The Lessons of the Asia Bibi Case By Nina Shea

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/asia-bibi-blasphemy-laws-western-asylum/

Pakistan has released the purported blasphemer against Islam. Now what nation will have the courage to grant her asylum?

Asia Bibi, the Catholic mother imprisoned in Pakistan for nine years and condemned to hang for violating that country’s strict blasphemy law, has drawn broad sympathy throughout the West. Lacking credible evidence, and despite her denials, lower courts plainly yielded to Islamist pressure in making the illiterate field hand the first Pakistani woman to be given a death sentence for insulting Islam’s prophet, Mohammed. Then on October 31, Bibi finally received justice in an acquittal by Pakistan’s supreme court. But when she was released a week later, she found that mobs were baying for her blood throughout Pakistan — and, most surprisingly, that the West held out no firm offer of a safe haven.

Islamabad has given assurances that Bibi has been taken to a secret, secure location inside Pakistan, pending a permanent place of refuge. But her escape seems stalled. The West’s response so far of passive hand-wringing while Bibi faces mortal danger indicates more than poor planning; it shows a failure to fully comprehend the deeply radicalizing effects of the blasphemy taboo within the world’s second-largest Muslim nation — and the inroads it has made in the West.

Western leaders have consistently expressed concern for Bibi during her nearly decade-long ordeal. Human-rights advocates, such as the indefatigable Lord David Alton, who just last month met personally in Pakistan with the chief justice, have vigorously championed Bibi in the British parliament. Yet when the moment of truth arrived, London quickly decided it would not give her asylum owing to security concerns. The U.K. has its own radical Islamist leaders within its million-strong Pakistani community to worry about, including Anjem Choudary, paroled last month following a terror-law conviction. Lord Alton called the British decision “craven.”

In Paris, the city hall had an enlarged photo of Bibi by its front entrance when I last visited several years ago, and France has long been discussed as a place of asylum for her. But deadly Islamist attacks against Charlie Hebdo’s editors for blasphemy, and most recently against French Jews, make asylum there unthinkable. Last week Italy and Canada revealed their engagement in “sensitive” multilateral talks on Bibi’s case, but so far neither has offered an actual legal grant of asylum. Also last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized for Canada’s turning away the MS St. Louis and its 907 desperate Jewish passengers seeking refuge from German Nazis 79 years ago. Hopefully, he will apply the St. Louis lesson to throw a lifeline to Bibi.

Haley Announces Flip from Longstanding U.S. Abstention on Golan Heights Resolution to ‘No’ By Bridget Johnson

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/haley-announces-flip-from-longstanding-u-s-abstention-on-golan-heights-resolution-to-no/

For the first time, the United States plans to vote “no” today instead of abstaining on an annual United Nations resolution slamming “continued Israeli military occupation” of the Golan Heights.

In past years, the resolution has called upon Israel “to desist from changing the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure and legal status of the occupied Syrian Golan and in particular to desist from the establishment of settlements.”

It also calls upon Israel “to desist from imposing Israeli citizenship and Israeli identity cards on the Syrian citizens in the occupied Syrian Golan, and from its repressive measures against the population of the occupied Syrian Golan.”

The U.S. Mission to the United Nations cited as the reasons for the change from abstention to “no” the “resolution’s anti-Israel bias, as well as the militarization of the Syrian Golan border, and a worsening humanitarian crisis.”

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley declared in a statement previewing the vote that “the United States will no longer abstain when the United Nations engages in its useless annual vote on the Golan Heights.”

“If this resolution ever made sense, it surely does not today. The resolution is plainly biased against Israel,” she said. “Further, the atrocities the Syrian regime continues to commit prove its lack of fitness to govern anyone. The destructive influence of the Iranian regime inside Syria presents major threats to international security. ISIS and other terrorist groups remain in Syria.”

