BOOKS Comments turned off

The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Free Speech (and Its Enemies) Robert Spencer delivers another indispensable book. Bruce Bawer

Posted By on July 25th, 2017

What would we do without Robert Spencer? In over a dozen definitive books, and on his invaluable Jihad Watch website, he has served as a one-man truth squad on the subject of Islam, providing readers with lucid, cogent accounts of the belief system itself, of the Koran, of jihad, and of the life of Muhammed. In Stealth Jihad (2008), he described the ways in which Islamic law is being forced upon America, subverting the nation’s constitutional freedoms in aggressive but peaceful and even, at times, seemingly reasonable ways. Now, in The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Free Speech (and Its Enemies), he looks at the same phenomenon from the other side – providing a compendious if not comprehensive history of the ways in which Western governments, media, and others in positions of authority have enabled stealth jihad and punished its critics.

Needless to say, it’s a depressing story. In my 2009 book Surrender, I told it up to that point – the Salman Rushdie fatwa, the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, the Danish cartoons. As it happens, Spencer kicks off his account with the cartoons, reminding us that the good guys (notably Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who refused to discuss freedom of speech with Muslim ambassadors) were outnumbered by the bad guys (the UN’s Louise Arbour and Doudou Diène, the EU’s Javier Solana, and – surprise! – Bill Clinton, all of whom condemned the cartoons). Spencer then takes a long leap back – not to Rushdie, but all the way back to Muhammed, who himself, Spencer points out, initiated the time-honored Islamic practice of eliminating critics tout de suite. After each of several poets – among them Ka’b bin a’l-Ashraf, Abu Afak, and Asma bint Marwan – publicly mocked Islam, Muhammed, prefiguring Henry II, asked aloud, “Who will rid me of [insert poet’s name here]?” Each of these versifiers was promptly dispatched by one of his faithful followers. And a beloved Islamic custom was born.

Spencer doesn’t just focus on Islam. By way of demonstrating to American readers that they shouldn’t put too much faith in the indelible, rock-solid nature of the First Amendment, he harks back to the 1798 Sedition Act – under which several individuals were imprisoned for mocking then-President John Adams – and the 1917 Espionage Act, under which Socialist Party leaders were jailed for opposing the draft. History, warns Spencer, “shows that First Amendment protections of free speech are most likely to be curtailed in a time of serious and imminent threats to the nation.” Have we reached that point now? After all, look at the procedural encumbrances that have been placed on the Second Amendment in many jurisdictions. Who’s to say that the same can’t happen to the First?

It’s not as if it such limitations haven’t been entertained at the highest levels. Spencer reminds us of a failed 2015 House resolution that decried “violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims”; of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 statement that “every constitutional right and amendment can be tailored in an appropriate way without breaching the Constitution”; of Hillary’s promise, in a 2011 Istanbul speech, to use “old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming” to silence Islam’s critics; of President Obama’s support for a UN Human Rights Council motion calling for the criminalization of “negative racial and religious stereotyping”; and of an Assistant Attorney General’s refusal “to affirm that the Obama Justice Department would not attempt to criminalize criticism of Islam.”

And of course Spencer revisits the Benghazi killings, every aspect of which, we’re reminded, was pure evil – Hillary’s mendacious attribution of the killings to an anti-Islam video; her promise to a victim’s father that its producer, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, would be “arrested and prosecuted”; Nakoula’s actual arrest and year-long (!) imprisonment (allegedly for a minor violation of probation); the cruelly cynical condemnations of the video by Obama himself as well as by innumerable administration flunkies, such as UN Ambassador Susan Rice. Every one of these actions, of course, was a betrayal not only of the First Amendment but of the dead in Benghazi, of the American people, and of the truth itself. Spencer quotes the estimable Kenneth Timmerman (whose 2016 book Deception: The Making of the YouTube Video Hillary and Obama Blamed for Benghazi I don’t think I’ve even heard of before) as calling Nakoula “the first victim of Islamic Sharia blasphemy laws in the United States.” During the presidential campaign, Democrats complained endlessly about conservatives’ supposed harping on Benghazi; in fact Hillary’s heinous conduct in this matter – forget everything else she’s ever done – should have been more than enough reason for a decent-minded electorate to repudiate her entirely. And to think that this wretch dared to call half of America deplorable!

