The Meaning of Freedom

Sultan Knish

THE INTERVIEW This week I did an hour-long conversation/interview with Jamie Glazov on his show and we had a great talk about a number of things. The embed is below, if you want to give it a listen.
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RESISTANCE

The media is angry. It gets angry whenever it encounters resistance to its narrative. That's what happened with the Trayvon Martin case and Obamacare.

When the media encounters resistance, it runs through its stages

1. Denial - No one but a few loons reject the narrative

2. Anger - How dare they reject the narrative

3. Bargaining - The media starts looking for moderates who will accept some element of the narrative

4. Depression - The media glumly pontificates on a broken America where racism and poor health care will always be issues. Where their narrative remains marginalized among the NPR/New York Times enlightened.

But the fifth stage, Acceptance, never kicks in. The process just repeats itself. The Trayvon Martin case is still locked into Anger mode. ObamaCare is starting to tip slowly toward Bargaining, but is also in Anger mode.

Anger mode happens when the media realizes that the resistance isn't a few people they can ignore, that the resistance is organized, literate, competent and is advancing towards its goal. It takes the media a while to reach this point, but once it does, it jumps into action, plugging its narrative non-stop, searching for any evidence, real or manufactured, to back up its case, and pushing that evidence non-stop.

The facts don't matter, only the survival of the narrative does, because the narrative is a vehicle for policy.

Trayvon Martin isn't about a dead 17 year old, it's about reestablishing racism as the dominant issue in American life, helping to pave the way for Obama's reelection campaign and finding a wedge issue to use against the NRA in order to bring down the Second Amendment.

The media's problem is that it launched the narrative prematurely based on sloppy information, without taking into account minor issues such as Zimmerman's own racial appearance or Martin's problematic backstory. It assumed that the public would uncritically eat up the narrative, the right would be sidelined or made to feel guilty for supporting individual self-defense and the Second Amendment and the narrative would steamroll its way to the 2012 election.

At first they didn't know how to deal with the blowback, now they're stuck having to fight to defend their narrative to the death.

The ObamaCare Mandate is even more problematic, because it's unpopular with the general public and not that popular even on the left. Administration authoritarianism made it seem acceptable, but that was an illusion and now that illusion is suffering a severe attack.

The left had counted on Scalia's authoritarian side, or what they thought was his authoritarian side, to pull this off for them. When they realized it wasn't going to happen, he became their first target. In Anger mode, when the left realizes that it is losing, it begins lashing out at those it blames for its defeat, whether it's Verrilli or Scalia. It's rarely capable of understanding why it lost, instead it reaches for personal attacks.




THE MEANING OF FREEDOM

The left does not really care about the Mandate, except as a vehicle for their policies. The media defends the Mandate, because it's defending national health care. This kind of cynicism leads to intellectual laziness and senseless arguments.

Instead of thinking through the objections from the other side, the left has wasted its energies on ridiculing the opposition. It can't rationally defend the Mandate from a Constitutional standpoint, for one thing it doesn't believe in the Constitution, it hardly speaks a common language with the more conservative Justices who do.

And that is the real problem with Verrilli, who could have done an excellent job explaining the social utility of the Mandate, but like his boss, is not very good at fitting the whole thing into an existing legal framework that prioritizes freedom over government power. Verrilli was a poor choice, but he was an inevitable choice by an administration that thought the Mandate was a good idea to begin with.

It's hard to make legal arguments when you don't share a legal framework or a cultural one. Kennedy uncomfortably dangles between the new court of liberals who no longer care about the law, only about making law, and the conservatives pushing back to the original document. He is out of step with Kagan and the Wise Latina who see the argument in terms of what is socially beneficial, not in relation to the limits of the law.

Slate's legal analyst Dalia Lithwick demonstrates the basic incomprehension when she writes that it's a choice between freedom from being forced to buy health insurance or freedom from free medical treatment.

Even people who support President Obama’s signature legislative achievement would agree that this debate is all about freedom—the freedom to never be one medical emergency away from economic ruin. What we have been waiting to hear is how members of the Supreme Court—especially the conservative majority—define that freedom. This morning as the justices pondered whether the individual mandate—that part of the Affordable Care Act that requires most Americans to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty—is constitutional, we got a window into the freedom some of the justices long for.

Freedom is to be free from the telephone. Verrilli explains that “telephone rates in this country for a century were set via the exercise of the commerce power in a way in which some people paid rates that were much higher than their costs in order to subsidize.” To which Justice Scalia is again ready with a quick retort: “Only if you make phone calls.” Verrilli tries to point out that “to live in the modern world, everybody needs a telephone,”


And that's really where the gap kicks in, isn't it.

Lithwick uses the word "freedom" without having any idea of its meaning. To her, free health care is a form of freedom because it liberates you from a dangerous situation. On the other hand the freedom not to buy health insurance is a dumb kind of freedom because it only frees you to be in danger of not having health care.

It's a wonder the ACLU still exists because most on the left no longer understand the meaning of freedom, they can't separate it from government intervention or view it as a thing apart from government intervention, except during brief periods when Republicans are in office and then everything is an attack on their 'freedom'.

The gap here is cultural. Generations of the left view the government as the fundamental core of modern life. Any limitation on its power to dispense social benefits is dangerous to what they define as freedom, which is really subsidized personal autonomy... which is limited by the same government mechanisms that enable it.

So too the religious freedom vs subsidized birth control products runs into the same wall. But their idea of collectively distributed products and services that make personal autonomy possible is not freedom, it's feudalism. And that's what the Mandate debate is really about.

The Constitution was there to provide freedom from authority, to place limits on the power of central government. That is the "dark time" that Lithwick fears we will be dragged back to. For those who define freedom in terms of government mandated benefits, who believe in a subsidized autonomy, that is indeed a terrifying thing.

ObamaCare opponents and Lithwick both fear losing their freedom. But the opponents define freedom as restraint of government power. Lithwick defines freedom as government power to impose such obligations on society that will provide the appropriate social welfare benefits for those who need it.

That gap is unbridgeable and mutually incomprehensible. When you can't agree on what freedom is, then there is nothing at all to talk about.




C'EST RIDICULE

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said French Muslims were clearly not responsible for the acts of a madman... He ridiculed Le Pen's parallel between the killer and immigration, pointing out that Merah was born and raised in France.

Clearly immigration has nothing to do with this.

Sure daddy dearest, Benalen Merah, lives in Algeria, and is suing France for the crime of shooting a proud Muslim Jihadist. And sonny was a second-generation immigrant, which clearly means that immigration has nothing to do with this.

One might ask how did France fill up with Muslims if not through immigration, but hasn't Sarkozy already assured us that Islam has nothing to do with this?

Mohamed Merah isn't Muslim or an immigrant. He's just one of those ordinary French youth who are angry over things. Nothing to see here. Everyone move along.

Sarkozy is busy pandering, promising anti-terrorism and anti-Imam measures that will go nowhere when he is reelected, just as they went nowhere last time. The architects of tolerance are organizing Jewish-Muslim marches and the media is worrying that there might be another backlash against Muslims.




BOYCOTTER OF ISRAEL NOW ALSO BOYCOTTING OXYGEN

Adrienne Rich, who called for compulsory lesbianism for women and the destruction of Israel, has expanded her boycott of the Jewish State beyond the Jews and into oxygen, which she believed was tainted by Zionism and Heterosexuality.

Rich's courageous commitment to refusing to breathe has been praised by BDS activists who have rallied to her in the wake of the Battle of the Park Slope Coop defeat. While Rich's decision to boycott Zionist and Heteronormative American Imperial oxygen has led to her passing from this plane to a wondrous realm of Muslim lesbians, thus preventing her from participating in the next Gaza flotilla, she has been praised for remaining true to her principles of hating Jews, men, women and koala bears.

Adrienne Rich leaves behind a final poem summing up her existence.

Damn (2012)

Jews,
They're everywhere
Like Zionism hives hatching
Patriarchal somo-dominance of integrity
Birds shriek into a hurricane
Lesbian Palestine I embrace you
Truth is dangling from
Eternity
Renounce Amerikkkan-Oxygen for
Justice




SENATOR EMBARKS ON COURAGEOUS SEARCH FOR FAIRIES

"I'm deeply concerned about the possibility of an escalation of tensions and the occurrence of more confrontations and demonstrations [in Egypt]," said McCain. "However, the more important question is whether the Muslim Brotherhood will adopt a moderate approach, or if some of its extremist members will be directing the constitution-drafting process and the [presidential] elections."


I certainly hope none of those "extremist" members of the Brotherhood will try to make the Constitution go Islamist.




IN YOUR FAT FACE

A new poll finds most New Jersey residents support the secret monitoring of Muslim groups by the New York Police Department, though that sentiment isn't as strong in Hudson and Essex counties.


What no word from Passaic County?

Will this stop Christie from shamelessly pandering to Muslims by bashing the NYPD? I wouldn't count on it, but if he's serious about going for the White House in 2016, he might want to tone it down a bit. This isn't the Democratic Party after all.




HATE IS A MUSLIM CIVIL RIGHT

Non-Muslims should not question a planned seminar on “the threat of Christianisation” to Islam as the Federal Constitution empowered Muslims to organise such events, a conservative pressure group asserted today.

The Muslim Organisations in Defence of Islam (PEMBELA) defended the event jointly organised by the Johor state education and mufti departments, saying that opposition towards the event meant questioning guaranteed Muslim rights.


So can we get an investigation of Muslim Christianophobia? Oh and this is Malaysia. And events like this are a preliminary to what we might call Hate Crimes, but over there is just called Muslims being angry about things and then burning them down.




COMING UP, THE GIRL SCOUT BURQA

The Scouts have developed the first uniform for Muslim girls as the organisation seeks to attract children from different cultures. Figures show there are around 2000 Muslim Scouts in Britain in 40 groups which have a predominantly Muslim membership. Worldwide about one in three Scouts are now said to be Muslim.

Bear Grylls, the Chief Scout, said the movement was proud of its diverse range of nationalities.

“With this new clothing range Scouting is continuing to move with the times and adapt to the growing number of people from different communities who are choosing to be a part of the Movement,” he said


But what will the nature of this movement end up being when it becomes Muslim?