In Democratic circles, anti-Semitism is becoming normal I am of two minds about where our country’s new flirtation with socialism is heading Roger Kimball

https://spectator.us/democratic-anti-semitism-israel/

As people scramble to explain the sudden resurgence of socialism not only on America’s college campuses but also in the corridors of political power, it is worth noting the concomitant resurgence of anti-Semitism in those redoubts. The coincidence is not, as the Marxists like to say, an accident. The truth is that unfettered socialism, though based primarily on a demand for the abolition of private property, always comes riding on a current of anti-Semitism. Picking apart the conceptual reasons for this link is a complex business that I will leave aside here. But it is worth noting how impeccable a provenance the union enjoys. Consider this observation:

What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. . . . Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time [and would] make the Jew impossible. . . . In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.

Louis Farrakhan in his ‘Jews are termites’ mode? Nope. That’s old Karl himself in his classic anti-Semitic effusion of 1843, ‘On the Jewish Question.’

It’s worth keeping Marx’s views in mind as you ponder the rise of figures like Ilhan Omar, the young and comely Somali refugee who just took Keith Ellison’s House seat in Minnesota. Like many new Democrats, Omar was nurtured by the far-left Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. ‘Israel has hypnotized the world,’ Omar said on Twitter, ‘may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.’

Then there is the man she replaced, Keith Ellison, now the Attorney General-elect of Minnesota. ‘We can’t allow another country to treat us like we’re their ATM,’ Ellison said of Israel. ‘That country has mobilized its Diaspora in America to do its bidding in America.’

And let’s not forget the Democrat ‘It Girl’ herself, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has gone back and forth on the question of whether Israel has a right to exist at all but has been as never-varying as Dewar’s Scotch in referring to Israel’s ‘occupation’ of Palestine.

Public charter school puts benefits of teaching Hebrew to the test By Alex Traiman

https://www.jns.org/public-charter-schools-puts-benefits-of-teaching-hebrew-to-the-t

The Mill Basin Hebrew Language Academy Charter School in Brooklyn, N.Y., in Israel. Credit: Alex Traiman. Credit: Alex Traiman.
The Mill Basin Hebrew Language Academy Charter School in Brooklyn, N.Y., in Israel. Credit: Alex Traiman. Credit: Alex Traiman.
An experimental approach to learning Hebrew is strengthening the identity of Jewish students who cannot afford a private-school education, while simultaneously building pro-Israel advocates from other faiths.

An experimental approach to learning Hebrew is strengthening the identity of Jewish students who cannot afford a private-school education, while simultaneously building pro-Israel advocates from other faiths.

Now in its ninth year, the Hebrew Public network of 13 charter schools utilizes a blend of startup philanthropic funding and state funds to offer high-quality bilingual education to Jewish and non-Jewish students alike. Currently, these schools run in New York, New Jersey, California, Minnesota and Washington, D.C. New schools are scheduled to open soon in Philadelphia and Texas.

The school teaches Hebrew to all its students—about half of them Jewish. Classes on other traditional public-school subjects are also taught in Hebrew. The school does not teach any subjects on Jewish faith, but does offer information on Israeli culture, history and national holidays, which often overlap with Jewish holidays.

“We are not a Jewish school. We are the only public-school network in North America that teaches Hebrew to kids of all backgrounds,” says Valerie Khaytina, chief external officer of Hebrew Public.

The network—with more than 3,000 students—was started by the Areivim Philanthropy Group and the Steinhardt Philanthropic Foundation in 2009 to provide a free alternative for parents and students searching for an education that could provide Jewish identity, but without the burdensome costs of a private Jewish day school, which can range anywhere from $10,000 to over $20,000 per year.

“The Areivim group sought to find the next big idea to actually make Jewish education affordable for all children,” explains Khaytina. “At around the same time, they got to learn about the concept of charter schools. And they said, ‘OK, that sounds great.’ Then they learned that to be a charter school, you have to be open to everybody. So, there is no religion in our schools.”

The World Should Back Trump’s Strategy on Iran by Emily B. Landau

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/middle-east-watch/world-should-back-trumps-strategy-iran-36002

The JCPOA has not engendered a more moderate stance on the part of the Islamic regime, which has become more aggressive in the pursuit of its regional aspirations across the Middle East.

The round of sanctions slapped on Iran in early November—targeting the oil and energy sectors, banks and shipping companies—are the latest step in the pressure campaign that the Trump administration has been mounting on Iran since it came into office in early 2017, and with greater impetus since it left the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the Iran nuclear deal, in May 2018.

