RUTHFULLY YOURS

““When you are motivated by fear, you seek to preserve demography by giving away geography,” explained Yoram Ettinger, a former Israeli ambassador and right-wing activist who has been active in publicizing the impact of Israel’s rising birthrate. “But if you examine Israel’s demographics realistically, there is no need to think in such terms.”

JERUSALEM—Israel’s peace camp and its international backers have long used one crude but powerful argument: Arabs make more babies than Jews and unless a separate Palestinian state is created, a demographic time bomb will turn Jews into a dwindling minority akin to white South Africans.

That prospect certainly seemed real when the Oslo peace process began in the 1990s. Fertility among Israeli Jews stood at an average of 2.6 children per woman, compared with 4.7 among Muslims in Israel and East Jerusalem and 6.0 among Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Yasser Arafat at the time famously declared that the womb of the Palestinian woman was his people’s most potent weapon.

Yet over the past decade, a demographic revolution with long-lasting political consequences has occurred. Jewish birthrates in Israel have spiked while Arab birthrates in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere in the Middle East have declined. This unlikely baby boom has made many Israeli Jews a lot less afraid of being outnumbered—one of the underappreciated reasons why the country’s voters have consistently rewarded politicians opposed to Palestinian statehood and to relinquishing land.

Israeli statisticians bemoan “inflated” Palestinian figures, which suggest Arabs outnumber Jews across Israel and the Palestinian territories.
New official statistics from the Palestinian Authority (PA) suggest that Jews are a shrinking minority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, however Israeli statisticians firmly disagree.
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday reported that there are approximately 4.81 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, with 2.93 million in the West Bank and 1.88 million in the increasingly densely populated Gaza Strip.
According to their calculations, when taking into account the Israeli Arab population, which the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS) estimated to be around 1.77 million in May 2016, the total number of Arabs across Israel and the Palestinian territories reaches 6.58 million.
According to the ICBS, the Jewish population stands at 6.34 million, and despite falling birth rates among Arabs across the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, the statistics also seem to suggest that the overall gap is only growing.

The issue of demographics acts as motivator for supporters of varied political solutions to the conflict. While many on both sides cite the demographic trends as a justification for a two-state-solution, others mitigate the divides differently. These include some right-wing Israelis, who support a partial annexation of Jewish majority areas in the West Bank, but no full independence for the Palestinians who remain outside. Others yet call for a fedaralized, European style state for both peoples.

No more attempts to psychologically analyze every new jihadist—to probe his troubled family or professional life in an attempt to figure out what “turned him to violence and extremism.”

No more reflexive reassurances that “this has nothing to do with Islam,” that a handful of bad guys have “hijacked” a “peaceful” faith, and that “the great majority of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims are, of course, peace-loving people who utterly reject this kind of action.”

No more slick pivoting to the subject of gun control, or American homophobia, or whatever other diversion seems useful under the specific circumstances.

No more blaming of Europeans’ supposed failure to accept or embrace or integrate or employ Muslims, or of Muslims’ alleged poverty or hopelessness or frustration or alienation.

No more hand-wringing by journalists, as they stand mere yards from the bodies of the dead, about the possible “backlash” against Muslims (which never really materializes).

No more declarations by U.S. officials that the mere mention of Islam in connection with Islamic terrorism is “dangerous” and “counterproductive” because it “alienates” the Muslim allies and Muslim communities whose help we need in fighting this problem that we dare not properly name.

No more respectful TV interviews with representatives of “Muslim civil-rights organizations” that have been proven over and over again to be fronts for terrorism.

No more outrageous lies by government and media that, almost fifteen years after 9/11, keep so many Americans so outrageously in the dark about the world in which we live now. No more of the despicable day-to-day efforts by the same actors to keep those Americans who do get it in line, to instill in them an unholy fear that, if they dare to address the problem honestly, they’ll be thrust forever out into the dark—beyond the realm of decent society, unacceptable, unemployable, unfriendable.

This is where it leads when you criminalize speech — it’s a regular occurrence in Muslim countries under the sharia. And so we can expect to see it in Western countries that adhere to speech restrictions in accordance with Islamic law.

