Saturday, May 18, 2013
Phone call between Hillary and Obama may be 'genesis' of anti-Muslim video lie
Andrew McCarthy makes the case that the 10:00 PM phone call on September 11 last year between Hillary Clinton and President Obama may be the conversation that led to the bogus story of an anti-Muslim video setting off "demonstrations" in Benghazi that led to the deaths of Americans.
Fraud flows from the top down, not the mid-level up. Mid-level officials in the White House and the State Department do not call the shots -- they carry out orders. They also were not running for reelection in 2012 or positioning themselves for a campaign in 2016. The people doing that were, respectively, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton.Jay Carney first revealed the existence of the phone call and the time in February. Hillary Clinton confirmed she spoke to Obama "later that evening." What was said between the two?
Obama and Clinton had been the architects of American foreign policy. As Election Day 2012 loomed, each of them had a powerful motive to promote the impressions (a) that al-Qaeda had been decimated; (b) that the administration's deft handling of the Arab Spring -- by empowering Islamists -- had been a boon for democracy, regional stability, and American national security; and (c) that our real security problem was "Islamophobia" and the "violent extremism" it allegedly causes -- which was why Obama and Clinton had worked for years with Islamists, both overseas and at home, to promote international resolutions that would make it illegal to incite hostility to Islam, the First Amendment be damned.
All of that being the case, I am puzzled why so little attention has been paid to the Obama-Clinton phone call at 10 p.m. on the night of September 11.
Even in the conservative press, it has become received wisdom that President Obama was AWOL on the night of September 11, after first being informed by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in the late afternoon, that the State Department facility in Benghazi was under attack. You hear it again and again: While Americans were under attack, the commander-in-chief checked out, leaving subordinates to deal with the crisis while he got his beauty sleep in preparation for a fundraising campaign trip to Vegas.
That is not true . . . and the truth, as we've come to expect with Obama, is almost surely worse. There is good reason to believe that while Americans were still fighting for their lives in Benghazi, while no military efforts were being made to rescue them, and while those desperately trying to rescue them were being told to stand down, the president was busy shaping the "blame the video" narrative to which his administration clung in the aftermath.
We now know from the e-mails and TV clips that, by Sunday morning, the White House staff, State Department minions, and Susan Rice were all in agreement that the video fairy tale, peppered with indignant rebukes of Islamophobia, was the way to go.The theory makes sense. What's more, there may be a phone log of the conversation and what was discussed in the records of both principles.
How do you suppose they got that idea?
That would be a fascinating document to discover.
americanthinker
Surprise UN attack: Germany v. Israel
By Benny Avni
For the first time ever, Israel has a real shot at a seat on the UN Security Council — but the Germans, of all people, may prevent it. Mind you, Germany — and, before reunification, West Germany — has been Israel’s most reliable European supporter for decades. Berlin, for example, sells the Israeli navy much-needed submarines. And despite growing anti-Israel sentiment there (from the right and left), German leaders, well aware of their historical baggage, often defend the diplomatically besieged Jewish state. But now Berlin diplomats risk reopening those deep historical wounds. What’s going on? For over 50 years since the UN was founded in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, Israel was the world’s only country that could never get a Security Council seat. Dictatorships like Syria and Iran got their turn in the prestige UN position; unfree China and Russia control two of its five permanent veto-wielding seats. But not the Mideast’s sole democracy. Israel couldn’t even be “elected” to the dog-catching committee (if the UN had anything so useful). The exclusion derived from the peculiarities of the world body’s “democracy”: To become a member of a UN organ, a country’s candidacy first needs to be endorsed by its regional voting bloc. But Israel’s neighborhood is filled with monarchs and dictators who refuse to even acknowledge its right to exist; it was locked out. This was finally fixed in 2000, after long US pressure: Israel was admitted to a “regional” bloc called the Western Europeans and Others Group. (WEOG, as it’s known, comprises the Western democracies, including America, Canada and Australia as well as the Europeans.) So now that it at last had a shot at a council seat, Israel needed to (first) win the endorsement of its new peers. Not easy: Several WEOG members share the opinion that Daniel Bernard, a French ambassador in Britain, famously expressed at a 2001 London dinner party: “Israel, that s---ty little country.” And gaining a council seat then gets even more difficult: A majority of all the UN’s 193 members must OK all the regional groups’ selections. With anti-Israel sentiments rampant in the UN halls, such approval is a tall order. But in 2005 Jerusalem diplomats offered their candidacy for a Security Council slot for 2019-20 that they believed to be “open”: Along with Belgium, it vied for one of two seats allocated for the Western group. With no competition, WEOG members would have no choice but to endorse both countries. But now the historic end to Israel’s exclusion is at risk. Late last month, Berlin informed the Western group that it, too, will vie for the 2019-20 slot, creating a three-way fight for two seats. German diplomats tell me that this is what they always do: As a top world economy and major UN donor, they compete for (and easily win) membership in the UN’s top body every eight years. But Jerusalem smells a rat. Irate officials there suspect that Berlin picked 2019-20 because Israel will be easy to beat in the popularity context. (And the next uncontested council seat available to the Western group is in 2029.) With its future-oriented economy, entrepreneurial Israel is an unlikely success story. Despite its many enemies, the country has built a relatively secure environment for its citizens, attracting fun-seeking tourists and inspiring world admiration. Yet, from Elvis Costello to Stephen Hawking, people who single out Israel for rebuke and boycott create the impression that the Jewish state’s success is somehow ill-gained. More than any other institution, the United Nations has promoted and validated this pariah status for the Jewish state. Remembering all too well where such scapegoating could lead, Israeli diplomats are rightly puzzled: Germany, of all countries, now muscles in, threatening to crush their dream of breaking the glass ceiling in the glass building on the East River.
nypost
For the first time ever, Israel has a real shot at a seat on the UN Security Council — but the Germans, of all people, may prevent it. Mind you, Germany — and, before reunification, West Germany — has been Israel’s most reliable European supporter for decades. Berlin, for example, sells the Israeli navy much-needed submarines. And despite growing anti-Israel sentiment there (from the right and left), German leaders, well aware of their historical baggage, often defend the diplomatically besieged Jewish state. But now Berlin diplomats risk reopening those deep historical wounds. What’s going on? For over 50 years since the UN was founded in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, Israel was the world’s only country that could never get a Security Council seat. Dictatorships like Syria and Iran got their turn in the prestige UN position; unfree China and Russia control two of its five permanent veto-wielding seats. But not the Mideast’s sole democracy. Israel couldn’t even be “elected” to the dog-catching committee (if the UN had anything so useful). The exclusion derived from the peculiarities of the world body’s “democracy”: To become a member of a UN organ, a country’s candidacy first needs to be endorsed by its regional voting bloc. But Israel’s neighborhood is filled with monarchs and dictators who refuse to even acknowledge its right to exist; it was locked out. This was finally fixed in 2000, after long US pressure: Israel was admitted to a “regional” bloc called the Western Europeans and Others Group. (WEOG, as it’s known, comprises the Western democracies, including America, Canada and Australia as well as the Europeans.) So now that it at last had a shot at a council seat, Israel needed to (first) win the endorsement of its new peers. Not easy: Several WEOG members share the opinion that Daniel Bernard, a French ambassador in Britain, famously expressed at a 2001 London dinner party: “Israel, that s---ty little country.” And gaining a council seat then gets even more difficult: A majority of all the UN’s 193 members must OK all the regional groups’ selections. With anti-Israel sentiments rampant in the UN halls, such approval is a tall order. But in 2005 Jerusalem diplomats offered their candidacy for a Security Council slot for 2019-20 that they believed to be “open”: Along with Belgium, it vied for one of two seats allocated for the Western group. With no competition, WEOG members would have no choice but to endorse both countries. But now the historic end to Israel’s exclusion is at risk. Late last month, Berlin informed the Western group that it, too, will vie for the 2019-20 slot, creating a three-way fight for two seats. German diplomats tell me that this is what they always do: As a top world economy and major UN donor, they compete for (and easily win) membership in the UN’s top body every eight years. But Jerusalem smells a rat. Irate officials there suspect that Berlin picked 2019-20 because Israel will be easy to beat in the popularity context. (And the next uncontested council seat available to the Western group is in 2029.) With its future-oriented economy, entrepreneurial Israel is an unlikely success story. Despite its many enemies, the country has built a relatively secure environment for its citizens, attracting fun-seeking tourists and inspiring world admiration. Yet, from Elvis Costello to Stephen Hawking, people who single out Israel for rebuke and boycott create the impression that the Jewish state’s success is somehow ill-gained. More than any other institution, the United Nations has promoted and validated this pariah status for the Jewish state. Remembering all too well where such scapegoating could lead, Israeli diplomats are rightly puzzled: Germany, of all countries, now muscles in, threatening to crush their dream of breaking the glass ceiling in the glass building on the East River.
nypost
Twisted Projections of Conjured Present
Just as I warned back in January, the race to blame the Great War on the Evil-Serbs-and-Russians (properly pronounced in the same breath) is on.
In the New York Times' Sunday Book Review, Reuters editor Harold Evans gave a glowing review to Christopher Clark's "The Sleepwalkers", which blames Serbia for "expansionism" and "terrorism," and Russia for "creating a narrative to justify taking up arms", by "shift[ing] the moral onus from the perpetrator to the victim." Naive France and gullible Britain got suckered in, and thus the Great War began.
This is, of course, patent nonsense. The French wanted a war of revenge for 1871, and this seemed as good an occasion as any. Britain chose to go to war, and while Sir Edward Grey couldn't imagine the actual horrors the war unleashed, his famous comment about the "lamps going out all over Europe" more than suggests he was aware something horrible was about to happen. Does that sound like being suckered in by the wicked, wily Russians to you?
Barbara Tuchman began her "Guns of August" with the parade of European royalty at the 1910 funeral of Edward VII of England - "on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again."
