RUTHFULLY YOURS

Anti-Trump, anti-American, anti-Israeli, and anti-Semitic propaganda or “fake news” relies on the general public’s vague familiarity with details.

Take for example the left’s reaction to Jared Kushner’s and Ivanka Trump’s celebration of the Jewish “Holiday of Freedom,” or Passover (Pesach in Hebrew), beginning at the Seder table, to celebrate the Jews’ miraculous exodus from Egyptian slavery back to freedom in their homeland, Israel.

Here is what Fusion.net published:

Perhaps during her family’s seder, Ivanka (or, better yet, one of the little Trumplets!) could add a fifth question to the proceedings just for her father: Would the exodus-era Israelites – a group seeking refuge from unimaginable hardships in the Middle East – need some sort of “extreme vetting” to enter the U.S., or would they simply be banned altogether?

This is a new addition to the nine-centuries-old “blood libel” against Jews celebrating Pesach. The first known incident happened in the twelfth century in Norwich, England, where Jews were falsely accused of torturing to death a 12-year-old and using his blood as part of the holiday ritual. By 1171, the blood libel of Passover ritual murder resulted in burning to death the whole Jewish community of Blois, France. Since then, similar false accusations have been used against the Jews throughout the world, not only around Passover time, and not only by European Christians. Nazi and Muslim regimes used staged blood libel cases to solidify the masses against the Jewish bogeyman. And the Muslims, including the peace-loving “enlightened” Palestinian leadership, use it to this day.

In March 2013, Hanan Ashrawi, a Christian Palestinian politician and Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer, who was a close confidant of the late Yasser Arafat and is very popular in the West, published an article criticizing President Obama for hosting the Jewish Seder in the White House.

“Does Obama, in fact, know the relationship, for example, between ‘Passover’ and ‘Christian blood’?!” Ashrawi asked. “Or ‘Passover’ and ‘Jewish blood rituals?!'” To add credibility to her rant, Ashrawi noted: “[M]uch of the chatter and gossip about historical Jewish blood rituals in Europe are real and not fake as they claim; the Jews used the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover.”

The article was published on the website of the NGO Ashrawi founded in 1998, Miftah, which, according to its website, is “the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, an initiative which works towards respect for Palestinian human rights, democracy and peace.” Miftah is generously funded by United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the British Oxfam, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and others. With much fanfare, Ashrawi received the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize and was endorsed by former former United Nations high commissioner for human rights and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, as well as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who said, “She [Ashrawi] is a brilliant spokeswoman for her cause.”

There’s a whole world of woe out there, a world of persecuted Christians and ISIS, al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra, Al-Shabaab, plus Putin, Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping. But that’s where the rest of us reside. The chattering classes are different. In their world there is only one peril, Donald J. Trump.
I hadn’t tuned-in before. Dateline London is a weekly BBC news program. There is a presenter and four panellists drawn from foreign correspondents based in the UK. They discuss issues of the day. In the latest program President Trump’s Syrian attack bulked large understandably, with North Korea and China also part of the discussion.

I’m mentioning this program because the panel was evenly balanced between progressive and conservatives, Trump supporters and Trump ridiculers. Just kidding! Of course, the panel comprised one hundred (and ten) per cent progressives and Trump ridiculers. One woman panellist put herself in the position of the Chinese wondering how to deal “with the lunatic in the White House.”

It was business as usual, in other words. I am sorry I didn’t catch any of their names. Does it matter? Pick any four or five appearing on the BBC or from the mainstream media generally and you would likely get the same supercilious pap.

The presenter and panellists to a woman and man (three to two or was it four to one? It hardly matters and was hard to tell) were concerned about Trump acting erratically and plunging the world into turmoil. They alarmingly confessed to having no idea what he would do next. Surprisingly, he hadn’t brought them into his confidence.

