RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Dutch have officially been enjoying the feast of Pentecost since 1815, but the church wants it replaced by an official holiday on Eid-al-Fitr, the day marking the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

We are too tolerant to intolerance. We think that by allowing freedom to the enemies of freedom we prove to the world that we stand for freedom. But in reality, by refusing to draw boundaries to our tolerance, we are handing away our freedom.

If we want to remain the free and tolerant society which we used to be, we must realize that the West has a concrete identity. Our identity is not Islamic, but based on Judaism, Christianity and humanism. Our freedoms result from this identity.

Next Sunday, Christians are celebrating the feast of Pentecost. A Protestant church in the Netherlands is using the occasion to propose the abolishment of the public holiday for the second day of Pentecost. The Dutch have officially been enjoying this holiday since 1815, but the church wants it replaced by an official holiday on Eid-al-Fitr, the day marking the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

With its proposal, the Christian group says, it wants “to do justice to diversity in religion.” That is politically-correct claptrap. Browsing through today’s papers, I can, however, understand why many Dutch are in a festive mood once Ramadan is over! These days, the headlines are full of incidents, which De Telegraaf, the leading newspaper in the Netherlands, describes as Ramadan rellen (Ramadan riots).

Suppose Christians would, on an annual basis, start to riot after leaving church on Pentecost and demolish property, arson cars, attack police, throw stones through the neighbor’s windows. Suppose the police would feel obliged to mark the Christian Lent in the calendar as days of heightened tensions. Would we not begin to wonder whether there was something wrong with Christianity?

Or suppose Jewish gangs would terrorize entire town districts on Yom Kippur day. Would we not beginning to wonder what they were being taught in their synagogues? Or would we just accept it, celebrate it even, as indications of the cultural “diversity” of our society?

I am writing these lines in my office in the Dutch Parliament in The Hague, barely a few minutes away from the house where the great 17th century Dutch and Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza lived and died. Spinoza gave the world a philosophy of tolerance and freedom.

However, what we must never do is be tolerant to intolerance. Because if tolerance becomes a snake devouring its own tail, soon there will be no freedom left and the intolerant will rule the world. Indeed, we are almost there. Three and a half centuries after Spinoza, in the city where he lived, I am writing these lines in a heavily protected sector of the parliament building. The windows are blinded, the doors are armored, and police officers are standing watch outside. They are there to protect me against the intolerance which has in recent decades entered our country – an intolerance that is neither Christian nor Jewish or secular, but Islamic. I am not an extremist if I say that. I am telling the truth. And that is my duty.

For here is the crux of the matter: If we want to remain the free and tolerant society which we used to be, we must realize that the West has a concrete identity. Our identity is not Islamic, but based on Judaism, Christianity and humanism. Our freedoms result from this identity. By depriving Islam of the means to destroy our identity, we are not violating freedom; we are preserving our identity and guaranteeing freedom.

Red nappies, green nappies — that’s how the progressive Left grooms its social justice warrior babies, a process that begins, as one kiddie-book author asserts, ‘fresh out of the womb’. Join us now at storytime and learn that ‘A’ is for ‘Activist’, ‘L’ for LGBTQ and ‘T’ stands for for ‘Trans’.

Progressives are concerned about the “indoctrination gap” which leaves many kids untouched by Green Left ideology. This gap involves the important demographic from birth through to three- and four-year-olds.

From four onwards, the kids are safely captured by state interventions, such as the Victorian Labor government’s political and gender-bending education down to pre-school and kindergarten level. For example, Premier Dan Andrews is now rolling out a $3.4 million program for 4000 educators to eliminate four-year-old boys’ “hegemonic masculinities”.

Closing the gap is under way through radicalising picture-books for toddlers. These include those board-books with hefty cardboard pages. Traditionally their content was of the “My First Colours” kind; the new authors fill them with images of their better society.

The gap-closing has gained momentum from the election of President Trump, to American progressives a near-unthinkable disaster. Some authors’ explicit goal is to raise a new generation programmed to avert any Trump lookalike in coming decades. “We’re going to have to start in utero,” one reviewer says.

Feminist Baby is by New Yorker and BuzzFeed worker Loryn Brantz. It’s for babies “fresh out of the womb” up to two-year-olds, as she puts it. Published in April and “the perfect baby-shower gift for today’s new parents”, it’s flying off the shelves at Australian bookstores and libraries.

Brantz told Time magazine, “Why not start kids off right away? Hopefully if we raise a whole generation of kids with Feminist Baby and with older books for kids about feminism and activism, something like this [Trump’s election] will never happen again.” Brantz is marketing the book with comics aimed at adult buyers. In these, “Feminist Baby serves as an under-age heroine bent on smashing the patriarchy and subverting tired traditions like the ‘gender reveal’ [that is, binary male or female].” In one panel, Feminist Baby punches Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who is dressed as a Nazi.

Brantz started to write the book pre-Trump, but obviously, “his administration is complicit in oppressing women of all shapes, sizes and colors”, which is why her book is so very important. Feminist Baby “is decidedly the one we need right now”, says another reviewer. “She’s here smashing your patriarchy, speaking her truths, and not taking anybody’s crap.”

