FULL MEASURE: May 28, 2017 – Price of Power via YouTube, May 29, 2017
(Remember Dialing for Dollars? It’s almost a full-time job for our Congresscritters. It’s clear why the Republicans in Congress can’t find either the time or inclination to pass the laws that President Trump wants them to pass. Don’t worry, though, the Country’s in the very best of hands.
— DM)
Sharia Down Under, Gatestone Institute, Judith Bergman, May 29, 2017
Recently, Australia adopted stricter vetting rules for immigrants to avoid admitting those who harbor hostile Islamic views. Evidently, this measure comes several decades too late: Those who harbor hostile Islamic views were let in a long time ago. Now, what will Australia do about those who are there?
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Sharia law, the president at the time of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils ludicrously argued, far from discriminating against women, “guarantees women’s rights that are not recognised in mainstream Australian courts”.
The Australian Federal Police investigated 69 incidents of forced or under-age marriage in the 2015-16 financial year, up from 33 the previous year. While there are no official numbers, it is estimated that there are 83,000 women and girls in Australia who may have been subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM).
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which has spent the past four years probing numerous religious organizations, has made no inquiries into Islam. The commission has held 6,500 one-on-one private interview sessions with survivors or witnesses making allegations of child sexual abuse within institutions, but only three sessions in relation to Islamic institutions.
What legacy did Australia’s former Grand Mufti, Sheikh Taj Din al-Hilali — named “Muslim Man of the Year” in 2005 and the country’s most senior, longest-serving (1988-2007) Muslim cleric — leave behind?
In 1988, when Hilali was imam of the largest mosque in Australia, he gave a speech at Sydney University in which he described Jews as the cause of all wars and the existential enemy of humanity.
In July 2006, he called the Holocaust a “Zionist lie” and referred to Israel as a “cancer”.
In October 2006 — insinuating that the long prison sentences handed to Sydney’s Lebanese gang-rapists for attacking young teenage girls in the year 2000, were unfair — he compared Australian women who do not wear the Islamic veil to meat left uncovered in the streets and then eaten by cats. During his long career, Hilali also praised suicide bombers as heroes and called the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States “God′s work against oppressors” and “the work of 100 percent American gangs”.
At the time, Hilali’s principal adviser and spokesperson, Keysar Trad, wrote, “The criminal dregs of white society colonised this country and… the descendants of these criminal dregs tell us that they are better than us.” Trad subsequently served as president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils — the national umbrella organization, which represents Australian Muslims at national and international level — from July 2016 until May 2017.
According to Australian senator Cory Bernardi:
“In 2009, the New South Wales Supreme Court found that Mr. Trad ‘incites people to commit acts of violence’, ‘incites people to have racist attitudes’ and is a ‘dangerous and disgraceful individual’… When talking about the gang rape of young women in Sydney by a group of Lebanese men… Mr. Trad … described these types of perpetrators as ‘stupid young boys’… Mr. Trad did not condemn Sheikh Hilali’s disgraceful comments about women being ‘uncovered meat’ in a speech about rape. Instead Mr. Trad chose to defend that speech and the sheikh’s comments”.
In February, Trad told Sky News presenter Andrew Bolt that an angry husband can beat his wife as “a last resort” but should only use his fists against her once he sees that “counselling” — chocolate and flowers, according to Trad — does not work.
Trad also called for the introduction of polygamy in Australia. He said that taking a second wife was “an alternative to divorce”, as, “in our religion, god hates divorce”.
Recently, in May 2017, after an emergency election, Rateb Jneid replaced Trad as president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils.
Since 2011, Ibrahim Abu Mohamed, who does not speak English and relies on translators, has been the Grand Mufti of Australia. In 1995, before moving to the West, Abu Mohamed wrote:
“The West does not bring to us any good, all they bring are their diseases, their designs and their shortcomings… They insist to impose on us their corrupt values, and their philosophy and mannerism, the very things which brought disease, fear, crime and stress to them, the very things which severed ties and broke relationships.”
According to the Daily Telegraph:
The Grand Mufti’s views were also laid bare… with the release of details of a book he wrote saying non-Muslims wanted their women to walk around ‘exposed as a piece of sweet pastry … devoured by the eyes of men'”.
In December 2012, Abu Mohamed led an Australian delegation of Muslim scholars to the Gaza Strip, where they met senior Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh. Abu Mohamed told local news agencies:
“I am pleased to stand on the land of jihad to learn from its sons and I have the honor to be among the people of Gaza, where the weakness always becomes strength, the few becomes many and the humiliation turns into pride”.
In 2013, Grand Mufti Abu Mohamed visited sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, in Qatar. Qaradawi advocates suicide bombings; has urged the world’s Muslims to fight in Syria and has said that killing people who leave Islam is essential, as Islam would otherwise disappear.
After the Paris attacks in November 2015, Abu Mohamed implied that the ISIS atrocities were partly caused by “Islamophobia”, saying:
“It is… imperative that all causative factors such as racism, Islamophobia, curtailing freedoms through securitisation, duplicitous foreign policies and military intervention must be comprehensively addressed.”
With Muslim leaders such as former Grand Mufti Hilali, former president of the Association of Muslim Councils, Kayser Trad, and current Grand Mufti Ibrahim Abu Mohamed, it should hardly come as a surprise that sharia — and indeed jihad — have made significant inroads in Australia. In 2011, the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils sent a submission to the Federal Parliament’s Committee on Multicultural Affairs, asking for Muslims to be able to marry, divorce and conduct financial transactions under the principles of sharia law. Sharia law, the president at the time of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils ludicrously argued, far from discriminating against women, “guarantees women’s rights that are not recognised in mainstream Australian courts”.
Although polygamy is illegal in Australia, a study in 2011 found that, “Valid Muslim polygynist marriages, lawfully entered into overseas, are recognized, with second and third wives and their children able to claim welfare and other benefits”. When former Prime Minister Tony Abbott called for action after learning about the issue, he was told that it would cost more to pay the wives the single parent benefit. Centrelink, the Australian authority responsible for welfare and other benefits, said that it did not hold data based on polygamous relationships or religion, and that Islamic marriages are not registered. The problem of unregistered Islamic marriages and social welfare fraud is a familiar issue in Europe.