Clark, on the other hand, opens his book with the 1903 May Coup, which Evans gleefully cites in gory detail:
But Clark needs to show that Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic "Apis" was an evil, murderous conspirator who deliberately started WW1 out of his Serb nefariousness, so the context of the May Coup, Austria's abusive relationship with Serbia, and just about everything relevant to the situation gets shoved aside.
He does, however, cite "historians of gender" to argue that all of the politicians involved were men, and had masculinity issues. Such depth of analysis! Lest he be considered insufficiently postmodern, Clark also deems Austria's ultimatum to Serbia - long considered a standard of shamelessness and bad faith - as “a great deal milder” than the 1999 NATO ultimatum to Serbia. Considering that Rambouillet was patterned after the Austrian ultimatum, and that its purpose was to make the war inevitable, I'd say Clark missed the point by such a wide margin here, he ended up shooting himself.
This is technically supposed to be a review of two books, Clark's and Sean McMeekin's "July 1914", but Evans spends most of his time on Clark. I get the impression McMeekin was brought along to make the case against Russia. He had previously written a book called “The Russian Origins of the First World War,” and Evans relies on him to make the claim that "Russia’s crime was first in escalating a local quarrel by encouraging Serbia to stand up to Austria-Hungary and then accelerating the rush to war."
So, if only Austria had been given a carte blanche by the rest of Europe - as it had by Germany - to curb-stomp the "terrorist, expansionist" Serbian savages, there would have been no WW1 - and perhaps Britain would still bestride the world. What a load of hummus.
I can understand the lament over world empire lost. I can understand the desire to blame the perennial Other - the Orthodox Slavs - for the myriad of sins of the Catholic and Protestant West. I even understand the twisted projection of conjured present - with Serbs as the arch-villains the white-knighting humanitarian West needs to defeat to save the Muslim damsel in distress and win her affections - to a traumatic event a century prior; in both cases, facts are discarded or suppressed when they interfere with the narrative.
But when the modern Anglo-American historians and politicians end up sounding like Kaiser Wilhelm - whom Clark cites at one point as saying, "Stop this nonsense! It was high time a clean sweep was made of the Serbs,” - then one can only conclude they represent a civilization that has deeply lost its way.
grayfalcon
Austrian view of the Serbs in 1914, now the Anglo-American mainstream
In the New York Times' Sunday Book Review, Reuters editor Harold Evans gave a glowing review to Christopher Clark's "The Sleepwalkers", which blames Serbia for "expansionism" and "terrorism," and Russia for "creating a narrative to justify taking up arms", by "shift[ing] the moral onus from the perpetrator to the victim." Naive France and gullible Britain got suckered in, and thus the Great War began.
This is, of course, patent nonsense. The French wanted a war of revenge for 1871, and this seemed as good an occasion as any. Britain chose to go to war, and while Sir Edward Grey couldn't imagine the actual horrors the war unleashed, his famous comment about the "lamps going out all over Europe" more than suggests he was aware something horrible was about to happen. Does that sound like being suckered in by the wicked, wily Russians to you?
Barbara Tuchman began her "Guns of August" with the parade of European royalty at the 1910 funeral of Edward VII of England - "on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again."
Clark, on the other hand, opens his book with the 1903 May Coup, which Evans gleefully cites in gory detail:
"King Alexandar and Queen Draga, betrayed and defenseless, huddle in a tiny closet where the maid irons the queen’s clothes. They are butchered, riddled with bullets, stabbed with a bayonet, hacked with an ax and partially disemboweled, their faces mutilated beyond recognition and the bloody half-naked remnants tossed from the royal balcony onto the grounds."Those horrible Serbs, murdering their defenseless king that way! Such savages! Let's set aside the inconvenient fact that the squeamish Brits were busy at the time setting up concentration camps for Boer civilians. Clark doesn't explain why the Obrenovic king was killed, as such hatefacts would interfere with his precious narrative. So the reader doesn't get to understand the heavy-handed absolutism of the Obrenovics, their servitude to Austria at the expense of their country and people, and the long string of abuses and humiliations heaped on both the ordinary Serbs and the military. His marriage to Draga Masin, a rich merchant's divorced daughter who went so far as to invent a pregnancy to appear likeable, was just the last straw. While I can't in good conscience approve of the method of their dispatch, they well deserved to be overthrown.
But Clark needs to show that Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic "Apis" was an evil, murderous conspirator who deliberately started WW1 out of his Serb nefariousness, so the context of the May Coup, Austria's abusive relationship with Serbia, and just about everything relevant to the situation gets shoved aside.
He does, however, cite "historians of gender" to argue that all of the politicians involved were men, and had masculinity issues. Such depth of analysis! Lest he be considered insufficiently postmodern, Clark also deems Austria's ultimatum to Serbia - long considered a standard of shamelessness and bad faith - as “a great deal milder” than the 1999 NATO ultimatum to Serbia. Considering that Rambouillet was patterned after the Austrian ultimatum, and that its purpose was to make the war inevitable, I'd say Clark missed the point by such a wide margin here, he ended up shooting himself.
This is technically supposed to be a review of two books, Clark's and Sean McMeekin's "July 1914", but Evans spends most of his time on Clark. I get the impression McMeekin was brought along to make the case against Russia. He had previously written a book called “The Russian Origins of the First World War,” and Evans relies on him to make the claim that "Russia’s crime was first in escalating a local quarrel by encouraging Serbia to stand up to Austria-Hungary and then accelerating the rush to war."
So, if only Austria had been given a carte blanche by the rest of Europe - as it had by Germany - to curb-stomp the "terrorist, expansionist" Serbian savages, there would have been no WW1 - and perhaps Britain would still bestride the world. What a load of hummus.
I can understand the lament over world empire lost. I can understand the desire to blame the perennial Other - the Orthodox Slavs - for the myriad of sins of the Catholic and Protestant West. I even understand the twisted projection of conjured present - with Serbs as the arch-villains the white-knighting humanitarian West needs to defeat to save the Muslim damsel in distress and win her affections - to a traumatic event a century prior; in both cases, facts are discarded or suppressed when they interfere with the narrative.
But when the modern Anglo-American historians and politicians end up sounding like Kaiser Wilhelm - whom Clark cites at one point as saying, "Stop this nonsense! It was high time a clean sweep was made of the Serbs,” - then one can only conclude they represent a civilization that has deeply lost its way.
grayfalcon
German Ministry Of Environment Identifies, Targets American And German Enemy Skeptics In 123-Page Pamphlet
When you look at what’s going on in some of the world’s leading democracies today, with some institutions running rampantly out of control without oversight, we should not wonder why people in droves are losing faith and trust in government.
Government issues pamphlet identifying enemy skeptics
The latest example comes from the powerful German Ministry for Environment: Umweltbundesamt (UBA) with the release of its latest 123-page pamphlet titled: Und sie erwärmt sich doch…Was steckt hinter der Debatte um den Klimawandel (It is indeed warming…What’s behind the climate change debate?). In the brochure the UBA (Germany’s equivalent of the EPA) insists the climate catastrophe is coming, and appeals to the public not to listen to skeptics.
In fact, the German government pamphlet specifically singles out, identifies and targets US and German skeptics, portraying them as “spreaders of half-truths and misinformation“. Welcome to open and tolerant debate in the Federal Republic of Germany!
You’ll recall that the UBA are the ones who recently admitted being baffled by the 15-year global temperature stagnation that has taken hold.
Government makes it clear: climate debate not welcome!
Reading the pamphlet, it is clear that this is a one-sided, catastrophe-obsessed propaganda piece that advocates completely the alarmist side of the debate and outright dismisses and marginalizes the growing non-alarmist side. The pamphlet is truly a disservice to the German taxpayers and a mass deception of the public. The Greens and the Ministry of Environment, as you will see, are brazenly targeting specific individuals and organisations whose only “crime” is having a differing opinion. Skeptics are being viewed as a threat.
I can’t imagine how intimidated those named in the pamphlet (especially the German skeptics) must feel today. The full power of the German government has them in its sights.
Only alarmists are cited as honest sources
Just a look at the references cited at the back of the pamphlet on page 116 already tells the story. Sources cited include radical environmental groups Germanwatch, Greenpeace and klimaretter.de, ultra-alarmist institutes like the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and dogmatic outlier scientists like Stefan Rahmstorf, Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, and Naomi Oreskes, just to name a few.
UBA has black list of American skeptics
According to the UBA, all the climate doubt stems mainly from the USA. Beginning on page 100, the UBA lists the Americans responsible for “spreading doubt and false information“, among them: ExxonMobil, Fred Singer, Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, Frederick Seitz, Joe Barton, Pat Michaels, John Christy, Ross McKitrick and the Heartland Institute. The UBA cites the Union of Concerned Scientists and a one-sided Die Zeit smear from November 2012 as its reliable sources for this information.
The name “Rahmstorf” appears throughout the pamphlet. One quickly gets the impression that the pamphlet stems from the German Ministry of Rahmstorf. Little wonder that when taken as a whole, the pamphlet is a huge public deception. Then again, misleading the public is nothing new for Professor Rahmstorf, for German readers: http://www.klimastorch.de/rahmstorf-vs.meichsner.pdf.
On page 106, the UBA claims that the Climategate e-mails “were stolen”, as if by criminals.
The UBA endorses RealClimate.org
On page 116, the UBA tells readers what it feels are reliable information sources of information on climate science. The German Ministry of Rahmstorf , of course, suggests Stefan Rahmstorf, who is ”an international renown climate scientist who is often featured in up-to-date books, newspapers and television shows” against the “climate skeptical half truths and false reports“. The UBA also recommends Rahmstorf’s Internetblog Klima-Lounge and the Potsdam Institute.
Moreover, the UBA recommends the site of “a group of 11 American and European scientists, among them Stefan Rahmstorf and Michael Mann, RealClimate”. The UBA also suggests alarmist site Klimaretter.Info as a good source of all sorts of information.
