RUTHFULLY YOURS

On Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon published an op-ed in The New York Times to ‎do what he does best: Pummel Israel while protesting against those who call him to task for it.‎

In the piece, Ban whined that the statements he made last week — first calling on both the ‎Jewish state and the “occupied Palestinian territories” to stop the violence, and then doubling ‎down on his assertion that Israeli “occupation” was the real culprit behind it — were unjustly ‎‎”twisted” to imply that he was justifying terrorism.‎

That the U.N. chief had said it was “human nature” for downtrodden people like the Palestinians ‎to express their frustration through violence had something to do with Israel’s adverse reaction to ‎his words, particularly since he hasn’t said such things about al-Qaida, Islamic State, Hezbollah ‎or Boko Haram. You know, the group that on Saturday night burned 86 Nigerian villagers alive, ‎among them many children.‎

But Ban nevertheless repeated his anti-Israel accusations.‎

To prove that he had been unfairly misquoted not once but twice, he clarified: “The stabbings, ‎vehicle rammings and other attacks by Palestinians targeting Israeli civilians are reprehensible. So, ‎too, are the incitement of violence and the glorification of killers. Nothing excuses terrorism. I ‎condemn it categorically.”‎

Readers did not have time to heave the slightest sigh of relief, however, since Ban proceeded ‎from there to explain why Israel is nevertheless responsible.‎

The State Department said today it’s trying to verify a Saudi report that nine Americans were among 33 swept up in an anti-terrorism operation in the kingdom.

The Saudi Gazette reported Sunday that four Americans were arrested a week ago and five more were taken into custody later in the week. Also seized during that period were 14 Saudis, three Yemenis, two Syrians, an Indonesian, a Filipino, an Emirati, a Kazakh and a Palestinian.

It wasn’t clear what their terror links may have been; the Saudis have arrested many suspected ISIS members over the past several months.

On Friday, four people were killed and 36 were wounded in a suicide bombing and shooting at Al-Ridha Mosque in Al-Ahsa province. The casualty count would have been higher had security not stopped the attackers at the gate.

A surviving 27-year-old terrorist at the mosque “sustained major injuries after being thrashed by worshippers,” Arab News reported.

It’s not know if any of the detained Americans were connected to that plot. The Arab News called the terror arrests a “pre-emptive crackdown.”

After the Hitler and Stalin disasters, Europeans swore “Never Again!” over and over again. Never Again to the Holocaust and Stalin massacres, but also to the many occasions of mass bloodshed that began with the wars of the Reformation.

And yet, today we can see Europe’s boastful old narcissism again.

It is a troubling and ominous sight.

I don’t mean to pick on Europe — there are plenty of mad political movements in the world. But Europe has been the source of all major international wars for centuries. Maybe it was only the Industrial Revolution that made Europe so destructive. But its neurotic repetition compulsion goes back at least to the invention of the printing press, which made mass political movements possible.

“Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad,” said the Greeks, and they were right. The very same signs of severe mental pathology seem to show up before every major bloodletting in history. If you look for historical patterns, you can see the signs long before mass violence breaks out again. Today, the most stunning example of pathology is visible in the suicidal policies of the European Union, a grossly dysfunctional family if ever there was one.

Many historians consider World War I to be the greatest disaster of the 20th century, because it killed a whole generation of highly educated men, who could have given constructive political and cultural leadership for decades to come. World War I itself was triggered by a century of tit-for-tat Franco-German wars, and it led directly to Hitler and the Cold War.

The war brought Lenin to power in Russia, followed by the first Marxist Terror. Hitler’s rise was driven by a desire to take revenge for WW I. Without WW I the world would have been spared much suffering.

Every European disaster echoes the previous one, which is why the historical pattern looks so neurotic. Europe’s propaganda line changes, but it always comes down to the same old narcissistic grandiosity, the same glorious rhetoric of Empire. Today the European Union is seriously intent on taking over the world via bureaucratic imperialism, using a network of international “laws” that nobody has ever voted for. Euro-imperialism is the reason behind the global climate fraud.

In the words of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the tunnels are being dug not only to “defend the Gaza Strip, but to serve as a launching pad to reach all of Palestine.” As one can see from any map of Palestine, “all of Palestine” does not mean living in peace alongside Israel; it means supplanting Israel.

To its credit, Hamas has been refreshingly transparent about its ambition, the elimination of Israel. Hamas wants the Palestinians to continue living in misery and bitterness. It is fertile soil for jihad recruitment.

A Palestinian Authority-Hamas unity government would mean tunnels not only along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, but also from the West Bank into Israel.

Forever looming, of course, is the illusion that Abbas will be able to persuade Hamas to abandon its aim to destroy Israel.

The myth that Hamas uses tunnels to smuggle food and other necessities to the “besieged” Gaza Strip has been buried under the rubble of the tunnel that collapsed last week east of Gaza City.

The incident, in which seven members of Hamas’s armed wing, Ezaddin Al-Qassam, were killed when the tunnel they were working in collapsed, provides further proof that the Islamist movement has stayed true to its charter, which calls for the total destruction of Israel.

Islamic State terrorists beheaded a 14-year-old boy in front of his parents, according to ARA News. The murder took place on January 30 in Jarablus – a city in northern Syria. The report said that the boy had missed Friday prayers at the mosque.

At the worship space in central Jarablus, extremist preachers who call for an Islamic Caliphate regularly call down death sentences for alleged sinners.

Human rights campaigner Nasser Taljbini reported that the Islamic sharia court had ordered the execution of sentence to take place in public. “Dozens of people attended the brutal execution, including the victim’s parents who were forced to witness the beheading of their own son,” Taljbini said.