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Chinese Fighter Forces U.S. Plane to Take Evasive Maneuvers J-10 jet fighter came within 300 feet of Navy reconnaissance plane over East China Sea By Dion Nissenbaum

Posted By on July 25th, 2017

WASHINGTON—A U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane was forced to take evasive action to avoid a possible mid-air collision after a Chinese jet fighter came within 300 feet of the American aircraft over the East China Sea, U.S. officials said Monday.

Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said a Chinese J-10 jet fighter rapidly approached under the U.S. EP-3 reconnaissance plane, slowed down and then flew in front of the American pilot, triggering the plane’s collision alarm system and forcing it to take evasive action.

The Chinese plane came within 300 feet of the U.S. plane, which was flying in international airspace, according to another defense official.

Capt. Davis said the incident was “uncharacteristic” of the Chinese military, calling it an exception, not the rule, for interactions between pilots in the area.

The incident is the latest in series of incidents between the U.S. and Chinese militaries as tensions rise on the Korean Peninsula.

In May, Chinese planes were involved in two similar incidents criticized by the Pentagon.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Israel Removes Metal Detectors at Jerusalem Holy Site Dismantling of devices comes amid flurry of diplomacy by U.S. and Western officials after a weekend of violence By Rory Jones

Posted By on July 25th, 2017

TEL AVIV—Israel on Tuesday began removing metal detectors from one of Jerusalem’s holiest sites, aiming to defuse tensions after their installation triggered widespread anger and protests among Palestinians and across the wider Arab world.

The detectors were installed earlier this month after Arab gunmen shot dead two Israeli policeman at the site known to Jews as the Temple Mount compound and Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. Their dismantling comes amid a flurry of diplomacy by U.S. and Western officials after a weekend of violence left three Israelis and at least three Palestinians dead.

Israel said it would replace the detectors with sophisticated technology. The plan will be implemented in the coming months and include greater police presence around the entrance to the central Jerusalem site.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the dismantling would satisfy Waqf, the Jordanian authority that administers the site and which called on Muslims to pray outside the compound in protest until the detectors were removed.

Israel on Sunday also installed cameras at the site, a move that was rejected by the religious body.

The Temple Mount plaza in Jerusalem’s Old City is sacred to both Muslims and Jews. It is home to the Al Aqsa mosque and the site of an ancient Jewish temple whose Western Wall is still visible and holy for Jews.

Only Muslims are allowed to pray on the plaza, but Jewish groups have been lobbying for that right. Jews can visit, but aren’t permitted to pray.

Some Muslims claim that Israel is attempting to control the site with the detectors, a charge that Israel denies. It has said the detectors and cameras are a security measure.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has condemned the installation of the cameras and said he would cut ties with Israel until they’re removed, although his office hasn’t detailed the specifics of the suspension. A spokesperson for the authority wasn’t immediately available to comment on the removal of the detectors. CONTINUE AT SITE

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Trump Shuts Down CIA Support for Syrian ‘Rebels’ After Years of Chronic Failure By Patrick Poole

Posted By on July 25th, 2017

The announcement last week that the Trump administration was shutting down the “covert” CIA program of arming Syrian “rebel” groups could not have come too soon.

As I’ve reported here in more than three dozen articles over the past three years, the CIA support program had suffered chronic failures, including defections of groups “vetted” by the CIA to al-Qaeda and ISIS, and leakage of weapons provided by the CIA into the hands of those same terror groups.

The pinnacle of this failure came in Obama’s last few hours in the White House in January. He ordered the bombing of a terror training camp that also hosted fighters from a CIA-“vetted” group embedded with al-Qaeda; that same group officially partnered with al-Qaeda a few days later.

Another defining moment of the debacle came last year, when CIA-backed groups fought against other CIA-backed groups:The Washington Post announced the cancellation of the CIA support program last week, claiming — without evidence — that the move was made to placate Russia:

Predictably, the “rebel” groups began flocking to al-Qaeda as soon as the CIA pipeline began to slow.