Government black list of German skeptics
The UBA also tells us to whom not to go for information (the bad guys) and publicizes a sort of black list of skeptics. On page 110 it lists the “climate change skeptics in Germany“, which include the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), Fritz Vahrenholt and Sebastian Lüning, journalists and publicists Dirk Maxeiner and Michael Miersch, film-maker and publicist Günter Ederer, and newspaper Die Welt.
In government’s view, skeptics are crackpots
In a nutshell, here we have the German government informing the public which people to be on the look-out for. If this holds up legally, remains to be seen. It is not the job of the government to tell the public who the goods guys and bad guys are in a public debate.
In its closing statements, the UBA pamphlet writes (p. 113) that:
- Parts of industry are financing campaigns to spread doubt and a false information over the results of climate science; the target is to fool the public;In the UBA’s view, those who publicly doubt the coming climate catastrophe are to be viewed as crackpots and industry hacks, and are thus to be ignored. The pamphlet reads like a declaration of war. I have a feeling that we have not heard the last of this story.
- Often scientists of foreign disciplines and without any knowledge of climate science appear in public with climate-skeptical claims.”
More tomorrow.
notrickszone
EU to ban olive oil jugs from restaurants
The small glass jugs filled with green or gold coloured extra virgin olive oil are familiar and traditional for restaurant goers across Europe but they will be banned from 1 January 2014 after a decision taken in an obscure Brussels committee earlier this week.
From next year olive oil "presented at a restaurant table" must be in pre-packaged, factory bottles with a tamper-proof dispensing nozzle and labelling in line with EU industrial standards.
The use of classic, refillable glass jugs or glazed terracotta dipping bowls and the choice of a restaurateur to buy olive oil from a small artisan producer or family business will be outlawed.
Sam Clark, the food writer, chef and proprietor of the award winning Moro restaurant in London, told The Daily Telegraph that the ban would stop him serving his customers specially selected Spanish olive oil in dipping bowls with bread when they are seated at their table.
"This will affect us. It is about choice and freedom of choice. We buy our oil, which we have selected from a farm in Spain, to serve our customers," he said.
telegraph
telegraph
‘Israel prefers Bashar Assad to Islamist rebels’
A weakened Bashar Assad is preferable for Syria and the whole region, to a takeover by rebel forces increasingly ruled by Islamic extremists, Israeli officials said overnight Friday-Saturday.
“Better the devil we know than the demons we can only imagine if Syria falls into chaos and the extremists from across the Arab world gain a foothold there,” said one senior intelligence officer to the London-based Times.
A defense official said Israel had originally thought too little of Assad’s ability to maintain control of his country despite an increasingly bloody and gruesome two-year war. “We originally underestimated Assad’s staying power and overestimated the rebels’ fighting power,” he told the Times.
Suspicions of increasing Islamic influence over rebels forces have been growing for some time, with evidence mounting that al-Qaida- and Salafi-linked groups are gaining power among the forces.
On Wednesday, a gruesome video posted online showed Syrian rebels from al-Nusra Front (Jabhat al-Nusra), the Syrian rebel cell associated with al-Qaeda, invoking sharia law as they sentenced soldiers loyal to Bashar Assad to death, shooting 11 of them in the back of the head.
A similar video circled the web on Tuesday, showing rebels from the Raqqa province publicly executing three men purported to be military officers. The stark horror of the struggle was also underlined early this week with the widespread circulation of a graphic video apparently documenting a Syrian rebel cutting an organ out of the corpse of a slain regime soldier and taking a bite out of it.
On Friday, senior Defense Ministry official Maj.-Gen. (Res) Amos Gilad said in an interview with Israel Radio that Assad is in total control of his country’s weapons systems and is acting sensibly with regard to Israel, seeking to calm escalating tensions between Jerusalem and Damascus following reported Israeli airstrikes earlier this month.
Gilad stressed that Israel is not striving to topple Assad’s regime, and that reported recent IAF attacks on Iranian weapons shipments in Syria en route to Hezbollah are motivated by a desire and an obligation to defend Israel.
Brigadier-General Tamir Hyman, the commander of the IDF division responsible for the Israeli-Syrian border on the Golan Heights, said that Assad’s army “has not fallen apart” despite the two years of fighting, and that its command structure was intact, adding that Israel had “no interest” in one side prevailing over the other in the civil war.
Also underlining growing concerns over friction between Israel and Syria, Maj.-Gen (ret.) Amos Yadlin, the highly-respected former head of the Israeli army’s Military Intelligence hierarchy compared current Israeli-Syrian tensions to the strains that presaged the 1967 Israel-Arab war.
He also said Moscow, by continuing to stand by Assad, was signaling that it was not going to let the US get its hands on Syria.
Yadlin, a one-time fighter pilot, ex-head of IDF Military Intelligence and former Israeli military attaché to the US who now heads a prestigious Tel Aviv think tank, warned that Syria’s embattled president might well retaliate were Israel to again strike at weapons convoys in Syria, as it has done twice this month already.
The Israeli remarks come at the heels of reported international efforts, by the US, Russia, Turkey and the UN, to end the Syrian conflict by bringing together regime officials and opposition forces to negotiate a transfer of power — efforts complicated by Moscow’s announcement Thursday that it would proceed with its planned delivery of the highly sophisticated S-300 air-defense system to Syria, and despite pleas from Israel not to do so.
During their meeting earlier this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly warned Russian President Vladimir Putin that the delivery could lead to war.
On Friday, the US slammed Russia’s decision to continue arming the Assad regime, warning that it’s arsenal could be overcome. “It’s at the very least an unfortunate decision that will embolden the regime and prolong the suffering, so it’s ill-timed and very unfortunate,” chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey told reporters at the Pentagon.
timesofisrael
timesofisrael
Friday, May 17, 2013
Christianity Facing 'Catastrophic Collapse' in Britain
By Charles C. W. Cooke
The Telegraph reports:
The Telegraph reports:
Christianity could be facing a catastrophic collapse in Britain according to official figures suggesting it is declining 50 per cent faster than previously thought.
A new analysis of the 2011 census shows that a decade of mass immigration helped mask the scale of decline in Christian affiliation among the British-born population – while driving a dramatic increase in Islam, particularly among the young.
It suggests that only a minority of people will describe themselves as Christians within the next decade, for first time.
Meanwhile almost one in 10 under 25s in Britain is now a Muslim.
Many historians hold that, along with many of the Protestant areas of Western Europe, the British “lost their religion” after the First World War. After 1918, Church attendance dropped consistently (except for during the Second World War) and Durkheim’s notion that Christianity was “superior” was shattered, not only by the horrors of total war but by the sight of those “superior” Christians killing each other on an industrial scale.
Nevertheless, the country still remained nominally “Christian.” Whether or not the majority of the British people actually believed in God or not after 1918, they remained more than likely to regard themselves as being “Christian,” internalizing the values taught by the established church. This, it appears, is changing – and quickly:
Now, as the deleterious consequences of uncontrolled immigration in Britain become apparent to the British, those who willfully allowed it to spin out of control have been forced to apologize and their critics have been allowed to speak again. Even Left-leaning Think Tank “Demos,” which was closely involved with the Blair government’s disastrous immigration policy, told Russia Today last week that,
Back on the Telegraph:
The rest here.
nationalreview
Nevertheless, the country still remained nominally “Christian.” Whether or not the majority of the British people actually believed in God or not after 1918, they remained more than likely to regard themselves as being “Christian,” internalizing the values taught by the established church. This, it appears, is changing – and quickly:
Initial results from the 2011 census published last year showed that the total number of people in England and Wales who described themselves as Christian fell by 4.1 million – a decline of 10 per cent.Any Brit who dared suggest that the importation of so many immigrants into a tiny, crowded island — into a country whose constitution and stability are ultimately reposed in the liberal traditions of the parent culture — would inexorably change things was, during the Blair years at least, dismissed as a “racist.” Any Brit who argued that a multi-ethnic society is all fine and dandy but that a multi-cultural society is a recipe for segregation and collapse was flatly ignored. Anybody who suggested that immigration from areas of the world spectacularly different to Britain should be limited was accused of intolerance. Indeed at times, merely mentioning the word “immigration” was enough to invite a stern look and the attendant suggestion that it was somehow beyond the pale for the people of a nation to assert that they might control who joins their society. To suggest that they might as a matter of general policy privilege those areas of the world full of people who are more like the natives was “profiling.”
But new analysis from the Office for National Statistics shows that that figure was bolstered by 1.2 million foreign-born Christians, including Polish Catholics and evangelicals from countries such as Nigeria.
They disclosed that there were in fact 5.3 million fewer British-born people describing themselves as Christians, a decline of 15 per cent in just a decade.
At the same time the number of Muslims in England and Wales surged by 75 per cent – boosted by almost 600,000 more foreign born followers of the Islamic faith.
Now, as the deleterious consequences of uncontrolled immigration in Britain become apparent to the British, those who willfully allowed it to spin out of control have been forced to apologize and their critics have been allowed to speak again. Even Left-leaning Think Tank “Demos,” which was closely involved with the Blair government’s disastrous immigration policy, told Russia Today last week that,
“We do have an integration problem. The“changing ethnic composition” of the British capital is causing a large exodus of ethnic white out of the city, he added. Goodhart went on to say that the problem of integration was not confined to Great Britain and is prevalent all around the EU despite attempts to eradicate segregation.This, as anybody paying attention could have told him, was utterly predictable. Of course there is a material difference between a country’s importing people with the same religious, political, cultural, and legal assumptions as the native population and a country’s importing people who lack those shared assumptions — especially when the government of that country dismisses calls for assimilation (and warnings that it is not happening) as cultural imperialism.
Back on the Telegraph:
Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said the long-term reduction of Christianity, particularly among young people, was now “unstoppable”.There’ll always be an England. Right?
“In another 20 years there are going to be more active Muslims than there are churchgoers,” he said.
