Tag Archive for: Islam

The Shameful Silencing of Foes of Jihad Violence and Sharia Oppression of Women

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Brendan O’Neill is right: “The intention is as clear as it is repellent: to send the message that it isn’t Islamism that’s the problem – it’s ‘Islamophobia.’” But this endeavor has been going on far longer than the brouhaha over Lee Anderson.

It goes back to incidents such as the British government’s persecution of Tommy Robinson and the banning of foreign foes of jihad violence and Sharia oppression from entering the country.

Many, if not most, of the “respectable” critics of “radical Islam” had little or nothing to say about those incidents, and now they, and Britain at large, are reaping the rewards of their cowardice and pusillanimity.

The shameful silencing of radical Islam’s critics

by Brendan O’Neill, Spiked, February 25, 2024:

What Tory MP Lee Anderson said this week was dumb. But what the cultural elites are doing on the back of Anderson’s comments is outright sinister.

They are using his outburst about ‘the Islamists’ having ‘control’ over London mayor Sadiq Khan to distract attention from the very real threat Islamists pose in 21st-century Britain. They are holding him up as oafish proof that the ‘real threat’ is the ‘far right’ and ‘Islamophobes’ – gruff gammon like him – not those mystical ‘Islamists’ people keep banging on about. They are exploiting the Anderson scandal to achieve something they’ve wanted to achieve since the 7 October pogrom and the orgy of bigotry it licensed in Britain and other Western nations – that is, shift the public’s attention away from Islamism and back to ‘Islamophobia’. It is one of the most cynical political manoeuvres of modern times….

And yet, for all their daftness, the reaction to Anderson’s comments has felt wildly overblown. Not to mention transparently self-serving. Political influencers have not contented themselves with criticising him, or branding him a raging Islamophobe, if that’s what they want to do. No, they’ve made him into the archetype of ‘Islamophobic Britain’. They’ve crowned him King Gammon, who merely gives voice to a phobic derangement that is all-pervasive. The irony is too much – they damn the conspiracist mindset that sees Islamists as the puppeteers of public life while promoting their own unhinged theory that actually it’s Islamophobes who haunt every corridor of power.

Khan says Anderson’s blather is symptomatic of a ‘massive increase in Islamophobia’. The Scottish first minister, Humza Yousaf, says Anderson’s comments are proof of ‘how acceptable and pervasive Islamophobia has become in our society’. We now know that ‘Islamophobia is rampant in the Tories’, says the Guardian’s Owen Jones.

This giddy extrapolation from one loudmouth’s musings on a TV show to the end of tarring the entire nation as ‘Islamophobic’ is not only cynical – it’s ominous. The intention is as clear as it is repellent: to send the message that it isn’t Islamism that’s the problem – it’s ‘Islamophobia’. Worse, Anderson-bashers are implying, if not outright stating, that critics of Islamism pose a larger threat to the nation than Islamism itself. Especially its right-wing critics, those ‘far right’ goons like Anderson and Braverman, as they crazily view those outspoken Tories. We are witnessing nothing less than a top-down cultural assault on truth – the truth here being that radical Islam is indeed a major threat to life, limb and democracy….

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Israeli Defense Minister: Iran, Hizballah, and Hamas are planning ‘October 7, part two’ for Ramadan

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Before October 7, violence on the Temple Mount was routine and intense at times, and now Israel is gearing up for what the Jerusalem Post has called “October 7-Part 2,” which could be planned for this year’s upcoming Ramadan, a month dedicated to jihad and further inflamed by Palestinian dignitaries.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s worse case scenario warning is realistic, and his warning is prudent given the current climate and the fact that Islamic zeal is off the charts since October 7.

Consider some points :

  1. the emboldening of jihadis after October 7;
  2. the fact that Ramadan is the month of jihad;
  3. widespread Palestinian rage over the war against Hamas, fueled by Islamic religious zeal;
  4. prodding by the Iranian regime as it escalates the activities of its proxies, and now claims that its Afghan proxy battalions are ready to support Gaza;
  5. the wavering of the Biden administration’s support for Israel;
  6. pressure from the United Nations for a ceasefire, which would enable Hamas to survive and regroup;
  7. the unity of the ummah globally in standing for Hamas.

Ramadan is certainly a period that Iran, Hamas and Hizballah will take advantage of one way or another. Some may regard Gallant’s warning as an exaggeration, but it is a better to be prepared. Preparedness, however, isn’t always straightforward. Gallant is “strongly against National Security Minister Itamar Ben- Gvir’s push to reduce access to the Temple Mount for certain Israeli-Arabs or Palestinians during Ramadan.” Palestinians call it the Al-Aqsa compound. One can only imagine the reaction to such an order as Palestinians ready themselves for “martyrdom” in an explosive atmosphere.

‘October 7, part two:’ Iran plans for terror during Ramadan, Israel charges

by Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jerusalem Post, February 27, 2024:

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Tuesday warned that Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas are trying to use Ramadan to inflame the region so as to achieve another October 7 disaster against Israel.

According to Gallant, their hope is to provoke Palestinians in the West Bank, Hezbollah, and Arabs and Muslims across the region to attack and turn their rage on Israel, using the Temple Mount and tensions in the West Bank as an excuse.

The defense minister has been a leading voice for smashing Hamas and earlier in the war, tried to persuade the war cabinet to launch a preemptive strike on Hezbollah.

Gallant calls for reducing tensions

However, at this point, he believes that fighting the war without hesitation must go hand in hand with reducing tensions in areas where there is no reason for there to be tensions.

This means Gallant is strongly against National Security Minister Itamar Ben- Gvir’s push to reduce access to the Temple Mount for certain Israeli-Arabs or Palestinians during Ramadan….

AUTHOR

CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Islamic Republic of Iran: State-backed Security Officials Raped 16-year-old Protester before Murdering Her

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The security officials were proceeding on the basis of clear Islamic principles.

The hijab is required for women so that men don’t get tempted. If men are tempted nonetheless, it is the fault of the woman.

This is why rape victims are sometimes imprisoned in Pakistan and other Muslim countries.

And proceeding from those assumptions, the imprisoned protesters in Iran are raped, so as to humiliate them and to ensure that they will be in hell after they die, for even then they will face punishment for allowing men to be tempted.

Document Shows Iranian Protester Raped Before Murder

Iran International, February 21, 2024:

A recently unveiled document has revealed that 16-year-old Nika Shakarami was raped by state-backed security during the Women, Life, Freedom protests.

The document, circulating on social media and seemingly discovered among a trove of files accessed after a hacktivist group breached the servers of the Iranian judiciary on Tuesday, contains evidence confirming that Shakarami had been subjected to rape amid a state sanctioned campaign of sexual violence as documented by rights groups.

The trove of documents obtained by the hacktivist group Edalat-e Ali covers a wide range of sensitive topics, spanning from internal discussions within the National Security Council following Mahsa Amini’s death to efforts aimed at curbing unauthorized VPN vendors, protests against the 2020 employment examination, and cases related to economic corruption.

