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November 2016

‘There He Goes Again’ — Jimmy Carter Blames Israel One More Time The former American president wants the U.S. to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state. By Elliott Abrams —

Jimmy Carter is 92 now, and it has been 36 years since his landslide defeat for reelection. But neither the passage of time nor the debilities of age slow him from making proposals that will do real harm to the State of Israel — and he has just tried one more time.

In Monday’s New York Times, he writes that “America must recognize Palestine” and presents a version of Israeli reality that simply takes leave of the facts. Carter tells us that “the simple but vital step this administration must take before its term expires on Jan. 20 is to grant American diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine, as 137 countries have already done, and help it achieve full United Nations membership.”

Now, granting diplomatic recognition to “the state of Palestine” will no more make it a legitimate and genuine country than granting diplomatic recognition to Plains, Ga., would make it one. The fact that 137 countries have done so — to no effect whatsoever — ought to make that obvious. So, what is Carter’s real goal here? He writes that it is peace, but the steps he proposes and the analysis he offers would leave Israel and the Palestinians further from peace than ever.

The “facts” Carter adduces are not only wrong, but tricky and misleading. For example, he writes that there are “600,000 Israeli settlers.” That number can only be reached by counting every Israeli living in Jerusalem — including in the Jewish Quarter, and the parts barred to Jews by Jordan before 1967 — as settlers. He writes that “Israel is building more and more settlements, displacing Palestinians and entrenching its occupation of Palestinian lands,” but he offers no data — because there is none to support his claim. Anyone who has visited the West Bank knows that virtually all settlements have not displaced Palestinians but have been, instead, built on fallow land, and the number of settlements and the land they take up rises very slowly indeed. The actual land area taken up by settler buildings themselves covers perhaps 1 percent of the West Bank, though far more falls within settlement boundaries. Roughly 12 percent of the West Bank lies to the west of the security barrier built by Israel to stop Palestinian terrorism. That barrier is not moving, or creeping, or taking up more land.

It’s Time for Honest Talk about Muslim Immigration Some immigrants from jihad zones will be involved in murdering Americans. Is this an acceptable price for compassion? By David French

At 9:52 a.m. on Monday morning, a silver Honda jumped a curb at Ohio State University and plowed directly into a crowd of students, sending bodies flying through the air. As students rushed to help, a young Somali immigrant, Abdul Razak Ali Ratan, got out of the car and began attacking horrified students with a butcher knife. All told, eleven people were wounded before a university police officer shot and killed Ratan, ending the attack.

Ratan is the third Muslim immigrant to mount a mass stabbing attack in 2016. The first occurred at an Israeli-owned deli in Columbus, Ohio, the second at a mall in Saint Cloud, Minn., and the third Monday at Ohio State. The attacks together wounded 25 people. The latest stabbing comes on the heels of Afghan immigrant Ahman Khan Rahami’s September bomb attacks in New York and New Jersey that left 29 injured.

The toll continues. Muslim immigrants Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev killed five Americans and wounded 280 in the Boston Marathon bombing and subsequent shootouts. Muslim immigrant Muhammad Abdulazeez killed five men and wounded two in attacks on military recruiting stations in Chattanooga, Tenn. Muslim immigrant Tashfeen Malik accompanied her first-generation Muslim-American husband to attack a Christmas party in San Bernardino, Calif., killing 14 and wounding 22. First generation Muslim-American Omar Mateen — son of Afghan immigrants — carried out the deadliest domestic terror attack since 9/11, killing 49 and wounding 53 at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub.

And if you think these are the only terrorist immigrants — or terrorist children of immigrants — you’re sadly mistaken. The Heritage Foundation has maintained a comprehensive database of terror plots since 9/11, a database that includes foiled attacks. The number of Muslim immigrants involved is truly sobering. For every successful attack, there are multiple unsuccessful plots, including attacks that could have cost hundreds of American lives.

After all these incidents, can we finally have an honest conversation about Muslim immigration — especially Muslim immigration from jihadist conflict zones?

RELATED: It’s Time We Faced the Facts about the Muslim World

When we survey the American experience since 9/11, two undeniable truths emerge, and it’s past time that we grapple head-on with them. First, the vast majority of Muslim immigrants — no matter their country of origin — are not terrorists. They won’t attack anyone, they won’t participate in terrorist plots, and they abhor terrorism. Some even provide invaluable information in the fight against jihad. That’s the good news.