The goal of the Trump administration is primarily to leverage the pressure of these sanctions to compel the Iranian regime to negotiate a much improved nuclear deal. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has noted that reimposing the sanctions that were lifted as part of the 2015 nuclear deal is also designed to ensure that the regime has fewer resources with which to continue to support terror and its other aggressive activities throughout the region, in line with its declared hegemonic aspirations.

Cutting off resources is a rather straightforward aim that has a good chance of achieving the desired result. With regard to the expected effectiveness of sanctions as a means of bringing Iran back to the table to renegotiate the nuclear deal, the situation is more complicated. It depends on the regime’s assessment as to whether it can withstand the pressure—at least until a new president is elected in 2020; one that might adopt a more favorable approach toward Iran—or whether it concludes that it cannot do so, and is compelled to make additional nuclear concessions in order to ease the pressure.

Donald Trump, He Grows on You-John O’Sullivan

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/donald-trump-grows/

Whether Donald Trump is a good and potentially great US president is one of the rare political questions that divide my family. From his early surge in the 2016 Republican primaries, my wife has been a firm supporter of the unorthodox Republican. Call her a Trumpette. I was cautious, sceptical and—while he was fighting Republicans in primaries—opposed to his nomination. When Trump sealed the nomination, my wife became more enthusiastic; I settled down uncomfortably into a Never Hillary posture on the respectable Centre Right. When he won the presidency against the odds, we both felt justified—she on the grounds that a bold new conservatism had been launched, I because a repressive Left party had failed to close the trap on the American people.

My rationale was the simple one that however bad Trump might be (impulsive, vulgar, abusive, seemingly ignorant on public policy …), he was certainly better than Mrs Clinton, who was a national leader of the progressive Left movement that holds sway in the media, universities, foundations like Ford and Rockefeller, labour unions, many corporations, the federal bureaucracy (the “deep state”) and the whole Moving Left show. The behaviour of Clinton, the Democrats, and the activist Left since the election has only confirmed my judgment.

For better or worse, however, we were both in the Trump column. Which is how we found ourselves as guests of a Republican congressman at an off-the-record speech by Trump in Washington to an enthusiastic meeting of Republican congressmen and donors. It was the first time I had sat through an entire Trump speech. It was a revelation, because it was a masterful performance. That was not because of what he said (which I can’t report), however, but because of how he said it.

First Muslim Women in US Congress Misled Voters About Views on Israel by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13308/ilhan-omar-rashida-tlaib

“Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” — Ilhan Omar, in a tweet, November 2012.

“When a politician singles out Jewish allies as ‘evil,’ but ignores every brutal theocratic regime in the area, it’s certainly noteworthy….” — David Harsanyi, New York Post.

“With many Jews expressing distaste for an ‘illiberal’ Israel, it’s little surprise that the bulk of American Jewry isn’t overly bothered about the election of Socialists who are unsympathetic to the Jewish state or consider Zionism to be racist.” — Commentator Jonathan Tobin.

Ilhan Abdullahi Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Harbi Tlaib of Michigan will be the first two Muslim women ever to serve in the US Congress. Most of the media coverage since their election on November 6 has been effusive in praise of their Muslim identity and personal history.

Less known is that both women deceived voters about their positions on Israel. Both women, at some point during their rise in electoral politics, led voters — especially Jewish voters — to believe that they held moderate views on Israel. After being elected, both women reversed their positions and now say they are committed to sanctioning the Jewish state.

America’s first two Muslim congresswomen are now both on record as appearing to oppose Israel’s right to exist. They both support the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. Both are also explicitly or implicitly opposed to continuing military aid to Israel, as well as to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — an outcome that would establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Instead, they favor a one-state solution — an outcome that many analysts believe would, due to demographics over time, replace the Jewish state with a unitary Palestinian state.

Australia waffling on proposal to move its embassy to Jerusalem By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/11/australia_waffling_on_proposal_to_move_its_embassy_to_jerusalem.html

Australia appears to be backing away from a proposal floated last month to move that nation’s embassy to Jerusalem. Why? Pushback from Indonesia, which is negotiating a free trade pact with Australia.

