving: and tell out his works with gladness.”

So at Provincetown, when the Mayflower first dropped anchor in 1620, the Pilgrims did likewise. For them, the psalm possessed a still deeper resonance. Keen scholars of Hebrew, which they saw as the original language of God, the Pilgrims knew that Psalm 107 was the source of the Jewish thanksgiving prayer, the birkat ha-gomel. They owned books by an English scholar, Henry Ainsworth, who used the Jewish philosopher Maimonides to show that this was so. The birkat ha-gomel was the prayer that every devout Jew should say, upon safe arrival after a dangerous voyage. The Pilgrims said it too.

And so in New England the Pilgrims took a variety of sources, and over time they blended them together to create their early Thanksgivings. Their successors did the same. They said Thanksgiving psalms like Jews, sometimes they fasted and sometimes they ate and drank, and like their British cousins they puffed themselves up with national pride. Centuries later, Americans ended up with a hybrid of Elizabethan patriotism, Algonquian fun, and a dash of non-denominational piety. In other words: the modern Thanksgiving. All you need add is Psalm 107, to make the event sublime.