Terrorist murder of Hadas Malka (Z'L)

On Friday evening, I noticed a helicopter hovering over the Old City.  This surprised me, seeing as there didn't seem to be much violence with the nearly 200,000 Muslims (including hundreds allowed in from the Gaza Strip, even!) who defiled the Temple Mount earlier in the day.  (This is the Islamic month of Ramadan, in which major roads in Jerusalem are reserved for Muslim-only traffic into the Old City.  It takes me about an hour to go visit my mother via another route, in a trip which normally takes me 20 minutes in the usual, direct route.  I bet you don't hear about this in the media.)

It was only Saturday evening, Motza'ei Shabbat, that I could check the news reports and heard that Hadas Malka had been murdered by three Palestinian terrorists.  She was 23 years old at the time of her death; the Pali murderers were 18.  They used knives and a gun in their attack and were shot to death by other officers on the street.  This happened near Sha'ar Shchem, aka Damascus Gate, on the north wall of the Old City.  Police officers and Border Patrol troops have been attacked (and killed) there before.  In fact, 19-year old Hadar Cohen was murdered in the very same spot just a year ago.  Both Hadar and Hadas were young women serving in the Border Patrol, which is actually an arm of the Israel Police force.

My immediate thoughts were on the futility of it all.  Hadas was buried Saturday night.  She will be pretty much forgotten very quickly, as Hadar was last year.  Young lives snuffed out for nothing at all.  This won't "liberate" any imaginary "Palestine".  Ever.  It's just killing for the sake of killing.  The three young Pali terrorists - taught to hate by the mosque across the street from their homes, by their parents, by Palestinian Authority propaganda, by the UNRWA school system that funds the spreading of hate with Dollars and Euros - have ended their lives for no good purpose, either.  (The mother of one of the murderers proclaimed that she wished that they had killed 50 or 60 times as many Yahud [Jews].  The PA will now grant a lavish stipend to the families of the murderers forever, unless someone puts a stop to that madness, too.)

But then it got worse.  When I looked for international media coverage of this attack in Jerusalem by Palestinian terrorists, I found references mostly in places like the Jewish News, and Israeli media.  The rest of the world didn't seem to notice.  The BBC did have something to say: they tweeted: "Three Palestinians killed after deadly stabbing in Jerusalem". Not an Israeli policewoman murdered, but three Palis killed.  This was as misleading a headline for Fake News as the BBC can contrive.

http://honestreporting.com/video-media-murder-and-israel/
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/231163
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/20650

After some severe condemnation, including from Donald Trump Jr., the BBC changed its headline.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/donald-trump-jr-calls-out-bbc-over-jerusalem-attack-headline/
https://bbcwatch.org/2017/06/18/bbc-news-changes-headline-deletes-tweet-after-anger-at-portrayal-of-terror-attack-in-jerusalem/

Last night, someone drove a van through a crowd of people in the vicinity of a mosque in London.  Within a short time, there were over 1,000 news reports on this at Google News.  Must be a "Man Bites Dog" story, Muslims hurt by a Jihadi-style ramming attack.  Just now, something else happened in Paris, apparently a car ramming attack.  Nearly 100 news items about this appeared at Google News almost immediately.  When a police officer is attacked in London or a sentry on guard is murdered in Ottowa or a police van is hit in Paris, it's global news immediately.  But when an Israeli officer is murdered in Jerusalem by cowardly Palestinian Jihadis, the media doesn't take notice.  Repeatedly.

With years and years of fawning headlines and stories about Palestinian terrorists and their unfounded claims and propagandistic grievances, it is not surprising that so many uninformed people in so many places - including Lefty but ignorant Jews who should know better - are babbling about Israel "stealing land" and the "brutal occupation" in the safest and most free country in the Middle East (for Arabs!) and "illegal settlements" being an "obstacle to peace in the Middle East" and describing Muslim immigrants and foreign invaders as "indigenous Palestinians" and so much other hogwash.  Perhaps that was the intent of the "journalists" in the first place.  No one seems interested in the truth anymore.  History will never be the same.