New.com.au reports:

Fairfax Media reported a Morrison Government minister had quietly reassured Indonesian Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita that the proposal – which has become the sticking point holding up a $16.5 billion free trade agreement between the two countries – had a slim chance of going ahead.

Asked today what the chances were the embassy would be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Mr Morrison told reporters in Singapore: “All I have said is that we will consider the matter.”

The Prime Minister has copped a backlash over the idea from Indonesia, Palestine and other predominantly Muslim countries, as well as the federal Opposition, since he floated the idea the week before last month’s crucial Wentworth by-election.

The Guardian reports:

Scott Morrison will attempt to rescue the Australia-Indonesia free trade agreement in his first meeting with Joko Widodo on the sidelines of the Asean summit in Singapore.

Indonesia’s trade minister, Enggartiasto Lukita, has confirmed there will be no deal while Australia considers moving its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

“It can be signed any time but when you will sign it … depends on Australia’s position [on the embassy],” he told Indonesian media in Singapore on Tuesday, according to the Nikkei Asian Review.

Indonesia – the world’s most populous Muslim country and a strong supporter of Palestine – is furious at the potential relocation, which was announced during the Wentworth byelection.

Bolsonaro is right about the Cuban doctors By Silvio Canto, Jr.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/11/bolsonaro_is_right_about_the_cuban_doctors.html

For years, Cuba has sent doctors to Brazil. It started in 2013 under an agreement between the Castro regime and Brazil’s leftist government. The doctors were sent to poor areas. In reality, it was just another source of hard currency for the Cuban government.

Brazil’s President-elect Bolsonaro wants to change the arrangement and Cuba does not like it.

This is his tweet.

This is the news report from The Guardian:

Mr Bolsonaro said Brazil would offer asylum to Cuban doctors who wished to stay in Brazil.

“This is slave labour,” he said. “I couldn’t be an accomplice of that.”

Fight the Denigration of American History By Michael Finch

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/16/fight-the-denigration

American history is everywhere under attack. The recent skirmishes started with the campaign to remove Confederate statues, but it surely won’t end there. As our betters in America’s universities want us to know, the whole of American history is suspect. In our media, in the popular culture, and in our schools, we’re subject to an unending drumbeat of how America was founded to promote imperialism, colonialism, racism, sexism, and genocide—unimpeachable facts, we’re told, for which all Americans must forever share the burden of collective guilt and shame.

For America to atone for her sins, her history must be denounced and then purged.

This assault on America’s past is hardly news to the Right; the Left has been waging war against American history for well over a half a century. But given this ongoing and unceasing hostility, the response of so many conservatives to recent events is terribly disturbing. While it is perhaps it is to be expected given our predilection to fight amongst ourselves (e.g., the Trump debate on the Right), it is extremely ill-advised and destructive to the things we still share in common.

One thing we should have learned is that the Left never stops; there is no end to their relentless pursuit of destructive hate. There is no room for reasonable adjudication of their claims. We are hopelessly naïve if we believe that once the Robert E. Lee statues come down, the Left will be satisfied. We all know what will follow; indeed it has already started.

The nation was founded, in large part, by slaveholders, from the author of the Declaration of Independence, to the Father of our Country, to the prime author of our Constitution. Jefferson, Washington and Madison were slave owners and the list goes on. They will need to be removed just as swiftly and lustily as the statues of General Lee.

There was a time when conservatives defended the remembrances of our past. What happened? In just the past few years we have watched as conservatives—attempting, one assumes, to act in good faith and build good will—have gone along with (or at least not objected to) utterances such as John C. Calhoun was a precursor to Adolf Hitler and that the removal of statues of Confederate icons such as Robert E. Lee, and certainly Nathan Bedford Forrest, is necessary or at least, understandable. These fought for slavery and against the Union, after all. Beyond Lee and his lieutenants, the other true American hero that has come under attack from so many on the right is Andrew Jackson. Again, we hear the ridiculous comparisons to Hitler and Nazi Germany. This isn’t just sloppy history, it is disgraceful to the memory of the man who, whatever his flaws, did so much to solidify this nation.