RUTHFULLY YOURS

This is a pithy comment left by a reader of Standpoint “But Israel’s normal has become Europe’s normal — a fact that is difficult to accept.” Difficult to accept, but easy to understand. Both regions are enriched by the Religion of Peace. That was inevitable in Israel’s case, but came about in Europe because of the treachery of our politicians, media and academics, who ignored the wishes of the electorate and insisted that only ignorant racists and xenophobes could object to huge numbers of people moving to Europe from the Third World. What could possibly go wrong, you plebs?”

This is how it happens these days, isn’t it? Last February it was during an interval at the theatre, turning on my mobile phone to find a text from a friend in Copenhagen saying the bullets had just missed her but that she was alive. A few weeks earlier, it had been a broadcaster asking for reaction on Paris before I had heard anything about it or whether any friends had been killed. This time it was a text from a close family member at a dinner in Paris I had chosen to miss in order to try to finish my book on Islam and Europe. They said there had been shooting nearby but they were fine. I texted back that perhaps they should get the bill and go home. Soon the phone began to ring and snapshots of the horror in Paris began to flood in.

The crazy ring-arounds have become a feature of modern European life. Then the lucky ones have the stories of the near-misses: friends who left before the attack, those who survived because they chose to drop their bag off at home before heading to the restaurant. Facebook has a new feature where people can signal themselves “safe” after a major incident anywhere. There is something comforting and horrifying about this. It’s not a surprise to me because I know this is normal life in Israel. But Israel’s normal has become Europe’s normal — a fact that is difficult to accept.

New York and Washington 2001; Madrid 2004; London 2005; Mumbai 2008; Toulouse 2012; Brussels 2014; Paris 2015; Copenhagen 2015; Sousse 2015; Sinai 2015; Beirut 2015. And now Paris again. Last month’s attack, even more devastating than January’s, has not broken French resistance: reports that Parisians were “gripped with fear” were false. But President Hollande’s declaration of war may be just an escalation in rhetoric.

How much havoc do the jihadis have to wreak before Europe and America resolve to tackle the source of the evil: the ideology of Islamism itself? How many have to die or be maimed — some 500 people in the Paris atrocity alone — before Western leaders recognise that the self-proclaimed Caliph Ibrahim, alias Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and his butchers of Islamic State wish to kill us — all of us, “Jews and crusaders” alike — not because of what we do but because of who we are?

In other words, the entire scheme was simply to get more bodies into the aging German work force and hope like hell, in less than a single generation, Muslims from the ummah would become post-Christian Germans. Good luck with that:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policy has attracted praise from all over the world. Time magazine and the Financial Times newspaper recently named her Person of the Year, and delegates applauded her for so long at her party’s convention on Monday that she had to stop them.

The speech that followed, however, may have surprised supporters of her policies: “Multiculturalism leads to parallel societies and therefore remains a ‘life lie,’ ” or a sham, she said, before adding that Germany may be reaching its limits in terms of accepting more refugees. “The challenge is immense,” she said. “We want and we will reduce the number of refugees noticeably.”

Although those remarks may seem uncharacteristic of Merkel, she probably would insist that she was not contradicting herself. In fact, she was only repeating a sentiment she first voiced several years ago when she said multiculturalism in Germany had “utterly failed.” “Of course the tendency had been to say, ‘Let’s adopt the multicultural concept and live happily side by side, and be happy to be living with each other.’ But this concept has failed, and failed utterly,” she said in 2010.

I checked, and this does not appear to be an Onion-like spoof. Emirates 24/7 appears to be a legitimate news site based in Dubai, with stories like “New hospitals in Dubai: Meraas Healthcare launched” and “New UAE rules on import of pesticides.”

It reports:

Hussain bin Ibrahim Al Hammadi, Minister of Education, and Chairman of the Federal Authority for Government Human Resources, has declared Thursday, December 24, an official holiday for the public sector to mark the birth anniversary of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), postponed from December 23.

A circular issued by the Minister of Education stated that the decision is in implementation of the provisions of Paragraph 5, Article 100 of the Cabinet Resolution No. 13 of 2012 and regulations of the decree of Federal Law No. 11 of 2008 on human resources in the federal government and its amendments, which defines the public holidays of ministries and federal authorities in the country.

