RUTHFULLY YOURS

The phrase, “change the laws on my own,” is not in the U.S. Constitution.

History will ill-serve Eric Holder if it does no more than echo the view common in the wake of his resignation that his tenure as Attorney General was “controversial.” Mr. Holder’s more than five years as the nation’s chief legal officer were consequential.

In tandem with Barack Obama ‘s White House, Mr. Holder pushed the authority of the federal government and its administrative agencies beyond the edge of the Constitution and law. They did so not in one or several controversial instances, as with past presidencies, but repeatedly and across the breadth of the federal government.

Universities, public schools, fire and police departments, the financial industry, utilities, state legislatures, orders of nuns, black parents, small-business owners, the electrons inside the Internet, random sections of the U.S. Constitution—all have learned that what they took to be the clear meaning of existing law was wrong.

Messrs. Obama and Holder have attempted to make federal legal authority limitless. The Obama-Holder theory of law—that the needs of justice, as they define it, supersede the law’s boundaries—deserves to be repudiated. It has no precedent outside progressive law journals or various periods in South American history.

Mr. Obama made his intentions clear. In July 2011, the president said in public he’d like to “bypass Congress and change the laws on my own.” The phrase, “change the laws on his own,” is not in the U.S. Constitution. The next year, Mr. Obama made his now-famous and unconstitutional recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. The recess appointments were the tip of the iceberg.

For the firm of Obama & Holder, shocking the conscience of sitting federal judges with legal overstepping is just another day in court. The Obama lawyers’ legal justification for their actions has often been, in effect, what difference does it make? That isn’t a legal argument. Yet.

Socked by new taxes, U.S. health-care technology companies are moving R&D centers and jobs overseas.

Of the many unintended consequences of the Affordable Care Act, perhaps the least noticed is its threat to innovation. Although most discussions center on the law’s more immediate effects on hiring, insurance rates and access to doctors and care, attention should also be paid to its impact on U.S. research and development and health-care technology.

The overwhelming majority of the world’s health-care innovation occurs in the U.S. This includes ground-breaking drug treatments, surgical procedures, medical devices, patents, diagnostics and much more. Most of the funding for that innovation—about 71% of U.S. R&D investment—comes from private industry. A recent R&D Magazine survey of industry leaders in 63 countries ranked the U.S. No. 1 in the world for health-care innovation.

But that environment is changing. According to R&D Magazine and the research firm Battelle, growth of R&D spending in the U.S. from 2012 to 2014 averaged just 2.1%, down from an average of 6% over the previous 15 years. In that same 15-year period, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, India and the European Union saw faster R&D spending growth than the U.S. China’s grew on average 22% per year.

The recent slowdown in R&D spending in the U.S. is in part caused by weak economic growth since the 2008 financial crisis. But the economy’s weakness itself has been exacerbated by the negative impact of new taxes and regulations under ObamaCare. According to Congressional Budget Office estimates, the new health-care law will levy more than $500 billion in new taxes over its first 10 years to help pay for insurance subsidies and Medicaid expansion. These new taxes include significant levies on key health-care industries, such as manufacturers of medical devices and drugs, and their investors.

Originally, I thought that President Obama’s refusal to invite Prime Minister Netanyahu to a White House dinner was merely because of our president’s animus toward Israel in general and Netanyahu in particular. It turns out, however, that Obama was saving dinner delicacies for a gala meal to honor Prime Minister Modi of India. At the White House dinner, P.M. Modi only had warm water. As a religious Hindu, he was observing Navrati, a Hindu festival, and was fasting.

The White House had been informed that Modi was fasting, but they assumed that meant that he was eating fast food dishes. I’m guessing that Modi’s uneaten food will be saved for Netanyahu, whom the White House will invite for a barbecue on Yom Kippur.

President Obama might not have known about Navrati. But perhaps he considered Modi to not be a real Hindu. Our President has proven to be somewhat of an expert on theology. At the UN, he explained that ISIS was not truly Muslim and he reiterated his assertion that no religion tolerates the killing of innocents. I’m guessing that part of our President’s expertise must have come from attending twenty years of sermons by the Reverend Wright who perhaps had suggested that the Crusades and Inquisition were part of a Jewish conspiracy.

On the other hand, perhaps it is not really a matter of theology. After all, the State Department has adopted the new dictum that if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and even flies like a duck, then it is probably a kangaroo. They are constantly providing us with new names for Al Quaida terrorists . In part this is in order to disguise the fact that the requiem for Al Quaida pronounced by President Obama was a bit premature.

Also this is because our administration is so enamored with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, that it would much prefer that the perpetrators of these atrocities turned out to be 7th Day Adventists.

“We awoke one morning in September and the world lurched on its axis.”Jeb Bush

The world may not have “lurched on its axis” this month, but President Obama did. This was the man who scored a Nobel Peace Prize, not for what he had done, but for what it was hoped he would do. He said he would end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unilaterally, he pulled all troops from Iraq two years ago, leaving a vacuum rapidly filled by al Qaeda and its affiliates. He plans to do the same in Afghanistan by the end of 2016. This month he added airstrikes against ISIS in Syria to those he began flying in Iraq last month. The “Peace” President has gone to war.

