Islamophobia? Not on Our Watch, insist the UK's Trembling Israelites

It seems hard to believe (actually, perhaps it doesn't, given today's onslaught on the Judeo-Christian tradition and the consequent neglect in schools of scriptural teaching) that people actually grew up thinking that Islam preceded Judaism and Christianity, but some viewers of this video are claiming just that!

It seems hard to believe, given the zeal with which the Left attacks male sexists of the Western kind, that they, with honorable exceptions, turns a blind eye to such excrescences as these, committed by Muslim men against non-Muslim females.

It seems especially hard to believe that in Britain Jewish leaders, with honorable exceptions, are so lily-livered that they are prepared to undermine one of the most courageous, astute and perspicacious of Jewish commentators on the current scene, namely that wonderful lady Melanie Phillips, in their anxiety not to transgress political correctness.

Cerebral British blogger Edgar Davidson pulls no punches in his indictment of such cravenness.  He calls Jewish Chronicle [JC] editor Stephen Pollard "an idiot", for instance, and thunders inter alia:

'Pollard is part of the elitist clique who think they know what’s best for British Jews (and he’s by no means the worst). We have seen with the recent decision by the Jewish 'leadership'  to demonize and silence Colonel Richard Kemp and Melanie Phillips (see articles by Jonathan Hoffman and David Collier about this), that they will not tolerate anybody who dares raise concerns about Islamic antisemitism and terrorism.

They have bought into the whole "Islamophobia" narrative in an attempt to appease people like Baroness Warsi (who claims to oppose antisemitism while being a vicious enemy of the Jewish state, whipping up antisemitic hatred of it among British Muslims).

 What started with the demonization of Tommy Robinson, Geert Wilders, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer (all true friends of Israel and the Jewish people) and then Katie Hopkins and Douglas Murray, was never going to end with just them. Now they seek to silence anybody on the 'right' of politics who raises these concerns and even accuse anybody who supports them of being 'racists'.  So, while many of the Jewish community's best friends are shunned by the Jewish leadership, that same leadership is happy to work with (and even invite to communal events): Israel-hating agitators like Warsi, antisemitic anti-Israel leftist Muslims like Naz Shah, and any number of left-wing politicians and activists who supported both Corbyn and the boycott campaign against Israel.

The Board of Deputies, The Jewish Leadership Council, CST [Community Security Trust], the JC and even recently the CAA [Campaign Against Antisemitism] are all complicit in the "Islamophobia" narrative. They are failing Britan's Jews.'  [Emphasis added]

It might be added that realists in Australia who tell things as they are (members of the Australian Jewish Association, for example, and distinguished scholars of Islam like the Anglican clergyman Rev. Mark Durie) are also vilified as "Islamophobes" by Jewish "leaders" who should know better.

With regard to Melanie Phillips (see her article here), a thread recently appeared on Twitter, in response to this cri-de-coeur by a Scottish convert revert to Islam, "journalist" (check out the grammar!) Alex Tiffin:

Despite (or perhaps because of) British Jews' well-founded fear of the antisemitism of the hard left exemplified by Corbyn and his henchmen and henchwomen of the hard left, Tiffin attracted such replies as these:

Oh!

I almost forgot to mention that Mr Tiffin is none other than a would-be Labour MP, who caused a kerfuffle north of the Border with threats of violence against infidels a few years ago.

Nor have I yet mentioned that one of the posts above was written by someone who apparently joined in the fun and games when (years ago, on an online forum) a toxic Israel-hater abused me so viciously and in such a defamatory, antisemitic and threatening  manner, posting my contact details on pro-Arab sites, and so on,  that the dear old UK police promised to get on the case, only to botch the entire exercise, doing nothing at all, despite knowing the abuser's identity and exact whereabouts and being provided with a copious amount of screenshots that would have comfortably allowed a prosecution (the Mr Plods sat on these until the expiration of the time period in which such evidence could validly be presented in court!) 

Funny old world innit.

"But What if the Strangers ... Want to Turn Your Own Country into Egypt? "

To sign go HERE

Last evening I stumbled online across lovely footage from "the Swinging Sixties".  Specifically it shows scenes of London in the summer of 1967.  Glimpses of Carnaby Street fashions, and the Portobello market, Biba, and much more. Bouffant-haired girls in their summer dresses, groovy guys with Beatles haircuts ...

The footage has attracted many views, together with innumerable comments.  The general theme, from both older commenters and people who were not even born in the 1960s, is the way in which Britain has changed since that decade.

Yes, some  remark how great it is to see people actually looking where they are going rather than being glued to mobile phones, while others remark how better dressed people seemed to be back then, and how slim.

But by far the prevailing nostalgia focused on the comparative homogeneity of the population, and a strong Islamophobic thread weaves through the comments.

Shocking to behold, though not numerous, are comments blaming population diversity and mass immigration on "Jews" and "Zionist Jews", with one avowedly "Asian" commenter joining in the antisemitism, and somebody adding obscenely that "the Jews" won the Second World War.

I felt like asking why, since mass Islamic migration, with what it portends at the ballot box and elsewhere, is hardly in the interests of Zionists and Jews, would any Jew want to encourage, much less engineer, it.  But then I figured that conspiracy theorists are incorrigible and best left alone.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKaDoR1qfKc

Why encourage it, indeed?  There are plenty of Jews who realise that mass Muslim immigration is not in their interests, nor in those of the wider society. However,  Melanie Phillips, in an article concerning Israel's new Nationality Law, wrote, inter alia, a few days ago:

'Two utterly fundamental and seismic issues are threatening to tear apart Britain, Europe and America. They are mass immigration and national identity.

The majority of Jews in Britain and America are warmly disposed towards the former and terrified of the latter. They have got it precisely the wrong way round. 

Diaspora Jews have a Pavlovian response to immigration. This is entirely understandable: the vast majority, myself included, are the descendants of immigrants and refugees.

Jews are also commanded in the Torah not to wrong or oppress a stranger “for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” But what if the strangers in question want to turn your own country into Egypt? 