The bad news is the second truth: Some Muslim immigrants (or their children) will either attempt to commit mass murder or will actually succeed in killing and wounding Americans by the dozens. All groups of immigrants contain some number of criminals. But not all groups of immigrants contain meaningful numbers of terrorists. This one does. It’s simply a fact.

Moreover, there isn’t an even geographic distribution of terrorists. We don’t have as many terrorist immigrants from Indonesia, India, or Malaysia as we do from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, or from the conflict zones in the Middle East. It’s much less risky to bring into the country a cardiologist from Jakarta than a refugee from Kandahar.

America Has Abdicated Its Leadership of the West For 100 years, the United States was the leader of the free world. With the election of Donald Trump, America has now abdicated that role. It is time for Europe, and Angela Merkel, to step into the void.By Dirk Kurbjuweitsee note please

Instead of blaming Obama, the Germans have the effrontery to blame Trump. And What unified Europe is this loon talking about? The Slavic nations, Hungary, France, Holland, Italy are looking away towards the American model….while German cities are becoming Allahstans…..rsk

Trump Election Means Europe Must Now Lead West -http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/trump-election-means-europe-must-now-lead-west-a-1120929.html

Even history sometimes leans toward pathos. In January 2017, when Donald Trump is sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, the American Age will celebrate its 100th birthday — and its funeral.
The West was constituted in its modern form in January 1917. World War I was raging in Europe at the time and in Washington, D.C., President Woodrow Wilson told his country that it was time for Americans to take responsibility for “peace and justice.” In April he said: “The world must be made safe for democracy.” He declared war on Germany and sent soldiers to Europe to secure victory for the Western democracies — and the United States assumed the leadership of the Western world. It was an early phase of political globalization.

One hundred years later: Trump.

Trump, who wants nothing to do with globalization; Trump, who preaches American nationalism, isolation, partial withdrawal from world trade and zero responsibility for a global problem like climate change. And all of this after a perverse election campaign marked by resentment, racism and incitement.

Human dignity is the centerpiece of the Western project. Following the revolutions in France and the United States in the late 18th century, states began guaranteeing human rights for the first time. Human rights have a normative character, as Heinrich August Winkler argued in his monumental work “History of the West.” And a racist cannot embody this normative project. Trump has no sense of dignity — neither for himself nor others. He does not qualify as the leader of the Western world, because he is both unwilling and incapable of assuming that role.

We now face emptiness — the fear of the void. What will happen to the West, to Europe, to Germany without the United States as its leading power? Germany is a child of the West, particularly of the United States, brought to life with American generosity, long spoon-fed and now in a deep state of shock. The American president was always simultaneously our president, at least a little, and Barack Obama was a worthy president of the West. Now, though, we must come to terms with a lack of Western leadership.

Emboldened by Success Trump Election Boosts European Populists

It is the seventh day after Donald Trump’s triumph, an election upset that set off a political earthquake around the world, and time for a visit with those far away from Washington who think like him. Members of France’s Front National (FN) are meeting at the five-star Hotel Napoléon in Paris, not far from the Champs-Élysées.

The topics of discussion this evening include disadvantaged youth in the outer districts of the capital, known as the banlieues, and radical Islamists who are recruiting new members there. The mood is explosive in the banlieues, warns the speaker, a resolute blonde woman, who goes on to say it is a ticking time bomb that could go off at any moment. “I am the only one who can defuse this bomb,” she adds.

Her words are met with cheers and applause. Marine Le Pen has struck the right note, once again. Here, in the stuffy conference room at the Hotel Napoléon, people want to hear what they have long believed: That Islam constitutes a threat and that France’s very future is on the line. Marine, the daughter of Front National co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, has been the head of her party for almost six years.

‘We Want To Destroy this EU’

The Frenchwoman will soon enter the presidential election campaign under the slogan “Marine 2017.” Within a few years, she has managed to garner the support of like-minded individuals, and not just in her native France. Le Pen also chairs the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) group in the European Parliament. ENF brings together elected representatives from nine countries, people who share an unmistakable common goal. “We want to destroy this EU,” says Le Pen.