Abbas Masjedi Arani, head of the Forensic Medicine Organization has sent the “very confidential” letter to the Supreme National Security Council, explicitly stating, “In the genital examination, signs indicating assault or rough sexual intercourse were evident.”

Nika Shakarami, a 16-year-old, was abducted and murdered by security forces during the anti-regime protests which swept Iran in 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody….

Read full article.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Why Is It So Difficult To Define Anti-Semitism?

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Even among those who condemn it, there is little consensus about what constitutes antisemitism. Is it disdain for Jews as a faith community or as a people? Is it motivated by hatred of doctrine or ethnicity?

Antisemitism has been around since the dawn of Jewish history and yet the mainstream media only found it newsworthy after October 7th. Since then, it has become ubiquitous in universities and pro-Hamas demonstrations – where progressives celebrate terrorism and demand the destruction of Israel and the Jews – and in a Democratic Party where progressive radicals demonize the Jewish State.

But even among those who condemn it, there is little consensus about what constitutes antisemitism. Is it disdain for Jews as a faith community or as a people? Is it motivated by hatred of doctrine or ethnicity?

Those who mistake it simply as prejudice against a faith do not understand the nature of Jewish identity, which is at once religious, ethnic, and national. The definition of hatred, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder.

Some antisemitism is religious to be sure, particularly among other Abrahamic faiths that must disparage Jews and Judaism to justify their pretensions to be the fulfillment of Jewish scripture and prophecy. Christians and Muslims both acknowledge the holiness of Tanakh and yet deviate significantly from it. To rationalize their divergence from Hebrew scripture, they must claim they supplanted Judaism or that the Jews corrupted their own scriptures.

Christianity

The Christian gospels, for example, are replete with anti-Jewish invective, associating Jews with darkness, evil, lies, deceit, and Satan (e.g., John 8:37-39; 44-47), blood libel and murder of the Prophets (e.g., Matthew 23:31-33; 1 Thessalonians 2), and hereditary blood guilt (Matthew 27:25). Assertions of insidious influence and control are central to the myth that the Jews compelled Pontious Pilate to kill Jesus at a time when Rome occupied Judea and the Sanhedrin had no leverage or authority to impose or even demand the death penalty. The passion narratives likewise contain demonic anti-Jewish caricatures that inspired persecution and massacres throughout Christian Europe.

Furthermore, the New Testament alters Tanakh (e.g., misstating the number of people who accompanied Yacov to Egypt and the burial place of the Patriarchs), misquotes the psalms and Prophets, and decontextualizes passages from Torah.

Islam

Despite the myth of Muslim tolerance, Islamic scripture is not much better. Indeed, the Quran is equally unflattering when it accuses the Jews of “unbelief” and murdering their Prophets (as does Christian scripture): “So, for their breaking the compact, and disbelieving in the signs of God, and slaying the Prophets without right, and for their saying, ‘Our hearts are uncircumcised’ – nay, but God sealed them for their unbelief, so they believe not, except a few…” (Sura 4:155).

It also accuses the Jews of corruption and deceit:

“And We decreed for the Children of Israel in the Book: ‘You shall do corruption in the earth twice…So, when the promise of the first of these came to pass, We sent against you servants of Ours, men of great might, and they went through the habitations, and it was a promise performed. Then We gave back to you the turn to prevail over them…Then, when the promise of the second came to pass, We sent against you Our servants to discountenance you, and to enter the Temple, as they entered it the first time.’” (17:4-7)

Moreover, Jews are frequently accused of scriptural corruption. “People of the Book, now there has come to you Our Messenger, making clear to you many things you have been concealing of the Book, and effacing many things…” (5:15); “God assail them! How they are perverted…They have taken their rabbis and their monks as Lords apart from God.” (9:31.) Claims of textual manipulation seem necessary for explaining away fundamental discrepancies with Tanakh, for example, that Yishmael, not Yitzchak, was bound by Avraham on Moriah.

Racial and ethnic components

Christians and Muslims often misstate Jewish text, doctrine, and history. But conceding deviations from the original Hebrew would undercut their doctrinal narratives. So, both their traditions must accuse the Jews of corruption and deceit, using themes and stereotypes that have fueled Jew-hatred throughout Christendom and the Islamic world for centuries.

Historically, the aim was not merely to disparage Jewish belief, but to devalue or subjugate the Jews as a people; and this is illustrated by the persistence of antisemitism against those who submitted to Christianity or Islam (usually on pain of death). The ethnic and racial components of antisemitism are evidenced by its continuation even after the outward elimination of doctrinal differences.

Catholic antisemitism always had a racial component. On the Iberian Peninsula, for example, people of Jewish heritage were often banned from professions and public office because of ancestry, not belief. Even before the Jews were exiled from Spain per the Edict of Expulsion in 1492 (and later from Portugal), those who were forcibly baptized and designated “New Christians” were identified by their tainted blood. This was first codified in 1449 by the “Statute of Blood Purity” in Toledo; and while some church leaders denounced such enactments, the Inquisition embraced them when it infiltrated Spain in 1478, and later Portugal, Peru, and Mexico in 1536, 1570, and 1571, respectively.

Clearly, racial antisemitism existed long before the Nazis; and it also infected Protestantism.

In targeting Jews through “friendship evangelism,” missionaries strenuously deny Protestant complicity in antisemitism by blaming Catholicism for the most pernicious forms of Jew-hatred. However, Martin Luther embraced the Church’s racial antisemitism and incorporated it in his vile screed, “On the Jews and their Lies,” which advocated expulsion, enslavement, and extermination. These tropes were later adopted by other non-Catholics, many of whom were complicit or complacent during the Holocaust.

Then there are doctrines like replacement theology and evangelical fronts like the Lausanne Movement. Whereas replacement doctrine seeks to displace actual Jews (defined by ancestry and their relationship with G-d) with a faith community of self-defined “spiritual Jews” who falsely claim covenantal status, Lausanne and similar movements actively engage in Jewish evangelism while claiming to love Israel and the Jews. Though antithetical to Torah, both recognize the Jews as a people, not merely a faith community.

And this recognition had parallels in the Islamic world, where forcibly converted Jews often stayed connected to their heritage, married among their own, continued observing Jewish rites and customs in secret – and remained under lingering suspicion. Like the Anusim (Conversos) of Christian Europe, many of these forced converts forgot their heritage while paradoxically maintaining it through rituals and marriage restrictions they continued to observe but no longer understood.

Xenophobia

When the fathers of European Enlightenment rejected the primacy of faith and national allegiances, they were offended by the Jews’ continuing embrace of their religious, ethnic, and national identity. The refusal to assimilate rendered them strangers wherever their migrations took them, arousing xenophobia with religious and racial overtones. And their image as quintessential outsiders was reinforced by their faithfulness to Torah, Jewish language, and ancient blood ties – all of which distinguished them from their host societies and reinforced stereotypes that continued to fester and mutate.

Denial of connection to Israel

A unique form of antisemitism today is the denial of the Jews’ history and connection to Israel. Progressives often maintain that Jewish identity is “only religious” to delegitimize it compared to Palestinian national identity. This theme is echoed in the PA Charter, which denies the Jews’ national history and deems them colonial occupiers.

