Religion Archives - Page 182 of 407

Jew Hate

December 16, 2019/in Culture War, Policy, Politics, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Joan Swirsky

There is nothing new about the fanatical hatred of Jews that we see playing out in today’s world––literally a pandemic of anti-Semitism which echoes the fear and loathing that gave rise to the over-4,000-year history of the Inquisition, the Crusades, centuries of pogroms, the expulsion of Jews from country after country, and the Holocaust of the 20th century in which six-million Jews were savagely incinerated in the crematoria of Hitler’s Germany as the entire world––including U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt––looked on and did nothing!

Plus ça change and all that. But it’s not exactly true that things have remained the same. Today, the staggering power of technology makes the spread of Jew Hate all the more rapid, powerful and lethal.

In America, while blacks, Muslims, feminists, single mothers, immigrants, the global-warming fetishists, college graduates in debt for their exorbitant-but-meaningless “educations” and minorities of every stripe all bleat endlessly about being victims of this or that indignity, slight, “unfairness,” historical insult or crime, the Annual Report on Hate Crimes released by the Uniform Crime Reporting Program of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) show that, by far, it is the world’s tiny population of Jews––15 million in a world of nearly eight billion––who experience the most bias, hatred, assaults, blatant racism and hate crimes.

I purposefully have not included the 2018 statistics from the global study on anti-Semitism by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), whose director, Jonathan Greenblatt, worked for three far-left regimes––the Clinton administration, the Obama fiasco, and the George Soros-funded Aspen Institute, and who has been accused by the founder and president of Americans for Peace & Tolerance, Dr. Charles Jacobs, of actively deceiving the American Jewish community about polling around the world that shows Islamic Jew hatred tops all others by a significantly wide margin.

“To stay anchored in the left,” explains Dr. Jacobs, “the ADL has had no choice but to bury its findings about Muslim anti-Semitism…prioritizing the protection of American Muslims over the protection of American Jews.”

Writer Isi Liebler elaborates at length on this premise, calling the ADL “a radical extension of the Democratic Party” that refuses to fight the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement––declared anti-Semitic by the American government––because the ADL actively supports the Marxist anti-Semitic group Black Lives Matter, which “incorporates anti-Israel passages in its platform and campaigns against anti-boycott legislation.”

HERE, THERE & EVERYWHERE

But we don’t need skewed polls from the ADL to know what is happening to innocent Jews both here and abroad.

All you have to do is to read the daily exposés on Jew hatred around the world and in America that Pamela Geller has been documenting for almost 20 years at https://gellerreport.com. ––definitely subscribe to this powerful site. Here, a small sample of typical headlines:

And in other venues:

Panel: Judge who shared ‘get the f**k over the Holocaust’ link not anti-Semitic.
European Court of “Justice” condemns Israeli winemakers in Judea and
Samaria but not Iran for nuclear violations.
The esteemed Gatestone Institute‘s Denis MacEoin writes about A “Guide” to the Israeli-“Palestinian” Conflict by the United Church of Christ which leaves “no room in it for a Jewish, Israeli or moderate Christian voice; just hatred of Israel…”
The European Union openly declares war on the Jews.
Amnesty International Teams with Radicals to Blast Israel.
Shock as Merkel Donates Half a Billion Dollars in Aid to Palestinian President, Paying Terrorists to Kill Jews.
Jewish cemetery in France vandalized, over 100 graves desecrated.

ON CAMPUSES

Again, the headlines say it all:

The 40 worst colleges for Jewish students, according to the Algeimener.com online newspaper, include, among others at which rampant anti-Semitism flourishes––largely with impunity: Vassar College, U of Chicago, U of California LA, U of Washington (Seattle), New York University, Oberlin College, U of California Berkeley, Brown U, Brooklyn College, U of California Irvine, San Diego State U, Stanford U, Northwestern U, U of Michigan Ann Arbor, Tufts U, U of California Santa Cruz, Hunter College (NY), U of Mass Amherst, Rutgers U, U of California Davis, Ohio State U, Wesleyan U, U of North Carolina, Harvard U, U of Texas Austin, Swarthmore College, Georgetown U, Syracuse U, U of Wisconsin Madison.

According to author, editor and blogger Ruth S. King in Tenured Cowards, “The craven indifference of academic elites to the anti-Semitism that threatens Jewish students…is reminiscent of the purges of Jewish professors and students in the darkening days following Kristallnacht in November of 1938”

Today, she continues, professors “…worry about every minority right except for the right of Jews to live in safety everywhere, including on their own campuses. These cowards, particularly Jewish professors––who preen and strut in narcissistic self-hatred––have turned their back on Jews and Israel. They will be the first to be shocked when the rising tide of international anti-Semitism comes lapping at their heels, and their cronies and friends abandon them as they have abandoned principles and decency.”

Among the vilest and most anti-Semitic groups at Harvard, Columbia and campuses across the country is Students for Justice in Palestine. By the way, will someone please tell me where on any map or Atlas in the entire world Palestine exists?

Yoo Hoo, Jewish alumni! Are you still donating to these schools? Paying them to “educate” your children. Well…stop! Let them know that their desire to extinguish Jews and annihilate Israel is the reason they will not receive another cent from you! Money Talks!

Clearly, the Arab strategy over the past many decades of spending multimillions of dollars endowing hundreds if not thousands of Chairs at colleges and universities throughout America––and especially in the D.C. area and other seats of powers, has given them total control over their preferred anti-Jewish and anti-Israel curricula, the better to contaminate the minds of students and influence America’s foreign policy vis-à-vis the historically anti-Semitic U.S. State Department.

For the first time since Israel was founded in 1948, we have a State Department under Sec. of State Mike Pompeo that is not blatantly anti-Semitic! Moreover, President Trump has just issued an Executive Order that deems discrimination against Jews on U.S. campuses to be a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and mandates that both colleges and universities lose federal funding if they fail to combat discrimination against Jewish students.

Of course, leftists everywhere––with Democrats leading the pack––object, which is absolutely no surprise as the Democrat Party is now the Official Party of Jew Hatred.

Do sane, moderate Democrats still exist? Yes they do, and to them I say Get Out Now! Leave your Party until it is purged of its racists, which you can help to accomplish at the ballot box.

MEDIA MAGGOTS

According to author and columnist Ben Shapiro, “Media coverage of Israel has long been skewed in favor of Israel’s enemies. Jews…are targeted by those perceived as higher on the scale of privilege. It’s the reason Rev. Al Sharpton has a show on MSNBC, the reason Democratic politicians continue to play footsie with Louis Farrakhan, the reason the New York Times ignores hate crimes in its own city…”

Social Media too––Facebook, Twitter, etc.––are hotbeds of Jew-hating fanatics, many with made-up names, cowards who routinely engage in blood libels, vicious stereotypes, and lies and rants that I, personally, interpret as jealous screeds. These are the people who lie in bed at night obsessing about Jews, blaming their own lack of success on Jews, and projecting onto Jews their own worse character traits and failings.

As ace journalist Ashley Lutz scrupulously documented in a Business Insider report, in 1983 there were 50 media companies, but today only six organizations are responsible for 90 percent of all the “news” we read, watch and listen to! They include:

GE (Comcast, NBC, Universal Pictures, Focus Features, et al).
NewsCorp (Fox, Wall St. Journal, NY Post, et al).
Disney (ABC, ESPN, Pixar, Miramax, Marvel Studios, et al)
Viacom (MTV, Nick Jr., BET, CMT, Paramount Pictures, et al)
Time Warner (CNN, HBO, TIME, Warner Bros., et al)
CBS (Showtime, Smithsonian Channel, NFL.com, Jeopardy, 60 Minutes, et al)

Make no mistake, the CEOs of these multibillion-dollar businesses are all leftist globalists––not a conservative among them. The last was Rupert Murdoch (Fox, Wall St. Journal, NY Post, et al) who gave control of his empire to his leftist sons Lachlan and James, hence the distinctly leftward tilt of Fox and the WSJ.