Last year, a 14-year-old Melbourne girl was forced to marry Mohammad Shakir, 34, in a ceremony at a Victoria mosque. In March, Shakir pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of forced-marriage. Ibrahim Omerdic, the Melbourne imam who performed the Islamic wedding ceremony, is also due to appear in court on criminal charges.
Muslim Australian girls, some allegedly as young as nine, have also been taken overseas, or are being threatened with it, and forced to become child brides. A nine-year-old girl reported that she would be taken to Afghanistan to marry, while others were told they would be forced to marry cousins of their parents when they turned 13. In 2012, a 16-year old refugee girl from Afghanistan was flown to Pakistan for a “family holiday” and forced to marry a man she had never met.
The Australian Federal Police investigated 69 incidents of forced or under-age marriage in the 2015-16 financial year, up from 33 the previous year. In the 2013-14 financial year, only 11 cases were investigated. Government agencies are said to consider the figure of 69 potential recent cases the tip of the iceberg, with many girls “too fearful to contact police”. A government child-welfare hotline has received more than 70 calls for help in the past two years, mainly from concerned teachers, counsellors and school principals. Forced marriage was criminalized in March 2013 in Australia. However, the law is not retroactive and marriages entered into prior to the law are beyond the authorities’ jurisdiction, meaning those girls are almost certainly lost.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is another Islamic practice that has recently come to public notice in Australia. In March 2016, three people, among them the mother and a Muslim cleric, were sentenced in Sydney for their role in the female genital mutilation of two seven-year-old sisters. While there are no official numbers, it is estimated that there are 83,000 women and girls in Australia who may have been subjected to FGM. 1,100 girls are born every year to women who may have had FGM, which means that their daughters are also at risk of being subject to FGM.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which has spent the past four years probing numerous religious organizations, including Catholics, Anglicans, Pentecostals, Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses and obscure cults numbering a negligible amount of members, such as new age ashrams, has made no inquiries into Islam. The commission has held 6,500 one-on-one private interview sessions with survivors or witnesses making allegations of child sexual abuse within institutions, but only three sessions in relation to Islamic institutions.
Four Islamic terrorist attacks, including the Lindt Café siege in Sydney in December 2014, in which the manager and a mother of three were killed, have taken place in Australia. Eleven attacks have been foiled, including planned public beheadings. This statistic does not include the January 2017 car-ramming in Melbourne. The driver, Dimitrious Gargasoulas, murdered six people, including children, and wounded 20 others, when he plowed his car into pedestrians. Even though a witness claimed that Gargasoulas was shouting “Allahu Akbar”, police refused to treat the event as a terrorist attack and even allegedly told a reporter to remove her interview with the witness from the internet. Gargasoulas had apparently converted to Islam prior to the attack and told the judge in a subsequent court hearing, “Your Honour, did you know the Muslim faith is the correct faith according to the whole world?”
Recently, Australia adopted stricter vetting rules for immigrants to avoid admitting those who harbor hostile Islamic views. Evidently, this measure comes several decades too late: Those who harbor hostile Islamic views were let in a long time ago. Now, what will Australia do about those who are there?
A mosque minaret in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Cole Bennetts/Getty Images)
Palestinian Authority’s Fatah Faction Appoints Israeli Arab Terrorist to Central Committee Upon Recommendation of Mahmoud Abbas, The Jewish Press, Hana Levi Julian, May 29, 2017
(Please see also, Palestinians: Abbas Immediately Breaks Promises to Trump. — DM)
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas sits with US President Donald Trump at the White House, May 3 2017
Fatah has appointed terrorist murderer Karim Younes to its Central Committee upon the personal recommendation of Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Media Watch reported this week.
Karim Younes and his cousin Maher Younis are two Israeli Arabs who together kidnapped and murdered Israeli soldier Avraham Bromberg in 1980.
The two killers have been presented by the Palestinian Authority government as role models for PA children. Public squares were recently named after each, to further glorify them, by the Palestinian Authority government.
The PLO Director of Prisoner’s Affairs said in a statement that he sees the appointment of Younes as proof that “our prisoners are not terrorists.”
“It is also noteworthy that Abbas has chosen an Israeli citizen to be among Fatah’s decision-makers,” Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacquest Zilberdik said in an article on the PMW website. “This is consistent with the Palestinian Authority message to Israeli Arabs to see themselves as part of the Palestinian national movement, and to view all of the land of the State of Israel as part of a future Palestinian state that will replace Israel.
“This new appointment of a terrorist was announced right after Abbas sent a message to Israelis demonstrating on Saturday for “Two states – One hope” at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, in which he stated, ‘The opportunity [for peace] still exists, and it cannot be missed when our hand is extended in peace that is created between those who are brave.’” [Ha’aretz, May 27, 2017]
Significantly, “[PA] Minister of Justice Ali Abu Diyak emphasized that the decision of the Fatah Movement leadership – led by President Mahmoud Abbas – to appoint the veteran prisoner Karim Younes to the Fatah Central Committee is the clearest and severest response to the campaign being led by Israel to accuse the prisoners, Martyrs (Shahids), and the Palestinian struggle of terror.” [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 28, 2017]
PLO’s Director of Prisoners’ Affairs Issa Karake welcomed the appointment, claiming it proof that the Palestinian prisoners are not criminals:
“I want to note an additional achievement, which was a political response by the Palestinian leadership when the Fatah Revolutionary Council made a decision to appoint prisoner Karim Younes, the most veteran of the prisoners, as a member of the Fatah Movement Central Committee.
“I think that this is a very great and significant political response, [which says] that our prisoners are not terrorists and are not criminals. They are freedom prisoners and fighters who enjoy an important national, human, and legal status among their leadership and among their Palestinian people.”
[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, May 28, 2017]
As part of the PA’s campaign to present terrorists as heroes and role models, the PA recently named two town squares after Karim and Maher Younes.