The claim that Jewishness is “just a religion,” however, is contradicted by the scriptural, historical, and archeological records, which confirm Jewish ethnicity, national heritage, and origins in Israel. The record does not similarly validate Palestinian Arab identity, which is a modern political construct.

Jewish children

Whereas the roots of antisemitism are disparate, they are not mutually exclusive, whether based on religion, ethnicity, racial theory, or xenophobia; and regardless of ideology, it is exacerbated by the Jewish refusal to assimilate. Unfortunately, many opponents of antisemitism unwittingly help perpetuate it through ignorance of its historical and theological foundations.

Even Jewish children understand this.

My generation was born less than twenty years after the Holocaust. Though my family lost collateral relatives to the Nazis and their Ukrainian accomplices, many of my friends’ parents were Holocaust survivors who constituted a significant portion of our community. And they informed our understanding of antisemitism as simultaneously religious, ethnic, national, and racial – which colored our self-perceptions and even our sense of play.

I grew up in a neighborhood where the streets had storm-sewers with removeable grates that we could crawl through. While other kids played “cops and robbers,” we often navigated our way underground playing “escape from the ghetto.” And the brutal kidnapping of the Bibas family brings that “game” to life.

Clearly, even children experience existential angst, and ours was shaped by an awareness of antisemitism in all its manifestations – something adult academics, politicians, and media personalities never seem to grasp.

But then again, perhaps it takes the untainted sensibilities of a child to recognize the nuanced complexities of Jew-hatred and understand its scope.

Copyright 2024. Matthew Hausman, J.D. All rights reserved.

Islamic Justice: Justice Par Excellence

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I was walking my two puppies, entirely focused on the job of making sure I cleaned up after them, like a good neighbor should, when someone bumped into me, knocked me to the ground, and yelled, “Watch where are you going? You blind?”

I turned around to apologize when I saw my friend doubled up laughing.

“You sure have a sense of humor. I almost cracked my head against the puppies’ mailbox,” pointing to the fire hydrant.

“Puppies’ mailbox,” he stopped laughing long enough to ask.

“Yeah, that’s their mailbox. They were checking their P-mail.”

He resumed laughing.

“Tell you what. Dump the puppies and buy me lunch, and I’ll give you a fascinating report from home. I know you haven’t been to Iran for a while, and I just returned yesterday. I’ll give you an exclusive so you can write about it and keep raking it in.”

“The way I have been raking it in with my writings, if I buy you lunch, my pups must go hungry. And I won’t do that to them.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse.”

“How about you dump them and just buy me some coffee?”

“I buy you coffee, then I’ll have to watch you drink it.”

“That bad?”

“No, but not all that good either.”

“Wow, and some Muslims believe you’re in the pay of the AIPAC and Israelis, the way you defend the Jews and bad-mouth Islam.”

“Speaking truth is bad-mouthing, I suppose. People don’t like to hear the truth. Cause it’s often bitter. If I wanted to be in the pay of anybody, I would choose the Saudis. My second choice would be the damned Iranian Mullahs who steal our money and support every Islamist thug anywhere in the world. The Israelis? Get real.”

“Some Muslims call you Islamophobe while some call you racist and many worse things.”

“Right. You know better. I am simply an Ex-Muslim who has become Ex because, from the minute my brain got functional enough, I saw serious issues with Islam from its inception to this very day. The Islamic justice system, in particular, bothered me a great deal. And you’re a lawyer, and I have talked to you about it many times.”

“Are we gonna stand around and watch your puppies check every tree and fire hydrant, or will you buy me a cup of coffee?”

“Tell you what. Come to my place, and I’ll make you a cup of instant coffee. I hope you don’t ask for cream. I don’t have any. Not even that chalky stuff they peddle as creamer.

We headed for my place.

“So you don’t think much of Islam and the Islamic justice system?”

“I believe the Islamic justice system perfectly fits the rest of Islam. It is a mockery. I have told you that before. No point rehashing the old stuff.”

“No rehashing. I’ve got some new stuff for you. My souvenirs from my latest visit home.”

“Okay, I’m listening.”

“A week before leaving for home, I started wearing the Islamic hijab…”

“Did I hear you right? You, a man, wearing an Islamic hijab?”

“Yeah. Don’t get so literal. I started growing stubbles. That’s a form of male hijab-faithful Iranian Muslim sport. It’s wearing your religion on your face.”

“Okay, I get it. But why?”

“Cause I wanted to interview a high-ranking Islamic judge—Hujat-ul-Islam—and having the stubbles would make me seem a devotee and give more leeway to ask some pointed questions.”

“Okay. Got that. Go on.”

“Fine. You’ve heard of ‘trial by fire’”?

“Yes, sort of.”

“I bet you haven’t heard of ‘trial by noose.’”

“No. Never been to law school. But, have heard of trial by pain in the neck.” I’m getting a bit annoyed at the guy.

“Close, not the same thing. Want to know what trial by noose is?”

“No, I want deliverance from the trial of putting up with you.”

“Are you insinuating I’m trying you?”

“No, I am not insinuating; I am saying right out you are.”

“Bear with me. You’ll love what I’ll be telling you. Guaranteed.”

“Okay.”

“I got an audience with a prominent Islamic judge and asked him many legal questions. They used a great deal of tact to avoid offending him. I didn’t want to end up in the slammer, understand?”

“Yeah?”

“I said to him, Your Person, people in America, where I practice law, have a terrible misunderstanding of the Islamic Justice system. For instance, they claim lawyers of prisoners of conscience are routinely denied access to their clients. He got offended and said, ‘No truth to it. We don’t incarcerate anyone unless they are guilty. When a lawyer, a paid shyster—that’s what all lawyers are—shows up to wiggle him out, we give the lawyer unlimited access to the criminal. We send him to live in the same cell with his client until he is fully convinced of the criminal’s guilt.”

“Hey, that’s good. Very hospitable of them.”

“Yeah. I gathered my courage and said, ‘Your Person, they, the Americans, dare to call Islamic courts kangaroo courts. He became agitated and screamed, ‘See, there is no limit to the slander and untruth these evil infidels shower on us. How could we possibly have kangaroo courts when we don’t even have kangaroos?”

“You’re sharing all this with me, gratis? Why don’t you write a book about it and make a fortune.”

“You don’t make a fortune writing books unless you are a big cheese. I know you have written books, and you can’t buy me a cup of coffee and serve me this black poison?” He pushes his barely-touched coffee away so hard that it spills over my rug.

My pups, on cue, run to the spill, sniff at it briefly, and return to gnawing on my rug’s fringe in between bouts of wrestling.

“See what I mean? Even the pups declined your hospitality. Besides, they’re doing just fine feasting on your rug. You could’ve bought me lunch.”

“Wrong. That’s their snack. They’re babies and require protein. Don’t you have better things to do? Like chasing an ambulance?”

“I’ll ignore that and go ahead and enlighten you about trial by the noose. It is a system of justice used extensively by the Mullahs. According to His Person, it bypasses all the complicated so-called due process and gets to it. A man suspected of a major infraction stands on a stepladder with a noose around his neck. The executioner kicks the stepladder away. He said that if the party were guilty, his neck would snap. If he is innocent, the rope breaks.”