This is inevitably where it will lead if we surrender to the leftist/ Islamic warmongers.

Merkel’s new Nazi regime.

It’s why we are suing Loretta Lynch. Yesterday, our law firm, AFLC, filed a lawsuit on grounds that Facebook violated Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act under the First Amendment. Section 230 grants immunity from lawsuits to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, thereby permitting these social media giants to engage in government-sanctioned censorship and discriminatory business practices free from legal challenge.

“Because of the immunity granted by the federal government, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are free to engage in their otherwise unlawful, discriminatory practices.”

“German Police Raid Homes Over ‘Verbal Radicalism’ On Facebook,” By Craig Boudreau, Daily Caller, July 13, 2016

German police conducted, for the first time ever, a series of raids across the country Wednesday targeting people who posted “hate speech” on Facebook.

Some 25 German police departments raided 60 homes in 14 counties in a move to combat what is seen as a growing problem with hate speech permeating the country, The Verge reported Wednesday.

Hate speech has been growing in Germany over the last 18 months, according to the newspaper Deutsche Wells, based on data from a study undertaken by the German anti-racism group, Antonio Amadeu Stiftung (AAS).

“The monitoring report reveals that the agitation is intensifying in the social media,” Anetta Kahane, AAS chairwoman said in a statement.

The rise in hate speech is thought to be directly linked to the massive wave of refugees entering the country. German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, said she welcomed the refugees in 2015. “I’m happy that Germany has become a country that many people abroad associate with hope,” Merkel said at a press conference in Berlin.

The BKA also made the connection, corroborating the link of refugees migrating to Germany and a rise in hate speech. “The action carried out today shows that the authorities are acting firmly against hate on the internet,” Holger Münch, head of the BKA, said in a statement. “Which has grown considerably in the wake of the refugee situation.”

Although much ballyhooed 42 years later for its unsuccessful attempt to remove current Neo-Ottoman, Islamic Jew-hating President/Muslim despot, Mas-Kom-Ya Erdogan, July 20, 1974, the same putatively “secular” Turkish military waged a “successful” jihad invasion of Northern Cyprus.

Using Cyprus’ own short-lived July, 1974 military putsch (the Greek junta-supported coup had collapsed by August 14, 1974) as a pretext for long sought expansionist designs within Cyprus, pseudo-secular Turkey claimed its 1974 jihad invasion was a “peaceful action,” which sought to “restore” Cypriot rights, territorial integrity, and security, “without any discrimination toward the (Christian majority and Muslim minority) Communities.” But the July-August, 1974 jihad of Turkey’s pseudo-secular military regime, consistent with the devastating half millennial legacy of its Ottoman forbears’ campaigns, was punctuated by Islamic jihadism’s trademark “sacralized” brutality against non-Muslims: massacre, pillage, enslavement, rape, deportation (of infidels), and colonization (by Muslim replacements).

The Sunday Times [of London] managed to secure a copy of the then secret European Commission of Human Rights (ECHR) report, (APPLICATIONS Nos. 6780/74 AND 6950/75, entitled, “CYPRUS AGAINST TURKEY REPORT OF THE COMMISSION,” Adopted on 10 July 1976), and published this harrowing overview (“What Secret Report Tells About Turk Atrocities,” The Sunday Times), on January 23, 1977:

It amounts to a massive indictment of the Ankara government for the murder, rape, and looting by its army in Cyprus during and after the Turkish invasion of summer, 1974…[including] systematic killings of civilians who were not involved in the 1974 fighting; repeated raping of women aged from 12 to 71, often brutally in public; the torture and savage and humiliating treatment of hundreds of Greek Cypriots, including children during their detention by the Turkish army; and charges of extensive looting and plunder which were supported by unpublished United Nations documents.

