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November 2017

BOOKS Comments turned off

PARIS IN THE PRESENT TENSE by Mark Helprin

By on November 2nd, 2017

A modern-day story of love, music, and death, with echoes of the Nazi retreat in World War II France.

Septuagenarian Jules Lacour is a widower and a cellist in agony after losing his wife, Jacqueline. His grandson, Luc, has leukemia and will die without treatments that neither Jules nor his daughter, Cathérine, can possibly afford. Stage fright has always prevented him from achieving fame and fortune, and he considers himself a failure. Though in terrific physical shape—he runs, he rows on the Seine—he wants to die and be with Jacqueline again, because “he himself did not need to live. It was Luc who needed to live.” Then, mirabile dictu, a “giant international conglomerate” asks him to write “telephone hold music,” promising obscenely high pay that would easily cover Luc’s treatment. Jules delivers beautifully, but alas, complications ensue. An intelligent and deeply sympathetic man, Jules remembers the day in 1944 when a Nazi soldier retreating through Reims heard his father playing Bach on his cello instead of La Marseillaise, realized the cellist was a hidden Jew and executed the family, leaving only 4-year-old Jules. That shock shaped the man Jules became, but it’s just one thread the author weaves. He is in no hurry to finish telling this beautiful tale as he lavishes attention on characters such as Armand Marteau, perhaps the worst insurance salesman in France; a team of homicide detectives, a Muslim and a Jew, eating a ham lunch with a judge; and women of ineffable beauty with whom Jules falls into instant love. One, Élodi, is a cellist 50 years his junior. Even the conglomerate has a personality: “the great, indefatigable, trillion-dollar machine of Acorn, a dispositif with neither soul nor conscience.” As Élodi declares to Jules that she will be his student, he sees “directly into her eyes, and never had he beheld a more elegant and refined woman, not even Jacqueline.” The conversations often read like mini-essays, as when Jules tells Élodi about the “jealous” God of the Jews—arguing with Him is “like a goddamn wrestling match.”

A masterpiece filled with compassion and humanity. Perfect for the pure pleasure of reading.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Curb Our Enthusiasm More signs of a strengthening economy.By James Freeman

By on November 2nd, 2017

It’s important to remember that Thursday’s roll-out of the House plan for pro-growth tax reform is just the first step in a long legislative path. It’s important to remember that the current economic recovery, slow as it’s been, is getting very old and won’t last forever. It’s important to remember that health care policy remains unreformed. Stocks are not cheap and the federal debt is not small. Last week this column noted that it’s still too early to call Trumponomics a success. Still, recent news is making it harder to stifle a sense of optimism about the prospects for American revival.

The National Federation of Independent Business survey of owners of small firms shows another solid month of job creation in October and there’s more good news for both longtime employees and recent hires: “Owners are raising compensation at rates not seen since 2000,” says NFIB chief economist William Dunkelberg.

Long term, workers need to keep getting more efficient at making goods and services to earn raises. Across the economy, there’s good news on that front as well. The Journal reports:

U.S. workers boosted output per hour this summer at the best rate in three years, a sign that long sluggish productivity gains might finally be breaking out.

Nonfarm business-sector productivity, measured as the goods and services produced per hour worked, increased at a 3.0% seasonally adjusted annual rate in the third quarter, the Labor Department said Thursday. The gain was better than economists had expected and the largest quarterly improvement since the third quarter of 2014.

Last quarter’s increase could be skewed due to the effects of the recent hurricanes, but the broader trend points to firmer productivity gains after the measure trended near zero much of 2015 and 2016. Through the first nine months of this year, worker productivity advanced at a 1.5% annual rate—putting 2017 on pace to be the best year for efficiency gains since 2010, when the economy was first emerging from a deep recession.