Less than two weeks after the election of the new US president, Europe’s anti-establishment parties are feeling the wind in their sails. “A Trump victory was considered unthinkable,” says Le Pen, who sent the billionaire her euphoric congratulatory message on Twitter on the night of the election. “Our life has changed,” Nigel Farage of Britain’s UK Independence Party (UKIP) says over a gin & tonic in the lounge of European Parliament in Brussels. In Vienna, Heinz-Christian Strache of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) proudly reports that he has already reached out to Trump advisers in Washington. And in Dresden, Frauke Petry of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party is planning to announce her candidacy in the 2017 Bundestag election, which is likely to see AfD land seats in federal parliament for the first time.

Populist leaders, who see themselves as the only true representatives of the people, have long known and respected each other. But the days of backroom deals are now over. Le Pen is flirting with her fellow European populists on the open stage: here a kiss of the hand for Marine in Vienna, there a chuckle and a joke with Geert Wilders in The Hague and even a little dance with Matteo Salvini, leader of the separatist Lega Nord in Italy.

German Intelligence Official Arrested in Islamic Terror Plot By Michael Walsh

The consequences of Mutti Merkel’s treasonous madness will be felt for years in Germany:

A German intelligence officer has reportedly been arrested over a suspected Islamist plot to bomb the agency’s headquarters in Cologne.

The 51-year-old official was said to have made a “partial confession” to the plot, according to Der Spiegel.

The suspect attempted to pass on “sensitive information about the BfV (Germany’s domestic security agency), which could lead to a threat to the office”, an official told the newspaper.

Well, this is just great. It’s clear that the occupying forces of Islam mean to make quick work of the Federal Republic of Germany, sucking its welfare coffers dry, molesting its women, taunting its capon males to do anything about it. Germany must die in the name of multiculturalism, diversity and tolerance, which is precisely why the international Left constantly pushes those “ideals.”

When you recall that Merkel grew up in the former DDR, raised to loathe and despise the West from childhood, her political goals become clear. But with resistance beaten out of the former Huns-turned-honies, it’s highly unlikely Germany can recover from this monumental act of treason.

Carrier Blinks, Jobs Stay, Trump Wins By Michael Walsh

More #winning:

From the earliest days of his campaign, Donald J. Trump made keeping manufacturing jobs in the United States his signature economic issue, and the decision by Carrier, the big air-conditioner company, to move over 2,000 of them from Indiana to Mexico was a tailor-made talking point for him on the stump.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump and Mike Pence, Indiana’s governor and the vice president-elect, plan to appear at Carrier’s Indianapolis factory to announce a deal with the company to keep roughly 1,000 jobs in the state, according to officials with the transition team as well as Carrier.

Mr. Trump will be hard-pressed to alter the economic forces that have hammered the Rust Belt for decades, but forcing Carrier and its parent company, United Technologies, to reverse course is a powerful tactical strike that will hearten his followers even before he takes office.

“I’m ready for him to come,” said Robin Maynard, a 24-year veteran of Carrier who builds high-efficiency furnaces and earns almost $24 an hour as a team leader. “Now I can put my daughter through college without having to look for another job.”

This was one of those campaign promises the How Not to Do It Left assured us would be impossible to keep. But the Circumlocution Office failed. Leave it to the New York Times to put a “progressive” spin on the decision, and compare Trump, favorably if indirectly, to Bernie Sanders:

It also signals that Mr. Trump is a different kind of Republican, willing to take on Big Business, at least in individual cases.

And just as only a confirmed anti-Communist like Richard Nixon could go to China, so only a businessman like Mr. Trump could take on corporate America without being called a Bernie Sanders-style socialist. If Barack Obama had tried the same maneuver, he’d probably have drawn criticism for intervening in the free market.

ISIS Claims Responsibility for OSU Attack While the Left tries to blame guns for the near-massacre – even though guns weren’t used. Matthew Vadum

The Muslim terrorist group Islamic State has claimed responsibility for U.S. green card holder Abdul Razak Ali Artan’s brutal car-and-machete attack at Ohio State University.

On Monday morning 18-year-old Artan drove his car through a crowd of pedestrians at OSU’s Columbus campus. He exited the vehicle and then began hacking away at people with his knife. A police officer at the scene shot and killed him. Media reports indicated 12 people were injured in the attack but none suffered life-threatening injuries. Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs promptly said “I think we have to consider that it is” a terrorist attack.

Sure enough, on Tuesday Islamic State claimed responsibility for the terrorist assault. The group’s Amaq News Agency stated the OSU attack was perpetrated by a “soldier of the Islamic State.”

