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Europe’s New Media Darlings: Terrorists

October 1, 2016

Europe’s New Media Darlings: Terrorists, Gatestone Institute, Giulio Meotti, October 1, 2016

It is such a shame and an irony that terrorists who have killed and ordered the killing of unarmed and innocent Jews, are now being celebrated as Europe’s apostles of peace.

Can you imagine Italian or French mayors and members of Parliament naming a street after Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who murdered at least 84 people in Nice on July 14? Or honoring the brothers Salah and Brahim Abdesalem for their attack at the Bataclan Theater in Paris on November 13, 2015, in which 89 people were murdered?

What would have happened if the city council of Jerusalem had conferred the honorary citizenship on Italy’s Mafia leader, Totò Riina, calling him a “political prisoner”? What would have happened if the city council of Tel Aviv had named a street after Giovanni Brusca, the Mafia butcher who kidnapped and tortured the 11-year-old son of another mafioso who had betrayed him, and then dissolved the boy’s body in acid? The Italian government would have vehemently protested. With Palestinian terrorists, however, there is another standard, as if in the eyes of many of Italy’s city councils, terror against Israeli Jews is actually justified.

In the pro-Palestinian credentials of the mayor of Naples, Luigi de Magistris, the only item missing was giving honorary citizenship to a Palestinian terrorist. Bilal Kayed is anything but a “man of peace.” He is a dangerous Palestinian terrorist who spent 14 years in Israeli prisons for two shooting attacks, and for planning and attempting the (unsuccessful) kidnapping of a soldier. Kayed is now a new honorary citizen of Naples.

“[It is] a decision that harms the image of Naples”, protested the newly elected president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, Noemi Di Segni. Meanwhile, Naples city council has refused to grant honorary citizenship to the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem.

It is not the first time that Mayor De Magistris embraces anti-Israel militancy. The city of Naples provided a municipal room to show a documentary called, “Israel, The Cancer,” which shamefully compares Israeli soldiers to Nazis. Israel’s Ambassador to Italy, Naor Gilon, protested against the screening and noted that “the film’s title, ‘Israel, The Cancer’, is reminiscent of dark eras in the Italian and European history, in which Jews were defined as a disease.”

De Magistris also received reciprocal “Palestinian citizenship” from the hands of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and the mayor of Naples returned the favor by granting honorary citizenship to PA President Mahmoud Abbas. De Magistris also gave his support to the “Freedom Flotilla,” a convoy of ships that tried to bring weapons to the Hamas regime in Gaza. Eleonora De Majo, a candidate on De Magistris’ political list, also called the Israelis “pigs.”

De Magistris is not the only Italian mayor who apparently prizes Palestinian terrorism. Palermo’s mayor, Leoluca Orlando, awarded honorary citizenship to Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian terrorist who orchestrated attacks that killed several people and who is currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison.

Many of Europe’s streets are plastered with the names of the Palestinian terrorists. The French town of Valenton named a street for Marwan Barghouti; and a few days after a priest was slaughtered this summer in France, a group of French cities planned to honor Barghouti. Towns such as Pierrefitte-sur-Seine have already awarded him honorary citizenship, and a photograph of the Palestinian terror leader was hung on the front of its city hall.

Barghouti, who masterminded the 2002 attack at the Seafood Market in Tel Aviv and a massacre in Hadera which killed six Israelis, is a man Europe’s television stations love to show handcuffed with his arms raised. He is Europe’s idol, a hero, an icon. The Guardian even published an op-ed piece by Barghouti, in which he expresses support for the “Third Intifada” of stabbing- and shooting-attacks and car-rammings.

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The mayor of Palermo, Italy, Leoluca Orlando (left), awarded honorary citizenship to Marwan Barghouti (right), the Palestinian terrorist who orchestrated attacks that killed several people and who is currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison.

The Western press loves Barghouti and even tries to compare him to Nelson Mandela, in articles such as “The Question of Barghouti: Is He a Mandela or an Arafat?” (Time); “A Mideast Mandela” (Newsweek) and “A Nelson Mandela for the Palestinians” (New York Times).

Twenty French cities, such as Vitry-sur-Seine, La Verrière and Montataire, have granted honorary citizenship to this terrorist and plastered their streets with his disgraceful name. The Jeu de Paume National Gallery in Paris hosted an exhibition calling Palestinian suicide bombers “martyrs.” The exhibit “Death”, by photographer Ahlam Shibli, featured Palestinian suicide bombers with captions that promote the jihadist agenda of glorifying their deaths.

Bezons, an urban conglomerate just 10 kilometers from Paris, was also the first French town officially to include among its honorary citizenship the Palestinian terrorist, Majdi Rimawi, who planned and carried out the assassination of Israel’s Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi in 2001. Rimawi, who sits in an Israeli prison, was immortalized in a plaque prepared by the city of Bezons in 2013, which labels the terrorist as a “political prisoner.”

The mayor of Bezons, Dominique Lesparre, held a public speech in which he called Rimawi a “victim.” In the official document issued by Bezons City Hall, entitled “Prisonnier et citoyen d’honneur,” the fact that Rimawi is a murderer was not even mentioned.

It is such a shame and an irony that terrorists who have killed and ordered the killing of unarmed and innocent Jews, are now being celebrated as Europe’s apostles of peace. They are now even the new media darlings.

Can you imagine Italian or French mayors and members of Parliament naming a street after Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who murdered at least 84 people in Nice on July 14? Or honoring the brothers Salah and Brahim Abdesalem for their attack at the Bataclan Theater in Paris on November 13, 2015, in which 89 people were murdered? Or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was linked to nearly every al-Qaeda attack between 1993 and 2003?

Categories: Antisemitism, Europe, Palestinian heroes, Palestinian terrorists
Tags: Antisemitism, Europe, Palestinian heroes, Palestinian terrorists

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Are Hillary’s Henchmen Trying to Take Out a Trump Advisor with Fake Antisemitism Charges?

August 23, 2016

Are Hillary’s Henchmen Trying to Take Out a Trump Advisor with Fake Antisemitism Charges? PJ Media, Liz Sheld, August 23, 2016

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The media continues its role as propagandist for the Democratic 2016 presidential ticket with astory showcasing “allegations of antisemitism” that “have surfaced” about presidential candidate Donald Trump advisor Joe Schmitz. But those who know him best say the allegations are “laughable, ugly and profoundly false” and that Schmitz exhibits “the highest character qualities.”

The article highlighting these allegations explains that “the revelations feed two themes that his opponent Hillary Clinton has used to erode Trump’s credibility: That he is a foreign policy neophyte, and that his campaign, at times, has offended Jews and other minorities.” In other words, the allegations that have “surfaced” are convenient if you have an interest in pushing either one of those Clinton campaign narratives.

Schmitz is a Naval Academy distinguished graduate, has a law degree from Stanford, and was formerly the Senate-confirmed inspector general of the Department of Defense. He is currently in private practice in Washington, D.C. Most recently, Schmitz has been advocating for and advising Donald Trump.

The allegations that have “surfaced” originate from a report filed by Dan Meyer, executive director of the intelligence community whistleblowing and source protection program.

Meyer, whose job it is to deal with whistleblowers, filed his own whistleblower complaint after he found himself punished for disclosing possible public corruption. The public corruption in question was the editing of an inspector general’s report that accused former Secretary of Defense and Clinton family pal Leon Panetta of leaking classified information to the makers of the film “Zero Dark Thirty.” Meyer says in his complaint that his DoD bosses had manipulated “a final report to curry favor” with Defense Secretary Panetta. The final report contained no such claims about Panetta leaking classified information. Meyer also alleges that he was targeted by the department because he was gay.

The details and circumstances of Meyer’s complaint are described in a McClatchy story from last month titled “Official who oversees whistleblower complaints files one of his own” which makes no reference to either Joe Schmitz or to the alleged anti-Semitism that is the subject of their latest story about the very same complaint. The story written last week now advances the political narrative that Trump offends “Jews and other minorities,” using Meyer’s complaint as a springboard to smear Schmitz.

Schmitz hired the openly gay Meyer in January of 2004, and left the Department of Defense towards the end of 2005, so the men worked together a little under two years. Meyer’s office told PJ Media “Mr. Meyer never filed any complaints against Mr. Schmitz.”

So where does this sensational statement written by McClatchy about Schmitz come from?

“His summary of his tenure’s achievement reported as ‘…I fired the Jews,’ ” wrote Meyer, a former official in the Pentagon inspector general’s office whose grievance was obtained by McClatchy.

This statement is not from Meyer, it is a description of an allegation made by someone else that Meyer is summarizing. It’s deceptively presented to look like it is an assertion from Meyer and that Meyer’s complaint involves Schmitz.

The Meyer complaint says that former Pentagon official John Crane was a “source and witness” to these remarks. So the allegations of antisemitism come from third-party Crane.

Crane also alleges that Schmitz downplayed the Holocaust. Meyer further summarizes Crane’s allegations, according to the McClatchy piece: “In his final days, he allegedly lectured Mr. Crane on the details of concentration camps and how the ovens were too small to kill 6 million Jews.”