“Hey, that’s very good. Very good.”

“So far, no one has seen the rope break. The Hujat-ul-Islam proudly claimed that it shows their unerringness in their judgment. He said there have been times, very rarely, that the rope has broken instead of the neck. You have to take their word for it like you do everything else they preach as Quran truth.”

“Well, that’s edifying.”

“See, you stick with me and learn a great deal.”

“Tell you what, when it comes to sticking, I want you to stick it; I mean, stick with someone else and leave me in my ignorance.”

“I’ll ignore that again. That’s the price all wise people pay in discharging their duties. All they get is insult, ingratitude, and sometimes death. Didn’t that happen to Socrates?”

“If you keep this up, it might happen to you by this ungrateful me.”

“Don’t be sore for spilling coffee on your rug. It masks what your puppies freely discharge on it. Now, let me go on. Do you know anything about ‘trial by missiles’?”

“No. I told you. Never been to law school.”

“Okay. It is another form of Islamic trial used mostly for women, particularly women adulterers. Well, you’ve gotta love it. It is completely legal for any married man to have sex with an unlimited number of women concurrently or consecutively through the farcical provision of temporary marriages. But if a married woman is even suspected of making love to a man, she gets the trial by missiles, more commonly known as stoning.”

“Yeah, barbaric.”

“Well, they don’t think so. It’s not simply burying the woman up to her neck and unleashing psychopathic thugs to stone her to death, he told me. No, there are safeguards and stipulations. They limit the size of the stones the mob may use to bombard the woman. They also draw a line some twenty meters away from the woman. No one is allowed to cross that line and have a better crack at her. There are no limits on the number of stones, however. Bushels and bushels full of them are set up at the firing line.”

“Now, I call that safeguard Islamic style. Isn’t it just wonderful?

“Just like the trial by the noose thing, they say if the accused woman is innocent of the charges, and she is still alive twenty-four hours later, then they’ll dig her up and let her go.”

“Yes, lovely indeed.”

“Get this. Again, he assured me that some women had occasionally survived trials. That is, a wrongly accused woman had actually survived the stoning. When he saw me incredulous, he explained how it could’ve happened. He said a host of invisible angels sent by Allah surrounded her and deflected the fusillade. The angels also gave her water and food and kept her company overnight. No one in living memory has seen anyone survive the stoning for more than an hour or so.”

“Right. Twenty-four hours of being buried up to the neck and receiving the barrage of stones and surviving it? That doesn’t prove innocence. It certainly qualifies as an outright lie fabricated by the thugs of Allah.

“Well, I’m with you on that. I thought I would ask him another question. So I said to him, ‘Your Person, the Westerners harp a great deal about the status of women. They say women in Islam are worth half of men, they have no right to divorce, and if ever dare to report being raped, four witnesses are required to substantiate their claim. Also, why are men allowed multiple wives while women are limited to only one husband? Why the disparity between the status of the sexes, Sir?’ The man sure had a temper. His neck vein bulged, and he yanked at his own beard so hard, I thought he might rip a chunk of it out and said, it is ordained in the holy Quran. It stipulates that men are rulers over women. And for excellent reasons. Men marrying multiple wives is a way of ensuring no woman is left unsupervised and uncared for. Many men are often killed in wars, and a surplus of women must be dealt with. Women also are deficient in numerous ways. They are not only physically weaker than men; they are prone to mental errors. Precisely the reason that a woman’s claims need not be taken seriously unless four witnesses confirm them. Women’s main function is to bear and raise children. They require supervision to keep them in their place.”

“Enough to make me puke.”

“Hold it until I leave. There is much more. I’ll tell you the rest of it later. Got to go chase an ambulance,” he says and dashes out.

Copyright 2024. Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

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Nigerian bishop says Muslim attacks on Christians are ‘very definition’ of genocide

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No Jews are involved, however, and so no one cares.

Is the Persecution in Nigeria a Christian Genocide? This Bishop Says ‘Yes’.

by Peter Pinedo, CNA, January 30, 2024:

Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of Nigeria shared details of the worsening persecution of Christians in Nigeria, accusing members of the government there of being complicit in what he called a Christian “genocide” and an erasure of the Christian presence from the country.

Bishop Anagbe, who leads the Makurdi Diocese, warned that if greater action is not taken he believes the Christian population, which currently numbers over 86 million, roughly half of the total Nigerian populace, could disappear entirely in the next few decades.

Though the Nigerian Christian population is massive and is known as having some of the most devoted faithful in the world, Bishop Anagbe said the Christian presence in Nigeria is “gradually and systematically” being reduced by radical Islamists through “killings, kidnappings, torture, and burning of churches.”

In the last decade alone, since taking up the leadership of his diocese in Nigeria’s central Benue state, the bishop said that he has lost 160 churches because of attacks that he said are being perpetrated by radical members of a Muslim tribe known as the Fulani.

Bishop Anagbe is in Washington, D.C., this week to bring attention to the crisis in Nigeria and to participate in the International Religious Freedom Summit, taking place Jan. 30–31.

He gave his remarks Tuesday morning at a breakfast in the House Rayburn Office Building. The event was organized by the papal relief group Aid to the Church in Need….

Some Western politicians and media outlets posit that the crisis in Nigeria has been brought on by climate change, which they say is forcing nomadic Fulani herdsmen to fight with Christian farmers over scarce land. Bishop Anagbe, however, condemned this narrative as “lies and propaganda.” He said that the Fulani terrorists are motivated by hatred of Christianity first and foremost.

Bishop Anagbe told CNA that the attacks, which often kill hundreds at a time, are “targeted at Christian Indigenous groups in Nigeria” as “a way of eliminating this group of people who have the same faith from different places.” This, he said, is the very definition of a religious genocide.

“I keep asking how many mosques have been attacked versus Catholic churches? How many pastors and reverend fathers have been kidnapped versus imams?”

“They’re doing this systematically,” he said. “When you eliminate people who are not confrontational to you, who didn’t provoke you, and there’s no war, it’s an agenda they have to do.”

The agenda, Bishop Anagbe said, is the “extermination” of Christianity from Nigeria.

Read more.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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Italy’s defense minister: Houthi attacks and Red Sea disruption threaten Italy’s economic stability

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: The Road To October 7 – Education For Jihad And Martyrdom

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Palestinian Authority | MEMRI Daily Brief No. 558

This extensive collection of MEMRI TV clips exposes educational materials that encourage Palestinian and Muslim youth to wage jihad and to become martyrs, in the spirit of Islamic fundamentalism. These materials are taught at kindergartens, schools, and other educational settings, as well as by mothers and fathers at home, by religious scholars, in mosques, and by political leaders in various settings.

To view this collection below:

AUTHOR

Yigal Carmon

Yigal Carmon is Founder and President of MEMRI.