Employers and employees are still waiting for the promised tax relief from Washington but it seems that other parts of the Trump agenda are beginning to have an impact. This morning your humble correspondent was fortunate to appear on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox Business program and also fortunate to be able to ask Mike Ryan of UBS about the impact of the Trump deregulatory agenda. Mr. Ryan, who is the chief investment officer for the Swiss bank’s wealth management business in the Americas, said that Washington’s new regulatory restraint is not only fostering business confidence but already helping companies improve earnings. Mr. Ryan added that the benefits go beyond the repeal of particular burdensome rules. He said that ”stopping the regulatory encroachment”—providing assurance that Washington is not preparing to spring expensive new surprises on the private economy—is a boon to business investment.

As of the start of October, federal red tape scorekeeper Wayne Crews found that Mr. Trump was off to an historic beginning. Mr. Crews measures the number of pages of new and proposed rules spewing forth from Washington. Last month he reported:

The Federal Register stands at 45,678 pages. Last year at this time, Barack Obama’s Federal Register stood at 67,900 pages. (Obama’s 2016 Federal Register set an all-time-record: 97,110 pages).

Compared to Obama at this time last year, Trump’s page count is down 32 percent so far in his first year.

It took a few years for Ronald Reagan to achieve his ultimate, one-third reduction in Federal Register pages following Jimmy Carter’s then-record Federal Register. So by this metric, Trump is moving much faster. CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Anti-Semitic Incidents Across U.S. Have Surged 67 Percent This Year, Study Finds By Bridget Johnson

By on November 2nd, 2017

A new report tallying the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States from the beginning of the year through the end of September found a 67 percent surge compared to last year.

The Anti-Defamation League audit found the greatest increases in schools, with jumps in bullying and vandalism seen from grade school through college.

A bump in anti-Semitic incidents was also recorded after the August “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., at which one counterprotester was killed when a suspect photographed earlier in the day with white supremacists ran his car into a group of demonstrators.

In the first three quarters of the year in 2016, there were 779 reported anti-Semitic incidents, including 29 cases of assault, 322 cases of harassment and 428 cases of vandalism.

In the first three quarters of this year, harassment reports more than doubled: there were 1,299 reported anti-Semitic incidents, including 12 cases of assault, 703 cases of harassment and 584 cases of vandalism.

ADL CEO and national director Jonathan A. Greenblatt said he was “astonished and horrified” by the steep rises in anti-Semitic incidents.

“While the tragedy in Charlottesville highlighted this trend, it was not an aberration,” Greenblatt said in a statement. “Every single day, white supremacists target members of the Jewish community — holding rallies in public, recruiting on college campuses, attacking journalists on social media, and even targeting young children.”

Greenblatt said many school incidents go unreported. “We are deeply troubled by the rising number of anti-Semitic incidents, bullying, and hate in our nation’s schools and we don’t think the statistics paint a full picture of what is happening,” he said.

In Healdsburg, Calif., in May, students taunted a sixth-grade boy with swastikas and lighters, telling him he would burn “like they did in the Holocaust.” In Radington Beach, Fla., in March, a Jewish student was taunted with Holocaust memes and a classmate drew a swatiska and concentration camp prison number on his arm. In Longmont, Colo., in April, a Jewish high school student who had been the target of anti-Semitic slurs for weeks was assaulted.

After Charlottesville, where white nationalist demonstrators carried Nazi imagery and chanted “Jews will not replace us,” the daily average of 2.36 anti-Semitic incidents rose to 4.3 per day.

The ADL’s global index of anti-Semitic sentiment around the world found in 2015 that 10 percent of Americans, or some 24 million Americans, hold anti-Semitic views, with even distribution across gender, age groups and religion. Thirty-three percent polled on a number of canards said Jews are more loyal to Israel than America, 16 percent said Jews have too much power in the business world, 16 percent said Jews have too much power in international financial markets, 20 percent said Jews talk about the Holocaust too much, and 14 percent said people hate Jews because of the way they behave. CONTINUE AT SITE

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FOREIGN POLICY, HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

CIA Releases Hundreds of Thousands of Osama Bin Laden Files By Michael van der Galien

By on November 2nd, 2017

The CIA has released hundreds of thousands of documents that were recovered at Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan after the raid in which the terrorist leader was killed. The documents make clear that:

1) Bin Laden was still actively leading al-Qaeda when he was taken out;

2) Iran and al-Qaeda have been working together for years; and

3) Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza was groomed to eventually take over leadership from his father from a very early age.