To be clear, these are not proven or verified facts. They have not been examined by the appropriate officials. The statements are claims by a former employee who has not seen fit to file his own formal complaint about the very things he alleges. Were there other statements in the Meyer report claiming Schmitz made anti-Semitic remarks that support Crane’s allegations? McClatchy has the Meyer complaint (PJ Media does not) and they did not offer up any such corroboration (and I have to believe they would if it was in there). One has to wonder who leaked a confidential whistleblower complaint and why.

According to McClatchy, Crane would not comment on his allegations, saying: “If, when, I am required to testify under oath in a [Merit Systems Protection Board] MSPB hearing, I would then comment on the statement attributed to me by Mr. Meyer.”

“Statements made under oath at the request of a judge in a formal proceeding would also remove my vulnerability to any potential civil litigation by any party involved in the filings by Mr. Meyer,” he added.

The McClatchy piece subsequently piles on Schmitz with another case that deals with antisemitism in the Department of Defense, but one that has nothing to do with Schmitz at all.

The Tenenbaum case is “decades old” and Mr. Tenenbaum’s original complaint focused on Inspector General General Counsel Henry Shelley, who worked on Tenenbaum’s discrimination case eight years ago, after Schmitz had left the DoD. In 2008, the Pentagon’s inspector general found in Tenenbaum’s favor that religious discrimination was a factor in the accusation that Tenenbaum was an Israeli spy.

McClatchy describes:

David Tenenbaum, an Army engineer at the Tank Automotive Command (TACOM) in Warren, Michigan, is now citing the allegations in a letter this week to Acting Pentagon Inspector General Glenn Fine as new evidence that current and former Pentagon officials helped perpetrate an anti-Semitic culture within the military that left him vulnerable.“The anti-Semitic environment began under a prior Inspector General, Mr. Joseph Schmitz,” the letter from Tenenbaum’s lawyer Mayer Morganroth of Birmingham, Mich., states.

“The allegations”? The same allegations made about Schmitz by Crane? Not additional, different allegations from another person, but the same allegations by the person who made hearsay statements in the Meyer complaint. The article confirms as much:

The letter from Tenenbaum’s lawyer Mayer Morganroth also alleges Schmitz made remarks about firing Jews and playing down the extent of the Holocaust, citing a “sworn statement” from an unnamed source with knowledge of the Tenenbaum case.A federal official with knowledge of the matter told McClatchy that Crane testified, under oath, about anti-Semitic remarks Schmitz made to him.

No word as to whether Crane’s allegations have been cross-examined or verified yet, or that there are corroborating witnesses to hearsay conjecture. Only that they were repeated as regards to a different situation.

Schmitz denied any accusations of antisemitism to McClatchy.

“The allegations are completely false and defamatory,” Schmitz said.

“I do not recall ever even hearing of any ‘allegations of anti-Semitism against [me],’ which would be preposterously false and defamatory because, among other reason(s), I am quite proud of the Jewish heritage of my wife of 38 years.”

Schmitz also denied any and all allegations of antisemitism to PJ Media and added that he has no familiarity with Tenenbaum at all.

PJ Media spoke with several associates of Schmitz, inquiring about the newly “surfaced” charges of antisemitism.

Professor Michael Halbig, retired vice academic dean at the U.S. Naval Academy and retired Naval Reserve captain, was a former Naval Academy professor of Schmitz. Halbig had this to say:

I’ve known Joe Schmitz since he was a youngster (a sophomore) in my German class at the Naval Academy. I was then an officer instructor and ended up spending a 40 year career there, retiring in 2012. My wife of 43 years is Jewish, our two sons have had bar mitzvahs, and I am in the process of converting to Judaism (next Friday, to be precise). We have maintained a Jewish household for 43 years. Joe and his wife Molly (and their son Nick, when he was a midshipman) have been to our home many times. We have known Joe and Mollie since before they were married in 1978. Joe was a close colleague in the Naval Reserve Intelligence Command, and was of particular assistance to me as inspector general when I was Chief of Staff in the years surrounding 9/11. I disagree with many aspects of Joe’s politics, about which we usually don’t talk much, but I have never, ever witnessed a whiff of Anti-semitism in Joe or his family. In fact, I cannot imagine it.

Bill Levin, Esq., was a co-clerk in the chambers of Hon. James L. Buckley, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, with Schmitz. Mr. Levin told PJ Media:

Joe Schmitz has been a good friend going now on 30 years since we clerked together on the DC Circuit for Jim Buckley. In all that time, Joe has never exhibited even the slightest hint of antisemitism. To the contrary, we openly have shared our faith with great mutual respect. The allegation of antisemitism is laughable, ugly and profoundly false.

Consultant to the DoD Office of the Inspector General Roger Golden, Esq., said of Schmitz: “I’ve known Joe Schmitz personally and professionally for over 20 years. Joe always has exhibited the highest character qualities. The attribution of ‘antisemitic behavior’ to Joe is absurd and unimaginable based on my experience. If anything, the opposite is true; Joe is strongly pro-Judaism.”

The media is selectively interested in cases of antisemitism. It’s a convenient slur to be directed at the proper political target, but ignored when it doesn’t serve the leftist narrative. Don’t buy into convenient stories the media tells you. Dave Reaboi over Red State said it well: “Let’s not allow ourselves to get into a lather, leading us to smear good people we don’t know simply because we want to score points against Donald Trump or any of our other political enemies.”

Categories: 2016 elections, Antisemitism, Media and Donald Trump, Media and Hillary Clinton, Trump campaign
Tags: Antisemitism, Media and Donald Trump, Media and Hillary Clinton, Trump campaign

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Bernie Sanders Invites Spain’s Anti-Semitic, Anti-Israel Party Leader to Democratic Convention

July 25, 2016

Bernie Sanders Invites Spain’s Anti-Semitic, Anti-Israel Party Leader to Democratic Convention, PJ Media, Ron Radosh, July 24, 2016

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Because of the tumult over the WikiLeaks revelations showing how the DNC worked to undermine Bernie Sanders’ candidacy in the Democratic primaries, few people have noticed the controversial guest that Sanders has invited to the Democrats’ convention.

Spanish newspaper ABC reported on July 22 that Paul Bustinduy, secretary of international relations of Spain’s far-left, anti-Semitic party Podemos, is Bernie’s guest.

Although Podemos came in third place in the June 26Spanish national election, it is a political force to be reckoned with in Spain. Podemos had joined an alliance with other mostly leftist groups in a coalition called United We Can — this was the name Podemos ran under. The alliance included the United Left, whose main component is members of the old Spanish Communist Party, which on its own has little support in Spain.

Composed of old Communists, Trotskyists, independent revolutionaries, Basque and Catalan nationalists, leftist urban intellectuals, and former supporters of the Socialist Party annoyed at what they perceive as its continuing compromises, United We Can models itself on the Marxist Greek party Syriza. Syriza brought the Greek economy to near total collapse.

To call Podemos blatantly anti-Semitic would not be a false accusation.

In Madrid, the party’s affiliate is called Ahora Madrid. The head of Madrid’s department of culture, Guillermo Zapata, who is a member, tweeted:

“ ‘How do you fit five million Jews in a SEAT 600 [a car]?’ Answer: ‘In an ashtray.’”

In 2012, he tweeted that Israel is “genocidal posing as an advanced democracy,” and resembles Assad’s regime in Syria.

Not surprisingly, United Left and Podemos support the international BDS campaign. They also supported the anti-Israel flotillas that attempted to sail to Gaza in support of Hamas in its war against Israel. They support virtually all measures the anti-Israel European left has proposed.

Podemos is so anti-Israel that it defends a notorious anti-Semitic Spanish magazine, El Jueves.

An English independent socialist internet magazine, Shiraz Socialist, recently ran an article aboutEl Jueves written by Yves Coleman, appropriately titled: “Spanish radical left tolerates anti-Semitism.”

Yves Coleman writes:

Following the publication of anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic cartoons in El Jueves on 10 February 2016, Pablo Iglesias (general secretary of Podemos) and David Fernandez, former member of the CUP in the Catalan Parliament, have, along with other personalities of the “political and cultural world,” signed a petition protesting against any possible complaint which could be filed against the anti-Semitic drawings published by El Jueves.

The magazine, Coleman notes:

… likes to play with the stereotypes of the Jew as a schemer, swindler and liar.

They regularly run cartoons of Jews wearing:

… either payots, long beards, a wide-brimmed hat and a black coat or an IDF military uniform.

One such cartoon, from another Spanish left-wing anti-Semitic group, depicts the “Stay out of Spain, Obama” protest. It shows Obama taking money from the Jews. In the Spanish left, Obama is viewed as an imperialist warmonger.

In another issue, they published the cartoon below about Israel, using the symbols of Hitler’s SS to indicate that Israel is composed of Nazis.

cartoon antisemitism

Although Spain is a nation in which few Jews live, it is also the European country in which anti-Semitic views are most widespread. Unfortunately, the magazine’s writers and editors, like Podemos, hold the same anti-Semitic views that exist among the French left, and especially exist in Jeremy Corbyn’s British Labor Party.

To be a leftist in Spain, France or Britain means that you support anti-Semites, condemn Israel, and feel comfortable comparing it as a nation to the Nazis.

While here, Mr. Bustinduy plans to meet with activists in the Latino community, trade unionists, and leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement — which itself is anti-Israel.

A day before the convention, on July 24, he will participate in a left-wing conference at the University of Pennsylvania called Democracy Rising.