In his statement regarding the appointment of Younes, the Minister of Justice further glorified all terrorist prisoners:
“The prisoners and Martyrs are the spearhead of the freedom fighters, symbols of our legitimate national struggle, and conscience of the Palestinian people…”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 28, 2017]
Japan vows ‘specific action’ with US to deter N. Korea, The Hill, Kyle Balluck, May 29, 2017
(Please don’t tell us until after it’s done. — DM)
© Getty
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is vowing “specific action” with the U.S. to deter North Korea in the wake of Pyongyang’s latest missile test.
“As we agreed at the recent G7, the issue of North Korea is a top priority for the international community,” Abe told reporters on Monday, according to Reuters. “Working with the United States, we will take specific action to deter North Korea.”
The news service added that Japan protested the test.
U.S. Pacific Command said it detected the launch of a short-range ballistic missile from a site near Wonsan Airfield on Sunday. It tracked the missile for approximately six minutes until it landed in the Sea of Japan.
“We are working with our Interagency partners on a more detailed assessment. We continue to monitor North Korea’s actions closely,” U.S. Pacific Command said in a statement, adding that it “stands behind our ironclad commitment to the security of our allies in the Republic of Korea and Japan.”
A National Security Council spokesman said President Trump was briefed on the latest North Korean test.
Pyongyang said last week that it was ready to deploy a new medium-range missile as part of an “answer” to Trump’s policies. The North also fired a missile hours before Trump delivered a major speech in Saudi Arabia earlier this month.
Trump to Germany: Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way, PJ Media, Michael Walsh, May 28, 2017
(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
What the president understands, and the Europeans pretend not to, is that Russia is no longer the direct menace it was during the days of the Fulda Gap, and that the real menace to Europe and NATO (which, by the way, includes the Islamicizing state of Turkey) is Islam, and its ongoing invasion of the historic lands of Christendom. If you think that’s a joke, and that it can’t happen in France, Italy or Britain, ask the Anatolians, the north Africans and the Albanians how that worked out for them.
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Quick, name the worst leader in western Europe. Yes, it’s a tough call: it’s either whoever the leader of Italy is this week, plus whichever socialist is temporarily in charge of France, plus the your-name-here chinless wonder domiciled at 10 Downing Street in London. But surely the prize goes to Frau Kartoffel herself, German Kanzlerin Angela Merkel, who’s been in office since 2005 and, alas, shows no signs of leaving any time soon.
On his visit this past week to Europe, President Trump spoke some hard truths to our European allies, but none spat it out more quickly than Merkel, to the absolute delight of the Trump-hating New York Times. It is a cold day in hell when the Times speaks fondly of any German, but here it is:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe’s most influential leader, has apparently concluded that the United States of President Trump is not the reliable partner her country and continent have automatically depended on in the past.
Clearly disappointed with European leaders’ inability to persuade Mr. Trump to publicly endorse NATO’s doctrine of collective defense — or to agree to common positions on Russia, climate change or global trade — Mrs. Merkel said on Sunday that traditional alliances were no longer as reliable as they once were, and that Europe should pay more attention to its own interests “and really take our fate into our own hands.”
To which let me add: it’s about time. I’ve spent a good deal of my life in Germany, speak the language, and raised my children there; my most recent book, the best-selling The Devil’s Pleasure Palace, concerns not only the Frankfurt School of Marxist philosophers and the cultural havoc they wrought in America, but the musical and literary cornerstones of German culture itself, including Goethe and Wagner.
If it took Trump’s typical bluntness to finally get the message across that the Europeans are now responsible for the mess of their own making, good. Germany in particular has coasted under the American nuclear umbrella for decades, allowing it to a) concentrate entirely on rebuilding its domestic economy, infrastructure and social welfare state and b) thumb its nose at American warmongering imperialism. It’s one of the least attractive aspects of the German character; the gratitude that the immediate postwar generation felt for our having rescued them from Hitler and the love Germans felt for all things American have vanished. In their place has come a churlish, we-can-take-it-from-here mutter that does not become them.
Formerly known as Christendom (Wikipedia)
What the president understands, and the Europeans pretend not to, is that Russia is no longer the direct menace it was during the days of the Fulda Gap, and that the real menace to Europe and NATO (which, by the way, includes the Islamicizing state of Turkey) is Islam, and its ongoing invasion of the historic lands of Christendom. If you think that’s a joke, and that it can’t happen in France, Italy or Britain, ask the Anatolians, the north Africans and the Albanians how that worked out for them.
Speaking on the campaign trail after contentious summit meetings in Belgium and Italy, Ms. Merkel said: “The times in which we could rely fully on others, they are somewhat over. This is what I experienced in the last few days,” she said.
Given this new context for international relations, she said, “that is why I can only say that we Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands — of course in friendship with the United States of America, in friendship with Great Britain and as good neighbors wherever that is possible also with other countries, even with Russia.”
Welcome back to the 19th century! As the gorilla in the middle, Germany has always been forced to deal with the West (in the form of France and French culture) and the East (Russia); the result was two world wars and the deaths of millions. The European Union was essentially a response to the lingering question of how to prevent the great ape from escaping its cage and having dinner in Paris a month or so later. Worse for Merkel, although born in Hamburg, she grew up on the wrong side of the East-West German border and so was raised in a state that was at once a communist dictatorship and a swaddling socialist experiment, one which beat the sense of personal striving out of the people and replaced it with a dull conformity.
That dullness is now embodied by Merkel, a dull, uninspiring leader with no vision for the future and, childless, with no personal stake in it. Somewhere in hell, Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker are having a good laugh about their perfect revenge on the capitalist West. Sure, it took their own destruction to pull it off, but what could be more German than that?
Salvadoran Officials Overwhelmed by Returning Deported Gang Members, Breitbart, Ryan Saavedra, May 28, 2017
Officials in El Salvador held emergency meetings after seeing a sharp increase in the number of violent gang members being deported back to the country from the United States under the Trump administration.
Salvadoran authorities have held emergency meetings and proposed new legislation to monitor returning criminals and gang members that are returning to El Salvador after deportation, according to the Washington Post.
This year the U.S. has already deported 398 gang members back to El Salvador – compared to only 534 for all of 2016.