Trump’s supposed erratic disposition is a figment. In fact he is doggedly pursing the agenda that he laid out in his campaign. Let’s face it; Trump isn’t the right sort of chap – not like, say, that nice, politically correct, Mr Trudeau. The talking heads want him to fail so badly they can taste it. It is nauseating to watch. One woman panellist revealingly expressed particular concern that some progressives had applauded Trump’s actions in bombing the Syrian airbase. That simply wouldn’t do.

But look, I get it, they don’t like Trump. I wouldn’t mind this so much if the panellists had just occasionally, just occasionally, left off their preoccupation with Trump’s disposition and discussed the unholy alliance between Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Assad in Syria and what it means; or the risks of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, or of North Korea fitting IBCMs with nuclear tips. Oh that’s too hard. Let’s concentrate on Trump’s latest tweet or on an purported dust-up between Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon.

Trump Derangement Syndrome means that the media has become besotted with psychoanalysing Trump, and also his family. Or sensationalising disagreements among his advisers; which, for the information of those who have not worked at senior levels in organisations, is both par for the course and often healthy. A lot healthier than groupthink.

The media have to be dragged into covering real issues. Look, I’m a Trump supporter. This biases my view. I appreciate that. So help me. Where exactly has the man stuffed up since becoming president?

Having an executive order on refugees stayed by hopelessly compromised activist judges does not count for much. Healthcare is notoriously difficult to handle. Trump’s first go failed. It will be time to dance on the grave of this campaign promise if he fails to repeal and replace Obamacare in the next year or two.

In the meantime, Neil Gorsuch is on the Supreme Court. What an outstanding achievement for a Republican president. He may get a chance to pick another one or two from his list of twenty-one conservative judges before his time is up. That would do more to preserve Western civilisation than anything else he could possibly do.

France’s financial support goes beyond the French government’s November 2016 decision to support labeling products produced in the settlements and instead supports the boycott of such products.

Officially, France prohibits any form of boycott against Israel. In 2015, the Court of Cassation confirmed a 2013 decision regarding the illegality of boycotts and the call for boycotts in France. Under the law, in 2013, BDS France was fined €28,000 (USD $30,000) by a local French court, after a call made in 2010 by 14 activists to boycott Israeli products in a supermarket. In addition, each of the 14 activists was fined €1,000.

However, according to a report recently released by NGO Monitor, the French government continues to fund NGOs openly hostile to Israel and to fund NGOs that support and promote boycott campaigns against Israel.

The French government’s financial support for boycott campaigns embraces:

The Made in Illegality campaign — which includes The Platform of French NGOs for Palestine, International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), as well as the French Union La CGT. France’s financial support goes beyond the French government’s November 2016 decision to support labeling products produced in the settlements and instead supports the boycott of such products.

The campaign’s goals include “prohibiting the import of settlement products,” “excluding the settlements from their bilateral agreements and cooperation with Israel,” and “excluding companies which are active or located in the settlements from public markets and public procurement procedures…”

The French government (Agence Française de Développement, AFD) provided the Platform of French NGOs for Palestine with €46,560 in 2009, €199,000 from 2011-2014, and €225,000 from 2014-2017. The Council of Île de France Region provided the Platform with €62,000 in 2013, €22,000 in 2014, and €20,000 in 2015. Claude Léostic, President of The Platform, was denied entry to Israel, and compared Israel to Nazi Germany: “…The people of France resisted the Nazi barbarians… But you have been suffering for more than 40 years, as incredible as it seems in this modern world, and that came after the Nakba…”

According to NGO Monitor, “40% (€225,000) of The Platform’s 2014 project “Mieux agir pour le respect du droit en Palestine” (Improved Action for the Respect of Rights in Palestine) was funded by the French government (AFD). This project was partnered with Ittijah. In 2010, the head of Ittijah, Amir Makhoul, was sentenced to nine years in prison for spying for Hezbollah during the 2006 Lebanon war. The Platform of French NGOs for Palestine and Ittijah were also partners on a project supported by the French government (€43,560 from AFD) in 2009, while Makhoul was still the head of the organization.