1. KILL PEOPLE 2. GET MONEY 3. PROFIT 4. ALLAH AKBAR

The United States said Thursday it wanted to step up development assistance to Nigeria's restive Muslim-majority north as it urged the Abuja government to address grievances underlying violence.

Carson, while voicing concern about Boko Haram, said that Nigeria's federal government needed to address "the underlying political and socio-economic problems in the north" to prevent extremism.

"The government must also promote respect for human rights by its security forces, whose heavy-handed tactics and extra-judicial killings reinforce the belief that Abuja is insensitive to the concerns of the north," he said.

Carson said that the State Department took Boko Haram's potential threat to the United States "very seriously" but indicated that he opposed a terrorist designation.

Carson said that despite "reports of episodic contact" between Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda, the Nigerian group was not "monolithic." Carson also dismissed assessments that religion was the primary driver of the violence.

"As Boko Haram is focused primarily on local Nigerian issues and actors, they respond principally to political and security developments within Nigeria," Carson said.


There isn't even any point in talking about treason. Is it even treason anymore when it becomes the norm, when it's reflected universally in government policy?




FOLLOW THE MONEY

The Society won approval in high places. The Vatican counted it among its partners in Christian-Muslim dialogue and both Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict received its secretary general. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual head of the world's Anglicans, visited the campus in 2009 to deliver a lecture. The following year, the U.S. State Department noted approvingly how the Society had helped Filipino Christian migrant workers start a church in Libya.

But the Society had a darker side that occasionally flashed into view. In Africa, rumors abounded for years of Society staffers paying off local politicians or supporting insurgent groups. In 2004, an American Muslim leader was convicted of a plot to assassinate the Saudi crown prince, financed in part by the Society. In 2011, Canada stripped the local Society office of its charity status after it found the director had diverted Society money to a radical group that had attempted a coup in Trinidad and Tobago in 1990 and was linked to a plot to bomb New York's Kennedy Airport in 2007.

Yet Libya's new leaders, the same ones who fought bitterly to overthrow Gaddafi and dismantle his 42-year dictatorship, are unanimous in wanting to preserve the WICS. They say they can disentangle its religious work from the dirty tricks it played and retain the Society as a legitimate religious charity - and an instrument of soft power for oil-rich Libya.

"There are still some loose ends in the Islamic Call Society in Africa," said Noman Benotman, a former member of an al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamist group who now works on deradicalization of jihadists at the Quilliam Foundation in London.

"They still have a lot of money going around through these channels that used to belong to the Islamic Call Society," he said. "Huge amounts of money are involved. I think we're talking about one to two billion dollars."


Ah, but the real question is whether that money is going to Boko Haram or Capitol Hill.




WE ARE ALL HOODIE WEARERS NOW

In the spirit of racial harmony, I have, for several days now, been thinking that I have to stop dressing like a white man and get with the Hoodie program. After all, isn't it better that we all learn, like Reginald Denny to "just get along?" (Or was it Rodney King? So hard to remember all the post-racial celebrities, isn't it?) Isn't it also safer for WASPs to Africanize now that we live in a nation where very marginal, very demented, and very repulsive groups such as the "New" Black Panthers can offer bounties on the head of anyone they dislike because of the color of his skin? Do I really need a weatherman to know which way their skin blows?




GAS GOUGING ON WHEELS

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wrapped up her San Francisco holiday weekend Monday with a blast at President Bush. The topic -- the price of oil. Gasoline has more than doubled since the Bush administration took office she says.

San Francisco's Meals on Wheels turns out more than 1,300 meals a day to seniors. But now there has been a dramatic rise in expenses.

"Our costs have gone up 40 percent, but even more so, the indirect costs of driving food costs is really taking a big hit on us. Almost a nine percent increase in food costs in just one year," says Ashley McCumber of Meals on Wheels.

McCumber joined Speaker Pelosi Monday to dramatize the tough times businesses are having because of fuel costs. The speaker blames what she labels the Bush-Cheney big oil agenda, using graphics to point out gasoline prices have more than doubled in the Bush administration.

...

Republicans should take a lesson, and seek out the current opinions at Meals on Wheels, Boys and Girls clubs, from small businessmen, caregivers and volunteers.


I doubt McCumber will show up to this one, but it's still a good idea.




AND NOW WE WANT IT BACK

"A day doesn’t go by that some Republican candidate, leader or otherwise shouts “we want our country back.”

We do want it back. You borrowed it, you broke it, and you weren't even decent enough to leave a note on the windshield. And if 2010 was any indication, we are well on the way to achieving that goal.


A response to a liberal. From Gary's Bear to the Right blog and you can find the soundtrack to that at Western Rifle Shooters.



A GOOD MUSLIM JUDGE MUST...


A Muslim judge too, according to the document, “must in his heart hate the man-made law”:

"He must also do everything in his power to enact laws that allow the Muslims to practice their Shari’a. He must keep it in his mind that he was not permitted to take this job except to serve Islam and Muslims. He must also… judge by the rulings of the Shari’a as much as possible, even if by a ruse."

So a Muslim judge is allowed to participate in the infidel system of justice only to serve Islam and fellow Muslims, not everyone who comes before his bench without discrimination, and he must rule as much as possible according to the dictates of sharia without attracting undue attention to his true intentions and loyalty.


Watch for this to really begin taking off. See details in Mark Tapson's article on Sharia subverting the legal system.



HOW YOUNG IS TOO YOUNG TO MARRY?

We're down to five year olds in the UK now. Not Saudi Arabia, the UK. See Pamela Geller.

The shocking revelations have come to light as a public consultation into criminalising forced marriage ends. Amy Cumming, joint head of the Forced Marriage Unit (FMU), told the BBC that more than a quarter - 29 per cent - of the cases it handled in 2011-12 involved minors.

She said: 'The youngest of these was actually five-years-old, so there are children involved in the practice across the school age range.'


Looks like Jesus from The Big Lebowsky should actually have been named Mohamed.



WIN-WIN

..The cost of an average family premium shot up 9.5% in 2011 — the highest rate in seven years and three times the rate of overall inflation, finds a major new survey of employer plans by Kaiser Family Foundation.

Kaiser attributes the premium spike to "changes from the new health reform law." The 200-page study explains: "Significant percentages of firms made changes in their preventive care benefits and enrolled adult children in their benefits plans in response to provisions in the new health reform law."


If we just reform health care some more, maybe no one will be able to afford it anymore at all. Except for the carefully rationed government kind. Did someone say Death Panels? Nah.




STUPID IS AS STUPID MISQUOTES

Whenever the usual useful idiots want to denounce me to the politically correct politburo, they reach for a carefully selected quote winnowed by a Muslim writer who had done work for Iranian and Saudi outlets.

This is the quote they select.

‘We would have to be willing to kill millions, directly or indirectly, while maintaining an alliance that would defy Russia, China and the First World nations that would accuse us of genocide. The real name for this war might well turn out to be World War III. It would take a Churchill or a Roosevelt to launch something like that…


What they carefully do is leave out a minor thing called context. Here's the opening paragraph of that piece.

Islamic Terrorism has become to the early 21st century, what Communism was to the late 20th century, the ultimate existential threat that the civilized world was forced to grapple with. In this article I will take a look at a few of the existing approaches, and their pros and cons, for winning the War on Terror.


The paragraph about having to kill millions that keeps getting quoted, that was listed under Cons. For the morbidly progressive, "cons" are a reason not to do something. Not a reason to do it.

Here's the entire paragraph that is carefully trimmed in these denunciations.

Cons: We would have to be willing to kill millions, directly or indirectly, while maintaining an alliance that would defy Russia, China and the First World nations that would accuse us of genocide. The real name for this war might well turn out to be World War III. It would take a Churchill or a Roosevelt to launch something like that, and while the world would be radically different afterward, it might well turn out to be radioactively different too.


What a difference a few words make.

Hezbollah Agents, Funders at Large in America

Adam Kredo

Hundreds of Hezbollah agents are suspected to be working in the United States, and the terror group enjoys the support of “several thousand sympathetic donors” across the country, according to an investigative report issued earlier today by the House’s Homeland Security Committee.

“Pinning down a reliable estimate of the number of Hezbollah operatives who now reside inside the U.S. is difficult because of their operational security expertise,” an outline of the report stated. “But some officials estimate that, based on cases uncovered since 9/11, there are likely several thousand sympathetic donors, while operatives probably number in the hundreds.” The committee also revealed that Hezbollah sympathizers have been involved in 21 legal cases since 2002—though the links of the accused to the militant group was not necessarily revealed.

“Most Hezbollah-linked federal defendants have been Lebanese nationals or naturalized U.S. citizens from Lebanon; many of those charged by the Department of Justice over the past decade remain at large in Lebanon,” the report states.

“Many defendants were known or suspected of having military training or direct combat experience against Israeli forces,” according the report. “Some were quietly convicted of fraud and deported as criminal aliens without their Hezbollah background being publicly disclosed by prosecutors.”

Hezbollah—more than any other terror group—has the unique ability to flip “a U.S.-based fundraising cell into a lethal terror force, should Iran decide that is in its interests,” the report states.

Comment: Islamic infiltration has reached new levels of concern in the USA. I have written a novel of fiction depicting the possible outcome of said infiltration. Please go to:http://lionofjustice.com/

The book is titled: The Lion Of Justice

Western Survival Depends on Western Pride

David J. Rusin
FrontPageMagazine.com

http://www.meforum.org/3199/western-survival-france

Claude Guéant, the French interior minister, sparked a firestorm last month when he praised Western values as "superior" to the oppressive ones found elsewhere, namely the Islamic world. Yet the controversy did more to spotlight an area in which the West clearly trails its rivals: self-confidence. If a government official cannot extol the unique virtues of freedom and equality that define Western life without being cast as a bigot by the politically correct, how can they be safeguarded against the highly motivated forces of Islamism, which doubt neither the superiority of their own principles nor the righteousness of imposing them on others? "Contrary to what the left's relativist ideology says, for us, all civilizations are not of equal value," Guéant, a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement, told a conference on February 4. "Those which defend humanity seem to us to be more advanced than those that do not," he averred. "Those which defend liberty, equality, and fraternity seem to us superior to those which accept tyranny, the subservience of women, social and ethnic hatred" — a truth that would be hammered home a month and a half later by a jihadist murdering Jewish children in Toulouse. Thus, Guéant underscored the need to "protect our civilization."

