Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

"Jewish Terror", "Arab Terror" and The New York Times

The headline in the New York Times website on Monday said "Revolt Network Foments New Brand of Jewish Terror in Israel." (Note - The headline has changed 14 hours later to "Israel Faces New Brand of Terrorism, This Time From Young Settlers", and that is what is in the print edition. The current article still uses the term "Jewish terrorism." The older headline is still out there in other news outlets that subscribe the the NYT wire feed.)

The last time that the New York Times used the phrase "Jewish terror" without quoting someone and outside of editorials, op-eds and book and movie reviews was in 2009, when a story said "Jewish terror is not new. A religious student assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, and a settler, Baruch Goldstein, killed 29 Muslims at prayer in Hebron in 1994. "

When was the last time the NYT mentioned "Arab terror" in a current news story, outside quotes, op-eds and reviews?

1996.

"Under an agreement reached by the previous Israeli Government, Israeli troops were to have withdrawn from most of Hebron by last March, but the move was delayed first by a series of Arab terror attacks, then by the election of Mr. Netanyahu and his determination to toughen the terms."

(This 2002 article uses the term "Arab terror" but it purports to read Ariel Sharon's mind when using it.)

The New York Times talks about Jewish terror today, but it has not been able to publish the term "Arab terror" as factual news in nearly 20 years.

Not 9/11. Not the second intifada. Not the scores of bombs in restaurants and buses. (The term "Arab terrorists" was used in connection with reports from the 9/11 Commission in 2004 and was used in describing the events of the Munich Olympics in articles in the 2000s.)

(To be fair, Jodi Rudoren did use the term "Palestinian terror" in 2014 referring to the Har Nof terror attacks. But even that term was very rarely used in the decade before that. The NYT peripherally used the term "Arab terrorism" in a US political article in 2015, the previous time was in 2006 speaking about "Sunni Arab terrorism. and before that was immediately after 9/11.)

To be clear:

This is the photo of Jews that the New York Times is using today to imply they are Jewish terrorists:

This photo would never be used by the NYT to refer to Arab or Palestinian terror:

(h/t EBoZ)

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01/11 Links Pt2:When human rights no longer matter to NGO’s; Uproar Over Trump, Silence On Abbas

From Ian:

Why Sanctions Are Pointless: Or, How Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs and Coca-Cola Broke the Arab Boycott

Everyone loves sanctions. But privileged Russians still enjoy imported French cheeses, and Iran’s Republican Guard is profiting handsomely from running a black market in sanction-busting imports. Even BDS may not be the dire threat that both its fevered proponents and its enemies like to imagine. Why? Because the truth is that sanctions are not really that hard to evade, and boycotts are not that hard to break. I know, because I helped to break the Arab boycott of Israel with the reluctant leverage of the Coca-Cola Corp. and the enthusiastic support of Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs.
I was trained as an economist, and in 1964 the government of Israel asked me to take a leave from the daily Maariv, then Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, to serve at our consulate in New York City on finding ways around the refusal of any Arab country to trade with our new nation. It had been almost a quarter of a century since I had enjoyed “The pause that refreshes” while visiting Beirut with my parents, so a thirst for Coca-Cola was hardly a habit with me or my countrymen. We all lived on short rations. Supplies of imported food and other essentials were limited during the struggle to build our nation, defend ourselves, and absorb millions of immigrants. When Coke first applied to open a bottling plant only a year after we gained our independence in 1948, it was refused as an unnecessary luxury.
But our soft drink companies yearned for a local franchise to bottle and sell Coca-Cola. This was regarded worldwide as a license to print money and usually ended up in the hands of someone with a great deal of political pull—in Hebrew protexia, or in the vernacular “Vitamin P.” Thus I became aware of the taste for Coca-Cola only after I arrived in arrived in New York to join the Israeli Economic Mission with the rank of consul.
Our mission was to convince American businessmen to ignore the Arab threat to seal off their much larger market from any company that did business with us. We also tried to drum up foreign investment in Israel, another move that would trigger the boycott. We asked Jewish-American importers to pressure their foreign suppliers to sell to Israel by warning that they would offend their customers if they refused to do business with Israel.