For what’s happening today is not so much immigration as the mass movement of peoples from global south to north. 

If unchecked, this will transform the developed world, overwhelm its public infrastructure, and forever alter the culture and identity of its constituent nations.

.... Society has to pull together in pursuit of a common project or else it will disintegrate into warring tribes. That common project — based on a shared history, language, religion, institutions and traditions — is called a nation....'  [Emphasis added]

 The real unease here is surely over Israel asserting its national identity at all, just as most British Jews are uneasy about Britain asserting its own national identity.

But without it, democracy and political freedom in the West will die. And without their own acknowledgement that they are themselves a nation, diaspora Jews will also fade away.

The Jewish world will merely consist instead of the State of Israel — the one place where Judaism’s defining and indissoluble connection between the people, the religion and the land to form the Jewish nation really does have meaning.'

Meanwhile, for Spain as a new stepping stone for mass migration to Europe see here

Blackburn Blues

When Jews were readmitted to England under the Cromwellian Protectorate, a decision ratified by King Charles II after the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, they came not as ghettoised, medieval people, but as modern citizens indistinguishable, save for the private expression of religion, from everybody else.

On the European continent the situation was different, still rooted in the past, and in the eighteenth century that icon of the French Enlightenment, Voltaire, was repelled by the Jews' apparent medievalism. 

In the infancy of the nineteenth-century, before Napoleon was prepared to guarantee the Jews of France the civic equality that had been ushered in by the French Revolution, Jewish leaders had to satisfy him that their people deserved French citizenship by meeting the requirements of modernity, assuring him, for example, of their repudiation of polygamy (which in fact had not been practised by European Ashkenazim since the early Middle Ages) and that  their premier allegiance was to France.

This they were easily able to do, and integrated seamlessly into the fabric of France.

How ironic is the situation today, when in old England medievalism and segregation of the kind the Enlightenment swept away, and which had never existed in modern Britain, flourishes in pockets of the country.

Take, for example, Blackburn, Lancashire, where an seemingly inexorable population replacement is taking place by people who seem in many respects mired in medievalism.  We glimpse men strutting ahead of their niqab-clad wives, and hear government adviser Dame Louise Casey fearlessly state what her masters in government apparently did not want to her to express.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnmI9eFzO9A

Islamophobic?  In this video dating to 2016 Melanie Phillips effortlessly routs Roshan Muhammed Salih (who appears regularly on Iran's Press TV  interviewing demonisers of the Zionist Entity such as Jenny Tonge) when he tries to compare "Islamophobia" to antisemitism. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4Sr8MZNgDo

Fear of Islamofascism, says Melanie (around 7:05), is "based on evidence and truth; antisemitism is based on lies".

North of the Border, Up Montreal Way (video)

"Destroy the accursed Jews! ... Allah, kill them one by one ... Grant victory to our brothers waging jihad in Palestine ..."

Here's one of those barmy Olde Tyme preachers, spewing some bloodcurdling sentiments.

But this youthful representative of the 7th century-inspired antisemitic species calling for genocide of the Jews  is not doing so in some Middle Eastern backwater.

He's doing it in Trudeauland.

His name's Imam Sayed al-Ghitawi and his hangout is the al-Andalous (here's looking at you covetously, Spain!) Islamic Center, Montreal:

 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eegxySP2jIU)

To quote the uploader:

"Brad Trost issued a statement opposing Motion M-103 in Canada's House of Commons. The Motion calls for Parliament to study and take action against Islamophobia. In his statement Trost reminds people that it is Jews, not Muslims, who remain the REAL targets of hate in Canada. This video illustrates why Trost is right."

As Toronto Sun columnist Tarek Fatah observed, inter alia, a few days ago:

'In the wake of the tragic massacre at a Quebec City mosque that killed six Muslims, a motion will be debated in the Canadian Parliament Wednesday asking MPs to “condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination.”

Many in the mosque establishment and right-wing Islamic groups in Canada are celebrating this as a victory.

But Muslim critics of the so-called “Motion 103”, which mentions only Islamophobia by name and not any other form of religious persecution, are in disbelief that so few members of parliament have objected to this giant step backward and the watering down of our freedom of expression.

Perhaps, since the motion is being put before the Commons by Liberal MP Iqra Khalid, a Muslim Canadian, MPs don’t want to be seen as insensitive to Muslim victimhood, or oppose the motion, lest they be labelled racist, misogynist and, of course, “Islamophobic”....

[P]erhaps MP Khalid will have the courage to amend her motion and include a denunciation of this prayer, variations of which are read at most mosques every Friday.

Will she label such hateful statements as an example of systemic racism that is anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-Hindu and anti-atheist?'

Useful Idiots Fighting for Whom?

A prominent Aussie Israel-basher's credo

"Clamouring critics of multiculturalism are motivated by ignorance, bigotry, racism, xenophobia, fear and hatred of Muslim Australians.

They fear their beloved mythical Anglo-Saxon monocultural masterclass is threatened. The Nazis had similar values....

According to the racist opponents of multiculturalism, the Muslim agenda is that Australia must be a Muslim nation.

If you believe this, I can also sell you the Sydney Harbour Bridge....

Ironically, we may be better off as a Muslim nation. Christianity has never been less popular and Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. It’s a religion of peace, love, family values and respect, and the only faith to give women equality in its holy book." 

So declared inveterate Israel-bashing ABC (Australia's answer to the BBC) journalist Peter Goers a few years ago.


What a comedian, eh?

Strange sort of mindset.

But one we are seeing all too frequently among the "anti-Zionist" crowd.

See what I mean?  (The Israel-basher quoted in the previous image happily poses with a book.)