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EDITORS NOTE: This MEMRI column with video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Goodness, What an Unpleasant Little Creature This Greta Thunberg Turns Out to Be

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Greta Thunberg has been commenting on the climate conference just held in Dubai. Her appalling remarks can be found here: “Greta Thunberg slams COP28 climate deal and Israel, waves Palestinian flag,” by Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman, Jerusalem Post, December 17, 2023:

Thunberg, 20, has been “standing with Gaza” since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, not only on social media but also at rallies. She was recently filmed chanting “crush Zionism” at a pro-Palestinian rally in Sweden.

When Greta Thunberg slams the COP28 climate deal and Israel, while she waves the Palestinian flag and cries “crush Zionism,” does she have any idea that Israel is, climate-warningly speaking, on the side of the angels, and the Arabs on the side of the devils? I doubt that Thunberg is aware that Israeli scientists have made their tiny country a leader in solar technology, and Israeli solar companies work on projects all over the world; the Jewish state has done more to help the world move away from fossil fuels than all 22 members of the Arab League combined. But it probably would have no effect; Ms. Thunberg has made up her mind: Israel is the oppressor, the Palestinians are the oppressed, and there’s an end on’t. Please don’t try to confuse her with facts.

Goodness, what an unpleasant little creature this Thunberg turns out to be. She’s not for a “two-state solution.” She’s not for a “ceasefire.” No, she wants to “crush Zionism,” which means she wants to put paid — violently — to the tiny Jewish state. And what about the Israeli Jews? Oh, they can scatter to the winds. Why should she care? She’s saving the world.

It takes a moral idiot to “stand with Gaza,” which means “stand with Hamas,” when that same Hamas has just provided the world with a catalogue of horrors. Hamas, the terror group that Greta Thunberg stands with, on October 7 had 3,000 of its operatives swarm into Israeli kibbutzim, where they killed more Jews than had been killed at any time since the Holocaust. But it was not simple killing. No, it was diabolical in its insensate cruelty. Hamas operatives beheaded babies, burned children alive, gang-raped, tortured, and murdered young girls, sliced the breasts off women, gouged out the eyes, and cut off the genitalia off men, murdered children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children, sliced open the stomach of a pregnant woman, pulled out the fetus before killing the mother. They videotaped each other, as they raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered. They called home, to excitedly tell their proud parents that “I killed ten Jews with my own hands!” These are the people Greta Thunberg is “standing with” when — after October 7 — she “stands with Gaza.”

“The final outcome of #COP28 is not a ‘historic win,’” Thunberg tweeted. “It is yet another example of extremely vague and watered-down texts full of loopholes that in no way is even close to being sufficient for staying within the 1.5° limit and ensuring climate justice.

“Phasing out fossil fuels is a bare minimum,” she wrote in the three-part thread. “We need drastic immediate emission cuts and binding commitments from the largest contributors of [sic]the climate crisis to finance loss and damages, adaptation and a just transition in the most affected areas.”…

Running off at the mouth, is Greta Thunberg. It’s all very well, what she says — she’s asking for the moon and sixpence — but she’s like the Miss America contestant who solemnly tells the judges that when she is not reading Camus and Dostoyevsky, she is “working for world peace” and hopes “to achieve it by the time I’m thirty.” Thunberg offers a wish list — and so can I, and so can any man — but not a single hint as to how her desired climate future will come about. She wants a “phasing out of fossil fuels.” Okay. But which ones in what order? By what date? And to be replaced by what other sources of energy? How do we choose between, say, nuclear power and solar energy? Or solar and wind? Questions, Greta, questions you are incapable of answering..

And why is it, Greta Thunberg, that you did not discuss the real obstacle at the COP28 meeting — the opposition of the Arabs to anything less vague than that adopted promise “to transition away from fossil fuels” in a “just, equitable, and orderly manner”? Or are these mere “details” too trivial for Greta Thunberg, World’s Greatest Authority, to think about?

In October, she posted a photo on X in which she and her friends held signs like “Free Palestine,” “Stand with Gaza,” “This Jew Stands with Palestine,” and “Climate Justice Now.” After that post, the Education Ministry said it would remove any mentions of the climate activist as a “role model” from the nation’s public school curriculum.

Good for the Swedish Education Ministry, that has determined that her anti-Israel remarks disqualify her from being held up as someone for schoolgirls to emulate. Keep on saving the world, Greta. Stick to that. You’ll do less damage that way. And for god’s sake, leave little Israel, now fighting for its survival, alone.

AUTHOR

HUGH FITZGERALD

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RELATED VIDEO: This Week In Jihad with David Wood and Robert Spencer

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: ‘Why DEI Must End for Good’—Bari Weiss Gets a Lot Right Here

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This is very good. But it’s our view that if you see what is taking place and describe it, in effect you are controlled opposition. Seeing what is happening but failing to understand its nature or intent actually perpetuates it. Makes you a slave to it one way or another. This is not hypocrisy by McGill at Harvard or the other university heads. This is a very clear use of the dialectic to move the revolution forwards. It is nothing short of that. Bari is great here in terms of describing what took place at the hearings where these women shocked the nation with their stammering defence of calls for genocide as protected speech, but implemented punishments for “misgendering”. Which is proof of exactly our thesis. But goes off the rails when she claims that saying this or that is the moral equivalent of screaming the N word in public. The N word was just an earlier dialectic. One of the first tactics to make it a crime to use a word in ANY context at all. And yeah, while you may not find it as a crime on the law books, everyone knows that the punishment they fact for using it is tantamount to a criminal punishment. What you call it, makes no difference. Unless you call it the N word of course.

At 12 minutes though, she does in fact get way closer to the real issue. But the issue of DEI appears to be tactical. That is to say, the way the communists intend to destroy Israel. They are destroying Ireland, Scotland, Italy and other Western nation states through mass immigration and other forms of dialectical negation. Making it illegal to acknowledge the culture of the majority of the people in Western nations  such as Christmas etc. but forced to accept massive street prayers by Muslims is another. The strategy, is the total and utter destruction of the nation state, of reason, of logic, and mostly of the individual. The rest is tactics. Get bogged down in those and you may win a battle or two now and again but you lose the war. Our failure, well one of many, is failing to think big enough to understand the enemy’s plans for us. Which is why so few could believe the vaxx was a bad idea.

Barri is awesome. We were so happy when she left the NYT as one of their editors, and still follow Alex Berenson, another ex-NYT professional who saw where it was heading. But antisemitism, while real, while the consequences of it will be catastrophic for a lot of people, seems to be another vector of attack from the meta view.

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EDITOR NOTE: This Vlad Tepes Blog column with video posted by Eeyore is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Life-Size Nativity Scene Figures Beheaded

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On Sunday night, all the nativity figures were decapitated: Joseph, Mary, the Three Wise Men and even the donkey.

Life-size nativity figures beheaded in the migrant stronghold of Rüsselsheim, Germany

By: Medforth, December 18, 023;

Attack on the life-size nativity scene in the city of the Opel car. On Sunday night, all the nativity figures were decapitated: Joseph, Mary, the Three Wise Men and even the donkey.

The people of Rüsselsheim are shocked: the nativity scene is located at the Protestant market church in the heart of the city, right next to the town hall, during the Advent season. The figures of the Holy Family with Jesus are life-size. Surrounded by two Christmas trees. Donated by the Rüsselsheim Trade Association 1888 e.v.!