Mr. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry gathered an impressive list of Arab allies – Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain – to aid in the destruction of ISIS through air strikes. Additionally, the plan is to arm about 5,000 Syrian insurgents who are fighting Bashar al-Assad to take up arms against more than 30,000 ISIS troops in Syria. And, Mr. Obama did this without having crossed any red lines. In contradiction to previous promises, in August he did put a few thousand “boots on the ground” in Iraq (military advisors, as President Kennedy quaintly called them, when he sent 400 of them to Vietnam in May 1961). Whether he does the same in Syria is yet to be known, but it is likely that some special forces are already there.

However, keeping true to form, when asked last Sunday by Steve Kroft on “60 Minutes” if he had been surprised by the rapid rise of ISIS, he said he was, but deflected the blame. Mr. Obama said “they underestimated them,” naming James Clapper and the intelligence community. He did not say “we;” he said “they.” However, three weeks after Fallujah fell to ISIS early last January it was Mr. Obama who referred to ISIS as the jayvee, not Mr. Clapper. The most salient characteristic of Mr. Obama: never take blame!

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” Sir Walter Scott’s lines apply to the Middle East. Mr. Obama has quoted the proverb, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”, or maybe the first enemy is still my enemy? Donald Rumsfeld once said, “You go to war with allies you have, not the ones you wish for.” Maybe, but are they real allies? Any deal we make with Arab allies risks being Faustian. It was the lesson learned by Jabez Stone in Stephen Vincent Benét’s novel, The Devil and Daniel Webster. Our most visible Islamic terrorist enemies are Sunni, but so are the Saudis, an ally. The greatest longer term threat we face is a nuclear Iran who are Shias. Iran’s centrifuges continue to spin. The Country is also Syria’s patron. In attacking ISIS in Syria, we are doing Bashar al-Assad’s work, but Assad has now killed an estimated 190,000 of his own people. What sort of deal will we strike with Iran?

Over the weekend, I argued that the terrorist organization the Obama administration chooses to call the ‘Khorasan Group’ does not actually exist – at least not as a standalone terrorist organization. As I elaborated in the column:

The “Khorosan Group” is al-Qaeda. It is simply a faction within the global terror network’s Syrian franchise, “Jabhat al-Nusra.” Its leader, Mushin al-Fadhli (believed to have been killed in this week’s U.S.-led air strikes), was an intimate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the emir of al-Qaeda who dispatched him to the jihad in Syria.

FDD’s Tom Joscelyn, who is as good as it can get when it comes to analyzing jihadist organizations, has also argued that the “so-called Khorasan Group” is “to put it simply, al Qaeda.” It is not a standalone terrorist organization. It is, at most, a group of trusted advisers within al Qaeda (the Islamic concept is a “shura”) who were dispatched by al-Qaeda emir Ayman al-Zawahiri to the jihad in Syria. Syria has been an optimal location for plotting attacks against the West because Qaeda has had safe-haven there akin to what it enjoyed in Afghanistan in the years before September 11, 2001. Most analysts and even jihadists themselves have never heard of the “Khorasan Group” because the shura it refers to is an internal organizational arrangement – not a combat unit, much less a terrorist organization. The members sent to Syria were simply al-Nusra, just like other al-Qaeda operatives in Syria.

President Obama and his subordinates take pains not to mention al Qaeda, particularly in the context of continuing plots to mass-murder Americans, because the president repeatedly and falsely claimed during the 2012 campaign to have “decimated” the terror network and put it “on the path to defeat.” The administration miniaturizes the continuing threat by breaking al Qaeda down into its components and speaking about them as if they were independent actors rather than a global jihadist movement unified by virulently anti-American Islamic-supremacist ideology.

Some of the names Obama officials use for these purposes are simply made up – like “core al Qaeda.” (See, e.g., Tom Joscelyn’s Weekly Standard report, “Misunderstanding al Qaeda”, quoting Susan Rice’s rationalization of “what we call al Qaeda core” [my italics] – what are actually just the network tentacles in Afghanistan and Pakistan). Other names may be appropriated from al-Qaeda’s organizational divisions (internal ones like “Khorasan” or external ones like “al-Nusra” or “Ansar al-Sharia”) and then disingenuously used in a similar fashion to make the global terror network seem like a disconnected and trifling gaggle of “jayvee teams.”

Political correctness in speech is the severed hamstring of the strongest assertion of moral integrity.

The politically correct fear of affronting Muslims is so infectious and poisonous it will lead a man who takes an otherwise commendable and irrefutable position on Islam to make a fallacious distinction between Islam and its allegedly “militant” adherents and practitioners.

In one sentence, apparently calculated to mollify Muslims and Islamic states of all stripes, including ISIS, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated:

“It’s not militants. It’s not Islam. It’s militant Islam.”

It occurs in the fourth paragraph of Netanyahu’s speech to the UN on September 29th, 2014.

It’s not militants. It’s not Islam. It’s militant Islam. Typically, its first victims are other Muslims, but it spares no one. Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Kurds – no creed, no faith, no ethnic group is beyond its sights. And it’s rapidly spreading in every part of the world. You know the famous American saying: “All politics is local”? For the militant Islamists, “All politics is global.” Because their ultimate goal is to dominate the world….

Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch called the Prime Minister’s speech “brilliant.” Indeed, it is that in many respects. But that one sentence has dimmed its brilliance with that single corrosive politically correct statement.

That single sentence undercuts the clarity and force of the rest of his speech. I won’t be the only one to have noticed it and measured its import on the balance of the speech and Netanyahu’s position on the threat of ISIS, Hamas, and all the other terrorist gangs he names. Our enemies will have noticed it and evaluated it and reached the same conclusion: He has pulled back from a blanket condemning of Islam root, trunk, branch and twig.

So when it comes to their ultimate goals, Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas.
And what they share in common, all militant Islamists share in common: • Boko Haram in Nigeria; • Ash-Shabab in Somalia; • Hezbollah in Lebanon; • An-Nusrah in Syria; • The Mahdi Army in Iraq; • And the Al-Qaeda branches in Yemen, Libya, the Philippines, India and elsewhere.

This is a follow-up response to John Azumah’s critique of my views on the Islamic State. Two key points are that core doctrines of jihadi movements are held in common by all Sunni schools of Islamic law – and not just ‘Wahhabi’ Islam – and jihadi groups have often justified their militancy campaigns on the basis that Muslim lands are ‘occupied’ by unbelievers.

John Azumah has taken yet another bite of the apple by releasing a third response to my Lapido Media article “‘Three Choices’ and the bitter harvest of denial”. This is an earlier response, now re-issued, in edited form, with Fulcrum (for his previous comments, both reported on Lapido Media, see here and here).

I can refer readers to my previous rejoinder to Azumah: “Complexity, Truth and the Islamic State: a response to John Azumah and Colin Chapman.” In respect of Azumah’s new material for Fulcrum I make the following observations:

I did not say that the conditions of the dhimma “always” applied to Christians living under Islamic rule. My point was subtly different, namely that coexistence after Islamic conquest was “always regulated by the conditions of the dhimma”. By this I did not mean to imply that dhimma laws were consistently or uniformly applied to Christians at all times and in all places: my point was that the dhimma conditions and worldview profoundly framed and shaped the patterns of coexistence of Muslims and their conquered subjects.

John Azumah emphasizes that groups like the Islamic State, Al-Qa’ida and Boko Haram trace their theology to the Hanbali madhab (Sunni school of law), which, he points out, is followed by only a minority of Muslims today. He insinuates that other schools – representing the majority of Muslims – have different rules concerning jihad and the treatment of conquered non-Muslim subjects.

This is misleading on several counts. Although it is true that Hanbali jurist Ibn Taymiyya has been influential among Salafi groups, his student Ibn Kathir, who has been almost as influential, was Shafa’i. Terrorists today follow all four of the main madhabs: Al-Shabab are Shafa’i, the Afghan Taliban were Hanafi, and Gadhafi, a long-term sponsor of terrorism, governed according to Maliki jurisprudence. In any case the rules for the treatment of non-Muslims during and after conquest are essentially the same in all four schools: for example it is permissible to kill male captives of war in all the schools of Sunni jurisprudence.

Abdirizak Bihi strolls through neighborhood parks where young Somalis shoot hoops and play soccer. He tells jokes, urges them to clean up their trash and even grabs the basketball to take a few shots.
It may seem like fun, but Bihi’s eyes are scanning the playgrounds and ball courts of Minneapolis for something sinister – anyone who might try to recruit these kids to join a jihad overseas.

If Bihi doesn’t show up for his personal patrol for five, six or seven days, “somehow the word gets out, and they’re back,” he said.
Community members and law enforcement officials are on a mission to stamp out terror recruiting in Minneapolis, home to the largest Somali population in the United States. A handful of people from the community have left to join militant groups in Syria within the last year, according to authorities.

The anti-jihad work is not unlike longstanding efforts to keep young people out of gangs in any number of other U.S. cities. And just like street gangs, militant groups tend to prey on the vulnerable via the Internet or to strike up relationships through small group meetings or one-on-one conversation in parks, mosques or even hospitals.
Bihi’s mission is also personal. His own nephew was recruited to fight for the al-Qaida-linked group al-Shabab in 2008 and died in Somalia.

He said he sees unfamiliar men with “hostile” eyes approach teens in parks. The kids describe how the men talk about the Quran – never about jihad at first – and scold them for wearing shorts or associating with infidels.
“It’s about scaring the hell out of them first, telling them that they are bad people and that they can make them good,” Bihi said. They leave when he approaches.
Terror recruiting is not new here: More than 22 young Minnesotans have traveled to Somalia since 2007 to take up arms with al-Shabab. Back then, authorities found a handful of people were holding secret meetings to promote the cause. Now social media are playing a prevalent role, according to FBI spokesman Kyle Loven.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/09/oklahoma-beheaders-mosque-taught-caliphate-destruction-of-us-and-israelOklahoma beheader’s mosque taught caliphate, destruction of US and Israel
Robert Spencer Jihad in the U.S., mosques, War is deceit 52 Comments

The Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City is in full damage-control and victimhood mode, saying they hardly knew Oklahoma beheader Jah’Keem Yisrael, and asking for protection against “backlash.” But here is a look inside that mosque, courtesy of an ex-Muslim who attended there, and still lives nearby, and who sent me this information directly:

I went to the same mosque the Oklahoma Muslim who beheaded his co-worker today. I live ten minutes away!