The response from the aforementioned relativists was swift and hostile, led by the Socialist Party of François Hollande, the apparent frontrunner in this spring's presidential race. Pierre Moscovici, Hollande's campaign chief, called Guéant's observations "a premeditated, willful, conscious gesture" to secure rightist votes for Sarkozy. He is "targeting Muslims," Moscovici added. Prominent Socialist Harlem Désir condemned Guéant's words as a "pitiful provocation" reflecting his party's supposed "moral decline." Hollande spokesman Bernard Cazeneuve accused Guéant of attempting to "hierarchize humanity," while the Young Socialist Movement decried his speech as "xenophobic and racist." Serge Letchimy, representing Martinique in the National Assembly of France, went farthest of all when he addressed Guéant in parliament, saying, "You bring us back day after day to those European ideologies which gave birth to the concentration camps."

To their credit, Guéant stood by his remarks and Sarkozy supported him. "Obvious words to note that not all civilizations have the same worth regarding the humanist values that are ours," Guéant later explained to Le Figaro. "Who can contest that there is a difference in values between a civilization that favors democracy, protects individual liberties … promotes the rights of women, and a civilization that accepts tyranny, accords no importance to liberties, and does not respect equal rights between men and women?" Many people, it seems.

Guéant is hardly the first politician to be raked over the coals for touting the exemplary characteristics of the West and shining a negative light, directly or indirectly, on Islam. Indeed, the row recalls one that erupted days after 9/11 when Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister at the time, maintained: "We must be aware of the superiority of our civilization, a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights, and — in contrast with Islamic countries — respect for religious and political rights." The reaction was fierce. Belgium's prime minister cautioned that such "dangerous" language "could feed a feeling of humiliation" among Muslims, an Italian opposition leader chided Berlusconi for "using terms that no statesman worthy of the name has used," and another likened him to Osama bin Laden. Berlusconi quickly backtracked, with his office citing his "deep respect for Islam, a great religion … which preaches tolerance" and "respect of human rights."

Of course, the political figure best known for bluntly comparing the Western and Islamic worlds while suffering the establishment's wrath is Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. "We will have to end cultural relativism," he stressed in Rome last year. "To the multiculturalists, we must proudly proclaim: Our Western culture is far superior to the Islamic culture. Only when we are convinced of that, we will be willing to fight for our own identity."

The ancient military thinker Sun Tzu taught that victory in any conflict is achieved by understanding not merely one's adversary, but also oneself. Applied to the struggle against Islamism, this starts with Westerners grasping that which they are charged with preserving: a unique cultural patrimony — born in Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem and nurtured during the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and American Revolution — that sustains the freest and most prosperous civilization in the historical record.

Yet as the response to Guéant demonstrates, appreciation of this Western "self" has grown thin in many circles. Due to "post-modernism, moral relativism, and multiculturalism, the West has lost all self-confidence in its own values, and seems incapable and unwilling to defend those values," argues Ibn Warraq, author of Why the West Is Best. "By contrast, resurgent Islam, in all its forms, is supremely confident, and is able to exploit the West's moral weakness and cultural confusion to demand ever more concessions from her."

Warraq declares that if their system is to endure, Westerners must acknowledge that "the great ideas of the West — rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law and equality under the law, freedom of thought and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy — are superior to any others devised by humankind." Likewise, it is critical to compare Western ideals to those of the Islamists, which are antithetical to liberty and increasingly threaten it. A glance at how women and minorities are treated by strict Islamic law is sufficient to expose multiculturalism's "lie that all cultures are worthy of equal respect and equally embracing of individual freedom and democracy," to quote reformist Muslim Salim Mansur.

The advance of Islamism can be checked only if the West unabashedly reasserts its core values. As feminist icon Phyllis Chesler warns in her review of Warraq's book, liberalization of the Islamic world "will never happen unless Westerners engage in the most spirited defense of Western freedoms," because "this is the best way we can strengthen our like-minded allies who are trapped in theologically fundamentalist Muslim countries." The same vigor is required at home to reverse deleterious multicultural policies that have fostered extremism, not integration. David Cameron, the British prime minister, has contended that the remedy involves "less of the passive tolerance of recent years and a much more active, muscular liberalism" that "believes in certain values and actively promotes them. … It says to its citizens, this is what defines us as a society: to belong here is to believe in these things."

At the very least, governments need to draw a clear line between Western principles that will not be surrendered and Islamist ones that will not be tolerated. Hints of the requisite approach are seen in Canada's citizenship guide, which states that the country's "openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices" such as honor violence and female genital mutilation, and the German interior minister's recent comments that "those who reject freedom and democracy have no future here."

Jihadists' ultimate success or failure at "eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within" and institutionalizing Islam in its place, a goal enunciated by the Muslim Brotherhood, depends more on the West than the Islamists. It will never come to pass unless it is facilitated by a slow-motion cultural suicide at the hands of leftist elites who insist that no society is better than any other, downgrade their own civilization's accomplishments, do nothing to protect the West, and smear anybody who contradicts them.

Will the decades ahead be shaped by unapologetic pride in the West's objectively superior system, as voiced by Claude Guéant? Or will the mindset of his critics prevail, thus sapping morale, projecting weakness, emboldening Islamists, and accelerating the decay? If the former, the West will survive — because it will have chosen survival. If the latter, the new barbarians will not have to climb over the gates as in days of yore; they will simply stroll through the ones opened for them by Western apathy.

David J. Rusin is a research fellow at Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

Passover: an inherently American value

Yoram Ettinger

Passover, and especially the legacy of Moses and the Exodus, has been part of the American story since the 17th century, inspiring the American pursuit of liberty, justice and morality.

The special role played by Passover – and the Bible – in shaping the American state of mind constitutes the foundation of the unique relations between the American people and the Jewish state. As important as are the current mutual threats and interests between the U.S. and Israel, the bedrock of the unbreakable U.S.-Israel alliance are permanent values, principles and legacies, such as Passover. In 1620 and 1630, William Bradford and John Winthrop delivered sermons on the Mayflower” and Arbella, referring to the deliverance from “modern-day Egypt and Pharaoh,” to “the crossing of the modern day Red Sea” and to New Zion/Canaan as the destination of the pilgrims on board.

In 1776, Thomas Paine, the author of “Common Sense” (which cemented public support for the American Revolution), referred to King George as the “hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh.” Upon declaration of independence, Benjamin Franklin, the most secular founding father, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third American presidents, proposed a Passover theme for the official U.S. seal: the pillar of fire leading Moses and the Israelites through the Red Sea, while Pharaoh’s chariots drown. The inscription on the seal was supposed to be: “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God,” framing the rebellion against the British monarchy as principle-driven. The lessons of the Jewish deliverance from Egyptian bondage reverberated thunderously among the rebels, who considered the 13 colonies to be “the modern day 12 tribes.”

The 19th-century abolitionists, and the civil rights movement from the 1940s to the 1970s, were inspired by the ethos of the Exodus and by the Bible’s opposition to slavery. In the 1830s, the Liberty Bell, an icon of American independence, was adopted by the abolitionists, due to its Exodus-inspired inscription: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10). Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (1852), and her husband, Calvin Ellis Stowe (whom Harriet referred to as her personal rabbi) were scholars of the Bible and the Exodus. Harriet Tubman, who escaped slavery in 1849 and freed black slaves on the Underground Railroad, earned the name “Moses.” The black slaves of 1879 and 1880 who ran away to Kansas were called “the Exodusters.” The most famous spiritual, “Go Down, Moses,” was considered the national anthem of black slaves.

In 1865, following the murder of President Abraham Lincoln, most eulogies compared him to Moses. Just like Moses, Lincoln liberated slaves, but was stopped short of entering the Promised Land. France paid tribute to the martyred Lincoln by erecting the Statue of Liberty, featuring rays of sun and a tablet, just like the glaring Moses descending from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Ten Commandments.

In 1954, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. compared the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision to desegregate public schools to the parting of the Red Sea. In 1964, upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, King proclaimed: “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself. The Bible tells the thrilling story of how Moses stood in Pharaoh’s court centuries ago and cried, ‘Let my people go.’”

President Ronald Reagan mentioned the Exodus as the first incident in a long line of Western resistance to tyranny: “Since the Exodus from Egypt, historians have written of those who sacrificed and struggled for freedom – the stand at Thermopylae, the revolt of Spartacus, the storming of the Bastille, the Warsaw uprising in World War II.”

In July 2003, President George W. Bush, in Senegal, said, “In America, enslaved Africans learned the story of the exodus from Egypt, and set their own hearts on a promised land of freedom.”

In March 2007, President Barack Obama said in Selma, Alabama, that the civil rights pioneers were the “Moses generation” and he was part of the “Joshua generation” that would “find our way across the river.”

In 2012, the statue of Moses stares at the speaker of the House, another statue of Moses towers above the seats of the Supreme Court justices, a Ten Commandments monument sits on the ground of the Texas State Capitol and a similar monument will be shortly erected on the ground of the Oklahoma State Capitol.

In 2012, the leader of the free world and its sole ally in the Middle East, Israel, are facing the most lethal threat to liberty since 1945 – conventional and non-conventional Islamic terrorism. Adherence to the legacy of Passover, marshaling the conviction-driven leadership of Moses, and demonstrating the Joshua and Caleb courage and defiance of odds, will once again facilitate the victory of liberty over tyranny.

Europe's Islamic Future Has Arrived

Soeren Kern

"Jews should not emigrate; anti-Semitic Moroccans should."

In country after European country, the post-modern charade of the bliss of multiculturalism -- the idea that all cultures are equal and can coexist peacefully side-by-side in any given country, and that Muslim immigrants should be allowed to keep their cultural traditions rather than integrate into wider European society -- is unravelling.

Consider just a few of the following Islam-related controversies that jolted Europe during March 2012, a month that not only exposed the deadly consequences of decades of politically correct multiculturalism, but also brought into stark relief the moral confusion that now reigns supreme among much of Europe's political class.