The rest here.
nationalreview
UNRWA Claims Director Didn’t Pose With Map That Erases Israel, Despite Evidence to the Contrary
By Zach Pontz
In a continuing tete-a-tete, The UNRWA has rejected claims made earlier this week by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) that one of its Middle East directors posed with a map that removed Israel, instead claiming the map was of the region prior to the creation of the Jewish state.
Ann Dismorr, Director of UNRWA Affairs in Lebanon, posed with the map earlier this month during the launch of an UNRWA project to improve the water supply network and rehabilitate shelters in the Rashidieh Camp.
UNRWA spokesperson Christopher Gunness, responding on UNRWA’s website, rejected PMW’s report.
“UNRWA categorically rejects accusations in the media that the Agency is ‘erasing Israel from the map’ because its officials and stakeholders stood next to a map which does not show Israel. The map in question is an embroidery depicting a pre-1948 map and therefore ante-dates the creation of the state of Israel. The allegations are therefore completely false,” claimed Gunness.
PMW however, took issue with this version of events, noting: “UNRWA spokesperson Gunness’ justification that the map ‘depict[s] a pre-1948 map’ is baseless, as the map includes the PLO-PA flag and not a British flag. That exact map erasing Israel, especially when accompanied by the PA flag, is one of the many ways the PA expresses its rejection of Israel’s existence and right to exist.”
algemeiner
Ann Dismorr, Director of UNRWA Affairs in Lebanon, with a map that shows all of Israel as "Palestine." Photo: Palestinian Media Watch.
In a continuing tete-a-tete, The UNRWA has rejected claims made earlier this week by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) that one of its Middle East directors posed with a map that removed Israel, instead claiming the map was of the region prior to the creation of the Jewish state.
Ann Dismorr, Director of UNRWA Affairs in Lebanon, posed with the map earlier this month during the launch of an UNRWA project to improve the water supply network and rehabilitate shelters in the Rashidieh Camp.
UNRWA spokesperson Christopher Gunness, responding on UNRWA’s website, rejected PMW’s report.
“UNRWA categorically rejects accusations in the media that the Agency is ‘erasing Israel from the map’ because its officials and stakeholders stood next to a map which does not show Israel. The map in question is an embroidery depicting a pre-1948 map and therefore ante-dates the creation of the state of Israel. The allegations are therefore completely false,” claimed Gunness.
PMW however, took issue with this version of events, noting: “UNRWA spokesperson Gunness’ justification that the map ‘depict[s] a pre-1948 map’ is baseless, as the map includes the PLO-PA flag and not a British flag. That exact map erasing Israel, especially when accompanied by the PA flag, is one of the many ways the PA expresses its rejection of Israel’s existence and right to exist.”
algemeiner
French Priest Assaulted, Archbishop Warns of Muslim Takeover
Muslims have a saying, “First the Saturday people, Then the Sunday People.” It’s as true in France as it is Egypt or Bethlehem.
The day after the attack on Father Grégoire, Monsignor Cattenoz has spoken out strongly and denounced “people of the Muslim faith taking control of the district”.Somehow I don’t think the committee will do much good. Before long, the committee will agree that Muslims are in no way responsible for the violence, and that the only solution is to find the violent people, who aren’t Muslims, more jobs and government subsidies. And more sensitivity toward the religion whose members they aren’t.
On Monday at around 8 pm, Father Grégoire from the parish of Saint-Jean was attacked by an individual. Struck on the face, the priest was unconscious on the ground until two other members of the parish arrived.
This Tuesday morning at around 11 am, Monsignor Cattenoz, Archbishop of Avignon, denounced growing insecurity in the district of Saint-Ruf (while the local authority official in charge of public safety instead claims that there has been a decrease in crime in this sector), as well as the proliferation of thefts and threats aimed at members of the parish.
The leader of the Catholics in Vaucluse went even further: “People of the Muslim faith have progressively taken control of this district”… before proposing to create a committee bringing together representatives of the main religions, in order to calm the situation.
frontpagemag
How Did 150,000,000 Europeans Come to Hate Israel?
By Giulio Meotti
“The Jewish religion is under attack in Europe”, declared the Conference of European Rabbis president Pinchas Goldschmidt. Many polls (such as the study on behalf of the German Social Democratic Friedrich Ebert Foundation) bring an iconic number measuring the disaster: 150,000,000 Europeans have a delegitimizing and demonizing view of the State of Israel and its citizens.
For a large sector of Europe, the cities, skyscrapers, hospitals, cinemas, and schools on that tiny sliver of land named "Israel" are merely real estate that will be restored to Islam once this malefic Jewish form is swept away.
This is a popular mobilization against Israel in the “Raus mit Uns” spirit. 150,000,000 Western citizens believe that Zionism is a misconceived project to be brought to an end as soon as possible. It is the consequence of the Palestinian-Islamic psychological war (note: the European Union has just contributed 20 million euros to the payment of salaries and pensions for April of nearly 76,000 Palestinian Arabs).
See what happened to Europe’s Jews in little more than a week.
In Hungary, where Adolf Eichmann obsessively hunted down all the Jews, a wave of fascist Judeophobia is poisoning the social cohesion and the head of the Raoul Wallenberg Association was injured in anti-Semitic attack.
A Labour party member in the UK, Nazir Ahmed, resigned after anti-Jewish remarks made on television.
A scientific genius, Stephen Hawking, embraced the racist boycott of the State of Israel.
The BBC planned a “documentary” claiming that the Jewish exodus from Jerusalem was a myth.
Dozens of French mayors rallied for the liberation of the Palestinian terrorists.
A Scottish Christian document erased the Jewish links with to the holy land.
In the French town of Villeurbanne, a rabbi and his son were stabbed.
It was an ordinary week of anti-Semitism in Europe.
The threat against Israel’s existence has become strategic in Rome, Berlin, London, Paris, Budapest, Amsterdam and Stockholm. Indiscriminate hatred against the Jews pervades European parliaments as much as in the Muslim madrasses. The call for Israel’s destruction echoes through Europe’s schools and mosques, textbooks and newspapers, TV series and pseudo “documentaries”.
It is today's greatest manipulation of opinion, of the kind immortalized by George Orwell in 1984 as a “Two Minute Hate”: Europe’s publicists, civil servants and educators incite violence directly when they describe Jews as “bloodsuckers”, “colonialists”, and many similar epithets. One step at a time, Europe is subverting the legitimacy of the Jewish people once again.
I have always felt an affinity with European intellectuals. But, it is with pain and surprise that I witness, one lifetime after Hitler’s Holocaust, the willingness of all too many to collaborate in the monstrification of the Jews. This is how Europe built an anti-Semitic public opinion of 150,000,000. This is how Israel has become an expendable myth among the European educated classes.
"Peace" can come only with the recognition in the Middle East of Israel as a national state of the Jewish people; the addition of the State of Israel to all the maps used in schools in the Islamic world; the elimination of the extensive anti-Israeli propaganda campaigns in the Muslim media and schools; the promotion of interactions among scientists, scholars, artists, and athletes; the abandoning of the delegitimization of Israel at the United Nations; the outlawing of terrorist groups devoted to the killing of Israelis and the destruction of Israel; the end of the economic boycott against Israel; the institution of full diplomatic relations with Jerusalem as Israel’s indivisible capital; and last but not least, the proclamation of theological fatwas prohibiting the murder of "infidels".
Europe is working hard to prevent all these necessary steps.
Because according to Europe’s mainstream, “peace” will prevail when Israel is dismantled, just like tranquility will prevail in the “Holy Land” when Zionism has been eliminated.
Europe is witnessing the creation of a majority according to which Israel is a superpower with extraordinary military power and wealth and os a committed and merciless enemy of humanity.
Europe’s public opinion has been persuaded to believe that Israel is a state that ought to be dismantled forthwith. Europe's population count today is 730,000, 000 citizens. What would happen if the anti-Semitic worm infected the mind of all of them?
Can Israel really remain immune from that eruption of psychotic anti-Jewish illness?
israelnationalnews
“The Jewish religion is under attack in Europe”, declared the Conference of European Rabbis president Pinchas Goldschmidt. Many polls (such as the study on behalf of the German Social Democratic Friedrich Ebert Foundation) bring an iconic number measuring the disaster: 150,000,000 Europeans have a delegitimizing and demonizing view of the State of Israel and its citizens.
For a large sector of Europe, the cities, skyscrapers, hospitals, cinemas, and schools on that tiny sliver of land named "Israel" are merely real estate that will be restored to Islam once this malefic Jewish form is swept away.
This is a popular mobilization against Israel in the “Raus mit Uns” spirit. 150,000,000 Western citizens believe that Zionism is a misconceived project to be brought to an end as soon as possible. It is the consequence of the Palestinian-Islamic psychological war (note: the European Union has just contributed 20 million euros to the payment of salaries and pensions for April of nearly 76,000 Palestinian Arabs).
See what happened to Europe’s Jews in little more than a week.
In Hungary, where Adolf Eichmann obsessively hunted down all the Jews, a wave of fascist Judeophobia is poisoning the social cohesion and the head of the Raoul Wallenberg Association was injured in anti-Semitic attack.
A Labour party member in the UK, Nazir Ahmed, resigned after anti-Jewish remarks made on television.
A scientific genius, Stephen Hawking, embraced the racist boycott of the State of Israel.
The BBC planned a “documentary” claiming that the Jewish exodus from Jerusalem was a myth.
Dozens of French mayors rallied for the liberation of the Palestinian terrorists.
A Scottish Christian document erased the Jewish links with to the holy land.
In the French town of Villeurbanne, a rabbi and his son were stabbed.
It was an ordinary week of anti-Semitism in Europe.
The threat against Israel’s existence has become strategic in Rome, Berlin, London, Paris, Budapest, Amsterdam and Stockholm. Indiscriminate hatred against the Jews pervades European parliaments as much as in the Muslim madrasses. The call for Israel’s destruction echoes through Europe’s schools and mosques, textbooks and newspapers, TV series and pseudo “documentaries”.