Catholic organizations are also extremely active members of the Platform of French NGOs for Palestine and open supporters of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS). Among these Catholic organizations are: Secours Catholique-Caritas France (SCCF); La Cimade; Pax Christi France; Comité Catholique contre la Faim et pour le Développement–Terre Solidaire (CCFD).

BERLIN—Three explosions hit a soccer team’s bus just ahead of a major game in the German city of Dortmund on Tuesday, seriously injuring one player in what authorities described as a targeted attack on one of Europe’s most prominent sports clubs.

Officials said that that three bombs hidden in a hedge went off as the bus pulled out of the Borussia Dortmund team’s hotel in a suburban neighborhood to carry the players 6 miles to their stadium for a quarterfinal game in the most prestigious tournament in club soccer.

Marc Bartra, a Spanish defender on the team’s roster, had surgery after injuries to a hand and arm as a result of the blast that shattered the bus’s windows, officials said.

“It’s not anything that is life-threatening in any way,” Borussia Dortmund Chief Executive Hans-Joachim Watzke said. “The team is, of course, completely in shock.”

As the police combed the crime scene Tuesday night, they found a letter claiming responsibility for the attack, Dortmund prosecutor Sandra Lücke said. She declined to provide more details about the letter or to comment about possible motives.

“We must assume that this was a targeted attack on the BVB team,” Dortmund Police Chief Gregor Lange said, using Borussia Dortmund’s acronym.

Borussia Dortmund’s scheduled quarterfinal game against AS Monaco in the UEFA Champions League later Tuesday evening was postponed to Wednesday.

A police spokesman said later in the evening that while authorities were still analyzing what exactly caused the blasts, their initial analysis showed it was a “serious attack” that could have cost lives.

Mr. Eid, who often uses a pseudonym, Qusai Zakarya, that he adopted while opposing the regime in Syria, now lives in Germany.
I know how painful it is to suffocate from nerve gas. I know the devilish terror that it triggers in the victim’s mind. I know because I am a survivor of the Syrian regime’s chemical massacre of Aug. 21, 2013.

On that morning, I nearly died after inhaling the deadly perfume that Bashar Assad unleashed upon my hometown of Moadhamiya, in the western suburbs of Damascus. I struggled to breathe as this silent killer hugged my chest and pressed my lungs until my heart stopped beating out of pain. The doctors gave up on me and left me for dead. I woke up 30 minutes later screaming in agony and surrounded by corpses.

But an even worse moment came when President Obama canceled his “red line” that had promised consequences for the use of chemical weapons. At the time I was gassed, I was a local media activist for the Syrian Revolution against Assad’s brutal regime. For two years, I was trapped in Moadhamiya as the town endured government siege, starvation and savage bombardment.

I escaped Syria and came to the U.S. in 2014, hoping that my testimony would help persuade Mr. Obama to stop the genocide. But after two years of speaking to the media, think tanks, universities, the State Department, Congress, the Pentagon and the National Security Council, I was sure that nothing would change the president’s mind—not me, not the “Caesar report” published that year on the industrial-scale torture in Syria’s prisons, and not the millions killed and displaced by Assad’s genocide.

I left the U.S. a year ago out of disappointment and frustration. Even though I was a refugee who had made it to America, I was disgusted with myself for living a comfortable life while thousands of Syrians were still being slaughtered each day by Assad, Iran, Hezbollah, Russia and Islamic State. I now live in Germany among other Syrian refugees.

As I watched footage of the nerve-gas attack last week that killed more than 100 people, including children—Assad’s worst chemical massacre since 2013—I could not help but cry and feel outraged at each and every person who could have saved them but didn’t.

BERLIN—In mid-2015, German prosecutors say, Iran set in motion a spying operation that targeted a prominent pro-Israeli politician and a Jewish newspaper in Berlin.

Details of the alleged plot—which authorities said appeared aimed at gathering information for “possible attacks” on them—emerged during a trial in Berlin’s highest court that ended late last month with the conviction of a 31-year-old Pakistani man, Syed Mustafa Haider, on espionage charges.