In France, a 23-year-old Islamic jihadist named Mohamed Merah confirmed the threat of homegrown Muslim terrorism. Merah, a French citizen of Algerian origin, killed three French paratroopers, three Jewish schoolchildren and a rabbi with close-range shots to the head. He filmed himself carrying out the attacks that began on March 11 to "verify" the deaths. Merah later died in a hail of gunfire on March 22 after a 32-hour standoff with police at his apartment in the southern French city of Toulouse. In an extraordinary display of moral callousness, an indifferent Catherine Ashton, the European Union's 'Foreign Minister' and member of the British Labour Party, declared that "what happened in Toulouse," -- the deliberate murder of the Jewish children -- was morally equivalent to the accidental war deaths of Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip. Then, in a clumsy effort to blunt the outrage engendered by Ashton's spectacle, her spin doctors released a statement to "clarify" her remarks by amending the official transcript of her speech.

Ashton made her contentious comments at none other than a pro-Palestinian activists' conference in Brussels, the self-styled "Capital of Europe" and also the most Islamic city in Europe. She hosted the event, entitled "Palestine Refugees in the Changing Middle East," in an attempt to convince the world that the European Union is an "honest broker" in the Middle East. Not surprisingly, the Hamas terrorist group applauded Ashton, saying "she deserves thanks, appreciation, and support in the face of Zionist attempts to terrorize and pressure her."

Meanwhile, in Geneva, Switzerland, the United Nations Human Rights Council on March 19 extended an invitation to Hamas's very own Ismail al-Ashqar to speak to the 19th regular session of the body. The UN reluctantly rescinded al-Ashqar's invitation at the last minute on fears that his appearance might further undermine its own credibility.

True to form, the Human Rights Council considered five resolutions on Israel and the Palestinians, including four resolutions submitted by Palestine, even though no such state exists. One resolution called for the council to appoint an international fact-finding committee to investigate Israeli "settlements" on the West Bank and their impact on Palestinian life.

The measure was adopted by a vote of 36 in favor, 1 against and 10 abstentions. Voting in favor were: Austria, Belgium, Norway and Switzerland. Not surprisingly, no European country opposed the measure (the United States cast the only 'no' vote).

In Germany, Sigmar Gabriel, the head of the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) and a possible candidate for German chancellor, on March 14 described Israel as an "apartheid regime." Posting on his Facebook site, Gabriel wrote: "I was just in Hebron [under the Palestinian Authority's control, not Israel's, at the Palestinian Authority's request - the editors]. That is a lawless territory there for Palestinians. This is an apartheid regime, for which there is no justification."

Gabriel's remarks triggered a wave of criticism from Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union Party (CDU), which issued a statement saying: "The fact that a German politician is using the term 'Apartheid' in connection with Israeli society is shameful. This is out of turn and reveals Mr. Gabriel's ignorance in foreign policy matters, especially when it comes to such complex issues such as the Middle East conflict."

Gabriel, a former environmental minister, was unrepentant. He later sought to meet with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, despite Germany's official policy not to recognize the terror group. Gabriel also said he welcomed the inclusion of Hamas as political partner in the Middle East.

In Sweden, Ilmar Reepalu, the leftwing mayor of Malmö, accused Jews in the country of teaming up with an anti-immigrant party to "spread hate" toward Muslims.

Reepalu, who has turned a blind eye to the growing problem of anti-Semitism in Malmö during the more than 15 years he has been mayor, believes that Jews are responsible for anti-Semitism because of their support for Israeli policies in the Middle East.

Muslims now comprise between 20% and 25% of Malmö's total population of around 300,000; much of the increase in anti-Jewish violence in recent years is being attributed to shiftless Muslim immigrant youth. In recent months, the only synagogue serving Malmö's 700-strong Jewish community has been the focus of repeated attacks. The synagogue, which has previously been set on fire and been the target of bomb threats, now has guards stationed around it, while the Jewish kindergarten can only be reached through reinforced steel security doors.

In January 2010, for example, Reepalu marked Holocaust Memorial Day by declaring that Zionism is racism. In an interview with the daily newspaper Skånska Dagbladet, he also said: "I would wish for the Jewish community to denounce Israeli violations against the civilian population in Gaza. Instead it decides to hold a [pro-Israeli] demonstration in the Grand Square [of Malmö], which could send the wrong signals."

Reepalu was referring to an incident in January 2009, during Israel's brief war in Gaza, when a small demonstration in favor of Israel was attacked by a screaming mob of Muslims and Swedish leftists, who threw bottles and firecrackers as the police looked on.

In July 2011, after a Hollywood film production company cancelled plans to shoot a movie in Skåne in southern Sweden due to concerns over anti-Semitism in Malmö, Reepalu cast his rage at the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center for advising Jews to avoid traveling to the region.

Reepalu, in an interview with the newspaper Sydsvenskan, said: "I have a feeling that the Simon Wiesenthal Center is not really looking for what is happening in Malmö but they want to hang the people who dare to criticize the state of Israel. Are they once again saying I should be silenced? I will never compromise my morals."

In a March 22 interview with the magazine NEO about the rise of anti-Semitism in Sweden, Reepalu said the Jewish community has been "infiltrated" by the conservative Sweden Democrats party to promote their mutual disdain for Muslims. Reepalu's comments triggered outrage but he is unlikely to give ground.

Jewish cemeteries in Sweden also have been desecrated; Jewish worshippers have been abused on their way home from prayer; and Jews have been taunted in the streets by masked men chanting phrases such as "Hitler, Hitler" and "Dirty Jew."

Some Jews in Sweden have stopped attending prayer services altogether out of fear for their safety and 15 Jewish families have left the city altogether because of harassment and threats.

In Britain, Baroness Cox, one of the most outspoken campaigners against the spread of Islamic Sharia law there, told a House of Lords symposium on March 19 that a growing number of British Muslims are shunning the official court system in favor of Sharia councils to settle legal disputes. She warned that if Sharia law is allowed to thrive, brutal punishments like stoning, whipping and amputations could become widespread in Britain.

Islamic jurisprudence is, in fact, spreading throughout Britain at an astonishing rate. At least 85 Islamic Sharia courts are now operating there, almost 20 times as many as previously believed.

A recent think tank study entitled "Sharia Law or One Law for All" found that scores of unofficial tribunals and councils regularly apply Islamic law to resolve domestic, marital and business disputes, many operating in mosques; and warns of a "creeping" acceptance of Sharia principles in British law.

In London, Ashton's Labour Party colleague Ken Livingstone, who is campaigning to become its next mayor, said he wants to turn the capital city into a "beacon" of Islam. According to a recent Ipsos MORI poll conducted for the BBC, Livingstone's main rival, the incumbent mayor Boris Johnson, holds a slight lead but is in a statistical dead heat. With an estimated one million Muslims living in London, Livingstone's appeal to Islam may, on May 3, propel him into the mayor's office.

Speaking to Muslim worshippers on March 16 at the North London Central Mosque, one of the most hardline anti-Western mosques in Europe, Livingstone pledged that if elected, he would "educate the mass of Londoners" about Islam.

Livingstone, a self-described socialist who previously served as the mayor of London from 2000 to 2008, declared: "I want to spend the next four years making sure that every non-Muslim in London knows and understands [Mohammed's] words and message. That will help to cement our city as a beacon that demonstrates the meaning of the words of the Prophet."

In the Netherlands, the Dutch public broadcaster VPRO has been offering its viewers a downloadable board game called "The Settlers of the West Bank" featuring Israeli "settlers" who use "Jewish stinginess," "Wailing Wall," and "Anne Frank" cards to "colonize" the West Bank. The aim of the game is to build as many "settlements" as possible on so-called Palestinian territory. VPRO, describing the game as "thought-provoking satire," reluctantly removed it from its website following accusations of anti-Semitism.

Frits Bolkestein, a veteran Dutch politician, said that Jews have no future in the Netherlands and he has recommended that they emigrate to Israel or the United States for their own safety. In an interview with the Dutch magazine Elsevier, Bolkestein said: "I see no future for recognizable Jews [those who wear skullcaps or sidecurls], in particular because of anti-Semitism, specifically in Dutch Moroccans, who continue to grow in number."

Dutch politician Geert Wilders was quick to refute Bolkestein by saying that "Jews should not emigrate, anti-Semitic Moroccans should." But the writing is on the wall; Europe's Islamic future has arrived.

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

Salam Fayyad's Hypocrisy

Mahmoud Dweik

In public, Fayyad is telling his people and the rest fo the world how much he cries abut freedom of expression. Behind the scenes, however, Fayyad's security officers are busy arresting and intimidating any Journalist who exposes corruption or voices criticism of the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah. How can Fayyad argue that he is serious about fighting corruption, and at the same time arrest a journalist for exposing a corruption scandal in a diplomatic mission?

The Palestinian Authority government of Salam Fayyad, announcing this week the launching of the 2012 Award for Press Freedom, invited Palestinian journalists to submit their candidacy for the prestigious award, the first if its kind in the Palestinian territories.

The award is intended to encourage freedom of media and speech in the Palestinian territories, where local journalists have long been facing a campaign of intimidation and harassment by the two Palestinian governments in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Ironically, the news about the launching of the new award coincided with the arrest of Youssef Shayeb, a Palestinian journalist from Ramallah, on charges of "slander and defamation." Fayyad's security forces in the West Bank arrested Shayeb after he published a report in a Jordanian newspaper exposing corruption in the Palestinian diplomatic mission in France.He was first detained for 48 hours, after which a Palestinian court extended his detention for an additional two weeks.

The arrest of Shayeb exposes Fayyad's double standards when it comes to freedom of expression. In public, Fayyad is telling his people and the rest of the world how much he cares about freedom of expression. To back up his claim, he has gone as far as announcing an annual award for press freedoms that would be granted to a Palestinian journalist who is chosen by a special panel of experts.

Behind the scenes, however, Fayyad's security officers are busy arresting and intimidating any journalist who exposes corruption or voices criticism of the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah.