Douglas Murray: Germany Just Can't Get It Right

The late Robert Conquest once laid out a set of three political rules, the last of which read, "The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies." This rule comes in handy when trying to understand the otherwise clearly insane and suicidal policies of Chancellor Merkel's government in Germany. These policies only make sense if the German government has in fact been taken over by a cabal of people intent not on holding Germany together but on pulling it entirely apart. Consider the evidence.
There can be few other explanations for why Chancellor Merkel's government last year let in more than one million people (about 1.5% of the current German population) without having any idea of who they were, where they came from or what they think. No democratic leader could possibly push through such a startling measure. How else can you explain why a country that in the 20th century had such a gigantic anti-Semitism problem, would import so many people from those areas of the world which, in the 21st century, now have the same gigantic anti-Semitism problem?
A document that was leaked late last year from the German intelligence service warned that the country is "importing Islamic extremism, Arab anti-Semitism, national and ethnic conflicts of other peoples..." How to explain a government and security service policy which allowed this to happen? Or a Chancellor who, when asked a very lightly critical question about all of this by a concerned German citizen, responded with a long disquisition that failed to answer even one part of the pertinent point?
More up-to-date, it is worth considering events since New Year's Eve. As the world now knows, that was when around 100 women were subjected to rape, harassment and sexual molestation by a huge crowd of migrants in the centre of the city of Cologne. It has now emerged that the first response of the Cologne police to this major incident was to hold back information about the identity of the attackers. Whether the police thought they could get away with that or not, this lie has now poured fuel onto the flames of public anger by demonstrating that the police, like the government and much of the media, are intent on misinforming the public about what is going on in their country, rather than keeping them truthfully briefed about it.

David Collier: When human rights no longer matter to NGO’s

As soon as the program was broadcast, the backlash started. On the programme itself, Illana Dayan, the shows anchor, had invited Gideon Levy, a frequent commentator on human rights to respond, and rather surprisingly, Levy’s main concern seemed to be that the show had been broadcast at all. Levy has since written an article in Haaretz saying that the show ‘should be ashamed of the report it aired which depicted human rights activists as dangerous, while ignoring the occupation.’ Rather incredibly, Levy begins to suggest the entire piece is taken out of context and ending in rather dramatic and ironic fashion, he suggests that by highlighting these actions to the world, the show has done a disservice. Here is Gideon Levy publicly claiming that some people assisting human rights abuses should not be put on TV.
And Gideon Levy is far from alone. 972 Magazine, an online outlet that spends its entire existence knocking Israel and talking up human rights, suddenly becomes blind to actions that clearly contravene the UN’S Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Today (10/1) they ran a piece by Haggai Matar, attacking those who publicised the actions of the activists. Suddenly, when analysing the words of a man who seemed to be rejoicing at the violent fate that would befall the land seller, there is a ‘but’ and an ‘however’. Incredibly, the criticism is reserved for the source of the recording, rather than the men who conspired to perhaps have someone killed. It seems that for these left wing ‘moralist thinkers’ that when it comes to human rights, some people’s rights are more important than others.
These are not the only two examples. Ever since the broadcast, the show has been attacked endlessly from sources desperate to protect the image of the NGO’s, movements that propose their very raison d’être is to protect human rights. But it isn’t just those making noise that we should focus on, it is those remaining quiet. Groups who describe themselves as being on the far left of the political spectrum, those that frequently hide behind or use the material provided by these NGO’s have temporarily stopped posting and tweeting. They have nothing to say. Media outlets like the Guardian and Independent, who would have been banging down the doors if the situation was reversed, are ducking under cover until the furore dies down. They do not want to attack ‘their own’.
We have always known this hypocrisy existed. We are well aware that these groups, these media outlets, these individuals, work in unison and are driven by personal bias and hatred towards Israel rather than a true sympathy for the Palestinians. It would have been nice to see one, just one, stand up and give the unequivocal condemnation they always demand of others. Instead we are left with those attacking the messenger, weak attempts at diverting focus and an entire part of the political spectrum simply disappearing for a while. No, this is not a surprise, but it is solid evidence that the hatred we see directed towards Israel every day, is simply that, blind hatred. Hatred that emanates from a bunch of very vocal but equally morally deficient hypocrites. It is worth remembering that next time you see one of their reports.

