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August 2016

RUTHIE BLUM: HAMAS’S BUSY WEEK

Hamas has had a lot on its plate this week. While engaging in the routine activity of honing its members’ military skills, the terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip is also busy preparing for the Palestinian Authority’s municipal elections, scheduled for Oct. 8.

Unlike its rivals in Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, who enjoy unwarranted international recognition and support for false moderation, Hamas has a thankless job.

On the one hand, it does all the literal and figurative heavy lifting: operating summer camps to train Palestinian kids how to commit mass murder, smuggling weapons, and constructing tunnels through which to kidnap and kill Israelis. On the other hand, it has to persuade the residents of Gaza that life there is simultaneously good (under its rule) and horrendous (due to Israel’s blockade and previous war, which left swaths of the enclave in ruins).

This is no easy feat in general. But this week it was particularly difficult, as news emerged that Hamas operatives, employed by foreign charities, have been posing as humanitarian aid workers and stealing many millions of dollars out of the mouths of Gaza babes.

Just as this story broke, Hamas released an election propaganda video portraying Gaza as an affluent wonderland — lush, plush and full of facilities for family fun. The clip is only partially lying, because Hamas honchos do own villas equipped with swimming pools and spas. And though Israel’s military operations against the terrorist group’s rocket bases and death tunnels were responsible for collateral damage, the amount of money that has been poured into the area for rehabilitation could have covered the cost of very luxurious living for everyone, had Hamas not appropriated it for other purposes.

To deflect voter attention away from this inconvenient revelation, Hamas pulled another public relations stunt: On Wednesday, one of its unnamed representatives told Israel Radio that it was engaged in prisoner-swap negotiations with the Israeli government.

This announcement came on the heels of Tuesday’s memorial service for the Givati Brigade’s Lt. Hadar Goldin, who was killed during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in 2014, and whose remains — along with those of Golani Brigade Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul — are being held as bargaining chips for the release of hundreds of Hamas terrorists.

C-FACT’S IMPORTANT “ECO-SUMMIT” TO DEBUNK THE CLIMATE JUNK SCIENCE ON CAMPUS

Later this week, student leaders from around the country will assemble in Brainerd, Minnesota, for this year’s annual CFACT “Eco-Summit.”

There, they will learn the hard facts to debunk climate and other Green myths, swap war stories, and receive vital training on organizing techniques that can help turn their campuses upside down this fall.

Will you help support this critical summit and equip CFACT’s campus chapters for the raging battles ahead?

Our top-notch student leaders will participate in workshops that teach them:

How to promote CFACT’s message on their campus

How to recruit students, build their chapters and outwit hostile college administrators

How to promote free-market environmental speakers and events

How to maximize social media on their campus

How to carry out petition drives, surveys and other grassroots organizing tactics

As you know, the Left has institutionalized itself on college campuses and is determined to shut down any free speech or right thinking that challenges it.

60’s campus radicals demanded the right to speak out and our free society gave it to them.

No sooner were they through the academic door, however, when they slammed it shut behind them and created today’s Politically Correct college environment that bullies students into believing there is only one way to think.

Islam’s Hatred of Dogs and Cruelty to Animals — on The Glazov Gang.

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/08/12/islams-hatred-of-dogs-and-cruelty-to-animals-on-the-glazov-gang-2/

A Growing Trend: Brave Muslim Zionists by Noah Beck

Muslims and Arabs who openly identify as Zionists are growing in number – powered by the freer flow of information and ideas made possible by social media and the search for answers in the wake of the Arab Spring and Islamist terror.

A new Facebook page for Arab supporters of Israel has attracted about 20,000 visitors. The page, which shares content in English, Arabic, and Hebrew, was founded by a religious Jewish woman and an Arab man. It posts examples of Israel treating Arabs and Muslims with kindness and shares surprising Arab support for Israel from across the Middle East, including Tunisians who created an Israeli flag after being unable to buy one, and who have faced threats for their views.

Muhammad Zoabi entered the spotlight as a proud Arab, Muslim Zionist in the summer of 2014. Just 17 at the time, Zoabi began to advocate for Israel in English, Arabic, and Hebrew. He posted a video demanding that Hamas release three Israeli teens who had been kidnapped a few weeks before Operation Protective Edge. Death threats soon forced Zoabi into hiding, and he found shelter with Kay Wilson, who had survived a brutal 2010 terrorist stabbing attack.