His main purpose, however, is to give his support to Bernie Sanders’ efforts to force the Democratic Party to move much further to the left. Undoubtedly, Bustinduy will complain about the Sanders group’s one big failure: to put an anti-Israel position into the Democratic Party platform.

With most of the media concentrating on reaction to the WikiLeaks release, the invitation to Podemos will most likely go unnoticed. Is there anyone in the mainstream media who will ask Sanders why he offered this invitation to a leader of a Spanish anti-Semitic, anti-Israel political party?

Categories: 2016 elections, Antisemitism, Bernie Sanders, Democrat National Convention, Israel, Spain
Tags: Antisemitism, Bernie Sanders, Democrat National Convention, Israel, Spain

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The UK’s Broken Labour Party

July 20, 2016

The UK’s Broken Labour Party, Gatestone Institute, Douglas Murray, July 20, 2016

(As the morass continues, how will the UK deal with its exit from the European Union? — DM)

♦ With the prospect of another Labour leadership election now gathering pace, tens of thousands more activists have joined the Labour party. It seems unlikely that they will be “moderates.”

♦ The election of an Islamist-sympathising, terrorist-sympathising, Israel-bashing hardliner at the head of the second largest party in the House of Commons undoubtedly changes the parameters of political discourse in the UK.

♦ However solidly Theresa May’s new Conservative government performs, it will always seem the point — so long as Corbyn is in office — that you are either for Britain or against it, for the Conservative party or against the country.

♦ A fractured and in-fighting opposition also means that there is no meaningful, organised voice challenging the government in Parliament. That principle — the principle on which our system is based — needs to work well even (perhaps especially) if you support the government of the day, because the government of the day needs to be kept alert to error and on top of sensible criticisms if it is going to pass the best legislation it can for the country.

Herbert Stein’s law, “Things that cannot go on, won’t,” is one of the best laws of politics. It works for fiscal issues and it usually works for politics as a whole. The British Labour party, however, is currently working to try to disprove this rule. To do them justice they are having a good stab at doing so, which suggests that the maxim should perhaps be re-written: “Things that cannot go on sometimes do.”

Consider the latest developments in the party’s recent unhappy history. Earlier this month the party’s specially commissioned inquiry into anti-Semitism within the party found the party not guilty of this bigotry for the second time in six months. Yet at the launch of these findings, a grassroots member of Jeremy Corbyn’s wing of the party verbally bullied a female Jewish Labour MP until she left in tears, and Jeremy Corbyn himself appeared to compare the Jewish state with ISIS. Although this episode captured some headlines, it was a mere footnote alongside the other catastrophes in the Labour party.

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UK Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn (left) appears at a press conference with left-wing campaigner Shami Chakrabarti (right), to present the findings of an inquiry into the Labour party’s anti-Semitism, June 30, 2016.

At the same time as this was going on, Labour MPs attempted a coup to get Jeremy Corbyn out of his position as head of the party. A carefully orchestrated set of resignations from his Shadow Cabinet came in every couple of hours until almost all of the Shadow Cabinet had resigned. Corbyn also lost the support of the deputy leader of the party, Tom Watson. A no-confidence motion saw 172 Labour MPs vote to say that they had no confidence in their party leader, while only 40 Labour MPs supported the party leader. This move meant that Jeremy Corbyn began to have significant trouble finding enough supporters in the Parliamentary Labour party to fill up his shadow cabinet. The joke in Westminster was that those few who did stay loyal to him would find themselves having to hold multiple briefs, so that somebody might easily find themselves being appointed Shadow Home Secretary and Shadow Foreign Secretary.

The trouble appears that all of Corbyn’s politics has a distinctly unfunny, nasty air. It emerged this week (from another declaration of no confidence in the leader) that earlier this year the Labour MP Thangam Debbonaire was both appointed and then sacked as the party’s Culture spokesperson, all within 24 hours and all without even being told, while she was undergoing treatment for cancer. Such stories of non-communication and cruelty towards individual MPs have fanned the rather understandable feeling that Jeremy Corbyn may not be suited to the highest peaks of politics.

Unfortunately for the Labour party, it is not only MPs who have a say. Under new rules unwisely drawn up under Corbyn’s predecessor, Ed Miliband, the Labour party can now be joined by anyone with £3 to spare. All such people then have the right to vote on who the Labour leader should be. Although the idea of having a say in any political party’s future for little more than the price of a cup of coffee may sound appealing, it also leaves a party open to the possibility of a hostile takeover from the most fanatical people in the country — whether they have the Labour party’s interests at heart or not. This is exactly what happened last year when Mr. Corbyn entered the Labour leadership race. Tens of thousands of people from the grassroots, who were soon to form themselves into the ‘Momentum’ movement, saw their chance to bring hard-left politics into the UK mainstream. Jeremy Corbyn won almost 60% of the vote in that election. In recent weeks, despite the formal no-confidence vote of the Labour MPs, this grassroots support for Corbyn only appears to have galvanised further. With the prospect of another Labour leadership election now gathering pace, tens of thousands more activists have joined the Labour party. It seems unlikely that they will be “moderates.”

Nevertheless, two “moderate” candidates for leader stepped forward, inevitably splitting the anti-Corbyn vote, until they seemed to realise this and one dropped out. Nevertheless, polls of party members suggest it looks overwhelmingly likely that in the coming weeks Corbyn will entrench his position by winning a landslide in a second ballot of the party’s members within a year.

Why does this matter? For two reasons. First, because the election of Corbyn has poisoned British politics. The election of an Islamist-sympathising, terrorist-sympathising, Israel-bashing hardliner at the head of the second largest party in the House of Commons undoubtedly changes the parameters of political discourse in the UK. However solidly Theresa May’s new Conservative government performs, it will always seem the point — so long as Corbyn is in office — that there is no party of the decent left available for the large proportion of voters who would like such a thing. This leaves countless patriotic, left-wing voters without a meaningful voice in Parliament.

A fractured and in-fighting opposition also means that there is no meaningful, organised voice challenging the government in Parliament. That principle — the principle on which our system is based — needs to work well even (perhaps especially) if you support the government of the day, because the government of the day needs to be kept alert to error and on top of sensible criticisms if it is going to pass the best legislation it can for the country.

The other reason why this principle matters is because it suggests that vested interests matter more than truth. Herbert Stein’s dictum lacked one crucial ingredient: people’s desire to look after themselves. There are Labour party MPs already looking for a way out, including looking to found a new party or parties. But they fear that way lies electoral oblivion. So they stay, in a party wracked with in-fighting and led by the most corrosive person their party has ever chosen in what had been a noble history. And all the while that person in charge of their party is busily mainstreaming the worst bigotries of our time. When pushed to decide between their morals and their careers, the dictum holds in the Labour party that things that cannot go on, find some way to do so.

Categories: Antisemitism, Britain, Conservative Party, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamists in Britain, Israel, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, Theresa May
Tags: Antisemitism, Britain, Conservative Party, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamists in Britain, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, Theresa May

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Stabbing Policemen, “Slut-Shaming” and New Death Threats

July 12, 2016

Stabbing Policemen, “Slut-Shaming” and New Death Threats -One Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in France: June 2016, Gatestone Institute, Yves Mamou, July 12, 2016

♦ Muslim perpetrators rationalize their violence by convincing themselves that they live in a racist society that rejects them and their religion. And the government legitimizes them when it asks Parliament to vote for a law that favors “diversity” on public television channels.

♦ Islamist terrorist Larossi Abballa, 26, stabbed to death police officer Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and his wife, police administrator Jessica Schneider, in front of their son, at their home in the Paris suburb of Magnanville. The murderer then live-streamed a video on Facebook, in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS).

♦ After the Islamist, anti-gay attack in Orlando, left-wing politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon wrote in his blog that he fears a possible “wave of hatred against Muslims”. For many Islamists in France, the Muslim is always the victim, even when he is the killer.

Islamization is gaining ground in the Muslim community of France. For a long time, this trend remained restricted to the cultural sphere and created strong controversies between Islamists and secular intellectuals (such as the ban on face-covering veils in schools and public places). But the debate stopped being a debate. Sometimes Islamic intolerance takes on the appearance of a civil war. The violence, which was mostly concentrated in the suburbs prior to the January 2015 terrorist attack on the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, is spreading now to the heart of French cities. Murders, assaults, death threats and “slut-shaming” happens almost every day here and there.

Muslim perpetrators rationalize their violence by convincing themselves that they live in a racist society that rejects them and their religion. And the government legitimizes them when it asks Parliament to vote for a law that favors “diversity” on public television channels. What is interesting is that judiciary system seems in disarray and does not know how to treat these types of conflicts: two jihadists back from Syria are condemned to a suspended sentence of six months in prison and a Muslim who slapped a female waiter because she served alcohol during the Ramadan was sentenced to eight months in prison.

The absence of political guidelines spreads fear and aids the rise of the right-wing political party, the Front National.

June 1. Karim Benzema, a French soccer star of Algerian descent, declared, in the Spanish sports newspaper Marca, that French national team’s coach, Didier Deschamps “bowed to the pressure of a racist part of France” by not including him in the team. Benzema was not included in the national soccer team for the UEFA Euro 2016 championship because he is apparently involved in a sex-tape extortion scandal targeting his colleague, Mathieu Valbuena.