The July 10, 1976 ECHR report provided an ugly overarching chronicle of the prototypical sectarian jihadist behaviors of the invading Turkish Muslim army:

In the course of the said military operations and occupation, Turkish armed forces have, by way of systematic conduct and adopted practice, caused deprivation of life, including indiscriminate killing of civilians, have subjected persons of both sexes and all ages to torture, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment, including commission of rapes and detention under inhuman conditions, have arrested and are detaining in Cyprus and Turkey hundreds of persons arbitrarily and with no lawful authority, are subjecting the said persons to forced labor under conditions amounting to slavery or servitude, have caused through the aforesaid detention, as well as by displacement of thousands of persons from their places of residence and refusal to all of them to return thereto, separations of families and other interferences with private life, have caused destruction of property and obstruction of free enjoyment of property, and all the above acts have been directed against Greek Cypriots only, due, inter alia, to their national origin, race and religion.

Pamela Geller already has it. There are no details other than six are in custody for the crowd-mowing jihadi attack in Nice last week. The estranged wife of the Albanian man involved has been released and is not a suspect.

Pamela correctly interprets the media’s use of the word “Albanian” as planting doubt about the Muslimness of everyone involved. It was something that Jim Jatras and I mentioned on her radio show in 2007 — namely that the term “ethnic Albanian” became useful during the 1999 conflict, to not turn Westerners off from helping the Muslim side in the conflict against the Christian-Serbs we were setting up as the villain.

But recall that we witnessed the disappearance of the word “Albanian” from articles in the early 2000s, when the news coming out about them was less flattering than their plight as innocent victims of bloodthirsty Christians (e.g., drugs, prostitution, jihad, gangs). Instead, terms like “Yugoslavs” were used, and sometimes “Kosovars,” since no one would know what that was despite our having waged our last pre-9/11 war there, the war that closed the 20th century. The foreshadowing war (of what was to become commonplace in this century: pro-jihad NATO war).

In other words, after working so hard to prop up ethnic identity in multi-national Yugoslavia and dismantle that country into ethnically pure, Western-dependent statelets, our officials and media found themselves embarrassed by their clients, and started shrouding their ethnicity.

The outcome of tonight’s apparent coup attempt in Turkey remains unclear, but the motivation for regime change in Turkey has been building under the surface for years. Turkey faces a perfect storm of economic, political and foreign policy problems.

First, Turkey’s much-heralded economic growth spurt of the 2000’s has come to a grinding stop. The Erdogan boom, which inspired predictions that Turkey might emerge as another China, resembled the Asian experience less than it did the Latin American credidt bubbles of the 1980s or the American subprime bubble of the 2000s. I wrote last April 25:

Turkey’s economy appears to defy gravity: with annualized GDP growth of 5.7%, it is the emerging market that has held up best under stressed global economic conditions. That is entirely due to the growth of domestic consumption; Turkish exports are flat despite the sharp devaluation of the country’s currency. And domestic consumption depends on a flood of high-interest consumer loans.

According to the Turkish central bank, consumer debt is now almost equal to total personal income in Turkey, vs. a bit over 20% in the United States. The average interest rate on consumer debt, the central bank reports, is just under 17%.

Dictator of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s solitary fiefdom by unpopular and oppressive diktat is intolerable to the descendants of Kemal Ataturk, and is turning Turkey’s progress backwards by a century.

I hope the truth is stronger than the “Wag the Dog” Hollywood-style spin we are being shoveled, both sides being to some extent culpable, and both sides being enough misrepresented that we need to couch everything we have stated in the freshet of weasel words to modify any suggestion of a solid affirmative anywhere within the hype we have been fed for hours.

Not that it makes a huge difference what I deem Turkey’s ratchet backwards to pre-reformation Turkey; in fact, I disliked Turkey more than any other of the 100-plus countries I have been to, lived or spent time in.

Erdoğan’s thumbnail history includes: Born in 1954, this pol has been Turkey’s 12th President, since 2014. Before that, he was Prime Minister, from 2003 to his ascendancy to leader in 2014; and prior to that, was mayor of Istanbul from 1994 through 1998. Erdoğan, it has become clear over the recent past, merits ouster. He ought to have been replaced years ago, as his positions have concretized, his bellicosity has become more evident, and his insistence on outlandish privilege or accommodation were noticed as excessively parochial and leaning toward revanchist adherences to an untenable Islam that Ataturk had been contemptuous of enough to have massively reformulated.