And shame on them for their positive coverage of raving anti-Semites like Cong. Ihlan Omar (D-MN), Cong. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Cong. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Cong. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and all the others who avidly support both the BDS movement to destroy Israel economically and the denial of foreign aid to America’s staunchest ally in the Middle East.

DEMOCRATS

As you read above, the Democrat Party has now––under the, ahem, leadership of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)––become the de facto party of Jew Hate, proven by the fact that with every vicious anti-Jewish, Israel-loathing statement of the above Democrats (Omar, Tlaib, Pressley, Ocasio-Cortez, et al), there has been NOT ONE WORD of objection, but rather Speaker Pelosi appointed Rep. Omar to the Foreign Affairs Committee, where she could learn every secret of the United States and pass it along to her like-minded Jew haters both here and abroad.

As Professor Abraham H. Miller has aptly noted, “Given a choice between preserving their Jewish identity or embracing the ideology of the left, many Jews would prefer to be Democrats than Jews.”

Writer Victor Rosenthal correctly posits that “the secret to educating anti-Semites so that they will stop being anti-Semites remains undiscovered.” He goes on to suggest that “Jews should secure their institutions and arm themselves to the extent that the law permits. Self-defense training should be part of all Jewish education. Nobody is respected for being a victim.”

There are simply too many examples of the betrayal of Israel and Jews everywhere by the current anti-Semitic Democrats in the U.S. Congress to cite. Suffice a few more headlines:

Democrats to Israel: Go to Hell.
Dem Presidential Hopefuls (Sanders and Warren) Meet With Terrorist-Run Pay-To-Slay Group.
In rebuke to Trump and Netanyahu, 107 Democrats pass resolution supporting 2 states (essentially cutting Israel in half).
Jews who are leading us away from peace.
Progressive Democrats Get it Wrong About Israel, Again.
154 Nations [in the rancid United Nations] Reject Israel’s Biblical Connection to the Temple Mount.
US Presidential Candidates, Anti-Israel Groups to Share Views at Far-Left J Street Conference––where, indeed, more than one of them recommended cutting or withholding aid to Israel.

In my view, these despicable anti-Semites resemble the “just-following-orders” Germans who Daniel Goldhagen aptly described in the title of his 1996 book, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners.”

Today, the Jew haters in America––who get away with their murderous attacks under the cover of “free speech”––and the vast number of Muslim and Arab Jew haters who have predicated their entire lives on killing Jews and eliminating the State of Israel, now take their marching orders from Democrat leaders, leftwing newspapers, cowardly professors, and the megalomaniacal anti-Semitic billionaires who support them.

It is no wonder that the estimable Daniel Greenfield wrote: “There is no future for Jews on the left except as collaborators in anti-Semitism.”

WHAT TO DO

It is clear that the Jewish organizations that once strongly advocated for Jewish issues and fought anti-Semitism aggressively no longer do so unless they involve politically correct issues that won’t inspire the vindictive wrath––and financial support––of Jewish Democrats. These include: the UJA-Federation, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Hillel chapters on college campuses and the Reform movement.

So don’t count on these organizations and don’t send them another dollar!

The good news is that, along with wide support from political conservatives, most Republicans, and the Christian Evangelical community, other Jewish advocacy organizations and publications are working tirelessly to combat the relentless assaults of the Jew- and Israel-haters among us.

They include:

AFSI (Americans for a Safe Israel)
1751 Second Avenue
New York, NY 10128
www.AFSI.org
Tel: 1-212-828-2424
Mark Langfan, Chairman

Americans for Peace & Tolerance
5 Main Street, Suite 118
Watertown, MA 02472
https://www.peaceandtolerance.org
Founder: Charles Jacobs

American Jewish Congress
745 5th Ave., 30th Floor
New York NY 10151
https://www.ajcongress.org
President, Jack Rosen

CAMERA–Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis
PO Box 35040
Boston MA 02135-0001
Andrea Levin, Founder

Campus Watch (a project of the Middle East Forum) monitors bias on American campuses, issues reports, and takes strong action where indicated.
https://www.meforum.org/campus-watch/
E-mail: info@meforum.org
Tel: 1-215-546-5406

Canary Mission
www.canarymission.org
Canary Mission documents individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses.

Coalition for Jewish Values
2833 Smith Avenue, Suite 225
Baltimore, MD 21209
1-301-727-2700
Office-at-CJValues.org
Www.Coalitionforjewishvalues.org

Coalition of Pro-Israel Advocates (COPIA)
10507 Tanager Lane
Potomac, Maryland 20854
info@copma.net

Combat Anti-Semitism
www.combatantisemitism.org
info@combatantisemitism.org
Email: sacha@combatantisemitism.org
Tel: +1- 646 417 4046

EMET (Endowment for Middle East Truth)
PO Box 66366
Washington, DC 20035
https://emetonline.org
Sarah Stern, Founder

Gatestone Institute
14 East 60 Street, Suite 705
New York, NY 10022
Www.GatestoneInstitute.org

HonestReporting.com
165 East 56^th Street, 2^nd Fl
New York, NY 10022-2709
Tel: 1-847-745-8284
E-mail: action@honestreporting.com

Jews Choose Trump
62 William Street
New York, NY 10005
Jewschoosetrump.org
www.jewschoosetrump.org

NCJA (National Conference of Jewish Affairs)
90 Washington Valley Road, Suite 1261
Bedminster, NJ 07921
www.conservativehq.com
Attn: Rabbi Aryeh Spero

Republican Jewish Coalition
50 F St NW, Suite 100
Washington, D.C. 20001
www.rjchq.org

The Exodus Movement, founded by Elizabeth Pipko for “proud Jewish Americans who reject the hypocrisy, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism of the rising far-left.”

Elizabeth Pipko, founder and president of The Exodus Movement.The Exodus Movement
740 South Mill Avenue, #200
Tempe, AZ 85281
www.theexodusmovement.com
Elizabeth Pipko, Founder
https://theexodusmovement.com

The Lawfare Project
633 3^rd Avenue, Fl 21
New York, NY 10017-8157
https://www.thelawfareproject.org/
Brooke Goldstein, Founder/Director

PRIMER- Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting
P.O. Box 0591
West Hartford, CT 06137-0591
http://primerct.org/index.php?content=index&title=PRIMER-Connecticut
info@primerct.org
Founder: Alan Stein
President, Mark Fishman
http://www.jewishledger.com/2014/07/primer-israel-advocacy-in-good-times-and-bad/

Stop Anti-Semitism.org
https://www.stopantisemitism.org/
Features Anti-Semite of the Month and Anti-Semite of the Year
Contact: Liora Rez at Liora@stopantisemitism.org.

Understanding the Threat
Provides tools to leaders, police and citizens to identify and dismantle jihadi/terrorist networks in their local communities.
P.O. Box 190772
Dallas, TX 75219
www.UnderstandingtheThreat.com
Founder: John Guandolo

ZOA (Zionist Organization of America)
633 Third Avenue, Suite 31-B
New York, NY 10017
https://zoa.org
Morton Klein, President

VIDEO: ‘The two-state solution is a myth’

December 16, 2019/in Culture War, News, Policy, Politics, Religion, Video, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Jihad Watch

Order The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process here.

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Trump Makes Christmas About Jesus Again

December 15, 2019/in Culture War, News, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Lloyd Marcus

“Donald Trump is making Christmas great again”, Sam Sorbo, talk radio host. I could not agree more with Mrs Kevin Sorbo.

My wife Mary is a great caretaker of our elderly greyhound whom she gets up early to let him outside to relieve himself. She also takes care of six cockatiels, three parakeets, two cats and me. Whenever I want to express my appreciation, I take her shopping.

It is amazing to watch Mary’s transformation upon entering a store. Invisible antennas rise out of her head and she becomes laser-focused, in shopping mode. I can see she is happy and will have a good time. Anyone who says women and men are the same is nuts.

Allowing her to enjoy herself, I tell her to call me when she is ready. Off I go wandering into various stores in the mall. It was Saturday and checkout lines in every store were long. Trump’s booming economy was easy to see; 566,000 new jobs, 54,000 manufacturing jobs, 3.5% unemployment rate and 3.1% wage growth.