Zoabi became so popular that he reached his maximum friend limit (5,000) on Facebook, where there is even a page calling for him to be prime minister of Israel. Zoabi’s Zionism is hardly surprising, given his upbringing. His mother, Sarah Zoabi, revealed her Israeli patriotism on national television. She introduced herself on the popular Israeli show “Master Chef” as an “Arab, Muslim, Israeli, proud Zionist” from the northern city of Nazareth. “I believe in the right of the Jewish people to have their own country, which is the state of Israel, the Holy Land…. I want to say to all the Arabs of Israel to wake up,” she continued. “We live in paradise. Compared to other countries, to Arab countries – we live in paradise.”

MY SAY: A SPEECH TO REMEMBER

Richard D. Lamm was a Democrat who served as governor of Colorado for twelve years from 1975 to 1987. His speech “My Plan to Destroy America” given in 2004 at a Federation for Immigration Reform is worth reading again. It is brilliant and prescient. rsk

” I have a secret plan to destroy America. If you believe, as many do, that America is too smug, too white-bread, too self-satisfied, too rich … then let’s destroy America. It is not that hard to do.

History shows that nations are more fragile than their citizens think. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and they all fall, and that “an autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.” So here is my plan:

1. We must first make America a bilingual/bicultural country. History shows … that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; it is a curse for a society to be bilingual. …

Scholar Seymour Martin Lipset put it this way: “The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension and tragedy.”

2. I would then invent “multiculturalism” and encourage immigrants to maintain their own culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal … there are no cultural differences that are important … and the black and Hispanic dropout rate is only due to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out-of-bounds.

3. We can make the United States a “Hispanic Quebec” without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity. As Benjamin Schwarz said in the Atlantic Monthly recently: “… the apparent success of our own multiethnic and multicultural experiment might have been achieved not by tolerance but by hegemony. Without the dominance that once dictated ethno-centrically and what it meant to be an American, we are left with only tolerance and pluralism to hold us together.”

4. I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with a salad bowl metaphor … I would make our fastest-growing demographic group the least educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated, and antagonistic to our population. …

5. I would then get the big foundations and Big Business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of victimology. … I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population.

6. I would establish dual citizenship and promote divided loyalties. I would “celebrate diversity.” … It stresses differences rather than commonalities. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other … when they are not killing each other.

A diverse peaceful or stable society is against most historical precedent. People undervalue the unity it takes to keep a nation together, and we can take advantage of this myopia. … Dorf’s World History tells us the [ancient] Greeks believed they belonged to the same race; they possessed a common language and literature and worshiped the same gods. All Greece took part in the Olympic games in honor of Zeus and venerated the shrine of Apollo at Delphi. A common enemy, Persia, threatened their liberty. Yet all of these bonds together were not strong enough to overcome two factors … local patriotism and geographical conditions that nurtured political divisions … .

Hillary’s Disastrous Economic Plan She is a master when it comes to wishful thinking By The Editors

Hillary Rodham Clinton gave a speech on economic policy in Michigan, just after Donald Trump had laid out his own economic agenda. Mrs. Clinton’s presentation was an exercise not in economics, but in mythology.

A seemingly trivial but nonetheless illuminating example of her fundamental intellectual unseriousness on economic questions was her repetition of the ancient, repeatedly discredited myth that Henry Ford raised his workers’ wages on the theory that doing so would enable them to buy Ford cars, thus increasing his company’s profit. Nothing of the sort ever happened, in reality, and the economic assumptions behind this myth — that one can spend one’s way to prosperity — is preposterous. Economically speaking, this is flat-Earth stuff, pure hokum from a woman who likes to smugly proclaim: “I believe in science!”

It is economically illiterate, but Mrs. Clinton sincerely believes it, arguing that, in the same vein, raising the federal minimum wage would actually help U.S. employers by giving consumers more money to spend at their businesses. That money of course must come from somewhere, and where it comes from is businesses (who, of course, pass on some of those costs in a variety of ways). Some consumers would have more to spend, and businesses would have less to spend. Mrs. Clinton, who does not know very much about any business other than charging $10,000 a minute for speeches (which is, to be sure, an excellent business model) perhaps has never been informed that the biggest customer of the typical small American business is — pay attention here — another business, small and family-owned firms making the majority of their sales to commercial operations rather than to individual consumers.

Her policy isn’t bootstrapping — it’s pure magical thinking.