To avoid responsibility for any wrongdoing, Fayyad's aides claim that their boss has no real control over the Palestinian security forces and point at President Mahmoud Abbas as the man to blame for the clampdown on journalists.

If Fayyad has no control over the security forces, then why does his government continue to pay salaries to tens of thousands of Palestinian policemen and security personnel?

Moreover, what is preventing Fayyad from speaking out against the Palestinian security forces if he is not happy with some of the things they are doing?

How can Fayyad distance himself from the Palestinian security forces one day and take credit for restoring law and order in the West Bank another day?

And how can Fayyad argue that he is serious about fighting corruption in Palestinian Authority institutions and, at the same time, arrest a journalist for exposing a corruption scandal in a diplomatic mission?

Even if Fayyad does not have direct control over the various branches of the Palestinian security forces in the West Bank -- as he claims -- his job as prime minister does not absolve him of full responsibility for what happens in territories that are under his jurisdiction.

Fayyad is mistake if he thinks that he can fool Palestinian journalists through double-talk. The arrest of the Palestinian journalist this week by his security forces has drawn strong condemnations from a large number of Palestinians.

A prime minister who orders his security officers to arrest a journalist because of an article is not a "reformist." Nor is he someone who deserves the respect of the international community for supposedly being "liberal" and "open-minded."

Many Palestinians were pinning high hopes on Fayyad mainly because he is not affiliated with Fatah or Hamas.

But there is a saying in the Arab world that if you live 40 days among any people, you become part of them. Fayyad has been living with Fatah and Hamas for too long; that is why he has begun acting and speaking like them.

Mahmoud Dweik is a journalist and analyst who lives in the West Bank

The State Department's Jerusalem syndrome

Caroline Glick

I went to the US Consulate this week to take care of certain family business. It was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. I think it is ironic that two days after my extremely unpleasant experience at the consulate, State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland refused to say what the capital of Israel is. It was ironic because anyone who visits the consulate knows that the US's position on Jerusalem is in perfect alignment with that of Israel's worst enemies.

Last time I went to the consulate was in 2007. At that time the building was located in the middle of an Arab neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem. It was unpleasant. In fact it was fairly frightening. Once inside the building I couldn't shake the feeling that the Americans had gone out of their way to make Israeli-American Jews feel uncomfortable and vaguely threatened. But then, I was able to console myself with the thought that the US has been upfront about its rejection of Israel's right to assert its sovereignty over eastern Jerusalem. By treating Jews as foreigners in their capital city and behaving as though it belongs to the Arabs by among other things hiring only Arabs as local employees, the US officials on site were simply implementing a known US policy. True, I deeply oppose the policy, but no one was asking me, and no one was hiding anything from me.

The new consulate is much different, and much worse. The State Department opened its new consulate in Jerusalem in October 2010. It is located in the Jewish neighborhood of Arnona. It was built on the plot that Israel allocated for the US Embassy after Congress passed Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995 requiring the US government to move its embassy to Jerusalem. I read that construction began in 2004. I haven't been able to find out whether when construction began it was to build the embassy or a new consulate so I don't know yet whether the Bush administration thought it was building an embassy that the Obama administration turned into a consulate or if the Bush administration thought it was building a consulate that the Obama administration completed.

Whatever the case, the fact that the building that was supposed to be an expression of US recognition of Israel's capital in Jerusalem is being used as the consulate is an unvarnished act of aggression against Israel and Congress.

If I am not mistaken, the US Consulate General in Jerusalem is the only US consulate in the world that is not subordinate to the embassy in the country where it is located. When it was located in a hostile Arab neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem, the fact that it was not subordinate to the US Embassy in Tel Aviv was upsetting. But it was also easily justified in light of US policy of not recognizing Israeli sovereignty in eastern, southern and northern Jerusalem.

But Arnona is in western Jerusalem. It is a Jewish neighborhood that even the most radical Israeli leftists don't envision transferring to the Palestinians in any peace deal. Putting the consulate in Arnona - and on the site reserved for the embassy no less - is the clearest expression of American rejection of all Israeli sovereign rights to Jerusalem imaginable.
And the fact that it is located in the heart of a Jewish neighborhood is far from the only problem with the building.

Israelis who live in Jerusalem and need US consular services are required to go to the consulate in Jerusalem. You can't just go to Tel Aviv to avoid the unpleasantness. This again is due to the fact that the US does not recognize ANY Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. From the State Department's perspective, people who live in Jerusalem -- even in Arnona and Rehavia and Ein Kerem etc. -- live in a DIFFERENT COUNTRY from people who live in Tel Aviv and Netanya. We can no more receive services from the embassy in Tel Aviv than we can receive services from the embassy in Amman.

I will be writing more about the US's adversarial treatment of Israel as embodied in its treatment of Jerusalem in next week's Jerusalem Post column. But suffice it to say here that Victoria Nuland's statement to AP reporter Matt Lee, (posted below in case you missed it), is a true depiction of America's policy on Jerusalem - and though it, on Israel.



It would be useful for someone to get Mitt Romney on record discussing his position on Jerusalem. Assuming that he says - like every other Republican presidential candidate - that he supports transferring the US embassy to Jerusalem, he should further be asked to explain how, if he is elected president, he will force the State Department to change its policies towards Israel and respect US law by treating Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

UPDATE from Yisrael Medad:
The following is an email I received from Yisrael Medad from the Begin Center. He writes an excellent blog www.myrightword.blogspot.com

Yisrael follows the US Consulate in Jerusalem far more closely than I and here is what he was to say:

I am old enough to recall pre-1967 when the Consulate in "West Jerusalem" was where it always was for some 150 years - at Agron Street. The library was great. And by the way, the building you mention is the offices of the consular section. Political, economic and other matters are still at Agron, where the Consul-General lives.


But to the politics: A rather disturbing pattern of behavior has emerged from the US Consulate-General in Jerusalem over the past years that would point to a need for Congressional review and oversight.



Except for matters of passports, visas and birth registration, all other activities whether social, educational, scientific, sports, etc. are blatantly discriminatory in that no Jewish American citizen, who lives in the area supervised by the Consulate, can benefit from or take part in. They are intended for Arabs solely.



Jews resident in the area of Judea and Samaria face a policy of exclusion and that, we maintain, would seem to be unconstitutional and illegal. In the same geographical area under the jurisdiction of the Consulate there exist two separate and not equal populations: Jewish and Arab, whether Muslim or Christian.


Is what they are doing legal by American law? Is it in the spirit of the democratic foundations of American democracy? Can the Consulate adopt exclusionist policies that separate between peoples based on race in the same geographic area? Can it create the "state of the West Bank"?



There are almost 350,000 Jewish residents in the communities located in the territory for which the C-G is responsible (the almost 300,000 Jews in the newer Jerusalem neighborhoods and within the Old City is another matter). Almost 15,000 are American citizens. They do not benefit from any of these cultural, social or funding outreach activities and other programs and monies. Jews don't count, other than deserving consular needs like birth registration, visas, etc.


I think it would be a helpful for the House Foreign Relations Committee to hold hearings on the manner in which the US Consulate in Jerusalem is run. Jewish US citizen residents of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria should be brought in to give testimony.

London warns of hand cream Olympics terror plot

Jeffrey Bigongiari

Islamic extremists recently posted a series of detailed instructions online for how to launch a terrorist attack during the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

One member of the group, called Abu Hija Ansari, called for cyanide to be mixed into hand cream so victims can absorb it through their skin. Ansari warned those attempting the recipe to wear gloves for their own protection, according to the Telegraph.

“Through skin: 1 – cyanide, 2 – skin cream,” Ansari wrote in Arabic, the Telegraph reports. “Mix the ingredients. The skin cream will open the pores in the skin and speed up the absorption and effectiveness of the poison.” A British newspaper, the Sun, said the website, which it reportedly accessed using a false identity, has approximately 17,000 members and known links to several terrorists working with the group Al-Qaeda.

A second terrorist wrote her missive under the logo of the 2012 games.

“It’s time to prepare for the event, as once again they are interfering with innocent Muslims,” she said, the Telegraph reports.

U.K. security services remain on high alert, looking for any potential threat to the games, which begin on July 27 in east London. Jonathan Evans, the director-general of MI5, recently briefed the British Cabinet on terrorist threats the U.K. might face in the run-up to the opening ceremony.
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Leaders who lead to surrender

Melanie Phillips

Readers of the Jerusalem Post have doubtless been bemused by a rumbling controversy over whether or not the Anglo-Jewish leadership comprises what Isi Leibler derided as "trembling Israelites".

Leibler suggested that both the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council were in denial over the UK's dramatic upsurge in anti-Israel feeling. In particular, they understated the threat of Muslim antisemitism and jihadism, and continuously issued statements warning of the dangers of Islamophobia which paled beside the violence and threats levelled against Jews.

Leibler was accused of misrepresenting the situation. What happened to Brooke Goldstein, however, suggests he is nearer to the truth. Leeds JSoc invited Goldstein, a US lawyer who fights Islamic extremism and defends Israel, to deliver a talk at about the stifling of free speech on the Middle East. The JSoc then abruptly cancelled her talk - on the grounds that it would jeopardise community relations and endanger the welfare of Leeds students.

Political correctness has warped their judgment

Why was Goldstein considered a menace? Apparently because she is a supporter of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, had linked to an article about him on a website called Gates of Vienna, and a member of her staff had blogged about a film entitled The Third Jihad.

Such reasoning shows how deeply political correctness has warped the judgment of these students. Wilders has been demonised because he stands resolutely against the Islamist aim of conquering the west - and because he thinks the Koran incites hatred and violence against Jews and "infidels". Does Leeds JSoc not think this incitement endangers Jewish students?

Gates of Vienna is an anti-Islamist site that has provided a platform for some ultra-nationalists. Goldstein says her organisation merely linked to one article. This tars her as a dangerous extremist? As for The Third Jihad, I know this is an important film - narrated by a Muslim - which charts the nature and extent of Islamist aggression and the inroads this has been allowed to make in the west. Yet this film has been smeared by the usual combination of Islamists and their western apologists.

I have a particular interest in this smear because I, too, am interviewed in this film. I, too, could thus be pilloried as an "anti-Muslim extremist" - and I'm afraid to say there are members of the UK Jewish community who already do that.

