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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Britain</title>
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		<title>Israel and the Other PA: Perfidious Albion</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/kenneth-levin/israel-and-the-other-pa-perfidious-albion/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israel-and-the-other-pa-perfidious-albion</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 27 Oct 2014 04:08:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kenneth Levin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[British media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Elites]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243736</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The dark world of anti-Semitism in British popular opinion and officialdom.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bb.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243829" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bb.jpg" alt="bb" width="268" height="268" /></a><em>&#8220;There is a possibility that the Germans or their satellites may change over from the policy of extermination to one of extrusion, and aim as they did before the war at embarrassing other countries by flooding them with alien immigrants.&#8221;</em> &#8211; British Foreign Office memorandum to the U.S. State Department opposing efforts to rescue Europe’s Jews, spring of 1943.</p>
<p>The recent vote in Britain’s Parliament to recognize a Palestinian state (passed by 274 to 12) is, we are told, of no real consequence. Prime Minister Cameron’s government has said it signals no change in British policy.</p>
<p>But the vote was promoted by anti-Israel voices in Parliament that seek to pressure Israel into suicidal concessions; voices that support the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel, have called for a total European trade embargo against the Jewish state, and have compared Israel to Nazi Germany. It is of a piece with other anti-Israel actions in Britain in recent years.</p>
<p>This summer’s Gaza War was triggered by Hamas &#8211; which openly declares its dedication to the murder not only of all Israelis but of all Jews &#8211; unleashing an incessant barrage of rockets at Israeli cities and villages. Even the Palestinian Authority’s representative to the United Nations observed of Hamas’s campaign that &#8220;each and every missile constitutes a crime against humanity.&#8221; But in Britain, beyond Prime Minister Cameron’s assertion of Israel’s right to defend itself, the most visible, most vocal, full-throated and widely echoed contention was that Israel did not have a right to defend itself. Even as Hamas used civilians as human shields, the inevitable civilian deaths were evidence of Israel’s Jews being, in the words of a columnist for<em> The Independent</em>, &#8220;a child murdering community.&#8221; Such claims became also the message of large public demonstrations, which in turn were accompanied by mob attacks on Israel-associated and Jewish-associated targets and new calls for boycotts and other actions against the Jewish state.</p>
<p>The response to the war, and the parliamentary vote, represent only the latest of anti-Israel convulsions that in recent years have seen British academics, unions, religious bodies, medical and architectural organizations and other groups solemnly advocate boycotts of Israel, members of Parliament call for Israel’s dissolution, and the British public vote Israel the nation representing the greatest threat to world peace. The campaigns against the Jewish state &#8211; condemning it with false, kangaroo-court indictments and embracing those who openly advocate and pursue genocidal anti-Israel agendas &#8211; inevitably bring to mind Albion’s long history of anti-Jewish perfidy.</p>
<p>No doubt the opening reference to anti-Jewish policies of the British government during World War II, indeed to Britain’s role as abettor of the Nazi genocide, will elicit irate complaints by today’s Israel-baiters. They will insist that this is just another example of the special pleading of Israel’s supporters and that in fact &#8211; regurgitating the mindless aspersion that seems to most titillate the anti-Semitic heart &#8211; Israel is today’s Nazi state.</p>
<p>But, as will be shown, the British government’s policies toward the Jews during the Holocaust were directly related to a lethal mix of old-fashioned British anti-Semitism and newer vintage anti-Zionism, and that same ugly brew is even more on display in Britain today than it was then.</p>
<p>At the same time, of course, Britain had played godfather to realization of the Zionist project, giving it the nation&#8217;s imprimatur with the 1917 Balfour Declaration in which then Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour asserted the British government’s favoring the reconstitution of Palestine &#8211; then part of the Ottoman Empire &#8211; as &#8220;the National Home of the Jewish People.&#8221;</p>
<p>Certainly, calculations of wartime expediency played a role in the issuing of the Balfour Declaration. But in addition there had been for more than a century in Britain notable individuals sympathetic to the Jews and their historical experience and predicament, and even groups that cultivated what might be characterized as philo-Semitic views. Moreover, such individuals and groups at times offered early support for Zionist aspirations, and people with similar sympathies figured in shaping the pro-Zionist perspectives reflected in the Balfour Declaration. But these attitudes have always been exceptions in Britain, particularly among the nation&#8217;s elites.</p>
<p>Lord Byron, in his 1815 <em>Hebrew Melodies</em>, might write: &#8220;The wild-dove hath her nest, the fox his cave,/ Mankind their Country &#8211; Israel but the grave!&#8221; But Byron’s readers hardly included a large following in the poet’s sympathetic views of the Jewish predicament.</p>
<p>George Eliot, whose last novel, published in 1876, was the seminal Zionist work <em>Daniel Deronda</em>, wrote in an 1878 essay, &#8220;It would be difficult to find a form of bad reasoning about [the Jews] which has not been heard in conversation or been admitted to the dignity of print.&#8221; Eliot, were she alive today, would no doubt find entirely new, if not entirely surprising, contorted reasoning about the Jews in what passes for coherent conversation and writing, perhaps especially journalistic writing, in present-day Britain.</p>
<p>Eliot titled her 1878 piece &#8220;The Modern Hep! Hep! Hep!&#8221; &#8211; construing contemporary anti-Jewish animus as the moral equivalent of medieval marauding Crusader gangs that, before departing for the Holy Land, would slaughter local Jewish populations while chanting &#8220;Hep! Hep! Hep!,&#8221; an acronym for Hierosolyma est perdita, &#8220;Jerusalem is lost.&#8221; Her title is likewise equally relevant today, as those who demonize Israel in British media, unions, universities, professional organizations, and religious bodies, either explicitly share the objective of, or simply make common cause with, those who would again massacre Jews with the ultimate aim of seizing Jerusalem and emptying the Land of Israel of the People of Israel.</p>
<p>Also resonant with today&#8217;s anti-Zionist/anti-Jewish bias is Eliot&#8217;s observation that other groups which had sustained a national consciousness and had recently translated that consciousness into a recreated national life &#8211; she notes particularly the Greeks and the Italians &#8211; were generally regarded positively in Britain for having done so. It was particularly the Jews whose preservation of a national identity, despite millennia-long efforts by those around them to destroy it, was viewed sourly and censoriously by much of British opinion, not least &#8220;polite&#8221; opinion, and whose aspirations to a resuscitated state enjoyed support in only limited quarters.</p>
<p>Forty years after Eliot’s essay, those leaders in Britain who did support the recreation of the Jewish national home and translated that backing into policy were quickly confronted with the overwhelmingly hostile attitudes and machinations of the nation&#8217;s military and its colonial bureaucracy in the Jewish homeland. The Zionist project was, of course, just one of many new or recreated nations that, in the wake of World War I, were carved out of the former German, Austro-Hungarian, Czarist and Ottoman empires. These included, for example, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Mandate Syria and Mandate Iraq. All of these states entailed the granting of sovereignty, or promised sovereignty in the case of the Mandates, to previously largely disenfranchised peoples, and all also encompassed other ethnic groups within their borders that chafed at the new national arrangements. Yet, consistent with George Eliot&#8217;s line of observation decades earlier, none stirred anything like the animosity displayed by many in the British government bureaucracy and other British elites at the prospect of a recreated Jewish national life.</p>
<p>The Military Administration set up in the wake of General Allenby&#8217;s wresting the territory from Turkish forces quickly exhibited anti-Jewish biases. This reflected not only ingrained anti-Semitism but also patronizing attitudes towards the Arabs and a conviction that the Arabs would be more malleable to British colonial intentions than would the Jews.</p>
<p>Some British officers played the role of agents provocateurs in encouraging Arab assaults on the Jews of the Holy Land, such as the large-scale Arab attacks on Jerusalem’s Jews in April, 1920. (The riots in the city coincided with the meeting of the Allies at San Remo that gave Allied endorsement to the British Mandate for creation of the Jewish National Home.) In addition, British authorities did little to stop the looting and killing, and the Military Administration also sought to use the riots as an excuse for curtailing Jewish immigration and other Zionist activities, arguing that local Arab antagonism would be difficult to control if such curbs were not instituted.</p>
<p>The British, in the post-war years, were attempting to maintain their Middle East territories with very limited forces and were indeed concerned with minimizing local unrest. But, of course, this does not account for Mandate officers working as agents provocateurs and stirring up anti-Jewish violence or for British authorities failing to quell Arab riots when they were fully able to do so. Nor does it explain the Military Administration&#8217;s preventing local Jewish units &#8211; elements of the Jewish Battalions &#8211; from coming to the defense of the Jews of Jerusalem. Vladimir Jabotinsky, who had played a key role in advocating Britain&#8217;s establishment of Jewish fighting units within the army, tried to organize defense. He was arrested by the British for his efforts and sentenced to fifteen years&#8217; imprisonment. Jabotinsky was soon released but only in the context of an amnesty extended also to the rioters. The British also chose to construe the Jewish units&#8217; attempts to defend the Jews of Jerusalem as an intolerable breach of military discipline and disbanded the units.</p>
<p>Lieutenant Colonel John Patterson was a non-Jewish British officer who had commanded the Zion Mule Corps (a transport unit consisting mainly of Jews who had left Turkish Palestine for Egypt during the war) at Gallipolli. Patterson was subsequently appointed commander of the 38th Jewish Battalion and led the battalion in the Palestine campaign. Patterson wrote extensively of the anti-Jewish depredations to which his troops, and the Jewish population of Palestine, were subjected by the British military&#8217;s forces in Palestine under Allenby (the Egyptian Expeditionary Force) and subsequently by the Military Administration. These depredations emanated both from the command structure and, in the wake of evident command tolerance, from the rank and file.</p>
<p>With regard to the April, 1920, Arab attacks on the Jews of Jerusalem, Patterson, referring to the assault as &#8220;the Jerusalem pogrom,&#8221; noted the Military Administration&#8217;s encouragement of the violence, its failure to intervene to stop it, its blocking of intervention by Jewish troops, its attempts to use the Arab assault as an excuse to curb Zionist programs, its scapegoating of Jabotinsky, and all of this being of a piece with general Military Administration hostility to the Jews.</p>
<p>Patterson wrote, for example, &#8220;A veritable &#8216;pogrom,&#8217; such as we have hitherto only associated with Tsarist Russia, took place in the Holy City of Jerusalem in April, 1920, and as this was the climax to the maladministration of the Military Authorities, I consider that the facts of the case should be made public&#8230;</p>
<p>&#8220;The Balfour Declaration&#8230; was never allowed [by the Military Administration] to be officially published within the borders of Palestine; the Hebrew language was proscribed; there was open discrimination against the Jews; the Jewish Regiment was at all times kept in the background and treated as a pariah. This official attitude was interpreted by the hooligan element and interested schemers in the only possible way, viz., that the military authorities in Palestine were against the Jews and Zionism, and the conviction began to grow [within Arab circles] that any act calculated to deal a death blow to Zionist aspirations would not be unwelcome to those in authority&#8230;</p>
<p>&#8220;Moreover, this malign influence was sometimes strengthened by very plain speaking. The Military Governor of an important town was actually heard to declare&#8230; in the presence of British and French Officers and of Arab waiters, that in case of anti-Jewish riots in his city, he would remove the garrison and take up his position at a window, where he could watch, and laugh at, what went on!</p>
<p>&#8220;This amazing declaration was reported to the Acting Chief Administrator, and the Acting Chief Political Officer, but no action was taken against the Governor. Only one interpretation can be placed on such leniency.&#8221;</p>
<p>Patterson wrote elsewhere of the Arab attacks: &#8220;The anti-Jewish outbreak&#8230; was carefully fostered&#8230; by certain individuals who, for their own ends, hoped to shatter the age-long aspirations of the Jewish people&#8230; There can be no doubt that it was assumed in some quarters that when trouble, which had been deliberately encouraged, arose, the Home Government, embarrassed by a thousand difficulties at its doors, would agree with the wire-pullers in Palestine, and say to the Jewish people that the carrying out of the Balfour Declaration, owing to the hostility displayed by the Arabs, was outside the range of practical politics.&#8221;</p>
<p>It was an inquiry into Arab attacks in the spring of 1920 and revelation that the military government had encouraged the assaults that led to London&#8217;s quickly dissolving the military administration and establishing a civil administration in its place. But the ranks of both the British military contingent in Palestine and the civil service remained the same, continued to harbor the same attitudes and continued to work against compliance with British obligations to the Jews as subsequently formalized in the League of Nations Mandate.</p>
<p>Winston Churchill, colonial secretary at the time, estimated that 90 percent of the British military in Palestine were opposed to Britain fulfilling its Mandate obligations. The civilian bureaucracy was so recalcitrant that Churchill circulated a memorandum to the Cabinet in 1921 suggesting &#8220;the removal of all anti-Zionist civil officials, however highly placed.&#8221;</p>
<p>Churchill, certainly more sympathetic to the Zionist project than most British officials, nevertheless in 1921 detached more than 75% of Mandate Palestine to create a new Arab nation of Transjordan. Although Transjordan formally remained part of Mandate Palestine until the end of the Mandate in 1947, its territories were closed to Jews. This occurred after endorsement of the Mandate by the Allied Powers at San Remo but before the League of Nations formally granted the Mandate to Britain. In 1923, despite the territory of the Mandate now being defined by the League of Nations, Britain detached the large portion of the Golan Heights that was within the Mandate’s borders and ceded it to the French Mandate in Syria in exchange primarily for French concessions regarding Iraq. This act was in clear violation of Britain&#8217;s League of Nations obligations.</p>
<p>So too were many other elements of British administration. The League of Nations Mandate called for Britain to promote &#8220;close settlement&#8221; of the land by Jewish immigrants; the British administration was determined to do no such thing. On the contrary, it routinely awarded large-scale grants of public lands to the Arabs while withholding public lands from the Jews. Whatever Jewish acquisition occurred did so essentially through private purchase. It also allowed virtually unmonitored migration of Arabs into the Mandate from neighboring states &#8211; people drawn by the economic opportunities created by both British and Jewish development &#8211; while at the same time repeatedly imposing limits on the admission of Jews.</p>
<p>Arab violence waxed and waned in the Mandate in a noteworthy pattern illustrated by the tenure of Lord Herbert Plumer as High Commissioner. Unlike his predecessor, Plumer generally resisted further backtracking from Mandate obligations to the Jews even in the face of Arab pressures, and his three years in office saw a marked decrease in violence. As has been recognized by a number of historians who have written on the Mandate, appeasement &#8211; to say nothing of tacit approval &#8211; tended to result in increased Arab violence as violence was perceived as yielding rewards, while a more steadfast course and rejection of concessions in the face of violence typically resulted in more peaceful interludes.</p>
<p>But Plumer&#8217;s leadership was exceptional. More typically, the Mandate administration conveyed its sympathies towards the Arabs and its favorable responses to Arab violence. In addition, over time, in the interest of Realpolitik and considerations of empire, the government in London, whether Labor or Tory, became less supportive of Zionist aspirations and more prepared to accommodate the anti-Zionist policies advocated by the Mandate bureaucracy. There emerged a recurrent cynical pattern: An outbreak of anti-Jewish violence; the dispatch from London of a commission of inquiry; determination by the commission that the violence had indeed been initiated by the Arabs; a response by the government in London that Jewish immigration should be further curtailed to placate Arab opinion.</p>
<p>The League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission at various times protested Britain&#8217;s betrayal of its obligations to the Jews under the Mandate. The Commission had only its moral suasion as backing for its arguments but did on occasion help bring about the British government&#8217;s retreat from anti-Jewish measures.</p>
<p>But the situation grew much worse for the Jews in the 1930&#8242;s, after the advent of the Nazi regime in Germany. Berlin quickly embarked on winning allies in the Arab world and stirring up anti-British sentiment. This provided another rationale, if one were needed, for appeasing Arab opinion regarding Mandate Palestine and imposing further hardships on the Jews. Britain did tolerate several years of increased Jewish immigration to the Mandate in the mid-&#8217;30&#8242;s. But in the wake of the 1936-39 Arab Revolt, Britain, consistent with previous precedent, found in its commission of inquiry that the Arabs had fully instigated the violence and mayhem and had sought to justify the revolt with false accusations against the Jews, but concluded that the appropriate government action should be dramatic new limits on Jewish immigration. In 1939, as war loomed in Europe and Jews were desperate to escape the continent, Britain issued a White Paper restricting admission of Jews to the Mandate to a total of 75,000 over the next five years, after which immigration would end entirely and Palestine would become an Arab state with a Jewish minority.</p>
<p>The Chamberlain White Paper elicited once more opposition from the League of Nations as a violation of Britain&#8217;s Mandatory obligations to the Jews. But the League of Nations, having failed to muster a forceful response to fascist aggression in the preceding years, was now a dying organization with little left of its former limited authority.</p>
<p>Britain&#8217;s determination, in the absence of a functioning League of Nations, to quash the Zionist enterprise once and for all played a vital role in shaping British Foreign Office, Colonial Office and military hostility to the rescue of Jews from the Nazi killing machine.</p>
<p>In some respects, the murderous animosity that then animated so much of British officialdom was less characteristic of the larger public in Britain than would seem to be the case today. Major elements of British media, clergy and Parliament called openly for government action to rescue Jews, much more so, for example, than did equivalent echelons in the United States. Among those whose efforts were particularly noteworthy was William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, who spoke out forcefully to urge rescue measures and sharply criticized Allied inaction. He was joined in his efforts by Arthur Cardinal Hinsley, leader of Britain’s Catholics.</p>
