Exposing The Criminal Society And The Culture of Death: Isi Leibler, Jerusalem Post, Aug. 24, 2016— We are losing the battle in the war of ideas for the simple reason that we are continuously on the defensive while those seeking our destruction actively and relentlessly demonize us. Ever since the Oslo Accords, successive Israeli governments have felt obliged to understate and even dismiss Palestinian terrorism and hatred in order to maintain domestic public support for policies that, with the benefit of hindsight, were doomed to fail.
The World We Have; The World We Want: Henry R. Nau, National Review, Aug. 15, 2016— America is walking away from the world “as it wished it to be” in 1945, a world of unprecedented peace, democracy, and prosperity. And it is embracing a world “as it is” in 2016 that is rapidly descending into violence, nationalism, and recession. In 1945, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman could only dream of the world that exists today.
Sweden: The Silence of the Jews: Ingrid Carlqvist, Gatestone Institute, Aug. 16, 2016— One of the most visible effects of Muslim mass immigration into Sweden is that anti-Semitism is very much on the rise in the country. Swedish Jews are being harassed and threatened, mainly in the Muslim-dense city of Malmö, where in January 2009, the friction deepened during a peaceful pro-Israel demonstration.
Willkommen? Maybe Not So Much: Christopher Caldwell, The Weekly Standard, Aug. 15, 2016— In the last days of July, German chancellor Angela Merkel rushed back to Berlin from her summer vacation to tell her countrymen how strong they were. She had done the same thing a year earlier, when Europe faced a wave of refugees from the war in Syria, joined by migrants from Iraq, Iran, and elsewhere in the Muslim world.
On Topic Links
Outreach Pioneer and Longtime Jewish Press Columnist Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis Passes Away: Jason Maoz, Jewish Press, Aug. 24, 2016
What Europe Could Learn From Israel: Judith Bergman, Algemeiner, Aug. 17, 2016
Britain Moves to Separate Radicalized Inmates From Other Prisoners: Kimiko De Freytas-Tamura, New York Times, Aug. 22, 2016
The Morning After: John Psaropoulos, The Weekly Standard, Aug. 22, 2016
EXPOSING THE CRIMINAL SOCIETY AND THE CULTURE OF DEATH
Isi Leibler
The Jerusalem Post, Aug. 24, 2016
We are losing the battle in the war of ideas for the simple reason that we are continuously on the defensive while those seeking our destruction actively and relentlessly demonize us. Ever since the Oslo Accords, successive Israeli governments have felt obliged to understate and even dismiss Palestinian terrorism and hatred in order to maintain domestic public support for policies that, with the benefit of hindsight, were doomed to fail. In the very early stages, Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat told his people that the ultimate goal was the end of Jewish sovereignty – and we dismissed such outbursts as empty words designed merely to placate his radical domestic opponents.
But as the government falsely praised our peace partner, many Israelis deluded themselves into believing that the terrorism we faced was an extremist aberration and that the Palestinians were committed to ending the conflict on the basis of a two-state solution. Likewise, most of the world accepted at face value our repeated praise of Arafat and his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, as moderates and genuine peace partners. This suited the long-term Palestinian policy of destroying us in stages. They readily accepted concessions and withdrawals but without compromising one iota, and they continue to demonize us and challenge our legitimacy. But the worst aspect was our failure to highlight the poisonous brainwashing the PA had inflicted on its population. While Arab hostility to Jews prevailed even during the British Mandate period, it was not comparable to the culture of death and evil that today saturates every aspect of Palestinian life.
The Palestinians have stated explicitly that their state would be Judenrein and that Jews would never be permitted to live in their ancestral home even if they were willing to accept Palestinian jurisdiction. Indeed, Palestinians were brutally executed when they were deemed to have sold land to a Jew. The PA has become a criminal society and can be compared to prewar Germany, when the Nazis transformed their population into genocidal barbarians by depicting Jews as subhuman. The Palestinians depict Jews as “the offspring of apes and pigs” and call for their extermination. This is not even done subtly but with blatant statements to this effect emanating daily from religious and political leaders and accessible from vast documentary sources compiled by Palestinian Media Watch, MEMRI and others.