In response to the cancellation announcement, cheerleaders of the “vetted moderate rebels” complained that the U.S. hadn’t supported the groups enough. But that talking point was rebutted by Obama nearly three years ago. In an August 2014 interview with Tom Friedman in the New York Times, Obama dismissed the notion that more weapons would have given the “rebels” any kind of edge, and he expressed frustration at the inability to find enough “moderates”:

With “respect to Syria,” said the president, the notion that arming the rebels would have made a difference has “always been a fantasy. This idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth, and that they were going to be able to battle not only a well-armed state but also a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah, that was never in the cards.”

Even now, the president said, the administration has difficulty finding, training and arming a sufficient cadre of secular Syrian rebels: “There’s not as much capacity as you would hope.”

And yet, just a month later the GOP congressional leadership passed $500 million in additional funds for an eventual U.S.-backed, Pentagon-trained army of 15,000 “vetted moderates” to combat ISIS. In less than a year, that half-billion dollar boondoggle approved by Congress turned into a disaster. By July 2015, fewer than 60 fighters had been successfully vetted and trained — costing taxpayers nearly $4 million for each fighter: CONTINUE AT SITE

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump Sidelines State Dept., Tasks Trusted Staffers with Making Case to Decertify Iran By Debra Heine

Posted By on July 25th, 2017

President Donald Trump has reportedly sidelined the State Department and entrusted White House staffers with making the potential case for withholding certification of Iran at the next 90-day review of the nuclear deal, Foreign Policy reported.

According to the report, the president made the decision after his “contentious meeting” with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last week.

Via Newsmax:

“The president assigned White House staffers with the task of preparing for the possibility of decertification for the 90-day review period that ends in October — a task he had previously given to Secretary Tillerson and the State Department,” an unnamed source told FP.

FP explained that Trump relayed the new assignment last Tuesday to a group of White House staffers after he reluctantly signed certification.

“This is the president telling the White House that he wants to be in a place to decertify 90 days from now and it’s their job to put him there,” the source told FP.

According to FP, three unnamed sources described the new process as a way to work around the State Department, which the president felt had given him no other options but to sign certification.

“This is about the president asking Tillerson at the last certification meeting 90 days earlier to lay the groundwork so Trump could consider his options,” one of the sources said.

“Tillerson did not do this, and Trump is infuriated. He can’t trust his secretary of state to do his job, so he is turning to the few White House staffers he trusts the most,” the source added.

According to FP, there’s been friction for “months” between the White House and State Department over how to handle the Iran nuclear pact — something Trump had vowed to tear up during his presidential campaign.

Last Monday, as the administration was set to certify that Iran was meeting the necessary conditions, “the president expressed second thoughts around midday” and a meeting between Trump and Tillerson that afternoon “quickly turned into a meltdown,” FP reported.

Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist, and Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president, repeatedly asked Tillerson to explain the U.S. national security benefits of certification, FP reported.

“The president kept demanding why he should certify, and the answers Tillerson gave him infuriated him,” one source told FP.

Tillerson is “trying to be a counterweight against the hard-liners, trying to save the [nuclear deal], but how long can that last?” one unnamed senior State Department official told FP. “The White House, they see the State Department as ‘the swamp.'”

Tillerson’s communications adviser, R.C. Hammond, disputed the account of the meeting between Trump and Tillerson, however.

“Not everybody in the room agreed with what the secretary was saying,” Hammond said. “But the president is certainly appreciative that someone is giving him clear, coherent information.”

Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton advocated for the United States to withdraw from the Iran Deal last week in an opinion piece at The Hill, calling recertification “an unforced error.”

Certification is an unforced error because the applicable statute (the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, or “INARA”) requires neither certifying Iranian compliance nor certifying Iranian noncompliance. Paula DeSutter and I previously explained that INARA requires merely that the Secretary of State (to whom President Obama delegated the task) “determine… whether [he] is able to certify” compliance (emphasis added). The secretary can satisfy the statute simply by “determining” that he is not prepared for now to certify compliance and that U.S. policy is under review.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Schumer’s Criticism of Hillary Is Worse Than It Seems By Roger L Simon

Posted By on July 25th, 2017

Chuck Schumer has been much remarked upon, even praised in many quarters, for stating the obvious — that Hillary Clinton should stop blaming the sun, moon, and stars, and, of course, Russia for her demise and look to herself for her failure to win the presidency. She was a wretched candidate with no obvious reason for running. Indeed, the WikiLeaks from her campaign operatives are rife with emails searching for some justification for her candidacy other than gender.