<p>A Foreign Office note in February, 1943, referred to the &#8220;striking difference between the intense propaganda campaign regarding Hitler’s Jewish victims [that is, calls for rescue] carried on here and the apparently negligible publicity in the United States.&#8221;</p>
<p>In addition Britain had admitted, among other refugees, over 8,000 unaccompanied Jewish children in the so-called Kindertransport of 1938-1939, with the children being placed in the care of Jewish and non-Jewish families. A parallel attempt to admit 20,000 children to the United States over a two-year period aroused intense opposition and was stymied.</p>
<p>Moreover, one can argue that State Department bureaucrats were as loathe to see Jews rescued and brought to the United States as Foreign Office officials were to see them in England. During the war, the State Department allowed use of only ten percent of the visas that were available for the rescue of Jews and blocked the escape from Europe even of many Jews who had received American visas. It did so by creating additional bureaucratic obstacles to their entry. Many were taken to death camps and murdered even as they possessed visas but were unable to surmount the additional levels of State Department obstructionism.</p>
<p>But where Foreign Office policy differed from that of the State Department, or at least where it set policy which the State Department all too willingly followed, was in its apparent determination to block rescue of Jews no matter where refuge might be offered. And, as Sir Martin Gilbert and others have demonstrated (in, for example, Gilbert’s <em>Auschwitz and the Allies</em>), behind anti-rescue policy in Britain largely lay concerns regarding Palestine. A dominant calculation appears to have been that Jewish survivors, no matter where they found refuge, would be a source of post-war pressure on Britain to fulfill its Palestine Mandate obligations to the Jews, whereas if no European Jews were rescued and none survived the war there would then be no basis for advocacy of a Jewish homeland.</p>
<p>It was in this context that one should understand the 1943 Foreign Office message to the State Department cited at the opening of this article, the concern that: &#8220;There is a possibility that the Germans or their satellites may change over from the policy of extermination to one of extrusion, and aim as they did before the war at embarrassing other countries by flooding them with alien immigrants.&#8221; There were other memoranda that hammered variations on the same theme, as, for example, one that spoke of &#8220;the difficulties of disposing of any considerable number of Jews should they be rescued.&#8221;</p>
<p>Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden’s personal secretary wrote of him in 1943: &#8220;Unfortunately, A.E. is immovable on the subject of Palestine. He loves Arabs and hates Jews.&#8221; (Churchill disagreed with Eden on Palestine policy but did not have the control over Eden that, for example, an American president has over his Cabinet members.) But British government policy toward the Jews obviously reflected a casual indifference to the Nazi genocide that went far beyond simply Eden’s anti-Jewish bigotry. (Churchill during the war cautioned another Foreign Office official &#8220;against drifting into the usual anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic channel which it is customary for British officers to follow.&#8221;)</p>
<p>(Churchill’s general sympathy for the Jews put off many of those around him. As one friend, Sir Edward Spears, informed Churchill’s official biographer, &#8220;Even Winston had a fault. He was too fond of Jews.&#8221;)</p>
<p>The lengths to which the Foreign Office went to obstruct rescue at any level and from any quarter is illustrated by the story of Chiune Sugihara, who in 1940 was the Japanese vice consul in Kovno, Lithuania. Sugihara issued several thousand visas to Jews desperate to leave Europe. Among the documents in the Japanese foreign ministry charting Sugihara’s activities have been found complaints from the British Foreign Office protesting Sugihara’s visas and warning that the rescued Jews would become a burden on Japan.</p>
<p>Throughout the war there were many European Jews who could have reached Mandate Palestine, but the British were determined to prevent their doing so. (Given the nature of British policy, it is perhaps not surprising that, after Hitler’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, provided the trigger to World War II, apparently the first to fall to British arms were not Nazi soldiers but two Jewish civilians. They were shot dead near Tel Aviv on September 2 when a British patrol vessel opened fire on refugees from Europe trying to slip into Palestine by boat.)</p>
<p>After September, 1940, when the fascist government of Ioan Antonescu seized power in Rumania, several thousand Jews fled the country via Rumania’s Black Sea ports and many died when their delapidated ships &#8211; &#8220;coffin ships&#8221; as they were popularly called &#8211; sank either in transit through the Black Sea or in attempts to evade the British blockade of Palestine. One ship sank when, having reached Palestine, it was forced back to sea by the British.</p>
<p>Another particularly notorious episode involved the Struma, likewise an essentially unseaworthy ship that limped into Istanbul harbor in December, 1941, with nearly eight hundred Rumanian Jewish refugees aboard, many among them women and children. The Turkish government offered to let the passengers disembark only if Britain agreed to admit them to Palestine. The British refused and persisted in their stance &#8211; even rejecting suggestions that they admit only the children &#8211; despite urgent requests for compassion from various quarters. The Turks ultimately had the ship towed out to sea and it quickly sank, killing all but one of the refugees.</p>
<p>By the time of the Struma’s sinking, agents of the Rumanian regime, together with German death squads, had already slaughtered some 200,000 of the 800,000 Jews within Rumania’s borders. But it was widely known that Rumanian strongman Antonescu was not entirely committed to the slaughter and was willing to go on allowing Jews to ransom their way out of the country. But the only possible refuge for them was the League of Nations-mandated Jewish National Home, and Britain continued to make certain that this remained closed to Rumanian and other Jews and that there would be no escape for them. A number of Jews were ultimately admitted to the Mandate in the course of the war, but far fewer than even the 75,000 permitted by the Chamberlain White Paper.</p>
<p>Some Jews obviously did survive the war, and the Nazi slaughter did not end the quest for realization of the promise of the Mandate. Britain still held to its opposition to creation of a Jewish state but failed in its efforts to stop the United Nations’ ratification of partition of Palestine (excluding Transjordan) into separate Jewish and Arab nations.</p>
<p>Britain then tried to achieve indirectly through military means what it failed to achieve diplomatically. The most effective of the five Arab armies that attacked the nascent Jewish state was Transjordan’s Arab Legion, led by a British officer, John Bagot Glubb (popularly known as Glubb Pasha), and with various other British officers in its senior ranks. The Arab Legion seized control of what later became known as the West Bank as well as eastern Jerusalem, including the Old City, and &#8211; in a policy of total ethnic cleansing &#8211; the Legion, under its British officers, either killed or expelled every Jew living in the territory that fell within its sway. (One is reminded of Tom Paulin, the Oxford poet renowned for his vicious, mindless rants against Israel, his unoriginal but, for many, ever-thrilling comparison of Israelis to Nazis, his advocacy of the Jewish state’s destruction and, perhaps most notably, his declared desire to kill Jews living on the West Bank. Had he been around in 1948, Paulin could have joined the British officer corps in the Arab Legion and fulfilled his fantasies of murdering West Bank and east Jerusalem Jews.)</p>
<p>As for the Palestinian Arabs dwelling in the West Bank, rather than facilitate their establishing their own state in the territory, consistent with the United Nations’ vision of a partitioned Palestine, Britain supported Transjordan’s annexation of the territory. Indeed, Britain became one of only two countries in the world that recognized the annexation, the other being Pakistan.</p>
<p>As King Hussein himself acknowledged, in the Six Day War of 1967 he ordered his troops to initiate hostilities against Israel at the war’s start and he continued to pursue the attack even as Israel urged him to remain out of the conflict and promised it would refrain from action against him if he did so. In the face of Jordanian bombardments, Israel ultimately went on the offensive in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, capturing both along with the Golan Heights from Syria and the Sinai peninsula and Gaza from Egypt.</p>
<p>Many Israelis believed then that peace with the Arabs was finally at hand; that the Arab states, eager for return of lost territories, would grant Israel peace in exchange. But the Arab nations, meeting in Khartoum in late August, 1967, instead endorsed the &#8220;three no’s&#8221;: no recognition of Israel, no negotiation, no peace.</p>
<p>Shortly afterwards, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 242 regarding steps to be taken towards ending the Arab-Israeli conflict. It called for the return of territory captured by Israel in exchange for peace, but not of &#8220;all&#8221; the captured territory. Indeed the key drafters of 242 stated that Israel should not be required to retreat to the pre-war armistice lines, that those boundaries were no more than cease-fire lines, were too vulnerable and would only invite additional aggression against Israel. The resolution called rather for the negotiation of &#8220;secure and recognized&#8221; boundaries.</p>
<p>Resolution 242 was actually introduced in the Security Council by Britain. Lord Caradon, then Britain’s ambassador to the UN and the one who presented the resolution, told an interviewer some years later: &#8220;It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial. After all, they were just the places where the soldiers of each side happened to be on the day the fighting stopped in 1948. They were just armistice lines. That’s why we didn’t demand that the Israelis return to them, and I think we were right not to&#8230;&#8221;</p>
<p>In 1969, the British Foreign Secretary stated in the House of Commons that the framers of the resolution did not envisage Israel withdrawing from &#8220;all the territories.&#8221; Subsequently, George Brown, who had been Foreign Secretary at the time of the war and passage of the resolution, made the same point in his book, <em>Out of My Way.<br />
</em><br />
The territories, most notably the West Bank, from the perspective of Resolution 242, have the status of disputed lands whose disposition is to be determined in the context of peace negotiations. In fact, a broad consensus among Israelis has supported, virtually since the war, the pursuit of a division of the West Bank that would entail Israel returning to Arab sovereignty most of the area, including the lands that are home to the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs &#8211; well in excess of 95% of the population &#8211; while retaining for Israel strategically vital and largely unpopulated areas. (With relatively few exceptions, settlement policy, along with the present placement of the settlement population, has followed this agenda and was undertaken to reinforce Israel’s claims to these strategic areas.)</p>
<p>But for British media, much of British officialdom and broad British opinion, particularly elite opinion, institutional memory regarding Resolution 242 has been erased and the resolution has been contorted into a demand that Israel return to its pre-1967 lines. Everything beyond those lines has been transmogrified into &#8220;occupied Palestinian territory,&#8221; and Israeli presence anywhere in the West Bank and east Jerusalem has been labeled &#8220;colonialism,&#8221; illegitimate, even &#8220;illegal.&#8221;</p>
<p>Moreover, popular British demands for Israel’s retreat to its 1967 line ignore the reality that no Palestinian political group with any power or following is offering Israel peace in exchange for withdrawal, however extensive Israel’s retreat. On the contrary, all parties still insist that, beyond the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories, Israel must also acquiesce to the &#8220;return&#8221; of untold numbers of Palestinian &#8220;refugees,&#8221; an agenda whose aim, consistent with the stated goals of all Palestinian parties &#8211; at least as stated in their declarations in Arabic &#8211; is Israel’s destruction.</p>
<p>And if Israelis refuse to participate in their own destruction, they are condemned in British popular opinion as the greatest danger to world peace and are the target of punishment by boycotts. At the same time, those who declare as their goal the annihilation of Israel and its Jewish population and pursue a strategy of mass murder specifically targeting civilians, indeed particularly targeting women and children, are hailed in Britain as poster children for the realization of a more just world.</p>
<p>British criticism of specific aspects of Israeli policy in the territories has likewise been characterized by hypocrisy and perfidy. One sees this not only in depictions of violent clashes between Israel and the Palestinians, which are routinely portrayed in British media, and very often by government officials as well, as unprovoked Israeli brutality or gross Israeli overreaction or collective punishment in response to Palestinian &#8220;resistance to occupation&#8221; (i.e., wholesale murder of Israeli civilians). The 2002 events virtually universally labeled the &#8220;Jenin massacre&#8221; in British media &#8211; the massacre that wasn’t, that even the United Nations acknowledged did not occur &#8211; is but one egregious example of such gross misrepresentations of Israeli-Palestinian violence. But even beyond the context of violence, anti-Israel distortions of realities in the territories are pervasive in Britain.</p>
<p>Consider the following example of Israeli policy and British response concerning Gaza. At the time that Israel gained control of the territories, the worst living conditions among the Palestinians were of those living in the refugee camps. This was particularly so in Gaza, where the camps housed a much larger proportion of the total Palestinian population than in the West Bank and where the Egyptians had allowed no electricity or running water in the camps and forbade residents to work outside the camps.</p>
<p>Under Israeli administration, camp residents, as well as the general population, had virtually universal access to employment. The Israelis also sought to alleviate the squalid living conditions in the camps. This included building new housing units outside the camps for residents and also providing building lots, infrastructure, and subsidies for those who wished to build their own houses, with, in either case, ownership being transferred to the residents. By 1983, over 3,000 Palestinian families had moved into Israeli-built houses and about 3,500 families had moved into houses they had built themselves on lots prepared and provided by Israel.</p>
<p>But the PLO and the Arab states vehemently opposed these housing programs, perceiving the provision of better living conditions to the refugees and their descendants as undercutting both the push for these people’s &#8220;return&#8221; to Israel and efforts to recruit them into PLO cadres. In addition, various arms of the UN embraced the Arab stance. In 1985, shortly after Israel opened up new housing constructed with support from the Catholic Relief Agency, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution condemning Israel’s relocating refugees to better housing as a violation of the refugees’ &#8220;right of return&#8221; to their former areas of residence in pre-1967 Israel. Included in the wording of the resolution was the statement that the General Assembly &#8220;Reiterates strongly its demand that Israel desist from the removal and resettlement of Palestine refugees in the Gaza Strip&#8230;&#8221;</p>
<p>Under UN pressure, Israel did end the housing projects. Nevertheless, seemingly to preempt their resumption, the General Assembly, at Arab insistence, passed the same condemnations of Israeli efforts to provide better housing for the refugees in subsequent years as well, with the resolutions including the same wording. Through these years, the British delegation to the UN consistently supported the Arab demand that Israel desist from offering those in the camps new housing. And yet in these and subsequent years British Foreign Office representatives would visit Gaza and use photo opportunities to complain about Israel’s failure to address the atrocious living conditions in the refugee camps! (In January, 1988, for example, about a month after Britain had voted in favor of the 1987 edition of the same resolution, David Mellor, described in the media as &#8220;a Foreign Office minister with responsibilities for the Mideast,&#8221; appeared before the television cameras in Gaza to denounce Israel for tolerating conditions in the camps that were an &#8220;affront to civilization.&#8221;)</p>
<p>Even Arab blood libels against Israel and &#8220;the Jews&#8221; are given a pass by British media or blamed on Israel. A cynic might attribute this at least in part to pride of invention, as the medieval blood libel, the claim that Jews kill Christians, particularly children, to use the blood of Christian innocents for Jewish rituals, was first introduced in England. The earliest recorded such claim involved the death of one William of Norwich in 1144.</p>
<p>The blood libel was exported from England to the continent, where over eight centuries it provided a rationale for the murder of thousands of Jews. The Nazis invoked it extensively, but since the end of World War II it has enjoyed its greatest popularity in the Arab world. There it has been the subject of a book attesting to its veracity by former Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlas and has found similar sympathetic treatment in myriad Arab texts, television shows, and movies. It is also a popular theme of Arab clerics and political figures.</p>
<p>British media have not given much coverage to, or found fault with, this current popularity of the blood libel in the Arab world. On the contrary, they have tended to be apologists for manifestations of Arab anti-Semitism, however crude and vile. For example, a BBC program on anti-Semitism in Egyptian media concluded that it merely reflected support for the predicament of the Palestinians and not &#8220;hatred of Jews as a race.&#8221; It was hardly surprising then when Britain&#8217;s Political Cartoon Society gave first prize in its &#8220;Cartoon of the Year&#8221; competition for 2003 to The Independent’s Dave Brown for his drawing of a naked Ariel Sharon devouring a Palestinian child.</p>
<p>One can certainly argue that the Jews and the Jewish state are not the only targets of bigotry in British popular opinion and in the attitudes of British elites and British officialdom. But with regard to Israel and the Jews, today&#8217;s smug and casual hatred, with its transparently ludicrous veneer of moral superiority, has a long, dark history that renders it different from other, quotidian biases; renders it rather one more chapter in a long record of anti-Jewish perfidy.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>Britain to Crack Down on Muslim Brotherhood</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/britain-to-crack-down-on-muslim-brotherhood/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=britain-to-crack-down-on-muslim-brotherhood</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 24 Oct 2014 04:45:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Crackdown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243670</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If only the Obama administration could follow suit.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Screen-Shot-2013-07-10-at-11.41.34-AM-620x406.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243671" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Screen-Shot-2013-07-10-at-11.41.34-AM-620x406-450x294.png" alt="Screen-Shot-2013-07-10-at-11.41.34-AM-620x406" width="366" height="239" /></a>Britain’s <i>The Telegraph</i> <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11171979/downing-street-set-to-crack-down-on-the-muslim-brotherhood.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reports</span></a> that Britain is aiming to take serious measures against the Muslim Brotherhood. The situation contrasts notably with the one in the U.S., where—among much else—the Obama administration has cut back ties with the current, geopolitically moderate Egyptian government because—backed by the <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-peace/2013/06/30/anti-muslim-brotherhood-protests-largest-political-event-in-world-history"><span style="color: #0433ff;">most massive popular protest in world history</span></a>—it came to power by overthrowing a Muslim Brotherhood regime that the administration favored.</p>
<p>As <i>The Telegraph</i> describes it:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Downing Street is to order a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and a network of Islamist groups accused of fuelling extremism in Britain and across the Arab world. </i></p>