Toomey vs. Sanctuary Cities Is it time to stop allowing illegal aliens to rape and murder? Matthew Vadum

Philadelphia’s egregious sanctuary city policy that has repeatedly allowed illegal aliens to commit rape in that city has to end, says Sen. Pat Toomey.

Philadelphia has one of the most “extreme versions” of the policy, Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican in a tough reelection fight, said on the “O’Reilly Factor” Wednesday.

There are hundreds of sanctuary jurisdictions across the country. Some left-wingers use the dreadful euphemism “civil liberties safe zones” to describe them. The phrase blurs the distinction between citizens and non-citizens by implying illegal aliens somehow possess a civil right to be present in the U.S.

The sanctuary movement that gave illegal aliens permission to rob, rape, and murder Americans is the product of decades of concerted collusion by radical George Soros-funded groups like the ACLU to get cities to pledge to violate laws that protect U.S. national security. Cheered on by the Left, sanctuary cities frustrate immigration enforcement efforts and shield illegal aliens from federal officials as a matter of policy.

The Obama administration is fine with that. President Obama has made America a sanctuary country, rolling out the red carpet for illegal aliens, especially those from Mexico, to come to the U.S. and depress labor markets while they suck the nation’s welfare state dry.

On Fox News Channel, Toomey slammed the City of Brotherly Love for unleashing a violent illegal alien from Honduras named Ramon Aguirre-Ochoa on Pennsylvanians. Aguirre-Ochoa was previously deported from the U.S. in 2009. He reentered the country illegally and was in the custody of police but was liberated when Philadelphia officials failed to honor a federal request to keep him in custody.

“This monster raped a child and he never should have been here,” he said. “And the folks at ICE didn’t want him here. They had asked the police department of Philadelphia to hold this guy until they could send an agent to pick him up and deport him.”

But “their hands were tied by a very bad policy that forbids them from cooperating with federal immigration officials. It’s terrible, and it’s a security risk for all of us.”

Failing to cooperate with immigration officials who want a prisoner held beyond the expected release date is in theory a violation of federal law, some say, but court rulings have clouded the issue.

Why the World Owes Israel a Debt of Gratitude Israel’s far-reaching contributions in making the world a safer place. Ari Lieberman

As Europe reels from a pandemic of deadly Islamist terror attacks, the European Union is turning to Israel for assistance. From its formidable cyber capabilities to its tactics and training, Israel is a recognized world leader in the fight against terrorism and nations plagued by Islamist violence and terrorism are seeking its counsel, expertise and technology.

But the fight against terrorism isn’t the only place where Israelis have left their mark. When Israel acquired statehood in 1948, it was a semi-arid land plagued by chronic drought. But thanks to a combination of conservation, recycling, drip irrigation and desalinization, Israel no longer suffers from water shortages and in fact, exports large quantities of water to Jordan. California, which has suffered from extreme drought in recent years, has partnered with Israeli water technology companies to alleviate its water problems. Texas has followed suit and many third world countries have requested Israeli assistance in water purification.

Israel has also become a leader in green technology. Starved of natural resources, Israel has had to resort to innovative methods to meet its energy demands. Every Israeli home is equipped with solar panels to capture the sun’s rays and convert it into usable energy. By 2017 Israel will have the distinction of possessing the tallest solar tower in the world, dwarfing similar structures in Europe and the Israeli government has committed itself to making renewable energy account for 10 percent of its total consumption by 2020.

After a catastrophic blackout in India in July 2012 that left between 600-700 million Indian citizens without power, India turned to Israel for assistance. An Israeli renewable energy company, SDE, was tasked with supplying hundreds of megawatts of power to India by utilizing technology that harnesses the energy generated by the ocean’s waves. SDE has also signed lucrative deals with China as well as other developing nations.

When man-made and natural disasters struck Haiti, Japan, Turkey, Kosovo, Nepal and the Philippines, Israel was among the first to send medical and rescue assistance. Israel’s relief efforts in Haiti were particularly impressive and garnered significant positive international attention.

In every field, from cyber warfare and defense to green energy to water technology to disaster relief, Israel has contributed immeasurably to the world but it is in the military realm where Israel has made lasting contributions that have made the world significantly safer. On at least five separate occasions, Israeli military action changed the course of history for the better.