The New York senator is clearly correct in his criticism but he has a larger unacknowledged problem that is ultimately far more serious: Hillary’s loss didn’t occur entirely due to her own ineptitude. She is not alone. Her party has no useful programs anymore. As Gertrude said of Oakland, there’s no there there. All they have is Trump bashing and, with the help of their media pals, that’s all they do — and the country knows it.

Yes, as we also all know, the Republicans have their issues, to put it mildly. For a party controlling practically everything, they are remarkably inept and self-destructive, but at least, beneath it all, they have the potential to come together and move forward. (Who knows if they will?) For the Democrats it is another matter. They are hamstrung on all sides.

On the left, they have the Bernie Sanders contingent. At first glance, these people are stuck in 1968, but in truth, they are stuck in (roughly) 1932 or is it 1867? (The publication of Das Kapital.) Bernie’s ideas are ye olde and moribund. He doesn’t even seem to understand (or admit) that the Europeans — whose version of socialism he continually touts — have been deserting that system right and left for years, going more free market than the USA currently is, particularly in the area of corporate taxes.

Bernie is Margaret Thatcher’s admonition about socialism eventually running out of other people’s money writ large. Sure, some young people are seduced by his seemingly idealistic palaver (actually it’s the reverse) but if he — or a younger clone — does run in 2020, one word will spell disaster for them: Venezuela. All socialist roads sooner or later point that way or to something even worse — the Soviet Union, China, etc. It doesn’t take a genius to point that out, nor to demonstrate the catastrophic deficits his proposals engender. (Hillary, scared of alienating his supporters, was terrible at this.) And the young people who vote — those concerned about jobs, not the sad Social Justice Warriors who have, unwittingly, already given up on life — will react accordingly.

HOMELAND SECURITY, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Necessity of Missile Defense By Chet Richards

Posted By on July 25th, 2017

The stocky man standing before me was immaculately turned out in a dark blue pin striped suit. With his thick New Jersey accent he could have been a movie Mafioso. But he wasn’t. Despite the cognitive dissonance this situation wasn’t as funny as it seemed. This apparent movie gangster was briefing me on Armageddon: full-scale nuclear war. He talked about a five-minute war – where all the nuclear weapons arrived at their targets simultaneously. He talked about a twenty-minute war: The missile launches would be simultaneous so that different targets, at different distances, would receive their doom at different times. He talked about megadeaths. He talked about the forever future of the world being determined in an hour. The subject was dead serious, for we were employed in the business of deterring such a catastrophe.

Nuclear weapons have three essential characteristics: They are very expensive, they must be delivered, and they are fearsome. These aspects dominate all modern strategic thinking.

Consider, first, the cost. Producing a fission bomb is a very expensive proposition. The old rule of thumb was $100 million for a regular production fission device. A hydrogen bomb is much more difficult and expensive. Developing just the capability to make such bombs is vastly more expensive than the production bombs, themselves. The real numbers are unknown except to a few. Moreover, making such devices small enough, compact enough, and lightweight enough to be useful as weapons is a nontrivial exercise.

Everything considered, the cost of these weapons is a stretch even for a well-developed economy. For a marginal economy, the cost of autonomous development is a back-breaker. It is usually cheaper to buy these things if they are available.

Because of their high cost, nations are economically inhibited from actually using nuclear weapons. They are usually considered both a prestige item and a deterrent. India and Pakistan both have long had deliverable nuclear weapons. Neither nation has been inclined to use them even though they have occasionally been at war with each other.

In the past, nations that have nuclear weapons have acted rationally rather than suicidally. But not all nations are rational. North Korea plainly is not. And, too, Iran has leaders who await the Twelfth Imam — the Mahdi — and the end of the world.

Having a bomb is not particularly useful unless it can be delivered. There are three existing methods of delivery: surface, airborne, and ballistic missile.

Surface delivery is by boat, truck, or cargo container. Existing radiation sensors can detect many types of bombs, but only at close range — a matter of yards. Thus, such weapons can be difficult to detect. Bombs must be funneled past sensors in order to be detected. We do that now at several ports of entry. Small boats and disbursed trucks are much more challenging. Only the future will tell if this kind of smuggling can be stopped. In any case, surface delivery can only wound a continental nation, not kill it. Thus, surface delivery is only useful for terrorism or blackmail.