Just coincidentally upstaging Christmas. And putting the holiday on the Gregorian calendar used by the West, not on the lunar calendar used by Islam.

The first-ever global meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) network of some 200 jurisdictions over the weekend in Paris, “to discuss actions…to combat the financing of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) …and to combat the financing of terrorism,” will probably make the participants feel good, but little to cut-off state sponsorship to feed the fast growing radical Islamist movement.

The development of new technologies and encryption of online communications and financial transactions and other non traditional methods to transfer money present serious obstacles to monitor funding of large number of terrorists and their supporters. But the most important obstacle is the West’s decades long willful blindness to name and shame Saudi Arabia as the biggest terror financier, as well as allowing the development and spread of opaque Sharia finance institutions and Islamic charities.

Thus, Germany’s Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel recent condemnation of Saudi Arabia’s ongoing funding the spread of radical Islam in the West was surprising. “Wahhabi mosques all over the world are financed by Saudi Arabia. Many Islamists who are a threat to public safety come from these communities, he told Bild am Sonntag, the largest-selling German Sunday paper. Even more unexpected was his statement: “We have to make clear to the Saudis that the time of looking away is over.”

The Saudi role in foresting Islamic terrorism was no secret. Before it came under some criticism after the al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Saudi Kingdom used to openly brag about the large donations to build, maintain and supply mosques, Islamic centers, madrassas, stocking them with Wahhabi Imams and ulemas (religious teachers), covering expenses such as salaries, pensions, and “terrorcare” that included hospitals and other public services.

Rome — There are people being crucified. Families are being shackled. Unspeakable things are being done to women. Christians are living the Way of the Cross in the most dramatic of ways. True Christian martyrdom is happening in the world today.

“The whole Middle East without exception is presently engulfed by a nightmare that seems to have no end and that undermines the very existence of minorities, particularly of Christians in lands known to be the cradle of our faith and early Christian communities,” said His Beatitude Mor Ignatius Youssef III Younan, patriarch of Antioch for the Syriac Catholic Church.

Cardinal Charles Bo of Burma talked about the need to bring greater visibility to the suffering of many Christians in the Middle East today, in a particular way. “In some parts of the Middle East,” he said, “Christianity is being wiped out en masse.” The evening before, a Vatican official was clear in calling out radical Islam as the driver of what Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople called the “obliteration” of Christians.

The word “genocide” is being used frequently here in Rome, at a conference titled “Under Caesar’s Sword: Christian Response to Persecution,” co-sponsored by the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs at Georgetown University and the Center for Civil & Human Rights at the University of Notre Dame.

“Compassion is the common religion here today,” Cardinal Bo said. “Christianity was born with the blood of the lamb. At this very moment some brother or sister is shedding blood for just one reason: He or she is a Christian.”

If the Jews do one thing well, it’s to imprint their mark on new lands. And if that imprint describes one pattern, it would be some black punishment for their trouble. As dark night follows bright day, this has been the law of exile. Only to deceive, many domiciles appeared to be the land of God’s promise. It would be hard for third or fourth generation Jews in South Africa not to have that kind of feeling about the country their grandparents adopted, warts and all.

“We built this country with heart and soul.” This slogan from South Africa’s 2015 “Annual Jewish Achiever Awards” was not mere trumpet blowing; there are records to support the blare. From the early mining magnates until today, South African businesses and the sciences have been led by Jews. But our community, far from shaping today’s events, finds itself the target.

Perhaps South African Jews were too occupied making their mark to get their hands dirty with government because, unlike American Jewry, they never cared to mix politics with business. The Apartheid era did bring activists out in droves, but more as communist ideologues than as Jews. When majority rule came in 1994, the transition was better than many had been right to fear — for by that time Jews in large numbers had skipped to greener pastures. Only their timing was bad. They skipped too early, and lost out on a golden age. Under the first black President, Nelson Mandela, a Jew could enjoy the old privileged life, now with a clear conscience.

The chief rabbi was the late Cyril Harris, a bonny Scotsman and Mandela’s bosom buddy. The Rabbi stood on the inauguration podium next to his president, and the world saw and heard his ringing words from Isaiah. Here was the moment when communal pride and the sense of belonging peaked. But under the law of exile, there would soon be a price to pay.