In 2016, Trump promised that if elected, Americans would say, “Merry Christmas” again. Wandering around the mall, I repeatedly heard shoppers and sales clerks say, “Merry Christmas!” I overheard a father instructing his three sons, “Remember boys, you’re suppose to be shopping for others, not for yourselves.” An adult woman said, “Mom, you’re not listening to me! Okay, we have to part ways”, as she headed to another section of the store. Ah, the sounds of the season. Clearly, the vibe in the air was upbeat and busy. Thank you president Trump.

Our tiny town of 500 residents in West Virginia had its annual Christmas Parade. The float carrying Santa and Mrs Claus was beautiful; pretty impressive for such a small town. However, the message that Jesus is the reason for the season was strong, bolstered by three floats featuring live Nativity scenes.

I smiled when I recognized a guy costumed to portray Joseph in one of the Nativity scenes. I met him at a church flea market this summer where he wore a Trump 2020 cap. Wearing my Trump 2020 cap, I approached him and said, “Are you a racist white supremacist?” He laughed as we embraced in a bear hug.

Something else I have noticed is an abundance of new faith based Christmas songs on the radio. Things have truly changed for the better in America. God has given us the gift of president Trump. I do not mean that in a weird idolatrous way. It is unarguable that the dramatic swift u-turn away from the evil direction our country was going is the result of Donald Trump in the White House.

After the Christmas parade, folks met for hot chocolate, cookies and homemade donuts gifted by the town bakery. As we chatted with neighbors, it felt warm, friendly and very Christmas; kind of like Bedford Falls in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Despite the three Grinchs’ (Schiff, Pelosi and Nadler) hate-filled attempts to remove him from office and their party’s war on Christmas, Trump has made Christmas about Jesus again.

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus (Donald J. Trump) who gives good and honorable gifts. He does not take hard earned funds from achievers to redistribute to illegals, the lazy and entitled. Here is a look into Santa Trump’s big red bag of gifts to America.

May you and your family have a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Blessed New Year.

Leftist Jews Ally with Suit-Wearing Jihadists in New Group [Part One] by Andrew Harrod

December 15, 2019/in Culture War, Elections, News, Policy, Politics, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Jihad Watch

Anwar Khan “has been doing outreach to the Jewish community on behalf of the Muslim community for decades,” stated former American Jewish Committee (AJC) official Robert Silverman at Washington, DC’s Newseum on December 3. His praise for Khan, the director of the Hamas ally Islamic Relief USA (IRUSA), typified the unsettling leftist Jewish ignorance of jihadist threats at this launch event for the Inter Jewish Muslim Alliance (IJMA).

Silverman addressed an audience that ultimately grew during the daylong conference to about 50. This included his fellow IJMA organizer, Microsoft External Affairs Director Suhail Khan, a “conservative” political operative with deep, longstanding personal Muslim Brotherhood (MB) ties. Other faces familiar to this author included the Gülenist Rumi Forum’s public relations director, Jena Luedtke, and the Iraqi-American co-founder of the American Islamic Congress, Zainab al-Suwaij.

Silverman’s association with the dubious Khan replicated Silverman’s experience as the first director of the Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council, previously rightly mocked as the “Wolf-Sheep Advisory Council.” Therein the left-leaning American Jewish Committee (AJC) had joined with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a nefarious MB-legacy organization, supposedly to combat hate crimes and other manifestations of bigotry. An IJMA statement distributed among the conference handouts and now available at IJMA’s new website proclaimed that IJMA members wanted, “as a Muslim-Jewish alliance, to counter voices of hatred and bigotry within our own communities.”

Yet the day’s proceedings demonstrated a decidedly one-sided view of prejudice among Jews and Muslims, as indicated by the seminar’s first presentation by Elana Hain from the Shalom Hartman Institute (SHI) of North America. “Antisemitism is converging on Jews from both the right and the left,” she correctly noted, but while “everybody in this room knows about antisemitism on the right,” leftist antisemitism “is much harder to talk about.” Today “what we are seeing on the progressive left is a type of conversionist antisemitism that says, ‘Jew, we will accept you if you disavow your commitment to the state of Israel.’” She noted particularly that “my spouse works on a college campus, and I have seen how Jewish students are increasingly unwelcome in progressive spaces.”

However true, Hain’s remarks surprisingly contained not a single reference to antisemitism involving Muslims or Islam. Excerpts from three publications (see here, here, and here) in her handout included several dubious allegations of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy and administration inciting antisemitism. By contrast, “Muslims” appeared only once in a Tablet article’s reference to hate crimes, even though the American Interest article she quoted briefly discussed “Islamic antisemitism” in an uncited paragraph. Meanwhile, internet searches of the Tablet for “Islamic antisemitism” find numerous articles (e.g. here).

Hain’s blind spot seemed particularly disturbing given the annual conference in Chicago of the viciously anti-Semitic American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) just days before (November 28-30). The conference featured inflammatory condemnations of Israel’s right to exist from prominent American Muslims. This included former Women’s March leader Linda Sarsour, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Executive Director Nihad Awad, and CAIR San Francisco chapter leader Zahra Billoo.

This author accordingly presented to Hain an audience question noting the AMP conference and that AJC CEO David Harris has previously called for “trifocal lenses” to confront antisemitism from the “far left, the far right, and the jihadists.” She responded that she was “including in progressive antisemitism” the “antisemitism that comes from the Muslim community around Israel.” She added that she had not devoted particular study to Islamic antisemitism and suggested that Muslim conference attendees might be better qualified to discuss this topic.

Just as Hain only circuitously referenced Islamic antisemitism, she similarly indulged questionable tropes commonplace among many Muslims. For example, without any indication of whether Jews or others had any valid objections to Islamic beliefs and/or behaviors she used the Orwellian phrase “Islamophobia.” Conflicts between Israel and Palestinians should not “lead to antisemitism or ‘Islamophobia,’” she said, as if irrational Jew-hatred were the same as critical inquiry into Islam.

Audience member Imam Abdullah Antepli, a leader of SHI’s Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), reflected Hain’s remarks with questions about “Islamophobic elements within the Jewish community.” “Within this organized anti-Muslim campaign in the United States, there are so many visible Jews,” he stated. Jews have a “fear of losing the state of Israel” and “when many Jews meet Muslims, that fear is all that they see,” she responded while again not explaining why such perceptions are meritless (consider Israel, Muslims, and Britain’s Labour Party).

Hain also equated Jewish national liberation in Israel with baseless claims that “Palestinians” represent a unique, historical nation and not merely a local collection of Levantine Arab communities. The statement “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people” is equally false as “Jews don’t have a history in that region” of Israel, she said. This is “mutual denial of peoples’ actual historical experiences,” notwithstanding numerous modern “Palestinian” fictions.

A veiled female Muslim audience member from the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, a group obsessed with all real and imagined “white supremacy,” prompted more historical revisionism from Hain. The Muslim claimed that historically the term “antisemitism” encompassed prejudice against both Jews and Muslims, and Hain suggested that antisemitism could include both “Judeophobia” and “Islamophobia.” In reality, the German publicist Wilhelm Marr invented the word “antisemitism” in 1879 in order to impart a scientific veneer to his rabid Jew-hatred.

The appeasing Hain, who called the leftist American rabbi Jill Jacobs a “colleague and a friend,” paralleled the reaction to Islamic antisemitism of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an IJMA sponsor. As Islamic antisemitism scholar Andrew Bostom has documented, ADL global surveys of antisemitism in recent years have identified Muslims as world leaders in prejudice against Jews. Yet the ADL has minimized such facts.

While Hain acted conciliatory towards Muslims, they often show little reciprocity, as a following article will analyze. Conference speakers after her like the radical “Islamophobia” expert Wajahat Ali were far more direct in their accusations of bigotry against various Jews while exhibiting little interest in the anti-Semitic milieus of conference participants like ISNA members.