This derives from the confusion among much of the leadership, which seems to believe that to identify the threat from Islamic religious extremism is "Islamophobic". Indeed, a number of communal worthies wrote to the JC attacking it for "criticising and embarrassing" Leeds JSoc instead of "supporting" and "thanking" it.

Thanking it for what? For its "resolve" in repudiating the principle of free speech on campus? For "improving Jewish student life" by smearing those who fight Islamic religious fascism, thus effectively whitewashing the virulent Jew-hatred pouring out of the Muslim world? For "acting in the best interests of their members" by turning on a lawyer who would help them defend themselves against anti-Jewish attacks?

The fact that this morally bankrupt act by Leeds JSoc has been supported by UJS and so many in Jewish leadership suggests that these leaders don't understand who are the true friends of the Jews. "Trembling Israelites" isn't the half of it. These Anglos are not so much "trembling" as leading the surrender to the enemies of the Jews - and thus indirectly encouraging them to redouble their attacks. British Jews should indeed be trembling at being thus abandoned by those who speak in their name.

Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist

Jasser's Appointment Riles Islamists

IPT News


http://www.investigativeproject.org/3513/jasser-appointment-riles-islamists

He has different views than most of the national Muslim advocacy groups featured in the media, and for that, Islamist groups have worked to keep Zuhdi Jasser from gaining traction in the national debate over religion and extremism.

He has been smeared as an Uncle Tom, a clown and even a "sock puppet" for anti-Muslim forces. So when it was announced Monday that Jasser had been appointed to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Islamists frothed with hyperbolic excess. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called the appointment "farcical" and urged supporters to sign a petition protesting the move. An "action alert" mailed to its listserv also steered supporters to the petition, "calling on community members and people of conscience to sign a petition for" Jasser's ouster.

The Muslim Public Affairs Council directed its Twitter followers to the petition, too, copying its claim that "Zuhdi Jasser Does Not Belong on the USCIRF." In a separate action alert, MPAC urged supporters to protest to their elected officials, calling the appointment "an affront to all Muslims."

Jasser is a Muslim. It's doubtful the move is an affront to him.

A group called the Muslim Peace Coalition issued a statement similarly calling supporters to protest the appointment, calling it "a huge insult to the American Muslims and it will have consequences in terms of demonizing Muslims abroad ... This is a guy who has made a living advocating to curb religious liberties for Muslims RIGHT HERE in the US. The contradiction and hypocrisy of this action could not be more underscored."

Jasser joining the USCIRF board is "like appointing David Duke as chair of NAACP," wrote Fida Mohammed on the petition page.

The federally-funded commission is tasked with monitoring and advocating "for religious freedom abroad wherever that right is being abused."

Jasser, an Arizona physician and Navy veteran, founded the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, advocating the separation of mosque and state and taking on Islamist groups he sees as working to slowly inculcate religious practice and dogma into public policy. The United States offers Muslims the greatest freedom to practice their faith because it maintains the separation.

In contrast, "The theocratic 'Islamic' regimes of the Middle East and some Muslim majority nations use Islam as a way to control Muslim populations, not to glorify God as they portend," the AIFD web page says. "The purest practice of Islam is one in which Muslims have complete freedom to accept or reject any of the tenants or laws of the faith no different than we enjoy as Americans in this Constitutional republic."

But those contesting his appointment cast Jasser as an opponent of religious liberty. His sin? Disagreeing with them while accepting funding from conservative sources, supporting law enforcement counter-terror efforts and publicly criticizing the proposed Ground Zero mosque.

"How can an individual who supports the curbing of Muslim civil and religious liberties at home be trusted as a 'commissioner' to review and analyze violations of religious freedoms abroad?" a web page featuring the petition says.

With the appointment, the USCIRF "is telling the American Muslim community and Americans of conscience, 'we are happy to insult your intelligence by pretending not to know the link between Zuhdi and some of the most vile anti-Muslim funders and entities in the country, and that we do not mind the contradiction between having him preach to the world about religious liberties while simultaneously advocating to curb YOUR liberties in THIS country,'" CAIR-Chicago Director Ahmed Rehab wrote on the petition site.

Writer Reza Aslan, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, posted a link to the petition on his Twitter feed, dismissing Jasser as "Glenn Beck's favorite Muslim." CAIR national spokesman Ibrahim Hooper echoed Rehan when he claimed Jasser has no credibility among Muslim Americans. "He has long been viewed by American Muslims and the colleagues in the civil liberties community as a mere sock puppet for Islam haters and an enabler of Islamophobia."

In an interview, Jasser said his views are being grossly distorted. Though he opposed the proposed Ground Zero mosque, his record and that of his family has been in helping build mosques in Wisconsin and Arizona. In none of the releases and Twitter posts issued this week is Jasser quoted saying anything against religious liberty or Muslims.

"If I'm such a Muslim hater, they can't find one quote from Zuhdi Jasser?" he asked. "It's like something out of Pravda or the Syrian media."

The level of vitriol directed at Jasser, and the accusation he is anti-Muslim, "is not based on anything rational. It's just name calling," said Qanta Ahmed, author of In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom. Like Jasser, Ahmed is a Muslim American physician who stands against radical elements of her faith and against Islamist political movements.

Disagreement with the national groups automatically triggers a backlash and accusations of bigotry, Ahmed said, all emanating from "monstrous organizations that want to drown out diversity."

Jasser has repeatedly taken on CAIR and its positions. In response, CAIR has tried to diminish his views, arguing he runs a small operation with a modest following. That was the line CAIR Governmental Affairs Director Corey Saylor took last March in criticizing Jasser's appearance before a House committee hearing on radicalization within the Muslim-American community.

Jasser, Saylor said, "is not representative of the mainstream Muslim community and not connected to the activities of the Muslim community to one – cooperate with law enforcement, and two – secure the civil liberties of our community."

One might say the same about CAIR. A survey released last summer by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center found just over 10 percent support for CAIR among Muslim Americans. CAIR's true following is difficult to gauge. In June 2007, the Washington Times reported that CAIR membership had plummeted 90 percent since 2001.

Records show the group sought millions of dollars from donors in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in 2006, and millions more from Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2009.

The group failed to file tax returns in the past three years which would show the amount of revenue from membership fees. That move prompted the IRS to strip CAIR of its tax exempt status last spring.

"This proves that they operate under the assumption that they represent all Muslims by virtue of calling themselves 'Islamic' or 'Muslim' in their names," Jasser said. "And if anybody disagrees with the cause of their existence, which is Islamism, they somehow are anti-Muslim."

His appointment stands to threaten that monopoly the Islamist groups wish to maintain. Jasser believes quieter lobbying has been used against him in the past with mixed results. Last July, groups opposed his appearance at a briefing on the uprising in Syria, where Jasser's family came from. One Islamist group tried to remove him from the panel, telling a congressional office it "would give him too much credibility." Jasser participated in the briefing.

But later in the summer, Jasser appeared to be sailing toward confirmation for a White House appointment to the State Department's Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. He cleared all the background checks and the vetting process, but the appointment was rescinded at the 11th hour without explanation.

Despite the "scorched earth attack" against him, Jasser said he is eager to start work with the USCIRF advocating for religious freedom for all faiths, including Muslims living under dictatorship and other repressive conditions.

The campaign against him is meaningless. There is no mechanism to undo the appointment, so it appears to be all about tainting his image. "I'm not surprised," Jasser said. "They lie and deceive about my work on a daily basis.

Global March to Jerusalem violence update: & +972′s Lisa Goldman gets owned by IDF on Twitter

Adam Levick

Israel’s borders (part of an effort by Arabs and far-left “activists” to “steal Jerusalem from the hands of the illegal Zionist occupation“) has, thus far, seemed to have failed miserably, here’s a brief update on GMJ related violence today:

Approximately 150 violent rioters in Bethlehem hurled rocks and firebombs at Israeli security personnel (see video below).

Approximately 200 rioters in Qalandia hurled rocks and firebombs at IDF forces.

Though the media (including the Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood) has been uncritically repeating Palestinian claims that politician Mustafa Barghouti was hit in the head by a tear gas canister, requiring medical treatment, the IDF contradicted these claims stating definitively that Barghouti was hurt in a brawl that broke out among the Palestinians over who would lead the protest march.
Global March to Jerusalem violence update: & +972′s Lisa Goldman gets owned by IDF on Twitter

March 30, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: Bethlehem, Israel Defense Forces, Jerusalem, Kalandia, Lisa Goldman, Mustafa Barghouti | by Adam Levick






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Though GMJ organizers’ ambitious anti-Zionist plan for a million man march on Israel’s borders (part of an effort by Arabs and far-left “activists” to “steal Jerusalem from the hands of the illegal Zionist occupation“) has, thus far, seemed to have failed miserably, here’s a brief update on GMJ related violence today:

Approximately 150 violent rioters in Bethlehem hurled rocks and firebombs at Israeli security personnel (see video below).

Approximately 200 rioters in Qalandia hurled rocks and firebombs at IDF forces.

Though the media (including the Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood) has been uncritically repeating Palestinian claims that politician Mustafa Barghouti was hit in the head by a tear gas canister, requiring medical treatment, the IDF contradicted these claims stating definitively that Barghouti was hurt in a brawl that broke out among the Palestinians over who would lead the protest march.

AND


Palestinian Protest
Turns Violent
Activists throw rocks, firebombs during ‘peaceful’ protests
@captbarakraz kid rock
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BY: Adam Kredo - March 30, 2012 9:12 am

Pro-Palestinian activists involved in the Global March on Jerusalem (GMJ) criticized Israel on Twitter Friday after violent protests along Israel’s borders forced the deployment of tear gas and resulted in injuries—but downplayed the fact that rocks and firebombs had been thrown by protesters to instigate the clashes.

Pictures and videos from the protest—which aims to “end the Apartheid, ethnic cleansing and Judaisation policies affecting the people, land and sanctity of Jerusalem”—reveal that self-described “peaceful” protestors have been throwing firebombs and rocks at Israeli border police.

Twitter user Captain Barak Raz, who identifies himself as a spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Force’s division in the West Bank, posted a video of protesters throwing a firebomb at Israeli security forces.