June 2. Patrick Kanner, Minister of Urban Affairs, Youth and Sport, said in Le Parisien that Karim Benzema plays an “unfair and dangerous” game when he implies that “ethnic reasons” might have played a role in the decision not to include him in the French soccer team.

June 2. It was reported that the Saudi preacher, Mohammed Ramzan Al-Hajiri, was banned from entering France until 2050. The daily, La Voix du Nord, reported that on May 15, the salafist Abou Bakr Essedik mosque of Roubaix had arranged for him to preach by phone. In April 2014, the same Saudi preacher had declared in public: “Losing your faith makes you no better than an animal” and “to kill a Muslim is a less serious crime than to make him an infidel.”

June 5. A 25-year-old Frenchman was arrested at the border between Ukraine and Poland. According to the TV channel M6, his truck was loaded with three portable rocket launchers, more than 100 kilograms of TNT, 100 detonators and half a dozen Kalashnikov assault rifles. He was unknown to security services and was planning terrorist attacks against synagogues and mosques in France.

June 6. One thousand migrants from Afghanistan, Sudan and Somalia, who were living in tents in the 18th district of Paris (Les Jardins d’Eole), were evacuated peacefully by police. According to the media, it is the 23rd operation of this kind in Paris since 2015

June 6. Swastikas and the words “white power” were tagged on the walls of the synagogue of Verdun. A similar incident of vandalism took place two months prior, said Jean-Claude Lévy, leader of the Jewish community in Verdun.

June 6. Gérard Tardy, mayor of Lorette, a small city in the Loire region of France, posted two messages on the electronic information boards of the city:

“Ramadan must be lived in peace without noise”
“In the Republic, nobody covers his face.”

The far left and Muslims organizations said these messages were “outrageous” and “disrespectful” to Muslims.

June 7. A waitress at a bar in Nice was violently slapped by a Muslim because she was serving alcohol to customers on the first day of Ramadan. Both the owner of the bar and the victim filed a complaint at the police station. The attacker escaped.

June 8. In Grigny, an outer suburb of Paris, people filmed used their smartphones to film a riot between “youths” [the French media’s euphemism for young Muslims] and police, and aired it live on Periscope, an “app” for instant video. No one knows what caused the riot. A father living in Grigny said, “In my time, violence with cops had always a motive: arrest, a stolen car… But now, it is different. It looks like people fight with police for fun”.

June 8. At midnight, Aya Ramadan, a female activist of the Parti des Indigènes de la République, posted on Twitter her congratulations to the two Palestinian terrorists who shot people in a bar in Tel Aviv, killing three. She wrote; “Dignity and pride! Cheers to the two Palestinians who have led a resistance operation in Tel Aviv.”

Gilles Clavreul, the High Commissioner of the Fight against Racism and anti-Semitism, said he would sue Ramadan for acting as an “apologist for terrorism.” The maximum punishment for such an offense is two years in prison and €100,000 fine. The Parti des Indigènes de la République is a racialist organization developing a political ideology to take the power from the “whites” to give it to the “colored people” in France.

June 8. The Observatory of Secularism (Observatoire de la laïcité), an official body linked to the prime minister’s office, published its annual report. According to the report, anti-Semitic attacks remain at a high level (808 attacks) and anti-Muslim attacks have tripled (from 133 last year to 429 in 2015). The report failed to establish a proportion between the number of Jews in France (half a million) and the number of Muslims (between six to ten million). The report also does not relate that most anti-Jewish acts are committed by Muslims. The Observatory of Secularism found itself in the eye of a storm last year for its complacency towards Islamism.

June 9. Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio, Mayor of Saint-Gratien, declared war on shops with veiled saleswomen. She wrote on her Facebook page. “I have decided to boycott all shops who impose veiled cashiers and veiled saleswomen on me.” She says she is committed to support, by all means possible, women who refuse to wear veil.

June 9. Provocation? The Parti des Indigénes de la République issued a public invitation to all Muslims to begin the night of Ramadan in front of Saint Denis Basilica, a huge Catholic monument that played an important role in history of France. The Catholic kings of France were crowned and are buried in the Basilica.

June 9. Soldiers protecting a synagogue in Garges (a Paris suburb) were attacked with a barrage of stones launched by a group of twenty people. One soldier was wounded.

June 8. Twenty MPs co-signed and published an open letter in the news magazine Valeurs Actuelles, addressed to Minister of Education Najat Vallaud-Belkacem. They were protesting the decision of the Ministry of Education to promote teaching Arabic at schools to young children of five or six years old. “This decision is stupid. Priority must be given to teaching French, the language of the Republic”.

June 13. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of left-wing New Anticapitalist Party (NPA), wrote in his blog after the Islamist, anti-gay attack in Orlando, that he fears a possible “wave of hatred against Muslims”. For many Islamists in France, the Muslim is always the victim, even when he is the killer.

June 13. Islamist terrorist Larossi Abballa, 26, stabbed to death police officer Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and his wife, police administrator Jessica Schneider, in front of their son, at their home in the Paris suburb of Magnanville. The murderer then live-streamed a video on Facebook, in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS). When police stormed the house, they rescued the three-year-old boy. According to Le Figaro, the killer had been sentenced in 2013 to three years of prison for participating in recruiting jihadists and funneling them into Pakistan, but was released almost immediately.

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Paris police officer Jean-Baptiste Salvaing (left) and his wife, police administrator Jessica Schneider (right), were stabbed to death in front of their son by Islamist terrorist Larossi Abballa (inset) on June 13. The murderer then live-streamed a video on Facebook, in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

June 14. A 19-year-old female student was stabbed at a bus station in the city of Rennes. Passersby succeeded in capturing her attacker, a Muslim man who said he was obeying “voices” that ordered him to make a “sacrifice for Ramadan.” The young woman was taken to a hospital, and the attacker was taken to a psychiatric hospital.

June 14. In reaction to the June 13 murder of two police officers by an Islamist terrorist, the government authorized all policemen to keep their gun on them when they are not on duty.

June 15. According to the Belgian daily La Dernière Heure, the Belgian antiterrorism service informed police departments that ISIS fighters left Syria at the beginning of June to be sent to France and Belgium to commit terrorist attacks.

June 15. Maude Vallet, 18 years old, was harassed, insulted and threatened by five women in a bus because she was wearing shorts on her way back from the beach. She wrote her story on Facebook: “Hi, I am a bitch”. She denounced traditions and the clergy, but refused to mention that these “slut-shaming” attackers were Muslim women. She said the ethnicity to which they belonged was not relevant.

June 15. Ali S, 32, a Tunisian who slapped a female waiter in a bar in Nice because she was serving alcohol during Ramadan was sentenced to eight months in prison and ordered to pay 1000 euros to the waitress. Because he was residing illegally in France, he will be deported and prohibited from returning to France for three years.

June 16. A street encampment of around 400 Sudanese and Afghan migrants, mostly men, was evacuated by the police in the 18th district of Paris. It is the 24th evacuation since June 15, 2015.

June 16. In reaction to the June 13 murder of two police officers by an Islamist terrorist, the right-wing politicians began campaigning to send 13,000 people registered as an “S” (people who live in France and suspected of being affiliated with a terrorist organization) to special “camps”.

June 16. A 22-year-old convert to Islam was arrested in Carcassonne with a knife and a machete. He confessed to the police that he wanted to kill American and English tourists before stabbing a policeman or a soldier. He is being held in custody in Toulouse. The man is registered as an “S”.

June 18. Abou Kamel Chahid threatened on Facebook to commit terrorist attacks in France. “We are four brothers, each has a mission. I swear by Allah, France is going leave the coalition. They won’t have choice. These kouffars [infidels] will never feel well in this country. Be careful, brothers and sisters, things are going to accelerate”.

June 18. For a year, the public multimedia library of Lannion (Britany) has been suffered a rash of vandalizations of its books, comics and DVDs — all relating to the Jews, such as books about the Holocaust and comics by Johan Sfar, the author of “La chat du rabbin” (“The Rabbi’s Cat”), a bestselling comic book.

June 19: An inmate of the Beziers prison in the south of France was sentenced to an additional six months in prison because he said he wanted to commit a terrorist attack against the nudist beach of the Cap d’Agde. The man, Alain G, a convert to Islam, was reported by other inmates.

June 19: 4000 French Muslims responded to a call launched by a group of Mosques in the area of Magnanville, a Paris suburb, to participate in a silent march in tribute to two police officers stabbed to death at their home. It is the first time that French Muslims showed some collective solidarity with non-Muslims against Islamic terrorism. Pressure from the media had been huge to make the demonstration into a show. There was, however, some criticism: MP Guénhaël Huet tweeted “sincerity or duplicity?”. Many other critics observed the absence of women among the marchers, which was analyzed as a sign of the deepening of Islamist ideology among the French Muslims. When the marchers arrived in front of the police station to lay down flowers, no policemen came out to thank them or shake hands.

June 20. After three days of controversy on social media, it appeared that the policeman who refused to shake hands with President François Hollande at a memorial ceremony for the two police officers murdered by the Islamist, Larossi Abballa, was not a member of right-wing Front National party. According to Le Monde, the policeman just wanted to protest against the shrinking budget of the police.