Prosecutors said Mr. Haider was guided by a person believed by German intelligence to be part of the Quds Force, an arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. He spent months tracking Reinhold Robbe, a former lawmaker who was then chairman of the German-Israeli Society, they said.

Mr. Haider, who was sentenced to four years and three months in prison, denied the charges and has instructed his attorneys to appeal the verdict against him, his lawyers said. The lawyers declined to comment further.

The Iranian embassy in Berlin said in a statement that Tehran “officially and categorically denied any link with this issue.” The embassy blamed “enemies of diplomacy” for “using any possibility and means to advance their bellicose goals.”

No attacks have taken place against the objects of Mr. Haider’s surveillance.

The revelations come at an awkward time for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Ms. Merkel, under pressure from German companies that want to do business in Iran, has been resisting U.S. President Donald Trump’s tougher stance toward Tehran.

The government said it would wait until Mr. Haider’s appeal has been heard before commenting.

Based on evidence gathered by Germany’s police and the country’s domestic intelligence agency, prosecutors said Mr. Haider gathered 600 photos, 32 videos and other information detailing Mr. Robbe’s movements between July and October of 2015.

In addition to his work on Mr. Robbe, he was asked to compile dossiers on the Berlin headquarters of Mr. Robbe’s Social Democratic Party, the Jüdische Allgemeine newspaper and a Jewish professor in Paris, Daniel Rouach, they said.

Prosecutors alleged the material was “meant to enable his intelligence employer to establish a direct way to the person under observation as they prepared an attack.”

They noted that the spying focused on what “safety precautions” were in place to protect the targets under surveillance and how to “navigate” in locations they were likely to visit.

The court didn’t publish a written verdict. A spokeswoman said it found prosecutors’ case “fundamentally convincing.”

Mr. Haider, a student studying engineering in Germany, received instructions from his alleged Quds Force handler, identified only by the initial M., via WhatsApp in mid-2015, prosecutors said. CONTINUE AT SITE

Muhammad Abu Rumman, a researcher at the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan and a writer for the Jordanian daily Al-Ghad, published an article highlighting 10 notable Western scientific achievements from 2016, including the detection of gravitational waves, which were predicted by Albert Einstein, and the discovery of a ninth planet in the solar system, and compared them to 10 notable “achievements” in the Arab world during that year, including the perfection of the car bomb, the “development” of the concept of lone wolves and barrel bombs, and the destruction of archaeological sites. Abu Rumman implicitly invites readers to compare these achievements and draw their own conclusions.

The following are excerpts from the article:[1]

Muhammad Abu Rumman (ikhwansyria.com)

“The BBC website published the 10 biggest scientific achievements of 2016, which include: the discovery of the gravitational waves that Einstein discussed 100 years ago; the arrival of the [Juno] probe to Jupiter; the discovery of a ninth [planet] in the solar system nicknamed ‘Nine’;[2] the discovery of a 99 million-year-old dinosaur tail preserved in amber; the finding of the largest prime number [yet discovered], which has 22 million digits; the development of a tiny disc that can store 360 terabytes of data and last for 14 billion years; stem cell injections for patients who suffered [a stroke due to] blood clots in order to restore motor function; the discovery of a new type of blind cave-dwelling fish that can climb walls; the first landing by a rocket [at sea after completing its mission]; and transplanting a chip in a paralyzed patient’s brain, enabling him to move his fingers.

“Now, let us think of the prominent Arab achievements, both scientific and non-scientific, during 2016:

“1. The car bomb tactic, which ISIS and Jabhat Al-Nusra excel at, which transforms basic primary materials into a devastating mechanism of killing, without the need to develop inventions and carry out complex scientific research as is done in the West. It is enough to pack a large amount of explosives into a car, don an explosive vest, and embed yourself in the ranks of the ‘enemy’ in order to injure and kill dozens and cause horrid destruction. ISIS has announced that, according to a recent study [it conducted], in the recent period there have been 1,112 martyrdom operations, all of whose perpetrators obviously died, and that during that period, they killed a large number of people on the other side.