The second point, Iran’s relationship with al-Qaeda, is by far the most important one. As Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio explain at The Long War Journal:

One never-before-seen 19-page document contains a senior jihadist’s assessment of the group’s relationship with Iran. The author explains that Iran offered some “Saudi brothers” in al Qaeda “everything they needed,” including “money, arms” and “training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in exchange for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.” Iranian intelligence facilitated the travel of some operatives with visas, while sheltering others.

Abu Hafs al-Mauritani, an influential ideologue prior to 9/11, helped negotiate a safe haven for his jihadi comrades inside Iran. But the author of the file, who is clearly well-connected, indicates that al Qaeda’s men violated the terms of the agreement and Iran eventually cracked down on the Sunni jihadists’ network, detaining some personnel. Still, the author explains that al Qaeda is not at war with Iran and some of their “interests intersect,” especially when it comes to being an “enemy of America.”

Of course, none of that means al-Qaeda and Iran are one and the same. The two certainly have major disagreements, both on a more personal level (bin Laden was angry that Iran refused to let his family members go for a long time) and on an ideological level (Iran is Shiite, Al-Qaeda is Sunni). However, bin Laden made clear to his followers that he didn’t want them threatening Iran.

As he explained in a letter that was released previously, he actually called Iran his terror group’s “main artery for funds, personnel, and communication.” Joscelyn and Roggio:

And despite their differences, Iran continued to provide crucial support for al-Qaeda’s operations.

And so the question becomes: what does the Trump administration plan on doing about this?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Right Truck, Wrong Driver A political ad reveals Democrats’ willful inversion of reality on terrorism. Seth Barron

By on November 2nd, 2017

Virginia’s gubernatorial race was rocked recently by a commercial, paid for by the Latino Victory Fund, depicting a white man trying to run down a group of nonwhite children with his pickup truck. As a black boy and a girl wearing a hijab walk on a peaceful sidewalk, they hear the roar of a turbocharged engine, and a companion yells, “Run!” The truck, flying the Confederate battle flag, and bearing a don’t tread on me Gadsden-flag license plate in front, is otherwise unadorned, except for a gillespie for governor bumper sticker, as its driver aims to slaughter the innocent kids. Ed Gillespie, the Republican candidate in what has become a national bellwether campaign, is presented as the standard-bearer for white racist political violence.

Just a few days after the ad aired, of course, a Muslim terrorist from Uzbekistan drove a truck into a walkway of pedestrians and bicyclists in Manhattan. Sayfullo Saipov was devoted to the triumph of the Islamic State and the preservation of its vanishing caliphate. The Latino Victory Fund’s anti-Gillespie commercial would have been more accurate if its pickup-truck driver had turned out to be the dad of the little hijabi girl running for her life.

The ad was pulled after yesterday’s attack. “We knew our ad would ruffle feathers,” said Latino Victory Fund president Cristóbal Alex, as if congratulating himself. Alex didn’t address the cognitive dissonance that his commercial would surely evoke in any informed viewer, or the inversion of reality that is the hallmark of leftist political rhetoric about immigration and the jihadi threat. The Virginia governor’s race has focused heavily on the immigration debate, with Gillespie—who holds positions somewhat to the left of the national Republican Party on amnesty and reform—taking a firm stance in favor of enforcement against illegal immigrant gang members, including MS-13, which has a strong presence in Virginia. Democratic candidate Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam has focused his campaign on the blue suburbs of northern Virginia, reaching out especially to the state’s expanding Asian population.