“Firebombs on security forces peaceful protest???,” Raz tweeted when linking to the video. “#Yeahright.”

Raz also posted a picture of what appears to be a Palestinian child casting a stone in a photographer’s direction.

“Wow that’s one young rioter!!” Raz tweeted. “Peaceful??”

The IDF’s official Twitter account condemned the child’s violence.

“This is how Palestinian rioters educate their children to terror,” one tweet on the feed read.

Others in the area have reported unsubstantiated claims that more than 100 injuries have been sustained in the heavily-Arab area of Qalandia.

Photos purporting to show injured Palestinians have also been broadcast across Twitter, though the context behind such images remains unclear.

“Palestinian directly hit in the face by a tear gas grenade,” wrote Jenny Baboun, who identifies herself as a translator for the Gaza Strip’s Ma’an News Agency.

Baboun also disseminated pictures that appear to show activists hanging a Palestinian flag by Israeli guard towers and other uncertain scenes of chaos.

Supporters of the march also celebrated activists as they attempted to penetrate Israel’s sovereign borders by violent means.

“We’re currently in Erez right in front of the wall,” tweeted one activist, referring to the Erez border crossing near Gaza. “Protesters burning tires and throwing stones.”

The ‘peaceful’ protesters were also caught gathering rocks.

The protester, who referred to Israeli security guards as “Zionist fuckers,” also noted that activists were attempting to disassemble a metal fence near the crossing.

“1 other injury. People are falling here like flies,” added the activist. “Yes, [IDF] fuckers are enjoying themselves. Blood everywhere.”

Protestors covered a wide area, demonstrating throughout the territories surrounding Israel.

“Demonstrations and protests in 17 locations,” tweeted Fadi Quran, who linked to a map displaying the areas where marches are taking place. “Palestinians from all over participated.”

Middle East experts decried the one-sided lambasting of Israeli security forces.

“GMJ uses the same PR tactic that has become standard for all the terrorist groups who attack Israel. They want to put the Israelis in a situation where they have to kill people,” said Noah Pollak, executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel. “Hamas, Hezbollah, GMJ—it’s all the same strategy: force the IDF to kill people, get it on video, kick back and enjoy the media furor.”

Hadar Sela, a Middle East writer and researcher, said, “The whole project was to create a PR disaster for Israel.”

“It comes as no surprise to see [Global March to Jerusalem] organizers and activists trying to get their pre-determined message out to the media by use of spin, even though that message has absolutely no foundation in the reality of the events which they initiated today,” Sela said.

Meanwhile, Palestinian political leader Moustafa Barghouti is said to be in stable condition after being struck in the face by a tear gas canister as he incited a mob to riot.

Barghouti, recently a guest at J Street’s 2012 conference, was reported by an IDF spokesperson to have been injured while enflaming the protestors.

Heading into the event, GMJ organizers referred to Israelis as Nazis and claimed that they are “ready for martyrdom.”

“Israel has gone crazy, and they are acting no different than Nazi’s. Our response to them is a response of bravery,” Firouz Mitiborwala, a GMJ-backer, told the Iranian-controlled Fars News Agency. “We are ready for martyrdom for our Palestinian brothers.”

Other anti-Israel activists are reported by Fars to have cut their chops aboard a Gaza freedom flotilla that attempted to penetrate Israeli waters in 2010. Activists aboard that ship attacked Israeli security personnel, leading to several injuries and deaths.

The protest movement has also been bolstered by several high profile endorsements from world leaders and Nobel laureates, including anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu, radical professors Noam Chomsky and Cornell West, Nobel peace laureate Mairead Maguire, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who served for nearly 20 years as President Obama’s spiritual leader.

Other prominent backers of the movement are longtime supporters of President Obama.

United Nations official Richard Falk, for instance, donated to Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008. So did Stanford University Professor Claybrone Carson and Marcy Winograd, a member of California’s Green Party.
This entry was posted in Middle East and tagged Global March to Jerusalem, Israel. Bookmark the permalink.

Did You See the Senate's Gas Price Sideshow?

Mike Brownfield

March 30, 2012

In case you missed it, there was quite a performance in the U.S. Senate yesterday. Liberals put on an election-year show, with the personal encouragement of President Barack Obama, in which they attempted to impose higher taxes on the oil industry as punishment for their profits while gas prices are at an all-time high.

The Senate rejected the bill 51-47. Despite certain defeat, liberals brought up the legislation in hopes of distracting the American people from the fact that President Obama is refusing to take steps that would help increase the supply of oil in the United States, and decrease regulation, thereby bringing down costs for consumers. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) put it, “Day after day after day, Democrats ask us all to come out here, not so we can make an actual difference in the lives of working Americans and families struggling to fill the gas tank, but so we can watch them stage votes for show.” Heritage expert David Kreutzer points out, most of what the President and his allies call “subsidies” are merely manufacturing tax credits that already put the oil and gas industry at a disadvantage:

[T]he unfair tax break that makes up nearly half of what Obama calls “subsidies” is the manufacturing tax credit. All manufacturers except the oil and gas industry get to deduct 9 percent of their revenues before calculating their tax bills…Though oil and gas producers get the deduction, they are singled out for a lower 6 percent deduction. The oil and gas industry gets a deduction that is only two-thirds as generous as for all other manufacturers …yet the deduction is called a subsidy to oil and gas. The President’s proposal does not eliminate the deduction for any other industry.

To make matters worse, if this legislation had passed and the President achieved his goal of increasing taxes on the oil industry, it would have only served to raise the price of fuel at the pump. When industry is taxed, they invariably pass on the costs to the consumers. But that fact apparently doesn’t matter to the President. His plan, instead, is to take money from the oil industry and hand it to his friends in the alternative energy industry, as he described:

Instead of taxpayer giveaways to an industry that’s never been more profitable, we should be using that money to double down on investments in clean energy technologies that have never been more promising. Investments in wind power and solar power and biofuels; in fuel-efficient cars and trucks and homes and buildings. That’s the future.

While the President talks about the future, he glosses over the past. For over three years, he has talked about the promise of alternative energy — and he has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in order to prop up those companies. But those efforts have failed. Solar energy company Solyndra went bankrupt, despite $535 million in taxpayer funding, along with Beacon, Ener1, Abound and others. The New York Times criticized the President’s efforts and concluded that his promise to create five million “green” jobs over 10 years has proven to be nothing more than “a pipe dream.” Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported, “Meant to create jobs and cut reliance on foreign oil, Obama’s green-technology program was infused with politics at every level.”

The President’s crony capitalist devotion to the alternative energy industry — at the expense of energy sources that work — comes with serious consequences. Heritage’s Nick Loris explains:

The reality is that when it comes to energy policy, the free market works. Indeed, the business environment for energy is robust despite seemingly endless forays by policymakers and bureaucrats into the energy industry. But those attempts to control energy markets do have an effect: They result in higher prices, fewer available energy sources, reduced competition, and stifled innovation.

But the President wants even more government involvement in the energy business — on his own terms. In Obama’s FY 2013 budget, he included billions of dollars for a hidden green stimulus — taxpayer money to be spent by the Department of Energy to fund research on technologies that are not commercially viable. In a new paper, Loris identifies $5.5 billion of wasted money that should be cut from the President’s budget, thereby removing the government–and taxpayers–from the role of subsidizing research.

Instead of picking winners and losers, the federal government should let the free market do its job. In addition to getting out of the business of funding research best left to the private sector, that also means ending targeted tax credits for oil, renewables, nuclear, alternative fuels and vehicles, and advanced coal and gasification. The next step is for the federal government to open access to domestic energy sources and end unnecessary, overly burdensome regulations that get in the way of energy production. And the President should approve the Keystone XL pipeline and open up federal lands for energy exploration.

Quick Hits:

It is expected to take less than an hour this morning for the justices of the Supreme Court to vote on the Obamacare case. After they decide, the work of writing an opinion will begin. The American people will have to wait until June before the decision is issued.
The House yesterday passed Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget by a 228-191 vote. A liberal alternative garnered 76 votes and the President’s budget outline received zero.
Canada is moving to raising the country’s retirement age in an effort to balance its budget by 2016. The government is also considering major cuts to the country’s public workforce.
French anti-terrorism commandos have arrested 19 Islamic activists and discovered several assault rifles in raids in Paris and two other French cities.
Online Chat: Join Heritage legal expert Robert Alt today from 12-1 PM as he takes your questions on the Supreme Court’s Obamacare hearings. Click here to participate on The Foundry.

As Expected – Land Day Turns Violent

Gabe Kahn

Land Day turned violent Friday when Arabs began hurling Molotov cocktails and stones at soldiers near the Kalandia checkpoint north of Jerusalem.

The riots began after Friday afternoon Muslim prayers – often a starting point for violence – when dozens of masked Arab youths began rioting at the checkpoint.

Soldiers responded with teargas and deployed the "Skunk" – a vehicle loaded with canons spraying a noxious-smelling liquid. A machine that transmits high frequency sound waves was also employed.

Israel Radio reported several protesters were lightly injured in the clashes and taken to the hosptial. Hamas parliament member Ahmed Atoun was lightly injured when he was struck in the head by a stone hurled by the rioters.

A video uploaded to the IDF Spokesperson's YouTube channel showed rioters in Bethlehem hurling stones and firebombs at an IDF watchtower. Hundreds of Arabs gathered near the Nablus Gate in Jerusalem in an attempt to stage an illegal march, but were stopped by police. Numerous arrests were reported.

Some 200 people attended a parade marking Land Day in Kafr Kanna near Nazareth, where no violence was reported.

Meanwhile, Jordanian news sites reported some 20,000 people are gathering in order to take part in the massive march towards the Israeli border. According to reports, 4 rabbis from the extreme anti-Zionist Neturei Karta sect were marching with them.

The stridently pro-Hizbullah Lebanese newspaper As-Safir reported 120 Hamas-provided buses will be transporting protesters to the Israeli border to participate in the “Global March on Jerusalem.”

Friday’s violence was widely expected by security officials who deployed on Thursday thousands of additional troops and police officers in anticipation of trouble.