More comedians, this time in France last month (note the keffiyehs):

Here's a look at how Europe's "cultural enrichers" respect women in France, with the "public space" closed to them in a shopping precinct in a district of Lyons, and how both Muslim-born and non-Muslim women are fighting back:

Here's a look at Merkeland, where youths from Muslim hellholes are demonstrating how much they respect women in authority (by abusing and threatening them):

Here's another look at "cultural enrichment" in the same country:

As British historian Niall Ferguson (husband of the articulate and courageous Ayaan Hirsi Ali) observed recently:

'On the migration issue the European leadership got it disastrously wrong. On the question of radical Islam the European leadership has fundamentally got it wrong. One has to recognise that the European elite's performance over the last decade entirely justified the revolt of provincial England that was what we saw in Brexit.

If those of us who were part of the elite spent more time in pubs in provincial England and provincial Wales we would have heard what I just said.

This is not about GDP, it is principally about the complete loss of control of the EU's external border and what that implies for our country's future.

I have had a kind of awakening. Brexit woke me up and reminded me I needed to pay much more attention to what the non-elite majority of voters were thinking.'

Under its wet wet wet liberal CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL seems bent on turning that organisation into a one-stop shop for the promotion of every leftist bandwagon that rolls by, and demonising as bigots anyone outspokenly critical of Islam.

As Jonathan Bronitsky has written, at the end of a brilliant essay here :

'First, I hope this essay persuades the ADL, which is heavily invested in antibullying (e.g., “No Place For Hate” campaign), to consider that it itself has become a bully to conservatives who remain in its ranks. Shutting out right-leaning individuals through crowd intimidation and derision weakens coalitions, which are vital in advocacy work. This behavior also diminishes the organization’s values, which will turn stale and trite when left unchallenged.

Secondly, I want the ADL to revisit and clarify its mission. “The nation’s premier civil rights/human relations agency,” asserts that it “fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry”; not just “all forms of bigotry,” but “anti-Semitism” and then “all forms of bigotry.” Yet as murderous anti-Semitism around the globe has surged in recent years, the ADL has dedicated itself more and more to matters of social justice in America (e.g., immigration, women’s reproductive health, economic “privilege”) that are already being pursued by a plethora of lobbying outlets and activist foundations. This wouldn’t be problematic—or rather, duplicitous—per se. But the ADL loudly and incessantly bemoans the fact that Jews are living in an increasingly dangerous world. “Thirty or forty years ago,” I heard over and over again at the National Leadership Summit, “I couldn’t have imagined that Jews would be getting shot dead in the streets of Europe.”

Well, resources are limited. Is combatting anti-Semitism a “priority” for the ADL? If so, then the organization should put its money where its mouth is. Alas, this outcome seems ever more unlikely as it seeks to enforce group conformity and advance political agendas that have nothing to do with defending the Jewish people.'

And as Jonathan S. Tobin wrote a few days ago: 

'In the month since the presidential election, many in the American Jews have been in mourning over Donald Trump’s victory. For all too many Jews and the organizations that purport to represent Jewish interests, partisan disappointment has led to a great deal of loose and highly irresponsible comparisons of our present situation to Weimar Germany and the rise of Hitler. It is in that context that a new report from the Community Security Service (CSS) about terrorist incidents and attacks on Jews and Israelis in the United States since 1967 is critical reading for those who wish to re-focus the Jewish community on real rather than imagined threats to its security.

The report, which was written by Yehudit Barsky, one of the top experts on radical hate groups in the country, provides a comprehensive analysis of the recent history of anti-Semitism in the United States. She paints a frightening picture of the rising toll of violence against Jews from two distinct sources: white supremacists and radical Islamists....

This serves as a reminder that for all of the talk about Islamophobia, both before and after the election, Jews and Jewish institutions remain the main targets of religious-based hate crimes in this country. This is a fact borne out by the FBI’s annual reports on hate crimes. The latest available report is from 2014 and that one, like every other issued since the outset of such compilations confirms this fact. In that year, 58.1 percent of all religious hate crimes in this country were directed at Jews. Only 16.3  percent were anti-Islamic....

 Monitoring hotbeds of hate is key to stopping attacks, but, in the effort to avoid accusations of Islamophobia, efforts by law enforcement to keep tabs on radical mosques and other Islamist centers have been abandoned and wrongly branded as acts of prejudice. Without good intelligence, it’s only a matter of time before another major attack might be successful....'

 And as Melanie Phillips has so well expressed matters ('Mrs May's False Note'):

'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism.

 Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself.

Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world.

The result of Mrs May’s lethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world – even to demonise as “Islamophobic” anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.

The result was the ludicrous exclusion from Britain of the anti-jihadists Geller and Spencer in 2013. Whatever one may think of their style or choice of allies, to suggest that people who fight against antisemitism and the jihadi threat to the world pose a threat similar to that presented by the terrorist godfathers Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada is just grotesque.

... Yet last July the government allowed into the country two extremist preachers from Pakistan, Muhammad Naqib ur Rehman and Hassan Haseeb ur Rehman, for a seven-week preaching tour of mosques. Both are supporters of Mumtaz Qadri who in 2011 murdered Salman Taseer, a Pakistani politician who spoke out against that country’s blasphemy laws....

To equate antisemitism with Islamophobia not only reveals a moral and intellectual muddle and a failure to understand what bigotry actually is. It also inescapably suggests a most alarming inability to grasp the full nature and extent of the Islamist threat to Britain and the free world.'

Meanwhile, Hizb ut-Tahrir, the extremist group banned in much of the Middle East but tolerated in Britain and Australia, has been making its view known, yet again, on the streets of London.

 Meanwhile, at an Austrian kindergarten's Christmas play ...

To say nothing of that German Christmas market in today's headlines.

Melanie Phillips on Trump's Triumph (video)

 Melanie Phillips, calling Trump's triumph "a kind of populist revolution," inter alia defends him from perceptions of antisemitism and racism, likening the present outrage on the part of the left to the smears of "xenophobia" and "racism" that dogged pro-Brexit voters determined to preserve their culture and restrict illegal immigration.  Historian Simon Schama takes issue ... but Melanie reminds him of the terrible antisemitism on the part of leftists that has exploded under "respectable" non-controversial administrations ...