Bizarre, contradictory logic from the NYT's editorial page:

Iran’s Other Scary Weapons Program

The United States should lift sanctions on Iran; no, it should impose new sanctions on Iran. The short answer is that the Obama administration should do both.

The sanctions imposed to press Iran to negotiate curbs on its nuclear program should be lifted as promised when the recent nuclear agreement goes into effect, maybe as early as next week. The Obama administration is wisely planning a separate set of new sanctions in response to Iran’s two recent tests of ballistic missiles, which violated United Nations resolutions.

...Iran is advancing the range and mobility of its ballistic missiles and vowing to accelerate production. Most worrisome is a collaboration with North Korea, which has nuclear weapons and provided Iran with many of its first missiles, and still supplies key components. A recent Congressional Research Service report called their cooperation “significant and meaningful.”

In October, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Iran would walk away from the nuclear deal if new sanctions of any kind were imposed. But the administration has been clear that even after the most onerous sanctions are lifted under the nuclear deal, it would enforce those pertaining to Iran’s missile, terrorism and human rights activities. The nuclear deal lifts United Nations ballistic missile sanctions on Iran within eight years, but American sanctions on firms that sell arms to Iran will remain.

See? The New York Times can be hawkish when it needs to be!

Except....

The administration told Congress that missile-related sanctions were coming, then held back, infuriating many lawmakers. While the delay was not explained, this is a delicate moment, and it may make sense to wait because Iran is on the verge of implementing the nuclear deal. Also, an Iranian official told Reuters last week that negotiations are again underway on the possible release of the Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian and other Americans held by Iran. Another complication is the recent worsening of the conflict between Shiite-majority Iran and Sunni-led Saudi Arabia.

New sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missiles must still be pursued. The people and agencies most responsible for Iran’s program were hit with sanctions years ago; the new measures would add 11 new individuals and entities to a long list. That should not be so onerous that Iran would walk away from the economic relief it stands to gain from the nuclear deal. And it is an important and necessary way of keeping pressure on Iran to cease its unacceptable activities.

So the US should threaten sanctions that are supposedly separate from the nuclear program, but shouldn't actually implement any of them because of the threat that Iran might walk away from the nuclear program agreement that is completely separate.

Don't worry about Iran's cooperation with North Korea on an illicit nuclear program. Everything is cool on that front. Only worry about Iran's cooperation with North Korea over an illicit ballistic missiles program.

This pretzel logic is meant to justify the administration's acquiescing to Iranian demands on ballistic missile sanctions after the fact, even though we were promised beforehand the White House would never, ever mix the two issues up.

For this year's Hasby Awards, celebrating the best examples of pro-Israel advocacy of the year, we will have some categories voted on by EoZ readers.

The first category to be voted on is Best Young Defender of Israel. There are a lot of great nominees here, many of whom I was not previously familiar. Please check out these nominees' work and vote for the best based on their work in 2015, and follow them on their social media accounts.

Chloe Valdary

Daniel Mael

Sarah Bernamoff

Leora Noor Eisenberg

Alexandra Markus (Lex)

Emanuel Miller

Shay Alfasi

Voting will close on Sunday, January 17.