Palestinian Authority enclaves in Judea and Samaria were also cordoned off.

IDF chief of Staff Benny Gantz and Israel Police commissioner Yochanan Danino on Friday personally toured potential hotspots to make first hand security assessments.

At least 15 people were killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers when they tried to cross the Syrian and Lebanese borders with Israel in May protests over Israel’s creation in 1948.

In June, Israeli troops killed 23 infiltrators who crossed into the no-man’s land between Israel and Syria as a part of violent protests against Israel's presence in the Golan Heights since 1967.

Betrayal Glorified: The Bizarre Jewish Movement to Destroy Israel by Pretending to Save It

Barry Rubin
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I can only laugh at the idea of dilettante Peter Beinart and J Street as leader of the anti-Israel (oops, I meant save-Israel-from-itself) movement. After all, imagine people parading as self-defined heroes while peddling ideas that have absolutely nothing to do with reality. But behind the stupid ideas is a very poisonous hidden agenda.

We live in an age of intellectual absurdity in which a book by someone who has no notion of Israeli reality and who is, at best, decades (I’d say three) out of date is treated as if he could possibly be of some relevance. Or an organization that has literally never made a single pro-Israel initiative claims to be the country’s best friends. AContrary to the title of Beinart’s book, there is no crisis of Zionism, certainly not in the way he and similarly thinking American Jews believe. The crisis is simply that Israel has become an actually existing country that is defined by an Israel-Jewish patriotism based on a historical Zionism. In fact, regarding Israel itself, Zionism has been so successful that it simply isn’t needed in the same way as it was in 1947.
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Regarding American Jews, the problem is that of the left-wing–almost always people who consciously know they are on the other side and their tool of choice on Israel is a sledgehammer–and those liberals they have fooled, not Zionism. This “new” approach is based on the debate of the 1970s and 1980s, more specifically the 1974-1992 era.

At that time, there were three points of contention that Beinart and others try to revive in a totally different world:

–Continuation of the occupation endangered Israel’s soul and society through hubris, brutalization, fanatical religiosity, and ambitious nationalism.

–If Israel didn’t make peace and get rid of the territories as fast as possible it would be destroyed by…well, it isn’t exactly clear by whom, since its enemies had failed so continually and were weaker than they’d been in the past. But this meant that Israel had to rush to make peace at any price.

–There was a wonderful opportunity to acieve a stable, just, and lasting peace. Merely offer the Palestinians and Arabs a reasonable settlement—particularly a Palestinian state—and a peace agreement would quickly follow.

This way of thinking has long since been discredited by the experiences of the failed peace process and radicalized regional politics. First, Israel withdrew from large portions of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, putting virtually all Palestinians under self-rule. Later, it pulled out of the Gaza Strip completely. There was no more “occupation” as there had been in the 1967-1993 period.

Second, we discovered that the Palestinians and Syria weren’t eager for peace. During the peace process era, the hardline propaganda, hate, and intransigence continued virtually uninterrupted on the other side. It became clear that Israel was not threatened by a refusal to take big risks and make concessions, rather the threat came from making deadly arrangements out of good intentions or even a dangerously bad “peace” deal that would leave the country worse off.

Third, most Israelis concluded that they didn’t want most of the territory captured in 1967. There was an Israeli consensus to keep much of east Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and some small areas of the West Bank along the border. But in exchange for real peace, they were ready to give up a lot, something like 100 percent of the Gaza Strip and 95 plus percent of the West Bank.

The same new thinking applied to accepting a two-state solution. Let the Palestinians have their state, even let Fatah or the PLO rule it if they only left us alone and ended the conflict. But that wasn’t going to happen. There was no intransigence or “Greater Israel” ambition to poison Israel. The experience and these changes left Israel with a clear conscience, not the “clear conscience” of those so distant that these issues were a mere abstraction but that of people who knew they sometimes made mistakes and had too take tough decisions to survive.

Fourth, the West generally broke its promises to Israel, showing that it was not dependable. The understanding was for Israel to make big concessions and take big risks knowing if that failed, the West would acknowledge Israel as the good guys and back it fully. Yet Israelis saw that the more risks Israel took, concessions it gave, and casualties it suffered, the more it was slandered and delegitimized in large parts of the West (including by the very people who know pretend to save it from itself). The supposed winning formula–pull back, turn over, concede and you will be secure and happy–didn’t work. The Obama Administration fully proved this reality.

Fifth, the 2000-2005 terrorist-based intifada and the radical response to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza reinforced these lessons, as did the growing Islamism that openly advocated war, terrorism, and genocide against Israel.

Sixth, the “Arab Spring” was a last straw, with revolutionary Islamists seizing power, Turkey changing sides, Iran building a sphere of influence and going full-speed-ahead on nuclear weapons, as well as a U.S. leadership on which Israel couldn’t depend. If ever there was a time for not making concessions and being starry-eyed over peace, our present day is that time.

The majority of Israelis say: I don’t want the settlements. I want a two-state solution. But unfortunately I know that the leadership and majority of Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims want to destroy us, not to get a Palestinian state. They are getting more radical, due to their own thinking and social issues. We cannot get any reasonable deal and any deal that might happen would be used by them as a more advantageous springboard for continuing the conflict against us.

That is why the Israeli peacenik left collapsed and Benjamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister. It wasn’t that Israel had moved to the right but that reality had done so.

Thus, the problem of American liberal Jews is not to save Israel from reactionary religious extremists and hardline rightists but to come to terms with the views of the majority of Israelis, the centrists and those left of center.

Yet these points that shape Israeli thinking, problems, and reality has almost never been explained in the American mass media or universities. Many Jews have never heard the above argument but simply absorbed the anti-Israel message so prevalent in those two institutions.

The real story, then, is the crisis of a portion of American Jewry—often a more publicly visible and powerful portion–who have forgotten (or never knew) Jewish history. Some of them push the ignorance of the real Israel and Israeli reality in the universities and media; others merely believe what they are being told daily. They would go to a rally about fighting “Islamophobia” but would be horrified by the idea of going to a rally about fighting revolutionary Islamist antisemitism.

Along the lines of their thinking we would have to rewrite the Haggadah along these lines:

“For we have not merely projected our paranoiac thinking that just one alone has risen against us to destroy us, but we’ve been so overwhelmed with irrational fear that we think in every generation they rise against us to destroy us; even though they are just standing around doing nothing except occasional texting and discussing the big game on television last night. But fortunately the left-wing critics, blessed be They, verbally attack us, help our enemies, and launch boycotts against us which save us from our own stupidity.”

Another part of their problem with Israel is that it is, in a sense, too “Jewish” and at odds with their preferred ideology. They want Israel to be what they want America and Europe to be. Yet instead it is too religious; too traditional; too much of a nation-state; too willing to defend itself; and too willing to recognize its enemies even if they are non-white, non-Western, and non-Christian.

If your definition of proper Jewishness is to be like Berkeley and Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Israel is not going to make the grade. On the contrary, Israel seems too much like the South, Midwest, or non-urban areas where people cling to their guns and religion and don’t eagerly turn over large portions of their territory to armed hostile forces that openly proclaim their goal of exterminating them.

I wrote the above paragraph in a style that (hopefully) would be funny but I think it is absolutely true. By being so “primitive,” it embarrasses them, like a Harvard professor whose relatives from the Ozark show up in their pickup truck toting shotguns and going to church.

Yet beyond all of this there is one more point to be understood that is of the greatest importance: the program of this sacrifice (I mean, “save”) Israel for its own good. That is the very strange program of calling for a boycott of the settlements.

Boycotting the settlements will not affect the settlements, or Israel, or the policies of Israel’s Middle Eastern enemies, and it won’t promote the cause of peace. True, this is an attractive strategy because it sounds moderate and supportive of “mainstream” Israel. But that’s only part of it.

No, the main reason is that it will promote the cause of delegitimizing Israel.

The goal is to change the narrative. Instead of blaming the Palestinian leadership’s, Arab regimes’, and revolutionary Islamists’ rejection of Israel’s existence, refusal to make compromises, glorification of terrorism, demonization of Israel, and refusal even won’t negotiate, the fault lies with Israel. They don’t have to change at all. It’s Israel that has to make more concessions and take even more risks.

According to this conception it is Israeli settlements that block peace. They force the other side to reject a deal, neglecting the fact that if they had made a deal the territory would have been handed over to the Palestinians and the settlements dismantled. If only the settlements went away, we are told, peace would quickly arrive, rather than understanding that if only the Palestinians made peace the settlements would go away

The strategy signals that the way to get peace is to ignore the real behavior and doctrines of Israel’s enemies and instead to punish Israel.

And suppose Israel doesn’t unilaterally dismantle the settlements? What is this movement’s next step? To boycott the country that won’t listen to them; to blame it for antisemitism, and to turn one’s face away from it. This year we are in the land of boycott, sanction, and divest from the settlements; next year in boycott-Jerusalem land!

Thus, the diagnosis being offered is false and slanderous toward Israel and the solution being presented is false and dangerous to Israel. The goal is to get American Jews to adopt the basic anti-Israel narrative that paints Israel as the villain responsible for the lack of peace and ultimately delegitimizes Israel’s survival.

Have no illusions. This Trojan Horse movement and its nonsensical arguments should be exposed. Every North American and European Jew should at least have the opportunity to hear the truth.

PS:

Special Bonus Feature: A Short History of Jewish History and the Centrality of Settlements

737 BCE, Jews establish settlements, leading Assyrians to invade.

587 BCE, Jews build new apartments in settlements. In response, Babylonians conquer land and exile the Jews.

70 CE, Jewish settlements produce Dead Sea Scrolls. Left-wing pseudo-intellectuals do not boycott. Temple Falls

1096 CE Jews think about establishing settlements. Crusades begin and Jews are massacred.

1648 CE Jews in Ukraine make kugel on settlements in Ukraine. Cossacks begin armed boycott movement.

1917 CE Shocked by Jews clinging to their religion, reactionary Zionism, and pseudo-revolutionary Bundism, heroic Bolshevik Jews save the day by helping bring about the Russian Revolution, close down synagogues, outlaw Yiddish, and put Zionists and Bundists into concentration camps.

And so on down to the present.