It is due to this rapid increase in deportations that Salvadoran officials like Héctor Antonio Rodríguez, the director of the country’s immigration agency, are worried about the impact the returning gang members will have in the country.
“This clearly affects El Salvador. We already have a climate of violence in the country that we are combating,” Rodríguez said. “If gang members return, of course this worries us.”
Many of the returning gang members belong to MS-13, a notoriously violent street gang that has plagued communities throughout the U.S. with horrific acts of violence. Although MS-13 started out in Salvadoran communities in Los Angeles sometime during the 1980’s, lax immigration policies and weak border security helped the gang explode in size as MS-13 originated from illegal immigrants, Breitbart Texas reported.
The recent murders of four teens in New York City have put MS-13 in the national spotlight with Attorney General Jeff Sessions declaring that U.S. authorities are going after the gang.
“The MS-13 motto is kill, rape, and control,” Sessions said. “I have a message to the gangs that are targeting our young people: We are targeting you. We are coming after you.”
Speaking at a rally in April, President Trump highlighted the importance of removing illegal alien MS-13 gang members from the U.S.:
At the heart of my administration’s efforts to restore the rule of law has been a nationwide crackdown on criminal gangs, and that means taking the fight to the sanctuary cities that shield these dangerous criminals from removal. The last very weak administration allowed thousands and thousands of gang members to cross our borders and enter into our communities, where they wreaked havoc on our citizens. The bloodthirsty cartel known as MS-13 has infiltrated our schools, threatening innocent children.
We have seen the horrible assaults and many killings all along Long Island where I grew up. We are seeing the vicious spread of transnational gangs into all 50 states and the human suffering they bring with them. I have been with the parents. It is devastation. A very respected General recently told me that MS-13 are the equivalent in their meanness to Al Qaeda. My administration will not rest until we have dismantled these violent gangs, and we are doing it rapidly, and we are sending them the hell out of our country.
On Wednesday, Breitbart Texas reported that Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said recently obtained documents from a whistleblower show that the Obama administration knowingly admitted 16 MS-13 gang members in 2014.
Has Anyone Ever Leaked so Much to so Little Effect?, Power Line,
The number of anonymous leaks that have assailed President Trump since his inauguration is staggering. They have come from the intelligence agencies, the FBI, and all over the executive branch, including the White House. Gateway Pundit enumerates the leaks that liberal media have reported on breathlessly during just the last two and a half weeks: 17 of them, almost exactly one a day.
Most have something to do with Russia, but God only knows what. Each of the last three administrations has sought better relations with Russia. George W. Bush looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and thought he saw his soul. (He was mistaken.) Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton tried to “reset” relations with Russia, blaming the disillusioned W. for the hostility between the U.S. and Russia that then prevailed. And Donald Trump and his advisers have likewise reached out to Russia in hopes of developing a more constructive relationship.
Why? Because we share several vitally important interests with the Russians, notwithstanding our historic enmity. First, as the world’s leading nuclear powers, we have an interest in avoiding nuclear proliferation and catastrophic war. Second, Islamic terrorism poses a problem for both us and the Russians; it is actually worse for them. In principle, we should be able to work together, to some degree, on this issue. Third, China is aggressive and expansionist in the Far East. Russia shares our interest in containing Chinese ambitions.
So it is entirely appropriate that our leaders should seek common ground with the Russians, where possible, in pursuit of our national interests. George W. Bush did it, Barack Obama did it, and Donald Trump is doing it. The main difference between Obama and Trump is that Obama was a pushover for Putin, and Trump isn’t.
All of this is so obvious that I have stopped paying attention to the Left’s coverage of alleged “scandals” relating to Russia. The Democrats desperately hope that someone on Trump’s campaign team may have conspired with the Russians to phish the DNC’s email server, as well as the RNC’s. (Not sure how that works, but liberal conspiracy theories don’t have to make sense.) But we know there is no such evidence. If there were, Democrats in the intelligence agencies, who, it now appears, were violating the law to a massive extent in search of dirt on Donald Trump, would have leaked it before the election.
Absent evidence of collusion, the Left’s hysteria over Russia is going to fizzle out. In the end, it will look silly. Meanwhile, everyone knows that the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, the Associated Press, etc., are using anonymous leaks in an effort to bring down the Trump administration on behalf of their party, the Democrats. I doubt that ten percent of the population could deny that proposition, and pass a lie detector test. So if nothing else, we have achieved clarity.
Trump’s triumphant foreign trip is a reminder, as Steve notes, that the antidote to the Left’s torrent of ineffective leaks is simple: govern. Here, the biggest concern, in my opinion, is Congress, not the president. Republican representatives and senators should get out of Washington and observe how little the people who voted for them are impressed by the Left’s assault on our president. Congress needs to pass the legislation the voters want–tax reform, Obamacare repeal, and the rest. And they need to do it soon.
by Bassam Tawil
May 29, 2017 at 4:00 am
Source: Palestinians: Abbas Immediately Breaks Promises to Trump
Hard on the heels of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’s assurances to US President Donald Trump that he is raising Palestinians on a “culture of peace,” he continues to glorify terrorists who have Jewish blood on their hands.
Abbas, who met with Trump in Bethlehem on May 23, told reporters that he was committed to working with the new US administration to achieve a “historic peace deal with Israel.” Abbas also announced his readiness to become a “partner in the war on terrorism in our region and the world.” He claimed that he and his Palestinian Authority have been promoting “tolerance and coexistence, and spreading a culture of peace and renouncing violence.”
 US President Donald Trump talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on May 23, 2017 in Bethlehem. (Photo by PPO via Getty Images) |
Abbas’s sweet talk, however, did not last long. Just hours after Trump left the region, Abbas and his PA returned to their anti-Israel incitement. This stands in blinding contrast to what Abbas told Trump and his Middle East envoy, Jason Greenblatt, with whom Abbas met 48 hours after his get-together with Trump in Bethlehem.
At a meeting of Fatah leaders in Ramallah on May 25, Abbas described Palestinian prisoners held by Israel as “heroes.”