Airborne delivery has old, and well-established, solutions. Effective bomber defense was developed in the 1950s.

Ballistic missile delivery is the current challenge. Long range ballistic missiles have three flight regimes: boost phase, exoatmospheric, endoatmospheric.

The best way to kill a missile, and its warheads, is in its boost phase when the missile is most vulnerable and its fiery rocket engines keep it from hiding. But boost phase interception requires that the defensive weapon be in a position to intercept the missile. This usually means space basing. Earth orbiting space-based High Energy Lasers can reach out over thousands of kilometers. So mere dozens of HEL battle stations can do the job. Space-based interceptor rockets, on the other hand, are constrained by their velocities. For the boost phase defense, up to thousands of space-based interceptor rockets may be needed.

Airborne lasers can kill up to hundreds of kilometers, but they must patrol outside the hostile’s borders – and therefore can only reach a limited distance into his territory. If one is willing to violate an adversary’s territory, then interceptor rockets could be mounted on high-flying stealth drone aircraft so as to circle over potential launch sites.

Exoatmospheric interception is probably the toughest system level challenge. This is not because it is hard. Rather, it is because of the geographical dynamics of the situation. The interceptors and sensors must be properly sited. The sensors must be close enough to the flight path see what is happening despite the Earth’s curvature. The interceptors must be able to reach the deployed warheads.

In this respect, it should be noted that President Obama’s abandonment of sensors and interceptors in the Czech Republic and Poland was pure appeasement of Russia and pure betrayal of Europe. The withdrawal made no technical sense. Such interceptors would work against an Iranian attack on Europe or the U.S. But they could not intercept Russian missiles unless Russia was attacking Europe. The trajectory dynamics precluded intercepting Russian ICBMs aimed at the U.S.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Al Gore Can’t Save the Global Warming Cult The fake science has been exposed. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on July 24th, 2017

Following Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord, Al Gore is releasing an update of his 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth. It’s called An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, in which no doubt we will hear the same apocalyptic hysteria of its predecessor, and the same lurid predictions that will never come true. The difference between the 2006 Academy Award winner and the updated version is that now volumes of counter-evidence and exposure of the manipulation of climate data make it obvious that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a progressive cult-belief and alternative energy boondoggle, not real science.

Earlier this month PJMedia covered a new report that seriously challenges the data all warmists rely on to buttress their case that the planet has been steadily warming to disastrous levels. This peer-reviewed paper examines how the raw data from weather stations are manipulated and altered by the three main purveyors of temperature data known as Global Average Surface Temperature (GAST)––The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, and the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research––before being used by other researchers. Incorporating more reliable satellite temperature data­­––which for going on two decades do not show any meaningful rise in temperature, let alone the steep rise that the GAST data show––the authors come to this devastating conclusion:

The conclusive findings of this research are that the three GAST data sets are not a valid representation of reality. In fact, the magnitude of their historical data adjustments, that removed their cyclical temperature patterns, are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data. Thus, it is impossible to conclude from the three published GAST data sets that recent year have been the warmest ever––despite current claims of record setting warming.

Moreover, the legitimate need to control for any environmental factors that could distort raw temperatures has been abused to produce a preordained conclusion:

While the notion that some “adjustments” to historical data might need to be made is not challenged, logically it would be expected that such historical temperature data adjustments would sometimes raise these temperatures, and sometimes lower them. This situation would mean that the impact of such adjustments on the temperature trend line slope is uncertain. However, each new version of GAST has nearly always exhibited a steeper warming linear trend over its entire history.

These types of manipulation of data, however, have been obvious going back to 1998 and Michael Mann’s infamous “Hockey Stick” graph, in which the Medieval Warm Period (950-1250), when temperatures were about as hot as they are today, was erased to show a steep linear rise in temperatures. And NOAA’s manipulation of data also has been exposed by the Real Climate Science blog, which examines NOAA’s charts and graphs claiming to show that 2016 was the hottest year on record, and U.S. temperatures have increased 1.5°F since the 19th century. In fact, critical analysis reveals that in 2016, “The percentage of hot days was below average, and ranked 80th since 1895. Only 4.4% of days were over 95°F, compared with the long term average of 4.9%.”