But on the morning of December 17, the nativity scene looks like a battlefield. All the figures have had their heads cut off. Joseph has been kicked over, Mary beaten away. Jesus is first missing, later found under the rubble.
The trade association tries to play down the incident: “Unknown perpetrators have obviously allowed themselves a macabre joke and cut off the heads of the figures.”

This does not necessarily make the situation any better for the trade association. The situation is beginning to flare up in Rüsselsheim. A local resident told the newspaper BILD: “A joke is when you can laugh about it. What’s funny about beheading Mary and Joseph?”

People on the Internet are also stunned by the violence directed at the nativity scene. People are angry at the perpetrator(s). One person posted on Instagram under the trade association’s publication: “It’s a barbaric act! Criminal offences must not be trivialised.”

Some figures had their heads chopped off in 2021 and 2022. There were no such incidents in the many decades before that.

The trade association comments: “Despite the regrettable incident, we would like to try to face this situation with humour (…) We see this ‘headless night’ as an opportunity to stand together and bring light into the darkness.”

The police will bring light into the darkness. A spokesperson confirmed to BILD that charges have been filed and investigations are already underway – including into a religiously motivated offence.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED VIDEO: Christians Devastated as Armed Moroccan Migrant Burns Historic Church and Nativity, Ruins 17th Century Organ Before Christmas

POSTS ON X:

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Empire State Building Honors Country That Was Involved in 9/11

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“Even Osama bin Laden was allowed to pass through Qatar.”

After Islamic terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, the Islamic terror state responsible for saving the mastermind of the attack bought 10% of the city’s surviving major skyscraper

Now, the Empire State Building is bowing to its Qatari masters.

Here’s a section of the 9/11 Commission Report which addresses the Qatari role in 9/11.

(Ramzi) Yousef (one of the key figures in the World Trade Center bombing) was captured in Pakistan following the discovery by police in the Philippines in January 1995 of the Manila air plot, which envisioned placing bombs on board a dozen trans-Pacific airliners and setting them off simultaneously. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—Yousef’s uncle, then located in Qatar—was a fellow plotter of Yousef’s in the Manila air plot and had also wired him some money prior to the Trade Center bombing. The U.S. Attorney obtained an indictment against KSM in January 1996, but an official in the government of Qatar probably warned him about it. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed evaded capture (and stayed at large to play a central part in the 9/11 attacks)

The 9/11 Commission Report is a bit cagey about specifics, but there were news reports that went into more detail.

American officials say the FBI and CIA just missed capturing the al Qaeda leader believed to have organized the 9/11 attacks — and now believed to be planning a new attack against Americans — because it appears he was protected and tipped off by a member of the royal family in Qatar, Abdullah Bin Khalid al-Thani.

In 1996, the FBI tracked Mohammed, under indictment on charges of terrorism, to Qatar’s capital city, Doha, and was within hours of capturing him.

Cloonan, who was the lead FBI agent on the case, said a specially equipped government executive jet, complete with blacked-out windows, was standing by to transport Mohammed.

“We had located Khalid Sheikh,” Cloonan told ABCNEWS. “We were prepared to fly the plane in and to take him out.”

But Cloonan says Mohammed was tipped off shortly after Qatar officials were told of the plan and headed for the airport.

The FBI then wrote a stern letter to Qatar after the Clinton administration nixed a plan to just grab KSM.

The C.I.A. officer believed, however, that if the United States officially asked for the assistance of the Qatar government, Mr. Mohammed would be tipped off, since it appeared that he was living in Doha under the government’s protection.

Back in Washington, counterterrorism officials at the National Security Council said they shared that worry. Senior counterterrorism officials already knew about the past support for Islamic extremists by one Qatar official, Sheik Abdullah bin Khalid al-Thani, Qatar’s minister of religious endowments and Islamic affairs. This was the same official who had repeatedly allowed Arab extremists who had fought in Afghanistan to live on his farm.

White House officials agreed with the C.I.A. about the inadvisability of going directly to the Qatar government for help. So they began considering a plan to grab him secretly.

At the request of the N.S.C., the Pentagon developed a plan calling for the military to snatch Mr. Mohammed. That plan was taken to the Deputies Committee, an interagency group during the Clinton administration that was made up of high-ranking officials from major departments and agencies, including Justice, Defense, State and the N.S.C. But Pentagon had devised a plan on such a large scale that it was was rejected, according to former counterterrorism officials. The only alternative was to go to the Qatar government…

But Qatar never paid a significant diplomatic price for its support of Mr. Mohammed. About the only rebuke it received was a private one in the form of a stinging letter from Louis Freeh, then the F.B.I. director, to Qatar’s foreign minister.

One government minister is believed to have harbored as many as 100 Arab extremists — including many veterans of fighting in Afghanistan — on his farm in Qatar during the mid-1990’s. There have been reports that even Osama bin Laden was allowed to pass through Qatar.

These days, Qatar is in the headlines over its backing for Hamas, but it’s always been a state sponsor of terror. And yet it’s bought up so many of our political elites, that none of them dare to speak out against it.

After the Taliban betrayal and Oct 7, Qatar is still treated as an ally, rather than the enemy that it is, and Al Jazeera like a news organization instead of the terrorist propaganda network that it is.

A regime with ties to Al Qaeda, Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood is getting the Empire State Building to shine its lights.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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A Tight Embrace

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

American Muslims for Palestine Director: A ‘Jewish Person or Christian Zionist’ is ‘Enemy Number One’

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AMP’s co-founder also created Students for Justice in Palestine.

The Biden administration was forced to condemn CAIR after its boss, Nihad Awad, who had a history of supporting Hamas, attended the American Muslims for Palestine conference and bragged about how happy he was about the Oct 7 attacks.

Awad claims that his remarks were taken “out of context.”

Now here’s Taher Herzallah, Outreach and Grassroots Organizing Director for AMP, talking about how Jewish people are the enemy. “Anybody who has any relationship or any support or identifies himself as a Jewish person or as a Christian Zionist then we shall not be their friend, I will tell you they are enemy number one and our community needs to recognize that.”

I’m guessing this one will also be described as “taken out of context.”

The AMP conference included Awad, Herzallah, and Hatem Bazian, the co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as AMP, who pretty much single-handedly made antisemitism the norm on college campuses.

Also present were Lena Masri, CAIR’s Civil Rights Director, and Fatima Mohammed: whose deranged CUNY Law grad speech went viral.

See if you can spot the pattern here.

Taher Herzallah is just quoting the Koran.

“O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends with one another. He among you who taketh them for friends is one of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.” (Koran 5:51)

So this hatred of Jews or Christians didn’t emerge on Oct 7 or 1967, 1948 or during any recent period. It was always there. It’s just more out in the open now.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘It’s “Me Too” Unless You Are a Jew’: Why Won’t Women’s Groups Condemn Hamas’s Rapes?