“Dr. Berhane Asmelash, a former prisoner and victim of torture, described prisoners being tied up and hung from trees. One form of hanging is known as the ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, because the victim looks as though they are on a crucifix.” — Eritrea.

Five Christian girls were kidnapped, forcibly converted to Islam, and forced to marry their captors. — Pakistan.

“We expect the Swedish Government and the concerned authorities to immediately make sure that these people are safe. A distinct asylum accommodation for Christians and other asylum seekers is essential. We appeal to you to set off such a place and give the word asylum back its true meaning of protection and safety.” — Ignatius Aphrem II, Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church.

In his response, the Director General of the Swedish Migration Board said that separate housing for Christians and other vulnerable groups “would go against principles and values that are central to Swedish society and our democracy.”

United States: A pro-ISIS group called the United Cyber Caliphate defaced the website of the Christian Reformed Church in Lamont, Michigan. A 15-year-old girl discovered the vandalism, which consisted of an ISIS propaganda video and Arabic text. The recruiter featured in the video says, “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses and enslave your women by the permission of Allah, the Exalted. This is His promise to us, He is glorified and He does not fail in His promise.”

Ethiopia: Muslims in the majority-Christian country started riots in the East Shewa Zone to attack Christians whom they accused of converting Muslims. They burned down 14 churches of different denominations and left more than 2,000 Christians without places for worship. One church cemetery was also vandalized. A church leader said: “We have been worshipping outside and sitting on the bare ground bearing the hot sun. We appeal to our brothers elsewhere to come and assist us. The attackers poured petrol and were chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ [Allah is Greater] before setting the church building on fire.”

Uganda: Around midnight on April 12, a mob of Muslims demolished a Christian church. They were heard chanting: “We cannot live together with neighbors who are infidels. We have to fight for the cause of Allah.” Musical instruments, more than 500 plastic chairs and other property were also destroyed. Two days earlier, a group of Muslims shouted “Allah only is to be worshipped, and Muhammad is his prophet” and slaughtered a church leader’s pigs, a key source of income. He had previously received a text message saying, “Let this be known to your church members that pigs are extremely unholy and an abomination before Allah, very outrageous and shameful. They are haram [forbidden] and unlawful as our holy Quran does prohibit them.” A church member also received a message that read, “We are soon coming for the heads of your pigs.” He soon found that eight of his swine had been killed.

Such was the desire of the European parliamentarians to protect Mahmoud Abbas that his blood libel was erased from all official documents.

Unable to countenance even the mildest criticism, and unwilling or unable to engage in serious conversation, even with European interlocutors much less with Israel, Abbas may finally have made the Palestinian cause too difficult for the Europeans.

The naming of Boris Johnson as Britain’s Foreign Minister set off in his home country a storm of name-calling and hand-wringing that approximates the Democrat reaction to Donald Trump. Without wading into British politics, there is one specific incident that the Daily Mail called an impolitic “gaffe” that should be assessed at greater length — and from a different angle:

Last November local [Palestinian] officials called off a visit to Palestine on safety grounds after the then-London mayor told an audience in Tel Aviv that a trade boycott of Israeli goods was “completely crazy” and supported by “corduroy- jacketed, snaggletoothed, lefty academics in the UK.”

Palestinian officials accused him of adopting a “misinformed and disrespectful” pro-Israel stance and said he risked creating protests if he visited the West Bank.

Johnson was right on the merits: The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is largely a function of university campuses and has little to do with Israel-UK trade, which is robust and growing. But the incident should be understood as a window into Palestinian strategy, and as such should not be overlooked.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas did not use the opportunity presented by Mr. Johnson’s visit to offer his view, to explain why Johnson was wrong, to promote UK-Palestinian trade, or even to argue for BDS. He reflexively threatened a prominent European guest with violence. It surely would have erupted on schedule if Johnson had continued his visit. The Palestinians are no longer interested in discussing their interests/demands/wishes. They have entered a period of ultimatum: one-hundred percent or nothing; my way or violence even with their friends.