It is today's greatest manipulation of opinion, of the kind immortalized by George Orwell in 1984 as a “Two Minute Hate”: Europe’s publicists, civil servants and educators incite violence directly when they describe Jews as “bloodsuckers”, “colonialists”, and many similar epithets. One step at a time, Europe is subverting the legitimacy of the Jewish people once again.
I have always felt an affinity with European intellectuals. But, it is with pain and surprise that I witness, one lifetime after Hitler’s Holocaust, the willingness of all too many to collaborate in the monstrification of the Jews. This is how Europe built an anti-Semitic public opinion of 150,000,000. This is how Israel has become an expendable myth among the European educated classes.
"Peace" can come only with the recognition in the Middle East of Israel as a national state of the Jewish people; the addition of the State of Israel to all the maps used in schools in the Islamic world; the elimination of the extensive anti-Israeli propaganda campaigns in the Muslim media and schools; the promotion of interactions among scientists, scholars, artists, and athletes; the abandoning of the delegitimization of Israel at the United Nations; the outlawing of terrorist groups devoted to the killing of Israelis and the destruction of Israel; the end of the economic boycott against Israel; the institution of full diplomatic relations with Jerusalem as Israel’s indivisible capital; and last but not least, the proclamation of theological fatwas prohibiting the murder of "infidels".
Europe is working hard to prevent all these necessary steps.
Because according to Europe’s mainstream, “peace” will prevail when Israel is dismantled, just like tranquility will prevail in the “Holy Land” when Zionism has been eliminated.
Europe is witnessing the creation of a majority according to which Israel is a superpower with extraordinary military power and wealth and os a committed and merciless enemy of humanity.
Europe’s public opinion has been persuaded to believe that Israel is a state that ought to be dismantled forthwith. Europe's population count today is 730,000, 000 citizens. What would happen if the anti-Semitic worm infected the mind of all of them?
Can Israel really remain immune from that eruption of psychotic anti-Jewish illness?
israelnationalnews
Cigarette Smuggling Ring Has Possible Ties to Hamas and Hezbollah, Authorities Say
By Zach Pontz
A cigarette smuggling ring that spanned several states and netted its perpetrators upwards of $55 million may have terror links, authorities say.
Sixteen Palestinian men, some with ties to convicted terrorists, were indicted Thursday in the alleged scheme that spans New York, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and New Jersey states.
Although it is still unclear what the illicit proceeds were used for, similar schemes have funded organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, according to Ray Kelly, commissioner of the New York Police Department.
“This case started because we were being vigilant about terrorism,” Kelly said in a statement. “We discovered that individuals who were on our radar for links to known terrorists were engaged in a massive raid on the New York Treasury in the form of cigarette tax avoidance.”
One of the suspects is Muaffaq Askar, who has long been suspected of supplying convicted killer Rashid Baz with the weapons he used to shoot up a van full of Yeshiva students on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994 — an incident that left one young Jewish man, Ari Halberstam, dead.
Authorities also said one of the ring’s alleged distributors, Yousef Odeh, 52, had strong financial ties to Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind cleric serving a life sentence for a conspiracy to blow up New York City landmarks.
According to authorities, Basel Ramadan, 42, of Ocean City, Maryland, ran the operation with his brother, Samir Ramadan, 40. They allegedly obtained cigarettes from a wholesaler in Virginia and smuggled the untaxed cartons to a storage facility in Delaware.
Adel Abuzahrieh, 42, of Brooklyn, would allegedly drive from New York to the storage facility several times a week with tens of thousands of dollars in cash to be exchanged for untaxed cartons of cigarettes. The cigarettes were then distributed and sold.
The ring cost the state of New York more than $80 million in sales tax revenue, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman said.
algemeiner
A cigarette smuggling ring that spanned several states and netted its perpetrators upwards of $55 million may have terror links, authorities say.
Sixteen Palestinian men, some with ties to convicted terrorists, were indicted Thursday in the alleged scheme that spans New York, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and New Jersey states.
Although it is still unclear what the illicit proceeds were used for, similar schemes have funded organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, according to Ray Kelly, commissioner of the New York Police Department.
“This case started because we were being vigilant about terrorism,” Kelly said in a statement. “We discovered that individuals who were on our radar for links to known terrorists were engaged in a massive raid on the New York Treasury in the form of cigarette tax avoidance.”
One of the suspects is Muaffaq Askar, who has long been suspected of supplying convicted killer Rashid Baz with the weapons he used to shoot up a van full of Yeshiva students on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994 — an incident that left one young Jewish man, Ari Halberstam, dead.
Authorities also said one of the ring’s alleged distributors, Yousef Odeh, 52, had strong financial ties to Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind cleric serving a life sentence for a conspiracy to blow up New York City landmarks.
According to authorities, Basel Ramadan, 42, of Ocean City, Maryland, ran the operation with his brother, Samir Ramadan, 40. They allegedly obtained cigarettes from a wholesaler in Virginia and smuggled the untaxed cartons to a storage facility in Delaware.
Adel Abuzahrieh, 42, of Brooklyn, would allegedly drive from New York to the storage facility several times a week with tens of thousands of dollars in cash to be exchanged for untaxed cartons of cigarettes. The cigarettes were then distributed and sold.
The ring cost the state of New York more than $80 million in sales tax revenue, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman said.
algemeiner
An Iranian in Lyons and Paris
By Paul Leslie
A “face-off” between the governments of Tunisia and France, which wished to retain and even expand the naval base it had kept at Bizerta, even after Tunisia gained its independence in 1956, became both the cause and the pretext for a crisis which escalated in July 1961 when Tunisia imposed a blockade, hoping to force its evacuation. As the conflict developed (culminating in a three-day battle between French and Tunisian forces that left some 630 Tunisians and 24 French dead), there was a certain amount of anti-Jewish agitation which led to the exodus of a significant number of Tunisian Jews, some going to France and others to Israel.
A “face-off” between the governments of Tunisia and France, which wished to retain and even expand the naval base it had kept at Bizerta, even after Tunisia gained its independence in 1956, became both the cause and the pretext for a crisis which escalated in July 1961 when Tunisia imposed a blockade, hoping to force its evacuation. As the conflict developed (culminating in a three-day battle between French and Tunisian forces that left some 630 Tunisians and 24 French dead), there was a certain amount of anti-Jewish agitation which led to the exodus of a significant number of Tunisian Jews, some going to France and others to Israel.
Though the major exodus of Tunisian Jewry was to occur in the wake of the anti-Jewish rioting which coincided with the Six Day War, the influx of Tunisian Jews to Paris at the beginning of the 1960s was followed by the establishment of new communities, including the Synagogue Beth-El, which, after initially being allowed a room in the famous synagogue of the Rue Cadet, moved into premises at 10 rue Saulnier in 1962. In 1981 the synagogue moved into its current premises at 3 rue Saulnier, greatly benefitting from the generosity of the late Edmond Safra.
This very special synagogue, which has become one of Paris Jewry’s institutions, has several morning, afternoon and evening services during the week. Since the eighties it has often operated on the principle that if certain already established services – for whatever reason or reasons – were getting low on numbers for the necessary prayer quora (minyanim) additional ones should be set up. It organizes Friday night dinners and Sabbath lunches on a regular basis – which are very popular with passing Israelis and Americans especially at the height of the tourist season. (See Serge Golan’s article, published on the 7th of March 2012 on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary.)
On the morning of the 23rd April an apparently deranged Iranian, who had been on the run for just over a week from the psychiatric hospital in Bron, arrived in a car and attacked a rabbi and his son with a box-cutter in front of this synagogue, attempting to cut the rabbi’s throat and also stabbing his son in the back. He was heard to cry: “Allahu Akhbar!”
This Iranian had been interned in the above asylum because he had previously scaled the wall of a centuries-old cathedral in Lyons and seriously damaged its astronomical clock. He had claimed that he could not concentrate on his prayers. (If this was the case and he so lacked self-control, why had he not been unsettled by noisy traffic and attacked a passing motorist, for example?)
Whether or not he is mad, as well as bad, this Iranian seems to be violently intolerant of non-Muslims. There are, moreover, some questions which need to be answered.
- How was he able to stay on the loose for so long? What was he doing during all this time? How did he get the idea to turn up in front of the Saulnier synagogue at a time when it was particularly packed with worshippers?
- Did he have some kind of support network, or was he acting alone? If he has psychological problems, has he been manipulated?
- If he was not acting alone, is there possibly a Hezbollah connection?
It took some time for the French government of the time to start taking energetic measures to protect the French Jewish community against the massive increase in serious attacks against them which accompanied the Second Intifada at the start of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Because most of the assaults, death threats, attacks against synagogues, schools and other Jewish institutions were committed then – as now – by members of France’s large Muslim minority (and of those attacking or threatening Jews most came originally from what was formerly French North Africa and then, to a lesser degree, from other Muslim-majority African counties), pressure was put on French Jewish representatives by the government of Lionel Jospin not to publicise this and thus supposedly “add fuel to the flames” (see the communiqué of the admirable Bureau National de Vigilance Contre l’Antisémitisme, dated the 19th April 2002, as published in Le Monde, – as well as “French Anti-Semitism: A Barometer for Gauging Society’s Perverseness. An Interview with Shmuel Trigano“.)
Though determined though belated action by successive French governments and the police seemed gradually to be reversing the rise in serious anti-Semitic incidents mentioned above, these have massively increased once more since last year’s murders in Toulouse. It has been convincingly argued that, since the propagation of lies about Israel and its defence forces have contributed to the growth in anti-Jewish hostility among France’s Muslim population - and/or are found useful by the minority of French Muslims who commit such terrible crimes against their Jewish citizens to justify themselves, as well as by their apologists – the French government should be publicly condemning unfounded extreme accusations against Israelis – or at least not be implicitly endorsing them.