<p><i>[Prime Minister] David Cameron launched an inquiry into the Brotherhood earlier this year, prompted by concerns it was stoking an Islamist ideology that had encouraged British jihadists to fight in Syria and Iraq.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), is an adviser to the inquiry and “is reported to have described [the Brotherhood] as ‘at heart a terrorist organization.’”</p>
<p><i>The Telegraph</i> adds that:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>A senior source close to the inquiry said its report—compiled but not yet published—had identified “an incredibly complex web” of up to 60 organisations in Britain, including charities, think tanks and even television channels, with links to the Muslim Brotherhood, which will all now come under scrutiny. </i></p>
<p><i>The inquiry, aided by the security services, has also investigated its network abroad. One expert said that the Brotherhood was now operating from three major bases—London, Istanbul and Doha, the capital of Qatar. </i></p></blockquote>
<p>That the Brotherhood operates out of Turkey and Qatar is, of course, not news to politically sentient people in the Middle East, who are well aware of the Turkey-Qatar-Brotherhood-Hamas axis.</p>
<p>As for what Britain plans to do about its domestic Brotherhood terror base:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>The Government crackdown will stop short of outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood but action is expected to include: </i></p>
<p><i>Þ Investigations into charities that are effectively “fronts” for the  Brotherhood; </i></p>
<p><i>Þ Inquiries into funding of the organisation and links to jihadi groups abroad; </i></p>
<p><i>Þ Banning clerics linked to the group from countries such as Qatar and Turkey from coming to Britain for rallies and conferences</i>.</p></blockquote>
<p>In other words, the British government has come around to viewing the Brotherhood the way it is viewed in the U.S. by people who are considered Islamophobic and bigoted for raising such issues.</p>
<p>Politically incorrect U.S. conservatives have for years been calling attention to the role of Brotherhood-linked officials in the administration, the stealth jihad practiced by Brotherhood front organizations, the domestic Brotherhood’s ties to foreign terror, and the Obama administration’s very problematic sympathy and support for the Brotherhood.</p>
<p>As Andrew McCarthy, writing in 2012, <a href="http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/08/09/our-government-and-the-muslim-brotherhood-my-speech-in-washington/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">described the situation back then</span></a>:</p>
<ul>
<li><i> The State Department has an emissary in Egypt who trains operatives of the Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations in democracy procedures. We’re helping them get elected. </i></li>
<li><i> The State Department announced that the Obama administration would be “satisfied” with the election of a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government in Egypt….</i></li>
<li><i> On a just-completed trip to Egypt, Secretary Clinton pressured the ruling military junta to hand over power to the newly elected parliament, which is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and to the newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, who is a top Brotherhood official.</i></li>
</ul>
<p>Last month on <i>Breitbart</i> Katie Gorka <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-peace/2014/09/09/has-the-new-york-times-just-provided-proof-of-muslim-brotherhood-influence-operations-in-the-united-states"><span style="color: #0433ff;">noted that: </span></a></p>
<blockquote><p><i>On June 13, 2012, five members of Congress called for an </i><a href="http://www.rand.org/topics/information-operations.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>investigation</i></span></a><i> into Muslim Brotherhood influence operations in the Obama administration. The five members—Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Tom Rooney (R-FL), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)—were widely criticized for doing so, even by their own Republican leadership, including John McCain (R-AZ), John Boehner (R-OH), and Mike Rogers (R-MI).   </i></p></blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile, Gorka points out, it is none other than the <i>New York Times</i> that has published a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/us/politics/foreign-powers-buy-influence-at-think-tanks.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #0433ff;">major exposé</span></a> of foreign governments’ influence-buying at U.S. think tanks—focusing especially on Brotherhood-patron Qatar’s large donations to the Brookings Institution and other centers. The <i>Times</i> observed that these think tanks “push…United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors’ priorities….”</p>
<p>Gorka also recalls the Justice Department’s “sweeping review” in 2011 of</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #101010;"><i>all counter-terrorism trainers and materials used throughout federal law enforcement and every branch of the military.  Hundreds of training slides were reviewed by an anonymous panel of reviewers. Many trainers were forbidden from future training and material that used terms like “jihad,” “Islamic terrorism,” or “Islamist violence….”  </i><span style="color: #000000;"><i> </i></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The general purge of “incorrect” terminology led famously, of course, to the administration’s dubbing the 2009 Fort Hood massacre as “workplace violence.”</p>
<p>The administration’s ongoing affinity for the Brotherhood camp was well evident this summer during the Gaza War when Secretary of State John Kerry demanded that Israel negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas under Turkey’s and Qatar’s auspices. Israel’s (along with Egypt’s) refusal to do so was one of the factors that led the administration to <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/revealed-u-s-cut-off-arms-supply-to-israel-during-gaza-war/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">embargo all arms to Israel for days</span></a>.</p>
<p>That Britain has come to recognize the Muslim Brotherhood’s terrorist, jihadist nature is encouraging news. It can be hoped that, by 2016, a U.S. administration will—unlike the present one—be able to as well.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Beheading Raises Islamic State Street Cred</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dawn-perlmutter/beheading-raises-islamic-state-street-cred/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=beheading-raises-islamic-state-street-cred</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Sep 2014 04:35:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dawn Perlmutter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[beheading]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Cameron]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Haines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=241062</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The strategic advantages of our jihadist enemies. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/378657_ISIL-David-Haines.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-241064" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/378657_ISIL-David-Haines-450x341.jpg" alt="378657_ISIL-David-Haines" width="342" height="259" /></a>The Sept. 13, 2014 beheading video of David Haines, British aid worker and military veteran, is almost identical to the Foley and Sotloff productions establishing an Islamic State forensic signature, PSYOPS pattern and a winning recruitment strategy. The David Haines beheading video titled “A message to the allies of America” is addressed to Prime Minister David Cameron who failed rapper turned jihadi executioner calls the “obedient lapdog” of America. This expression is a double insult signifying that he is controlled by America and intrinsically impure. The in your face disrespect will have particular appeal in recruiting British Islamists. Although the latest victim David Haines is British, the beheading video continues to symbolically reference Gitmo by making the hostages wear orange clothing. The disarticulated head placed on the center back of the body is identical to the forensic signature of the beheadings by Al Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor group to Islamic State. The end of the video is a uniquely terrifying characteristic of IS messaging displaying their next victim, in this case hostage Alan Henning.  Similar to the two previous videos, Haines is not murdered on film and only ten seconds of the 2:30 second film displays violent imagery. Unlike the Foley and Sotloff videos that humiliated President Obama the Haines video was easily accessible online.</p>
<p>Although the beheading video was addressed to Prime Minister Cameron it was also a response to the ineffectiveness of President Obama’s September 10, 2014 speech that obviously did not strike fear into the hearts of the IS. The Presidents refusal to call the Islamic State by their chosen name or to recognize them as Islamic or a state not only demonstrated his inability to understand the threat but symbolically reflected an unwillingness to know and face the enemy. A semiotic principle expressed in magical thinking is that fear of naming something represents actual fear of the thing itself. Ancient societies believed in word magic, the idea that words, particularly names are imbued with magical powers. They attached great importance to the knowledge of names and believed that to know the true name of something gives one power over it. Furthermore it was a common belief that pronouncing the names of gods or demons in their original form and language would bring them into existence. That is the origin of the expression ‘speak of the devil and he will appear’. To name something makes it real and a force to be reckoned with. Hence to choose politically correct messaging that creates taboo words such as Islamic, State or War has the unintended consequence of evincing fear and weakness. Conversely, tribal warrior cultures like the Islamic State instinctively understand the power of words.</p>
<p>The significance of names as a form of symbolic warfare is evident in gang graffiti where it is common for gang members to cross out names of rival gangs. For example, to spray paint over another gangs tag, cross it out and then put your name up right next to it is an act of disrespect. Crossing out a rivals name and putting a &#8216;K&#8217; next to it, signifies your intent to kill a member of that rival gang if they come into your territory. This is precisely the same message that the Islamic State sent in their beheading videos, if you enter our territory we will kill a member of your gang. By making good on their threats to kill, the Islamic State raised their street cred. Their credibility and level of respect is what attracts new recruits. Islamic State beheading videos and social media messaging should be interpreted in the same manner as gang codes. For example, the hundreds of IS beheadings of soldiers and civilians can be understood as initiation rituals similar to the concept of ‘Blood in Blood Out’ which requires a new member to commit murder. The beheading videos can be viewed as similar to the revenge threats coded in gang graffiti dissing President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron. Similar to gangs without the appropriate timely, symbolic and proportional response the videotaped revenge killings will not only continue but escalate.</p>
<p>Islamic State recruitment has been so successful because they understand the signs, symbols and language of the street and the urge to jihad. This is evident in the thousands of Westerners they recruited to join the fight in Syria and Iraq. Conversely The State Department’s ‘Think Again Turn Away’ campaign demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of jihadist messaging. The campaign which utilizes twitter, Facebook and jihadist own violent imagery to attempt to dissuade foreign recruitment into IS is based upon a nonexistent we-are-the-world shared humanitarian rational worldview that presumes everyone is appalled by acts of brutality.  The campaign is based on a false premise that permeates President Obama’s policies and strategies, a fallacy of universal characteristics of human nature, in this case the belief that all people are inherently good and strive for the same things. The Obama fallacy can only comprehend beheadings, violence and terrorism as a direct or indirect result of oppression, colonization, child abuse, poverty, lack of education or some other social ill.  This dangerous misconception is also responsible for the inexplicable denial that countries can be invaded and conquered in the 21st century and the denial that Islamist jihadists around the globe want to rule the world.</p>
<p>While the state department sometimes utilizes the words shame and honor in their messaging they completely misunderstand the nature of warrior honor cultures, particularly the importance of instilling fear, showing strength and making good on their threats. Once the Islamic State took control of cities, like any gang or cartel, any attempts to reclaim designated territory provokes revenge killings.  The president’s refusal to acknowledge the conquered territory in Iraq and Syria as an Islamic State reveals that the administration does not comprehend that when Westerners join IS they are essentially pledging allegiance to another country, the enemies of America. Instead of ‘Think Again Turn Away’, a better slogan would be ‘Join Jihad, Lose Citizenship, Stay Away’.</p>
<p>Similar to President Obama the Prime Minister refuses to call the enemy by name and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg does not recognize them as a state. In response to the beheading of David Haines Prime Minister David Cameron said, ‘They are killing and slaughtering thousands of people – Christians, Muslims, minorities across Iraq and Syria. They boast of their brutality. They claim to do this in the name of Islam. That is nonsense. Islam is a religion of peace. They are not Muslims, they are monsters”….“This murderous organisation calls itself Islamic State. But it is not a state, it is a brutal terrorist outfit” The hundreds of potential British recruits interpret this language as punk ass fear unworthy of respect. The Islamic State names their enemies and through the power of words, images and videos they sounded a call to arms throughout the world. Their first strategic advantage is their willingness to name their adversary, hence the acknowledgement that they are ready, willing and able to confront the West. Their second strategic advantage is the West’s reluctance to name them which allows Islamist jihadists to live in America and Britain hiding in plain sight. It’s time for the West to properly name, thereby, accept the nature of their enemy.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Robert Spencer</strong> on <strong>The Glazov Gang</strong> discussing Jihad-Denial and the hazardous danger our society faces by indulging in it:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/MNA-WH-kBzI" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Israel and a Tale of Two British Exports</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/kenneth-levin/israel-and-a-tale-of-two-british-exports/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israel-and-a-tale-of-two-british-exports</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Sep 2014 04:20:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kenneth Levin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239821</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Inside the dark world of the British anti-Semitic mind. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/england-uk.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239963" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/england-uk-450x293.jpg" alt="england-uk" width="323" height="210" /></a>Arguably the UK’s most successful domestically produced export to Israel has been parliamentary democracy. Arguably its most successful domestically produced export to the Arab world has been the anti-Semitic blood libel, the claim that Jews use the blood of non-Jewish children to bake their Passover matzah or for other ritual purposes. What is curious is that there are so many in Britain for whom the latter &#8220;achievement&#8221; resonates more and finds expression in new domestic iterations of this hoary, murderous British creation.</p>
<p>The blood libel first appeared in Norwich, England in 1144. A subsequent libel in the same vein, concerning the death of a boy in Lincoln in 1255, was immortalized by Chaucer’s reference to it in &#8220;The Prioress’s Tale&#8221; in The Canterbury Tales. At least into the early twentieth century, versions of the libel could be found in collections and recordings of British ballads.</p>
<p>The anti-Semitic libel enjoyed wide popularity across Europe throughout the Middle Ages and blood libel accusations were often accompanied by the mass murder of Jewish communities. Versions of the libel have persisted in Europe into the present century.</p>
<p>In the Arab world, evidence of successful European introduction of the blood libel can be traced at least as far back as the Damascus blood libel in 1840. But it is particularly in recent decades that the blood libel has won almost ubiquitous currency among Arabs. Former Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass published The Matzah of Zion in 1986, promoting the blood libel as fact, and the book gained a very wide audience and has gone through many reprints . There have been a number of Arab television dramatizations of the blood libel and myriad assertions of the libel&#8217;s veracity by Arab religious and political leaders.</p>
<p>In April 2013, the Palestinian non-profit MIFTAH, founded by Hanan Ashrawi and funded in part by the British Council, took President Obama to task for hosting a seder at the White House. MIFTAH complained: &#8220;Does Obama in fact know the relationship, for example, between ‘Passover’ and ‘Christian blood’..?! Or ‘Passover’ and ‘Jewish blood rituals?!’ Much 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.&#8221;</p>
<p>During the recent Israeli-Hamas fighting, Hamas official Osama Hamdan declared (translation by MEMRI): &#8220;We all remember how the Jews used to slaughter Christians, in order to mix their blood in their holy matzos. This is not a figment of imagination or something taken from a film. It is a fact, acknowledged by their own books and by historical evidence.&#8221;</p>
<p>In medieval Europe, both secular rulers, like Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in 1236, and various popes &#8211; Innocent IV and Gregory X in the thirteenth century, Martin V and Nicholas V in the fifteenth century &#8211; issued emphatic statements condemning the blood libel and declaring that Jews did not prey on Christian children and did not use blood in their rituals. One would be hard pressed to find equivalently prominent figures in the Arab world condemning the blood libel today.</p>
<p>Prompted by this popularity of the blood libel in the Arab world, and by the anti-Israel slant to Middle East events that prevails in Britain, the theme of Jews preying on non-Jewish children has won new prominence in Britain, particularly within the British chattering classes: in the media and among cultural elites.</p>
<p>To be sure, British invocation of the blood libel does not require an Israel-linked context. For example, in April, 2005, The Guardian published a political cartoon that portrayed then Conservative Party leader Michael Howard, a Jew, with a fang dripping blood as he grinned and held up a blood-filled glass. The caption read: &#8220;Are you drinking what we’re drinking? Vote Conservative.&#8221; But it is primarily the Arab-Israeli conflict and anti-Israel bias that provide the background for most contemporary British regurgitations of the blood libel.</p>
<p>The faux, bandied justification for British libeling of Israeli Jews as child killers is the claim that Israeli forces target Palestinian children. But this sets reality on its head. In fact, Hamas openly declares its religious duty to kill not only all Israelis but all Jews, including all Jewish children. And the Palestinian Authority, under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, uses its media, mosques and schools to declare that all Palestinians must dedicate themselves to Israel’s destruction and to praise as role models those Palestinians who have carried out terrorist attacks against Israelis, including attacks that targeted children.</p>
<p>In addition, all Palestinian groups have translated their words into deeds. For example, in the years immediately following Yasser Arafat’s launching of his terror war against Israel in September, 2000, more pre-teen Israeli children were killed than pre-teen Palestinian children (that is, children below the age of almost any possible role in hostilities on either side). More broadly, some eighty percent of Israeli fatalities were non-combatants, as compared to about forty-six percent of Palestinian fatalities. Nor can this difference reasonably be attributed, as it sometimes has been, to Palestinians having less precise weapons with which to target Israelis. The Palestinians’ primary weapon during those years was the suicide bomber, a very precise weapon indeed in honing in on a target.</p>