(Ryan Bellerose, Tomer Kornfeld and Kasim Hafeez requested to be withdrawn from the voting.)

web surveys

We are doing everything we can to fight for Israel with hard work, research and - above all - the truth. I could sure use your help.Please donate today.If you have other skills you can volunteer for EoZ, send an email to volunteer@elderofziyon.com

01/11 Links Pt1: Clinton Considered Plan to Spark Palestinian Protests; Hamas' and Hezbollah's pyromania

From Ian:

Clinton Considered Secret Plan to Spark Palestinian Protests

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton considered a secret plan created by her then-advisers to foment unrest among Palestinian citizens and spark protests in order to push the Israeli government back to the negotiating table, according to emails released as part of the investigation into the Democratic presidential frontrunner’s private email server.
In a Dec, 18, 2011, email, former U.S. ambassador to Israel Thomas Pickering suggested that Clinton consider a plan to restart then-stalled peace negotiations by kickstarting Palestinian demonstrations against Israel.
Pickering described the effort as a potential “game changer in the region,” recommending that the United States undertake a clandestine campaign to generate unrest. Clinton requested that his email be printed.
“What will change the situation is a major effort to use non-violent protests and demonstrations to put peace back in the center of people’s aspirations as well as their thoughts, and use that to influence the political leadership,” Pickering wrote.

PMW: Palestinian children wear “suicide belts” to celebrate Fatah’s 51 years of violence

When one looks at Palestinian Authority education and messaging to its children, it is no wonder that in the last three months, most of the terror attacks have been carried out by young Palestinians. At Fatah's anniversary celebrations in Bethlehem last week, young masked children were dressed with “suicide belts” and equipped with "guns" and "RPGs".
Palestinian Media Watch has reported that a central part of PA educational messages to children is promotion of violence and glorification of terrorists.
The official PA daily reported on this Fatah event, specifically mentioning the fact that children participated in the procession brandishing toy weapons and “suicide belts,” however the PA mouthpiece did not express any reservation or disapproval over this at all:
“Children were seen carrying models of RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and explosive belts, and they all walked through the alleys of the refugee camp in the procession, during which the sound of songs of the national revolution were heard.” [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 8, 2016]

PMW: PA and Fatah glorify Tel Aviv murderer of 3

Abbas’ Fatah movement posted an uncensored version of the picture of dead terrorist murderer Nashat Melhem lying in a pool of blood. It also praised the killer of 3 as a “Martyr” and congratulated him on its official Facebook page:
Text: “Nashat Melhem died as a Martyr (Shahid) after an armed confrontation in the courtyard of a mosque in Umm Al-Fahm on blessed Friday, congratulations and may Allah receive you in Heaven” [emphasis added, Official Facebook page of the Fatah Movement, Jan. 8, 2016]
Nashat Melhem was a 29-year-old Israeli Arab terrorist who carried out a shooting attack, killing 2 Israelis, Alon Bakal and Shimon Ruimi, and wounding 8 others, at Hasimta bar in Tel Aviv on Jan. 1, 2016. While fleeing after the attack, Melhem killed a taxi driver, a Bedouin Israeli Amin Shaaban. A week after the attacks, on Jan. 8, 2016, Israeli security forces tracked down Melhem to his hometown of Arara in the north of Israel. After Melhem opened fire, the Israeli soldiers shot and killed him.
The PA Ministry of Health called the murderer “one of the dearest Martyrs (Shahids),” whose “name is engraved with his pure blood.” The ministry explained that it was unable to include terrorist Melhem on its list of “Martyrs” because he did not come from the areas under the ministry’s jurisdiction. Following criticism, the ministry issued a press release emphasizing Melhem’s status as “Martyr” (Shahid) despite the omission from the list:

MEMRI: Jibril Rajoub to Israelis: You Sons of Bitches, We Will Accept Nothing Less than a Palestinian State

At a ceremony marking the 51st anniversary of the establishment of Fatah, the movement's Central Committee member Jibril Rajoub, former head of the Preventive Security force, addressed the Israelis, saying: "You sons of bitches, we will accept nothing less than a Palestinian state. We own this place, we are its people, while you are alien here." Rajoub, who serves as the head of the Palestinian football association and the head of the Palestine Olympic committee, further said: "To this day, resistance has remained a genetic code among all Fatah members." The ceremony, held at Burqin, near Jenin, was broadcast on the Palestinian Awdeh TV channel on January 6, 2016.