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Pius XII, Francis, and the Media

December 14, 2019/in Culture War, News, Policy, Politics, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Catholic Thing

William Kilpatrick: Pope Francis seems not to see a problem meeting with and embracing an anti-Semite like the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayyeb.

John Cornwell’s 1999 smear of Pius XII, Hitler’s Pope, became a best-seller, lauded by reviewers and excerpted in major magazines. Cornwell portrayed Pope Pius as an anti-Semite, a supporter of Hitler, and an enabler of the Holocaust.

None of this is true, of course. Eugenio Pacelli despised Hitler, denounced Nazi ideology on numerous occasions, and – according to historian Martin Gilbert – was responsible for saving the lives of thousands of Jews. During the German occupation of Rome, hundreds of Jews were housed within the Vatican, 3,000 found sanctuary in Castel Gandolfo, and at Pius’s request, Roman convents and monasteries hid 5,000 Jews.

The book’s calumny was captured in the cover photo, which shows Cardinal Pacelli leaving a government building and being saluted by two German soldiers. All meant to insinuate that Pope Pius XII has just emerged from an important meeting with Hitler. But the picture was taken in 1927, long before Hitler came to power. Nuncio Pacelli was leaving a reception for German president, Paul von Hindenburg, and the soldiers were members of the Weimar Republic, not the Third Reich. Pacelli never met Hitler. Indeed, when Hitler visited Rome in 1938, Pacelli, along with Pope Pius XI, publicly snubbed him by leaving town. No photo of Pope Pius XII with Hitler exists. If it did, the world press would probably feature it on a regular basis along with stories condemning Pius for anti-Semitism.

Jump ahead to the present, and what do we find? Why, it’s a photo of Pope Francis kissing a well-known anti-Semite. No need to go digging to find it. In fact, there are several photos taken on several occasions of the pope embracing the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayyeb. Yet, the Grand Imam’s anti-Semitic views are no secret, and the pope must surely have been aware of them.

During the Second Intifada, al-Tayyeb said that “The solution to Israeli terror lies in the proliferation of suicide attacks that spread terror into the hearts of Allah’s enemies.” He added, “the Palestinians have the right to blow up everything they want.”

Why, then, isn’t an outraged press running the photo on the front pages accompanied by captions such as “Pope embraces anti-Semitic Imam”?

The short answer is that they’re not outraged – at the pope or the Grand Imam.

The media, of course, does display outrage at anti-Semitism when it arises among groups or individuals considered to be white nationalists, Christian extremists, alt-right, or just plain conservatives. But other groups and individuals seem exempt from charges of anti-Semitism.

When leftists, liberals, and Democrats express anti-Jewish sentiments, the mainstream media tends to look the other way. The other exempt group is Muslims. They can’t be blamed because . . . well, because it’s a part of their culture. Besides, considering all the evils that the Jewish State has visited upon Palestinians, it’s perfectly understandable that Muslims would respond with anti-Jewish sentiments – or, so the reasoning goes.

Since liberal journalists tend to favor Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and since they are very sensitive to cultural differences, it’s not surprising that the Grand Imam, too, is given a free pass on his anti-Semitism.

Pope Francis also gets a pass because the liberal press correctly perceives him to be a fellow liberal. So, even if they thought the embrace of al-Tayyeb to be unfortunate (which they don’t), it would be quickly forgotten in light of all of Francis’s good deeds on behalf of the environment, the poor, migrants, and world peace. Indeed, the signing of the Abu Dhabi “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together” would by itself, for liberal media, be enough to absolve both men of any prejudicial thoughts.

The media is friendly to Francis because he’s part of the club of bien-pensants who only wish well for the world. The proof of their protective attitude toward Francis is that, although Francis’s papacy is possibly the most scandal-ridden in modern history, with new scandals emerging on a weekly basis, most of the media has never looked deeply into the myriad charges.

The most serious charges have to do with cover-ups for abusive prelates in which Francis has been directly involved. How has the media responded to these cover-ups? Basically, with a cover-up of their own. Not that the press doesn’t run stories about the abuse cover-ups, but they are strangely restrained and muted stories, often blaming “conservatives” for using the scandals to oppose the pope. By-and-large, they assign only minimal responsibility to Pope Francis. Just as the media wants us to believe that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, it would also have us believe that the abuse crisis has nothing to do with Francis even when some of his closest collaborators are implicated.

Compare this to the media feeding frenzy that followed the 1963 premier of Rolf Hochhuth’s play “The Deputy” – which vilified Pope Pius Xll as a Nazi collaborator. For the next four decades, one sloppily researched book after another portrayed Pius as an anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizer.

The slur has never really gone away. It hangs heavily in the air waiting for the next scandalous book about the man who supposedly welcomed the Holocaust. As I wrote five years ago, “the ‘Hitler’s Pope’ campaign was highly successful, with the result that the calumny against Pius is now almost universally accepted by the opinion-making elites and by plenty of average citizens as well.”

Despite the fact that there now exist a number of well-documented books refuting the “Hitler’s Pope” myth, there have been, as far as I know, no retractions or apologies by those who helped spread the myth. The myth has been so widely disseminated, that few know that, in the years after World War II, Pius Xll was considered a hero by Jews throughout the world. And fewer still are aware that he was actually involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler.

The media seems to have a double standard about popes. They’ll believe anything derogatory about the pope who was known to be a staunch defender of tradition and doctrine, and they’ll forgive everything for a pope who shares their own liberal views. On the one hand, they’re eager to display a “fake news” photo of Pius in what appears to be a compromising position; on the other hand, they’re quite willing to ignore a photo of Francis embracing a contemporary anti-Semite.

None of this is meant to suggest that Francis himself is anti-Semitic, but it does suggest a certain carelessness on his part. Pope Pius Xll knew enough not to give photo ops to Hitler. But Francis doesn’t seem to understand that there is a problem with showering affection on a man with pronounced anti-Semitic views, so long as they are promoting interreligious relations.

Unlike Pius, he doesn’t seem to appreciate the gravity of his office or the responsibilities that go with it. He does seem, however, to understand that the media will put a positive spin on just about anything he does. So, perhaps, he thinks he can afford to be careless.

COLUMN BY

William Kilpatrick

William Kilpatrick is the author of Christianity, Islam and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West, and a new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Jihad. His work is supported in part by the Shillman Foundation. For more on his work and writings, visit his website, The Turning Point Project

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2019 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Trump Pushes Back Against Campus Anti-Semitism

December 14, 2019/in Culture War, Elections, News, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Jihad Watch

Video: President Trump signs antisemitism executive order – News 19 WLTX

Pro-Palestinian thuggery on campus finally gets a rebuke. My latest in FrontPage:

President Trump made history again on Wednesday, when he signed an executive order authorizing the Department of Education to act against anti-Semitism on American college and university campuses, and making it clear that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal money, “would apply to institutions that traffic in anti-Semitic hate,” that is, virtually every public institution of higher learning in America.

This executive order is long overdue. The Jerusalem Post reported that as far back as 2015, “more than 30 organizations, including Jewish fraternity AEPI, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Zionist Organization of America wrote to University of California regent Bruce D. Varner in July, requesting that substantive measures be taken to combat rising anti-Semitism on UC-affiliated campuses.”

The problem wasn’t restricted to the University of California, either, but nothing was done. And it is virtually inconceivable that Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or any presidential hopeful on the scene today would have signed the executive order that Trump signed Wednesday. Trump pointed out that earlier efforts to combat campus anti-Semitism “didn’t get it done,” and declared: “This year, there’s no roadblock.”

There have been roadblocks for years. Campus groups, most notably the notorious Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), have grown increasingly aggressive as the Left has intensified its embrace of opposition to Israel and open anti-Semitism. Jewish students and supporters of Israel on campuses have been shouted down, defamed, vilified, and physically menaced, with only a handful of groups, particularly the David Horowitz Freedom Center, providing any support for those students.

The Freedom Center has fought back, virtually alone, demanding that universities withdraw their support for pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic groups such as the SJP that spread Jew-hatred on campus for well over a decade. The Center provides students who support Israel with valuable intellectual resources and helping them to stand strong against the furious onslaught from Leftists and the Muslim Brotherhood juggernaut.