The Imam was Imad Enchassi the last I heard. He was a friend of mine. He is a Lebanese-born Sunni who hates Israel. He once gave a sermon that the Israelis were trying to collapse al-Aqsa mosque by digging tunnels underneath it. They have no issue with Palestinian suicide bombings because, as it was explained to me, that is the only weapon the Palestinians have.

They sold Milestones in the book shop while I was there, which as you know calls for replacing all non-Islamic governments with Islamic ones. I remember listening to a tape a friend of mine, Yahya Graff, another white convert to Islam, had that prayed for the destruction of Israel and America.

The imam when I first converted, Suhaib Webb, is hailed as a moderate by liberals in the United States but he was the one that explicitly told me that according to Islam, three choices are to be given to non-Muslims: convert, pay the jizyah tax and live under Islamic rule, or jihad. They try very hard to whitewash Islam when the media is around, but they believe in their religion and the ultimate goal of an Islamic caliphate.

I thought that maybe I’d start with a rendition of Paul McCartney’s plaintive masterpiece “Yesterday”… “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away. Now it looks as though they’re here to stay, oh I believe in yesterday” – but then I thought too romantic.

And then I thought, how about the favorite classic we all learned as children – “Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques, Dormez-vous, Dormez-vous, Sonnez les matines, sonnez les matines, Ding Daing Dong, ding daing dong. Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, Brother John, Brother John” but then I said to myself…too French.

Perhaps the story of Chicken Little – “The sky is falling. The sky is falling” and I thought getting closer but too childish. What about Santayana’s “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Maybe, but too philosophical. And then I remembered Joseph Conrad’s sadly, cynical observation – – “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness,” and sadly it felt right. And so, here were are in a place of unimagined chaos and cowardice, paralysis and brutality. The beast roams the earth; we are stymied, stunned and continue to fiddle.

My friends, “Ehr Kumpt. Part 2, the Sequel.”

This is not a time for delicacy. For tiptoeing. It is not a time to parse words nor worry about offending someone with unfiltered vocabulary. Time is no longer a luxury we possess. Distance, no longer provides protection. We are being threatened like no time before, by an enemy obsessed with an apocalyptic end game that will bring only disaster. An enemy that worships savagery. An enemy that celebrates depravity. An enemy that glorifies the death of the young.

There has been a seismic shift in our world. We feel it. We see it. We know it. We dare not deny it. Pick up any newspaper on any day, the first page, the second page, the third page, the fourth page and beyond – – most of the articles are about radical Muslims, not just ISIS, immersed in a vicious culture of blood and slaughter. Skip to the sports page or the crossword puzzle if you wish but that doesn’t make the uncomfortable news go away.

In fact, it brings joy to the jihadists who hope for our indifference. If we deny evil then we need not fight it. It doesn’t exist – just a few lunatics, thousands of miles away, pounding sand, blowing each other up and occasionally beheading an unlucky journalist. Not so bad.

For years we have been mercifully spared the ugliness and intimacy of war. The Battle of the Bulge and Iwo Jima were a black and white movie tone newsreel after Tom & Jerry and before the Pride of the Yankees. We planted victory gardens, rolled up tin foil, bought Liberty Bonds, said goodbye to fathers, sons and brothers. But the trenches were on the other side of the Atlantic and Pacific. So too, every other subsequent conflict. The Yanks were coming but the shooting was “over there.” We suffered little. But today, war has been redefined and relocated. Geneva is finished. We are all combatants in the cross hairs. We are all on the front lines, like it or not. The battlefield has no boundaries and the war, no rules. The enemy targets deliberately, fiendishly, any place of innocence. All are vulnerable and so we must recalculate our strategy, re-examine our tolerance, re-energize our resolve and unequivocally identify the evil doers. Let us not be silenced by fear, by feckless goodwill, by reckless hope, by meaningless rhetoric.

There are one billion Muslims in the world and authorities agree that 5% are committed Islamists who embrace terror and wish to see, by any means possible, the Muslim flag fly over every capital, on every continent. I was relieved when I heard only 5%. Thank God it’s only 5%. Now I could sleep soundly. But wait, let me figure this out, 5% of a billion is… 50 million Koran waving, Allah Akbar howling Muslim murderers out there planning to slit our throats, blow us up or forcibly convert us.

It only took 19 of Osama bin Laden’s disciples to bring down the Twin Towers, plow into the Pentagon and crash a plane into Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Over 3,000 dead. Over $10 billion in damages on that sad day. 19 Al Qaeda. 50 million Islamists. Do the math.

But what disturbs me is where are the other 950 million Muslims who are not terrorists? Who are not bomb blasting, acid throwing, zealots? Where are the other 950 million Muslims who tuck their children in at night with a lullaby, who are okay with Christians and Jews, crave a peaceful world and wish nothing more than a tasty bowl of hummus and a friendly game of Shesh Besh with a neighbor?