June 21. The NGO “Action by Christians for the Abolition of Torture” (“Action des chrétiens pour l’abolition de la torture”) released a poll about the perception of torture by the French. The results were astounding:

36% said it is acceptable to use torture “in exceptional circumstances.” The number was 25% in 2000 [Poll Amnesty/CSA. 2000].
54% of those polled found it “justifiable” to use electric shocks to torture a terrorist suspected of planting a bomb.
45% said they considered torture an efficient tool against terrorism.
18% said they thought they could torture a terrorist themselves. 40% of Front National supporters said they thought they could torture a terrorist themselves.

June 21. More than 1000 women (mostly Muslims) signed a petition demanding separate hours for women at the public swimming pool of Mantes la Jolie, a Paris suburb. The petition included a request for only female employees to be present during women’s hours. Officials, in the name of secularism, refused the request.

June 21. The daily, Libération, published a report on the Turkish government’s strategy to gain control of Islamic institutions in France.

June 21. A Muslim security guard operating in the “fan zone” of the UEFA Euro soccer tournament in Nice was seen praying while on duty. Police were called to expel him; bystanders were afraid he was a terrorist.

June 22. The investment company Mayhoola, affiliated with the royal family of Qatar, the al-Thanis, spent half-a-billion euros for a controlling interest in the French fashion company Balmain. The same day, the news magazine Marianne published a full survey about the real estate properties of the royal Qatari family in France: 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion USD) in villas, buildings, malls, etc.

June 22. A Muslim from La Chapelle-Basse-Mer (western France) was given a four month suspended prison sentence, a €300 fine, and ordered to pay €1000 in damages each to the two people he threatened to kill, as well as €300 for court costs. In December 2015, he drove his car into a schoolyard and threatened to kill the cook and deputy cook of the school, because his eight-year-old son had eaten pork at the school cafeteria. The boy was hungry and apparently did not want to wait for a substitute meal for vegetarians and Muslims.

June 23: At 3am, in the heart of Barbes, the Muslim quarter of Paris, two men on a motor-scooter opened fire on a group of young men walking in the street. No one was wounded. The police found two 9mm bullet casings on the scene.

June 24: In Toulon, a hundred women demonstrated in the street, all of them wearing shorts. They said they wanted to support Maude Vallet who had been attacked in a bus by five women; the attackers had said that by wearing shorts, she did not respect herself. Like Maude Vallet, the demonstrators refused to mention that all the attackers had been Muslims. Instead, the demonstrators repeated the traditional litany that “it has nothing to do with Islam”.

June 24: In Portes-lès-Valence, an Islamist under surveillance by security services was convicted and imprisoned for the murder of his three-year-old stepdaughter. He had beaten the child to death. The mother was also charged for failing to report the abuse.

June 25: Can a female lawyer testify in court while wearing a veil? This controversy engulfed the bar association of Seine Saint Denis, a suburb of Paris. On June 24, at a students’ moot court competition, a young woman appeared with a tuque, a traditional hat which no lawyers in France wear anymore. But, in a visible way, under the tuque, she was wearing a Muslim veil. The controversial question of whether this is now a hot topic. Many observers think that the tuque will be reintroduced in France by Islamist lawyers in the next few months.

June 26: Bernard Cazeneuve posthumously admitted Hervé Cornara to the Order of Légion d’Honneur. A year ago, Cornara, a businessman, was murdered and beheaded by his Muslim employee, Yassine Salhi, who claimed to act on behalf of the Islamic State. Salhi placed Cornara’s severed head on display, alongside twin ISIS flags, at the gas factory near Lyon where they worked.

June 27: The press reported that two days earlier, 300 hundred migrants from Sudan, Eritrea and Afghanistan engaged in a mass brawl in the 18th district of Paris. The brawl apparently erupted because a woman was sexually harassed by a man from a different ethnic group. The police used tear gas grenades to stop the violence.

June 27: In Ales (southern France), Abdellah, a Moroccan, apparently had no money to pay for his meal at the Sushi bar where he had eaten, so he ran out of the restaurant with his girlfriend. When the police caught him, he began to shout:

“You pork-eaters! You sausage-eaters… We are going to kick France’s ass. Long live the Kouachis [brothers who murdered the Charlie Hebdo journalists in January 2015]! I swear to God, I have a Kalashnikov…”

Abdellah was sentenced to two years in prison for “defending terrorism,” and was ordered to pay the Sushi bar bill.

June 28: Azzeddine Taïbi, a communist, was elected mayor of Stains, a suburban city known for its Salafist population. On the same day, the Administrative Court of Montreuil rejected an appeal by the Seine-Saint-Denis Prefecture demanding the removal of a banner in support of Marwan Barghouti. Barghouti is currently serving five life sentences in an Israel prison for

“orchestrating three shooting attacks that killed 5 people: one attack in Jerusalem… in which Greek monk Tsibouktsakis Germanus was murdered… and one shooting and stabbing attack at the Sea Food Market restaurant in Tel Aviv (March 5, 2002). When arrested by Israel in 2002, Barghouti headed the Tanzim (Fatah terror faction).”

Barghouti’s supporters try to paint him as the “Palestinian Mandela.” So, today, the portrait of Barghouti is back covering “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” on the pediment of the Seine-Saint-Denis Hall.

June 29: The prosecutor’s office in Paris opened in inquiry into death threats posted on social networks against the magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Some twenty “very threatening” messages, including the death threats, were posted on Charlie Hebdo’s Facebook page for three or four days in mid-June, Le Parisien reported. Police are investigating.

June 30: The French government introduced amendments to the “Equality and Citizenship” bill, to fight against “prejudice” and make “diversity” (ethnic minorities) more visible on public television.

According to the latest “barometer of diversity,” only 14% of people perceived as “non-white” (in the terminology) are present on the air. Erika Bareigts, secretary of state in charge of “real equality,” said that “diversity is the reality of French society, and we must show it. This soothes the debate, and everybody needs it.” She added: “The media do not show non-whites in positive or starring roles. That must change.”

June 30: Two jihadists, back from Syria, where they joined the Islamic State, were sentenced to six-month suspended prison terms. The jihadists are 16 and 17 years old. They stayed only six months in Syria and said they left ISIS because of the “rotten ambiance” in their battalion, which was composed of French volunteers.

Categories: Antisemitism, France, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic jihad, Islamic perversions, Islamic radicalization, Islamic supremacy, Islamic tolerance, Islamisation of France
Tags: Antisemitism, France, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic Jihad, Islamic perversions, Islamic radicalization, Islamic supemacy, Islamic tolerance, Islamistation of France

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Op-Ed: The American Gulag

June 26, 2016

Op-Ed: The American Gulag, Israel National News, Phyllis Chester, June 26, 2016

For years, beginning in 2003, I have personally faced both censorship and demonization. When I began publishing pieces about anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, and Islamic gender and religious apartheid at conservative sites, I was seen as having “gone over to the dark side,” as having joined the legion of enemies against all that was right and good.

My former easy and frequent access to left-liberal venues was over. I learned, early on, about the soft censorship of the Left, the American version of the Soviet Gulag. One could think, write, and even publish but it would be as if one had not spoken–although one would still be constantly attacked for where one published as much as for what one published.

Since then, Left censorship has only gotten worse. (There is also censorship on the Right–but not quite as much.)

A week ago, a colleague of mine was thrilled that a mainstream newspaper had reached out to him for a piece about the violent customs of many male Muslim immigrants to Europe. He discovered, to his shock, that his piece had been edited in a way that turned his argument upside down and ended up sounding like American Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s view, namely, that home-grown terrorists need “love and compassion,” not profiling or detention.

I told him: One more left-liberal newspaper has just bitten the Orwellian dust. He could expose this use of his reasoned view for propaganda purposes–or wear out his welcome at this distinguished venue.

“But,” I said, “on the other hand, what kind of welcome is it if they change your words and the main thrust of your argument?”

That same week, right after the Jihad massacre in Orlando, another colleague, long used to being published–and published frequently at gay websites–wrote about the male Muslim immigrant/refugee physical and sexual violence against girls and women (their own and infidel women); against homosexuals–and paradoxically, also against young boys. He counseled gays to understand that the issues of gun control and “hate,” while important, were also quite beside the point, that “homosexuality is a capital crime in Islam.”

His piece was rejected by every gay site he approached. One venue threatened him: If he published his piece “anywhere,” that his work would no longer be welcome in their pages.

I welcomed him to the American Gulag.

He told me that he finally “had” to publish the piece at a conservative site.

Gently, I told him that what he wrote was the kind of piece that was long familiar only at conservative sites and that he should expect considerable flack for where he’s published as well as for what he’s published.

Another gay right activist told me that when he described Orlando as a Jihad attack, he was castigated as a “right-wing hater.” He, too, had to publish what he wanted to say at a conservative site.

I published two pieces about Orlando. I said similar kinds of things and I privately emailed both articles to about 30 gay activists whom I know.

The silence thereafter was, as they say, deafening. I was not attacked but I was given the Silent Treatment.

For a moment, I felt like gay activist Larry Kramer might have felt when, in the 1980s, he tried to persuade gay men to stop going to the baths and engaging in promiscuous sex, that their lust was literally killing them. Kramer was attacked as a spoilsport and as the homophobic enemy of the gay lifestyle. Alas, Kramer had been right and many gay male lives were lost to AIDS.