The French government’s decision in 2012 to honour the Alternative Information Centre, a veritable lie factory, and its founder and director, Michel Warshawsky – one of the worst anti-Zionist Israelis and a supporter of BDS who never ceases to give aid and comfort to anti-Semites everywhere – with the Prix des droits de l’homme de la République française (French Republic’s Human Rights Prize) sent completely the wrong message – to say the least.
Farage Fumes at Scots
UKIP leader Nigel Farage was furious at questions during a BBC interview about protestors who met him in Edinburgh last night. In a heated discussion on BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme, Mr Farage got so angry with the questions that he cut short the interview and hung up on the presenter. He had earlier lashed out at the "racist Nazi scum" who forced police to bundle him into a pub for his own safety. He said: "I've never seen anything like it before anywhere. "The idea that UKIP is some kind of horrible, nasty, anti-immigrant, racist party is not something that was evident to the rest of the country, but of course that wasn't what it was all about. "It was a demonstration dressed up as being anti-racism but in fact in itself was deeply racist, with a total hatred of the English and a desire for Scotland to be independent from Westminster." He added: "If this is the face of Scottish nationalism it's a pretty ugly picture. "The anger, the snarling, the shouting, the swearing was all linked in to a desire for the Union Jack to be burnt and extinguished from Scotland forever. "There's absolutely no doubt who these people were or what they stood for." As the interviewer criticised Mr Farage's viewpoint, and blasted him for not having any elected representation in Scotland, he'd decided he'd had enough. Mr Farage replied: "Absolutely none, but rather more than the BBC do. "We could have had this interview in England a couple of years ago, although I wouldn't have met with such hatred as I'm getting from your questions and frankly I've had enough of this interview. Goodbye."
dailystar
Germany risks becoming sick man of Europe, warns ECB's Asmussen
Speaking in Berlin, Mr Asmussen said Germany needed to target reforms at the education system and energy and infrastructure sectors, as well as tackle income inequality.
telegraph
German FM sees ‘window of opportunity’ in peace process
Emerging from a meeting with Justice Minister Tzipi Livni in Tel Aviv on Friday, the visiting German foreign minister urged Israelis and Palestinians to restart negotiations. He also said that Israel has a right to defend itself so far as Syria is concerned.
Guido Westerwelle told reporters that US Secretary of State John Kerry’s shuttle diplomacy between Israeli and Palestinian officials is creating “a window of opportunity,” and he urged both sides to seize the moment.
Livni told Germany’s top diplomat that a US bid to restart peace talks should be regarded “with enthusiasm” by all sides.
At a press conference ahead of the meeting, Westerwelle said that Israel has a right to defend itself vis-a-vis threats emanating from Syria.
Livni reiterated the foreign minister’s comments and added that Russia’s transfer of advanced weapons to Syria would not contribute to creating stability in the region.
On Thursday, Russia made clear that it would proceed with its planned delivery of a highly sophisticated air-defense system to Syria. According to a report published in The New York Times Thursday, Russia had also sent advanced antiship cruise missiles to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Westerwelle and Livni met privately for an hour and were then joined by their advisers.
timesofisrael
timesofisrael
We Should Have Heeded the Warning Signs of Islamist Antisemitism
With the rise of Islamist regimes following the Arab Awakening, we are seeing an increase in religious repression across the Middle East. That repression was predictable had we only read the tea leaves of Islamist antisemitism.
Islamism is an all-encompassing political, religious, societal, and cultural philosophy which believes that all citizens derive their rights not individually from God but from their national leader’s interpretation of Islam enacted on behalf of God. Islamists, in effect, reject the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and instead enact the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, which enshrines, among other supremacist Islamist doctrines, blasphemy and apostasy laws. Egypt’s ruling party, the Muslim Brotherhood, put this on full display during their recent public rejection of the UN Charter on Women as being “anti-Islam.”
We have for too long tacitly accepted the synergy between Islamism and antisemitism. Had we heeded the warning signs, we could have at least been prepared to confront head-on the ascendancy of Islamists across the region. We would have understood that we first need to empower our natural allies on the ground—liberals and anti-Islamists. The Obama Administration abandoned our friends of the Green Revolution in Iran in 2009 and now, again, in Egypt in 2011. Throughout history, antisemitism has long been the “canary in the coal mine” for threats against all people, all faiths, and liberty.
The demonization of Jews is not just another symptom from the radical fringe of militant Islamist groups. It runs much deeper across Islamist thought, and is in fact pathognomonic (distinctive of a disease) of a far more pervasive societal and tribal fascism also mirrored in the Arab secular left. Arab national socialist movements like the Baathists of Syria and Iraq, or the NDP of Egypt, share with Islamists a common dominant strain of antisemitic conspiracy theories and Jew-hatred.
Beneath Islamist antisemitism is a more dangerous pan-national global supremacism that exploits all minorities, whether Jewish, Christian, or atheist, or minorities from within the faith like the Shi’a, Ahmediyya, Isma’ilis, or dissenting Sunnis. Islamist run media like Al Jazeera provide the vehicle to plant conspiracy theories in the fertile minds of susceptible Muslims. Our challenge in the United States is to either help their antagonists, non-Islamist reformers, domestically transform that soil through alternative media—or we can sit back and watch the Islamists in Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood), Tunisia (Ennahda), Saudi Arabia (Wahhabis), Iran (Khomeinists) or Pakistan (Deobandis) fertilize and till the hate-filled soil into an even greater imminent threat.
Make no mistake—the departure of Arab fascist dictators in the Arab awakening was a long overdue step forward. But we cannot expect dysfunctional tribal societies with rampant anti-Semitism, a dominant victim mentality, high illiteracy rates, and a deep seeded hate of western democracy to resemble genuine democracies. Already, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is buckling down on free speech and blasphemy against Islam in a systematic fashion far worse than even under the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak.
While Islamist movements are frighteningly popular, with support recently peaking at 35 to 40 percent of the Egyptian population, they are still not a majority movement. However, the antisemitic hate in Egypt is a majority sentiment. Islamists were able to come to power by finding common cause with otherwise divided secularists around the language of hatred of the West and of Jews.
A poll conducted in 2006 by the Pew Global Attitudes Survey revealed that “anti-Jewish sentiment” is endemic in the Middle East across faith groups. “In Lebanon, all Muslims and 99% of Christians say they have a very unfavorable view of Jews. Similarly, 99% of Jordanians, large majorities of Moroccans, Indonesians, Pakistanis and six-in-ten Turks also view Jews unfavorably.” This is a cultural byproduct of what is messaged in many Muslim news media, textbooks, literature, sermons, and entertainment. Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan recently referred to Zionism as a “crime against humanity.” Meanwhile, Egypt’s Brotherhood finally allowed a documentary on the disappearance of the “Jews of Egypt” to be shown, after long being held up by government censors.
In 2006, Pew reported that Muslims in Europe also hold a far more unfavorable opinion of Jews than the general population. In Britain, 47 percent of Muslims held an unfavorable view of Jews versus 7 percent of the general public. In France, 28 percent of Muslims held an unfavorable view of Jews versus 13 percent of the general population.
The Qatari owned Al Jazeera has aired countless sermons and programs vilifying Jews and Israel. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi is arguably Sunni Islam’s most influential cleric in the world and wields considerable influence in the Muslim Brotherhood. Reaching weekly over 60 million viewers in his program “Shariah and Life,” he commonly spews anti-Western and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. On January 28, 2009, he stated “the last punishment was carried out by Hitler…this was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the believers.”
The grim reality is that Muslim imams, scholars, and activists demonstrating the courage to publicly take on the antisemitism of Islamist leaders are far too few and have not made their presence known. They have neither the platforms nor the backing which petro-funded Islamist linked movements do around the world.
We must support them by heeding the warnings which the horrible history of Islamist antisemitism has shown and take action to prevent its prevalence on every front throughout the world. The Obama administration cannot even get itself to even use the word “Islamism,” let alone take a stand against the pervasive antisemitism created by Islamists at home and abroad. Just like Islamist inspired terror, Islamist inspired antisemitism cannot be treated without targeting Islamism. Instead, President Obama’s national security team has engaged Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups in the U.S. and oddly seems to consider the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt an ally in the making.
Our leaders have to take sides in the battle of ideas against Islamism by reviving our public diplomacy in support of universal human rights, whether popular or not. We need to systematically expose—name and shame—the antisemitic behavior and ideas promulgated by Islamist movements, including all forms of hatred against Jews, conspiracies, and anti-Americanism. Antisemitic ideas are not isolated incidents to be condemned and dismissed. We should expose their root cause, foremost of which among Muslims is Islamism.
The U.S. must engage and provide platforms for courageous reform-based civil society organizations dedicated to working against anti-Semitism. Conversely the administration must also disengage from Islamist groups and expose their ideology for what it is—incompatible with modernity. We must end the climate of political correctness and subtle bigotry, which gives Muslims a pass on accountability for the hate-filled ideas of antisemitism. We must not be seen as advocating for liberty only at home and turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism from our supposed “allies”.
We must confront Islamist groups with what Prime Minister David Cameron referred to as “muscular liberalism.” While hyper-secularists in Europe attack the faithful of all faiths, Islamists thrive in that blind multicultural environment. We ignore at our own peril what Islamist antisemitism tells us about who they are and what lies ahead for those of us in its way.
jewishpress
Thursday, May 16, 2013
France and Italy have 'structural not economic' problems, says ally of Angela Merkel
A senior ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel says France and Italy have structural problems that needs to be addressed in order to fix their economy.Michael Meister, from Mrs Merkel's Christian Democrats, says the European Union (EU) members have to work harder and faster to resolve its problems.
Mr Meister added the European Central Bank (ECB) needs to stop buying Italian government debt if they fail to meet debt reduction requirements.
He said: "Italy and France have structural problems to resolve and not economic problems.
"They can't wait any longer. More time won't relieve the problem. It'll only make it worse."