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Why won’t so-called “women’s groups” condemn Hamas terrorists for raping Israeli women on October 7? This is what a growing number of people are asking, including Former Miss World and Miss Israel 1998, Linor Abargil, who gave a very moving and emotional speech before the United Nations on December 4.

Abargil appeared on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom” on Thursday. She said, “It’s ‘Me Too’ unless you are a Jew.” She observed, “It’s not about political, it’s not about ‘Free Palestine, it’s not about which side you’re on on the map: to use rape as an act of war is unbearable. I mean, what happened to humanity?” She then became very emotional and had to take a moment to compose herself before she shared:

“One of my friends… told me a story about this young woman — that he saw a video of her — she was raped by three Hamas people, one after another raped her. . .Screaming they beat her, spit at her, they then butchered her, and one of them took her cell phone and just send everything to her mother. Her scream just haunts my friend every night he’s tried to sleep. And her screaming should be out there for all the world to shout out for this girl that is not here to shout herself. But instead, all of the organizations are just silent. …I mean, I’m telling you, I’m just speechless.”

In the second hour of Thursday’s program, Dana Perino interviewed Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) who also called out the women’s groups that are usually her political allies. They include Emily’s List, Democratic Women’s Caucus, Women’s March, I Stand With Her, and American Association of University Women.

Gillibrand said, “When I saw the list at the U.N., I couldn’t believe it. I was so aghast, I was so furious. I don’t understand how we cannot have solidarity amongst all women in the United States and globally — that using rape as a weapon of war is unacceptable. It has to be condemned. The fact that the U.N. has not called Hamas a terrorist organization and condemn[ed] the horrific violence on October 7 is unacceptable. And they’re not even enforcing international law.”

She went on to say, “I think women’s rights groups in the United States should care deeply about women around the globe and should not turn a blind eye. They should not keep their head in the sand. They have a moral responsibility to have moral clarity…”

Perino asked Gillibrand if she watched the video of the October 7 massacre that the Israeli government provided for Congress to watch. She responded, “I did. It’s unspeakable. The horrific acts that were committed in the most heinous and evil ways you can imagine: beheadings, dismemberments, mass rapes, shooting of babies and children. It’s something that should never, ever happen. And it has to be called out not only by the U.N. but by the world community. … They did not show us the victims of rape, and they did not show us the videos of rapes happening because they thought it was too horrific for Congress to see, but we should see it. And these films and these photographs should be made public because the world has to condemn this…”

Abargil’s and Gillibrand’s emotional pleas stand in stark contrast to the cold words of Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, December 3. When CNN host, Dana Bash, asked her why women’s groups are “downright silent” about Hamas raping and mutilating Jewish women on October 7, Jayapal shockingly downplayed Hamas’s evil acts, continually trying to compare those acts to Israel’s justifiable right to defend itself.

Bash said, “With respect, I was just trying to talk about the women, and you turned it back to Israel. I’m asking you about Hamas…”

Jayapal interrupted, “I already answered your question, Dana, I said it’s horrific. I think that rape is horrific — sexual assault is horrific. I think it’s horrific. I think that it happens in war situations. Terrorist organizations like Hamas obviously are using these as tools. However, I think we have to be balanced about bringing in the outrages against Palestinians…”

Bash pointed out, “And it’s horrible, but you don’t see Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian women.” To which Jayapal responded, “Well, Dana, I don’t want this to be the hierarchy of oppressions…”

Although U.N. Women finally condemned Hamas on December 1 (almost two months after the October 7 attack), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is still pleading with groups such as the United Nation’s own World Health Organization and women’s groups around the world to be vocal advocates for the many Israeli women and girls that were raped on October 7 (and for the hostages that likely continue to be abused). He said, “I heard heartbreaking stories of abuse. I heard, as you have heard, about sexual abuse and unprecedented cases of cruel rape.”

He then asked, “Did you remain silent because it was Jewish women? … I say to the women’s rights organizations, to the human rights organizations, you’ve heard of the rape of Israeli women, horrible atrocities, sexual mutilation? Where the hell are you? I expect all civilized leaders, governments, nations to speak up against this atrocity.”

Family Research Council’s Senior Fellow for Education Studies, Meg Kilgannon, is not surprised by women’s groups’ lack of attention to this horrific issue. She told The Washington Stand, “National women’s groups have been part and parcel of the Democratic Party for years. For women who pay attention, we know that these groups will never represent our values or the real interests of women. The example of excusing depraved behaviors of terrorists is just another of many ways the leaders of women’s groups serve the interest of progressive and authoritarian men.”

FRC’s Director of the Center for Human Dignity, Mary Szoch, agreed and added, “The terroristic actions of Hamas are pure evil and should be denounced by everyone — especially those claiming to speak for women. Failure to speak out against members of Hamas raping Jewish women is inexcusable.”

AUTHOR

Kathy Athearn

RELATED VIDEO: Hostility to Mother Mary – and the Role of Feminism

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Israel Targets Hamas Commanders as Terror Group’s Atrocities Are Exposed

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Israeli forces surrounded the house of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar in southern Gaza on Wednesday, demonstrating just how quickly they have advanced southward. “Our forces can reach anywhere in the Gaza Strip,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

The war is still far from over, with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant predicting two more months of major fighting, followed by “mop up” operations to “tak[e] out pockets of terrorist resistance.” But Israeli leaders “definitely feel that they’re racing against that clock because that pressure is mounting from all around the world,” even as further evidence of Hamas’s atrocities emerge, veteran war correspondent Chuck Holton said Thursday on “Washington Watch.”

The Israeli military is scoring military victories both high and low. Israel has begun flooding Hamas’s tunnel network in northern Gaza with seawater, with the dual aim of destroying military equipment and forcing Hamas fighters to come to the surface, Holton explained. So far, it has proved “a fairly effective strategy,” and the Israel Defense Force (IDF) is “taking prisoner many Hamas fighters who are giving themselves up,” he said.

By late November, the IDF had killed five senior Hamas military leaders, about half of the 11 depicted in a photo taken from a tunnel in northern Gaza. The IDF also believes it has “significantly degraded” at least 10 out of an estimated 24 Hamas battalions (of 1,000 or more fighters each) “by taking out midlevel commanders,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

“When they say they’re going to take out Hamas, … what they are planning to do is just destroy any infrastructure that could be used for military purposes, and to kill the leadership of Hamas and replace them with something that’s a little bit friendlier,” Holton explained.

The problem is, the IDF is finding that “the whole of Gaza has been militarized in some way, shape, or form,” said Holton. “The whole of Gaza is not a bunch of civilians in cities, with some military things sprinkled around there. It’s actually a giant military base with 2.5 million civilians living in it.” This means that, “in order to destroy Hamas’s capability to make war, … they may have to just raze the whole thing and start over. And obviously that would take a much, much longer campaign to accomplish.”

But Israel needs to achieve victory as soon as possible, said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, host of “Washington Watch.” He pointed out, “you have the international community and the United Nations repeatedly saying we need a humanitarian ceasefire, which is essentially another name for allowing Hamas to regroup.” The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres took the extraordinary step of forcing the Security Council to vote on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The U.S. vetoed the resolution on Friday afternoon, with 13 out of 15 members voting for the measure and the U.K. abstaining.