In June 7, 1967 Israeli forces liberated the eastern part of Jerusalem from oppressive Muslim rule. Jerusalem is home to the two great monotheistic religions, Judaism and Christianity. The city held little significance for Muslims who prayed toward Mecca and Medina. From the period of 1948 through 1967, the eastern part of the city, with its holy Christian and Jewish sites was under Muslim occupation. The Jordanians violated an agreement that would have permitted Israelis to visit holy sites. Jewish sites were desecrated or destroyed and the Christian population declined markedly as a result of stealth oppression.

Counting The Palestinians Assessing the dimensions of the demographic threat. Caroline Glick

There are no magic solutions to our problems with the Palestinians. But there are options other than repeating let alone expanding on failed policies.

In a surprise move last month, Hamas announced it will be participating in the Palestinian municipal elections in October. The Palestinian Authority’s Fatah leadership greeted Hamas’s announcement with deep and understandable anxiety. Hamas is expected to win control over a significant number, perhaps even a majority of municipal and local governments in Judea and Samaria.

PA leader Mahmoud Abbas (whose own fiveyear term in office ended six years ago) and his Fatah comrades aren’t the only ones worried. Last week, Yediot Aharonot’s military commentator, Alex Fishman, reported that the IDF’s senior leadership is also deeply concerned.

According to Fishman, in recent weeks Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman has held a series of senior-level discussions, initially convened to discuss long-term Israeli strategic options in Judea and Samaria. Due to the IDF’s concerns over the elections, those discussions quickly devolved into a more limited discussion of how to prevent a Hamas electoral victory.

Fishman reported that the top generals have convinced Liberman, who until now supported octogenarian Abbas’s swift retirement, that “it is Israel’s interest not only for Abu Mazen [Abbas] to remain in power, but to empower him still further.”

To this end, according to Fishman, Liberman has agreed to adopt a plan prepared by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), for Israel to transfer the Civil Administration’s planning and zoning authority in Area C to the PA. The plan also involves retroactively authorizing tens of thousands of Palestinian structures built illegally in Area C and authorizing the construction of a new Palestinian urban center in Area C.

Area C, it should be recalled, constitutes some 60 percent of Judea and Samaria. It has a negligible Palestinian population. All of the Israeli communities are located in Area C. The IDF holds sole security control over the area.

How Hillary & Obama Brought Us ISIS The brutal accuracy of Trump labeling Clinton and the president the “cofounders” of ISIS. Joseph Klein

Donald Trump is standing by his charge that President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are the “co-founders” of ISIS.

“In many respects, you know, they honor President Obama,” Trump said at a Florida rally on August 10th. “He’s the founder of ISIS. I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.”

Commentators immediately ripped into Trump’s latest accusation against Obama as demonstrably false. They point out that ISIS’s predecessor organization was originally a part of al Qaeda in Iraq and was founded years before Obama became president. David A. Graham, a staff writer at The Atlantic, for example, wrote that the idea that Obama is “a founder of the group is plainly ridiculous.”

A conservative radio show host, Hugh Hewitt, tried during an interview with Trump to offer him some wiggle room. “You meant that he created the vacuum, he lost the peace,” Hewitt said, in attempting to clarify for the audience what Trump really meant. At first, Trump did not back down from his use of the term “founder” when describing Obama’s relationship to ISIS. He responded, “No, I meant he’s the founder of ISIS. I do. He was the most valuable player. I give him the most valuable player award. I give her, too, by the way, Hillary Clinton.” But then, Trump explained, “I mean, with his bad policies, that’s why ISIS came about. If he would have done things properly, you wouldn’t have had ISIS.” Hewitt agreed with Trump’s explanation, but said he would not have used the phrase “founder of ISIS” to communicate it.

A debate over the precise semantics should not be allowed to obscure the underlying truth of Trump’s observation. Obama’s policies, in which Hillary Clinton participated in their formulation and early implementation, created the conditions that allowed ISIS to rise and become the global threat that it represents today.

ISIS (or the Islamic State, as it likes to call itself) emerged from the remains of the al Qaeda organization in Iraq, which was founded by the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi was killed during the second term of George W. Bush’s administration. The al Qaeda organization itself was defeated as a result of Bush’s “surge” policy, which Obama and Hillary Clinton, as U.S. senators, opposed. On October 22nd, 2007, Osama bin Laden admitted in an audio tape, entitled “Message to the people of Iraq,” that al Qaeda was losing the war in Iraq because it had made mistakes and no longer had the allegiance of Sunni insurgents who had switched sides. When Barack Obama became president on January 20, 2009, the war in Iraq against ISIS’s predecessor group was essentially won.