Casting electoral politics as the old, white America versus the new, vibrant, multiethnic America is a seductive strategy for Democrats, who can’t resist looking at actuarial charts and population graphs that show a nonwhite-majority electorate by 2050, at the latest. But as Hillary Clinton’s disastrous 2016 campaign demonstrated, politicians must be elected by today’s voters, not tomorrow’s. The “inevitability” strategy backfires, in part because white voters generally don’t like being told to expedite and celebrate their coming demise.

The strategy also backfires because rhetoric about the wonders of unfettered immigration meets the reality of horrible terrorism committed by immigrants or their children. The Latino Victory Fund—whose very name suggests ethnic triumphalism—tried to cast even mild immigration-restrictionist sentiment as white supremacism, and to depict Charlottesville murderer James Fields as the typical Gillespie voter. But the reality of terrorism in America is that it is widely and correctly associated with political Islam.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Preparing Our Children to Respond to the Anti-Israel Propaganda on College Campuses Alex Grobman, PhD Part III

By on November 2nd, 2017

“Perception truly is now reality, and our enemies know it,” asserts Steve Fondacaro, an American military expert. Israel and the West are engaged in what is “fundamentally an information fight,” in which Palestinian Arabs have mastered the technique of controlling the propaganda narrative. Their success has been so pervasive in crafting the language we use in discussing the conflict, we often are not even aware of how inadvertently we advance their agenda.

Soviet ideology is responsible for helping shape Palestinian Arab strategy, notes historian Joel Fishman. Words are designed to elicit hatred, disgust and contempt. Terms like racist, fascist, oppressor, apartheid nation, occupier, usurpers of Arab lands, and Israel as the obstacle to peace are accepted by large segments in the West, particularly in Europe, as an accurate description of the Jewish state.

Israel’s legitimacy is further undermined by the process of “reversal of culpability,” which uses false indictments and historical analogies. Goliath becomes David, and David becomes Goliath. Israelis are accused of committing “genocide,” thus “Israel is doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews.”

This pernicious labeling is also used by “self-hating Jews,” and Jews highly critical of Israel. In this toxic environment, even staunch supporters of Israel err in the terms they use. Here are just a few examples:

West Bank: For thousands of years, the area was recognized as Judea and Samaria, part of the Jewish people’s ancestral heartland. On April 24, 1950, Jordan annexed its 2,270 square miles, and the West Bank became the name used to describe the territory. Only Great Britain and Pakistan recognized this changed status. During the Six Day War in 1967, Jordan lost control of Judea and Samaria.

Using the term West Bank instead of Judea and Samaria, obscures the ancient historical and religious connection of the Jews to this area, and implies that Jordan has the legitimate right to rule the region. Judea’s boundaries, which are defined in The Jewish War by Flavius Josephus, was part of the ancient Kingdom of Judah, the Southern Kingdom. Samaria was part of the ancient Kingdom of Israel, the Northern Kingdom.

A review of Jewish religious and secular sources will provide a profound appreciation for the importance and centrality of Judea and Samaria to the Jewish people.

Legally, the territory remains disputed. When a peace agreement is reached notes Eugene Rostow, a legal scholar and former Dean of Yale Law School, Israel must withdraw her “armed forces ‘from territories’ she occupied during the Six-Day War—‘not from ‘the’ territories nor from ‘all’ the territories, but from some of the territories, which included the Sinai Desert, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.”

This has not stopped resolutions calling for withdrawals from “all” the territories, which are defeated in the Security Council and the General Assembly.

Settlers and Settlements:

David Friedman, the American Ambassador to Israel, recently said, “They (Israelis) are only occupying 2 percent of the West Bank.”