ISIS forces boys and adolescents to fight alongside adult terrorists and sometimes forces them to participate in beheadings of captives.

Earlier this week ISIS reportedly arrested dozens of women in Jarablus for violating the Sharia dress code. According to their interpretation of Islam, women must be fully covered from head to foot. Infractions are dealt with harshly.

Our government is playing games with itself. And losing.

On Wednesday Chaim Levinson reported in Haaretz that for the first time in nearly two years, last week the Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria approved new building plans for a small number of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

Levinson also reported that last month Jerusalem’s municipal planning and building commission gave final approval to plans to build nearly 900 housing units in the southern neighborhood of Gilo. Initial approval was granted back in 2012.

But in the intervening three years, the commission refused to allow them to go forward.

From the report, we learn that the government’s critics in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria who claimed that it was barring Jewish building were right all along. Despite the government’s denials, the fact is that for at least the last year and a half, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers maintained an undeclared freeze on construction for Israeli Jews in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

During this period, Jews have only been permitted to build in these areas either on the basis of plans that had received final approval before the unofficial freeze took effect, or in cases where refusal to approve building would have involved admitting that a freeze was in effect. So, for instance, in areas where the rights of Jews to their property in Judea and Samaria have been challenged before the Supreme Court by EU-financed Israeli NGOs like Yesh Din, the government has defended those rights and so given permission for Jews to exercise their property rights.

The government opted to enact this unofficial building freeze, and so trample the civil rights of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens, in the hopes of convincing the Obama administration to protect Israel from Palestinian efforts to pass anti-Israel resolutions at the UN Security Council.

Iran’s capture of 10 American sailors earlier this month is proving to be the gift that keeps on giving — for Iran.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei awarded Iran’s highest military honor — the Fath (Victory) medal — to five Iranian commanders who captured the Americans off Farsi Island.

The ceremony shows that Iran continues to rub America’s nose in the humiliation.

Fox News:

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei awarded the Order of Fat’h medal to the head of the navy of the Revolutionary Guards and four commanders who seized the two U.S. Navy vessels, according to Reuters. Iran’s state media reported the news on Sunday.

In a tweet sent from his account Sunday, Khamenei misidentified those who were “captured” as being members of the Marines.

On Jan. 12, Iran captured 10 sailors whose boats “misnavigated” into Iranian waters, according to Defense Secretary Ash Carter. Though the sailors were released the following day, Iran released video of the sailors being captured, detained and apologizing for the incursion.

In one of the more enduring images from the video of the capture, the sailors are shown kneeling on the decks of the boats, with their hands on their heads, all while being watched by armed Iranian troops. Though U.S. officials initially sought to downplay the encounter, Carter recently said the images made him “very, very angry.”

N24 television has reported that up to 50% of “asylum seekers” have gone into hiding and their whereabouts are unknown. They presumably include economic migrants and others who are trying to avoid deportation if or when their asylum applications are rejected.

Tens of thousands of migrants destroyed their passports and other identity documents before arriving in Germany. It may take years for German authorities to determine the true identities of these people and their countries of origin.

Even if Germany sends these individuals back to the countries where they first entered the EU (usually Greece, Hungary or Italy), with a borderless Europe, migrants can easily make their way back to Germany.

German authorities are downplaying migrant lawlessness, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiment.

Migrants are still coming to Germany at the rate of about 2,000 per day.

“Eight to ten million migrants are still on the way.” – Development Minister Gerd Müller.

In other news from the receding tide of war, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has given medals to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who recently captured and humiliated American sailors.

Iran state media reported Sunday that the Supreme Leader had awarded the Fath, or Victory, medal to the head of the Revolutionary Guards navy and four commanders who were involved in seizing two U.S. Navy boats in January. The two patrol boats were seized after they somehow entered Iran’s territorial waters. The Pentagon hasn’t publicly explained what happened, but the Revolutionary Guards have said they believe the boats entered their waters by mistake.

The Guards released the boats and crew, but not before deliberately embarrassing the sailors, the Navy, and the U.S. by broadcasting photos of the Americans in captivity, including the one nearby of the U.S. sailors on their knees with their hands behind their heads under armed Iranian guard.

Secretary of State John Kerry initially hailed the return of the sailors as a sign of the great new era of U.S.-Iran cooperation in the wake of the nuclear accord. “I think we can all imagine how a similar situation might have played out three or four years ago, and the fact that today this kind of issue can be resolved peacefully and efficiently is a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure, and strong,” Mr. Kerry said.

Suspected Boko Haram members stormed a refugee encampment in northeast Nigeria, killing at least 60 people, many of them children burned to death in makeshift homes.

The attack spotlighted the Islamist insurgency’s brutal punishment of those fleeing its violence.

The assault began on Saturday night in the small town of Dalori, which houses a camp for Nigerians and other West Africans made homeless by the group’s violence, said a military spokesman, Col. Mustapha Anka. Several suicide bombers ran toward the camp’s gates while gunmen on motorcycles traversed the area firing assault rifles, he said.

The terrorists dressed in military fatigues, as Boko Haram fighters often do, said a survivor, Maina Bukar. Several of them set fire to mud-brick homes with families trapped inside. “I had to run and hide,” he said.

Many of the dead were children, Mr. Bukar said, adding that he helped recover 60 bodies. His account matches that of another survivor, cited by the Associated Press, who described hiding in a tree as Boko Haram militants firebombed homes below him. Three suicide bombers, all women, then ran into a group of people fleeing to a nearby village, the AP reported.