Figures released yesterday revealed France went back into recession a year after French president Francois Hollande was voted into power.
While Italian government bond yields have fallen as investors put faith into the ECB's ability to prevent indecisive elections in recent months.Mr Meister said: "The credibility of the ECB requires that it demand Italy to meet its obligations.
"If Italy does not do that, the basis for the ECB's bond-buying programme is no longer applicable."
"The ECB should thus not buy any further bonds without a critical examination of the obligations that Italy has promised. It (the ECB) has already been skating on thin ice.
"It should concentrate on monetary policy."
The deputy parliamentary floor leader said Italy urgently needed to work on improving its competitiveness and consolidating its budget.
But he added that the new Italian government were capable of taking the necessary action.
express
express
Turkish Female Journalist Receives Death Threats for Removing Hijab
By
According to Hijab, Burka and Niqab apologists, wearing one is purely a matter of choice for a woman. Except the only place that it’s really a matter of choice is in a non-Muslim country.
Rabia Kazan, a Turkish female journalist and author of a book about prostitution in Iran, describes the stifling experience of being forced to cover up and the threats that came after she chose freedom.
According to Hijab, Burka and Niqab apologists, wearing one is purely a matter of choice for a woman. Except the only place that it’s really a matter of choice is in a non-Muslim country.
Rabia Kazan, a Turkish female journalist and author of a book about prostitution in Iran, describes the stifling experience of being forced to cover up and the threats that came after she chose freedom.
Arguing that there is no verse for wearing headscarves in the Quran, Kazan has faced heavy criticism also in her country due to her thoughts. Her own father attacked her house with stones.frontpagemag
I FELT FREEDOM WHEN I TOOK OFF MY HEADSCARF”
“During the first years of wearing a headscarf, I used to feel like my head was stuck up inside a nylon bag, and I heard humming. I had those fearful moments when the needles came loose, wondering if the needle would prick my throat. So I would at times take off the headscarf secretly when my mother was not watching. But one day when I got caught by my mother she subjected me to an unforgettably painful beating.
30 years later, when I decided to uncover my head, another battle started. It was very difficult. Radical Islamists got very furious when a covered and well-known writer decided to uncover her head. I heard harsh insults and received death threats.
When I came to America, first of all I started to swim to my heart’s content… It was such regret for me not to have done it for so long that I didn’t want to get out of the swimming pool before I swam for two hours every night…
I suffered from vitamin D deficiency since my skin didn’t get enough sunlight by then and this normally causes serious illnesses, weakness and mental fatigue. I sunbathed a lot. Then I tied my hair in a pony-tail and played tennis under the blue sky with my white tennis clothes on. I cannot tell you how good it felt. Then I fulfilled my dream of growing nails and putting on red nail polish, which was a personal remembrance to me. I had met a woman in my trip to Iran who was forced to put her hands into a bag full of insects just because she had put on red nail polish… Whenever I put on red nail polish, I still remember that woman with sadness…
Now I am free and believe that God has no problem with the hair on my head, He will not burn me in his Hell for this reason, He holds us with much more mercy and kindness than we think, and that being “a good person” is much more important than wearing a dark veil.
‘Bulgarian Fraud’ Threatens the EU Welfare State?
By Walter Russell Mead
There’s a scandal brewing in the Netherlands that could weaken support for the European welfare state. A well-organized crime ring in Bulgaria has been rounding up villagers and putting them on buses to Rotterdam. When they arrive there, they are sent to fill out welfare forms using forged rental contracts to prove that they have taken up residency. As soon as their claims are approved, they come back to Bulgaria and hand off the ‘account’ to their handlers, who then proceed to milk the Dutch welfare state for up to €8000 per person.
The FT reports that the scandal is still being used as a sign of administrative incompetence on the part of the Dutch government rather than a flaw in the country’s immigration policy. But that could soon change:
Bulgaria and Romania are home to large Roma populations—estimated to be up to half a million in Bulgaria and 1.5 million in Romania —and these people tend to be much, much poorer and less well educated than those around them. And by reputation, the Roma are great travelers and, in stereotyped thinking that is so widespread as to be practically universal among West European average citizens, the Roma are thought to be habitual swindlers and grifters. Although there’s no evidence that the Bulgarian villagers in this case were Roma, it’s not too far a stretch to think that “Bulgarian fraud” is conjuring up images of thieving Roma in the popular Dutch imagination.
One likely consequence of this latest episode could be the scaling back of many welfare programs in some EU states. Between unpopular immigrants from predominantly Muslim states and a perceived mass movement of the Roma into the richer EU countries, public sympathy for the poor and the marginal is likely to diminish. Throw that together with budgetary problems, and the outlook is pretty clear.
the-american-interest
There’s a scandal brewing in the Netherlands that could weaken support for the European welfare state. A well-organized crime ring in Bulgaria has been rounding up villagers and putting them on buses to Rotterdam. When they arrive there, they are sent to fill out welfare forms using forged rental contracts to prove that they have taken up residency. As soon as their claims are approved, they come back to Bulgaria and hand off the ‘account’ to their handlers, who then proceed to milk the Dutch welfare state for up to €8000 per person.
The FT reports that the scandal is still being used as a sign of administrative incompetence on the part of the Dutch government rather than a flaw in the country’s immigration policy. But that could soon change:
…while the Dutch press refers to the scandal as the “Bulgarian fraud”, most MPs have concentrated on their own government’s mistakes, with the nationalist overtones so far remaining in the background.Europeans have a mixed attitude at best towards immigration. Muslim and North African immigrants and refugees have had trouble integrating into European societies, with the resulting intercommunal tensions sometimes spilling over into street violence. Since 2010, both France and Italy have dismantled Roma camps, even expelling their inhabitants back to their home countries in the French case. This is in tension with the elites’ idea of a United States of Europe, where the population of any constituent nation-state is allowed to move and settle wherever they so choose on the continent.
“The reaction has mainly been a rather cynical ‘What did you expect?’” said Mr Schnabel. “Next year Bulgarians are free to settle in the Netherlands, there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
Bulgaria and Romania are home to large Roma populations—estimated to be up to half a million in Bulgaria and 1.5 million in Romania —and these people tend to be much, much poorer and less well educated than those around them. And by reputation, the Roma are great travelers and, in stereotyped thinking that is so widespread as to be practically universal among West European average citizens, the Roma are thought to be habitual swindlers and grifters. Although there’s no evidence that the Bulgarian villagers in this case were Roma, it’s not too far a stretch to think that “Bulgarian fraud” is conjuring up images of thieving Roma in the popular Dutch imagination.
One likely consequence of this latest episode could be the scaling back of many welfare programs in some EU states. Between unpopular immigrants from predominantly Muslim states and a perceived mass movement of the Roma into the richer EU countries, public sympathy for the poor and the marginal is likely to diminish. Throw that together with budgetary problems, and the outlook is pretty clear.
the-american-interest
Israeli Eurovision delegation threatened in Malmo
A member of the Israeli delegation to the Eurovision song contest in Malmo, Sweden, said he and two of his compatriots were threatened on the street.
Alon Amir told Sveriges Radio on Tuesday that he and the other two Israelis were accosted by a group of young men. Amir told the men he was from Cyprus “because I knew where it was heading,” he told Sveriges Radio on Tuesday. “They said: ‘Where are the Israelis staying, we want to bomb the place,’” Amir said. “It wasn’t a joke.”
Several dozen anti-Semitic incidents per year occur annually in Malmo, a city of about 1,000 Jews where approximately 30 percent of the population comes from Muslim countries. The Swedish court system did not convict anyone of hate crimes in Malmo in 2010 and 2011 despite registering 480 complaints.
On Wednesday, the chairman of the Malmo municipality’s Culture Committee, Daniel Sestrajcic, said Israel should be boycotted from the Eurovision – a major international event with delegations from 39 countries. “Israel can return when Palestine is free,” he shouted at a demonstration commemorating the Palestinian “catastrophe,” or Nakba – the Palestinian name for the creation of the State of Israel.
In a statement on May 14, Rolf K Nilsson, a Swedish lawmaker, condemned Sestrajcic for making Malmo “once again emerge as an anti-Semitic, anti-Jew and anti-Israeli city.”
The competition in Malmo is scheduled to end Saturday. Hundreds of Jews and non-Jews are planning to walk together that day through the streets of Malmo while wearing kippahs as a sign of their opposition to anti-Semitism.
Malmo’s outgoing mayor, Ilamr Reepalu, has been accused of encouraging anti-Semitism with statements he made, including drawing an analogy between anti-Semitism and Zionism and suggesting Jews distance themselves from Zionism to stay safe.
Last year, assailants set off an explosive device outside the city’s Jewish Community Center and vandalized the building. No one has been indicted for the incident, which police said was not classified as a hate crime.
timesofisrael
timesofisrael
Car burnings rise as France threatens to take euro crisis to 'higher plane' , says hedge fund boss Michael Hintze
The billionaire boss of CQS, one of London’s biggest hedge funds, has written to investors warning them that the France could trigger another more dangerous phase of the debt crisis and rock the fragile global recovery.
In a note to investors, Mr Hintze has said: “While Cyprus has stolen the news headlines of late, I am concerned that the eurozone’s problems could soon turn to the ‘core’, and in particular the focus could be on France.”
He added: “A loss of confidence in France would shift the eurozone’s troubles to a higher plane. France lies not only at the core of the eurozone, but is also one of the original architects of the European Union. Clearly, a loss in confidence in France would likely have far-reaching consequences; its impact on the EU, the broader global economy and markets.”
France, which yesterday was shown to have plunged back into recession, represents 19.6pc of eurozone GDP and 14.4pc of European Union GDP. Its share of the European Central Bank’s capital is 14.2pc.