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Must We Fight China? An alternative to the establishment’s defeatism By David P. Goldman

By on November 2nd, 2017

The foreign policy establishment underestimated China for years. Now it is panicking at China’s growing power. Not since British contempt for the Japanese turned into defeatism at Singapore in 1942 has Western opinion of an Asian rival turned around so quickly. In the Fall 2017 Claremont Review of Books, I review Graham Allison’s influential new book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? Allison makes the case for appeasement. If you want peace, I counter, prepare for war. That means restoring America’s technological supremacy. Excerpts from my review are below. The complete review can be found at Claremont Review of Books.

Graham Allison’s much-heralded new book warns that China’s challenge to American strategic dominance sets us on a path to war. He calls this peril the “Thucydides Trap,” because he claims that it is similar to other great-power conflicts in history, above all Athens’ challenge to Sparta before the Peloponnesian War in 431-404 B.C. Expanding on a 2015 Atlantic essay admonishing American planners to avert a looming war with China, Destined for War urges Americans to accept China as a great power.

A professor and outgoing director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School, Allison can’t be faulted for timing. In July and August of this year, North Korea’s tests of nuclear-capable missiles with range sufficient to strike American territory put the China problem at the top of our strategic agenda: apart from a military confrontation no one wants, America seems to have no alternative but to ask China to use its good offices to restrain North Korea. As a result, China has more influence in matters that bear on vital American interests. In an August 2017 Wall Street Journal essay that drew public praise from National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Henry Kissinger argued for strategic cooperation with China in the Korean peninsula. McMaster distributed a dozen copies of Allison’s book to senior National Security Council staff earlier this year.

The Thucydides Trap thus demarcates a crucial turn in the thinking of America’s foreign policy Establishment. Through most of the George W. Bush and Obama Administrations, conventional thinking held that America would promulgate the liberal international order in the Middle East and elsewhere, while China would struggle with the internal weaknesses inherent in a dictatorial regime. Allison’s book offers a different and darker vision: He argues, correctly in my view, that China’s economy will continue to grow in breadth and depth to challenge America, and concludes, wrongly in my view, that America can do nothing except to accommodate the rising Asian superpower.

America can make reasonable concessions to certain Chinese security concerns, to be sure. But China and the United States compete in a global economy where digital technology has digital outcomes. China now dominates high-tech electrical manufacturing, while America’s manufacturing sector is imploding. Not too long from now this trend will have grave national security implications for the United States, and become a source of strategic instability. The issue is not whether America allows China more power in the South China Sea, for example, but whether the migration of manufacturing out of the United States will lead to a fundamental change in the great power relationship—comparable, perhaps, to America’s technological superiority over the Soviet Union during the last years of communism.

Allison emphasizes China’s achievements, rejecting the common prejudice that China has grown simply by stealing technology from the West.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Balfour Declaration: Did the British Promise Palestine to the Jews and Arabs? Alex Grobman, PhD

By on November 2nd, 2017

On November 2, 2017, we will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. Sent by British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour in a letter to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, it read:

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

The Importance of the Balfour Declaration for the Jewish People

For the Jews, this meant the British were supporting their dream of reestablishing a Jewish homeland in the land of Israel. At the San Remo Conference in San Remo, Italy in April 1920, the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers delineated the exact boundaries of the countries they had conquered at the end of World War I, and resolved that the Balfour Declaration would be incorporated in The Treaty of Peace with Turkey.

When the League of Nations formally confirmed the Mandate for Palestine in July 24, 1922, this acknowledged a pre-existing historical right of the Jews to the land of Israel that they had never relinquished as former Israeli ambassador Dore Gold noted. The Jewish people had been sovereign in the land for a thousand years until many were driven into exile. When the Muslims invaded Palestine in 634, ending four centuries of conflict between Persia and Rome, Israeli diplomat Yaacov Herzog noted, they found direct descendants of Jews who had lived in the country since the time of Joshua bin Nun, the man who led the Israelites into the Land of Canaan. This means that for 2,000 years Jews and Christians constituted the majority of the indigenous population of Palestine, while the Bedouin’s were the ruling class under the Damascene caliphate.