I want to believe they are out there for their sake and for ours. I want to believe they weep in pain over the desecration of their faith. I want to believe that we have partners who dream the dreams we do and wish upon the same star.

I want to believe – – but where are they?

A silent partnership is no partnership. Sin is not just in the act of commission – it is also in the act of omission. Most Germans were not Nazis – but it did not matter.

Most Russians were not Stalinists – but it did not matter.

Most Muslims are not terrorists – but it does not matter.

Stand up righteously or get out of the way. Perhaps in every mosque, in every midrassah, in every Muslim neighborhood, Edmund Burke’s powerful warning should be chiseled on a wall in Arabic, in Farsi, in Pashto, in Urdu, for all to read and heed. “All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.”

A couple of months ago, 3 young Israelis were kidnapped by Hamas terrorists and killed. And so began Operation Protective Edge. But the Gaza war was much more than shooting down rockets and blowing up tunnels – it was the preview, the soft opening, for a much more serious war – a genuine world war. It was a test of resolve, of fortitude. It was a test watched carefully by the indecent forces of a rising Islamist world. Israel is only the beginning. The first prize sought in what promises to be a protracted, multi-generational Kulterkampf. Israel made the headlines but the front lines are all over the map – we just don’t know it yet. The whole world was watching and our performance was pathetic. We, the good guys, stumbled at the gate; tripped clumsily in an embarrassing display of moral confusion and ineptitude. It was amateur hour and the bad guys were licking their chops.

I say the following unapologetically and with a heavy heart. When the war began, the President of the United States, the leader of the Free World, should have immediately, instinctively invited to the Oval Office, the leading Democrats and Republicans of the Senate and the House, his cabinet and all significant Washington political players. Every domestic and international news organization should have been notified and the following talk broadcast across the planet.

“Fellow Americans – a crisis has erupted once again in the Middle East and I have been told that the war between Israel and Hamas is complex and nuanced. I have been told that our great nation must be evenhanded- but I am here to say with no equivocation, with no hesitation, this war is not complex. This war is not nuanced and we will not be evenhanded in this confrontation of good and evil, of right and wrong, of civilization and savagery. We Democrats and Republicans, Liberals and Conservatives from sea to shining sea, stand together in unshakable support of Israel against foul, corrupt, murderers who sacrifice the lives of children in their pursuit of power. To Israel we say – do whatever you must. To Israel we say, take whatever time you need to crush this vile enemy and whatever you require, you can count on us. To the world we say, Israel is fighting for all of us – for our values, for our principles, for our civilization. Support her efforts, as we do, in every way possible. I will not tolerate any words of disparagement against our greatest ally and friend in the Middle East. God bless Israel and God bless the United States of America.”

But these words did not ring forth from the White House, the capital of the free world. What we did hear was “No victor, no vanquished.” This statement was our President’s strategic plan. No call for triumph over terrorism, but a weak kneed, stalemate with butchers – a tie between good and evil. Right and wrong. Civilization and savagery.

This did not go unnoticed.

Media coverage during the war was biased and shameful with a few notable exceptions. To permit Hamas spokesmen and Hamas sympathizers to speak and to defend their monstrous deeds to millions of viewers is morally shocking. To promote equivalency between Israel and Hamas is morally appalling. With my remote, I would channel surf, go from station to station and I could not believe what I was hearing on CNN, CBS, BBC, ABC, MSNBC, and all the rest. The grotesque propaganda, the repulsive distortions – the tolerance of the wicked.

And this did not go unnoticed.

As I sat through these numbing broadsides, I wondered if our mainstream media during WWII would have invited the Germans and the Japanese to share their perspectives on the hostilities in Europe and in the Pacific. As they moaned about Dresden and the Doolittle Raid, would the anchors have nodded in sympathy? When the Germans and Japanese explained the need for the V1 and V2 bombardment of London and the necessity for the Bataan Death March, would the anchors have expressed understanding?

The obscenities and outright lies given airtime and legitimacy should be sickening to any person of conscience.

Words distinguish us from the beast. In a powerful Holocaust tale, Eli Wiesel painfully writes that when words lose their meaning, disaster follows. In today’s Middle East, lexicon; restraint means suicide. Terrorists have become militants. Self-defense is a war crime. Democracy is apartheid. Israelis and Jews have become Nazis. Warning civilians to get out of harm’s way has become genocide. 38 Muslim countries – 22 Arab countries and Israel, the only Jewish nation, must constantly defend her right to exist.

Russia invades. Nigeria enslaves. China oppresses. Pakistan rapes. Iraq slaughters. North Korea starves. Iran nuclearizes. Syria massacres. Venezuela plunders. Afghanistan tortures. Sudan annihilates. ISIS beheads and Israel is the pariah state, put under the microscope by the morally noxious.

And this did not go unnoticed.

Eric Hoffer, the longshoreman philosopher, wrote the following in 1968 – 46 years ago. His words have not grown stale with the passage of time. To the contrary, they are every bit as relevant and meaningful today, nearly 1/2 a century later.

