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The ICC’s War Crimes by Caroline Glick

By on May 28th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20665/icc-war-crimes

Far from starving or deliberately killing civilians, Israel is doing more to protect the lives of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip than any military has done to protect the lives of civilians in war zones in human history.

The ICC’s goal in propagating this slander against the Jewish state is to criminalize the State of Israel and pave the way for its annihilation by denying it the right to self-defense.

[I]t is also illegal. The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel. Israel is not a signatory of the Rome Treaty, which founded the ICC, and set out its powers and jurisdiction. To get around that fact, the ICC illegally accepted “Palestine” as a signatory to the treaty.

The PA was established in 1994 by force of the bilateral agreements the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signed with Israel during the 1990s. Those agreements —popularly known as the “Oslo Accords”— bar the PA from seeking membership as a sovereign state in international bodies, including the ICC.

Unlike the libelous accusations Khan raised against Israel’s elected leaders, Khan’s provision of material support for Hamas’s war of genocide is an actual war crime.

First, the United States should indict Hamas’s terror masters, including senior leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohamed Deif, Ismail Haniyeh, and other top Hamas terrorists for the murder, rape, kidnapping and torture of U.S. citizens on and since Oct. 7. Not only should these war criminals not get a free pass for their actions, they should be held criminally liable by real courts, as opposed to the ICC’s kangaroo court….

Second, Khan and his associates should be charged with extortion of U.S. elected officials…. [O]n May 3, the ICC issued a statement that Khan posted on his X account, threatening action against anyone acting against them.

As Netanyahu explained, the ICC’s move against Israel won’t daunt him as he leads the country in this difficult war for national survival. But actions taken against Israel by the ICC and similarly corrupt international bodies form noxious precedents that can be used in the future against free nations fighting genocidal terror armies and regimes. If permitted to proceed unpunished for its crimes, the ICC will gain in power and stature. And just as it is using its power against the lone Jewish state today, so it will use it against the United States tomorrow.

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The EU’s empire of censorship Brussels’ war on ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’ is a brazen attack on democracy. Norman Lewis

By on May 28th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/27/the-eus-empire-of-censorship/

There is another war going on in Europe outside of Ukraine. It is one being waged by the EU elites, over what can be said, heard and thought. This is a war against ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’, which the EU claims pose an existential threat to democracy. In truth, it is the Eurocrats’ censorious designs that are the real danger to Europeans’ liberties.

With the European Parliament elections fast approaching in June, the EU has ramped up its censorship campaign. Last month, several mayors of Brussels attempted to forcibly shut down the NatCon Brussels event. And last week, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen pledged to create a ‘European Democracy Shield’ if she were re-elected for a second term. She says this would combat ‘foreign interference and manipulation’ by establishing a new unit dedicated to detecting and removing online disinformation.

Von der Leyen’s speech follows a similar one made in January by EU foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell. He warned that disinformation is ‘not about a bomb that can kill you, it is about a poison that can colonise your minds… [that] spreads like a cancer and puts the health of our democracies at risk’.

Not to be outdone, Věra Jourová, European Commission vice-president for values and transparency, spoke dramatically of ‘rivers of dirt and hatred and lies’ at a conference organised by the European Digital Media Observatory last week. She also suggested that the EU must increasingly deploy AI to ‘detect manipulation’ and ‘better enforce what is qualified as crime’.

Brussels’ warnings about hate speech and disinformation have become almost apocalyptic.

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The smearing of JK Rowling How the lies of trans activists turned a beloved children’s author into an international hate-figure. Lauren Smith

By on May 28th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/28/the-smearing-of-jk-rowling/

If you’d have said 10 years ago that JK Rowling would become the No1 hate figure of the cultural elites, people would have thought you were mad.

Until quite recently, she was a beloved children’s author, whose Harry Potter series is credited with turning a generation of young people on to literature. The only people who raged against her were ultra-religious Christians in the US, terrified that her ‘Satanic’ novels would teach their children the ways of witchcraft.