There are so many incidents illustrating that furious onslaught that they could fill an entire good-sized book. Nor have only students been targeted: in February 2010 at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, attempted to give a speech there on relations between the United States and Israel but was ultimately unable to do so: after Muslim students heckled and interrupted him repeatedly, he left the stage.
Before Oren appeared, the UCI Muslim Student Union (MSU) chapter had issued a statement that read, in part:

As people of conscience, we oppose Michael Oren’s invitation to our campus. Propagating murder is not a responsible expression of free speech. . . .

We strongly condemn the university for cosponsoring, and therefore, inadvertently supporting the ambassador of a state that is condemned by more UN Human Rights Council resolutions than all other countries in the world combined. . . .

The most important aspect of this statement was its claim that the university was “inadvertently supporting” Oren’s views just by cosponsoring the event. This was a complete rejection of the idea of the university as a place where all ideas can be discussed and accepted or rejected on their own merits. As far as the Muslim Student Union was concerned, giving someone a platform was tantamount to endorsing his views—so only those with acceptable opinions, that is, anti-Israel opinions, should be given a platform.

Applying that principle has turned universities into one-party states in which only one point of view is allowed. Trump’s executive order opens up the possibility that they might become institutions of higher learning again.

It will take a great deal of effort. At Temple University in August 2014, SJP members called Daniel Vessal, a Camera on Campus fellow and a member of the Jewish fraternity AEPi, “kike” and “baby killer,” and punched him in the face. Vessal explained that when he tried to engage SJP members in dialogue, but “people at the table were calling me a ‘baby killer’…And then this kid just rocks me in the face as hard as he can. My glasses flew off. After a two-second blur I had no clue what had happened. I couldn’t believe the kid actually hit me. When the police came over and were filing the report the kids at the table were screaming ‘You Zionist pig, you racist, that’s what you get.’” Police did not arrest the attacker.

In May 2016, Eliana Kopley, a sophomore at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), was trying to enter a screening of an Israeli documentary about the IDF called “Beneath the Helmet” when she was accosted by an angry mob screaming “Long live the Intifada!” and “F**k Israel!” The protesters prevented her from entering the building where the film was being shown, and even chased her into a nearby building, where they pounded on the doors and windows while continuing to scream their slogans. Police ultimately escorted Kopley into the screening. The UCI chapter of the SJP was thrilled with this thuggery, and praised the mob.

Likewise in a November 2015 rally organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Hunter College, a campus of the City University of New York (CUNY), protesters brandishing signs reading “Boycott Israel” and “Zionists out of CUNY” screamed at Jewish students: “Zionists go home!,” “Zionists out of CUNY!,” “Jews out of CUNY!,” “Get out of America!,” and “We should drag the Zionist down the street!” In February 2016 at Brooklyn College, a group of hard-Left students burst into a Faculty Council meeting and began chanting “Zionists off campus!” When a Jewish professor tried to get students to end their disruption of a Faculty Council meeting at Brooklyn College, they called him a “Zionist pig.”

The Muslim students’ behavior toward Oren and at Hunter College rapidly became the norm across U.S. campuses: it has become unsafe to be pro-Israel at an American university. As colleges grow more authoritarian in their Leftism, they have become increasingly inhospitable to students who oppose the Left’s pet causes.

But now President Trump has ensured that universities and colleges that actively allow anti-Semitic activity will face consequences. At the signing of the executive order, Alan Dershowitz said: “No more important event to turn universities away from being bastions of hatred and discrimination than this executive order being signed today. It is a game changer. It will go down in history as one of the most important events in 2,000 battle against anti-Semitism.”

For the sake of simple justice, and for the sake of the freedom of inquiry on college and university campuses, and for the sake of the truths that the Freedom Center has been fighting for all these years, all people of good will should hope that Dershowitz will be proven correct.

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Tlaib Falsely Blames Jersey Shooting on ‘White Supremacy’

December 13, 2019/in Culture War, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Discover The Networks

Rep. Rashida Tlaib took to social media Thursday to falsely blame white supremacy for Tuesday’s murderous shooting in Jersey City targeting Jews.

“This is heartbreaking,” Tlaib tweeted. “White supremacy kills.” This came more than a day after the two perpetrators had been identified as David Andersen and Francine Grahm, both black. Police found anti-Semitic posts online written by the suspects, who were killed in a shootout with police. A manifesto of some sort was left in their car. Anderson reportedly was associated with the Black Hebrew Israelites, a black nationalist group made up of racists and anti-Semites.

Tlaib eventually deleted her racist tweet without comment.

“It’s telling, and frankly sick, that Tlaib tweeted out sympathies for the Jews that were murdered blaming it on white supremacists,” tweeted journalist Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll. “Didn’t care enough to find out what happened. Just enough to use dead Jews for her political agenda.”

Rashida Tlaib

35 Known Connections

Upon winning the Democratic primary on August 7, Tlaib draped herself in a Palestinian flag while celebrating with her supporters. In her victory speech, she promised to “fight back against every racist and oppressive structure that needs to be dismantled.” When she was subsequently asked by Great Britain’s Channel 4 News if she planned to vote against U.S. military aid to Israel, Tlaib responded: “Absolutely, if it has something to do with inequality and not access to people having justice…. If you’re going to be a country that discriminates on somebody solely based on their faith, solely based on their skin color … I will be using my position in Congress so that no country, not one, should be able to get aid from the U.S. when they still promote that kind of injustice….”

When Tlaib won her congressional election on November 6, 2018, CAIR founder and CEO Nihad Awad congratulated her on her “historic victory of becoming the first Muslim and Palestinian woman in the U.S. Congress.”

In December 2018, Tlaib become just the second U.S. lawmaker — the first was Ilhan Omar — to publicly voice support for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. “I personally support the BDS movement,” Tlaib said in an interview with the news website The Intercept. “I want us to see that segregation and how that has really harmed us being able to achieve real peace in that region.”

To learn more about Rashida Tlaib, click on the profile link here.

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Guilty! I Support the Iranian Protestors

December 12, 2019/in Culture War, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Kenneth R. Timmerman

As protests continue to wreak havoc in Iran with a breadth and intensity not seen since the 1978 revolution against the Shah, Tehran’s clerical rulers and their Revolutionary Guards enforcers have become increasingly desperate.

That could be seen in videos that recently surfaced of the horrific massacre of hundreds of unarmed protestors in Bandar-e Mahshahr, an oil town on the Persian Gulf near Iraq. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his top Iran advisor, Brian Hook, both condemned the regime for sheer evil of this deed, worthy of Hitler’s executioners.

So what is the regime to do? Why, blame the Americans, of course!

In every Iranian media today you will find articles and columns blaming President Trump, Secretary of State Pompeo, and yes – even me! – for fueling the protests.

Hossein Shariatmadari, the executive editor of Kayhan, a daily that is run by Iran’s intelligence ministry, is a top regime propagandist. When things go wrong for his clerical brethren, he reassures them that it’s not their fault: it’s the Americans.

Over the years, he has repeatedly identified me as the head of some secret-spooky CIA HUMINT program to assist the Iranian opposition.

I’m flattered he thinks that one person, unfunded, unsupported, with only a voice, can have such an impact. And I’m positively thrilled that he actually believes that the CIA has such a program (alas, they do not).

Nevertheless, in his latest screed, published in Kayhan on December 4, he positively fumed.

“Didn’t Trump officially support the protests as soon as they started? And didn’t he announce that America will meet the needs of the rioters? I say, Damn him! Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state, and Kenneth Timmerman, former CIA member and currently director of the American institute NED [National Endowment for Democracy], also acknowledged that the CIA has not only helped the Iranian rioters by providing software systems but also has delivered them hardware.”

For years, the State Department has funded software developers to provide Persian-language messaging apps and encrypted web-browsers for Iranians. That’s a matter of public record.

Early iterations of these apps were woefully deficient, and actually caused more harm than good, since Iranian statehackers were able to penetrate them and expose the Iranians who were using them.