Artan did in fact follow the express directives of Islamic State. In September 2014 the group issued this order to its followers:

So O muwahhid, do not let this battle pass you by wherever you may be. You must strike the soldiers, patrons, and troops of the tawaghit. Strike their police, security, and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents. Destroy their beds. Embitter their lives for them and busy them with themselves. If you can kill a disbelieving American or European — especially the spiteful and filthy French — or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be….If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman, or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him….

On Facebook, Artan referenced jihadist mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki and wrote: “I am sick and tired of seeing my fellow Muslim brothers and sisters being killed and tortured EVERYWHERE. … I can’t take it anymore. America! Stop interfering with other countries … [if] you want us Muslims to stop carrying lone wolf attacks.”

As soon as details about Artan began trickling out it was obvious to anyone not wearing politically correct blinders that the attack was an act of Islamic terrorism. KARE11.com reported “Artan was a Somali refugee and Ohio State student who left his homeland with his family in 2007. They lived in Pakistan before coming to the U.S., where Artan became a permanent resident in 2014.”

Somalia and Pakistan are “two epicenters of the global jihad,” writes Robert Spencer. If President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal to place a temporary moratorium on immigration from jihadist-friendly countries had been in effect “Monday’s jihad attack at Ohio State University would never have happened,” he adds.

Under President Obama, Somali refugee resettlement has surged by an astounding 250 percent. As Jim Stinson writes at LifeZette:

Somalia is an overwhelmingly Muslim nation. Over 99 percent of Somalians are Muslim, according to Pennsylvania State University. Mass Muslim migration to Western nations in recent years has generated major concerns about cultural assimilation, vetting procedures, and, ultimately, instances of radicalization and violence.

‘Healing Divisions’ and ‘Unity’ Are Unconstitutional Does it matter what America’s Founders wanted? Bruce Thornton

Thanksgiving Day elicited several calls for “unity” and “healing,” following a divisive and bitterly fought presidential election. Several pundits referenced Abraham Lincoln’s wish “to heal the wounds of the nation,” which he articulated in the speech instituting Thanksgiving Day in 1863. Donald Trump said in his Thanksgiving address, “It’s my prayer that on this Thanksgiving, we begin to heal our divisions and move forward as one country, strengthened by shared purpose and very, very common resolve.”

Nice sentiments all, and one hopes they are merely feel-good rhetoric typical of holidays. For as comforting as they are for some, they reflect a misunderstanding of our political order and the foundational ideas behind the Constitution. Except in times of war or other national crises, “national unity” and “healing divisions” frightened the Founders, for “unity” historically has been the precondition of tyranny.

The Founders knew that the thirteen Colonies were diverse in their interests, religions, regions, folkways, and cultures. Modern diversicrats have long peddled the notion that Revolutionary era Americans were all “white males” unified and defined by the same interests and beliefs. Such superficial racial categories were politically important mainly when the issue was race-based slavery. But the peoples who created the United States were otherwise not so shallow and simplistic. They realized that confessional, regional, economic, and class divisions were more significant and potentially dangerous, for they are often zero-sum in their pursuit and practice, and can lead to fragmentation and violence. The Civil War was the gruesome proof that this fear was justified.

Moreover, the diversity of “interests and passions” could never be eradicated, for it reflected a flawed human nature vulnerable to ambition, greed, and the desire for power. James Madison called the political instruments of this diversity “factions,” which were “sown in the nature of man.” Hence the “checks and balances” and “divided powers” of the Constitution were the solution to the danger of a faction becoming too powerful and inciting political disorder and threats to freedom. In addition to the mixed federal government, federalism, which acknowledged the sovereign powers of the states that created the federal government, would be another check on factionalism. Clashing interests and concerns would be adjudicated by state governments, which would be more familiar with local conditions and interests, and thus better placed to create policies more suited to them.

Most important, the thirteen sovereign state governments would be a check on the aggrandizement of power by any combination of factions whether elite or populist. Given the variety of state interests, Madison writes, this diversity would grant a “greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties, against the event of any party being able to outnumber and oppress the rest.” This diversity would also impose “greater obstacles opposed to the concert and accomplishment of the secret wishes of an unjust and interested majority.” Hence such attempts to acquire a critical mass of power “will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other states” because of “the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of [the nation].” Thus liberty will be preserved, and diversity protected by creating in the states numerous diverse alternatives for citizens who find any particular state hostile to their interests or beliefs.