Thus, gay activists see their collective interests as best served by marching, lock-step, with politically correct politicians who view “mental illness,” “gun control,” and “American right-wing hatred of gays”–not Jihad–as the major problems. Such gay activists also prefer “Palestine” to Israel. It makes absolutely no difference that Israel does not murder its homosexual citizens and that in fact, Israel grants asylum to Muslim Arab men in flight from being torture-murdered by other Muslim Arab men.

A number of European activists have recently visited me. They described what has been happening to women who undertake the journey from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey; along the way, the girls and women are continually groped and sexually assaulted, even penetrated in every possible orifice, by gangs of male Muslim immigrants. If they want to live, their husbands and fathers can do nothing.

So much for Muslim immigrant women on the move.

And now, European women are being told to “dye their hair black,” stay home “after 8pm,” “always have a male escort at night;” a group of German nudists, whose tradition goes back 100 years, have just been told to “cover up” because refugees are being moved into the rural lake community.

Where will this all end? In Europe becoming a Muslim Caliphate dominated by Sharia law and by all its myriad misogynist interpretations? In Muslim immigrants assimilating to Western ways? In Europeans voluntarily converting to Arab and Muslim ways? In non-violent but parallel Muslim lives?

Bravo to England which has just taken its first, high risk steps to control its borders and its immigrant population.

Categories: Antisemitism, BREXIT, Censorship, Extremism, Freedom of speech, Homosexuals, Islam and homosexuals, Islamists, Leftists, Media, Multiculturalism, Political correctness, Right wing haters
Tags: Antisemitism, BREXIT, Censorship, Extremism, freedom of speech, Homosexuals, Islam and homosexuals, Islamists, Leftists, Media, Multiculturalism, Political correctness, Right wing haters

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Backstage at Turkey’s Shotgun Wedding with Israel

June 14, 2016

Backstage at Turkey’s Shotgun Wedding with Israel, Gatestone Institute, by Burak Bekdil, June 14, 2016

♦ There are two major problems that will probably block a genuine normalization of relations between Turkey and Israel. One is Hamas, and the other is the seemingly irreversible anti-Semitism that most Turks devour.

♦ Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has claimed more than once that Hamas is not a terrorist group but a legitimate political party.

♦ Erdogan came up with the idea that Zionism should be declared a “crime against humanity.”

There is every indication that Turkey and Israel are not far away from normalizing their troubled diplomatic relations. According to Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, for instance, the former allies are “one or two meetings” away from normalization.

If, however, Ankara and Jerusalem finally shake hands after six years of cold war, it will be because Turkey feels increasingly isolated internationally, not because it feels any genuine friendship for the Jewish nation.

In all probability, the “peace” between Turkey and Israel will look like the definition of peace in Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary: “In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting” — despite the backdrop for peace looking incredibly (but mischievously) convenient. On May 29, a Jewish wedding ceremony was held in a historical synagogue in the northwestern province of Edirne for the first time in 41 years. A few months before that, in December, the Jewish year 5776 went down in history possibly as the first time in which a public Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony was held in Muslim Turkey in a state-sponsored event. All that is nice — but can be misleading.

There are two major problems that will probably block a genuine normalization. One is Hamas, and the other is the seemingly irreversible anti-Semitism which most Turks devour.

In a powerful article from this month, Jonathan Schanzer forcefully reminded the world that although Saleh Arouri, a senior Hamas military leader, was expelled from his safe base in Istanbul, “… many other senior Hamas officials remain there. And their ejection from Turkey appears to be at the heart of Israel’s demands as rapprochement talks near completion.”

Schanzer says that there are ten Hamas figures currently believed to be enjoying refuge in Turkey, and he names half a dozen or so Hamas militants there, including Mahmoud Attoun, who was found guilty of the kidnapping and murder of a 29-year-old Israeli. Also enjoying safe haven in Turkey are three members of the Izzedine al-Qassam brigades. Schanzer adds that,

“There are a handful more that can be easily identified in the Arabic and Turkish press, and nearly all of them maintain profiles on Facebook and Twitter, where they regularly post updates on their lives in Turkey.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has claimed more than once that Hamas is not a terrorist group but a legitimate political party. He has held innumerable meetings with senior Hamas officials including Khaled Mashaal, head of its political bureau. In addition, Erdogan came up with the idea that Zionism should be declared a “crime against humanity.”

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Turkish President (then Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, meeting with Hamas leaders Khaled Mashaal (center) and Ismail Haniyeh on June 18, 2013, in Ankara, Turkey. (Image source: Turkey Prime Minister’s Press Office)

Anti-Semitism, as mentioned, is the other problem. Erdogan deliberately spread anti-Semitic sentiments to an already xenophobic society until he decided to go (relatively) silent when he recently realized that Turkey’s cold war with Israel was not sustainable. This does not mean that his or Turkish society’s views regarding Jews have changed.

Earlier this year, for instance, one of Erdogan’s chief advisors appeared in pro-government media to attack political rivals as “raising soldiers for the Jews.” This sentiment is not confined to government big guns.

The first Jewish wedding at Edirne synagogue after 41 years was, no doubt, a merry event, both for the Turkish Jewish couple and politically, but it failed to mask the ugly side of the coin. Unlike a normal Turkish wedding (or, say, a Jewish wedding in the U.S.), unusually tight security measures were taken in the neighborhood around the synagogue, including the closure of roads leading to the synagogue and security searches of the wedding guests. The guests had to go through a metal detector at the door of the synagogue. Road closures and a metal detector for a wedding?!

There was more. Turks happily expressed their feelings in social media to “celebrate” the Jewish wedding. “One of my biggest dreams is to kill a Jew,” wrote one Twitter user. “[Hitler] did not do it in vain,” wrote another. The Hitler series went on with “He was a great man,” “Where are you Hitler?” and “We are all Hitler.”

This is the backstage scene in the country where a Jewish couple happily married at a synagogue for the first time in 41 years — the same country supposedly to “normalize” its ties with Israel.

Categories: Antisemitism, Hamas, Israel and Turkey
Tags: Antisemitism, Hamas, Israel and Turkey

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How Anti-Semitism Became Respectable Again

June 11, 2016

How Anti-Semitism Became Respectable Again, PJ Media, David P. Goldman, June 10, 2016

On most university campuses the majority of young brainwash victims take it for granted that Israeli nastiness is the source of the endemic Jew-hatred in the Muslim world. That mindset prevails from Berkeley to the Vatican Secretariat. A billion and half people cry from the bottom of their hearts: For us to live, they must die, or at least be driven from their homeland. The wretchedness and despair of this great mass of humanity, a tiny fraction of which has turned up on Europe’s doorstep, is too great to ignore. Surely the Jews must in some way be responsible. It is enough to turn some liberal Jews into functional anti-Semites.

The difference between today and the 1930s, to be sure, is that Jews are armed rather than defenseless. I am weary of excusing myself for breathing. Let them hate us as long as they fear us.

The world was anti-Semitic in 1944, when Ben Hecht wrote A Guide for the Bedevilled. The majority of educated, civilized, and rational people believed that the Jews in some fashion had brought their own problems upon themselves. Hecht began fighting anti-Semitism after an unsettling exchange with a New York hostess, who explained to him that Jews had to acknowledge their own responsibility in the matter of their persecution. This polite Gentile lady explained:

The Jews complain. They suffer dreadfully, and they accuse. But they never stop to explain or to reason or to figure the thing out and tell the world what they, and only they, know…They are–how shall I put it–collaborative victims, a thing they refuse to see…The Germans are not a race of killers, fiends, of a special and different sort of sub-humans.

Not that she approved of Nazi genocide, to be sure; she may not have known the extent of the butchery, but she knew that dreadful things were happening to Europe’s Jews. But she thought that the Germans must have had some kind of provocation to hate the Jews so deeply. Why else would the Germans hate Jews so much?

When did the old anti-Semitism return? For half a century the horror of a million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis stopped the mouths of the anti-Semites, but that memory has worn off. What Hecht’s interlocutor believed in 1944, most liberals believe today, not to mention the vast majority of Europeans. Yes, the Arabs hate Jews, and express this hatred in a barbaric way, they will allow, but that is because Israel has provoked the hatred.

Tripwires that once seemed taboo are being crossed every day. One was triggered in the new action film “Triple 9,” which portrays a gang of ruthless Russian mafia killers operating under the cover of a kosher meat business. There are some violent Jewish criminals, but I have not been able to find a single example of an observant Jew among them. The filmmakers have invented a stereotype that has no instantiation in the real world.

As Debbie Schlussel writes:

The movie, “Triple 9,” in theaters today, is one of the most blatantly anti-Semitic, anti-Israel movies I’ve seen in a very long time. And it’s also anti-police and anti-U.S. military. Plus it’s an incredibly violent, bloody movie whose message is that American military men and police officers are just as bad as ISIS. And so are Jews and Israelis. On top of that, the movie employs anti-Semitic terms, approvingly.[Corrupt cops] murder, torture, and kill for an Orthodox Jewish Israeli Russian mafia family headed by Kate Winslet…There isn’t a single Russian mafia figure who is an Orthodox Jew, but why be concerned with facts when you’re director John Hillcoat or writer Matt Cook who made this Protocols-of-the-Elders-of-Zion cinematic “masterpiece.”…Orthodox Jews don’t behead and kill people and don’t preside over tortured, bloodied bodies in real life. That’s the domain of Muslims. Except in this movie.