Reported number of Gaza homes damaged in 2014 kept increasing in 2015. Why?

The Gaza Shelter Cluster, led by the Norwegian Refugee Committee, issues reports every month on the progress of Gaza reconstruction after Protective Edge.

Given that the war ended in August 2014, one would think that the number of damaged houses would have been pretty much stable shortly afterwards.

The February 2015 report said that 156,000 houses were damaged or destroyed.

The April report said the number was 161,700.

By October, the number of houses damaged in Gaza by August 2014 had gone up to 171,519. (It has remained fairly steady since then.)

Is it possible that the number of damaged houses increased by 10% when there were no bombs falling?

It may be possible that people waited over a year to report legitimate damage on their homes, but that seems very unlikely.

Perhaps some Gazans "damaged" their homes to become eligible to receive cement - which they could then sell to Hamas on the black market.

It is just a theory, but I can't come up with a better one.

A Salafist preacher in Gaza, Sheikh Muhammed Salman Abu Jamea, has written a legal opinion against anyone who helps Gaza youths get to the border where they clash with Israeli troops, often with fatal results.

Abu Jamea said that these clashes are a waste of the nation's youth, and do not accomplish anything. So far, he says, 40,000 young men and women have been lost with no gain. Sending young people to confront Israel "with their bare chests" only results in injuries and death, he says, and encouraging them to sacrifice themselves with no gain is not permitted.

Those who give rides to youths to start riots at the Gaza border are responsible for their deaths, the sheikh said.

There may be a political context here. Abu Jamea was in the news before, six years ago, for issuing another fatwa against building smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, pointing out that the tunnel owners exploit workers who often were killed in cave-ins.

That fatwa was issued at the request of the Palestinian Authority.

Was this one an attempt by Mahmoud Abbas to calm things down, or did the sheikh issue it on his own?

Abu Jamea also recently issued a fatwa against honor killings, so he just might be consistent in issuing fatwas to save Muslim lives.

The fact that this sounds so anomalous is itself cause for concern.

Palestine Press Agency reports that residents of a neighborhood in Beit Hanoun, Gaza whose houses have been completely destroyed in the summer of 2014 are angry because the Hamas’ Land Authority prevents them from rebuilding their houses.

Hamas says the area, known as “Azbat Beit Hanoun," is government-owned land.

An official named Dr. Yousef Al-Kafarne said that the Land Authority also prevented UNRWA from building and repairing there. UNRWA did not issue any press release about this matter.

After some complaints and the intervention of some unnamed “Palestinian factions,” the Hamas Land Authority allowed partially destroyed houses to be rebuilt or renovated.

But completely destroyed houses are forbidden from being rebuilt.

You may recall a few months ago some left-wing NGOs would say that no Gaza homes have been rebuilt from scratch, blaming Israel - even though Israel was allowing tons of construction material to enter and Hamas was rebuilding its terror infrastructure unhindered. A cash shortage from donors as well as Gaza bureaucracy were also to blame for the slowness of rebuilding.

Now we see that Hamas has been actively opposed to rebuilding homes.

And those NGOs are silent.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

Surprising support by Palestinians for confederating with Jordan, Egypt

There is a new AWRAD survey of "Palestinian opinion leaders, " defined this way:

423 Palestinian opinion leaders participated. They include political party leaders, civil society leaders, high-ranking government and private sector officials,journalists, youth activists, and professionals such as academics, researchers, consultants, doctors, engineers and lawyers.