For most of her career, Rowling was embraced by the great and the good. After all, she was immaculately liberal-left. She voted Labour. She loved Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. She voted Remain in the EU referendum. She was outspoken about feminism and women’s rights. What could she possibly be demonised for?

The answer? She believes in a thing called biological sex. She doesn’t believe that men can become women – views that are held by the vast majority of the population.

In 2018, her dark secret began to surface. Rowling had long been an active user of X, or Twitter as it was known back then. And it came to light that she had ‘liked’ a tweet describing transwomen as ‘men in dresses’. This was back when the trans issue had barely entered mainstream consciousness. So, when Rowling’s spokesperson claimed she had liked the tweet by accident, there was an element of plausible deniability.

Then, in 2019, Rowling made her views plain. This was the year that researcher Maya Forstater was forced out of her job at a think-tank due to her trans-sceptical opinions. Forstater took her case to court and eventually established that gender-critical beliefs must be protected from discrimination under the UK Equality Act. Rowling tweeted her support.

‘Dress however you please’, she said, ‘call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya.’

This raised the hackles of some among Rowling’s audience. But it wasn’t until the next year that the campaign against her really took off.

In June 2020, Rowling took to Twitter again to mock the use of awkward and nonsensical ‘trans-inclusive’ phrases to describe women. Responding to a headline which used the phrase ‘people who menstruate’, Rowling quipped: ‘I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?’

Later that month, she responded to this Twitter controversy with a lengthy essay on her blog. Here, she clearly – and compassionately – articulated her position on the gender issue. In it, she made clear that she has no problem with transgender people. But she is concerned that the attempt to erase biological sex threatens hard-won rights. She is worried about the effects trans ideology might have on female healthcare, education, child safeguarding, freedom of speech – all completely valid concerns, you might think.

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Iran Closing In on Nukes; World Targets Israel Hypocrisy and cynicism beyond all bounds. P.David Hornik

By on May 28th, 2024

https://pdavidhornik.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=email-subscribe&r=

From the Wall Street Journal:

On Monday, the U.N. atomic-energy agency reported that Iran’s stockpile of 60% highly enriched uranium rose 20.6 kilograms to 142.1 kg as of May 11 from three months earlier, its highest level to date.

U.S. officials say that material could be converted into weapons-grade enriched uranium in a matter of days. It would then be enough to fuel three nuclear weapons.

Three Iranian nuclear bombs in a matter of days—sound alarming? Yes, but not, seemingly, to Washington.

The U.S. is arguing against an effort by Britain and France to censure Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s member-state board in early June, the diplomats said. The U.S. has pressed a number of other countries to abstain in a censure vote, saying that is what Washington will do, they said.

A censure resolution might not seem a very strong measure this late in the day—and it isn’t. But, at least:

Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said a censure resolution would help set out a record of Iranian noncompliance that could ultimately lead to a snapback of international sanctions.

British and French officials are telling Washington that an IAEA censure resolution could pave the way for a formal rebuke by the UN Security Council. The Biden administration says Russia and China would just veto it, handing Tehran a diplomatic coup. On that, the administration may be right.

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‘Groom These Women’: The Persecution of Christians, April 2024 by Raymond Ibrahim

By on May 26th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20663/persecution-of-christians-april

On April 26, a Muslim man named Muhammad Shehroz, led a 4-year-old Christian boy, Moosa Masih to a field where he brutally sodomized and then sought to strangle the child to death. — britishasianchristians.org, May 3, 2024, Pakistan.

Even though it is illegal in Pakistan to marry underage girls, the authorities refused to act on the Christian family’s pleas to recover their daughter, due to a birth certificate that had obviously been forged, which claimed she was 18. A court subsequently ruled that, being of age, Ameen had willingly converted to Islam and married a Muslim man. — britishasianchristians.org, April 28, 2014, Pakistan.

“On April 5th, members of the jirga [Pakistani conflict resolution team] forcibly arrived at my residence and coerced me to accompany them to the police station. They threatened to abduct my daughters if I dared to resist,” said the father of Kainat Pervaiz, a 16-year-old Christian girl who was abducted and raped. They coerced him to drop the case in exchange for 50,000 rupees (USD $180) and the proposed marriage of his daughter to her rapist as a form of “compensation.” — britishasianchristians.org, April 28, 2014, Pakistan.