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSEnq40AX0I)

Marvellous Melanie on British Leftist Antisemitism

Nobody tells it better than Ms Melanie Phillips.  A must-watch (or listen-to) video.

Nearly an hour's worth of footage, but this wonderful woman is worth every minute.

To quote the uploader:

 British Columnist for The Times, Melanie Phillips, critiques attempts
by the Left to equate Antisemitism with Islamophobia, distorting the
truth about Islamism in the process. JBS exclusive coverage of an
ISGAP program from the ISGAP Center in NYC.

No Imperialism or Islamophobia Please: We're Leftists

BDSer Associate Professor Jake Lynch has been talking to the Aussie Green Left Weekly about his reportedly troubled Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University.

https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/61387

 And look who was spotted in the audience for this talk at Sydney Uni by John Pilger yesterday:

Photo credit: Peter Boyle

Meanwhile (in contrast to the good sense expressed by conservative columnist Andrew Bolt here and here), in an article entitled "Blame Hate, Not Islam: Europe's Left responds to terror attacks," the Aussie Green Left has been quick to defend the Religion of Peace following the Islamic terror attacks in Brussels, and to take a little swipe at the Zionist Entity in the process.

Inter alia, it tells readers:

'Grassroots groups across Europe are warning against succumbing to misguided and bigoted speech in the wake of the latest terrorist atrocity in Belgium.

Reacting to the terror attacks in Brussels on March 22, an Israeli state official echoed the typical narrative conflating Islam and terrorism, and the idea of a clash of a civilisation.

"This is a Third World War against our common values," Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said, according to the Jerusalem Post. "Terrorism must unite Western countries to unite for a determined, creative, and uncompromising fight against its origins, funders, and operators." Western culture is under attack from extremist Islamic terrorism, which is relentless and indiscriminate, Ya'alon added.

In Europe, calls for increasing security and tightening borders pushed anti-racist groups to issue both condolences and warnings against Islamophia amid the sorrow... 

Brushing away heated polemic, some groups instead opted for a sober anti-imperialist analysis...

Islamophobic comments flooded social media following the attacks, with #StopIslam trending on Twitter in major European countries including Belgium, France, Turkey, Germany, Britain and the Netherlands..."

More on the same theme from CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations), in an article entitled "While Brussels aches, Muslims brace for another round of Islamophobia":

"Jews Are The New Jews"

In Old London Town

By the philosemitic British journalist Julie Burchill, a gutsy piece refuting the fashionable leftist and Muslim canard that "Muslims are the new Jews":
Here's a taster:

'.... How are Muslims not the New Jews? Let me count the ways. 

For a start, there seems to be no sign of any sort of Kindertransport in action - rather, the modus operandi would appear to be "women and children last" judging by the huge groups of able-bodied young men who have found their way to the West.... I don't recall any accounts of marauding bands of Jewish youths mob-handedly molesting gentile women on the streets of countries which gave them refuge....

[T]here is only one tiny Jewish majority country, which did not exist until 1948, and so the Jews fleeing persecution throughout the centuries had no place of assured safety until recently; yet another reason why supporters of Israel such as myself are so passionate about its survival. The Jews who came to Britain as refugees came to a very different country, with no welfare state, also speaking no English and with little money....

Likewise

Jewish refugees left the virulently antisemitic countries of Eastern Europe for the moderately antisemitic countries of Western Europe and considered it a good exchange, grasping the new freedom that came their way and running with it. Certain sections of the Muslim community, on the other hand, seem to veer between rather hysterical extremes of victorhood and victimhood....

Somewhat embarrassingly, a recent Freedom of Information request by a Sikh organisation found that of 400 anti-Muslim "hate crimes" recorded in the first half of last year, 28 per cent were not on Muslims at all.

But I don't mind the stats which tell us how many Muslims were attacked so long as we also get the stats on how many Muslims attacked people, including their own people in so-called "honour crimes", which are actually hate crimes of the most cowardly kind, usually committed on defenceless young girls by one or more fully-grown men. 

Meanwhile, antisemitic attacks continue to rise - and the Jewish Community Security Trust doesn't need to add attacks on Christians to bulk up the numbers....

 Muslims are not the new Jews - Jews are the new Jews and sadly Muslims now number greatly among their chief tormentors.

But there is a greater issue at stake here, far beyond the different standards of behaviour displayed by Jewish refugees in the past and Muslim refugees now. Wherever the Jews have gone, they have enriched and opened up the host culture far beyond the extent even to which they have enriched and opened up themselves....'

Read all of the article here

Class War Warrior

From an article intended to show what a great president Bernie Sanders would make, but which should surely make realists shudder:

Been and Seen in New York City

 'She started by referring to the Islamophobic bigotry of many of the Republican candidates. As she continued, calling herself “an American Muslim student who aspires to change the world,” Sanders interrupted her to invite her up to the stage and embrace her, and then, respectfully, he gave her the opportunity to finish her question onstage on equal footing. How would Sanders respond, Abdelgadar asked, to the Islamophobia spouted by the Republicans and amplified by the media? Sanders gently took her hand and stood next to her at the lectern as he responded.

Had this scene been scripted, it would have been a remarkable tableau vivant. It was not rehearsed, but neither was it accidental. Sanders’s response to her question gave us a rich insight into the Socialist worldview that underpinned the Jewish and multicultural Brooklyn environment in which he was raised, which goes a good way toward explaining his broad and growing appeal.

Sanders began by equating anti-Semitism, racism and Islamophobia. He hearkened to his own Jewish heritage and recalled the murders of his father’s family in Nazi concentration camps. Racism is not only about pent up hatred and stupidity, he explained; it is also a tool that politicians and the wealthy elite use to keep workers divided and to weaken their efforts to organize....'

Read it all here


Sobering claims here

And here

"The West Decides to Pretend That Radical Islam Doesn't Exist" (updated)

I like this astute and brave young American guy, Ben Shapiro. 