Anti-Semitic caricatures used to be off limits. When Dickens created the far less offensive character of Fagin in Oliver Twist, he atoned by inventing the saintly Jewish figure of Rina in Our Mutual Friend. One finds unflattering portrayal of Jews here and there in English fiction (including some despicable poems by T.S. Eliot) but nothing like this filth. It’s become acceptable to hate Jews.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu touched another tripwire this week by nominating mass-murderer Marwan Barghouti for the Nobel Peace Prize, an act hailed by the Arab press. “Barghouti is currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for his role in leading terrorist activities during the first and second intifadas that included dozens of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. He is a former leader of the Tanzim, a militant faction of the Fatah party currently headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, that took credit for many of the murders during the bloody Second Initfada in the early 2000’s. In 2014, he called for the launch of a third intifada,” the Jewish Press reported.

It is one thing to excuse Arab terrorism against Israeli civilians–the Left has done that throughout–and it is quite another to propose to reward murderers with the world’s most respected humanitarian honor. The world of enlightened opinion has no tears for the half million dead Syrian civilians, the tens of thousands of Kurds murdered by Turkish security services, or the countless dead in the Iraqi civil war now unfolding between ISIS and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias. But it cries a river for suicide bombers who murder Israelis, because the Israelis in some way were asking for it.

On most university campuses the majority of young brainwash victims take it for granted that Israeli nastiness is the source of the endemic Jew-hatred in the Muslim world. That mindset prevails from Berkeley to the Vatican Secretariat. A billion and half people cry from the bottom of their hearts: For us to live, they must die, or at least be driven from their homeland. The wretchedness and despair of this great mass of humanity, a tiny fraction of which has turned up on Europe’s doorstep, is too great to ignore. Surely the Jews must in some way be responsible. It is enough to turn some liberal Jews into functional anti-Semites.

This is not a new thought. Before and during the Second World War it was the conventional wisdom. Authors whom I abhor like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot said it openly. An author whom I love, J.R.R. Tolkien, said it allegorically: in The Hobbit, the Dwarves (whom he explicitly identified with the Jews) bring the calamity of Smaug upon themselves through their own obsession with gold in their miner’s kingdom at the Lonely Mountain. Tolkien was not an anti-Semite, not at least in the canonical definition (someone who hates Jews more than is absolutely necessary). On the contrary, he was something of a philo-Semite (he famously rebuked a German publisher who asked him to prove his Aryan heritage with the thought that he was sorry that he had no descent from “that talented people,” the Jews). But he wrote in a period when everyone knew that the Jews were in some measure responsible for their own troubles.

Tolkien, to be sure, compensated for his earlier ambivalent portrayal of the Dwarves/Jews in The Hobbit by portraying an Elven-Dwarvish friendship in The Fellowship of the Ring, deservedly the most beloved English-language novel of the 20th century. He was a man of his times who at length rose above his times. Those who did not rise above their times included G.K. Chesterton, who conjectured that there must be some truth to the medieval allegation that the Jews made Passover matzoh from the blood of Christians, and Hilaire Belloc, who wrote a book entitled “The Jews” calling for the “elimination” or “segregation” of “the alien.”

Islam, as Bernard Lewis wrote in his seminal essay “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” “has given dignity to drab and impoverished lives.” What is that dignity? It is the consoling belief that despite the humiliation of the Muslims during the past two centuries, the Umma still possesses God’s revelation and divine favor. The Christian West, from the White House to the Vatican to the Elysee Palace to the Kanzleramt, sustains this conviction by its courtship of Muslim good will. There is one great cognitive dissonance in the mix, and that is the transformation of the Jews from a despised, dependent and vulnerable minority to a Middle Eastern superpower. The return of the Jews to Zion threatens the belief that Islam is the seal of prophecy: how could God favor the Jews, who perverted the original revelation that Mohammed restored? That is why the Temple Mount remains a radioactive issue on the Muslim street. Merely by being there, Israel offers an existential challenge to Muslim identity. Conservative Muslim regimes, to be sure, may make a temporary accommodation with Israel when it is in their interest to do so; apocalyptic regimes like Iran’s never will.

Muslim civilization is crumbling, as I warned in my 2011 book “How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too).” The human cost of this crumbling will be horrific, ranking among the worst humanitarian disasters in human history, and a disaster that we will watch in real time in high-definition video. The West is sickened by the spectacle and indifferent to its causes; if the Jews madden the Muslims, enlightened opinion thinks, let them go away.

Ich, ich dulde dass du rasest, Du, Du duldest dass ich atme, wrote Heinrich Heine of the relationship between Gentiles and Jews in 19th century Europe: I tolerate your rage, and you tolerate my breathing. Things have changed. The crime of the Jews today is to breathe, and especially to breathe the air of their own country. As the body count rises, enlightened opinion once again will blame the Jews for breathing. Muslims will continue to engineer humanitarian disasters (as in the last Gaza War) to solicit Western sympathy, and European governments will attempt to placate their growing Muslim populations by blaming Israel.

The difference between today and the 1930s, to be sure, is that Jews are armed rather than defenseless. I am weary of excusing myself for breathing. Let them hate us as long as they fear us.

Categories: Antisemitism, Israel, Israeli security, Jewish left
Tags: Antisemitism, Israel, Israeli security, Jewish left

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UK Labour Party Inquiry: Deny, Divert, Cover Up

May 30, 2016

UK Labour Party Inquiry: Deny, Divert, Cover Up, Gatestone Institute, Douglas Murray, May 30, 2016

♦ Today, as the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn has the opportunity either to tackle anti-Semitism or mainstream it into the UK body politic. The evidence that he has any interest in doing the former are not good.

♦ Whenever the specific question of anti-Semitism was raised, Corbyn would say how opposed he was to all forms of racism, “including Islamophobia.” It has apparently proven impossible for Corbyn to realize the specific nature of anti-Semitism; whenever it has come up, he has used the opportunity to talk not about racial hatred against Jews but what he believes to be an epidemic of hatred towards Muslims.

♦ The British Labour party today evidently is riddled with anti-Semitism from top to bottom, and led by people who want to divert attention from the fact or cover it over entirely. Things can only get worse.

How would you push away a problem you did not want to deal with? The best way, as any addict could tell you, is to pretend that you have dealt with it. The drug-addict pretends to have given up drugs. The alcoholic pretends to have cut down on drink. And the British Labour party pretends to have dealt with its anti-Semitism problem.

Since the start of this year, stories of routine anti-Semitism have emerged from the most junior levels of the Labour party (the Oxford University Labour Club) to the highest levels (a member of Parliament and a member of the party’s National Executive Committee). No one who had followed the career and hobby-horses of the current Labour party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, could have been surprised by this. Anti-Semitism is a swamp he has spent his political life swimming in. But today, this has become not just a problem for him. In recent decades, Jeremy Corbyn’s activities had been of interest only to the small number of people who had hoped to keep the Labour stable clean of anti-Semitism. Today, as the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, he has the opportunity either to tackle anti-Semitism or mainstream it into the UK body politic.

The evidence that he has any interest in doing the former are not good. Last month, after online media released anti-Semitic tropes shared and composed by the Labour MP Naz Shah, she was suspended from the party, pending an investigation. The former Mayor of London and Labour grandee Ken Livingstone then spent a week trying to defend Shah by (among other things) explaining which of Hitler’s early policies were not that objectionable. Every day for more than a week, the national newspapers were running headlines about Labour’s anti-Semitism problem. Finally, even this Labour leader realized that something had to be done. And of course the best way to do “something” is to announce an inquiry that will do nothing. This Corbyn soon did, announcing an inquiry that would be led by Shami Chakrabarti, a left-wing human rights advocate, with no expertise in anti-Semitism and a tendency to think well of Islamist extremists. Oddly enough, Chakrabarti — who has made a virtue of her non-party affiliation throughout her career — joined the Labour party on the day that the inquiry was announced.

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Labour Party MP Naz Shah (left), was recently suspended from the party for composing and sharing anti-Semitic tropes. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn (right), has a tendency to hang around with Holocaust deniers, anti-Semitic hate-preachers and others of a similar ilk, and is a self-declared “friend” of the terror outfits Hamas and Hezbollah.

From the outset, she showed that she was willing to do the precise bidding of her party leader. Not least in ensuring that the point of any inquiry was entirely missed. For immediately upon being announced as the leader of the party’s inquiry into anti-Semitism, Chakrabarti announced that it would make no sense “only” to look into anti-Semitism, and that the inquiry must instead also look into “other forms of racism, including Islamophobia.” In a subsequent interview, she went on to question why the Conservative party had not set up an inquiry into what she alleged was its “Islamophobia.” Of course, this is a side-step that Jeremy Corbyn has very much made his own.

In the run-up to his election as Labour party leader, Corbyn was often asked about his tendency to hang around with Holocaust deniers, anti-Semitic hate-preachers and others of a similar ilk. Apart from not quite owning up to his connections to such people, the other technique he employed at this time was to put on a look of extreme affront and say that he had spent his entire life “fighting racism.” Whenever the specific question of anti-Semitism was raised, he would say how opposed he was to all forms of racism “including Islamophobia.” It has apparently proven impossible for Corbyn to realize the specific nature of anti-Semitism; whenever it has come up, he has used the opportunity to talk not about racial hatred against Jews but what he believes to be an epidemic of hatred towards Muslims.