[A] massive riot broke out in an asylum shelter after some Muslims noticed a resident wearing a cross necklace. — medforth.biz, April 13, 2024, Germany.

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of April 2024.

The Muslim Slaughter of Christians

Uganda: On Apr. 10, a Muslim man murdered his mother for refusing to leave the Christian faith. Two months earlier, Sulaina Nabirye, a 50-year-old widow, had put her faith in Christ. Immediately, her 31-year-old son, Arajabu Mukiibi, began to pressure her to return to Islam, according to a relative (name withheld for security reasons):

“During the month of Ramadan, she complained of her son pressuring her to stop attending church and revert back to Islam, since he was studying to become an imam at Bugembe Mosque. When she refused to convert back to Islam, he stopped visiting her at her house and threatened to chase or even kill her.”

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Bravo! Dina Rubina: Rude and Crude but Definitely Justified

By on May 26th, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/israel/2024/05/rude-and-crude-but-definitely-justified/

Pushkin House in London, in collaboration with the University of London, recently invited Israeli author Dina Rubina (above) to a literary discussion on Zoom about her books. Then she received the email below from the meeting’s moderator, Nataliya Rulyova, who demanded she state where she stands “on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” because other invited participants need to “understand your position on this issue before responding”. That note and Ms Rubina’s blistering response are reproduced below.

From: Nataliya Rulyova

Hello, Dina!
The Pushkin House announced our upcoming conference on social media and immediately received critical messages regarding your position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They wanted to understand your position on this issue before responding. Could you formulate your position and send it to me as soon as possible?
— Natasha

Then followed Ms Rubina’s response

From: Dina Rubina
To: Nataliya Rulyova

Dear Natalia! 
You’ve written beautifully about my novels, and I’m so sorry for the time you’ve wasted, because apparently we have to cancel our meeting.

The universities of Warsaw and Torun have just canceled lectures by the wonderful Russian-speaking Israeli writer Yakov Shechter on the life of Galicia’s Jews in the 17th and 19th centuries “to avoid making the situation worse.” I suspected that this would affect me too, since academia is now the main breeding ground for the most disgusting and virulent anti-Semitism, disguised as so-called “criticism of Israel.” I was expecting something like this, and I even decided to write you an email about it… but I put it aside. It’s time for me to publish it.

This is what I want to say to all those who expect from me a quick and obsequious report on my position regarding my beloved country, which currently lives (and always has) surrounded by ferocious enemies who seek to destroy it . My country which is waging a just war today against a rabid, ruthless, deceptive and cunning enemy. The last time I apologized was in elementary school, in the principal’s office, I was 9 years old. Since then, I have been doing what I think is right, listening only to my conscience and expressing exclusively my understanding of the world order and human laws of justice.

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German Police Stop Muslim Terror Attack on Synagogue One of the Muslim men was shot after attacking a police officer. Daniel Greenfield

By on May 26th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/german-police-stop-muslim-terror-attack-on-synagogue/

We hear a lot of talk about “Islamophobia”, but the proportion of Muslim terror plots against other people’s houses of worship is incredible and a truly global phenomenon. There are so many that all you can do is say, “here’s another one.”

And here’s another one.

German authorities said on Friday that they have arrested two men suspected of plotting a knife attack on worshippers at a synagogue in the southwestern city of Heidelberg, The Associated Press reported.

The pair discussed “the killing of one or more visitors in the attack on the synagogue followed by death as martyrs, whereby the two persons wanted to be shot to death by police,” authorities said in a joint statement quoted by AP.

The two suspects are German citizens, with the 18-year-old also holding Turkish nationality, authorities said. Their names were not released.

One of the Muslim men tried to attack the police.

The 24-year-old, armed with knives, was shot during the search around three weeks ago when he ran towards a police officer and did not respond when spoken to. He was injured. According to earlier statements by investigators, the suspect suddenly fled out of a window with several kitchen knives during the operation. There he deliberately threw a knife at a police officer and ran towards him with other knives.