Ben on BDS:

Ben on Leftist inconsistencies:

Ben on the Iran threat:

 Ben on the Islamic menace:

 Yesterday, in relation to the latter problem confronting the West, and the all too common denial voiced by world leaders including Angela Merkel and Barack Obama, Ben Shapiro wrote, inter alia:

'Last year, there were 452 suicide terror attacks across the world. Four hundred and fifty of them were committed by Muslims. Last month, Muslims pledging allegiance to ISIS murdered 14 people in San Bernardino, California. Last week, thousands of Muslims around Europe, from Germany to Sweden to Switzerland, sexually assaulted hundreds of young women on New Year's Eve. Just days ago, a Muslim man shot a Philadelphia cop at point-blank range and declared that he did it in the name of Islam.

In response, Hillary Clinton declared, "Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with Islam." ...The mayor of Cologne, Germany, told young women not to walk within "arm's length" of young Muslim men, and leftist commentators explained that the wave of sexual harassment resulted from some generalized, nonspecific religious patriarchal attitudes. The mayor of Philadelphia said that the attack on the police officer had nothing to do with "being a Muslim or the Islamic faith," and that instead, we ought to focus our attention on the pressing issue of gun violence ....

If the West keeps this up, there won't be any West of which to speak.

.... The West is far too powerful to lose to ISIS or radical Islam -- unless the West decides to pretend that radical Islam doesn't exist. In pathological fashion, that's just what our leaders have apparently decided to do.'

Read all of Ben Shapiro's piece here

Read, too, the comparable warning, from across the Herring Pond, of the prescient and courageous Douglas Murray in The Spectator that concludes:

'Later this month the House of Commons will discuss the urgent issue of Mr Trump. This is because last month Trump said that he wanted to stop Muslim immigration into the US and added that Britain and Europe have a serious Muslim extremism problem. Because of this more than half a million people signed a petition calling for Trump to be barred from Britain. This now has to be debated in Parliament and doubtless all those MPs who rarely do much about problems they could deal with will grandstand their opposition to a foreign politician who doesn’t care what they think. In the last week we have been reminded that the British government not only doesn’t know who is coming into our country, but doesn’t even know who is leaving either. Still, it’s all fine so long as we divert ourselves by talking Trump. Perhaps this will be the European habit for some time to come. Perhaps it will finally do for us.

Millions of people whose identities and beliefs are unknown have been let into our continent. Many who have been here for a few years continue to present challenges which are by no means minimal. There seems to be a belief that so long as we have got Katie Hopkins, Donald Trump or Tommy Robinson to kick around then we can focus our energies on ignoring the problem.

Of course all one can do is warn. But it seems to me that, if we keep distracting ourselves from the problem and beating up on every response to it, then this continent of ours is going to go very bad, very fast.' 

Rest of Murray's article here

Oh, and by the way, I've come across an unpolitically correct gem of a video that puts the situation in a nutshell: "The fear to offend outweighs the will to survive".  It uses the mass assaults of German women as the peg on which to hang its warning about the bleak future facing Europe if things continue the way they are.  It makes uncomfortable viewing, but we ignore its inherent message at our peril.  Do take a look:

History As She Is Spoke: "The Jews in Palestine are occupiers of Islamic land"

"This is not the first time apologists for Jewish criminality in Palestine have sought to silence criticism of the actions of the Jewish entity by playing the victim card. The Jews in Palestine are occupiers of Islamic land ....

 It is the height of depravity to seek to delegitimise the real and deadly concerns of the victims of Jewish barbarity in Palestine by portraying their opposition to Jewish occupation as opposition to Jews themselves. The criticisms directed towards Hizb ut-Tahrir are the in fact the same criticisms directed to all Muslims who principally oppose the criminality of Jewish occupation in Palestine....

It is well known to all that Jews have always historically turned to Muslims in times of their most desperate need. Jews have only flourished under Islam; indeed their golden age was realised only under Islam.

 To attempt to reconstruct history by portraying Muslims as anti-Semitic is not only disingenuous but criminal...."

So declares the Australian wing of the Caliphate-seeking Islamic extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir in response to revelations that the New South Wales Board of Deputies has written as follows to the president of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board:

 "We write to refer a matter to the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board with a request that the ADB prepare a brief for the Director of Public Prosecutions to prosecute Ismail al-Wahwah and Wassim Dureihi under S.20D of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act.

 An inflammatory speech was delivered in [the Sydney suburb of Lakemba in Arabic on July 25, 2014 by Wahwah, the local spiritual head of Hizb ut-Tahrir – an organisation which advocates sharia and the destruction of the democratic way of life.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aumYJHM2cM]

A translated extract follows:

 “The entire world suffers from the children of Israel today and complains about them. Who will set the world free from the children of Israel so that the world will be able to say that it has rid itself of that hidden evil? This mission will be accomplished by none but you, O Muslims … The ember of jihad against the Jews will continue to burn. The struggle and the jihad will continue until the words of Allah come true.  Judgment day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews … Tomorrow you Jews will see what will become of you — an eye for an eye, blood for blood, destruction for destruction.”

Reinforcing his message, the unseen crowd interjected with a chant of “Khaybar, Khaybar” — the full war-cry being “Khaybar Khaybar Ya Yahud jaysh Muhammad saya’ud ” (Khaybar, Khaybar O Jews,the army of Muhammad will return).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aumYJHM2cM]

 This is a blatant call for violence against Jews on the basis of their race as Khaybar was the scene of a 7th-century massacre of Jews in what is now Saudi Arabia.

The following observations will be of assistance:

Ismail al-Wahwah gave the speech in public to a live audience.

The speech incited hatred towards, serious contempt for, and severe ridicule of, Jews on theground of them being Jewish. The speaker clearly refers to “the children of Israel” – ie Jews – as a people.

It is clear that the speech threatened physical harm towards Jews. It also incited others to threaten physical harm towards Jews.

Each of these elements was done intentionally.

The intent extends beyond that of the main speaker to the host, Wassim Dureihi, a spokesperson  for Hizb ut-Tahrir.