A society in which children from kindergarten are brainwashed into believing that the highest goal in Islam is to achieve martyrdom in the course of killing Jews can only be described as criminal. The demonization of Israel and manifestations of the culture of death are promoted without inhibition by the leadership, the mullahs in the mosques and the state-controlled media. They amount to direct incitement for individuals to strike out and kill Jews in concert or randomly. The “heroic” scenes of youngsters stabbing Jews, the praise by Abbas himself of martyrs “with holy blood” and the totally contrived religious frenzy over accusations of Israelis planning to destroy al-Aksa mosque, coalesce into a witch’s brew of primeval rage and hatred.
The PA provides generous state salaries to terrorists apprehended by Israelis, and if they are killed, their families are remunerated – from funds provided by Western countries. Religious and political leadership at all levels sanctifies terrorists as heroes and national martyrs. City squares, schools and even football clubs are named in their honor. The barbarism imbibed by the Palestinians is reflected in the street celebrations that erupt spontaneously with every murder of an Israeli. Even more nauseating are the repeated displays on TV of mothers expressing pride at their children becoming martyrs, and expressing hope that their other children will follow the example.
Under these circumstances, it is no wonder that Palestinian opinion polls reflect public support for terrorist attacks against Israel and opposition to a two-state solution. The Arafat/Abbas indoctrination process has radicalized successive generations into believing that the only solution to the conflict is the permanent termination of Jewish sovereignty in the area.
There is irrefutable evidence of the barbaric and genocidal nature of Palestinian society. Indeed, the reality is that, despite maintaining a “moderate” stance to the outside world, internally the Palestinians and ISIS are birds of a feather – although the Palestinians are probably more corrupt.
Alongside the turbulence in the region and the threat from Iran and ISIS, could one envisage any country agreeing to accept statehood for what will inevitably be a neighboring criminal state pledged to its destruction or a candidate for an ISIS or Iranian takeover? This would be utterly inconceivable. Yet most of the international community, including the United States, regards this as an issue of two nations arguing over real estate. Were that the case, the Palestinians would not have dismissed the offers by prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, who were willing to concede up to 97 percent of the territories formerly controlled by the Jordanians.
Israel has been the target of repeated defamation and delegitimization yet has basically only been on the defensive, seeking to refute the lies being disseminated against it. But as Joseph Goebbels said, if one repeats a lie continuously, people begin believing it. This dictum has now been realized; many in the Western world have absorbed the distorted Palestinian narrative of Israel being an apartheid state, an occupier and a nation born in sin.
Ironically, the weakness of our position lies in the fact that, until recently, in order to appease our allies and “protect” Israelis from being confronted with the stark reality, we deliberately held back from telling the truth and failed to highlight the barbaric and criminal nature of our purported peace partner. Had we mounted campaigns at the outset, exposing the horrors perpetrated by our neighbors, it may not have influenced anti-Semites and the delusional Left but it would have made a significant impact on the open-minded.
But even now, belatedly exposing the barbarity of our neighbors should be made the top priority in our foreign relations efforts rather than the endless disputes over whether the minuscule 2% of territory comprising settlements (which are not being expanded) is justified.
The recent initiative by Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman to establish relations with independent Palestinians, aside from not having cabinet approval, is bound to fail because any Palestinian engaged in such negotiations will immediately be assassinated. Pressure must be exerted to encourage rank-and-file Palestinians that their best interests will be served when they appoint leaders who genuinely support the peace process. Alas, for the time being, that is not even on the horizon.
Today, we must move forward and promote a focused effort to document and expose the evil nature of Palestinian society, which will make it far more difficult and embarrassing for the Americans and Europeans to continue pressuring Israel to accept the creation of what will invariably be a criminal state – particularly in the context of the mayhem prevailing in the region and the terrorist threats now impacting the heartland of Europe.
THE WORLD WE HAVE; THE WORLD WE WANT
Henry R. Nau
National Review, Aug. 15, 2016
America is walking away from the world “as it wished it to be” in 1945, a world of unprecedented peace, democracy, and prosperity. And it is embracing a world “as it is” in 2016 that is rapidly descending into violence, nationalism, and recession.