<p>Moreover, Arafat, an authoritarian power whose goal of destroying Israel always took precedence over the welfare of the Palestinian people, diverted Palestinian assets, including the huge contributions received from Europe and the United States, to that goal and away from the needs of his people. In a similar vein, he pursued a policy of using Palestinian civilians, including children, as human shields, knowing any ensuing civilian casualties will redound to his own propaganda gain. (Hamas, since taking control of Gaza in 2007, has pursued the same course and has openly acknowledged its use of Palestinian civilians as human shields.)</p>
<p>But despite this reality, the Observer, in February, 2001, published a poem by Tom Paulin entitled &#8220;Killed in Crossfire,&#8221; picking up the theme of Jewish targeting of children, and managing, with a poet’s efficiency, to pack the piece with a slew of anti-Semitic tropes:</p>
<blockquote><p>We’re fed this inert<br />
this lying phrase<br />
like comfort food<br />
as another little Palestinian boy<br />
in trainer jeans and a white teeshirt<br />
is gunned down by the Zionist SS<br />
whose initials we should<br />
- but we don’t &#8211; dumb goys -<br />
clock in the weasel word crossfire.</p></blockquote>
<p>Also during this period, The Independent ran a cartoon depicting a naked Ariel Sharon, then Israel’s prime minister, devouring Palestinian children, and the UK’s Political Cartoon Society subsequently honored the drawing with its Political Cartoon of the Year Award for 2003.</p>
<p>In the 2009 Gaza War, which involved an Israeli incursion after, as with the present war, extensive firing of rockets by Hamas and its allies into Israel, estimated Palestinian fatalities range from around 1200 to about 1400. Hamas stated during and immediately after the war that only fifty of its fighters were killed in the conflict. Israel claimed that Hamas and allied combatants killed numbered around 700, or approximately half of total Palestinian deaths. Only in November, 2010, did Hamas admit that, in fact, between 600 and 700 of its fighters were among the dead and that the Israeli figures were essentially correct.</p>
<p>But British media almost exclusively parroted the figures put out by Hamas (or by the UN, which itself adopted the numbers fed it by Hamas). British media also, then as now, was essentially silent on Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields. The story, then as now, was of Israel targeting Palestinian civilians and, more particularly, the toll on Palestinian children of Israel’s supposedly heartless and inexcusable aggression.</p>
<p>Colonel Richard Kemp, formerly commander of British forces in Afghanistan, stated in an interview on BBC during the war:</p>
<p>&#8220;I think – I would say that from my knowledge of the IDF and from the extent to which I have been following the current operation, I don’t think there has ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza.</p>
<p>&#8220;When you look at the number of civilian casualties that have been caused, that perhaps doesn’t sound too credible – I would accept that.</p>
<p>&#8220;However, Hamas, the enemy they have been fighting, has been trained extensively by Iran and by Hezbollah, to fight among the people, to use the civilian population in Gaza as a human shield.&#8221;</p>
<p>But Colonel Kemp’s perspective, repeated in the context of the current war, was basically ignored by the British commentariat then as now.</p>
<p>Similarly, Hamas’s belated acknowledgment that the ratio of civilian to fighter deaths in the 2009 war was about 1:1 &#8211; this compared to, for example, Western campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kosovo, where the ratio of civilian to fighter deaths has most reliably been estimated at between 3:1 (Afghanistan) and 4:1 (Iraq and Kosovo) &#8211; had virtually no impact on the popular characterization in Britain of Israeli behavior in the war as entailing intentional killing of Palestinian civilians, particularly children.</p>
<p>Representative of British attitudes, at least among the chattering classes, was a six-minute play by Caryl Churchill produced in 2010 to much critical acclaim and entitled &#8220;Seven Jewish Children.&#8221; The play consists of seven segments, each entailing actors discussing what should be told to &#8220;her&#8221; &#8211; a Jewish child &#8211; about events in the lands they and she subsequently fled, her presence in Israel and the conflict with the Arabs. The play offers up standard anti-Israel, anti-Semitic tropes: that the Jews stole the land, stole Arabs’ houses, steal Arab water, regard Arabs as sub-human and themselves as superior and, of course, kill Arab children and feel justified and pleased to do so.</p>
<blockquote><p>Don’t tell her the boy was shot&#8230;<br />
Tell her we&#8217;re entitled&#8230;<br />
Don’t tell her how many of them have been killed<br />
Tell her the Hamas fighters have been killed<br />
Tell her they&#8217;re terrorists<br />
Tell her they&#8217;re filth&#8230;<br />
Don’t tell her about the family of dead girls<br />
Tell her you can’t believe what you see on television<br />
Tell her we killed the babies by mistakeTell her about the family of dead girls, tell her their names why not, tell her the whole world knows why shouldn’t she know? tell her there&#8217;s dead babies, did she see babies? tell her she&#8217;s got nothing to be ashamed of. Tell her they did it to themselves. Tell her they want their children killed to make people sorry for them, tell her I&#8217;m not sorry for them, tell her not to be sorry for them&#8230; tell her they&#8217;re animals living in rubble now, tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out&#8230; tell her we&#8217;re chosen people, tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel? tell her all I feel is happy it&#8217;s not her&#8230;</p></blockquote>
<p>A 2011 study, conducted in a number of European countries by a German university, found that 42% of those interviewed in the UK agreed with the statement that &#8220;Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians.&#8221; (If Israel’s intent has been extermination, it has been uniquely inept at pursuing it. For example, looking primarily at UN statistics covering most of the period of Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza, which began, of course, in 1967, life expectancy for Palestinians rose from 48 in 1967 to 72 in 2000 (compared to an average of 68 in 2000 for all of the Middle East and North Africa); Palestinian infant mortality dropped under Israeli health programs from 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 live births in 2000 (compared to 40 in Egypt, 23 in Jordan and 22 in Syria); and Israeli inoculation programs eradicated polio, whooping cough, tetanus and measles.)</p>
<p>What has led people in the UK to this bizarre, bigoted comprehension of Israel? Obviously, beyond what anti-Jewish animus abroad in the society they may have absorbed, the explanation lies in large part in what has been fed to them regarding Israel by biased British media, British academia, British cultural outlets, including the examples already cited.</p>
<p>Coverage of the present war has followed the well-worn path of that same bias. Despite previous experience of Hamas providing distorted casualty figures that overstate civilian deaths and hide combatant losses, British media typically parrot Hamas figures (or those figures as repeated by the UN) and cast Israel as unconscionably targeting civilians, with children being the most notable victims of Israeli policy. (The actual ratio of civilian to fighter deaths, according to Israel, is the low figure for such conflicts of about 1:1, as in the 2009 war, and this will almost certainly prove to be correct.)</p>
<p>British media likewise report very little if anything about Hamas using civilians as human shields, firing rockets from inside or near schools, mosques, hospitals, hotels, and other civilian locations, or about Hamas preventing civilians from leaving areas from which it is firing or from rocket storage sites, rocket manufacturing facilities and command and control centers.</p>
<p>It is true that Hamas monitors the foreign media in Gaza, and journalists who report honestly about these matters would put themselves in some danger. But journalistic integrity obviously would require either factual reporting on what is happening in Gaza, including the intimidation of the foreign press, or no reporting at all. British media, instead, have submitted to Hamas guidelines without reporting their doing so; and, in fact, those guidelines are consistent with the bias British media bring to the story.</p>
<p>The BBC, in a rare brief spasm of journalistic integrity, did, on August 8, post a report by its head of statistics noting difficulties with widely cited claims, emanating ultimately from Hamas either directly or via the UN, concerning the percentage of fatalities in Gaza that were civilians. The numbers &#8211; the UN was declaring at the time that at least 72% of the dead were civilians &#8211; had been used in many instances as supporting assertions that Israel was simply randomly killing Gazans or even intentionally targeting civilians.</p>
<p>The BBC report states: &#8220;An analysis by the New York Times looked at the names of 1,431 casualties and found that ‘the population most likely to be militants, men ages 20 to 29, is also the most overrepresented in the death toll. They are 9% of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents, but 34% of those killed whose ages were provided’&#8230; ‘At the same time, women and children under 15, the least likely to be legitimate targets, were the most underrepresented, making up 71% of the population and 33% of the known-age casualties.’&#8221;</p>
<p>The report goes on to cite Israel’s claim that at least 1,068 of the dead were combatants and to acknowledge that: &#8220;It is important to bear in mind that in Operation Cast Lead [the 2009 war] Hamas and Gaza-based organizations claimed that only 50 combatants were killed, admitting years later the number was between 600 and 700, a figure nearly identical to the figure claimed by the IDF.&#8221;</p>
<p>But this exercise in objective journalism was soon replaced by business as usual. For example, five days later the BBC web site, promoting an appeal for funds for Gaza, was declaring that &#8220;85%+&#8221; of those killed in Gaza were civilians.</p>
<p>And it was business as usual in other British media, in British street demonstrations vilifying Israel, and within other British institutions, where the theme of Israelis/Jews as child killers again enjoyed a particular prominence. As Brendan O’Neill, editor of the British online journal Spiked, noted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;What has been most striking about the British response to the Gaza conflict is the extent to which all the things that were once said about Jews are now said about Israel. Everywhere, from the spittle-flecked newspaper commentary to angry street protests, the old view of Jews as infanticidal masterminds of global affairs has been cut-and-pasted onto Israel.</p>
<p>Consider the constant branding of Israelis as ‘child murderers.’ The belief that Israel takes perverse pleasure in killing children is widespread. It was seen in the big London demonstrations where protesters waved placards featuring caricatured Israeli politicians saying ‘I love killing women and children.’ It could be heard in claims by the U.K.-based group Save the Children that Israel launched a ‘war on children.’ It was most explicitly expressed in the Independent newspaper last week when a columnist described Israel as a ‘child murdering community’ and wondered how long it would be before Israeli politicians hold a ‘Child Murderer Pride’ festival.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Surely any explaining the popularity of the child murderer trope must acknowledge that central to its appeal is that it titillates the anti-Semitic mind.</p>
<p>Matthew Arnold wrote of Oxford as &#8220;whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age.&#8221; Today the last grotesquerie of the Middle Age is not whispered but shouted, from Britain’s newspapers and magazines, its literary journals and professional journals, its theaters and made-for-television dramas, its NGO’s and street demonstrations, its university common rooms and lecture rooms, its union halls and town halls and corridors of national power: the Jew-baiting, blood libel shout.</p>
<p><em> Kenneth Levin is a psychiatrist and historian and author of &#8220;The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People under Siege.&#8221;</em></p>
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		<title>The Islamic State Has Nothing to Do With Islam?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/the-islamic-state-has-nothing-to-do-with-islam/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-islamic-state-has-nothing-to-do-with-islam</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Aug 2014 04:57:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cameron]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239626</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What’s behind the rush to separate the religion from its most notorious exponents.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/An-image-from-the-jihadist-Twitter-account-Al-Baraka-news-on-June-11-2014-allegedly-shows-militants-from-ISIL-hanging-the-Islamic-Jihad-flag-AFP.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239627" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/An-image-from-the-jihadist-Twitter-account-Al-Baraka-news-on-June-11-2014-allegedly-shows-militants-from-ISIL-hanging-the-Islamic-Jihad-flag-AFP.jpg" alt="An-image-from-the-jihadist-Twitter-account-Al-Baraka-news-on-June-11-2014-allegedly-shows-militants-from-ISIL-hanging-the-Islamic-Jihad-flag-AFP" width="305" height="236" /></a>Whatever they may disagree about, Western leaders are in complete agreement about one thing: the new self-styled caliphate, the Islamic State, has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam. It’s a comforting, reassuring vision for Western non-Muslims facing a massive influx of Muslim immigrants and jittery about the prospect of Islamic terrorism, except for just one problem: it’s entirely false.</p>
<p>Barack Obama has <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/transcript-president-obamas-remarks-on-the-execution-of-journalist-james-foley-by-islamic-state/2014/08/20/f5a63802-2884-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">made it clear</span></a>: “ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents.” David Cameron <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11038121/David-Cameron-Isil-poses-a-direct-and-deadly-threat-to-Britain.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">intoned</span></a>: “What we are witnessing is actually a battle between Islam on the one hand and extremists who want to abuse Islam on the other. These extremists, often funded by fanatics living far away from the battlefields, pervert the Islamic faith as a way of justifying their warped and barbaric ideology – and they do so not just in Iraq and Syria but right across the world, from Boko Haram and al-Shabaab to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.”</p>
<p>State Department spokesperson Marie Harf <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/brittany-m-hughes/state-dept-beheading-us-journalist-not-about-united-states"><span style="color: #0433ff;">emphasized</span></a> that Obama meant what he said: “ISIL does not operate in the name of any religion. The president has been very clear about that, and the more we can underscore that, the better.” British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond <a href="http://www.channel4.com/news/iraq-philip-hammond-james-foley-beheading-isis-is-isil"><span style="color: #0433ff;">declared</span></a>: “[ISIL]’s so-called caliphate has no moral legitimacy; it is a regime of torture, arbitrary punishment and murder that goes against the most basic beliefs of Islam.” The British opposition agrees: Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/killing-of-james-foley-an-utter-betrayal-of-britain--foreign-secretary-philip-hammond-9687959.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">said</span></a> that Islamic State “extremists are beheading people and parading their heads on spikes, subjugating women and girls, killing Muslims, Christians and anyone who gets in their way. This is no liberation movement — only a perverted, oppressive ideology that bears no relation to Islam.”</p>
<p>Cooper’s statement was a bit more specific than most others of its kind, and shows up the weakness of all of them. For every Islamic State atrocity she enumerated, there is Qur’anic sanction:</p>
<p>Beheading people: “When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks…” (Qur’an 47:4).</p>
<p>Subjugating women and girls: “Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because Allah has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them” (Qur’an 4:34).</p>
<p>Killing Muslims: “They wish that you reject Faith, as they have rejected (Faith), and thus that you all become equal (like one another). So take not Auliya’ (protectors or friends) from them, till they emigrate in the Way of Allah (to Muhammad SAW). But if they turn back (from Islam), take (hold) of them and kill them wherever you find them, and take neither Auliya’ (protectors or friends) nor helpers from them” (Qur’an 4:89).</p>
<p>Killing Christians: “Fight those who believe not in God nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by God and His Apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (Qur’an 9:29).</p>
<p>Even if the Islamic State is misinterpreting or misunderstanding these verses, it is doing so in a way that accords with their obvious literal meaning. Yet this denial from Western leaders is nothing new. Obama, for his part, excuses and apologizes for Islam every time a jihadist atrocity affects the U.S. in some way. Of course, most would wave away his denial as a political necessity, and ask why it matters anyway &#8212; why does it make any difference whether or not what the Islamic State is doing is in accord with Islamic texts and teachings? Among other reasons, because it will help determine how much support the new caliphate will ultimately get from Muslims worldwide, and will serve as an indicator of how much we can expect to see the actions of the Islamic State replicated by other Muslims elsewhere.</p>
<p>The blizzard of articles and statements from Muslims and non-Muslims, including the leaders of the principal nations of the Western world, assuring us that what the Islamic State is doing has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam are designed to reassure non-Muslims in the West that they need not have any concerns about massive rates of Muslim immigration and the Muslims already living among them: “Not to worry, folks, your friend Ahmad down at the office will never start acting like those nuts in the Islamic State.”</p>
<p>One problem with this is that it prevents authorities from calling upon Muslim communities to teach against the doctrines that the Islamic State acts upon, and to work for genuine reform. And so the door remains open to the possibility that the actions of the Islamic State <i>could</i> be repeated in Western countries. Barack Obama and David Cameron would do far better to confront the Islamic State’s Islamic justifications for its actions and call on Muslims in the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere to teach against these understandings of Islam that they ostensibly reject.</p>