He was doing what his religion taught him to do. And these two men were far from alone. There is a reason this keeps happening over and over again, and it’s not about Israel or even Jews. It’s about Islam.

The sooner we come to terms with that reality, the sooner we can intelligently address the situation.

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What’s Spanish for ‘Chutzpah’? Bret Stephens

By on May 26th, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/21/opinion/thepoint#spain-palestine-recognition

This week’s announcements by the governments of Ireland, Norway and Spain that they will recognize a Palestinian state are drawing predictable reactions from predictable quarters. Some see them as useful rebukes to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war strategy in Gaza that will further isolate Israel. Others, including me, view them as feckless gestures that reward Hamas’s terrorism.

That’s a column for another day. For now, it’s enough to note the Spanish government’s sheer nerve.

Though Spanish public opinion overwhelmingly supports swift recognition of Palestinian statehood, it’s another story when it comes to Spain’s own independence movements. In 2017 the regional government of Catalonia held a referendum, declared illegal by Spain’s Constitutional Court, on the question of Catalan independence. Though turnout was low — in part because Spanish police forcibly blocked voting — the Catalan government said nearly 90 percent of voters favored independence.

The central government in Madrid responded by dismissing the Catalan government, imposing direct rule. Two years later, under the current left-wing government of Pedro Sánchez, Spain sentenced nine Catalan independence leaders to prison on charges of sedition, though they were later pardoned. This year the lower house of the Spanish Parliament voted to grant amnesty to those involved in the 2017 campaign as part of a deal to prop up Sánchez’s government, despite a Senate veto. Seventy percent of the Spanish public opposes the amnesty.

Catalans aren’t the only ethnic minority in Spain that has sought independence, only to encounter violent suppression. In the 1980s the Spanish Interior Ministry under a socialist government responded to the long-running Basque separatist movement with state-sponsored death squads, notoriously responsible for a string of kidnappings, tortures and assassinations. The Spanish government called the separatists terrorists — as indeed some were — though their tactics look tame compared with Hamas’s. By the time the conflict ended in 2011, it had claimed more than 1,000 lives.

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The Free World: An Alarming Status Report by Majid Rafizadeh

By on May 25th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20660/free-world-alarming-status

It seems urgent for the long-term survival of the United States and the Free World – where people enjoy unprecedented freedom of speech, property rights, economic opportunity, religious freedom and other civil liberties – not to accept assaults on these hard-won achievements either at home or abroad.

Adversaries have become increasingly empowered, and allies may well be losing confidence in the West’s leadership. This week it was announced that three countries in Europe, Ireland, Norway and Spain – all of which have long, unfortunate histories of antisemitism – plan to recognizing a Palestinian State that will be terrorist.

US President Joe Biden assured Russia in 2022 that a “minor incursion” into Ukraine would be all right. Predators do not “do” minor.

The Biden administration handed over Afghanistan to a terrorist group, the Taliban; now it looks as if the Biden administration and these three racist countries in Europe are determined to hand Gaza to another terrorist group, Iran’s proxy, Hamas, which openly says it is more committed than ever to destroying its free, democratic neighbor, Israel.

Israel is trying to protect its citizens and maintain its sovereignty in the face of relentless aggression, while battling not only Hamas but also two illegitimate antisemitic courts (the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice), the antisemitic United Nations, antisemitic European countries, well-funded antisemitic demonstrations in the West, and the Biden administration… [which] for years has been trying to force out Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The US would doubtless prefer an Israeli prime minister who would allow Hamas to remain in control of Gaza and reconstitute its military capabilities; who would allow the creation of a terrorist Palestinian state bordering Israel, and who would stand aside as genocidal Iran obtains nuclear weapons.

In addition, the Communist Chinese regime, seeing the Biden administration reward aggression, past, present, and presumably future, is encircling the Philippines and Taiwan and sending tens of thousands of young men of military age in packs across America’s southern border, and more than 5,000 over its northern one.