In 1945, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman could only dream of the world that exists today. They lived in a brutal and chaotic era that had descended twice in 25 years into the depravity of horrific war. They did not accept the state of affairs as it was. They helped create a better world, one that for 70 years avoided another major global war, vanquished the scourge of totalitarianism championed by the former Soviet Union, spread freedom for the first time throughout the whole of Europe and significant parts of Asia, and created a global economy that produced rapid growth and reduced inequality as defeated and developing nations steadily closed the gap in relative wealth and power with the United States.
Now, America’s leaders, including both major-party presidential candidates, dismiss the idea that we can make the world as we wish it to be. That’s utopian ideology, they say, a foreign policy that leads to military quagmires and divers us from our hard-core national interests. Obama ridiculed his predecessor for muscling freedom forward in Iraq and Afghanistan and spurned new military interventions in Ukraine and Syria. Hillary Clinton, his first secretary of state and the Democratic nominee for president, intervened in Libya but now regrets it; she has also walked back her commitments to major trade agreements. And Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, threatens to undo the pillars of the Truman/Reagan world: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the World Trade Organization. They all claim they will defend and avoid the periphery (which for Obama and Clinton appears to include Ukraine and the disputed islands in the South and East China Seas). Stop trying to make the world as you wish it to be, they say, and take care of America first, in the world as it is.
The siren song is tempting. But the world doesn’t get better just because we accept it as it is. It depends on what other leaders want. And other leaders are making the world the way they wish it to be. At the core, the Truman/Reagan world might be unraveling. Britain exits the European Union; Poland, Hungary, and potentially other new democracies in Europe drift towards an authoritarian Russia; and South Korea is politically at odds with Japan and economically dependent on a more nationalist China. And at the periphery, dangers threaten to invade the core. Russia, China, and ISIS do not accept the world as it is. Vladimir Putin seeks a new Europe, in which Russia exercises a veto power in the former Soviet republics (including, if he can get away with it, the Baltic states). He is created problems in Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria to keep the West’s influence at bay …
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
SWEDEN: THE SILENCE OF THE JEWS
Ingrid Carlqvist
Gatestone Institute, Aug. 5, 2016
One of the most visible effects of Muslim mass immigration into Sweden is that anti-Semitism is very much on the rise in the country. Swedish Jews are being harassed and threatened, mainly in the Muslim-dense city of Malmö, where in January 2009, the friction deepened during a peaceful pro-Israel demonstration. Demonstrators were attacked by pro-Palestinian counter demonstrators, who threw eggs and bottles at the supporters of Israel. The mayor of Malmö at the time, Ilmar Reepalu, failed to take a clear stance against the violence, and was accused of preferring the approval of the city's large Muslim population to protecting Jews. He remarked, among other things, that "of course the conflict in Gaza has spilled over into Malmö."
In January 2009, an Arab mob in Malmö pelted a peaceful Jewish demonstration with bottles, eggs and smoke bombs. The police pushed the Jews, who had a permit for their gathering, into an alley.
The situation in Malmö has twice been deemed so alarming that U.S. President Barack Obama sent Special Representatives to the city: Hanna Rosenthal visited in 2012, and Ira Forman came in 2015. "We are keeping an eye on Malmö," Forman told the media.
The harassment of Malmö's Jews was, for a long time, a mystery to the general public; Were neo-Nazis really walking the streets of Sweden's third largest city? Many believed that to be the case, until the local daily paper Skånska Dagbladet published a series of articles, in which the Jewish community finally pointed out the elephant in the room: Malmö's growing Muslim population …
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
Christopher Caldwell
Weekly Standard, Aug. 15, 2016
In the last days of July, German chancellor Angela Merkel rushed back to Berlin from her summer vacation to tell her countrymen how strong they were. She had done the same thing a year earlier, when Europe faced a wave of refugees from the war in Syria, joined by migrants from Iraq, Iran, and elsewhere in the Muslim world. Back in the summer of 2015, Merkel announced that Germany could handle 800,000 of them. Migrants took it as an invitation. Over a million came. The encounter between Germany and its new Muslim population has been rocky. Last New Year’s Eve in downtown Cologne saw 1,200 sexual assaults by mostly migrant men. A Moroccan girl stabbed a policeman in Hannover in March, and in April two teenagers, Yusuf T. and Mohammed B., blew up a Sikh temple in Essen.