As for the second claim of a 1.5°F rise, “NOAA creates the warming trend by altering the data. The NOAA raw data shows no warming over the past century.” The altered data are made to correlate with the increase of atmospheric CO2, conveniently supporting the main hypothesis of a “greenhouse effect” in which temperatures increase along with the greater volume of CO2 in the atmosphere––a hypothesis dating back to 1896. Additionally, missing weather station raw data––42% of stations in 2016––have been replaced by fabricated data.

Warmists, of course, like most cultists have a whole repertoire of very unscientific tactics for swatting away these inconvenient truths. They use the ad hominem and genetic fallacies to demonize critics, accusing them of being stooges of the oil companies or flat-earth kooks, even as they ignore the warmists who have received billions in government grants and green-energy subsidies, and who like Al Gore indulge in end-of-times scenarios–– “Every night on the TV news is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation,” he told Fox News––redolent of Millerism and other eschatological melodramas. And of course, it’s okay for Al Gore to make millions of dollars off such subsidies and “renewable energy” investments. Not to mention celebrity status and perhaps political capital; he’s being touted as a presidential contender in 2020, the environmental knight who will slay the “denier” dragon Trump who besmirched our national reputation and endangered the planet by withdrawing the U.S. from the preposterous Paris Climate Accord. And let’s not forget global-warming “scientists” themselves, who over the years have reaped billions of federal dollars, with $22 billion of taxpayer money slated just for 2017. At least oil companies spend their own money.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians, Mother of Terrorist, Celebrate Slaughter Of Jewish Family “Praise Allah. I am proud of my son. May Allah be pleased with him.” Joseph Klein

Posted By on July 24th, 2017

A Palestinian mother extolled her 19-year old son’s “accomplishment” in the name of Allah. She exclaimed: “Praise Allah. I am proud of my son. May Allah be pleased with him.” The mother was not celebrating her son’s graduation, new job, marriage, fatherhood or some other life-affirming event. Rather, she was celebrating the deaths that her terrorist offspring, Omar al-Abed, brought to a Jewish family on July 21st. The family was about to sit down for a Sabbath dinner and to celebrate the birth of a grandson that same day when the Palestinian terrorist prodigy invaded the family’s home. Wielding a knife, he proceeded to kill a grandfather, his daughter and his son, and to seriously wound the grandmother. The massacre ended only after a neighbor, who belongs to an elite IDF unit and was home on leave, heard cries for help from the house and shot the terrorist. Al-Abed was eventually handcuffed and taken to a hospital for treatment of his wounds.

The terrorist’s mother was joined in her celebration by Palestinians dancing in the street in Gaza. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh reportedly phoned Omar al-Abed’s father to congratulate him for what his son had done to bring “pride to the nation.”

The trigger for this latest spurt of violence was said to be Israel’s decision to install metal detectors at the entrances leading to the Temple Mount. Israel took this action in response to the killings by terrorists on July 14th of two Israeli police officers guarding the holy site. The murders were carried out by Arab Israeli citizens who used guns previously smuggled into the compound. Israel installed metal detectors to prevent any further smuggling of arms.

Palestinian violence has been spreading since then, resulting in the deaths of four Palestinian rioters in confrontations with Israeli security forces trying to restore calm.

The spiraling violence is being spurred on by Muslim religious leaders and Palestinian officials claiming that Israel’s security actions were defiling the Al Aqsa mosque situated on the Temple Mount. Omar al-Abed picked up on this theme in the “will” he posted on Facebook three hours before his cowardly attack. He said he was acting against “the sons of apes and pigs who defile Al Aqsa.” Hoping for martyrdom, he posted: “I will go to heaven. How sweet death is for the sake of God, his prophet and for Al-Aqsa mosque.” The 19-year old terrorist, who is the apple of his mother’s eye, did not get his wish and will now have to answer for his crimes. No doubt, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will reward the terrorist’s family with a generous stipend while he remains in Israeli custody. That’s the way Abbas operates.