40% of those polled believe protests will continue for years; 45% believe that they will continue only weeks or months.

57% give the biggest external reason for the protests as being "threats to the status of holy places in the Old City of Jerusalem." But 70% give the most important internal factor as being "Frustration with Palestinian leadership in both the West Bank and Gaza." (The pollsters fudged the first part of that poll by saying "97% think that threats to the status of holy places, settlements and closures are driving the protests" - that "and" should be an "or.")

Not too many are optimistic about the results of the current uprising being positive for the Palestinians. A majority believes that it makes a Palestinian state less likely, that Israel will increase use of force and that Israel will establish new settlements in response.

75% support the statement that the Palestinians are no longer bound by the Oslo agreements. No doubt, they believe that Israel still is.

A majority believe that ending security cooperation with Israel would serve Palestinian interests.

81% felt that personal freedoms and democratic processes have declined over the past few years.

These answers surprised me, though:

For one thing, this shows that West Bank Palestinians are more hawkish than their Gaza counterparts.

But for 23.5% of those who oppose a two-state solution, their alternative is not getting rid of Israel - but to become part of Jordan and Egypt!

Yes, that is only 8% of those polled, but I've never even seen this question ever being asked before. And it is a solution that Israel could be interested in, even if Egypt and Jordan don't seem to want it at this time.

If that idea gets that much support when no one is talking about it, imagine how much support it could get if the seeds are planted in people's minds?

01/10 Links: The Jihad Against Jewish Hebron; Shin Bet busts Hebron Hamas cell; IsraAid in Yorkshire

From Ian:

Police open criminal investigation of far-left Israeli activist

The Israel Police have opened a criminal investigation into a far-left activist who was shown on an investigative journalism TV program last week boasting about how he helps Palestinian security forces find Palestinians who sell land to Jews.
In the hidden camera footage aired by Channel 2’s “Uvda” on Thursday night, Ezra Nawi can be seen boasting about how the Palestinian land owners are tortured and later killed after taken into custody by the Palestinian Authority’s Preventative Security Service.
“Straight away I give their pictures and phone numbers to the Preventive Security Force,” Nawi is heard saying in reference to the Palestinian Authority’s counterintelligence arm. “The Palestinian Authority catches them and kills them. But before it kills them, they get beat up a lot.”
The footage was part of a segment on Uvda about a group of Israelis who posed as far-left activists in order to infiltrate Israeli human rights NGOs working in the West Bank.

Guardian once praised Israeli ‘activist’ who helps kill Palestinians selling land to Jews

In 2009, the Guardian published an official editorial titled ‘In Praise of Ezra Nawi’.
Nawi is a Jewish Israeli ‘human rights activist’ with the group Ta’ayush, a “grassroots movement of Arabs and Jews working to break down the walls of racism and segregation”.
Prior to the editorial, the Guardian had published an op-ed by contributor Neve Gordon which was even effusive in its praise of the “pro-democracy, human rights activist”.
Fast forward to 2016.
Uvda, a respected news magazine on Israel’s Channel 2, just revealed that two Israeli “human rights activists” – including Ezra Nawi – bragged, in an exchange caught on film – that they “entrapped” Palestinians interested in selling land to Jews and subsequently turned them in to the Palestinian Authority.
Remarkably, they turned these Palestinians in even though they acknowledged – in the video secretly recorded by another NGO – that they likely faced torture or murder by the Palestinian secret police.