His remarks came in response to the hunger strike of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are serving lengthy terms for murdering or wounding hundreds of Israelis. The hunger strike, which began on April 17, is led by Marwan Barghouti, a senior official with Abbas’s Fatah faction who is serving five life terms in prison for his role in a spate of terror attacks that killed five Israelis during the Second Intifada (2000-2005).
Referring to the convicted terrorists as “our heroes,” Abbas lashed out at the Israeli government for its refusal to surrender to the demands of the hunger strikers.
“We will stand with them and support them,” Abbas said, referring to the convicted terrorists. “We will emerge triumphant and we won’t allow [Israel] to defeat or humiliate the prisoners.”
Abbas’s powerful message flies in the face of his promise to Trump and his representative, Jason Greenblatt, to cease all forms of incitement against Israel.
By describing the convicted terrorists as “heroes,” Abbas is in fact sending a message to all Palestinians that murdering Jews is a noble and heroic act.
Such rhetoric prompts Palestinians to launch terror attacks against Israelis. It is a clear call by Abbas for Palestinians to follow in the footsteps of terrorists and murderers.
Is this Abbas’s way of promoting a “culture of peace” among his people? Is this his version of encouraging Palestinians to renounce violence?
Less than 24 hours after the Abbas-Trump meeting in Bethlehem, in which he promised Trump and envoy Jason Greenblatt to cease all forms of incitement against Israel, the PA government in Ramallah resumed its vicious rhetorical attacks on Israel.
The attacks came in response to celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the liberation and unification of Jerusalem. They also came in response to routine and peaceful visits by Jews to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
In a statement issued by the Palestinian Authority on May 24 that is reminiscent of a medieval blood libel against Jews, Israel was accused of perpetrating “black crimes” against Jerusalem and Palestinians and of defiling Islamic holy sites in the city.
It described the Jews visiting the Temple Mount as “extremist settlers” and falsely claimed that they were deliberately targeting the Al-Aqsa Mosque (on the Temple Mount). In fact, Jewish visitors never enter the mosque.
It is precisely this kind of rhetoric that drives Palestinians to launch knife and car-ramming attacks against Israelis. For the past year and a half, Abbas and his PA officials and institutions have been waging a poisonous campaign of incitement surrounding peaceful, permitted Jewish visits to the Temple Mount. The incitement has resulted in a wave of terror attacks against Israelis. How does this fit in with promoting peace?
Abbas’s prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, both before and after the meeting with Trump, has also joined the chorus of glorifying convicted terrorists.
In a statement on May 25, Hamdallah, who is often referred to by Westerners as a moderate and pragmatist, stated: “We salute the legendary steadfastness displayed by the knights of freedom, our heroic prisoners.”
Like his boss, Abbas, Hamdallah also strongly condemned the Israeli government for failing to comply with the hunger strikers’ demands, which include increased family visitations, allowing inmates to have a photograph with their families every three months, installing more TV channels and air conditioning in their cells, and increased access to university studies.
Hamdallah and Abbas are sending precisely the same message to the Palestinians: if you murder a Jew, you earn the title of “knight of freedom.” In other words, Hamdallah, too, is urging Palestinians to engage in acts of violence against Israelis.
One wonders exactly how Abbas and his officials will explain these statements to Trump and the U.S. Administration.
Experience has shown that the glorification of terrorism and jihad (holy war) only serves to encourage more Palestinians to take to the streets and stab or run over with their cars the first Jew they see.
The Palestinian denial of Jewish ties and history to the land also continues full blast, despite Abbas’s pledge to Trump that Palestinians are not in conflict with Jews or Judaism.
Hours after Trump left the region, Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudaineh, issued a statement that pointedly ignored any Jewish links to the land. “East Jerusalem, with its Islamic and Christian holy sites, will remain the eternal capital of the State of Palestine,” Abu Rudaineh announced. Note his deliberate omission of any reference to Jewish holy sites in the city.
This is neither a slip of the tongue nor a poorly-worded statement on the part of Abbas’s spokesman. Rather, it is an intentional denial of Jewish rights to Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, which Palestinians refer to as an integral part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and claim has no significance to Jews. This has always been part of the Palestinian strategy — to deny Jewish rights and to delegitimize Israel.
Like his boss, Abbas, however, Abu Rudaineh seems to have a good sense of humor. He has called on Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to “stop his daily incitement against Palestinians and their leaders.” And what is the content of Netanyahu’s “incitement”? His statement that a united Jerusalem will remain the undivided capital of Israel.
In the view of Abbas’s spokesperson, such a statement is clear “incitement” — not the glorification of terrorists, not the incendiary anti-Israel rhetoric and not the continued denial of Jewish history and rights.
President Trump’s visit to Israel proved to be yet another opportunity for Abbas and his Palestinian Authority to practice once again their skills of deceit and deception. In English, everything sounds great. In Arabic, however, the messages sent by Abbas to his people take on the unmistakable ring of hate.
Bassam Tawil is a scholar based in the Middle East.
This Week in Trump, Power Line, ,
Normally I don’t traffic in the typical media thumb-sucking about what’s immediately ahead for the President, or other unctuous, subjunctive commands about what the President “must do” if he is going to advance. But I make an exception now because I have a sense that Trump might make some big moves this week following on his highly successful and consequential first foreign trip.
How do I know it was a successful and consequential trip? Because the media was complaining about Melania’s wardrobe and Trump’s supposedly boorish behavior of pushing himself past the prime minister of Montenegro during a group photo setup. I think that was just Trump making clear that the U.S. is done leading from behind. How else do I know it was a successful trip? Because Angela Merkel has her nose bent out of joint. Frau Merkel was quoted this weekend saying, “We can’t rely on the U.S. anymore. I have experienced this in the last days. We Europeans should take destiny in our own hands.”
Merkel and other Europeans reportedly gave Trump the razzle-dazzle about staying in the Paris Climate Accord, which Trump is now rumored to be ready to dump this week. I hope so, though I don’t think it may matter very much. The Paris Accord is so weak that even chief climatista James Hansen calls it a “fraud,” and the fact that ExxonMobil and other major fossil fuel companies support remaining in the Paris Accord is additional indication that Trump might cause more difficulties for the climate racket it he stays in. The great Roger Pielke Jr writes:
“As a symbol, here is how the politics works: Trump pulls out of Paris, Trump wins. Trump stays in, Trump wins. Fun game, huh?”