After first mouthing an insincere condemnation of the murderous attack on the police guarding the Temple Mount, Abbas has exploited the situation ever since. He announced that he was going to suspend all contacts with Israel until the metal detectors were removed. Abbas reached out to the United States and the so-called “international community” to pressure Israel into cancelling its heightened security measures. He reportedly said that unless Israel backed down, tensions over access to the holy site could spiral out of control. The United Nations Security Council is meeting in closed session Monday morning to discuss the crisis. Sweden, Egypt and France requested the special meeting. None of these countries have supported Israel in dealing with the ever present threat of Palestinian terrorism. They have bought into the Palestinians’ victimhood narrative.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government has been holding firm so far on its latest security measures. Tzachi Hanegbi, the minister for regional development and a senior member of the ruling Likud party, told Army Radio: “They (metal detectors) will remain. The murderers will never tell us how to search the murderers. If they (Palestinians) do not want to enter the mosque, then let them not enter the mosque.”

However, there is some division within the Israeli government on the utility of the metal detectors. Senior security officials have reportedly warned that the potential danger the metal detectors may pose in being used as a pretext for widespread violence may outweigh their usefulness. Thus, the government could be preparing a way to replace the metal detectors with a less controversial alternative. Israel has begun installing sophisticated security cameras at one of the entrances. While security officials have told Israeli media that the cameras are meant to complement the metal detectors, not replace them, the cameras may provide the Israeli government with a face saving way to defuse the immediate crisis. Prime Minister Netanyahu hinted as much when he said at his weekly cabinet meeting, “The only thing we want is to ensure no one can again take weapons in and carry out another attack. We’re willing to examine alternatives to the metal detectors, so long as the alternative ensures the prevention of the next attack.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Peter Smith Wan Secularism Is No Match For Islam

Posted By on July 24th, 2017

The contest is unequal. Those who believe in nothing beyond this mortal coil are no match for those inspired by religious faith. The battle could be engaged, maybe, if the diminishing Christian alter ego of Western secularity were muscular. Unfortunately, from its leaders down, appeasement predominates.

Is it well worthwhile watching and listening to Linda Sarsour. She is the former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York. This organisation has links through Qatar to the Muslim Brotherhood. She is an American born of Palestinian parents. She was a Bernie Sanders supporter and played a leadership role in the Women’s March in Washington, organised the moment Donald Trump won the presidency.

Apparently, she was invited seven times to the Obama White House. She is part of the grand and noxious alliance between the Left and Islam. Here, in Australia, think of left-faction Labor luminaries lining up with Islamists to throw Israel to the wolves.

By the way, advisedly, I said ‘watching and listening to’ Ms Sarsour, rather than just ‘looking her up’. The lady is resolute and you fully realise that only by seeing and hearing her speaking. She absolutely knows where she stands, gives no quarter, and is not the least bothered by engaging in racial stereotyping.

Switch to defenders of Western civilisation who speak with the same forthrightness? That’s right, where are they to be found? Well, maybe Marine Le Pen or Geert Wilders among politicians or Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer among US commentators. But there is a big difference. All those who I have mentioned are shunned, as extreme, by polite Western society. Geller and Spencer were refused entry into the UK in 2013. By contrast, Sarsour is embraced by mainstream Muslim society and by the Left at the highest levels.

sarsour tweet

Sarsour is not at all shy about invoking Allah in secular matters. There is nothing strange about this in an ideology which has no separation between mosque and state. Herein lies the problem for the non-Muslim rest of us.

sarsour tweet II

The strength of Western enlightened society has been its secular nature. Church and state are separate in nations built on Christian values. These values allowed capitalism to flourish and bring about unimagined prosperity. However, part and parcel of such values is to let discordant voices be heard. Freedom and tolerance — a strength — has become a chink in the armour.

Conservative commentators fall over themselves to be balanced and fair when faced with an imam carrying the religious equivalent of Mein Kampf in his back pocket. (‘Oh, I am sure you wouldn’t personally beat your wife even though you are prepared to stand by the words of Allah, which precisely instructs husbands to beat their disobedient wives.’) And so, the contradiction, along with many others, wafts away into the ether never to be chased down.

An irreligious, multicultural, society is ill equipped to defend itself against the menace of religious fundamentalism when those embracing such fundamentalism are part of a rapidly growing minority group. It can’t be done. The menace simply grows. It grows because there is no effective counterweight.

Muslims enjoy and suffer the same experiences as do we all in everyday life. But there is more to them. They live out the possibility of an afterlife. Whereas this is all there is for your average Joe or Jill.