Mr Hintze, a Tory donor and leading philanthropist, said that rising social unrest, especially among young people, could hamper the French government’s ability to push through “deeper economic reforms that are required.” “A reflection of growing discontent among the youth can be seen in the rise in
car burnings,” Mr Hintze has said in a note to investors. “Figures released by
the French Minister of the Interior recorded 1193 cars having been burned over a
two-day period on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, with the annual number
somewhere around 42,000 to 60,000.”
telegraph
telegraph
'Islam convert' Bayern player 'furious' after getting beer-soaked despite warning after Bundesliga win
A Bayern Munich player, who is a convert to Islam, is reportedly furious for being doused with beer after the German giants won the Bundesliga trophy by beating Augsburg 2-0.
Although mid-fielder Franck Ribery, who shuns alcohol as it is forbidden by his religion, had warned his team-mates to keep any drinks far away from him before the game, however, his teammate and Bayern defender Jerome Boateng unloaded a massive pitcher of beer over his head, New York Daily News reports.
According to reports, a seething Ribery put Boateng on the top of his list of new enemies, vowing never to speak to him again, adding that the defender doused him with alcohol despite knowing that Ribery is Muslim.
However, the report said that Ribery's Islamic piety is a sharp contrast with the image of footballer who was once accused of sleeping with an underage prostitute and had to face jail time for his alleged trysts with then 16-year-old call girl in 2008, the report added.
business-standard
business-standard
The Interfaith Racket: Passport to Credibility
By Douglas Murray
Such is the case with much of the interfaith dialogue conversations in Britain today and there can be no better exemplar than that thrown up by an old friend of this column – the disgraced ex-Labour peer Lord Ahmed of Rotherham.
Lord Ahmed, it will be remembered is the serially expelled "first Muslim peer" in Britain. Having been hastily promoted by the Labour party, his career in public life reached a nadir a few years ago when, whilst texting on his mobile phone, the noble lord ran over and killed a man on a motorway. Ahmed went to jail for driving offenses, and has cropped up a number of times since – most recently a few weeks ago, when a recording came to light – courtesy of the Times (London) newspaper – showing Ahmed on television in Pakistan. In that interview (conducted in Urdu) Ahmed was shown, among other things, blaming his conviction and imprisonment for driving offences on Jewish lawyers and Jewish media.
Swiftly expelled by the Labour party, Ahmed had to face yet another disciplinary process (he has been reinstated before). He has now said that he does not wish to go through the process and has resigned from the Labour party. So far, so sad. But one of the matters least considered was his membership in numerous groups which held themselves out as providing "interfaith dialogue" between the Muslim community and – in particular – the Jewish community. The Joseph Interfaith Foundation, for instance, featured Ahmed as a Trustee.
The Joseph Interfaith Foundation declares itself to be "committed to fostering engagement through constructive and realistic dialogue and interaction between the Muslim and Jewish communities in Britain. The Foundation also aims to promote a deeper understanding of both faiths among the general public." How that squares with having one of your Trustees blame the Jews for his driving offense and sentencing is a difficult question to answer. What seems at least plausible is that Ahmed – who had a long track record of sympathizing with the most extreme Islamists – used interfaith networks to give himself credibility.
When the Times revealed the story of the Pakistan interview, Ahmed took the opportunity of an interview with a Muslim journalist to say how sorry he was to the Jewish community. Now – true to form – he has backtracked on that backtrack. And the manner in which this has been done speaks as much to the naivety of "interfaith dialogue" as it does to the matter of Ahmed's sincerity.
For, as London's Jewish Chronicle recently reported, before Ahmed's final resignation, he chose once more to play the victim card. Ahead of his suspension hearing with the Parliamentary Labour party, he claimed that he would not receive a fair hearing because he had not seen the evidence against himself. Despite the fact that the Times posted the expository video on its website and paid a number of translators who all agreed that the words that came out of Ahmed's mouth on the tape were the words that come out of his mouth, Ahmed said: "I don't have the evidence against me."
"I would love to get to the bottom of it," he went on. "If I can see the film then we can put it to bed. I would be utterly devastated to know that I have said that." And who should now leap to Ahmed's rescue? Why an "interfaith" friend, of course.
Another habitué of the "interfaith" racket, Rabbi Mark Winer, appeared alongside his friend Ahmed and listened to his friend's obfuscation and lies. And the rabbi said, "We all have our demons, of hatred and bigotry and sexism. I assumed he had said it. Lord Ahmed hasn't asked me for help. I wrote to him and said, 'Let's get this straight,' because this isn't the Nazir Ahmed I know."
Did he mean that the man saying on tape that the Jews were responsible for sending him to prison probably wasn't exactly the same person who had turned up at all those endless high-profile interfaith shindigs? The rabbi went on, "I have no problem acknowledging the possibility that he might have spoken badly. People are very confusing and very complex and I was willing to accept that from him." And then, just to make things easier, the rabbi said, that because Ahmed was the first British Muslim peer, people were "looking to knock him down."
Could anyone get anything more wrong? People wanted to "knock [Ahmed] down" because he was the first Muslim peer? Because Ahmed was the first Muslim peer, most people were eager to do anything they could to cover for him, forgive him, reinstate him time and again – and even now, as the rabbi has just shown, are not able to believe the words that came from his mouth in Pakistan because they so differed from the words that came from his mouth at interfaith meetings in London.
Somewhere in the heart of this misguided burlesque lies the tragedy not just of a community, but of a society. Not once learning a lesson might be dismissed as ignorance. To keep on refusing to learn it begins to look deliberate.
gatestoneinstitute
Because Ahmed was the first Muslim peer, most people were eager to do anything they could to cover for him, forgive him, reinstate him time and again – and even now are not able to believe the words that came from his mouth in Pakistan because they differed from the words that came from his mouth at interfaith meetings in London.Interfaith dialogue is one of those things it can seem impossible to be against. What reasonable, rational person could possibly object to people of different faiths coming together and discussing their differences? Well, as with any negotiation, the problem only really comes if one individual, or group of individuals, heads into the discussion ignorantly or naively while another knows exactly what he is planning to get from it.
Such is the case with much of the interfaith dialogue conversations in Britain today and there can be no better exemplar than that thrown up by an old friend of this column – the disgraced ex-Labour peer Lord Ahmed of Rotherham.
Lord Ahmed, it will be remembered is the serially expelled "first Muslim peer" in Britain. Having been hastily promoted by the Labour party, his career in public life reached a nadir a few years ago when, whilst texting on his mobile phone, the noble lord ran over and killed a man on a motorway. Ahmed went to jail for driving offenses, and has cropped up a number of times since – most recently a few weeks ago, when a recording came to light – courtesy of the Times (London) newspaper – showing Ahmed on television in Pakistan. In that interview (conducted in Urdu) Ahmed was shown, among other things, blaming his conviction and imprisonment for driving offences on Jewish lawyers and Jewish media.
Swiftly expelled by the Labour party, Ahmed had to face yet another disciplinary process (he has been reinstated before). He has now said that he does not wish to go through the process and has resigned from the Labour party. So far, so sad. But one of the matters least considered was his membership in numerous groups which held themselves out as providing "interfaith dialogue" between the Muslim community and – in particular – the Jewish community. The Joseph Interfaith Foundation, for instance, featured Ahmed as a Trustee.
The Joseph Interfaith Foundation declares itself to be "committed to fostering engagement through constructive and realistic dialogue and interaction between the Muslim and Jewish communities in Britain. The Foundation also aims to promote a deeper understanding of both faiths among the general public." How that squares with having one of your Trustees blame the Jews for his driving offense and sentencing is a difficult question to answer. What seems at least plausible is that Ahmed – who had a long track record of sympathizing with the most extreme Islamists – used interfaith networks to give himself credibility.
When the Times revealed the story of the Pakistan interview, Ahmed took the opportunity of an interview with a Muslim journalist to say how sorry he was to the Jewish community. Now – true to form – he has backtracked on that backtrack. And the manner in which this has been done speaks as much to the naivety of "interfaith dialogue" as it does to the matter of Ahmed's sincerity.
For, as London's Jewish Chronicle recently reported, before Ahmed's final resignation, he chose once more to play the victim card. Ahead of his suspension hearing with the Parliamentary Labour party, he claimed that he would not receive a fair hearing because he had not seen the evidence against himself. Despite the fact that the Times posted the expository video on its website and paid a number of translators who all agreed that the words that came out of Ahmed's mouth on the tape were the words that come out of his mouth, Ahmed said: "I don't have the evidence against me."
"I would love to get to the bottom of it," he went on. "If I can see the film then we can put it to bed. I would be utterly devastated to know that I have said that." And who should now leap to Ahmed's rescue? Why an "interfaith" friend, of course.
Another habitué of the "interfaith" racket, Rabbi Mark Winer, appeared alongside his friend Ahmed and listened to his friend's obfuscation and lies. And the rabbi said, "We all have our demons, of hatred and bigotry and sexism. I assumed he had said it. Lord Ahmed hasn't asked me for help. I wrote to him and said, 'Let's get this straight,' because this isn't the Nazir Ahmed I know."
Did he mean that the man saying on tape that the Jews were responsible for sending him to prison probably wasn't exactly the same person who had turned up at all those endless high-profile interfaith shindigs? The rabbi went on, "I have no problem acknowledging the possibility that he might have spoken badly. People are very confusing and very complex and I was willing to accept that from him." And then, just to make things easier, the rabbi said, that because Ahmed was the first British Muslim peer, people were "looking to knock him down."
Could anyone get anything more wrong? People wanted to "knock [Ahmed] down" because he was the first Muslim peer? Because Ahmed was the first Muslim peer, most people were eager to do anything they could to cover for him, forgive him, reinstate him time and again – and even now, as the rabbi has just shown, are not able to believe the words that came from his mouth in Pakistan because they so differed from the words that came from his mouth at interfaith meetings in London.
Somewhere in the heart of this misguided burlesque lies the tragedy not just of a community, but of a society. Not once learning a lesson might be dismissed as ignorance. To keep on refusing to learn it begins to look deliberate.
gatestoneinstitute
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