“Definitely, they feel that they’re racing against that clock because that pressure is mounting from all around the world,” Holton agreed.

“Also, the Biden administration is really starting to show its true face,” he added. “At the beginning, they were standing up and saying, ‘We stand with Israel, they have the right to defend themselves.’ And now they’re saying, ‘Israel, you cannot take longer than the first week of January to complete this.’ ‘We will not allow you to replace the government in Gaza with anything other than Palestinian people,’ etc., etc.”

On the other hand, “the Israeli leadership is saying, ‘Well, there’s one other group of people that has more power over us than you do. That’s our own electorate.’ And the voters here in Israel are saying, ‘Absolutely not. We are not going to put up with more Palestinian Authority in Gaza or anywhere else,’” said Holton. “Israel knows that the Israeli people are not going to let up the pressure on their own politicians until they accomplish this mission.”

“I would think, if I were in Israel, there is only one thing to do. That is, to eliminate this threat,” said Perkins. “As [the hostages] come back and discuss their treatment, and [as] more and more information comes out about what happened on October 7 — the atrocities, the brutality, just demonic activity.”

“They’re hoping to be able to free more of those hostages,” Holton offered. “They found out some absolutely terrible things from the hostages that were released during the ceasefire last week. And that is, that the vast majority of those women were raped, some of them many, many times, even while the bombs were falling around them, … and even some of the men.”

As Perkins met with members of Congress on Capitol Hill this week, he said he witnessed “many of them brought to tears by the reports that they got.” Members of Congress have screened a 43-minute video that features uncut footage of the events on October 7, taken either from surveillance cameras or by Hamas militants.

“Killing the leadership of Hamas as quickly as possible is [Israel’s] quickest route to some sort of victory that they can claim,” said Holton. “And the pressure that they’re putting on the civilian population is … actually helping the IDF, because now the civilian population is starting to understand that, if Hamas would just give themselves up and lay down their weapons, all of their suffering could end. And they’re starting to blame Hamas — rightly so — [rather] than to blame the Israelis.”

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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Palestinian poll shows overwhelming support for terrorism, and suggests that international attention is misplaced

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An extraordinary survey of Palestinians shows widespread popular support for the Hamas massacres of October 7, with nearly all Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank feeling a sense of national pride since the attack.

The Arab World for Research and Development sociological center, or AWRAD, published the results on November 14 from its offices in Ramallah, West Bank. The main findings reveal a strong sense of unity and high morale:

  • 75 percent of residents in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank support the massacres of October 7;
  • 98 percent feel pride as Palestinians in light of this terrorist attack;
  • only 9 percent believe that reaching a peaceful agreement with Israel is possible;
  • a mere 7 percent consider the possibility of coexistence between the Arab and Jewish peoples;
  • contrary to demands of Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden, only 17 percent support a two-state solution;
  • nearly 75 percent support the creation of an Arab state “from the river to the sea,” meaning the physical destruction of the state of Israel;
  • almost 70 percent expect the continuation of war;
  • nearly 73 percent believe the Arabs will prevail;
  • only 3% think that Israel will emerge victorious.

The survey of 668 people was evenly conducted across the entire territory of the West Bank and Jerusalem. The conflict in Gaza limited the survey to Palestinians in Rafah, Khan Yunis, and Deir al-Balah, the southern and central parts of the territory.

Answers to questions, as a percentage of respondents:

Questions Sector Gaza West Bank Total
How much do you support the military operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas on October 7th? 63.6 83.1 75.0
Considering the ongoing events, do you feel a sense of pride as a Palestinian? 97.8 98.2 98.0
Now, has your commitment to a solution based on the restoration of historical Palestine as a final resolution increased? 66.4 74.4 71.1
Now, has your conviction in the possibility of achieving a peaceful solution with Israel increased?   9.0   9.2   9.1
Now, has your conviction in the possibility of coexistence between the Palestinian and Israeli peoples increased?   7.9   6.6   7.2
Do you support the solution of establishing one state or two states in the following formats:

Two-State Solution for Two Peoples

A Palestinian state from the river to the sea

  

 

22.7

70.4

  

 

13.3

77.7

  

 

17.2

74.7
Do you believe that Palestine or Israel will emerge victorious from this war?

Palestine

Israel

  

 

66.4

6.5

  

 

77.0

0.8

  

 

72.6

3.1

The overwhelming majority of those surveyed in Gaza and the West Bank rejected proposals expressed by Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden for the peaceful coexistence of Arab and Jewish states.

The survey also gives an idea of the levels of support among the population of Gaza and Ramallah for various current parties, terrorist groups, organizations, news media, and foreign countries. The United States and Israel rank dead last.

Positive assessment of the following parties/organizations/media/states, as a percentage of the number of respondents

Parties/Organizations/Media/States Sector Gaza West Bank Total
Al-Qassam Brigades 79.1 95.2 88.6
Islamic Jihad 71.9 92.9 84.2
Al-Aqsa Brigades 69.7 86.9 79.8
Hamas 59.6 87.7 76.0
Arabic media 37.5 56.0 48.4
Hizballah 44.1 45.8 45.1
Russia 34.7 43.0 39.5
China 35.3 33.2 34.4
Turkey 31.1 36.1 33.9
Iran 32.9 32.5 32.6
International Red Cross 26.7 27.8 27.3
Fateh, or Al-Fatah 18.4 26.6 23.2
Egypt 18.8 10.7 14.0
Jordan 13.0 11.5 12.1
Palestinian Authority   8.3 11.7 10.3
Western media 12.6   6.4   9.2
United Nations 14.8   5.1   9.1
EU   8.0   2.6   4.7
Saudi Arabia   1.4   4.1   2.9
UAE   1.5   3.3   2.5
UK   1.8   0.5   1.0
US   0.7   0.3   0.4
Israel   1.1   0.0   0.4

Among the Arabs of Gaza and Ramallah, Hamas ranks high but not at the top. In terms of the level of public support, other terrorist organizations –the al-Qassam Brigades, Islamic Jihad, and al-Aqsa Brigades – are at the top of the list.

Russia under Vladimir Putin enjoys support substantially higher than any Arab country in the survey. Qatar, which supports Hamas and other terrorist groups in addition to hosting a vital United States military facility, was not mentioned in the survey. Russia is also more popular than the Fateh Party, the old party of Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat, also known as Al-Fatah; and the wildly unpopular Palestinian Authority. Survey results show that Russia is more highly regarded than Islamist-run Turkey and Iran, and almost as popular as the Hezbollah terrorist group.

Conclusion

West Bank residents surveyed show markedly more support for violence and extremism than residents of Gaza, site of nearly all the combat during the conduct of the survey from October 31-November 7.

Survey results show that Hamas is far less popular in Gaza than the West Bank, and that three other terrorist groups are far more popular in both areas.

A conclusion to draw from the results is that international focus on Hamas and Gaza, and not on other terrorist groups and the people in the West Bank, is to miss the most crucial points of the latest war against Israel.

AUTHOR

Andrei Illarionov

Senior Analyst for Russian and European Affairs.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.