<p>But they never do that, and apparently have no interest in doing it. Instead, they foster complacency among the people of the U.S. and Britain. For doing so, they may never pay a price, but their people will almost certainly have to pay, and pay dearly.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Long-Awaited Investigation into Alexander V. Litvinenko&#8217;s Murder</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/britain-launches-investigation-of-alexander-v-litvinenko-murder/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=britain-launches-investigation-of-alexander-v-litvinenko-murder</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Jul 2014 04:49:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alexander V. Litvinenko]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Investigation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[poison]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=237045</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Formal inquiry finally launched into the killing of a KGB-agent-turned-dissident.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/yTYYn.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-237047" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/yTYYn-437x350.jpg" alt="yTYYn" width="275" height="220" /></a>On Tuesday, nearly eight years after former KGB officer-turned-dissident Alexander V. Litvinenko was killed by radioactive poisoning, the British government <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/britain-opens-investigation-litvinenko-assassination-n162661"><span style="color: #1255cc;">announced</span></a> it was opening a formal investigation into the matter. The decision is likely to further strain already tenuous relations between Russia and Great Britain, who are at odds regarding Russia’s annexation of Crimea, their support of Bashar Assad in Syria, and their possible complicity in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The move represents an about-face for Home Secretary Theresa May, following the London High Court’s decision in February <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/54344161/ns/world_news-europe/t/uk-court-quashes-decision-not-hold-litvinenko-poisoning-inquiry/#.U9DxjKjFm3c"><span style="color: #1255cc;">rejecting</span></a> her refusal not to hold a public inquiry. May’s reluctance had stemmed from concerns about what effect it would have on British-Russian relations, which have long been strained by the murder. But despite denials by British Prime Minister David Cameron, it appears the murders of 298 passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over an area controlled by pro-Russian separatists has provided the ultimate impetus for reconsideration.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">&#8220;I am announcing today the government’s decision to establish an inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 to investigate the death of Mr. Alexander Litvinenko in November 2006,” May <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/announcement-in-relation-to-the-death-of-mr-litvinenko"><span style="color: #1255cc;">announced </span></a>on the <a href="http://uk.gov/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">uk.gov</span></a> website. “The inquiry will be established by the Home Office. The inquiry will be chaired by Sir Robert Owen, a senior judge who is the current Coroner in the Inquest into Mr. Litvinenko’s death.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">During the long legal process leading to May’s announcement, Owen insisted the British government possessed documents that “establish a prima facie case as to the culpability of the Russian state in the death of Alexander Litvinenko.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">A <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17246562/ns/dateline_nbc/t/litvinenko-assassins-likely-escape-justice/#.U9D3UajFm3c"><span style="color: #1255cc;">history</span></a> of bad blood between Litvinenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin goes back to 1998. At the time Putin, a former KGB officer, was appointed to head the FSB, which is what the KGB became after the fall of the Soviet Union. Litvinenko had also been a KGB officer working in counterintelligence before getting a 1997 promotion to senior operational officer in the FSB department investigating organized crime at the new agency. Litvinenko incurred Putin’s wrath when he and four other FSB agents conducted a news conference during which they accused the head of the organized crime directorate of ordering the assassination of Boris Berezovsky. Berezovsky was a powerful businessman and political operative allied to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">After Litvinenko warned Berezovsky about the plot, he was fired and subsequently arrested three times. After spending a month in jail he was released after promising not to leave Russia. But he acquired a forged passport and fled with his wife and son seeking asylum in Britain on Nov. 1, 2000.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Over the next six years, Litvinenko became an anti-Kremlin journalist, accusing the Russian government of abuses during their battles with Chechen separatists in the 1990s, and the FSB’s alleged 1999 bombing of 300 people in explosions at apartments in Russia that was used to justify its second war against Chechnya. He also claimed two of the Chechen separatists who took hostages at a theater in Moscow in October 2002 during which 162 people died were working for the FSB. He also pointed the finger at the FSB for having trained al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. In addition, he accused Putin of pedophilia.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Yet what might have set the wheels in motion for Litvinenko’s murder was his investigation into the October 2006 murder of fellow Russian Anna Politkovskaya. Politkovskaya was also a journalist who had built an international reputation for her own exposés of the Russian government’s activities in Chechnya. After she was gunned down outside her home, Litvinenko began his investigation, and ultimately accused Putin of ordering Politkovskaya’s assassination.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">On November 1, 2006, six years to the day after he arrived in London, Litvinenko met with former Russian army officer Dmitri Kovtun at the Millennium Hotel in central London, where he drank tea from a pot poisoned with polonium-210. Afterwards it was discovered that the pot, the teacup, the hotel bar and several members of the bar’s staff had been contaminated with polonium 210.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">From that day until his death on Nov. 23, Litvinenko, 43, slowly wasted away, from the long distance runner he was into a bald and frail husk, one excruciating day after another. On his deathbed, Litvinenko, who had predicted Russia would assassinate him, blamed Putin for his poisoning. Putin has dismissed the allegation.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">At the time, investigators believed that the plot to kill Litvinenko had been orchestrated by Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB agent. Lugovoi, who is now a member of the Russian Parliament, denied any involvement in the plot, as did Kovtun. A document filed with the Crown Prosecution Service by police in 2007 characterized the killing as “state sponsored.” And despite Russia dismissing the accusations against Kovtun and Lugovoi as irrelevant, it began its own investigation, which ultimately had the effect of hampering the British one, despite British police and prosecutors contending there was enough evidence to charge to both men.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">On Tuesday, everything changed. Previous contentions by the British government that it was necessary to withhold evidence it characterized as classified and potentially detrimental to the national interest have apparently been resolved. The inquiry will <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-k-to-probe-who-was-behind-alexander-litvinenkos-death-1406028786"><span style="color: #1255cc;">proceed</span></a> beginning July 31 and should conclude by the end of 2015, according to British Prime Minister David Cameron. Some of the proceedings may be held in private when classified material is being considered. And while Cameron claims that the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 played no part in the decision, there is little doubt that Russia will see it that way.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">May noted the inquiry will not include questions regarding whether Britain could have, or should have, taken measures to prevent Litvinenko’s death. &#8220;It is more than seven years since Mr. Litvinenko’s death, and I very much hope that this inquiry will be of some comfort to his widow,” she said in a written statement to Parliament.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It should be noted that Boris Berezovsky, who engendered the initial acrimony between Putin and Litvinenko, and was himself a critic of Putin and Russia following his own exile to London, was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/world/europe/boris-a-berezovsky-a-putin-critic-dies-at-67.html?pagewanted=all"><span style="color: #1255cc;">discovered</span></a> dead in a luxury home outside the city last year. The coroner could not determine wether his death was a suicide or a murder. &#8220;I can either return a verdict that Boris Berezovsky has committed suicide, or that he was killed, <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_03_27/British-coroner-left-the-question-open-regarding-cause-of-Berezovskys-death-1777/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> coroner Peter Bedford. “Any of these versions should definitely be supported with evidence. I do not have sufficient evidence to confirm any of these versions. So I&#8217;ll leave the verdict open.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Litvinenko’s widow, Marina Litvinenko, was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/23/world/europe/britain-to-announce-inquiry-into-killing-of-ex-kgb-officer-reports-say.html?hp&amp;action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&amp;module=second-column-region&amp;region=top-news&amp;WT.nav=top-news&amp;_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">elated</span></a> by the decision to investigate her husband’s murder. “I am relieved and delighted with this decision,” she said in a statement. Referring to her husband by his nickname, she continued. “It sends a message to Sasha’s murderers: No matter how strong and powerful you are, truth will win out in the end, and you will be held accountable for your crimes.”</p>
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		<title>Iraq Jihadists in the U.K.</title>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 25 Jun 2014 04:35:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Enza Ferreri]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[As the region destabilizes, so does security in Britain. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/rHGnnad-360.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234744" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/rHGnnad-360.jpg" alt="rHGnnad-360" width="268" height="151" /></a>It&#8217;s always been obvious that the problem of <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/enza-ferreri/britains-jihadists-within/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">&#8220;British&#8221; jihadists</span></a> coming back from Syria &#8212; and now Iraq too &#8212; to become terrorists here was not going to go away. The UK government, with its phobia of &#8220;Islamophobia,&#8221; cannot possibly solve it.</p>
<p style="color: #0433ff;"><span style="color: #000000;">From <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27898724">&#8220;Iraq crisis: ISIS militants threaten UK, says Cameron&#8221;</a>:</span></p>
<blockquote><p>David Cameron has warned of the threat to the UK if an &#8220;extreme Islamist regime&#8221; is created in central Iraq.</p>
<p>He said Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) fighters threatening the government in Baghdad were also plotting terror attacks on the UK.</p>
<p>And Britain could not ignore the security threat the UK now faced from jihadists in Iraq and Syria.</p></blockquote>
<p>Britain may not ignore it, but it&#8217;s not going to do very much about it.</p>
<p>A BBC reporter said today on the TV that this problem is the same all over the world. He should have added &#8212; but didn&#8217;t &#8212; &#8220;wherever there are Muslims.&#8221; Muslim-free countries don&#8217;t experience this problem at all.</p>
<p>The BBC report was about what the government can and cannot do in order to protect British people from this threat, and in general to avoid the &#8220;radicalisation&#8221; of UK Muslims.</p>
<p>Despite the fact that 9 years have passed without another 7/7, the government measures to fight Muslim radicalisation in this country have been a failure, the journalist went on to say.</p>
<p>What a surprise! The only reason there are not more terrorist attacks in the UK, I would say, is the constant surveillance of the &#8220;Muslim community&#8221; by police and intelligence services &#8212; with huge expenses for a gravely cash-strapped Britain &#8212; which is now <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/06/22/liam-fox-isis-terrorism-surveillance-_n_5519583.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">necessary to increase</span></a>.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, former MI6 director Richard Barrett explained that the security services will <a href="http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/news/world-news/167520-not-possible-to-monitor-all-uk-syria-fighters"><span style="color: #0433ff;">not be able to monitor</span></a> all the &#8220;British&#8221; jihadists who return to the UK after fighting in Syria.</p>
<p>The implications for UK security of the Iraq and Syrian conflicts due to the &#8220;Britons&#8221; fighting there is a topic dominating the national newspapers.</p>
<p style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2664929/Terror-fallout-British-jihadists-fighting-Syria-felt-years-come-Britain-says-Met-Police-officer-warns-new-threat-Islamic-extremism.html?ITO=1490&amp;ns_mchannel=rss&amp;ns_campaign=1490">&#8220;Terror fallout from British jihadists fighting in Syria will be felt for years to come in Britain,&#8221;</a><span style="color: #000000;"> headlines <i>The Daily Mail</i>.</span></p>
<p>This warning came from the top counter-terrorism expert Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police&#8217;s assistant commissioner and head of specialist operations, who said that Britain will feel the repercussions of Syria and the rise of Islamic extremism within its own borders for &#8220;for many, many, many years to come.&#8221;</p>
<p>She added that young &#8220;British&#8221; Muslims who have gone to fight in Syria might commit violence and terrorist acts when they return.</p>
<p>Possible links have been found between three Muslims based in Cardiff, Wales, who were present with other ISIS militants in a propaganda video filmed by the group, and two men from the same part of the city, who are in prison for having planned to blow up London&#8217;s Stock Exchange.</p>
<p>Shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan warned that radicalisation in prisons was a big problem. Indeed, this corresponds to the dire predictions of Dr. Peter Hammond in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0980263913/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0980263913&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=villagonlinema00&amp;linkId=354UXL2OPIKSRKFN"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat (Amazon USA)</span></a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0958454981/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=6738&amp;creativeASIN=0958454981&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=villagonlinemaga"><span style="color: #0433ff;">(Amazon UK)</span></a>.</p>
<p>The book says that, when the Muslim population reaches 2% to 5% of a country, they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting from jails and street gangs.</p>
<p>According to the the United Kingdom Census 2011, in that year <a href="http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/key-statistics-for-local-authorities-in-england-and-wales/rpt-religion.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Muslims were 2.7 million</span></a>, 4.8% of the country&#8217;s total population.</p>
<p>Hammond&#8217;s book, which was first published in 2005 and then in a second edition in 2009, says that, when Muslims are above 5%, they exercise an influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. They will push for the introduction of <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/enza-ferreri/halal-a-taste-of-terror/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">halal food</span></a>, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims, and will increase pressure on supermarket chains to sell halal, with threats for failure to comply. They will also try to get the government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia law within their ghettos.</p>
<p>Rings a bell? This is the stage which Britain has already reached. The only prediction that hasn&#8217;t materialised is Muslim threats to supermarkets, only because they are redundant as those companies are all too eager to oblige.</p>
<p>And now look at the next stage: when Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to increase lawlessness as a means of protest, examples of which are the car-burnings in Paris (and we can now add Sweden) and uprisings and threats for any action which offends Islam, namely any non-Muslim action. The greater the proportion of Muslim population the more frequent these tensions will be, until they become daily occurrences.</p>
<p>How can British people not have noticed that, over the years, their country&#8217;s Muslims &#8212; whose number has steadily increased &#8212; have indeed become more vociferous, oppressive, demanding, aggressive and dangerous?</p>
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		<title>An Islamic Trojan Horse Inside of Britain</title>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 17 Jun 2014 04:25:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Enza Ferreri]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Islamization of a nation intensifies. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/sharia_law.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234108" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/sharia_law.jpg" alt="sharia_law" width="277" height="295" /></a>It&#8217;s not enough that in Britain non-Muslim children in <a href="http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/10334813.Halal_meat_served_in_three_quarters_of_council_supported_schools/">publicly-funded schools</a>, Islamic and non-Islamic, are served halal meat &#8212; from animals whose throat is cut without proper stunning, according to the Islamic rite &#8212; often without knowing it. Even <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10895029/Soldiers-not-told-they-are-eating-halal-meat.html">British forces</a> have been discovered to be subjected to the same treatment.</p>
<p>Now schools in the UK are increasingly becoming the battleground of a war between radical Islam and the hopeless, dhimmi British &#8220;authorities,&#8221; if this is the right term to use in the face of inaction.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not the only one to have thought of a military metaphor. In the media, an alleged Islamic plot to take over schools has become a &#8220;Trojan horse.&#8221;</p>
<p>A country in whose capital city the most popular baby name for boys is <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/revealed-londons-top-20-most-popular-names-for-baby-boys-and-girls-9532511.html">Muhammad</a> and the fourth most popular is Mohammed is doomed.</p>
<p>The gradual but inevitable progression of Muslim demographics brings with it the <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/as-muslim-population-grows-what-can-happen-to-a-society">equally inexorable</a> advancement of Islamic tactics becoming more and more aggressive and oppressive.</p>
<p>This is not the first time that the ongoing process of <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/enza-ferreri/the-battle-of-the-burqa/">Islamization of British schools</a> has found its way into the news. Official inspections, Department of Education involvement, school authorities without answers &#8212; we’ve been here before and, I dare say, we’ll be here again.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s happening in British schools? We have to be clear here. Bear with me, as the saga is still unfolding and murky.</p>
<p>First, there is the current, run-of-the-mill management of many Muslim schools (publicly funded, of course) which <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/06/12/Gender-Segregation-OK-Says-Ofsted">does nothing wrong</a>, according to the government’s education regulator Ofsted, except segregating boys and girls, “restricting” music and art classes although they are demanded by the national curriculum, requiring girls to wear headscarves &#8212; in short educating children according to the Islamic way of life.</p>
<p>I would contend that this is Islamization of schools through and through. But no, Ofsted says, these are all positive things, expressions of Muslim identity and faith.</p>
<p>So, the brouhaha is just about a number of schools that risk becoming “really” Islamized and are investigated as possible targets of an &#8220;Islamic takeover,&#8221; which goes even further.</p>
<p>“Operation Trojan Horse” has become the nickname of an organized attempt by Islamists to co-opt schools in England and run them according to Muslim beliefs.</p>
<p>It all started with a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2583905/Forced-fanatics-Head-teachers-reveal-theyve-bullied-smeared-driven-jobs-resisting-Islamic-extremists.html">leaked letter</a>, whose authenticity is still in question, discovered in March 2014 and alleged to be from Islamists in Birmingham, central England &#8212; the second largest UK city, home to a great Muslim population &#8212; outlining <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-26482599">plans to take control</a> of schools there and possibly in other cities.</p>
<p>A month later Birmingham City Council said it had received hundreds of allegations of similar plots over a period of 20 years.</p>
<p>Investigations by Ofsted and the Education Funding Authority in 21 Birmingham schools did find <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-27763113">evidence of an orchestrated Islamist campaign</a> to target particular schools, and that head teachers had been &#8220;marginalised or forced out of their jobs.&#8221;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10776607/Islamist-plot-six-schools-face-Ofsted-special-measures.html">Six schools</a> were placed in special measures after inspectors found systemic failings, including failure to take adequate steps to safeguard pupils against extremism. Thirteen more were found wanting. Ofsted’s investigations later expanded into schools in East London, Bradford and Luton, all areas with large Muslim populations.</p>