I am guessing that the technology has gotten better since then. Why? Because the regime felt so threatened that immediately when the protests erupted in response to the gasoline price hikes on November 15, they cut off all access to the Internet nation-wide, starting with the popular Telegram app that reportedly is now used by forty million Iranians (half the entire population).

Iran’s so-called Cyber Army monitors traffic on these apps on a regular basis. And they monitor opposition news sites, especially those that have tentacles into the regime itself and expose the abject corruption of the regime’s leaders.

Iran’s intelligence services goes to great lengths to neutralize these opponents, not just by hacking their websites, which they do frequently, but by sending assassins out to kill them.

In early November, an Iranian regime assassin gunned down a cyber activist, Massood Molavi, in the streets of Istanbul, in a brazen attack caught on live video surveillance cameras. Molavi’s sin? Exposing secret documents from within the regime’s intelligence services on a Telegram channel known as “Black Box.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo referred to Molavi in a recent press conference where he blasted Iran’s clerical and military leaders for their murderous crackdown on protesters and dissident.

Just one month earlier, the regime boasted of capturing the publisher of a popular opposition news site, Ruhollah Zam, luring him from Europe to Iraq with promises of big money. After they forced him to make a televised confession, he disappeared.

But no amount of bluster, and clearly, no amount of bullets, can check the will of the Iranian people to resist the tyranny of their usurper rulers.

As I wrote in 2009, on a previous occasion when IRGC Brig. Gen. Hossein Shariatmadari and others in the state-run media in Iran tried to lay the “blame” on me and my foundation for an earlier run of nation-wide protests, I would be happy to accept such an honor, however misplaced.

However, neither I nor my board can take credit for such power or influence. As I wrote then,

“The people of Iran have shown through their courage, independence and determination that they don’t need help from anyone outside their country to get them to take to the streets. I have full confidence that they will get rid of the dictators of Tehran. Apparently, so do the regime’s leaders.”

Wonder if they’ve started fueling the Leader’s escape jet yet?

Muslims Reject Hijabi Model Halima Aden

December 12, 2019/in Culture War, News, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Clarion Project

Making headlines as the first mainstream hijabi model who appeared on Kanye West’s runway then again in Sports Illustrated, Halima Aden is turning heads again — this time as a headline speaker at the Reviving Islamic Spirit conference.

**Huge Announcement**
For the first time at #RIS2019 – Halima Aden @Kinglimaa!!

Don’t miss out!! Get a chance to meet Halima and hear from her live by purchasing your ticket at https://t.co/iAatcEdWVc pic.twitter.com/FeruEcGSJx

— #RIS2019 (@risconvention) December 6, 2019

Taking place December 20-22, 2019 in Toronto, Canada, the choice of hijabi model Halima Aden has drawn mixed reviews from Muslims. While there’s always the group that loves the fanfare of celebrity Muslims, there is also the group of Muslims who are interested in faith for the sake of faith rather than the next fashionable identity brand (which is how some see Halima and social justice Muslims).

Why this is problematic: it tells us #Muslims to take as role models individuals whose public decisions and acts contradict the #Quran & sunnah. Can we please just stop & develop some foresight? What does #RIS2019 presume to achieve by becoming a pop cult convention? https://t.co/q75ImD13Mf

https://twitter.com/NourMGoda/status/1204071146632699905?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1204071146632699905&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fclarionproject.org%2Fris-muslims-reject-hijabi-model-halima-aden%2F

Though I don’t wear the hijab and understand that Muslim women who do wear one tend to have their own reasons for it, I can sympathize with the frustration of seeing items of faith reduced to markers of diversity or fashion, or embraced by businesses as a marketable item. On that, conservatives, traditionalists, a reformer like myself and even Islamists disinterested in social justice causes, can all agree: Stop fetishizing what some women in Islam choose to wear as part of their faith.

Who is she?

— Noufal Ibrahim (@noufalibrahim) December 9, 2019

While I’m sure Halima Aden is a wonderful person, leaning into bringing on board celebrity Muslims to draw an audience is against what I imagine is the spirit of Islam. We should be led by our ethics and ideas, and not by how loved we are by the material world.

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Those territories are not “occupied,” and there is no “West Bank” and no “Palestine”

December 12, 2019/in Culture War, Elections, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Jihad Watch

This article makes supremely important points that are all too often overlooked. Find out how and why the “Palestinians” were invented in The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process.

“Losing the Semantic War on ‘Palestine,’” by Mitchell Bard, Algemeiner, December 5, 2019:

I have written before about the importance of semantics in the discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and how frustrated many people are about losing various battles over nomenclature, such as references to the disputed territories as “occupied,” and “Judea and Samaria” as the West Bank. An arguably more important semantic battle regarding this area has gone largely unnoticed — and been lost without a fight.

Many of Israel’s detractors, professors, the media, and others now routinely refer to the conflict as “Israel-Palestine.” Here are a few examples:

Jewish Voice for Peace has a web page for Israel Palestine Conflict 101.

Human Rights Watch’s website has the header “Israel/Palestine” as does the respected journal Foreign Policy.

The Global Policy Forum goes one better with its page on “Israel, Palestine and the Occupied Territories.”

Brown University’s newspaper headlined its coverage of a discussion by two Middle East analysts, “Policy experts talk Israel-Palestine conflict.”

Tablet ran the story, “How To Talk About Israel And Palestine.”

Haaretz, Newsweek, NPR, and The Independent are just a sample of media outlets listing articles under “Israel-Palestine.”

The Middle East Studies Association routinely has panels and papers such as “Regional Politics and the Palestine/Israel Conflict” and “Memory and History in the Palestine/Israel Conflict.”

The University of Colorado has an endowed professor of Israel/Palestine Studies in the Program in Jewish Studies.

Why is this a problem?

Any scholar who is not pushing a political agenda knows Palestine ceased to exist in 1948 when Israel won its war of independence, and Jordan (which is also part of historic Palestine) seized the West Bank and Egypt captured the Gaza Strip.

The use of the word “Palestine” is sometimes unclear. Is it referencing the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Israel, Gaza, or some combination of these areas? Depending on the interpretation, this could delegitimize the existence of Israel and the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their homeland.

It is also problematic because it can imply that the conflict is over an area where the Palestinians were once sovereign. This feeds the narrative of Israel as an occupier. The Palestinians have never had a state, and had no interest in one during the Jordanian occupation.

Referring to the Israel-Palestine conflict also reinforces the idea that the dispute is over land. Often misleadingly described as a fight by two peoples over one land, the reality is more complex, as it involves politics, psychology, history, and religion. In recent years, the Islamization of the conflict has eclipsed other factors, as many Palestinians reject the historical Jewish connection to the land and will not contemplate Jews living on Islamic territory or ruling over Muslims.

The most pernicious aspect of the reference to “Palestine” is to create a false equivalency with the sovereign nation of Israel. Israel is a democracy that shares the values and interests of the West. Palestine does not exist; it may one day in the future, but for now, there is only the Palestinian Authority, which is autocratic, denies its people their basic rights, and does not share the values or interests of the West…

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Trump Secures Freedom for American Jailed in Iran

December 11, 2019/in Culture War, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Clarion Project

President Trump secured the freedom for an American jailed in Iran.

Xiyue Wang was a 37-year old graduate student at Princeton doing research in Iran in 2016 when he was jailed for spying. The U.S. denied those charges.

By May 2017, he was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison and sent to Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison used for political prisoners.

Just days ago, Wang was flown in a Swiss government airplane from Tehran to Zurich. He was met by Brian H. Hook, the State Department’s special representative for Iran.

Wang was traded in a prisoner exchange for Masoud Soleimani, an Iranian scientist who was arrested at a Chicago airport last year and was convicted on charges of violating American trade sanctions against Iran.

The charges against Soleimani were dropped by the Justice Department.

The New York Times reports, “American officials said that Mr. Soleimani’s release was a low price to pay for Mr. Wang’s freedom because Mr. Soleimani was expected to be released from prison as early as next month under a plea agreement.”