At her latest appearance, Merkel professed herself proud of last summer's invitation and told Germans they were now summoned to "a great test in mastering the flipside, the shadow side, of all the positive effects of globalization." This was the chancellor's glass-half-full way of acknowledging that various newcomers to the national household had begun to attack and kill her voters at an alarming rate. On Monday, July 18, a 17-year-old Afghan, armed with an axe and hollering Allahu Akbar!, attacked a family of travelers from Hong Kong on a train. Four days later, on Friday, a German-Iranian named Ali Sonboly ran amok in Munich with a 9mm Glock and 300 rounds of ammunition in a McDonald's full of children and a shopping mall, shooting 29 people, of whom 9 died. That Sunday, in Reutlingen in Baden-Württemberg, a 21-year-old recent Syrian arrival named Mohamed hacked to death a pregnant Polish restaurant employee. At a music festival in Ansbach that same afternoon, another Syrian refugee, 27-year-old Muhammad Daleel, became Germany's first-ever suicide bomber, killing himself and wounding 15.
Germans have been enjoined not to leap to conclusions about the individuals involved. The train axe man and the festival bomber claimed their attacks for ISIS. The machete man knew the woman he killed, so the incident was, news reports reassured, "not terrorism." The mall shooter was a terrorist, true, but his family had arrived from Iran in the 1990s, making it possible to describe the terrorism as "homegrown." Still, all the killers were of a migrant background, and this will do nothing to make Merkel's promotion of migration more popular. Last year's invitation to refugees was the occasion of a lot of German self-congratulation. The country is still relatively optimistic. An early August poll by the Pew Research Center asked people in various European countries how they felt about the European Union's policy on refugees. They hate it. In all of them, the number of people who disapprove is a multiple of the number of those who approve. In Greece, 94 percent are upset, 5 percent content. Germans distrust EU refugee policy by "only" a 2 ½ – 1 ratio. Merkel is lucky. Migration has fallen to a tiny fraction of what it was in 2015—just 57,000 refugees since March …
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!
Outreach Pioneer and Longtime Jewish Press Columnist Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis Passes Away: Jason Maoz, Jewish Press, Aug. 24, 2016—Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis, pioneer in Jewish outreach, founder of the international Hineni organization, and Jewish Press columnist for more than fifty years, passed away Tuesday at the age of 80. Rebbetzin Jungreis was born in Szeged, Hungary, in 1936, where her father, HaRav Avraham HaLevi Jungreis, was chief rabbi.
What Europe Could Learn From Israel: Judith Bergman, Algemeiner, Aug. 17, 2016— If there is one thing at which Jews have traditionally excelled, it is adapting. Throughout history, Jews have managed to adapt to often overwhelmingly negative circumstances, while constantly maintaining and developing their culture. This ability to adapt occasionally gave way to an irresistible temptation among Jews to blend in with their surroundings and to stop actively practicing Judaism.
Britain Moves to Separate Radicalized Inmates From Other Prisoners: Kimiko De Freytas-Tamura, New York Times, Aug. 22, 2016— Convicts in British prisons who preach terrorism and extreme ideology to fellow inmates will be held in high-security “specialist units,” the government announced on Monday, amid efforts to crack down on Islamic radicalization in jails. The announcement reflects an emerging trend in Europe to isolate terrorism convicts and influential extremists from the rest of the prison population.
The Morning After: John Psaropoulos, The Weekly Standard, Aug. 22, 2016— George Papaconstantinou has been through hell. His reputation as the finance minister who cowrote and signed Greece’s first bailout agreement with the eurozone in the spring of 2010 cost him his cabinet post the following year and his parliament seat the year after that. He spent the next three years fighting charges that he tampered with state documents to help relatives evade taxes, which could have jailed him for life.