Arab Response to the Balfour Declaration

The Arabs viewed the Balfour Declaration as a betrayal. The Balfour Declaration did not mention the Arab rights or Arab right to the land, only that the “civil and religious” rights of the inhabitants of Palestine are to be protected.

Reverend James Parkes, a pioneer in the study of antisemitism and the history of the Jewish people, countered that the British “did not ‘give away what belonged to the Arab people;’ for it had already refused to recognize… on historical grounds, that the Arab claim to be exclusive owners of the country was justified.”

Furthermore, the British were quite clear that Palestine was not a state, but the name of a geographical area asserts Eli Hertz. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to select Palestinian Arab representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, they adopted the following resolution: “We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.” There is no mention of the national rights of the Arab people.

Hertz adds that prior to Jews referring to themselves as Israelis in 1948, the term Palestine applied almost entirely to institutions established by Jews: The Jerusalem Post, founded in 1932, was called The Palestine Post; Bank Leumi L’Israel, incorporated in 1902, was called the Anglo Palestine Company until 1948; Israel Electric Corporation, founded in 1923 was initially called The Palestine Electric Company; and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1936, was originally called the Palestine Symphony Orchestra.

Zuhair Mushin, the head of the PLO Military Operations Department, described how the Arabs adopted the ruse of a Palestinian people to destroy the Jewish state: “There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political reasons do we carefully underline our Palestinian identity. For it is of national interest for the Arabs to encourage the existence of the Palestinians against Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity is there only for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new expedient to continue the fight against Zionism and for Arab unity.”

Yet, the Arabs argued that the British promised Palestine to them, as a result of the correspondence between Sir Arthur Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, and Husain Ibn Ali, the Sharif of Mecca beginning in 1915. In return for leading a revolt against the Turks, the Sharif would receive significant areas of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire.

A “Twice Promised Land?”

Asked whether Palestine was part of this agreement and thus a “twice promised” land, historian Efraim Karsh emphatically said no. “In his correspondence with Sharif Hussein of Mecca, which led to the Great Arab Revolt during World War I, Sir Henry McMahon…specifically excluded Palestine from the prospective Arab empire promised to Hussein. This was acknowledged by the Sharif in their exchanges and also by his son Faisal, the future founding monarch of Iraq, shortly after the war.”

Karsh added, this has not precluded “successive generations of pan-Arabists and their Western champions from charging Britain with a shameless betrayal of its wartime pledge.”

The Arab Revolt?

With regard to the Arab Revolt, Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, the chief British political officer for Palestine, remarked that the “Arabs of Palestine, far from contributing anything towards the ultimate victory [during WWI] actively opposed us and deserve no better treatment than others…”

Philip Graves, The London Times Middle East correspondent who served in the British Army from 1915-1919, declared, “Most annoying to anyone who has served with the British forces or the Sherifian Arab forces in the Palestine campaign…are the pretentions of the Arabs in Palestine to have rendered important services to the Allies…”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

A Time to Celebrate Israel 100 years later, the Balfour Declaration is still misunderstood.By Lawrence J. Haas,

By on November 2nd, 2017

“His Majesty’s Government,” British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour wrote a century ago in a 67-word paragraph that changed the course of history, “view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object.”

The 100-year anniversary of the “Balfour Declaration” on Nov. 2, 1917, which paved the way for Israel’s creation, should be a time of unbridled celebration, an occasion to honor the region’s lone democracy and most dynamic economy. Instead, it has also become an opportunity for critics of Israel to relaunch their misguided, often dishonest, attacks that seek to undermine the country’s global legitimacy.

It is, then, important that Israel’s supporters not only celebrate this anniversary proudly but also remind the world of how the Balfour Declaration – enunciated in a letter from Balfour to Lord Walter Rothschild, a leading British Jew – came to be, what it represented and what followed in its wake.