Haaretz outs IDF hero who infiltrated B'tselem, Ta'ayush

The Haaretz newspaper has exposed the alleged identity of the young man who infiltrated leftist groups as part of an investigative report that was aired on Channel 2 last week.
The man, who was planted in the leftist groups by a group called Ad Kan, recorded the most damning documentary materials aired on the show, by use of a hidden camera. His identity was kept secret on the show, and the IDF, too, refrained from making it public when he was awarded the Chief of Staff's citation for his courage in Operation Protective Edge.
According to the Channel 2 report, the man – who was referred to by the pseudonym "Arik," was the one who asked the IDF to keep his name secret, in order to make it possible for him to continue to infiltrate the leftist groups.
The investigative report has severely damaged the groups' image as being concerned with "human rights," by exposing that senior members of B'tselem and Ta'ayush have been informing on Arabs in Judea and Samaria who wish to sell land to Jews, in the knowledge that this leads to their arrest and torture by the Palestinian Authority (PA), which issues death sentences to people who sell land to Jews.

Deborah Cole, writing in the Times of Israel, tells us:

BERLIN, Germany (AFP) – German leaders expressed shock over dozens of apparently coordinated sexual assaults against women on New Year’s Eve in the western city of Cologne blamed on “Arab-looking men,” but warned against anti-migrant scapegoating.
Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a thorough investigation of the “repugnant” attacks, ranging from groping to at least one reported rape, allegedly committed in a large crowd of revellers during year-end festivities outside the city’s main train station and its famed Gothic cathedral.
Police in Cologne said they had received 90 criminal complaints by Tuesday and quoted witnesses as saying that groups of 20-30 young men “who appeared to be of Arab or North African origin” had surrounded victims, assaulted them and in several cases robbed them.
Germany took in around one million asylum seekers in 2015, many of them fleeing war-ravaged Syria.

But, as she fails to note, most are not fleeing war-ravaged Syria.

One need not be a sociologist to understand that importing millions of young men from a part of the world notorious for misogyny into the Land of the Blondies is likely to result in trouble and it is, in fact, resulting in trouble. Aside from rising rates of anti-Semitism and crime and homelessness in countries like Germany and Sweden there is also the little matter of rape.

They say that Sweden has emerged as the rape capital of Europe. The Swedes must be very proud.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas said the assaults represented “a new dimension of crime that we will have to get to grips with,” adding that they had appeared to be “coordinated.”
Asked by a journalist whether refugees were behind the rampage, Maas said police were still working to identify the attackers.
“This is not about where someone is from but what they did,” he said.
“Making an issue out of it, lumping it together with the refugee issue, is nothing but exploitation. Now is the time to determine the facts and then decide on the necessary consequences.”

Exploitation? I have no idea what this guy is talking about, but he sounds like someone who would be quite comfortable in the Obama administration... where they have turned dissimulation and evasion into a form of art.

Furthermore, this is not a matter of "lumping it together with the refugee issue" because it is an integral part of the immigration issue to begin with. Sweden and Germany have invited huge numbers of people into their countries who despise Jews, dislike Christians, disrespect women, and, outside of the financial benefits, do not even respect their host cultures or the authorities within those cultures.

The bottom line is that the EU, Germany, and Sweden have made an irreversible blunder and their people are going to pay very seriously, over a very long period of time, for that blunder.

I am not one of those who speaks of an "invasion" of Europe because in the minds of most these travelers, I have little doubt, it is a matter of building a better life in a more generous part of the world or, in the case of some, to run from war. Why they feel it necessary to run all the way to Stockholm or Cologne is not difficult to fathom. I mean, if you had a choice between living in Karachi or Stockholm, which would you choose?

Meanwhile the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which hopes to gain seats in three regional elections in March, seized on the attacks as “a result of unchecked immigration.”
“Here we see the appalling consequences of catastrophic asylum and migration policies on Germany’s everyday reality,” party leader Frauke Petry said.

There is no question but that right-leaning parties throughout Europe are going to benefit politically from the criminal-like negligence of the various mainstream European leaders, such as Angela Merkel. The sad thing is that most Europeans objecting to the opening of the immigrant floodgates are not racist, nor particularly right-wing. European political figures, who are invested in the policy, will encourage people to think upon those who object as "racists" if not "neo-Nazis."