Feminist Baby’s first words (tongue in cheek) are “Gender is a social construct.” In Brantz’s world, the feminised cradle-dweller “lives how she wants and doesn’t let the patriarchy keep her down”:

Feminist Baby chooses what to wear
and if you don’t like it she doesn’t care!

When it’s snowing, let’s hope she doesn’t choose sandals.

And do it tough, Dads. If you coo to Feminist Baby that she’s beautiful, the infant swipes back, “And I’m smart and capable too!”

Another reviewer says presciently that the book should “imbue your tiny tot with all of the important characteristics necessary for her (or him) to become a lifelong, probably insufferable, feminist”.

Brantz sees toddlers’ books opening a cot conversation about “intersectionality and feminism”. (No, I don’t know what intersectionality is either.)

Another such author is Innosanto Nagara, whose book for children up to three years old A is for Activist has sold 50,000-plus copies. He’s “calling children and parents to action” on things like social justice and immigration. His board book is “unapologetic about activism, environmental justice, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, and everything else that activists believe in and fight for”.

Originally written for the InvestigativeProject on Terrorism.

Jordan, a country that has had a formal peace treaty with Israel since 1994, has seen an uptick in anti-Israel hostility.

Last month, Jordan condemned the killing of a Jordanian-Palestinian attacker who was filmed stabbing an Israeli policeman multiple times before he was shot, calling it “a heinous crime.” In September, Israeli police killed a Jordanian tourist who attacked with a knife. Jordan described this act of self-defense as a premeditated and “barbaric act of the army of the Israeli occupation.”

Israeli analysts disagree whether Jordan’s rhetoric is a cause for concern.

Since the second Palestinian Intifada broke out in 2000, Jordan’s public statements often contradict private behavior, said Elad Ben-Dror, a Bar-Ilan University Middle Eastern Studies senior lecturer. Publicly, “the Jordanian parliament and press are fierce in their denunciation of Israel… Beneath the surface, however, there is a strong link and security cooperation between the two countries, especially with regard to the war on terrorism.”

Jordanian demographics drive the public vitriol, said Tel Aviv University Contemporary Middle Eastern History Chair Eyal Zisser. Palestinians comprise half the Jordanian population, “and because the population is conservative and very much Islamic, the regime lets the public…express anti-Israeli sentiments as a way to vent and reduce…pressure on the regime.”

So “cheap shots” like condemning the shooting of a terrorist in the act of trying to kill are “aimed at showing the Palestinians in Jordan [that] the Hashemites have not abandoned them,” said Oded Eran, a senior research fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. “The King expects the Israeli government” to ignore such statements. And for the most part, Jerusalem does.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently took exception. “It is outrageous to hear the Jordanian government’s speaker support the terror attack which occurred today in Jerusalem’s Old City,” a statement released by Netanyahu’s office said. “It’s time Jordan stopped playing both sides of the game. Just like Israel condemns terror attacks in Jordan, Jordan must condemn terror attacks in Israel. Terror is terror.”

Moreover, some anti-Israel hostility by Jordan goes beyond mere statements.

In March, Jordan released Ahmed Daqamseh, a former soldier who murdered seven Israeli schoolgirls as they visited his country. His tribe gave him a hero’s welcome and he called for Israel’s destruction on Al-Jazeera TV. Many lawmakers and politicians had reportedly lobbied to set him free, and doing so may have been a populist move.

Jordan also hosts “Al-Quds,” the official TV station of Hamas, the Gaza-based terror group committed to Israel’s destruction.

President Donald Trump fulfilled a key campaign promise yesterday when he announced the United States will pull out of the potentially economically disastrous Paris Climate Accord that President Obama imposed on the country in his final months in office.

In so doing, Trump is taking on all of this global warming poppycock that rests on the utterly ridiculous notion that carbon dioxide, the natural gas humans and other earthly life forms constantly produce and expel, the same gas that promotes plant growth, is a pollutant.

It is a truly insane idea that has no support in science but leftists are running with it because they hope to browbeat and intimidate Americans into accepting shrinking the economy by drastically reducing carbon emissions.

Obama signed a legal instrument related to the Paris Climate Accord on Aug. 20, 2016, titled “Acceptance on behalf of the United States of America.” The relevant part of the document provides that Obama does “hereby accept the said Agreement and every article and clause thereof on behalf of the United States of America.”

Some on the Left are now arguing that process somehow prevents Trump from taking the country out of the agreement unilaterally, even though Obama (unconstitutionally) purported to bring the country into the agreement unilaterally.

In the White House’s Rose Garden, Trump called the treaty “the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries.” The agreement leaves American workers and taxpayers “to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production.”

He continued:

Thus, as of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country. This includes ending the implementation of the nationally determined contribution and, very importantly, the Green Climate Fund which is costing the United States a vast fortune.

Compliance with the PCA could cost the country as many as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025, he said, citing a study by National Economic Research Associates. By 2040, he added, compliance could cause the country to miss out on $3 trillion in gross domestic product, wipe out 6.5 million industrial jobs, and reduce household incomes by $7,000 or more.

The pact leaves America at a disadvantage by “effectively putting” the country’s vast energy reserves, including coal, “under lock and key,” while allowing other countries to further develop their coal resources.