I quote: “The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out 1,000’s, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey drove out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out, heaven knows how many Chinese and no one says a word about refugees. But, in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield, dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious on the battlefield, it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in the world…Other nations when they are defeated, survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated, it would be destroyed…” Hoffers’ final words are chilling and prophetic. “I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the Holocaust will be upon us.” To those who are morally obtuse I say shame on you– from university professors to the useful idiots of the media, from liberal churches to Hollywood, from the United Nations to the clueless left – let me remind all the ‘misguided do-gooders” – your deeds do not go unnoticed.”

The world does not like a righteous Goliath especially if Goliath speaks Hebrew.

Let’s leave the Middle East and head to Europe. For those who have not been recently, it has changed. It has changed dramatically. The sights. The sounds. The crowds. The streets are much different than when we backpacked with our Eurorail passes – strolling down the Champs-Elysees, chasing pigeons at Trafalgar Square, wandering the backstreets of Amsterdam after dark. The continent that gave birth to Western civilization, the continent that defined high culture is crumbling before our very eyes. Because of well-intentioned tolerance and an undisciplined pluralism, Europe is returning to the dark ages. By most estimates, Europe will be unrecognizable by the middle of this century – crushed by a demographic tsunami. The birthrate of the Brits, the French, the Dutch and the rest of the EU is well below ZPG. The Muslim community’s birthrate is prolific. The danger, however, is that Europe has not been a melting pot, assimilating new Muslims. And these new Muslims, for the most part, are not interested in respecting the great democracies of Europe. They want Sharia law and Islamic culture to be ascendant and with their birthrate, the ballot box and their disdain for the West, in time, they will get it.

The element that is surging and redefining Europe are not the democracy respecting Muslims but those who are rampaging in nearly every capital. They are preaching hate for Jews, for Christians, for Israel, for America, for the entire Western world. It is not our grandfather’s Europe and it will not be a Europe our grandchildren will recognize.

For the record, Europe is being flooded not by freedom loving, tolerant, assimilating Muslims who wish to share in Western freedom, in Western tolerance, in Western culture but rather by violent Islamists, extremists who reject every value we treasure. We love ethnic communities – they are vibrant, exciting, magical faraway places only a walk away. Chinatown, Little Odessa, Greek town, Little Havana, Lower Eastside, Little Italy, but what is spreading across Europe are not charming, quaint neighborhoods enjoyed by locals and camera toting tourists in search of a charming restaurant. These are beachheads for invasion.

Want to stare down a guard at Buckingham Palace? Do it soon.

Want to see the Follies-Bergere dance the Can Can? Do it soon.

Want to sip wine at the vineyards of Tuscany? Do it soon.

Want to sunbathe on the beaches of San Trope? Do it soon.

The sun never set on the British Empire but now there is a cold darkness settling on Europe. A Nihilism. A corruption. A perversion in the name of Allah. A Kristallnacht of European and Western culture is coming that will destroy a millennia of creative genius. Don’t listen to me. Listen to what the Islamists preach. Don’t listen to me. Look at what the Islamists do. It is not a leap into fantasy to perceive a dystopian future that is irretrievably ugly and inconceivably vile.

· The Sistine Chapel demolished for portraying God’s image.

· The Pieta, Venus de Milo, David smashed. Idolatry.

· Botticelli’s and Goya’s and Renoirs and Rubens torched – paintings of women not wearing a hijab and chador.

· The Guttenberg Bible. The Magna Carta. Tossed into a bonfire. Profane literature.

· Museums all across Europe vandalized by marauding Islamist fanatics.

Even the Nazis saved the masterpieces.

· Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart silenced.

· The end of opera. Rossini, Verdi, Puccini gone.

· For Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moliere. The Final curtain, a dark stage.

Even the Nazis enjoyed the classics.

I must assume there are skeptics out there – folks who disbelieve my warnings and might label me an alarmist – a Paul Revere wannabe – galloping across the Pyrenees through the European heartland in the shadow of the Alps crying out “The Muslims are coming. The Muslims are coming.” I weighed each and every word carefully. Repeatedly. Was I treading into bigotry? … into melodrama?

Speak with the ‘canaries in the mine’, the Jews of Europe, fleeing in record numbers. Synagogues fire bombed. Jewish businesses vandalized. Children threatened on their way to school. Kippot buried in their pockets. Mezuzot. Hamsas. Magen Davids dangling on chains tucked under shirts and under blouses to hide Jewish identity. Israeli products pulled off store shelves. This is not the 1930’s nor the 1940’s and yet it is. 68 years since the Nazis defeat but their descendants are making Hitler proud picking up where he left off.

“I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the Holocaust will be upon us.” Slip in the word “Jew” for Israel and we see the future of Europe.