<p>But, typically, only 2 schools had their <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-27775709">funding terminated</a> by the government.</p>
<p>In the aftermath, Education Secretary Michael Gove said that all UK schools must promote &#8220;British values.&#8221;</p>
<p>The question, indeed the problem that has caused this whole crisis to develop, is that nobody seems capable of defining what British values are any more.</p>
<p>My bet is that, if Gove could provide a clear and precise definition of that concept, Birmingham schools would not have been the object of a concerted attempt of turning them into breeding grounds for Islamic terrorists in the first place.</p>
<p>British Prime Minister David Cameron, with the perfectly straight face of someone who’s taking his own words very seriously, has attempted to list some of these <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/normantebbit/100275737/trojan-horse-i-warned-about-this-years-ago/">elusive British values</a>: freedom, tolerance, respect for the rule of law, belief in personal and social responsibility, and respect for British institutions.</p>
<p>I’ll say that Islamic leaders will find no reason to object to any of those.</p>
<p>Cameron suggested &#8220;freedom.&#8221; Muslims see this as, for instance, freedom of religion, which in their case means <a href="http://www.enzaferreri.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/what-eid-teaches-moderate-muslims-kids.html">freedom to teach kids</a> how to cut fully-conscious animals&#8217; throats during the religious and family festival of Eid, and then progressing to teach them how to become suicide bombers (which is the problem now under investigation).</p>
<p>Another example of freedom is that of Muslim girls to wear what my friend Alex Boot calls <a href="http://alexanderboot.com/content/word-favour-religious-discrimination-schools">&#8220;the traditional Halloween garb”</a> even when it’s not Halloween.</p>
<p>Tolerance is very, very acceptable for Muslims: to them it means that we must tolerate whatever they do and say, without the need for them to reciprocate and tolerate us infidels.</p>
<p>Respect for the rule of law: They mean sharia law, of course, and they do respect it, without a doubt.</p>
<p>Belief in personal and social responsibility: The responsibility towards the Ummah, the wide community of all Muslims, is well understood and accepted by Mohammedans. That’s why Islamic charity is only directed at Muslims. Personal responsibility is also viewed favorably by Muslims, as shown by restraint in dress code, alcohol consumption, dietary limitations and so on.</p>
<p>Respect for British institutions may seem trickier at first sight, but not when you consider that they are planning to take over all these institutions, and they’ve already made a good start with schools. Once the aforementioned “British” institutions become what Muslims want them to be – an outcome that appears to be more certain by the day &#8212; they’ll have no problem in respecting them.</p>
<p>Cameron has fallen here into a little logical trap of circularity: you cannot use the <em>definiendum</em> – the word to be defined – in the <em>definiens</em> – the definition. You cannot explain Britishness with another reference to it.</p>
<p>But never mind. Cameron’s still achieved a remarkable feat: giving a definition of British values so generic and vague that we can all agree with it, in a great multicultural, multireligious (or, not be discriminatory, multi-non-religious), multiethnic feast.</p>
<p>Of course, in order to give flesh and real significance to the concepts he choses, he would have been forced to introduce taboo words, like, off the top of my head, “Christian.”</p>
<p>The reason why &#8220;British values&#8221; has become a concept without meaning is the same why the European Union cannot find a unifying factor for Europe.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve heard endless discussions on how we don&#8217;t know what Britishness is, or Europe for that matter.</p>
<p>But it&#8217;s obvious that, if you deny or remove the whole historical process that gave birth to &#8212; and the cultural foundations that sustain &#8212; the identity of a nation or part of the world, you end up with a shapeless, amorphous entity. You should then not be surprised that you cannot define it.</p>
<p>These days the dirty words that we cannot pronounce and therefore can&#8217;t be used to define us are &#8220;Judeo-Christian.&#8221;</p>
<p>Judeo-Christianity is what unifies Europe and what is at the core of Britain.</p>
<p>Britain is Christian. Its history demonstrates it, its Constitution confirms it.</p>
<p>If this had been recognized, Islam in Britain would not have been allowed to make the progress it has made.</p>
<p>The main characteristic and chief function of definitions is that they must be able to exclude as well as include. An all-inclusive definition means nothing.</p>
<p>The Latin word “definire,” from which the English terms with the same root derive, literally means “to delimit, to place a boundary or border around” something.</p>
<p>That’s why in today’s world, in which all must be included – literally <span style="color: #222222;">(haven&#8217;t we de facto abolished all borders?) </span>as well as metaphorically &#8212; to say or think something meaningful has become almost impossible, and when someone does it he risks imprisonment. Even more difficult is to do something that makes sense – as the British government wonderfully exemplifies.</p>
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		<title>What&#8217;s Next for Britain?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/enza-ferreri/whats-next-for-britain/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=whats-next-for-britain</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Jun 2014 04:15:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Enza Ferreri]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why those expecting a conservative surge in the next British election may be disappointed. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/ukip.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-226734" alt="ukip" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/ukip-450x253.jpg" width="315" height="177" /></a>After an <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/enza-ferreri/earthquake-in-the-u-k/">earthquake</a>, we gather the pieces hurled and scattered all over the place by the magnitude of the event, put them together and reconstruct. This is precisely the situation Britain finds itself in after last week&#8217;s momentous elections.</p>
<p>The big question in British politics now is who is going to win the 2015 General Elections for the British Parliament, which will produce the majority to form the new government.</p>
<p>The local and European elections were much anticipated and the outcome has been analyzed at length. The elections are supposed to give an idea of the next occupant of 10 Downing Street, the British Prime Minister’s residence.</p>
<p>But the new four-main-party-system that the UK Independence Party (UKIP) has introduced by storm makes these predictions much more complicated. UKIP has been the nightmare of pollsters and number crunchers, who admit defeat in appraising the current situation &#8212; and more importantly, admit that predicting the future will be much more difficult.</p>
<p>Without UKIP, it would be relatively easy to forecast next year’s results. If, as is often the case, on May 22 the incumbent party in government had fared badly and the opposition well, it would be seen as a sign that it’s time for the usual reversal of roles between them.</p>
<p>But now the Labour Party in opposition, although electorally performing better than the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in the government coalition, has also hemorrhaged a stream of votes to UKIP. Therefore its percentage in the polls is not much higher than the Tories, which does not indicate a safe Labour victory in 2015.</p>
<p>On the other hand, most votes for UKIP have come from the Conservatives (Prime Minister David Cameron’s party). This means that these two parties of the Right will be forced to share votes in the General Elections as well, thus reducing the Tories’ chances to win. But by how much we don’t know, because a certain number of people who voted for UKIP at the European Elections won’t do so when it comes to electing the UK Parliament and deciding the next Prime Minister.</p>
<p>It may seem appropriate to choose UKIP, a party that is largely one-issue (leaving the European Union) at the Euro polls, but from the national government many voters, albeit sympathetic to party Leader Nigel Farage’s views, want something more. These voters are interested in a wide range of issues that affect their lives, such as the economy, education, health, crime, welfare, housing, employment, and so on. It’s difficult to know how many will desert UKIP for the Tories next year.</p>
<p>The three main parties, Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats &#8212; often placed in the same bracket and derisively called “LibLabCon” to indicate that what they have in common is much more significant than their differences, giving the electorate no real choice – likely do not understand the message of the recent election.</p>
<p>In order to do so they would have to change what they are to become something completely different. All their aims and policies are predicated on carrying on as usual, offering the country more of the same, the only difference being in degree. Yesterday it was recognition of same-sex civil unions, today the law on same-sex marriage. Today it’s <a href="http://libertygb.org.uk/v1/index.php/home/root/news-libertygb/6389-winchester-churchill-quotation-gets-liberty-gb-leader-paul-weston-arrested">racist to quote Churchill’s anti-Islam</a> words, tomorrow it will be racist to describe a pet as “a black cat with a bit of white.”</p>
<p>Incidentally, many votes were lost by the Conservatives to UKIP because of the Tory Prime Minister David Cameron&#8217;s insistence on making homosexual marriage legal.</p>
<p>All the three main parties are egalitarian and strict followers of political correctness. They vilify people for legitimate concerns over where the country is headed, explicitly or implicitly calling them names. They never stop to wonder whether people might be right; at most they express sympathy, understanding and “concern” for how people feel, not so subtly implying that those feelings are irrational and based on false perceptions, whereas reality is what the business of politics is all about so those feelings should be disregarded.</p>
<p>The following voter account sums up the <a href="http://www.devilskitchen.me.uk/2014/05/ukip-elections-and-messaging.html">reasons why many voted UKIP</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Despite all of this, I will vote UKIP at the Euro-elections, and there are two main reasons for this: first, that I wish to carry the message, very strongly, to the LibLabCon alliance that they do not have a right to be in government, they do not have a right to power—something that Labour and Conservatives have, I think, utterly forgotten (leading inexorably to a corruption almost as total as the Republicans and Democrats in Washington).</p></blockquote>
<p>Some pundits frequently note that UKIP’s voters are mostly men, over 50 and blue collar. Implicit in this announcement is the view that such demographics should say a lot about UKIP, specifically how bad it must be if it attracts predominantly people of this despicable sort.</p>
<p>It’s reminiscent of the media in the US and elsewhere, which at the time of the presidential elections were highlighting how Mitt Romney was disproportionately preferred by men, with the same ominous implications of backwardness and “uncoolness.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.enzaferreri.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/john-cleese-london-is-no-longer-english.html">London is not part of the UK</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> any more, due to its strong immigrant and Muslim presence, and is becoming increasingly so, was confirmed once again by the last vote pattern.</span></p>
<p>London is the only region where UKIP is still struggling, whereas Labour is doing fine. Immigrants in general and Muslims in particular tend to vote for the Labour Party, which has opened wide the doors of the country to them when in government, is overgenerous in its welfare policies for everyone, and is favorable to Islam to the point of distraction.</p>
<p>This is only one of several cases in which the <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/08/politics-and-islam-in-dhimmi-europe">Muslim vote has shaped European politics</a> in recent times. In some cases it’s proved decisive: the analysis of various groups’ votes showed that, without Muslims in France, former French President Nicholas Sarkozy would have won &#8212; the election of socialist Francois Hollande as President was <a href="http://galliawatch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/is-it-really-end.html">determined by the followers of Islam</a>.</p>
<p>What does the future hold for UKIP and for Britain?</p>
<p>The UKIP will try to get its first Member of the British House of Commons elected this June 5 to fill the seat of <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">MP Patrick Mercer, who recently resigned</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p>
<p>European UKIP representatives, including Farage, have said that at the General Elections of 2015 they&#8217;ll target and concentrate their efforts particularly on those constituencies where they already have councillors or have done well in the local elections. They say that this has been the successful strategy of the Lib Dems, who have been in a similar position of being outsiders in the past.</p>
<p>In the long term, Farage aims to repeat the destruction of Canada’s Conservative Party two decades ago, when the rebel Right-wing Reform Party, that many compare to UKIP itself, caused another political earthquake.</p>
<p>In an <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2638377/Now-I-destroy-Tory-party-In-crowing-interview-Nigel-Farage-reveals-quit-politics-hes-got-UK-EU.html">interview with the <i>Daily Mail</i></a>, Farage said that a Canadian-style Tory meltdown “could happen” in Britain. Canada’s century-old ruling Conservative Party was destroyed overnight in the country’s 1993 election by the populist, low-tax Reform Party, which had been called “racist, sexist and homophobic,” some of the epithets thrown at UKIP, along with the “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” that PM Cameron used for UKIP supporters. According to Farage:</p>
<blockquote><p>The split in Canada’s Centre Right enabled the Liberals, Canada’s equivalent of our Labour Party, to take power.</p>
<p>But after ten years of infighting, the Reform revolution succeeded. The Canadian Alliance, a merger of Reform with the ruins of Canada’s old-style Tories, led to former Reform official Stephen Harper becoming Prime Minister in 2006.</p></blockquote>
<p>Farage compared attacks on himself to those on Reform Party leader:</p>
<blockquote><p>‘They called him a Right-wing extremist, a nutter, away with the fairies, he’ll never get anywhere and what happens? They won one by-election, a schoolmistress way out West, who resisted every bribe and temptation to rejoin the Conservative Party.</p>
<p>‘Now you have a Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, who was first elected on a Reform ticket, as were half the Cabinet.</p>
<p>‘Don’t think this can’t happen here. The public want something different. We are catalysing a big change in British politics on fundamental issues that have been brushed under the carpet and ignored by a completely out-of-touch career political class for too long.’</p></blockquote>
<p>In all this euphoria, we mustn’t forget UKIP’s limitation, first of all that the party’s not opposed to Islam. In fact, it even has British parliamentary candidates who openly advocate Sharia law, like <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10221430/UKIP-MP-candidate-supports-sharia-law-including-cutting-off-thieves-hands.html">Dean Perks</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Sharia law, in my opinion, works as a prevention. And prevention is better than cure. If you think you&#8217;re going to get your hands chopped off for pinching something, you won&#8217;t pinch it.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>A UKIP council candidate who tweeted that Islam is &#8220;evil&#8221; was <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27268747">suspended from the party</a>. Farage distanced himself from his own immigration spokesman, Gerard Batten, who had proposed a special code of conduct in the form of a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/05/nigel-farage-ukip-mep-batten-muslim-code-conduct">charter calling on Muslims to accept equality</a>, reject violence and accept the need to modify the Quran, which Muslims had to sign. And in public speeches the UKIP leader is careful to limit his <a href="http://edgar1981.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/nigel-farage-ukip-speaks-to-london-jews.html">comments on Islam</a> to politically correct ones.</p>
<p>Even more tellingly, <a href="http://join.ukip.org/JoinOnline.aspx?type=1">membership of UKIP is forbidden</a> to current or even previous members of the English Defense League and other groups who are outspoken on the Islamisation of Britain and dare hinder it.</p>
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		<title>&#8216;Earthquake&#8217; in the U.K.</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/enza-ferreri/earthquake-in-the-u-k/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=earthquake-in-the-u-k</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 26 May 2014 04:28:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Enza Ferreri]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Anti-EU party upsets all current paradigms of British politics.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/635156-1bc4c180-e478-11e3-b327-fc34ef98ae31.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-226273 alignleft" alt="635156-1bc4c180-e478-11e3-b327-fc34ef98ae31" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/635156-1bc4c180-e478-11e3-b327-fc34ef98ae31-450x303.jpg" width="315" height="212" /></a>&#8220;An earthquake&#8221; is how the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) described what happened Thursday May 22 when all Britain voted to elect its share of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and various parts of the country voted to elect local councils.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">While the results of the Euro Elections were not announced until Sunday to wait for the results of the whole European Union, where some countries voted later, the local election results were known immediately, and were pretty much as Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, described them: an earthquake.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In a country with a three-main-party system (Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats), the UKIP became firmly established as the fourth party. It didn&#8217;t gain overall control of any local council, but that doesn&#8217;t tell the whole story.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Labour won 338 more councillors than it previously had, the Conservatives were down 231 councillors, the Liberal Democrats took a bashing losing 307, as many as 40 percent of their councillors, and UKIP went from two to an astonishing 163 councillors, turning from a fringe, tiny party into a serious contender for government.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But it was last night, at the European Elections, that UKIP got a real triumph. Not only did it top the polls with more votes than all other parties for the first time in its history, but its victory also marked the first time in which a nationally-held election has not been won by either the Conservative Party or the Labour Party since 1906.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This historical event upsets all the current paradigms of British politics. For a start, it makes it much more difficult to predict future election results, including the 2015 general elections for the British Parliament, the &#8220;real&#8221; polls that will decide who&#8217;s going to govern the UK.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">A three-party system is easier to understand and forecast than a four-party one. Without UKIP, Labour might have been cast as the next British government, benefiting from the dissatisfaction from the supposed &#8220;cuts&#8221; and &#8220;austerity&#8221; measures that the present coalition of Tories and Lib Dems in government had to enforce to heal at least in part the ruinously irresponsible economy and welfare policies of the past Labour administration.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Something similar happened in other parts of Europe, hence the BBC&#8217;s headline, &#8220;Eurosceptic &#8216;earthquake&#8217; rocks EU elections,&#8221; in reference to the parallel result of Marine Le Pen&#8217;s Front National which <a href="http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27559714">won</a> a record victory in France. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Back in the UK, the Liberal Democrats were almost wiped out from the European Parliament, being left with just one MEP of the 11 they previously had. This is Catherine Zena Bearder, standing in the South East, the largest region in the UK, where my party, one-year-old Liberty GB, got 2494 votes.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">These results show a clear shift in public opinion towards a decidedly anti-immigration, anti-European-Union stance.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The reaction of the (previously) three main parties and of the liberal media is interesting because it shows that they simply don&#8217;t get it.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">They cling to justifications, rationalizations, excuses, pedantic nitpicking, like &#8220;it hasn&#8217;t been an earthquake because UKIP has no control of a single council&#8221; or &#8220;it&#8217;s just a temporary protest vote. They&#8217;ll come back to us.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Lib Dems project onto the UKIP&#8217;s future what happened to them. The Lib Dems, never genuinely contemplating the possibility of being in government, were ruined by their experience in power, where they didn&#8217;t keep their utopian promises to the electorate. In an act of wishful thinking the Lib Dems predict that the same will happen to UKIP.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">My favorite is the reaction of Labour. Faithful to their Marxist heritage, they explain everything away with the economy. People on the doorstep tell us that they are not concerned about immigration per se, Labour says, but only about its economic consequences for jobs, wages, housing and so on.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We&#8217;ll sort these things out, they continue, the usual Labour way: by wasting more of public money and increasing taxes.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">They don&#8217;t realize that no people &#8220;on the doorstep&#8221; will tell any Labour representative that they don&#8217;t want immigration for reasons of culture and identity, not just economics, lest they be considered racist by the aforementioned Labour person.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And UKIP took votes from all parties, including Labour, whose traditional base of working-class voters got progressively dissatisfied with it.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">People who until now voted for the mainstream establishment parties &#8212; and people who didn&#8217;t vote at all &#8212; have decided to stop being silent and take action by choosing a party that says many of the things they think but cannot express.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We all take great hope and encouragement from this trend.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It took UKIP 20 years from its foundation to get to this point, and it struggled for recognition for a very long time.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">There was a time when a vote for UKIP was considered wasted, but it turned out to be instrumental in putting pressure on the Tories on the issue of leaving the European Union. There will be a time when voting for Liberty GB will put pressure on UKIP on the issue of the threat of Britain&#8217;s Islamization, on which Farage&#8217;s party has so far been persistently silent.</span></p>
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		<title>Unraveling the History of the Israeli Navy, Part I</title>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 22 May 2014 04:29:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jack L. Schwartzwald]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[How the Israeli Navy transitioned from obscurity to a missile pioneer.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/US_Navy_080621-N-8273J-115_Capt._Bill_Moran_left_and_Israeli_Navy_Capt._Azarel_Ram_render_honors_during_an_honors_ceremony_for_Chief_of_Naval_Operations_CNO_Adm._Gary_Roughead.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-225922" alt="080621-N-8273J-115" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/US_Navy_080621-N-8273J-115_Capt._Bill_Moran_left_and_Israeli_Navy_Capt._Azarel_Ram_render_honors_during_an_honors_ceremony_for_Chief_of_Naval_Operations_CNO_Adm._Gary_Roughead-450x301.jpg" width="315" height="211" /></a>In the beginning, when Britain ruled Palestine, mere glimpses emerge: of twenty-three Jewish frogmen and their British commander disappearing without a trace on a seaborne mission against Vichy Lebanon (1941);</span><sup style="line-height: 1.5em;">1</sup><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of Jewish soldiers learning naval skills at the British naval base in Haifa (1943); and of Jewish workers posing proudly next to two minesweepers they have constructed for the Royal Navy in Tel Aviv harbor (1944).</span></p>
<p>The historian, however, begins his labors where he will, and our story commences not in British Palestine but at Fleet Landing in distant Newport, Rhode Island.  It was here in April 1946 that a motorized liberty launch put in carrying crewmembers of the USS <i>Massey</i> and their guests—a group of Annapolis midshipmen who had come aboard for two weeks of drills.  On reaching land, some of the midshipmen and crewmembers bounded ashore only to be summoned back to the launch, where they received an informative lecture from Lieutenant Paul Shulman, the <i>Massey’s</i> engineering officer.  The topic was standard disembarkation from a naval vessel, and the take home message was this:  If the sailors wanted to do things according to regulations, then officers were to debark first, followed by midshipmen (since they were destined to be officers) and finally crewmembers.  While highly enlightening, the lecture seems not to have been appreciated by men anxious to begin their liberty—although they did do a commendable job of applying their new knowledge when Shulman finally let them leave the launch.<sup>2</sup></p>
<p>Gruffness was nothing new to Paul Shulman. His biographer, J. Wandres, relates that five years earlier, while an Annapolis midshipman himself, he had had a terse exchange with a revered houseguest at his parents’ home.  The visitor had remarked that he was delighted that Jewish boys like Shulman were studying to be naval officers since an independent Jewish state, once it came into being, would require men with such skills.  Shulman snapped back that he intended to be a career officer in the U.S. Navy and wished the houseguest luck with recruitment elsewhere.<sup>3</sup>  The houseguest, David Ben-Gurion, found Shulman’s sense of commitment impressive and did not forget him.</p>
<p>Career plans enunciated by 18-year-olds are apt to change.  And so it was in the case of young Shulman.  The Holocaust—and Britain’s subsequent refusal to allow the survivors of that catastrophe to immigrate to the Jewish National Home in Mandatory Palestine—made a deep impression on the maturing officer.  Obtaining his release from active naval duty in 1946, he helped front an organization that purchased decommissioned U.S. and Canadian naval vessels for use in smuggling European Jews to Palestine in the teeth of Britain’s draconian blockade.  (Unfortunately, the Royal Navy intercepted most of these vessels, sending the passengers back to Europe or to internment on Cyprus.)<sup>4</sup></p>
<p>In April 1948, the 25-year-old Shulman accepted an offer to serve as Chief-of-Staff for naval training in the nascent Israeli Navy.<sup>5</sup>  Weeks later—on May 15<sup>th</sup>—five Arab armies crossed the frontier of the newborn Jewish state intent on annihilating it.  Within the navy, at this time, there existed two competing operational philosophies.  The <i>Palyam</i>—a frogman-based commando unit—believed that commando operations could meet all of Israel’s naval requirements, including staging attacks, keeping sea-lanes open, blockading enemy ports and transporting marines.<sup>6</sup>  Shulman adhered to the rival view, outlined by former Royal Navy officer, Robert Stephenson Miller, that a traditional navy would better serve Israel’s needs.</p>
<p>In the event, both operational schools were vindicated.  At the outset of the war, four decommissioned naval vessels intercepted by Britain during the illegal immigration campaign were at anchor in Haifa harbor.  Just prior to declaring independence, Israel took possession of these vessels, carried out repairs and formed them into the so-called “Big Flotilla” in accordance with Miller’s conception.<sup>7</sup>  In the meantime, an Israeli agent had purchased six “explosive” speedboats.  Formerly belonging to the “Decima Mas” special operations unit of the Italian Navy,<sup>8</sup> these became the chief strike weapon of the <i>Palyam</i> (now know as the “Marine Sabotage Unit”<sup>9</sup> and soon to be renamed “<i>Flotilla 13</i>”—a name that finally stuck<sup>10</sup>).</p>
<p>The stage was now set for the most stunning naval feat of the war—a combined operation, involving both the Big Flotilla and the <i>Palyam</i>.  Because the explosive boats could not travel long distances on the open sea, they were being transported in the lifeboat position aboard one of the Big Flotilla ships when the latter, commanded by Shulman, cornered the Egyptian flagship, <i>Al Emir Farouq</i>, off the Gaza coastline on October 21, 1948.  A ceasefire had just gone into effect, but when an Egyptian shore battery opened fire on the Israeli flotilla, Shulman obtained permission to attack directly from Ben-Gurion.<sup>11</sup>  The explosive boats were lowered into the water and sped toward their quarry—each carrying 650 pounds of explosive in the prow.  At a distance of 100 yards, the <i>Palyam</i> pilots, commanded by Yochai Bin-Nun,<sup>12</sup> locked their rudders in position and jumped overboard.  On impact, the explosives separated from the boats, sunk and exploded below the water line.<sup>13</sup>  Struck twice, the Egyptian flagship broke in half, carrying 500 men to the bottom, while a third torpedo boat crippled an Egyptian minesweeper.<sup>14</sup>  Five days later, Ben-Gurion promoted Shulman to command of the Israeli Navy with the rank of <i>Aluf</i> (i.e., Admiral). According to J. Wandres, Shulman would muse afterwards that he must be the first U.S. Naval lieutenant to achieve the rank of admiral in just three years.<sup>15</sup></p>
<p>Notwithstanding the success of the <i>Al Emir Farouq</i> operation, Israel’s War of Independence was decided on land.  The navy had neither to clash with an enemy fleet nor to forestall an attempt at amphibious invasion, nor even to protect seaborne commerce.  (Marine insurance rates actually fell by half during the war.<sup>16</sup>)  Mere shore bombardment proved beyond the fleet’s means.  Because the U.S. and Canadian navies had removed the original artillery from the ships comprising the Big Flotilla, the Israeli Navy employed field guns (secured to the decks by rope) for such bombardment attempts with most unsatisfactory results.<sup>17</sup>  In sum, says one historian, the Israeli Navy emerged from the war as “a disorganized collection of unsuitable ships, operated by inadequately trained crews,” which was manifestly unable “to come up with a useful role for their service…”<sup>18</sup> To square the circle, Shlomo Shamir, a distinguished army officer with no naval experience, was chosen to succeed Shulman in command.<sup>19</sup></p>
<p>Although the equipment improved with the purchase of some bona fide naval destroyers in 1955, finding a useful mission remained problematic.  Given little guidance from the rest of the military, the navy began training for the purpose of protecting Israel’s sea lines of communication in the event of another war.  But the IDF (Israel Defense Force) did not intend to ask the navy to fulfill this purpose in wartime.  Because Israel relied heavily on citizen reserves, a prolonged conflict was deemed impracticable.  The widespread requisitioning of manpower, trucks, planes and ships at a moment’s notice upon the outbreak of war would bring the economy to a standstill—a condition that could not be long maintained.  Consequently, all planning was geared toward rapid blitz-style military actions—the outcome of which would be determined before open or closed sea lines could come into play.<sup>20</sup>  The main reason that the navy was able to requisition the aforementioned destroyers<sup>21</sup> at all seems to have been a belief on the part of the IDF brass that it would force Israel’s enemies to overspend on their own navies in order to keep up, thereby diverting the enemies’ resources from military equipment needed for the decisive battle on land.<sup>22</sup></p>
<p>The navy’s new equipment saw its first action during <i>Operation Kadesh</i> (i.e., the 1956 Sinai Campaign), wherein Israel joined Britain and France in a war against Egypt—the Israelis responding to Egyptian-sponsored terrorist raids and the blockade of Eilat (her southern port); the British and French retaliating for Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser’s nationalization of the British- and French-owned Suez Canal.  At the outset, Israel’s Anglo-French allies insisted that the Israeli Navy avoid the main area of operations so as not to become entangled with the large allied naval assault force.  Israeli landing craft (obtained during the early 1950s) did play a role in the Gulf of Aqaba by transporting four light tanks to southern Sinai for the IDF assault on Sharm-el-Sheikh, but it appeared that the destroyers would be consigned to the sidelines for the duration.  In the event, they were spared this disappointment by the Egyptian Navy, which dispatched the frigate, <i>Ibrahim El Awal</i>, to bombard Haifa.  As the ship withdrew, the destroyers gave chase supported by torpedo boats and IAF fighter-bombers.  Crippled in the water by Israeli fire, the <i>Ibrahim El Awal</i> was boarded by Israeli sailors and towed back to Haifa, where it was repaired and re-commissioned as an Israeli naval vessel.<sup>23</sup></p>
<p>This positive outcome did not negate the fact that the Israeli Navy had been taken by surprise at its own base of operations (Haifa) or that the Egyptian ship had fired off 160 shells and begun sailing for home before the Israelis were able to react.  It was a humbling reminder that the principal duty of a small state’s navy is to guard the coastline.<sup>24</sup>  This message was driven home with finality the following year when the Soviet Union sold a new weapon—the missile boat—to Syria and Egypt.  Capable of traveling at 38 knots and firing the ship-to-ship <i>Styx</i> missile at targets up to 40 kilometers distant, the new threat rendered Israel’s destroyer-based navy all but obsolete.  Although the missile boats could not detect specific land targets owing to the cacophony of shoreline radar echoes, were they to open fire on Israel’s target-rich coastal cities, there was nothing the lumbering destroyers could do about it.<sup>25</sup></p>
<p>While such weapons systems were in development in Western nations including the United States, they were not yet operational or available for sale.<sup>26</sup>  Hence, a new conception for Israel’s Navy was necessary—tilting the balance away from the “traditional navy” Miller plan and towards small ships for coastal defense.  Chosen to lead the drive was former <i>Palyam</i> commander, Yochai Bin-Nun, who served as Commander of the Israeli Navy from 1960 to 1966.  Under his leadership, the old <i>Palyam</i> commando concept became so preponderant that the effects still reverberate.  Says one historian, “Nearly every navy in the world has commando forces at its disposal.  But … in no other navy in the world do commando operations have such a predominant status.”<sup>27</sup></p>
<p>Directly countering the Syrian and Egyptian missile boat threat was a prime challenge for the new navy.  With no similar weapons systems existing in the West, Israel began work on its own—the <i>Gabriel</i> missile.<sup>28</sup>  Based on a blueprint developed by MIT-trained IDF Major General Amos Horev in 1953 and brought to fruition by the Drexel-trained engineer, Ori Even-Tov, in 1965, the new missile was smaller and of shorter range than the Soviet <i>Styx</i>, but had a more advanced guidance system and was virtually invisible to targeted vessels since it traveled just above the ocean plane.<sup>29</sup>  To carry the <i>Gabriel</i>, Israel chose German-designed patrol craft manufactured in France.<sup>30</sup></p>
<p>At the outbreak of the 1967 Six Day War, these weapons were still in production.  Consequently, commando operations formed the crux of the navy’s contribution.  The results were discouraging.  The day of explosive boats had passed with the widespread adoption of radar.<sup>31</sup>  Israel’s naval commandos now based their operations on a lone operational submarine—the 1930s-vintage, former Royal Navy S-Class <i>Tanin</i>—and a flotilla of underwater, Bond-like “Swimmer Delivery Vehicles (SDVs),” whose prototypes—known by the very un-kosher term <i>maiale</i> or “pigs” (a name which stuck with them ever after despite protests from the IDF’s chief rabbi<sup>32</sup>)—had been developed in Mussolini’s Italy.  On the first night of the war, frogmen deployed by the <i>Tanin</i> attempted to raid Alexandria harbor only to find the base empty of military targets.  Worse still, on their return they missed the rendezvous and were later captured in an attempt to hide on land.  The <i>Tanin</i>, meanwhile, went 0 for 8 in torpedo shots against an Egyptian frigate and then got pinned down for three hours by depth charges launched in retaliation.<sup>33</sup></p>
<p>On the same night the SDVs attempted a raid on Port Said at the entryway to the Suez Canal.  They, too, found no targets in port, and only narrowly withdrew after shore batteries and patrol boats spotted them and opened fire.  Operations off the Syrian coast—one of them commanded by Yochai Bin-Nun, who had been summoned from retirement<sup>34</sup>—fared no better, and in the end, the navy’s lone success in the war came accidentally with the capture of Sharm-el-Sheikh on June 7.  The site, from which Egypt had blockaded the Straits of Tiran making war inevitable, was to have been taken by Israeli paratroopers with the navy in support.  Owing to catastrophic losses in the Sinai, however, the Egyptians had already fled.  Consequently, when Israeli naval forces arrived ahead of the paratroopers, they were able to come ashore unmolested to secure the vital position.<sup>35</sup></p>
<p>It remained for the navy to play a role in the one great blunder of the war:  In a dreadful mishap on June 8<sup>th</sup>, Israeli jets and torpedo boats attacked the American signals intelligence ship, <i>USS Liberty</i>, severely crippling the vessel and inflicting 205 casualties including 34 deaths.  The ship had been specifically identified as the <i>USS Liberty</i> earlier that morning after an Israeli <i>Noratlas</i> reconnaissance plane detected its hull number.<sup>36</sup>  But the vessel was then lost to follow up—in large measure because after the lapse of several hours, its position marker was taken off Naval Command’s situation map as being no longer accurate.  Worse still, word of the ship’s sighting was not passed on at the ensuing shift change.<sup>37</sup></p>
<p>In an unfortunate coincidence one hour later, a loud explosion at El Arish in Sinai (now held by Israeli forces) was mistaken for an Egyptian naval bombardment.  At the time, all other U.S. naval vessels had withdrawn from the coast, but the <i>Liberty</i> acting under separate orders from the National Security Agency and Joint Chiefs of Staff, had failed to receive its orders to do likewise.  Thus, it continued patrolling the coastal waters north of Sinai where Israeli torpedo boats, which had not been alerted to the possible presence of an American warship, now sighted it and mistook it for an Egyptian vessel.<sup>38</sup>  Acting in accordance with IDF Chief-of-Staff Yitzhak Rabin’s standing orders to sink all unidentified vessels in the war zone, the torpedo boats requested air force assistance.  After two initial flyovers failed to discern friendly markings,<sup>39</sup> the ship was attacked from the air.  Later, the Israeli torpedo boats arrived on the scene to inflict more damage.</p>
<p>The first clue that a tragic mistake had been made was the recovery, by one of the torpedo boats, of a life raft from the <i>Liberty </i>that possessed a U.S. Naval insignia.  Israel immediately offered apologies to the U.S. government and offered to pay compensation.  The episode has become the subject of conspiracy theories and cover-up charges, but ten subsequent U.S. government (and three Israeli) investigations have failed to expose any evidence or motive to support the notion that the attack was anything but a terrible and unintentional blunder.<sup>40</sup></p>
<p>Four months after the war, the navy suffered a humiliating setback.  During a routine patrol along the Sinai coastline on October 21<sup>st</sup>, the destroyer <i>Eilat</i>, Israel’s flagship, discerned a flash of light from Egypt’s Port Said at the outlet of the Suez Canal.  It was a Soviet-made <i>Styx</i> missile, and it found its mark in the <i>Eilat’s</i> stern.  Some 15 minutes later a second missile found its target.  The ship began to list.  For two hours, Israeli sailors attempted to salvage the destroyer, but when a third <i>Styx</i> struck the vessel’s magazine, her captain issued the order to abandon ship.  Within a quarter of an hour, the <i>Eilat</i> went to the bottom.  A fourth of the crew were killed and fully half wounded in this sea-to-sea missile strike—the first ever in naval history.<sup>41</sup></p>