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1203366688638541826?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1203366688638541826&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fclarionproject.org%2Ftrump-secures-freedom-for-american-jailed-in-iran%2F

For his part, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Tehran was “fully ready” for a full prisoner exchange with the U.S., prompting political analysts to wonder if the move signified a thawing in relations between Iran and the U.S.

After getting our hostage back this week, fully ready for comprehensive prisoner exchange.

The ball is in the US’ court.

Today, back to regional diplomacy in Istanbul, at the Ministerial Heart of Asia mtg, joining forces for peace & development in Afghanistan.#NeighborsFirst pic.twitter.com/dJw05JYM7X

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) December 9, 2019

Iran is still holding a number of American citizens, also falsely arrested as spies. These citizens include Baquer Namazi, 81, and his son Siamak, 45, who were sentenced in 2016 to 10 years in prison each for “collaborating with an enemy state [the U.S.],” charges that were never detailed.

Siamak was arrested just a short time after the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers was concluded. His father, a retired official with the United Nations, was arrested in February while visiting his son in jail.

Ironically, Siamak, a businessman, was connected to the National Iranian American Council, a pro-Iranian lobby group in Washington, D.C. He spoke out against U.S. sanctions on Iran and advocated for closer business ties between the countries. He was arrested in October of 2015 while visiting relatives in Iran.

As pointed by The Wall Street Journal, the payment by the Obama administration to Iran of $1.7 billion in cash received on the day a number of U.S. hostages were released “has created an incentive for them to imprison more Americans to trade for some future concession.”

Even considering the fact that Siamak was promoting the Iranian regime, the Journal continued, “the mullahs put their need for U.S. hostages above gratitude for such political assistance. Revolutions tend to devour their foreign sympathizers.”

The Namazis are held separately in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, where their health is said to be significantly deteriorating.

Other Americans being held by Iran include:

Karan Vafadari, an American-Iranian dual national who owns an art gallery in Iran.
Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent and CIA contractor, who went missing while on a trip to Iran’s Kish Island in the Persian Gulf in 2007. Pictures of Levinson taken in 2011 were broadcast on Fox News in 2013. They showed a haggard Levinson with unkempt graying hair and beard in chains and wearing an orange jumpsuit.
Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese citizen and a permanent resident of the United States who is an information technology expert was arrested while atending a professional conference in Iran. Zakka, whose appeal was denied, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of spying.

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Bronx: Muslim migrant plotted to behead people with chainsaw, amassed large stash of weapons

December 11, 2019/in Immigration, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Jihad Watch

“Defense attorney Susan Kellman said Alimehmeti had struggled to fit in after moving to the US aged six from Albania.”

Yeah, that explains it. Doesn’t everyone who struggles to fit in as a child stockpile weapons and try to join a terrorist group?

“ISIS fanatic dubbed ‘The Dentist’ who hoped to behead people and stockpiled knives and a pocket chainsaw in his Bronx apartment is jailed for 22 years as judge brands him a ‘ticking time bomb,’” by Isabella Nikolic, Mailonline, December 9, 2019 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

An ISIS fanatic who was dubbed ‘The Dentist’ and hoped to behead people with a pocket chainsaw has been jailed for 22 years after a judge branded him a ‘ticking time bomb’.

Sajmir Alimehmeti, 26, who lived in an apartment in the Bronx, was sentenced by US district judge Paul Englemayer, who listed the terrifying stash of weapons he amassed.

They included a military-grade survival knife with a five-inch blade, three tactical knives with four-inch blades, two credit-card-sized folding knives, a commando wire pocket saw, a 24-inch pocket chainsaw, a rucksack designed for tactical combat, a tactical ski mask and handcuffs.

Judge Englemayer said it was impossible to conceive of a ‘benign reason’ for Alimehmeti to ‘stockpile weapons that would be used to restrain, gut, or decapitate a human body’, according to the New York Post.

Alimehmeti reportedly used coded language when referring to places he wanted to travel to ‘brush his teeth’.

Prosecutors also said that he claimed he watched ISIS beheading videos to keep himself motivated while exercising.

He allegedly initially tried to travel to the Middle East to join ISIS twice in 2014 but was stopped by British authorities both times.

He is accused of being stopped at Manchester Airport in October 2014 when security found nunchucks and camouflage clothing in his luggage.

And he is accused of trying to get to the Middle East again in December that year but was stopped by security at Heathrow Airport in London when they found images of ISIS fighters and improvised explosive devices on his cellphone….

Defense attorney Susan Kellman said Alimehmeti had struggled to fit in after moving to the US aged six from Albania.

She claimed he was radicalized as a teenager during a stint for robbery in the Fishkill Correctional Facility by Mohamed Mamdouh, one of the masterminds behind a foiled plot to blow up a Manhattan synagogue in 2011.

In addition to 22 years in prison, Alimehmeti also was sentenced to five years supervised release.

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Terror Attack At Naval Air Station Highlights Immigration Catastrophe

December 10, 2019/in Culture War, Featured, Immigration, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Michael Cutler

Limitations in the vetting process endanger national security.

The nearly all-consuming fixation on the lack of border security along the U.S./Mexican border ignore the many other elements of what should be a cohesive and coordinated immigration system.

Contrary to the claims made by the open borders, immigration anarchists, the purpose of the border wall is not to prevent the entry of aliens and/or cargo into the United States, but to make certain that all who enter the United States are properly vetted and records of their entry are created.

However, not enough attention is paid to the vetting process itself upon which the integrity of the immigration system depends.

The issue of border security must include the process by which visas are issued and by which aliens are screened at ports of entry.

The great majority of foreign terrorists who have attacked our nation have actually entered the United States through ports of entry either with visas that were obtained by concealing the backgrounds and true identities of the aliens in question, or by making bogus claims to political asylum, getting released and then disappearing.

The issue of the vetting of aliens has made it to the front page of newspapers and the “A block” of television news program because of the deadly shooting at the Pensacola Air Naval Station by a 21 year old member of the Saudi military, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a second lieutenant in the Saudi Air Force as reported in the New York Times on December 6, 2019, Trainee on Military Base Mounts Deadly Attack.

It has been reported that Alshamrani had posted virulently anti-American remarks in social media. The immediate obvious question is whether or not the vetting process including appropriate searches of social media accounts that might have disclosed his hatred of America before he was granted his visa.

The ability to effectively vet applicants is limited. Searches delve into possible criminal histories, but when applicants have no criminal histories and no known ties to criminal or terrorist organizations, such vetting process may fail.

Apparently there are two purposes behind the training of foreign pilots by the U.S. military: to protect U.S. national security interests and encourage the sale of military aircraft and other equipment by U.S. military suppliers.

Justifiably, a number of political leaders, and other have called for the suspension of this program so that the vetting process can be evaluated. To this point, on December 8, 2019 the New York Post reported, Lindsey Graham wants training program suspended after Pensacola shooting.

That report included this excerpt:

US Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who represents the base, said on ABC’s “This Week” that the incident “has to inform our ongoing relationship with Saudi Arabia.”

“We should not be taking new incoming Saudi students until we’re absolutely confident in our vetting process,” Gaetz said.

There are currently more than 850 Saudis in the US for various training activities — among about 5,000 foreigners from 153 countries in the country undergoing some form of military training.

There has been a string of incidents that include foreign military students going missing in the United States in the past. There have also been worrying reports about foreign students enrolled in other U.S. schools going missing, including some who are citizens of countries that have a nexus to terrorism. Yet with only about 6,000 ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents for the entire United States and with more than half of them engaged in the investigation of non-immigration issues, there are precious few agents available to enforce the immigration laws. “Sanctuary” policies of a growing number of cities and states exacerbate the crisis.

One of the most astonishing incidents involving a failure of the vetting process occurred six months after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 when it was discovered that two of the dead terrorists had been granted authorization to attend a civilian flight school in March 2002, six months after they participated in the terror attacks of 9/11.

On March 19, 2001 the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims conducted a hearing into that fiasco on the topic, INS’s March 2002 Notification Of Approval Of Change Of Status For Pilot Training For Terrorist Hijackers Mohammed Atta And Marwan Al-Shehhi. The video of that hearing is worth watching.