Already, Thursday’s anniversary has stoked controversy. British Prime Minister Theresa May said her country should celebrate it “with pride,” invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to London to mark the occasion at a formal dinner and rejected Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ requests that London apologize for the declaration that, he suggests, fueled Palestinian suffering.

On the other hand, British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn – who calls leaders of the Jew-hating terror groups Hezbollah and Hamas his “friends” – turned down an invitation to attend that dinner. At the same time, Gwyneth Daniel, a great-granddaughter of David Lloyd George, Britain’s prime minister at the time of the declaration, calls May’s decision to celebrate “completely outrageous” and plans to protest outside that event.

The anniversary also comes at a time of rising global anti-Semitism as well as mounting attacks on Israel from global bodies and governments, universities and other nonprofits and grassroots movements.

The United Nations and its entities condemn Israel for alleged “crimes against humanity” while ignoring the actual horror perpetrated by Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Riyadh and many other governments. Meanwhile, public and private bodies ban Israeli products and shun its intellectuals, athletes, entertainers and other citizens.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Germany: Violence Spirals in Refugee Shelters by Soeren Kern

By on November 2nd, 2017

German authorities have justified their failure to inform the public about the scale of the problem by citing the privacy rights of the criminal offenders.

Experts have long warned that the practice of housing migrants from different ethnic and religious backgrounds in tight accommodations is the ideal breeding ground for violence.

“A maintenance man who worked in a refugee shelter reported ‘mafia-like’ conditions. Refugees were required to pay for access to the electrical sockets there.” — Der Tagesspiegel.

Violent crime, including murder, rape and physical assault, is running rampant in German asylum shelters, according to a leaked intelligence report. German authorities, who appear powerless to stem the rising tide of violence, have justified their failure to inform the public about the scale of the problem by citing the privacy rights of the criminal offenders.

The report, leaked to the newspaper Bild, was prepared for Markus Ulbig, the interior minister of Saxony, where more than 40,000 migrants are being housed in refugee shelters. According to the report, there were ten murders or attempted murders at Saxon migrant shelters in 2016, as well as 960 physical assaults, 671 cases of grievous bodily injury, seven rapes, 10 sexual assaults of children and 268 cases of drug trafficking. The report also cited hundreds of incidents of theft, coercion, arson, brawls and attacks on police officers.

The violence at Saxon migrant shelters continued during the first six months of 2017: there were more than 500 physical assaults, several homicides and hundreds of reported thefts.

Experts have long warned that the practice of housing migrants from different ethnic and religious backgrounds in tight accommodations is the ideal breeding ground for violence.

In Germany as a whole, around 40,000 crimes — nearly 150 each day — were reported in refugee shelters during the first nine months of 2016, according to another leaked report by the Federal Criminal Police (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA). These crimes included 17,200 physical assaults, 6,500 thefts, 510 sexual assaults and 139 murders or attempted murders.

Observers say this is just the tip of the iceberg, as most crimes go unreported out of a fear of revenge. The BKA does not make public its data about migrant shelter criminality and there have been no additional leaks of such information. Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests that migrant-on-migrant crime is endemic across Germany.In Saxony-Anhalt, for instance, a parliamentary inquiry into a stabbing between Afghans at an asylum shelter in Bernburg revealed that migrants have assaulted other migrants at shelters across the state, including in Aschersleben, Ballenstedet, Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Burg, Dessau-Rosslau, Eckartsberg, Genthin, Haldensleben, Halle, Harbke, Kemberg, Leuna, Lutherstadt Eisleben, Magdeburg, Naumburg, Oranienbaum, Oschersleben, Salzwedel, Sangerhausen, Seegebiet Mansfelder Land, Stassfurt, Wanzleben, Weissenfels, Wolmirstedt, Zeitz and Zerbst. The stabbings involved migrants from Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Benin, Bosnia, Burkina Faso, Eritrea, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, India, Iran, Iraq, Kosovo, Macedonia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, Somalia, Syria, Turkey and Ukraine.

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