In fearing the worst, the émigrés may have been prescient. A decade later, a threatening cloud gathers over the Jewish community in South Africa. Jews fret that a heavyweight business clout can’t seem to buy any lobbying power. Muslim interests on the other hand are all over the government, like a rash. Jews perforce have had to fall back on the path of least resistance. Two feeble dictums have been the Jewish Board’s rule of thumb: 1) Do and say nothing that might close government doors on dialogue, and 2) Avoid offending the nation by offending its favorite son, Archbishop Tutu. It was soon made obvious that both sacred cows felt free to treat the Jewish community with disdain.

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

— Juliet, Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

The agreement adopted in Paris at 7:28 p.m. local time Saturday doesn’t call itself a treaty, but in every other respect it is one. Four years ago at the Durban climate conference, climate negotiators decided to launch a process “to develop a protocol, another legal instrument, or an agreed outcome with legal force.” If the Paris Agreement is to meet the requirements of the Durban Platform, legal scholar and Clinton-era climate-change coordinator at the State Department Daniel Bodansky states that “the Paris Agreement must constitute a treaty within the definition of the Vienna Convention.”

Article Two (a) of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties defines a treaty as an “international agreement concluded between states in written form and governed by international law.” Under the principle of pacta sunt servanda (“agreements must be kept”), treaties are binding on the parties and must be performed by them in good faith, Bodansky observes in a recent book. Article 14 of the Paris Agreement establishes a compliance mechanism, and Article 20 duly sets out the process for the depositing of “instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval, or accession.”

Article Two of the Constitution of the United States circumscribes the power of the executive to make treaties by stating that the president “shall have the power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.” The question then arises whether the Paris Agreement imposes new legally binding obligations on the United States. American negotiators were mindful of this when Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly threatened that the U.S. would walk out unless negotiators removed from the draft treaty the specification that developed countries would begin providing $100 billion a year in climate funding, by 2020. The Business Standard of India reported that Kerry said: “I would love to have a legally binding agreement. But the situation in the U.S. is such that legally binding with respect to finance is a killer for the agreement.”

The perversity of European attitudes toward, and treatment of, Israel were on ludicrous display in recent weeks. Almost simultaneously, a group of high-level retired military officers cleared Israel of the war-crimes charges thrown at it for the Gaza war of 2014 — and an Israeli officer was detained in Britain on exactly such war-crimes charges. The Jerusalem Post reported that

a retired IDF officer was detained for questioning in recent weeks upon landing in Britain on allegations that he was involved in war crimes during the Gaza war in the summer of 2014. The reserves officer was questioned for hours and was only released following Foreign Ministry intervention. . . . It is thought that the officer’s name was on a list prepared by pro-Palestinian groups naming IDF soldiers involved in alleged war crimes during Operation Protective Edge.

Meanwhile, the “High Level Military Group” or HLMG concluded exactly the opposite. Here is the final conclusion of its detailed 80-page report:

We can be categorically clear that Israel’s conduct in the 2014 Gaza Conflict met and in some respects exceeded the highest standards we set for our own nations’ militaries. It is our view that Israel fought an exemplary campaign, adequately conceived with appropriately limited objectives, and displaying both a very high level of operational capability as well as a total commitment to the Law of Armed Conflict. It did this under challenging circumstances on a formidably complex urban battlefield.

Leon Aron is the director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of, among other works, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life and Roads to the Temple: Memory, Truth, Ideas, and Ideals in the Making of the Russian Revolution 1987–1991.

As conscientious chroniclers do, Michael Doran, in his painstaking examination of the Obama administration’s disastrous foreign policy toward Russia, both instructs us and provokes thoughts and questions that may exceed the intended scope of his essay. Specifically, one is drawn to ask: what caused this policy to be so dismal, so strewn with mistakes, so strikingly unable to predict Moscow’s behavior or to catch up with Vladimir Putin’s increasingly bold moves?

Between historical explanations based in theories of conspiracy and those premised on assumptions of incompetence, it’s usually prudent to plump for incompetence; or so we’re told. But a number of those advising President Obama on Russia are personally known to me to be quite competent, so that explanation won’t wash. Doran offers a different explanation, one that focuses on the beliefs of the president. Barack Obama, he writes, is ideologically wedded to a strategic understanding that is at once false, impervious to correction by reality, and unswayable by the counsel of advisers. This may well be so, but the problem may also be deeper and require elaboration.