Leaving aside the obvious fact that Muslims are not a race, there is in any case no evidence whatsoever to support the allegation of Corbyn and others that there is an epidemic of “Islamophobia” in the UK, and specifically no evidence of such an issue in the Conservative party. But this attempt to turn around the narrative was pushed by certain Labour apparatchiks to complain that any and all questioning of the newly elected London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, for his past affiliations with Islamist extremists was not a legitimate line of questioning of the judgement of anyone running for elected office, but instead an “Islamophobic” attack purely motivated by “racism.” Even now, Corbyn supporters are trying to distract attention from their own party’s very evident problem and turn racism allegations around on the Conservative party. None of which suggests any serious desire to get on top of their problem.

We can already predict what the conclusions of the Chakrabarti Inquiry will be, from the manner in which she has started it. Will she able to explain that the main originator of anti-Semitism in the Labour party today comes from its growing Muslim base? If she does identify that, will she then need to have an inquiry into herself for such flagrant “Islamophobia”? More likely she will find the party entirely blameless. Just a few dozen bad apples, and so on. And even then, we now have a nice demonstration of what will happen if any unpleasant findings do accidentally slip through.

The Labour party has another inquiry: into allegations, reported earlier this month, of anti-Semitism at its Oxford University club. Amazingly enough, while that inquiry (led by Baroness Royall) found “difficulties,” it claimed to find no “institutional anti-Semitism.” These careful headline facts having been released, the rest of the report was then swiftly supressed on the orders of the Labour party. Only a bland executive summary and some recommendations were made public, evidently leaving even the author of the inquiry “frustrated.” So there is the state of the British Labour party in 2016. A party evidently riddled with anti-Semitism from top to bottom, and led by people who want to divert attention from the fact or cover it over entirely. The Labour party has a serious problem, and it is in institutional denial. Things can only get worse.

Related Video: Douglas Murray on “Anti-Semitism in Britain’s Labour Party”

Categories: Antisemitism, Britain, Conservative Party, Islamic invasion, Islamisation, Islamophobia, Labour Party
Tags: Antisemitism, Britain, Conservative Party, Islamic invasion, Islamisation, Islamophobia, Labour Party

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Hatred with and without algorithms

May 29, 2016

Hatred with and without algorithms, Israel Hayom, Judith Bergman, May 29, 2016

If you have ever found it profoundly disturbing that so much political debate centers on an online ‎platform, Facebook, which was originally about social interaction, but has by now metamorphosed into a ‎grotesque, many-headed monster that actively encourages (more about that later) and whips into a ‎frenzy existing hatred against Israel and Jews, your intuition was correct. The latest journalistic ‎experiment, in what can only be described as the dark underbelly of Facebook, confirms it. ‎

While the fact that Facebook is rife with anti-Semitic hatred is not news to anyone with even a fleeting ‎familiarity with the platform, the following is bound to disturb even the most hardened cynic.‎

A journalist from the British online newspaper Jewish News went undercover on Facebook, creating ‎fake anti-Israel internet profiles in order to infiltrate the anti-Semitic hate groups that proliferate on the ‎social platform. What he discovered were groups resembling “a lynch mob from the Middle Ages, its ‎members winding each other up until the entire group is burning with an anger that is desperate for an ‎outlet.” He mentions how one highly active group, “Israel is a War Criminal,” has more than 250,000 likes. ‎Browsing its timeline regularly, he says, “is a horrifying and deeply disturbing influence. … It is a ‎cesspit of vile and extreme political activism.”‎

What is of most concern, however, is not even the virtual cesspit of violent language and hatred, or the ‎sewer-like fabricated memes created, Goebbels-style, merely to elicit the most primitive ‎response against Israel and Jews. The most disturbing part in all this is that Facebook actively participates ‎in the hate fest, egging the participants on until hate is everywhere: “As the website builds a profile of ‎what you like and what you do not, it begins to form a unique bubble around your online existence … which means when I search for ‘Israel,’ I receive groups that are inherently pro-Israeli, but when ‘Mr. X’ ‎does, he sees a completely different list. … The truly disturbing element of the search results is that they ‎produce a list that is almost hermetically sealed in one direction. They give the appearance that the other ‎side doesn’t exist.”‎

In other words, Facebook’s algorithms ensure that users only see more of what they have already liked ‎and seen. Therefore, if you are an anti-Semitic or anti-Israel Facebook user, Facebook ‎aims to please by showing you anti-Semitic or anti-Israel Facebook posts, even if you just put in ‎‎”Israel” in the search field. In this way, those Facebook users “learn” that their warped reality is “true,” repeatedly ‎confirming their prejudices until the hatred has become all-pervasive. ‎

The Jewish News journalist’s observation regarding Facebook’s algorithms aptly confirms what Shurat‎ Hadin concluded in October, when the Israeli organization filed a lawsuit against Facebook: “Facebook ‎actively assists the inciters to find people who are interested in acting on their hateful messages by ‎offering friend, group and event suggestions and targeting advertising based on people’s online ‘likes’ and internet browsing history.”‎

In other words, Facebook actively works to create hate-filled, anti-Semitic echo chambers — a sobering ‎and truly horrific thought that everyone ought to consider, whenever they enter the virtual meeting ‎place.‎

The trouble with the online echo chambers is, of course, that they do not remain online. The ‎incitement makes its way into the real world, where it may manifest itself in stabbings and murders in ‎Israel and anti-Semitic hate crimes and terrorism elsewhere.‎

Let’s take a step back from the virtual world for a moment and contemplate whether we see the disturbing Facebook trend in real life as well. Echo chambers are not unique to the ‎virtual world of social media. It is a growing phenomenon in real life, as well — a particular version of “reality” ‎regarding Israel is promulgated, circulated and reinforced endlessly, until it becomes the only “truth.” ‎

The United Nations is one such echo chamber, where the very language applied about Israel is coded in ‎phrases that denote a reality that does not exist outside this disaster of an international organization. ‎Nevertheless, most of the diplomats involved in the U.N., whether they agree with this language or not in ‎private, uniformly employ it as if it were true, leading to the establishment of a false reality that has dire ‎consequences on the decisions and votes made against Israel. One recent and striking example was the yearly vote on Israel in the World Health Organization, where the Jewish state was again ‎denounced as the world’s only health violator. The absurdity of this decision is extreme, yet grown men ‎and women, highly educated diplomats from supposedly civilized nations such as the U.K., France and ‎Germany, supported the resolution. By doing this, they not only betrayed all logic and ‎the justice they purport to support, but they clearly demonstrated that there exists in the U.N. ‎an alternate reality similar to the alternate reality that Jew-haters inhabit online ‎in the seedy underbelly of Facebook.‎

Western academia and university campuses represent another echo chamber where the established ‎‎”truths” abut Israel may not be challenged according to the reigning rules of political correctness, and ‎where professors and social justice warriors reinforce each other’s deep-seated anti-Semitic prejudices ‎in a way that creates an alternate reality similar to those mentioned above. ‎

This is not, however, limited to university education. In Britain, a schoolgirl from Wanstead High ‎School was met with frenzied jubilation and won the regional final in a speaker’s competition, the Jack ‎Petchey Speak Out” Challenge, after giving a virulent anti-Israel speech.The speech was a primitive ‎variation of the most commonly spewed diatribes against Israel, yet she was applauded by the school’s ‎teachers and pupils, as well as the local authorities, and rewarded accordingly. ‎

Tis is the result of yet another echo chamber, which now exists in British primary education. The British ‎National Union of Teachers, aptly named NUT, actively condones similar propaganda to that which is ‎found on Facebook’s hate sites, in the U.N. and in academia, thus supporting from an early age the ‎imbibing of British children with hatred toward Israel and furthering the dissemination of Palestinian ‎propaganda. As an example of this, NUT recently supported a conference,“Nakba: Then and Now” in ‎London, organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. At this conference, ex-NUT President Philippa ‎Harvey, speaking on behalf of the union, described a new project called “Beyond the Wall,” which intends ‎to engage U.K. schools in learning about schooling in conflict zones. The project intends to show films to the ‎young Britons that illustrate “the daily struggles experienced by Palestinian children as they try to gain ‎an education.” One hardly dares to imagine the kind of untruths and propaganda running rampant in ‎those films.‎

Whereas it is important to fight the virtual cesspool of hatred, which serves as its own brainwasher and ‎echo chamber, as it were, on Facebook, we must not lose sight of the fact that the exact same ‎mechanisms at work on Facebook are very much at play in the way that anti-Semites and Israel haters ‎operate in the real world. There they create their own nonvirtual echo chambers, which are equally or ‎even more dangerous, because they have a much further reach than just the haters and trolls prowling ‎the internet. ‎

By surrounding themselves with like-minded haters and creating alternate realities and ways of ‎speaking about those realities, in schools, on campus, in academic circles and among diplomats in the U.N., ‎they ultimately become blind to any kind of objective facts, and they even lose the language needed for rational discourse about Israel. And they don’t even need computer algorithms to ‎do it.

Categories: Antisemitism, Echo chambers, Facebook, Hate groups, Israel, Israel and human rights, Media, United Nations
Tags: Antisemitism, Echo chambers, Facebook, Hate groups, Israel, Israel and human rights, Media, United Nations

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