It is important to note that the diatribe was crude Jew-hatred reminiscent of last year’s anti-Israel rallies in Sydney that descended into blatant antisemitism, complete with Nazi swastikas and placards evoking racist images that had nothing to do with any Middle East conflict.

 Wahwah’s speech was delivered in Arabic and a subtitled video was recently released...."

(Hat tip: J-Wire) See also Shirlee Finn's excellent detailed post on this topic here

Also of interest on J-Wire, barrister Geoff Bloch's riposte to a Guardian article by a prominent Aussie human rights lawyer, Julian Burnside, who averred, inter alia, that "Right now, Islamophobia is the new anti-Semitism ..."  See Bloch's winning (game, set, and match) piece here

Among Australian Jewry, None So Blind As Those Who Won't See

Newly posted to Facebook by The Online Hate Prevention Institute (run by Dr Andre Oboler):

As breathtakingly naive as it is ostensibly nice.

For this goes far beyond condemnation of attacks on individuals who happen to be Muslim, and gratuitous baiting of members of the Muslim community, disgraceful behaviour which most decent people deplore.

I am hardly the only Australian Zionist concerned that Jews are giving aid and comfort to those who hate Israel, and that Jews are helping to muzzle free debate on an ideology that is widely regarded as misogynistic, antisemitic, and violent, and at odds with Western democracy, let alone that Jews are abetting the concept of "Islamophobia".

The latter is, as Australian Jew Michael Burd put it in the Australian Jewish News (26 December) "an over-used term ... meant to shut down all debate and leave many an innocent person feeling like a racist".

This post by the Online Hate Prevention Institute has received "Likes" on Facebook by people who, frankly, should know better.

The attitude seen represents the thin end of a wedge which might well lead Australian Jewish leadership organisations to ban the likes of Dr Mordechai Kedar from addressing communal audiences, as the British Board of Deputies recently did.

 "None so blind as those who won't see", as the old saying goes.

Cross-posted at Jews Down Under

The ABC & Bibi: Bravo, Bolt!

My previous post shows the ABC's interview with Bibi Netanyahu.  I saw only the tail end of the interview and what struck me was the hectoring tone taken by interviewer Leigh Sales, who attempted to interrupt the Israeli prime minister a number of times, and then proceeded to lecture him on what is right for his own country.

Little surprises me about the ABC, which is the equivalent of the BBC and equally leftwing and politically correct.
And I see that my impression of the interview has been borne out by the popular Australian columnist Andrew Bolt and by many commentators on his column concerning the interview (hat tip: reader Ian):

'How does it work in the ABC’s world?:

 Terrorist: I am going to kill you and all your children.

ABC presenter: Can we haggle here?

[Bolt then quotes the genocidal antisemitic Hamas Charter at length]

But from 7.30 last night:

 LEIGH SALES: ...(H)ow will you have a two-state solution if you’re not prepared to negotiate with Hamas?

 BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Well, I don’t negotiate with people who want to destroy me ... People who are out to destroy you are not candidates for negotiation. You make peace but only with an enemy that wants peace. An enemy that wants to eradicate you from the face of the Earth: there’s nothing to negotiate about. We want to talk to those Palestinians who reject Hamas. That’s why I’ve asked president Abbas to reject Hamas and espouse peace. You can’t have Hamas and peace. You have to choose one or the other. We choose peace.

 LEIGH SALES: But you have to negotiate with who is the representative of 1.8 million Gazans and that is Hamas, otherwise there is no prospect for a two-state solution?

 BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Hamas is not the representative. Hamas is their jailer. Hamas has oppressed them. There was only one election in Gaza: once. After that, there are no elections; there are executions. Hamas executed dozens of Palestinians who don’t agree with them during the last war that they forced on their people, using them as civilian shields and when people protested they put a bullet in their heads… They don’t represent anyone in Gaza. They rule them with an iron fist. This is a terrorist tyranny. I will not accord them any legitimacy. Neither should anyone else.'

 Read more here

                                                                     * * *

And we are all anti-"The Zionist Project" eh?

"Disenfranchised"

Defined by my dictionary as:

"1. Deprived of the rights of citizenship, especially of the right to vote; 2. Deprived of a privilege, right, or power".

Rather like the plight of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban, then, huh?

Yet, on the ABC and elsewhere, pundits are trotted out who misuse that very word, purloining it to describe the present position of Muslims in Australia!

There was such a commentator today on the ABC, who did exactly that; he was invited on to talk up "Islamophobia" and the "fear" in Australian Muslim circles following the recent terror raids and the reported attempted murders yesterday of two police officers (seriously slashing one) by an 18-year-old Afghan Australian recruit to extremism who one of the victims shot dead.

Australian Jewry's enfant terrible adds his ten cents' worth

And talk them up the commentator did: "disenfranchised" escaped more than one from his lips, to "explain" Islamic extremism.

Observes Andrew Bolt's  column today, inter alia:

'Two policemen are stabbed in Melbourne after offering to shake the hand of a Muslim terror suspect and who do Muslim leaders attack?

Yes, the police. Again.

The Islamic Council of Victoria’s reaction yesterday is a disgrace and only too typical of the Muslim leadership that has so betrayed Australia....

It seems impossible to deny the role of Islam in this confrontation. It seems implausible to blame anyone but Haider himself for what followed.

Yet the Islamic Council of Victoria’s secretary, Ghaith Krayem, announced he was “disappointed” that police “almost have said it was the young man’s fault”.

Pardon? Who else’s fault could it have possibly been?

The ICV compounded that implied slur of the police by demanding “a full and objective investigation into this incident to ensure that such a tragedy is never repeated”.

If it were calling for an investigation into Islam, Islamic radicals and apologists in bodies like the ICV, I would agree.

Let’s get the role of Islam out in the open.

But, no, for the ICV the fault lies not with Islam but a few criminals it claims misrepresent the faith — and especially with Australian society, which had “to deal with the root causes of alienation and disaffection of people such as this”.

The Lebanese Muslim Association yesterday agreed Muslims were feeling marginalised and “picked on” and “root causes” here needed addressing.