I was called as an expert witness at that hearing.

For all of the beast-beating and complaints of the members of that subcommittee and other members of congress, measures to prevent such failures have been outweighed by the demands of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a veritable laundry list of corporations and special interest groups that our immigration laws not be enforced and our borders be allowed to remain wide open by those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing- even when lives and national security are on the line!

Today we are focused on aliens being given the best possible military flight training in America’s latest fighter planes. The possibilities of what such a highly-trained pilot could do in the seat of such as aircraft is mind-numbing.

In the wake of the shooting at the Pensacola Air Naval Station information had been circulated that the alleged shooter had visited New York City days before the attack, possibly in the company of other classmates. This immediately gave rise the concern that he, and possibly others, might have been scoping out potential targets for terror attacks.

The mainstream media, in a moment of rare candor raised that possibility. Yet no one had thought to a Department of Justice press release published just days earlier.

On December 3, 2019 the DOJ reported, Hizballah Operative Sentenced to 40 Years in Prison for Covert Terrorist Activities on Behalf of Hizballah’s Islamic Jihad Organization; Ali Kourani Was Trained by Hizballah’s External Terrorist Operations Component and Gathered Intelligence in New York City in Support of Attack-Planning Efforts.

You will notice in this excerpt from the earlier DOJ press release that announced Kourani’s conviction that immigration law violations were among the crimes that he committed:

Yesterday, a jury returned a guilty verdict against Ali Kourani, a.k.a. “Ali Mohamad Kourani,” a.k.a. “Jacob Lewis,” a.k.a. “Daniel,” on all eight counts in the Indictment, which charged him with terrorism, sanctions and immigration offenses for his illicit work as an operative for Hizballah’s external attack-planning component. Kourani is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 27, 2019…

My recent article, Alleged Hezbollah “Sleeper” Arrested In NYC By Joint Terrorism Task Force included this paragraph:

On September 19, 2019 the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York issued a press release that announced, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Announces Indictment Of New Jersey Man For Terrorist Activities On Behalf Of Hizballah’s Islamic Jihad Organization. The subtitle of that press release provides more disturbing information, Alexei Saab Allegedly Was Trained by Hizballah’s External Terrorist Operations Component in Bomb-Making and Conducted Intelligence-Gathering in New York City and Washington, D.C., and Elsewhere in Support of Hizballah’s Attack-Planning Efforts.

On August 2, 2019 the Justice Department posted thus extremely this worrying news release, Afghanistan National and Former U.S. Military Interpreter Charged for Role in Human Smuggling Conspiracy.

On August 20, 2018 the Department of Justice issued a press release, Two Individuals Charged for Acting as Illegal Agents of the Government of Iran.

My piece written in February 2018, Saudi Graduate Of Al Qaeda Terror Training Camp Arrested In Oklahoma – Alleged classmate of 9/11 hijackers attended US flight school in 2016 included a link to the DOJ press release, Saudi Citizen Charged in Oklahoma With Concealing Attendance at Al Qaeda Training Camp.

There is a clear nexus between immigration and national security yet, for decades, the immigration system has abjectly lacked the resources it needs to imbue this important mission with the resources essential to enhancing the integrity of this vital system. Furthermore, the radical Left have demanded the dismantling of immigration law enforcement altogether, in essence ordering “Shields down” in a truly perilous era.

How many more innocent victims must be slaughtered before our nation comes to its senses?

Not All Findings of Religious Freedom Index Are Encouraging

December 10, 2019/in News, Policy, Politics, Regulation, Religion/by The Daily Signal

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a leading nonprofit law firm defending religious freedom, is taking an innovative approach to evaluate the current state of religious freedom in America.

Most assessments in this area focus on government actions such as laws, regulations, or court decisions that affect religious freedom. Becket’s first-ever Religious Freedom Index instead focuses on public opinion, using a national poll to examine six dimensions of religious freedom. The results are generally positive, with a few caveats.

At least formally, religious freedom in America long has been defined broadly. The First Amendment, for example, refers to the “free exercise of religion,” which obviously extends beyond speech or religious worship. In fact, colonial laws protected the exercise of religion for more than a century before the United States was born.

In the mid-20th century, following World War II, the U.S. was an original supporter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 18 of that document says that religious freedom includes both belief and behavior, in private and in public, individually and collectively.

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But rights, even such fundamental and comprehensive ones, are more than statements or ideas. To be real, they must be experienced and that, in turn, depends a great deal on people’s understanding, perception, support, or opposition to religious freedom. This is why, for example, the Pew Research Center’s evaluation of religious freedom around the world looks at social, as well as government, hostilities involving religion.

Becket’s Religious Freedom Index asked about the degree of acceptance/support or challenge/opposition to six dimensions of religious freedom.

The index, for example, asked five questions about religious pluralism, such as practicing religion in daily life without fear of discrimination or harm. Overall, it shows an average of 80% support for religious pluralism.

Although there was little difference between Democrats and Republicans regarding religious pluralism, the largest gap was about the freedom to practice one’s religious beliefs “even if they are contrary to accepted majority practices.”

Significantly, however, Democrats led Republicans by 10 points (85% to 75%). Future indexes will show whether this continues as the category of “accepted majority practices” changes over time.

The Religious Freedom Index also explored “how Americans value religion and its role in society.” The results were not as encouraging.

“When it comes to issues and what happens today in our country,” for example, 56% said that religion is “part of the solution” while 44% said it is “part of the problem.” The division about “people of faith” was 59% to 41%.

Problems, of course, need solutions. This perception by many (thankfully, not a majority) that not only religion in general, but people of faith in particular, are part of the problem may weaken support for the freedom to practice one’s religious beliefs even when those beliefs are contrary to majority practices.

The index also examined the familiar area of church and state. Here, even though the U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibits any “religious test for public office,” one-quarter of Americans say that candidates “should be disqualified or blocked from holding public offices” based on their religious beliefs.

They also say that “[s]ociety should not tolerate public officials who might allow their religious beliefs to influence their decisions.” It will surprise many that the percent of religious people who say they believe this is exactly the same as the percent of agnostics and atheists.

The Religious Freedom Index is based on an online poll surveying a representative sample of 1,000 Americans age 18 and older. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.1%, and Heart and Mind Strategies constructed the index.

Becket’s conclusion from this first Religious Freedom Index is that “there is evidence for broad support of robust religious freedom protections, discomfort with government interfering in religious practice, and positive attitudes toward a culture of accommodation of religious practice.”

The caveat, however, is this: “Within each dimension the composition of support and opposition varies depending on political parties, age, ethnicity and many other factors.”

This means that the consensus supporting religious freedom in America might be broad, but it also may not be very deep.

COMMENTARY BY

Thomas Jipping

Thomas Jipping is deputy director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: @TomJipping.

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Trump: “The King said that the Saudi people are greatly angered by the barbaric actions of the shooter”

December 9, 2019/in National Security, Policy, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Jihad Watch

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1203030938663428103?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1203030941108711424&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jihadwatch.org%2F2019%2F12%2Ftrump-the-king-said-that-the-saudi-people-are-greatly-angered-by-the-barbaric-actions-of-the-shooter

Does Trump himself believe this? Does he actually think that “the Saudi people…love the American people”? Or is he calculating that he needs to take this line because he wants to keep the Saudis on his side against Iran?

Either way, the Saudi problem is not going to go away, and is going to have to be dealt with sooner or later. This is a regime that has spent billions, if not trillions, to spread Wahhabi Islam — a form of the religion that is even more virulent and violent than the others — around the world. Its schools are routinely found to teach hatred of Jews and Christians, despite repeated promises of textbook reform. Even if Trump thinks the Saudi regime is reforming, a claim that has been made but for which there is scant evidence, he should realize that “the Saudi people” are mostly doctrinaire Muslims (as they have been taught to be and threatened into remaining) who therefore have no love for the kuffar of America.

For years I have called for an end to our sham alliance with Saudi Arabia. The Pensacola shooting only shows yet again why this is needed.

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