Roger thinks the smart play for the euroclimatistas would be to kick the U.S. out. I doubt they have that much moxie, and in any case Trump would love it. I can just imagine his tweetstorm now.
Meanwhile, is Trump going to shake up his staff? One analogy to the early months of Trump’s presidency is the first few months of Bill Clinton’s presidency in 1993, which also did not go well for him in terms of public approval and forward progress on his legislative agenda. It’s not exactly the same: no one in the media today is emulating Time magazine’s “The Incredible Shrinking President” cover of June 1993 that Clinton’s fecklessness provoked. The liberal-media complex fear today is just the opposite—that Trump is a fascist dictator.
It was at about this point in 1993 that Clinton shook up his staff, bringing David Gergen on board as communications director (fortunately there is no risk that Trump will inflict that special misery on us), and musing about demoting Dee Dee Myers, one of his early press spokespeople. It didn’t really help all that much. Hillary’s ridiculous and authoritarian health care plan couldn’t even get a vote in a Congress with comfortable Democratic majorities in both houses, and the crime bill that did pass in the fall of 1994, with its trendy “assault” weapons ban and midnight basketball program, backfired on Democrats.
I suppose the cautionary tale here is that today’s GOP Congress needs to pass some things, or else they will suffer (deservedly) the same fate as the Democrats did in 1994. They really need to get their act together—fast—on the replacement for Obamacare and tax reform. They GOP Congress doesn’t need specific direction from Trump to do these things. In fact, it would be a great move back to political health if Congress stepped up and showed that it can lead the nation just as well as a President, which is what the Founders intended. But that’s a subject for a longer, separate post.
My conclusion is that Trump’s foreign trip and events this week will mark a turning point for his first term.
“Drip-Drip” Genocide: Muslim Persecution of Christians, February, 2017, Gatestone Institute, Raymond Ibrahim, May 28, 2017
“They are burning us alive! They seek to exterminate Christians altogether! Where’s the military?” — Christian man fleeing Al-Arish, Egypt; video.
“Historical churches in Iran being destroyed while UNESCO overlooks,” is the title of one report.
On the same day as Pakistan’s government charged an elderly Christian man with blasphemy — which carries a death penalty — it acquitted 106 Muslims of burning down an entire Christian village.
The Islamic State is at it again. More stories of atrocities against Christians continued to surface. In one, a Christian man, Meghrik, said the bus in which he was riding in Syria was stopped at what turned out to be an ISIS checkpoint. Three men dressed in black entered and began checking all the passengers’ identification papers. “Are you a Christian?” they asked him. “No,” he said. He explained that he was raised by Christian parents and his family name was Christian, but that he was not. “You’re lying,” the fighter said. “Your name says you’re a Christian. Come with me.” He was taken to an ISIS judge who “concluded that he was a Christian” and said “You’re sentenced to death.” Thereafter Meghrik was severely whipped and tortured. At one point, he was thrown in a hole in the ground and surrounded by an execution squad prepared to fire. After 10 days of this treatment and for unknown reasons — Meghrik cites a miracle and is now a devout Christian — he was released.
While much of the world acknowledges that the Islamic State is engaged in acts of genocide against religious minorities such as Christians and Yazidis, in other Muslim states, such as Pakistan, Christians and other non-Muslim minorities are experiencing a “drip-drip genocide“, said the noted author, journalist and Pakistani politician Farahnaz Ispahani:
“Right before the partition of India and Pakistan, we had a very healthy balance of religions other than Islam. Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Zoroastrians. Pakistan goes from 23 per cent [non-Muslim at the time of partition in 1947], which is almost a quarter of its population, to three per cent today. I call it a ‘drip drip genocide’, because it’s the most dangerous kind of wiping out of religious communities…. It doesn’t happen in one day. It doesn’t happen over a few months. Little by little by little, laws and institutions and bureaucracies and penal codes, textbooks that malign other communities, until you come to the point of having this sort of jihadi culture that is running rampant.”
Other accounts of Muslim persecution of Christians to surface in February 2017 include, but are not limited to, the following:
The Slaughter of Christians in Egypt
As in January, when five different Christians were killed in four separate hate crimes around the country, another murderous wave took non-Muslim minorities by storm, this time in al-Arish, Sinai. The murders may have resulted from a video released in February by the “Islamic State in Egypt.” In the video, masked militants promise more attacks on the “worshipers of the cross” — a reference to the Coptic Christians of Egypt, of whom they also refer to as their “favorite prey” and “infidels who are empowering the West against Muslim nations.” One of the militants, carrying an AK-47 assault rifle, added, “God gave orders to kill every infidel.” Below is a list of Christians murdered in al-Arish:
After the slayings, at least 300 Christians living in al-Arish fled their homes, with nothing but their clothes on their backs and their children in their hands. In a video of these Copts, one man can be heard saying “They are burning us alive! They seek to exterminate Christians altogether! Where’s the military?” Another woman yells at the camera:
“Tell the whole world, look — we’ve left our homes, and why? Because they kill our children, they kill our women, they kill our innocent people! Why? Our children are terrified to go to schools. Why? Why all this injustice?! Why doesn’t the president move and do something for us? We can’t even answer our doors without being terrified!”
“We loved our country but our country doesn’t love us,” said the brother of one of the slain.
Muslim Abduction, Rape, Murder and Mutilation of Christian Women
Pakistan: Hours after being dropped off at the Convent of Jesus and Mary school in Punjab by her brother, Tania Mariyam, a 12-year-old Christian girl, was found dead in a canal. Despite all the evidence to the contrary — including her clothes being ripped off and signs of drugging — police investigations concluded that she had committed suicide. After three weeks of pressure from Mariyam’s family and human rights groups, who insisted that the girl had been raped and murdered — as so many Christian girls (and boys) in Pakistan have been before her — police finally conceded that she had not killed herself. Even so, “the severe delays,” says the British Pakistani Christian Association, “mean that much of the evidence has been lost.”