This ever-growing tragedy doesn’t end neatly in Europe, in the Middle East, in Mumbai or the Philippines. Most of us have never tasted the bitterness of war. Witnessed its horror. Clawed our way out from beneath tons of rubble. But we dare not be complacent and cry out confidently – “we have 2 oceans and the TSA to protect us.” We live in a shrunken world. In a porous country. In an open society. We have become perilously naïve. Recklessly evenhanded. Unacceptably tolerant. Dangerously comfortable. The greatest generation has spawned the clueless generation. I say it again loudly, slowly and clearly – we are at war, here in America as well, with radical Islamists. We have been attacked repeatedly and yet we continue to turn away. We euphemize the enemy. Disguising his identity and his intent. There will not be armadas chanting “Allah Akbar” landing on the beaches of Malibu and Boca. No vast battalions chanting “Allah Akbar” while crossing the Rio Grande or the 45th Parallel – but make no mistake – we are at war, right now, this very minute. The tactics have changed. The battlefield is different. The rules of engagement have been redefined but we dare not make the mistake that all is well and that Islamic terrorists are simply violent criminals. That Islamic terrorists are just a bunch of unemployed losers, no part of a vast network hell bent on destroying our country. Their disunity in numbers but their unity in purpose is their power. The Lone Wolf is deadly and we are the prey.

Ask the man or woman on the street when did this all start and most would reply: “On 9/11.” That was a catastrophic day, but not the start. For us here in America, the war began in Teheran in 1979 when our embassy was taken over. It has continued ruthlessly and without pause ever since. Lockerbie and Scotland, TWA Flight 840, the USS Cole, embassies and American interests bombed and Americans killed in Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Spain, Kenya, Germany, Egypt, Kuwait, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.

Connect the dots.

Here on American soil, before 9/11, the Twin Towers were attacked in 1993. The Times Square bomber. The Tsarnev brothers in the Boston Marathon bombing. The Fort Hood massacre was not work place violence but the calculated, cold blooded murder of 13 American soldiers by a Muslim Jihadist yelling “Allah Akbar.” The shooting up in Little Rock, Arkansas of an army recruiting station. The murder of 2 CIA agents outside Langley by a Pakistani whose final words before meeting his maker were “There is no God but Allah.” The indignant, impious, arrogant claim By CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic relations-that anyone who commits an act of violence is by definition, not a Muslim. Therefore, a Muslim terrorist, a Muslim killer, a Muslim suicide bomber, is a misleading term of bigotry and Islamophobia. The slick, masterful ISIS recruitment in Minneapolis. New York. Colorado. On Facebook. On Twitter and across the country.

Connect the dots.

Let’s get Jewish-personal. A Zim Line cargo ship was prevented from offloading it’s cargo for 3 days because of pro-Palestinian mobs in Oakland, California. A young man from our shul on his 1st day of university was taught by his PhD, tenured professor that Israel committed ethnic cleansing in 1948… In Dade County a synagogue was defaced with swastikas and the words Hamas scrawled on its walls. A JCC in Seattle was attacked. A pro-Palestinian rally in Miami called for “the massacre of the Jews.” University campuses across the country, hot beds of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish hostility. A local merchant in Roswell told one of our members (not realizing she was Jewish and vocal) that she was fed up with Israel’s brutal treatment of the children of Gaza.

We are not Europe but connect the dots.

I am concerned, as we all should be, of the alarming surge in Islamist rhetoric, violence and influence. I am equally concerned, as we all should be, of the alarming silence and inaction of mainstream Muslims.

I fear political correctness run amuck. I fear the worship of multiculturalism. I fear progressive voices of repression. I fear a distorted media tolerant of intolerance. I fear politicians who prefer the easy, still of the night to the noble, necessary struggle of the day. I fear we are not so far away from where we thought we would never be.

Three thoughts to ponder. This past year many of us saw the Book of Mormon at the Fox. An irreverent, vulgar, hysterically entertaining musical about the Mormons. We parked our car at the Georgian Terrace and crossed Peachtree Street. In front of the theater were a half dozen, well dressed, mannerly Mormons handing out literature. “Sir, if you would like to know more about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” a young woman said to me as I took her brochure, “Please go to our website.” I thanked her. She smiled, wished me a pleasant evening and turned to speak with another ticket holder. I thought, “God bless these folks. This is how we disagree in America.” At the same moment I had another thought. What if Trey Parker and Matt Stone came out with a tasteless, bawdy musical that was hysterically entertaining entitled “The Quran, Allah’s Holy Book.” What would happen? It doesn’t take much imagination to answer that question. Jeff Foxworthy correctly wrote, “Have you ever wondered why it’s okay to make jokes about Catholics, the Pope, Jews, Christians, the Irish, the Italians, the Polish, the Chinese, the French (including French Canadians)…but it’s insensitive to make jokes about Muslims?”

A few years back, a Danish newspaper “Jyllanns-Posten” printed 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad to illustrate an article. If the photos published were of Moses or Buddha or of the Apostle Paul, the event would have been met with a yawn. But not so with our Islamist friends. The reaction? Not a letter to the editor. Not a request to submit an op-ed. Not a friendly visit to the publisher – – but worldwide rage. Riots. Boycotts. Embassies burned. Ambassadors recalled. Attacks on Christians and on churches. 200 killed.

Soon after, a professor from Brandeis wrote a book on this outrageous event entitled, “12 Cartoons That Shook the World.” It was published by Yale University Press located at 302 Temple Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, United States of America. But what was missing in the book? What Yale University refused to print were the 12 cartoons and images of Muhammad. This self-censorship was shameful, cowardly, un-American and a sniveling submission to Islamic narcissism and intimidation.