One can only wonder which of the likely leaders of the Free World will permit — or put a stop to — these staggering negative trends of geopolitical deterioration in the future.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20660/free-world-alarming-status

It seems urgent for the long-term survival of the United States and the Free World – where people enjoy unprecedented freedom of speech, property rights, economic opportunity, religious freedom and other civil liberties – not to accept assaults on these hard-won achievements either at home or abroad.

Adversaries have become increasingly empowered, and allies may well be losing confidence in the West’s leadership. This week it was announced that three countries in Europe, Ireland, Norway and Spain – all of which have long, unfortunate histories of antisemitism – plan to recognizing a Palestinian State that will be terrorist.

US President Joe Biden assured Russia in 2022 that a “minor incursion” into Ukraine would be all right. Predators do not “do” minor.

The Biden administration handed over Afghanistan to a terrorist group, the Taliban; now it looks as if the Biden administration and these three racist countries in Europe are determined to hand Gaza to another terrorist group, Iran’s proxy, Hamas, which openly says it is more committed than ever to destroying its free, democratic neighbor, Israel.

Israel is trying to protect its citizens and maintain its sovereignty in the face of relentless aggression, while battling not only Hamas but also two illegitimate antisemitic courts (the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice), the antisemitic United Nations, antisemitic European countries, well-funded antisemitic demonstrations in the West, and the Biden administration… [which] for years has been trying to force out Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The US would doubtless prefer an Israeli prime minister who would allow Hamas to remain in control of Gaza and reconstitute its military capabilities; who would allow the creation of a terrorist Palestinian state bordering Israel, and who would stand aside as genocidal Iran obtains nuclear weapons.

In addition, the Communist Chinese regime, seeing the Biden administration reward aggression, past, present, and presumably future, is encircling the Philippines and Taiwan and sending tens of thousands of young men of military age in packs across America’s southern border, and more than 5,000 over its northern one.

One can only wonder which of the likely leaders of the Free World will permit — or put a stop to — these staggering negative trends of geopolitical deterioration in the future.

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London’s Jews are fighting back against the bigots The anti-Israel mob failed to cancel a film screening about the horrors of 7 October. James Heartfield

By on May 25th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/24/londons-jews-are-fighting-back-against-the-bigots/

On Thursday evening, over 1,500 members of London’s Jewish community and their allies chased off an anti-Israel protest outside the Phoenix cinema in East Finchley, north London.

The anti-Israel protest, organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, was prompted by the Phoenix’s decision to show a film from Seret, the UK-Israeli film festival. The film in question, Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre, documents the Hamas attack on 7 October last year, in which hundreds of music fans were slaughtered.

The protest had been building up a head of steam for several weeks. Earlier this month, a group called Artists for Palestine UK called for the Phoenix, and several Everyman cinemas, to boycott Seret, claiming that it was ‘co-sponsored by the Israeli government’ and thus part of Israel’s ‘broader art-washing strategy’. On Wednesday night, pro-Palestine protesters echoed these claims when they vandalised the Phoenix cinema and scrawled ‘say no to art-washing’ across its entrance.

It also emerged on Thursday that two of the Phoenix’s big-name patrons, directors Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, resigned from its board in a huff over its decision to show films from Seret.

It certainly looked like it was going to be a tough night for the Phoenix. Organisers of the protest against the screening urged the anti-Israel mob to ‘BRING NOISE! Drums, bells, pots and pans, whistles…’. But in the event, the protesters were drowned out by East Finchley’s Jewish community.

Local Jews and their allies were outraged by the attack on the Phoenix. And so that evening, they rallied to the defence of the cinema. By 6.30pm, the Phoenix’s defenders were already crammed on to the cinema side of the street. Opposite them, in an over-large police pen, three lonely anti-Israel protesters were left to rattle around by themselves.

As the number of the Phoenix’s defenders became too many to contain on the pavement, they started spilling over on to the street. When 40-or-so anti-Israel protesters walked up from the Underground, they were booed and barracked by East Finchley’s Jewish community.

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