“There was a disgusting police cover up,” the murdered girl’s father said, “and I fear that they have colluded with the murderer and know more than they are letting on. They do not care about Christians.”
West Africa: According to a report, “Muslims radicals punished the [14-year-old] daughter of a Christian missionary for her faith by subjecting her to brutal female genital mutilation. Currently, the young woman remains in a coma, struggling for her life.” Lydia’s father, Yoonus, formerly a Muslim scholar, had converted to Christianity. When the local Muslim community heard of this — and that he “was now leading Muslims to Christ” — they “urged him to return to Islam and promised to give him gifts if he rejected Christianity. However, Yoonus and his family refused to renounce their faith, resulting in increased persecution,” including the attack on his daughter.
Egypt: Two new cases surfaced of young Christian girls being abducted with the indifference or complicity of the authorities. After Rania Eed Fawzy, 17, failed to return home, her parents and lawyer said it was “an incident of kidnapping and forced conversion to Islam.” They “filed a complaint with the local police that a Muslim male named Rabee Radi Naghi had taken their daughter against her will.” When the family lawyer contacted the Egyptian Attorney General, Nabil Ahmed Sadek, requesting “to remove Rania from hiding and deliver her to one of the Christian Orthodox homeless youth shelters”—as “[n]ormally in such cases the local authorities know where the kidnap victim is kept” — the Attorney General refused and said, “[T]he girl embraced Islam, what do you want?”
As the report explains, even if she did freely convert, “a child in Egypt is considered a minor until age 21. Until [one comes] of age, conversion from one religion to another is illegal.”
“In such kidnapping cases, however, the authorities always settle the issue by accepting the minor Christian girl’s ‘conversion’ to Islam … never the other way around. In conversion from Islam to Christianity complaints, police go above and beyond their role to retrieve the girl and warn her of death from apostasy. Such cases suit the purposes of ideological jihad. By removing a non-Muslim young woman of child-bearing age from the Christian community, adding her to the Muslim girl population to bear Muslim children serves to increase the Muslim population while decreasing Christian numbers.”
Separately, after an apparent ruse caused the older brother of Hanan Adly, an 18-year-old Christian girl, to step out of the house one night, she disappeared from the family farm. The family and their lawyer made a formal complaint to the police, accusing a neighbor, Mohamed Ahmed Nubi Soliman, 27, of kidnapping her. Prosecutors summoned the man and “he admitted a connection with the incident. However, he was released due to lack of physical evidence,” says the report.
“A national security investigation was ordered, but … there has been no progress with the case, despite protests outside the police station by friends and family of Hanan.”
Mali: A Christian nun was kidnapped in the Muslim-majority African nation with “no claims or demands for ransom”, said a local Christian leader. Sister Cecilia Narváez Argoti, of Colombian background, belonged to the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary Immaculate.
“The kidnappers arrived on 7 February from a secluded location a bit far from the village where Sister Cecilia and her sisters were. They broke into the missionary center and plundered money and computer equipment. They then escaped with the ambulance of the medical center with the nun.”
Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches
Central African Republic: Supporters of a Muslim rebel group destroyed two churches and killed a pastor in what are described as “revenge attacks.” After the national security forces, backed by UN peacekeepers, launched a military operation to interrogate Youssouf Malinga, a local Muslim militia leader known as the “Big Man,” he and his men opened fire on the security forces and killed two passersby. Security forces responded with fire and killed Malinga and one of his men; three soldiers were also injured in the shootout. Malinga’s supporters responded by surrounding an apostolic church and stabbing its pastor to death. “More than two dozen people were wounded. At least two churches were destroyed, along with a school,” in the “revenge attacks,” the report adds. “Central African Republic was plunged into civil war in 2013 following the overthrow of former president Francois Bozize, a Christian, by Muslim rebels from the Seleka militia.”
Congo: Churches are “being desecrated and Christian nuns terrorised by ‘violent thugs’ amid a wave of increased hostility on Christians,” according to reports. Elsewhere the “thugs” are described as “Islamist extremists.” In February alone, “the extremists” burned a major seminary and
“sow[ed] terror among the Carmelite Sisters in nearby Kananga…. The extremists also attacked the St. Dominic church in the town of Limete. They ‘overturned the tabernacle, ransacked the altar, smashed some of the benches and attempted to set fire to the church,’ the archbishop said.”
Iran: “Historical churches in Iran being destroyed while UNESCO overlooks,” is the title of one report. After explaining that “Destroying church buildings has a long record in the history of the Islamic regime of Iran,” it gives several examples in recent times. Sometimes churches are attacked by “extremist Muslims” who destroy crosses, statues, and icons with sledgehammers and axes; other times the government is responsible. In one case, “judicial authorities in Kerman issued a ruling for a historical church building in their city to be brought down, even though a few years earlier this church had been registered as a national heritage site”; in another instance, a “historical evangelical church building in Mashhad that had been registered as a national heritage site in 2005, was destroyed.” There “are around five hundred registered church buildings in Iran, with many of them abandoned or on the verge of destruction.”
Sudan: The government ordered the “demolition of at least 25 church buildings” in the Khartoum area, relates one report. The government claimed the churches were built on land zoned for other uses, although mosques located in the same area were spared from the demolition order. Christian leaders said this is “not an isolated act” but rather part of a wider “crack-down” on Christianity that “should be taken with wider perspective.” The Sudan Council of Churches denounced the order and called on the government to reconsider the decision or provide alternative sites for the churches. But Mohamad el Sheikh Mohamad, general manager of Khartoum State’s land department in the Ministry of Physical Planning, said the order should be implemented immediately. “Sudan since 2012 has bulldozed church buildings and harassed and expelled foreign Christians,” the report concludes.
Nigeria: The Christian Association of Nigeria is calling on the nation’s government to help rebuild destroyed churches in the Muslim majority regions of the nation’s northeastern states. This comes after a report revealed that “at least 900 Christian places of worship have been destroyed by Boko Haram since the [militant Islamic] group began its violent activities.” U.S. lawmakers said that Nigeria is the worst nation in which to be Christian. Christopher Smith, Chairman of US House of Representatives’ Sub-committee on Africa, said that both his staff and he have “investigated the crises facing Christians in Nigeria today” and
“made several visits to Nigeria, speaking with Christians and Muslim religious leaders across the country and visiting fire-bombed churches, such as in Jos…. Unfortunately, Nigeria has been cited as the most dangerous place for Christians in the world and impunity for those responsible for the killing of Christians seem to be widespread.”