In this way Europe is undermining its liberal, democratic nature going forward.

This is true for two reasons. The first is that the immigrants do not share those liberal, democratic values and seem generally unwilling to assimilate. This means that as they gain greater political power the less liberal and democratic Europe will become. Western feminism is dying because it is trapped between the multicultural imperative and the well-being of European women. Since multiculturalism apparently trumps social justice, those of us raised within an ideologically-multicultural milieu have thrust a sock into the throats of western feminists who might otherwise be inclined to speak out on behalf of their sisters in places like Karachi or Riyadh, not to mention Tehran.

Any who attempt to stand up for the rights of women suffering under Islamic misogyny will inevitably be ostracized from their political peer group with a "right-wing racist" label smacked across their forehead.

The second reason is that it becomes much harder to uphold humanitarian values when faced with people who emphatically do not share such values. How does one hold aloft the banner of humanitarianism toward the very people who wish to rape your daughter? This is not to say, obviously, that all Arab immigrants into Europe condone or commit rape, but certainly enough that it should awaken something in the European heart.

Victims described terrifying scenes in the marauding mob.
Katja L., 28, said she was with three friends outside the station when they encountered a group of “foreign-looking men.”
“Suddenly I felt a hand on my bottom, then on my breasts, then I was groped everywhere,” she told Cologne tabloid Express.
“It was horrible. Although we screamed and flailed about, the guys didn’t stop. I was beside myself and think that I was touched about 100 times across around 200 meters.”

Europe has opened itself to a whole new set of challenges for the coming century. We will see rising rates of crime, rape, and Jihadi acts of terror as European Jews slowly drift away to Israel or Australia or North America.

In the end, I most strongly feel bad for young European women who will be pay the most immediate and direct price for their parents' good intentions. Few people doubt Europe's humanitarian convictions as sincere.

We merely doubt that they will get what they bargained for.

Finally, nobody is going to tell me that opposing the mass migration of a population known to hold anti-Semitic hostility in percentiles ranging from the mid-70s to the mid-90s is racist toward those people.


Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

From Herald Scotland:

THE British government is refusing to accept evidence of civilian fatalities in UK air strikes from human rights groups monitoring the results of bombing raids on the ground in Syria and Iraq.

The Ministry of Defence told the Sunday Herald that it will not investigate reports of deaths on the ground in Syria and Iraq - from anyone but UK military personnel, and 'local forces' deemed friendly.

The UK Government is being urged to launch an immediate investigation after independent monitoring group Airwars reported between 72 and 81 civilian deaths in Iraq could be linked to British air strikes.

In the wake of the report, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) insisted there had been “no reports” from Iraq or Syria of civilian casualties as a result of the UK air campaign.

The MoD insisted it would not consider reports from independent monitoring groups, such as Airwars, which collates information from sources including media reports and civilians on the ground in affected areas.

The MoD claims it relies only on evidence from its own internal surveillance - through aerial assessments or information from evaluations carried out by what it calls 'local forces'. A spokeswoman refused to comment further on what it meant by 'local forces'.

Chris Woods, director of Airwars, which describes itself as a not-for-profit transparency project, said he was “shocked” by the admission by the MoD that it ruled out reports by human rights monitoring organisations.

He said Airwars had uncovered huge discrepancies in incidents being reported when it worked with US Central Command (Centcom) last year on compiling a database of civilian casualties of American bombing missions.

“One of the things that troubled us was that we were aware of three times more alleged civilian casualty incidents than Centcom was,” he said. “Their own internal mechanisms were simply missing two out of three alleged cases on the ground and we ended up sharing our data-set with them, simply so they could begin triggering investigative processes for those events they were unaware of."

Israeli policy is for the Military Advocate General to investigate all reports of civilian casualties during wartime - from human rights groups as well as from Palestinian sourses themselves.

But the British apparently believe that they cannot trust information from any non-British source in the first place.

(h/t Ellis Simpson)