In memory of Hadas Malka, HY"D.

SOURCE







Iran’s Ayatollah: ‘All Muslims Are Duty-Bound to Campaign and Carry Out Jihad’ Against Israel

Speaking Monday on the occasion of Eid al Fitr, the Muslim feast marking the end of the month of Ramadan, the Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei, Iran’s so-called “Leader of the Islamic Revolution,” declared that all Muslims “are duty bound” to carry out Jihad against Israel—which he referred to as “the Zionist regime.”

“Unity and avoiding division benefits all Muslim countries and through harmony over the issue of Palestine as the foremost problem of the Muslim world, it must be prevented from being diminished or forgotten,” the ayatollah said, according to a statement about the speech posted on the ayatollah's English-language website.   

“Palestine is the foremost issue of the Muslim world, but some Muslim countries act in such a way that is meant to make the issue of Palestine ignored and forgotten,” he said.

“According to Islamic jurisprudence,” said the ayatollah, “once faced with the domination of the enemy over Islamic territory, all Muslims are duty-bound to campaign and carry out jihad in whatever possible form and, therefore, fighting against the Zionist regime is incumbent upon and mandatory for the entire Islamic world.”

SOURCE





The rise of inflexible progressivism

by HERB LONDON

As a young man coming from a left-wing pedigree, I embraced a liberal agenda which included most notably, a belief in Israel as a bastion of socialism and democracy. In the 1950s, a good progressive was a good Zionist. Oh, how the world has changed. Now a progressive has moved 180 degrees to an anti-Zionist position. As one wag put it, the left is now the congenial home of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

Linda Sarsour, the leader of the Woman's March in Washington and a commencement speaker at the City University of New York, clearly embodies the new spirit on the left. She has praised Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, once anathema to liberals. She has honored Embrased Rasmesh Odeh, a terrorist murderer. She has spoken in favor of Shariah finance. One of the supporters of Ms. Sarsour said, "Nothing is creepier than Zionism."

What is truly remarkable, and to some degree ideologically shattering, is that The New York Times wrote a fawning profile about this woman who challenges all liberal principles. She had the audacity to say that "the vagina of Ayaan Hirsi Ali should be taken away," the same Ayaan who has worked so hard to promote women's rights throughout the Muslim world. Yet the Anti-Defamation League defends Ms. Sarsour. Why do liberals not recognize that the Muslim countries do not give women and people in the LGBT community the same civil rights that Israel does?

For the left, Zionism has promoted Islamophobia - a false critique from the standpoint of Islamists. As a consequence, anti-Semitism is rendered a virtue, as a way to discourage negative sentiment about Islam. Yet even when the evidence of anti-Semitism is incontrovertible, the left contends anti-Semitism is a figment of a hysterical, oversensitive imagination. For the most part, Jews are being systematically written out of the progressive agenda, even though they were responsible for that agenda in the first place. But why quibble?

This new age, already upon us, has sheltered many Jews from the harsh reality of contemporary progressivism. Jews still gravitate to a Democratic Party led by two men (Tom Perez and Keith Ellison) avowedly anti-Zionist. In casual conversation, Jews will say Democrats represent grass-roots movements and people. However, it is important to note the party of the hard left is the government party relying on rules and mandates imposed by Washington D.C. bureaucrats. It no longer represents the blue-collar worker who built the party during the New Deal.

At the Chicago "Dyke March" held recently, Jewish pride flags were banned because Jews "made people feel unsafe" and, after all, the march was pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist. The irony is that the Dyke March preaches inclusion and is billed as "anti-racist, anti-violent, volunteer-led grass-roots mobilization and celebration of dyke, queer, bisexual and transgender resilience." Yes, the march includes every permutation of homosexuality, but it does not include Jews, presumably these are the people found to be "offensive."