What makes the African nation so hostile to Christians is Boko Haram, a militant Muslim group, which has “forced Christians to convert and forced Muslims to adhere to its extreme interpretation of Islam.”
Pakistan: Catholic churches and schools in the Lahore area closed down after a Taliban splinter group, which had killed seventy Christians on Easter Day, 2016, carried out a suicide bombing at a rally and killed at least 14 people. The group had vowed a year ago that it planned on launching “more devastating attacks that will target Christians and other religious minorities as well as government installations.”
CAIRO, EGYPT – DECEMBER 11: Christians rally in the street outside the church of St Peter and St Paul in the Coptic Cathedral complex after a bomb exploded on December 11, 2016 in Cairo, Egypt. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
On January 28, a court acquitted 106 Muslims of burning down an entire Christian village in 2013 — including 150 homes and three churches. The attack came after one of its inhabitants, Sawan Masih, was accused of blasphemy. More than 80 prosecution witnesses, 63 of them with statements recorded about the attack, said they did not recognize any of the 106 accused. So they were all released.
Also on January 28, the government arrested an elderly Christian man on the charge of blasphemy — which carries a maximum death penalty. A mosque leader accused Mukhtar Masih, 70, of writing two letters containing derogatory remarks about the Koran and Muhammad. The report cites a source who said that “the charges against Masih were fabricated by local Muslims seeking to seize his property.” Nonetheless, police raided the elderly man’s home the same day and took his entire family into custody. His family was released but he was booked on charges of blasphemy, and beaten in an attempt to force him to admit to it.
Separately, the Pakistani government denied that “Christian minorities are being targeted by the country’s controversial blasphemy laws,” says another report — despite the well-known fact that religious minorities, chief among them Christians, are the demographic group most prone to being accused and convicted of blasphemy, to say nothing of being beaten, lynched, and burned alive in mob attacks. After alleging that, of 129 cases of blasphemy, 99 were leveled against fellow Muslims, Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan said “religious minorities are not being embroiled in blasphemy cases more than Muslims.” However, “[s]everal different persecution watchdog groups have pointed out that Christians are often heavily targeted by blasphemy laws.” Pakistani human rights activist Wilson Chowdhry said officials are “twisting statistics”:
“Sadly, Mr Khan’s comments… [and] contrived results have failed to recognize that Christians in recent years have become the number one target of blasphemy allegations. It is our belief that a large proportion of the 26 percent of blasphemy convictions listed against minorities will have sentenced Christians, yet we contribute only 1.6 percent of the entire national population.”
Muslim Hate for and Discrimination against Christians
Egypt: Fadi, a 15-year-old Christian boy, was sentenced to 15 years in prison after being found guilty of what human rights activists say is a false accusation. Last summer, a Muslim neighbor accused him of sexually assaulting an 8-year-old Muslim boy. Investigations and forensic examinations were performed but revealed no evidence of sexual activity. The family was still ordered to leave the village and the charges remained. According to Fadi’s mother, Hana, he was targeted only because their Muslim neighbors, whose grandfather is an influential imam at the local mosque, “don’t like Christians.” She adds: the “judge convicted my son to 15 years because he is a Christian. If he was a Muslim boy, the judge would acquit him when he saw the forensic report, because the forensic report absolved my son,” but “because my son is Christian,” the judge “believed the speech of [the Muslim boy’s] father instead of the forensic report.”
Turkey: The Islamic terrorist who opened fire on an Istanbul nightclub during New Year’s Eve celebrations confessed that “I wanted to stage the attack on Christians in order to exact revenge on them for their acts committed all over the world. My aim was to kill Christians.” But for a variety of reasons that made it difficult for him to launch a spectacular attack on Christians, Abdulkadir Masharipov, of Uzbeki origin, ended up killing 39 people and wounded 65 others at a nightclub. He laments that he did not die then and there as a “martyr”: “When I was out of bullets, I threw two stun grenades. I put the third one near my face to commit suicide, but I didn’t die. I survived, but I entered Reina [nightclub] to die.” Apparently to hurry him on his way to what he sought on the day of attack, Islamic paradise, Abdulkadir said that “it would be good if he were given capital punishment.”
Iraq: Kurdish Peshmerga forces continue to be hostile to a Christian militia group also fighting the Islamic State. After William J. Murray, chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Religious Freedom Coalition, visited the Christian town of Qaraqosh on the Nineveh Plain, he wrote that it
“has enemies other than the ruthless Islamic State, or ISIS, which left it in ruins. Currently the Kurdish militia, the Peshmerga, is blocking aid to the NPU [Nineveh Protection Unit] that guards the town, because the NPU is the Assyrian Christian militia. It is the only armed Christian group in Iraq…. While for appearance and funding from Washington, the Kurds support Christian interests for now, the historical relationship between the two groups includes participation in slaughtering Christians by the tens of thousands. There is no room for a Christian enclave, particularly one that is armed, in the future of an independent state of Kurdistan…”
Kurds are Sunni Muslims.
France: A new study revealed that, in the Western European nation with the largest Muslim population, the overwhelming majority of “religious attacks” are against Christians. “Acts targeting Christian places accounted for 90% of all attacks on places of worship (Christians, Jews or Muslims).” Although the government responded to these statistics by saying that “all these acts have no religious motivation,” and that out of 949 attacks on churches, “there was a possible ‘satanic motivation’ in 14 cases and an ‘anarchist’ motivation in 25,” it did not reveal the source behind the other 910 attacks. Another report, however, from neighboring Germany gives a hint:
“Last year in Dülmen, following the arrival of well over a million [mostly Muslim] migrants in Germany, local media said ‘not a day goes by’ without attacks on Christian religious statues.”
While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians by Muslims is growing. The report posits that such Muslim persecution is not random but rather systematic, and takes place irrespective of language, ethnicity, or location.
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