Where is a great university’s courage? Where is Freedom of the Press? This happened in America. In the land of the free and in the home of, I hope, still the brave.

I recall, as we all do, the good old days when air travel was a pleasure. When I flew here to Etz Chaim in my commuting, student days, I’d catch a cab outside my apartment on the upper West side and be at LaGuardia in about 20 minutes. I’d check my bags in 2 minutes and be at the gate in 4 minutes, just in time to board my flight. I even got a meal.

In those days, flying was an adventure, even in coach. Today it is irritating and exhausting. What happened? What changed? Who’s to blame? Who has created the need for a multibillion dollar security industry? Who has created a tedious need for us to remove our shoes and belts, empty our pockets, pack only 3-1/2 ounces of Listerine, go through metal detectors and x-ray machines, submit to frisks and wand searches? Arrive hours before departure? Who is responsible? Let’s see – – not the Italian Mob, not skin heads, not neo Nazis, not Columbian drug cartels, not the Russian mafia, not the Crips nor the Bloods nor the Aryan Brotherhood, not the Ku Klux Klan. So who is it that has irretrievably ruined worldwide air travel?

So, think of a Muslim play on Broadway.

Think of a scholarly text on Muhammad.

Think of flying Delta or United or AirTran.

Think about it and connect the dots.

For us, WWII lasted 4 years. It has been 13 years since 9/11. 35 years since the invasion of our Iranian embassy and like it or not, we are still at war with radical Islam. Declaring we are not at war with radical Islam does not make it so. Roosevelt and Churchill got it and understood that the stakes were not just the Sudetenland and a few islands in the South Pacific. From the White House and 10 Downing Street, they understood it was planet earth. Today, the radical Islamists seek the same prize – not just Bagdad or Benghazi – but planet earth.

This is not dramatic fiction but the real thing. A handful of us, here today experienced the real thing about 11 weeks ago in Israel. We didn’t see the real thing on the nightly news nor read about it in the evening paper or hear about it in a long distance phone call from uncle Moshe in Tel Aviv. We were there as Kassam rockets rained down on Israel, on us, targeting, not military bases, not Merkava tanks, not IDF divisions, but children at play, families enjoying dinner, friends laughing over a beer, lovers strolling through a park, teenagers playing volleyball on the beach. The world watched and preached and judged and only now has begun to stir from their slumber of hypocrisy and inaction. Hamas is ISIS. ISIS is Hamas. They are all the same. Hezbollah. Islamic Jihad. Al Shabab. Muslim Brotherhood. Boko Haram. Al Qaeda. Taliban. Iran. The only difference, is the length of the knife they use in their butchery.

Israeli blood bleeds the same red as the blood of James Foley, of Steven Satloff, of David Hawthorne Haines of Christians and Yazidis.

Let’s reason some suggest. One last Hail Mary negotiation. Maybe we can figure out what’s bothering these troubled Muslims and perhaps they’ll tell us what we can do to resolve the friction. I am all for dialogue, but we are dealing with a moral species that eats its own, kills it’s young and celebrates innocent death as homage to God.

Osama bin Laden eluded capture for 10 years. Ever wonder why? There was a $25 million bounty on his head. That’s a lot of money. $25 million can by a lot of plastic surgery. A new identity. Rosetta Stone tapes. Elocution lesson. A suburban home. A Brooks Brothers wardrobe. New partners. New friends. Surf and turf every night and a round of golf every day.

In 10 years, there was not one betrayal of Osama bin Laden – – not one. And I asked myself, “why not?” – $25 million is a great amount of money and can easily facilitate a luxurious disappearance. The answer is simple. These Islamist criminals are unlike us in the most basic of ways and we have yet to accept and understand their total immersion in moral debauchery.

The enemy has eyes and ears. Fingers and toes. Speaks with lips. Runs with legs. Eats. Drinks. Has the face of a human being – but, has a much different heart and a much different soul.

Three years ago on this bima, on this very same day, standing at this podium, I cried out, “Ehr Kumpt – they are coming.” 3 years later on this bima, on this very same day, standing at this podium, I cry out not “Ehr Kumpt – they are coming,” I cry out, “Ehr daw – they are here.”

The fury of ultimate evil is upon us and we must act – not to contain it. Not to degrade it. Not to manage it. Not to tolerate it, but to exterminate it utterly and absolutely.

If we fail in this holy crusade, we will live in a world bereft of color. Empty of music, of art, of romance, of laughter, of freedom, of invention. A world barren of all beauty. Depleted of all virtue.

We are divided today not by faith nor holy book. We are divided today by decency and indecency. By right and wrong. By moral and corrupt. By courage and cowardice. By righteousness and evil.

The good citizens of earth must rise up. Gather on the mountain top and proclaim in thundering unison the words of Isaiah:

“Hoy ha’omrim lera tov v’la’tov rah – woe to them that call evil, good and good, evil. Who present darkness as light and light as darkness. Who call bitter, sweet and sweet, bitter.

We must turn back the evil.

We must turn back the darkness.

We must turn back the bitter.

My friends – Ehr daw – they are here.

Rabbi Lewis’s first day Rosh Hashanah sermon September, 2014