Our Hypocritical “Educators” Tufts administrators in denial.

Editorial note: Tufts University was one of twelve campuses on which the David Horowitz Freedom Center placed posters this Fall targeting the campus hate group Students for Justice in Palestine and exposing the financial and organizational ties that link the student organization to the anti-Israel terror group Hamas. At all twelve campuses, administrators ordered that the posters be immediately torn down, while proclaiming their ardent support for the principle of free speech. The following letter from David Horowitz exposes the absurdity and hypocrisy of this administrative stance and responds directly to accusations from two Tufts deans (posted below David’s letter) that the Freedom Center’s posters violated Tufts’ “community standards” and poster policy and “are not welcome on our campus.”

*

November 29, 2016

James M. Glaser
Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences, Tufts University
Jianmin Qu, Dean of the School of Engineering, Tufts University

Gentlemen,

I have just received your letter of November 14, conveying your “serious concerns regarding the posters placed on the Tufts University campus on October 19, 2016,” for which we took responsibility. The posters in question identify a hate group – Students for Justice in Palestine, which is sponsored by your institution. SJP calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, receives funding from the terrorist organization Hamas, and sponsors campus resolutions to boycott Israel, which liberals ranging from Larry Summers and Alan Dershowitz to Hillary Clinton have condemned as anti-Semitic. The statements in our posters are factual, or are reasonable opinions based on the facts.

Your “serious concerns” are summed up in two claims. First that “the posters in question violate our community standards” and, second, that they “violate our poster policy which requires notification and authorization by a university office or recognized student group prior to placing posters on campus.” You ask us in future to seek such permission.

Really. The two of you have already sent a letter to every member of the Tufts student body warning them that the university condemns our posters and that, “The university will be sending a statement to the posters’ sponsors in order to make clear that such materials are not welcome on our campus.” Now what student or student group, knowing that the university condemns these ideas, and has taken the extraordinary step of warning the entire student body that our ideas are unwelcome, would be willing to risk authorizing our posters? Which is why we took the step of putting up our posters without asking permission, since we are well aware that institutions like Tufts seek to be “safe places” for a politically correct orthodoxy and can be ruthless in acting to hermetically seal off dissenting ideas like ours.

Bernie Power Muhammad and Today’s Child Brides

Only Islam offers such high-level scriptural endorsement, prophetic example and legislative justification for the arranged marriages of young girls and much older men. The future of a friend’s fourteen-year-old neighbour in Melbourne demands that this abomination be addressed.
I received a phone call today from a friend in Melbourne asking for advice. A Muslim family lives nearby and their fourteen year old daughter confided in him: “I think my mum is arranging a marriage for me, and I am scared. I don’t want it.” My friend has now contacted the Australian Federal Police, and an investigation has started.

This is not an isolated incident. NSW Family and Community Services Minister Brad Hazzard recently declared that “there is a tsunami of young girls, some as young as nine, who are being taken overseas and being forced to become child brides … The imams in the Muslim community need to speak up more, and indeed any other religious leaders in communities who might pursue this practice.” Muslims Australia president Kaiser Trad claimed to be shocked by the reports, asserting that “one of the conditions for a marriage to be valid under Islamic teachings is consent. For anybody to force a young lady or a young man into a marriage against their will is wrong.” He was not quote as condemning child marriage per se.

A study of Muslim texts reveals that it was practised in the early Islamic period, even by the prophet Muhammad himself. His third wife, Aisha, was daughter of his best friend Abu Bakr. The marriage took place when she was six years old and was consummated when Aisha turned nine. Multiple texts in authentic hadiths (authoritative traditions) attest to these ages. Informants include Aisha herself,[1] Hisham’s father,[2] and Ursa.[3] Aisha reported: “He had intercourse with me when I was nine years old.”[4] She also noted: “The Messenger of Allah married me when I was six, and consummated the marriage with me when I was nine, and I used to play with dolls.”[5]

Apparently Aisha had not yet reached puberty. Al-Asqalani’s celebrated commentary on al-Bukhari’s hadith makes this comment about Aisha’s childhood amusement: “The playing with the dolls and similar images is forbidden, but it was allowed for `Aisha at that time, as she was a little girl, not yet reached the age of puberty. (Fath-ul-Bari page 143, Vol.13) Another Hadith describes her sitting in the mosque with Muhammad as “a little girl (who has not reached the age of puberty).” (Sahih al-Bukhari 7:163)