In January 2016, a Shabbat service and reception for Jewish participants at a gay conference in Chicago was disrupted by hundreds of protesters who chanted, "Hey hey, ho ho, pinkwashing has got to go." Pinkwashing is a term to describe efforts by Israel to cover up its treatment of Palestinians by touting its strong record on gay rights. What the incident shows is that even on gay rights Israel will not be given the benefit of the doubt because anti-Zionism trumps homosexual acceptance.

That progressives would find common quarter with Islamists is the shocking part of this ideological evolution. Obviously, secularism has played a role for many Jews. But the Anti-Defamation League's support for the Council on American - Islamic Relations is nothing short of jarring, despite the extent of Jewish secularization.

To have been a progressive and to see how the word and movement have gone through the caldron of ideological change demonstrates the influence of Orwellian logic. Orthodoxy is liberalism, dogma is openness; Shariah is expansive. Who would have thought that the modern Jew would imbibe this logic? But as Norman Podhoretz noted in his splendid book, "Why Are Jews Liberals?" Jews are liberal because liberalism is the new religion of Jews

SOURCE





Angela Merkel’s welcome mat: Refugees roil the German public with an election approaching

Only the hard-hearted would slam the door against a refugee. Their stories are heart-breaking and their courage in seeking a better life in a new home is remarkable. Nevertheless, refugees in uncontrolled number are a headache for everyone. Germany, held up as a nation with a big heart, is learning the cost of Angela Merkel’s big heart. More than a million refugees have arrived since 2015.

Nearly 3 of 4 refugees admitted will struggle to take care of themselves, the German Institute for Employment Research finds. A new survey suggests they’ll probably stay for years on the public dole. The institute finds that fewer than half arriving from Syria, the largest source of refugees, arrive with the equivalent of a high school diploma, and barely 1 in 5 have a college degree. Nearly half a million of them stand in the unemployment line, up by more than a hundred thousand from last year.

The good news is that the number of asylum seekers in Germany dropped by 600,000 in 2016. Aydan Ozoguz, commissioner for immigration, refugees and integration, tells London’s Financial Times that only a quarter to a third of the newcomers will enter the labor market over the next five years, “and for many others we will need up to 10 years [to get them settled].”

Syrians, fleeing an interminable civil war, are followed in number by Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, Eritreans and Albanians. Together they’re a political headache for Chancellor Merkel, whose poll numbers have declined over the past year leading up to the federal elections in late September. She has had a generous hand in welcoming refugees and immigrants, and most of them are Muslims who find it difficult to adapt and adjust to the religious and political freedom and responsibilities in the West. Pollsters say absorbing the million or more migrants is the top concern of German voters.

The unprecedented number of refugees in 2015 created an enormous backlog of applications for residence — more than 430,000 currently are waiting for clearance now. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees has cleared more cases than ever before, says Thomas de Maiziere, the German interior minister, considerably more than twice as many in the year before. The number of government clerks has been quadrupled to clear the backlog.

“The [refugee office] is now out of the woods,” he says, “and with wind in its sails. Every month more decisions are made than applications received, so the backlog is being cleared.” More than 50,000 migrants voluntarily returned to their home countries last year, and another 25,000 were deported.

Mrs. Merkel, mindful of Germany’s record in the 20th century, wanted to play Lady Bountiful with her wide-open door, and during the height of the refugee wave, with hundreds drowning in the perilous passage in flimsy boats across the Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea, she was widely acclaimed. But the size of the refugee wave surpassed expectations, and public opinion shifted dramatically.

Her open-door policy was blamed for enabling terrorism arriving with the migrants, and when an Islamic migrant from Tunisia drove a truck into a popular Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 and wounding 56 holiday shoppers, the incident galvanized public opinion. It forced a review of national security.

SOURCE

*************************

Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

***************************