Our fault, then? That’s an excuse jihadists would want to hear.

But how strange. We actually have about as many Buddhists as Muslims, yet only Muslims warn they are so “alienated” that we must expect terror attacks unless we change.

This absurdly inflamed sense of victimhood — this blaming of non-Muslims — is now so common among Muslim leaders that we must conclude it is not just a misjudgment but a tenet of their ideology....

Yes, for our Muslim leaders it seems the root cause of Islamic terrorism is never Islam and always the West. And so often there’s the same implied threat: change or risk death — said either as a demand or prediction, depending on whether the speaker is an extremist or moderate....'

Read the rest here


Incidentally, from an Aussie academic who back in 2002 concocted a pro-BDS petition with (part-Jewish) leftist academic John Docker, a curious observation today:

A Litany of Shame: Fabulous Phyllis highlights Brandeis's past betrayals

Professor Phyllis Chesler knows a thing or two about Islamic oppression of women, as her recently published memoir, An American Bride in Kabul, makes clear.

A staunch defender of Israel, she has already criticised here Brandeis University's craven rescinding of its planned honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an act which of course suggests that when the claims of Islam clash with the claims of downtrodden womankind, liberal-leftists will betray the latter in order to placate the former: "Islamophobia" is, evidently, more of a crime in leftist eyes than Islamic misogyny (see, for instance, here).

Indeed, Islamic misogyny is not to be differentiated from the vestiges of sexism that occur in the United States and other Western societies: to make that distinction, in the eyes of liberal-leftists, is racist and unconscionable, hence the disingenuous piffle of  signatories to a faculty petition against Ms Ali's honouring that "gendered violence"occurs everywhere.

But in her latest critique of Brandeis, Professor Chesler dwells not on the above obvious points but on something which to many of us is not so obvious: she has done yeoman service in highlighting the fact that Brandeis has form when it comes to accommodating the enemies of Israel.

She writes, inter alia:

'In 2003, Brandeis partnered with Al-Quds University—and did so, year after year, until 2013, when violent demonstrations broke out on the Al-Quds campus, replete with traditional Nazi salutes.

In 2006, the Brandeis community of students and professors did not protest the Distinguished Professorship Brandeis awarded to the "inflammatory" anti-Zionist playwright Tony Kushner.

In 2006, Brandeis also staged a "Voices of Palestine" exhibit. Seventeen paintings by Palestinian youths depicted their lives under Israeli "occupation." This time, refreshingly, Brandeis students had the exhibit taken down because there was absolutely no Israeli perspective being exhibited.

This was not surprising. There usually isn't an Israeli perspective exhibited. Kudos to these Brandeis students.

In 2006, Jordan's Prince Hassan bin Talal delivered the keynote address at the Brandeis graduation. Students did not protest Jordan's human rights record vis a vis the Palestinians (they massacred them in 1970), or in terms of torturing its own citizens, nor its abysmal record on honor-related violence, including honor killings.

Indeed, Brandeis students and staff did not hold Jordan accountable for its former systematic desecration of Jewish holy places and for its forcing the evacuation of Jews, many of whose families had been there for centuries, from the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem in 1948.

Brandeis students did not create online petitions to debate the merits of choosing Jordan's Prince as a speaker.

Here's why. Arabs and Muslims have been and still are treated super-sympathetically on American and Canadian campuses. Jews and Israelis are not. Nevertheless, the false charge of "Islamophobia" is received as divine revelation on many of these same campuses....'

In 2007, Dr. Daniel Pipes was invited to speak at Brandeis. However, he was defamed by Brandeis's former President who compared the distinguished and sober Pipes to Holocaust denier Norman Finkelstein. Both allegedly were speakers who "inflame passions, whose mission is not so much discussion and education as it is theatre, a show." Pipes did not lecture at that time—but subsequently did so.

Oh, but there's more.  Read all of Phyllis Chesler's revelations here

Antisemitism in its Broadest Sense, Vicar?

Pro-Israel Christians in London

In a letter to the Church of England Newspaper, headed "The real antisemitism of today", Jeremy Moodey, CEO of the Israel-bashing NGO Embrace the Middle East (formerly BibleLands), has noted, inter alia:

"Many Jewish people feel that criticism of the State of Israel is intrinsically antisemitic, especially when Israel is singled out as being the main obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Since such criticism has increased in recent years, particularly in the context of Israel’s continued occupation of the Palestinian territories, the humanitarian crisis caused by its blockade of Gaza, and the seemingly relentless expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, it may follow in the minds of some Jewish people that antisemitism is on the increase."

Pro-Israel non-Jews in Australia

The perception that Mr Moodey identifies (and with which he disagrees) is of course one that has been articulated in recent days by Binyamin Netanyahu, when he said:

"In the past anti-Semites boycotted Jewish businesses and today they call for the boycott of the Jewish state, and by the way, only the Jewish state.  I think that it is important that the boycotters be exposed for what they are, they are classical anti-Semites in modern garb."

 On Facebook Mr Moodey had expressed exasperation with the newspaper over the fact that his letter had appeared in the newspaper somewhat truncated, which prompted his friend the Reverend Stephen Sizer, in linking to Moodey's letter on the Embrace the Middle East website to write:

"I gave up on the CEN for news on the Middle East a long while ago - apart from Jeremy's articles and the occasional letter. Very sad."

Soon afterwards, on the same thread, Sizer added his ten cents' worth on the nature of antisemitism:

Many Jewish people feel that criticism of the State of Israel is intrinsically antisemitic, especially when Israel is singled out as being the main obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Since such criticism has increased in recent years, particularly in the context of Israel’s continued occupation of the Palestinian territories, the humanitarian crisis caused by its blockade of Gaza, and the seemingly relentless expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, it may follow in the minds of some Jewish people that antisemitism is on the increase. - See more at: http://www.embraceme.org/blog/real-antisemitism-today#sthash.en7hD7Nf.dpufMoodey is not best pleased, since the editor of the said newspaper truncated his letter. Reverend Stephen Sizer has treated his Facebook followers to a brief disquisition on antisemitism.

"Antisemitism in its broadest sense is real. It is latent in much political rhetoric and religious conviction and it is explicit in the agenda of groups like the BNP and EDL. But diluting the term to include BDS or legitimate criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians will only lead to complacency. Racism is evil in what ever guise it manifests itself."

It's noteworthy that he makes no mention of Islamic antisemitism, which as we know is rife and deep-seated, and of ancient lineage.  Perhaps this omission is not surprising, given that the Reverend Sizer seems to have many Muslim allies in his crusade (as it were!) against Christian Zionism; indeed, I gather that he attended the "Islamophobia" Awards ceremony, an IHRC fund-raising event that took place at the Holiday Inn, Wembley, on Friday evening.

But let's come back to that thread:

Does the vicar condone the distasteful remarks of/links from some of his followers?  Does he regard  as "antisemitism in its broadest sense" comments such as these, all, coincidentally, by ladies (though examples by male followers also abound):

(Update: that's an example of one from a male made after this post was published)

"These Jews Are A Danger To The Jewish People": Steyn on those who avoid 'the "M" word'

London calling!

Nominations for the annual "Islamophobia" Awards are in, and include predictable  and not so predictable names.

Among the predictable nominees are Geert Wilders, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Daniel Greenfield, Douglas Murray, and Daniel Pipes.

Among the less unpredictable are Barack Obama, Aussie Prime Minister Tony Abbott, and Aussie Senator Cory Bernardi, the latter "for claiming that Christianity is under siege from both the political Greens party and the religion of Islam"; (streuth! wherever did the senator get that idea?).

And again ...

The Awards event has received some warm and fuzzy messages of support from, among others, a non-Muslim female professor (how heart-warming it is that a high-powered woman can overlook the horrendous amount of sexual grooming by Muslim gangs preying on underage non-Muslim girls that's been occurring in Britain lately; if only the pesky tabloid press which insists on reporting the grooming would do the same!), from the former Archbishop of Canterbury, that druidic-looking bloke who once described as inevitable the adoption of aspects of sharia law by Britain (does Rowan Williams not realise that  his fellow-Christians are suffering persecution and death at the hands of Islamists in the Middle East?), and from an academic of Jewish birth who's been one of the official denouncers of Israel on "Al Quds Day" in Londonistan.

In New York City

The UK-based nominees include "Raheem Kasaam (Student Rights), for demonising Muslims on issue of gender segregation" (yep, don't let the rights of those uppity members of the inferior sex who demand the right to sit where they please in the public space of the secular academy get in the way of a good whinge) and MEP "Gerard Batten, for saying British muslims should sign charter rejecting violence" (bit rich that, eh?; I mean, doesn't Batten realise that Islam is a religion of peace?)

One man missing from the list of nominees is  Canadian columnist Mark Steyn, whose insightful articles on the danger posed by militant Islam to Jews, Israel, and to western democracy used to grace the London Daily Telegraph and, as I have remarked before, are much missed.

Mr Steyn may have made the list had his no-holds-barred attack on soon-to-retire long-serving ADL chief Abe Foxman not narrowly missed Friday's deadline for nominations (results will be announced from London on the 21st of this month).

California dreaming

What's infuriated Mr Steyn is Mr Foxman's Islam-free contention that  "nationalists, anti-government people, neo-fascists, neo-Nazis of anti-immigration and anti-government" are driving present-day antisemitism.

Writes Steyn, inter alia, of  Foxman and Jewish communal leaders like him, who fail to give Muslim judeophobes their due share of the blame:

"These Jews are a danger to the Jewish people.

Their denial is so thick and so amoral that it is difficult sometimes to find the words to express my utter disgust and contempt.

By fighting the last war against the German Nazis over and over in their heads, they endanger living Jews. But they will never learn...."

He continues:

'I would like Foxman to go to Toulouse, a city the size of Jacksonville, Florida, where in recent years one synagogue has been firebombed, another set alight when two burning cars were driven into it, a third burgled and "Dirty Jews" scrawled on the ark housing the Torah, where a kosher butcher's was strafed with gunfire, and a Jewish sports association attacked with Molotov cocktails, and three Jewish children murdered outside their grade school, I would like Foxman to go to Toulouse and tell any Jew he finds there (they are advised by their rabbis not to wear identifying marks of their faith) that it's all the work of "anti-government people".

I would like him to go to Malmö - once the first Christian city in Norway and soon to be the first Muslim city in Sweden - and tell such Jews as he can find (they are abandoning the city) that the desecration of Jewish cemeteries and the ugly reinforced steel doors at the Jewish kindergarten and the rocket-proof glass in the windows of the synagogue are all the fault of "neo-Nazis". Sweden is renowned for its neo-Nazis, isn't it? Doubtless they were the reason why a year or two back at the Davis Cup the Israeli tennis players had to play their match behind closed doors, in a Baltiska Hallen stadium without a single spectator. For had they opened the doors, the seats would have filled up with Swedish "nationalists" and Swedish "neo-fascists" and all hell would have broken loose.

I would like Abe Foxman to go to Tower Hamlets in London's East End, where on Holocaust Memorial Day a couple of years ago a visiting New Yorker had to be taken to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel after a Jewish tour group was pelted with stones by a group jeering "If you go any further, you'll die." I would like Foxman to tell those Jews that their attackers were an "anti-immigration" group.

I would like him to go to Villiers-le-Bel, where a Jewish girl was brutally attacked by a gang shouting "Jews must die!", or to Odense, where the headmaster says his school can no longer take Jewish pupils for security reasons, and tell them it's the fault of Danish "nationalists" and French "neo-Nazis".

But I don't suppose Abe Foxman will go anywhere outside his bubble, will he? Is it really too much to expect him somewhere in that long laundry list of antiquated irrelevances to utter the "M" word? ...'

 Read Mark Steyn's entire screed here