<p>Three months later, disaster struck anew when the T-class submarine, <i>Dakar</i>, manned by a crew of 69, disappeared without a trace during its maiden voyage home after purchase in Great Britain.  Its fate remained a mystery for 30 years until its wreckage was discovered on the ocean bottom, 1.8 miles down, off the island of Crete in 1999.  The cause of the tragedy has never been determined.<sup>42</sup></p>
<p>Despite these devastating reverses, new vistas were opening for Israel’s navy.  Possession of the Sinai Peninsula with its extensive coastline promised a vast expansion in its scope of operations.  Hoping to capitalize on this fact, Israel’s new naval chief, Avraham “Cheetah” Botzer, sought to enhance the navy’s relevance by realigning its mission in accordance with the needs of the other branches.<sup>43</sup>  Henceforth, the navy was to regard itself not as a separate entity, but as an integral part of the IDF.  Reflective of the new outlook, it adopted IDF-style uniforms to replace its former navy attire and relocated “Naval Command” from Haifa to Tel Aviv where the rest of the IDF was headquartered.<sup>44</sup></p>
<p>In order to patrol Sinai’s Mediterranean and Red Sea coastlines effectively, the navy needed to press ahead with procurement of the French-built, German designed missile boats that were to carry the new <i>Gabriel</i> missile.  Known by the designation <i>SA’AR </i>(Hebrew for “Storm”<sup>45</sup>), the new boats were less than 1/10<sup>th</sup> the size of a destroyer.<sup>46</sup>  Hence, they were faster, more maneuverable and required far smaller crews (eliminating the risk of an <i>Eilat</i>-magnitude disaster should a single ship be lost).  At the same time, the compact new missile system allowed them to pack a stronger punch, all at a fraction of the cost of a new destroyer.<sup>47</sup></p>
<p>Unfortunately, there was a problem.  Just prior to the Six Day War, the French government had placed an embargo on military sales to Israel in order to appease Arab sentiment.  Two of the missile boats had already been delivered, and France allowed two more, which had been paid for while under construction, to sail for Israel after the war.  But when Israel used French-made helicopters in a raid on Beirut Airport in retaliation for Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israeli planes (1968), President de Gaulle ordered a halt to all further deliveries.  Alerted to the decision several days before the orders reached Cherbourg where the boats were under construction, Israel informed the port authorities that they would be running sea trials on two nearly complete boats on January 4, 1969.  Unaware of de Gaulle’s decision, the port approved.  Once out to sea, the boats simply kept going until they reached Haifa.<sup>48</sup></p>
<p>As these vessels, too, had been purchased in advance, the action didn’t exactly constitute theft, but de Gaulle angrily declared that five boats still being built at Cherbourg—for which contracts had been signed replete with a 30% down-payment<sup>49</sup>—were not to reach Israel.  Instead, they were resold to a Norwegian company involved in oil exploration off the coast of Alaska with Israel being reimbursed from the proceeds.  The boats set sail from Cherbourg on Christmas Eve 1969 in the teeth of 30-foot waves and 70-knot winds.  Two days later they were sighted off Gibraltar, where the British authorities effectively winked at them by signaling, “bon voyage” as they sailed past.<sup>50</sup>  On New Year’s Eve they arrived in Haifa.  Though headed by a well-known Norwegian shipping agent, the Norwegian “company,” was actually a front for Israeli buyers, and the crewmen were actually Israeli sailors participating in <i>Operation Noah</i> to recover Israel’s contractual property.<sup>51</sup></p>
<p>With the missile boats now on hand to fill the roles of attack and forward defense, the Israeli Navy rounded out its inventory upgrade by obtaining shallow-draught, U.S.-made <i>Dabur</i> (“hornet”) class patrol boats for coastal and rear defense and by incorporating landing craft (some of which were built domestically at Haifa’s “Israel Shipyards”) for amphibious operations carried out in cooperation with the IDF.<sup>52</sup> Equipped with its new arsenal, Israel’s Navy was poised to sail into a new era.</p>
<p>________________________</p>
<p><b>Notes</b></p>
<p><sup>1 </sup>This was <i>Operation Boatswain</i>—an attempt to sabotage the oil refineries in Tripoli (Samuel M. Katz, <i>The Night Raiders: Israel’s Naval Commandos at War</i>.  New York:  Pocket Books, 1997, 27-28).</p>
<p><sup>2 </sup>J. Wandres, .  <i>The Ablest Navigator: Lieutenant Paul N. Shulman, USN, Israel’s Volunteer Admiral</i>.  Annapolis:  Naval Institute Press, 2010, 28.</p>
<p><sup>3 </sup>Wandres, 14.</p>
<p><sup>4 </sup>Wandres, 39.</p>
<p><sup>5 </sup>The course was taught in English since Hebrew lacked naval terminology (Wandres, 58).</p>
<p><sup>6 </sup>Mommsen, 22-23.</p>
<p><sup>7 </sup>Mommsen, 28, 30.</p>
<p><sup>8</sup> A former Italian naval officer (and ex-Fascist), Fiorenzo Capriotti, trained the <i>Palyam</i> in the boats’ operation. (Katz, 60-61).</p>
<p><sup>9</sup> Moshe Tzalel, <i>From Ice-Breaker to Missile Boat: The Evolution of Israel’s Naval Strategy</i>.  Contributions in Military Studies, Number 192. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2000, 10.<br />
<sup>10</sup> The name derived from the unit’s tradition of toasting its membership on the 13<sup>th</sup> of each month (Katz, 72-73).</p>
<p><sup>11</sup> Mommsen, 40.</p>
<p><sup>12</sup> After targeting the minesweeper and locking his rudder, Bin-Nun had trouble ejecting with his flotation device—finally exiting the boat under fire with only 40 meters to spare.  He received the Medal of Valor for his role in the raid (Katz, 68-69; Abraham Rabinovich, <i>The Boasts of Cherbourg</i>.  New York:  Seaver Books, 1988, 24-25).</p>
<p><sup>13</sup> Mommsen, 29.</p>
<p><sup>14</sup> Wandres, 1-3; Mommsen, 40; Tzalel, 90.  The reason the <i>Al Emir Farouq</i> had 500 men aboard was because it was transporting troops to the Gaza front (Katz, 69).</p>
<p><sup>15</sup> Wandres, 3.</p>
<p><sup>16</sup> Tzalel, 11.</p>
<p><sup>17</sup> Tzalel, 10.</p>
<p><sup>18</sup> Tzalel, 14.</p>
<p><sup>19</sup> After serving one year as naval Aluf, Shamir was given command of the air force.</p>
<p><sup>20</sup> Tzalel, 16-18; Mommsen, 44-46.</p>
<p><sup>21 </sup>Also obtained was a small flotilla of torpedo boats, several WWII-surplus infantry landing craft and three small wooden Italian boats, which were carried overland across the Negev to Eilat to serve as the Israeli Navy in the Gulf of Aqaba (Mommsen, 52).</p>
<p><sup>22</sup> Mommsen, 46.</p>
<p><sup>23</sup> Mommsen, 67-68; Moshe Dayan, <i>Diary of the Sinai Campaign</i>, New York: Harper &amp; Row, 1965, 110-14.  On November 3, the IAF accidentally attacked a British frigate in the Gulf of Aqaba, mistaking it for an Egyptian ship that had been sunk by the British two days earlier.  The Israelis lost a plane in the attack.  (Mommsen, 69; Tzalel, 27)</p>
<p><sup>24</sup> Tzalel, 2, 93.</p>
<p><sup>25</sup> Mommsen, 77-78.</p>
<p><sup>26</sup> Mommsen, 81.</p>
<p><sup>27</sup> Mommsen, 79.</p>
<p><sup>28</sup> The name was suggested by a Canadian engineer, whose firm codenamed its war materiel after angels and Catholic saints (Rabinovich, 48).</p>
<p><sup>29</sup> Mommsen, 80; Rabinovich 37.</p>
<p><sup>30</sup> There was domestic opposition in Germany to the sale of weapons to Israel, so the German manufacturer subcontracted production to a French shipyard.</p>
<p><sup>31</sup> Mommsen, 52-53.</p>
<p><sup>32</sup> Katz, 93.</p>
<p><sup>33</sup> Mommsen, 85, 105-07; see also Tzalel, 101.</p>
<p><sup>34</sup> Mommsen, 113.</p>
<p><sup>35</sup> Mommsen, 107-111; Tzalel, 100.</p>
<p><sup>36 </sup>Mommsen, 116; Tzalel, 144-45.</p>
<p><sup>37</sup> Tzalel, 145; Michael B. Oren, “The <i>USS Liberty</i>:  Case Closed.”  Originally published in <i>Azure</i>, Spring 5760 / 2000, No. 9.  Accessed <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/liberty1.html">here</a> November 19, 2013.</p>
<p><sup>38</sup> Oren, <i>op cit.</i></p>
<p><sup>39</sup> Admiral Thomas Moorer of the U.S.N., would later express astonishment that Israeli pilots could not identify ships accurately, but in a prior exercise, this had been shown to be a distinct shortcoming of Israeli fighter pilots.  (Tzalel, 147-48)</p>
<p><sup>40</sup> Mitchell Bard, <i>Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict</i>.  Chevy Chase:  The American Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE), 2002, 62-64; Oren, <i>op cit</i>.</p>
<p><sup>41</sup> Rabinovich, 5-9; Mommsen, 127-28; Tzalel, 108.</p>
<p><sup>42</sup> No distress call was ever received.  Examination of the wreckage, which was discovered by Nauticos—the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Features/The-mystery-of-the-Dakar">same company</a> that located the wreckage of the <i>Titanic</i>— showed that the periscope was extended (indicating that the submarine was near the surface when the problem occurred).  The hull, broken into two pieces, had imploded—evidence that the submarine broke apart under pressure (Mommsen, 144).</p>
<p><sup>43</sup> Tzalel, 43-44.</p>
<p><sup>44</sup> Mommsen, 152; Tzalel, 46-47.  Naval Command did not relocate until 1972.</p>
<p><sup>45</sup> Rabinovich, 65.</p>
<p><sup>46 </sup>The boats displaced 250 tons compared with 3,500 tons for the average destroyer (Rabinovich, 28).</p>
<p><sup>47</sup> Rabinovich, 28, 67.</p>
<p><sup>48</sup> Rabinovich, 13-20.</p>
<p><sup>49</sup> Rabinovich, 88.</p>
<p><sup>50</sup> Rabinovich, 151-52.</p>
<p><sup>51</sup> Mommsen, 137-42.  France had considered bombing the vessels after they were sighted off Gibraltar, but as this technically would have been an act of war, they dropped the idea.</p>
<p><sup>52</sup> Mommsen, 145-46.</p>
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		<title>Britain&#8217;s Jihadists Within</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/enza-ferreri/britains-jihadists-within/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=britains-jihadists-within</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 14 Apr 2014 04:25:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Enza Ferreri]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Assad]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223381</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Syrian jihadists once embraced by the U.K. government are now the country's biggest threat. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/70976852_019514832-2.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-223420" alt="_70976852_019514832-2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/70976852_019514832-2-450x325.jpg" width="315" height="227" /></a>Some of the “freedom fighters” who are at war against the evil tyrant Assad in Syria, the “rebels” whom both U.S. President Obama and British Prime Minister Cameron wanted to help, have now been re-classified as “the </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10758623/Syria-is-now-the-biggest-threat-to-Britains-security.html">biggest threat</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Britain&#8217;s security” and a “greater threat than al-Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” The </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://rt.com/news/returning-british-syria-fighters-804/">British Home Office</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> identifies Syria as “the most significant development in global terrorism.”</span></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/79a998e0-ab69-11e3-aad9-00144feab7de.html">More than half</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of anti-terror investigations by the UK security service MI5 involve “Britons” who went to fight in Syria. Charles Farr, the Home Office’s counter-terrorism chief, and others warned that the Syrian war is stoking the biggest terror threat to the West since September 11, and this problem is predicted to persist for as long as the hostilities will continue.</span></p>
<p>Syria is much closer to Europe than Afghanistan and Pakistan, making it a particularly easy and dangerous destination for UK Muslims who come back well trained, armed and ready for business: terrorism. And because the security services monitor about half of them, the risk is very high.</p>
<p>Robert Spencer asks some <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/04/returning-jihadis-from-syria-now-biggest-threat-to-uks-security">pertinent questions</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Why aren’t they monitoring the rest? And why were these men let back into the country in the first place? Simply because they’re citizens? (Are they even all citizens?)</p></blockquote>
<p>In the past three years, from the beginning of the conflict, no fewer than 500 Britons have travelled to Syria to fight, many more than the corresponding number for Iraq. According to French President Francois Hollande, they are actually <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25981278">up to 700</a>.</p>
<p>Between 250 and 400 of them are believed to be back with us, although the number may be higher. Apparently, they found life there <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/10644586/British-jihadist-warns-life-is-hard-in-Syria-and-hundreds-return-to-UK.html">“too hard,”</a> so they say. But they may have been encouraged to return “home” in order to carry out attacks in the UK.</p>
<p>Hundreds more are still in Syria, and one of them has posted an Internet video <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10713479/British-jihadist-in-Syria-encourages-others-to-join-war-in-recruitment-video.html">urging his coreligionists</a> in Britain to join them and help their Syrian brothers and sisters, saying: &#8220;The doors of jihad are still open.&#8221; He is a member of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a group which wants Syria to become an Islamic state ruled by Sharia law and which is considered too extreme even by Al-Qaeda, that officially disowned it. The first provincial capital to be occupied by ISIS was the city of Raqqa, on whose Christian community it has imposed <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-26366197">payment of the jizya</a> and other rules associated with dhimmi status.</p>
<p>These are people who know their Islam, no doubt. They’ve forced even the BBC reporters to become familiar with the triple choice: convert, submit, die.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2014/04/10/jihadists-are-embarking-on-final-solution-in-middle-east/">Aymenn al-Tamimi</a>, a University of Oxford expert on Iraqi and Syrian jihadists, said:</p>
<blockquote><p>In case ISIS’s ambitions to a global caliphate were still not apparent to anyone, ISIS’s official Twitter account for Raqqa province had this to say on the imposition of the dhimmi pact: ‘Today in Raqqa and tomorrow in Rome.’</p></blockquote>
<p>ISIS uses British radicalised recruits, like Anil Khalil Raoufi, the University of Liverpool student of engineering who was recently killed in Syria.</p>
<p>The Syrian war is helping to accelerate the “final solution” for Christians in the Middle East.</p>
<p>The rebels’ ruthlessness is not in question. A Facebook video shows a British jihadist in Syria <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/british-jihadists-tortured-and-killed-prisoners-in-syria-9120294.html">torturing and executing</a> another jihadi who had insulted Allah, with the caption: “I can’t wait for feeling you get when U just killed some1.”</p>
<p>“<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24520762">Who are the British jihadists</a> in Syria?” asks the BBC. The answer: “The Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King&#8217;s College London says most British jihadists are <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25893040">university-educated</a> Muslims of British Pakistani origin in their 20s.” Ah! And I thought that, as the Left says, violent jihad and Muslim terrorism are caused by poverty and deprivation. It turns out that, once again, these people are mainly middle class.</p>
<p>UK security services last autumn intercepted a plot by &#8220;British&#8221; jihadists returning from Syria planning a <a href="http://www.theweek.co.uk/world-news/57382/cameron-must-stop-british-jihadists-returning-syria">Nairobi-style gun attack</a> on civilians in a crowded location, maybe in London.</p>
<p>Furthermore, Al-Qaeda urged “lone wolf” terrorists trained in Syria to <a href="http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/National/royalwedding/article1391102.ece">target the Queen</a> with bomb attacks at British sporting events, including the Derby. Cheltenham races, Wimbledon and Football Association Cup matches are other recommended potential targets that could cause “maximum carnage.”</p>
<p>The recommendations come from<i> Inspire</i>, an English-language online magazine produced by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), that lists Britain as Al Qaeda&#8217;s biggest target after America.</p>
<p>The big question is: what to do?</p>
<p>Robert Spencer is not the only one calling for not letting Syria jihadists back into the UK. <i>The Week</i> has a <a href="http://www.theweek.co.uk/world-news/57382/cameron-must-stop-british-jihadists-returning-syria">sensible suggestion</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Pass a law forbidding any British subject from travelling to Syria &#8211; unless registered with a charity authorised by the Foreign Office&#8230;</p>
<p>But anyone suspected of making an unauthorised trip to Syria would not be re-admitted to the United Kingdom.  Put up posters to that effect at every airport and seaport&#8230;  &#8220;If you travel to Syria illegally, you will not be allowed to return here.&#8221;</p>
<p>Preventing any more of these jihadists coming &#8216;home&#8217; would be the simplest solution.  Dealing with an attack by such men once it kicks off will be difficult.  Terrorists on shooting sprees of this kind inflict damage quickly, relying on a shock effect to cow their intended victims.  No doubt the SAS or SBS will arrive, but even they will be lucky to arrive in time.</p>
<p>The butcher&#8217;s bills have been quite severe.  Mumbai: 153 killed and more than 600 wounded.  Nairobi: 67 dead and 175 wounded.  In both cases hundreds of millions of pounds worth of damage were also caused to property.  Imagine if something similar were to happen in London.</p></blockquote>
<p>The UK’s Home Office, despite tough talking, has let these potential terrorists back into the country. We’ve heard threats to arrest and prosecute them from the Crown Prosecution Service.</p>
<p>There have been arrests: while only 24 people last year, already 20 this year, including Moazzam Begg, a former Guantánamo detainee – yes, one of those innocent souls – whose trial date has been set in October.</p>
<p>But his arrest has caused protests from the Muslim community, claiming that they are being unfairly targeted. What’s new?</p>
<p>That has made government officials even more “aware of the thin line they must tread in dealing with the problem” than they already were.</p>
<p>UK Muslim charities delivering aid in Syria complain that they risk being arrested for terrorism on their volunteers’ return home – as if one eighth of zakat (Islamic charity) were not obliged to finance jihad according to Sharia law.</p>
<p>In fact, ten Muslim charities linked to Syria are under surveillance after Adeel Ali, the head of a UK charity that raised thousands of pounds from the British public for Syria, has been photographed <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/5511886/al-fatiha-global-charity-boss-pictured-with-armed-men-in-syria.html">embracing masked fighters</a> brandishing an AK47.</p>
<p>With Islam, you never know where the money supposedly for charity ends up. There’s ample evidence of &#8220;charity workers&#8221; in Syria <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4258/uk-jihadists-charity-workers">supporting jihadi &#8220;martyrs.”</a></p>
<p>The Left, as usual, sides with the Muslim community and blames the government, like George Monbiot in <i>The Guardian</i> making this <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/10/orwell-hero-terrorism-syria-british-fighters-damned">historical comparison</a>: ‘If George Orwell and Laurie Lee were to return from the Spanish civil war today, they would be arrested under section five of the Terrorism Act 2006.”</p>
<p>But a legitimate question has been raised: how can a government, like the British one, which only a few months ago was prepared to join the war against Assad and be allied to the same &#8220;fighters&#8221; on whose side these jihadists are battling, now consider them criminals? Isn’t it a bit inconsistent? This, after all, is the same government that openly supports the downfall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, backs the Syrian rebels pursuing this goal, lost a parliamentary vote on military intervention in Syria last year &#8212; and is fully aware that its allies in the Gulf are funding al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in Syria. This inconsistency clearly shows how that pro-rebel stance is a terrible error.</p>
<p>And how likely is it that anything will be done to British-citizen Syrian jihadists now, when in an analogous situation in the case of the NATO-backed uprising in Libya in 2011 no British jihadi fighting in Libya was arrested? After all, to punish them would be “Islamophobic.”</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Don&#8217;r miss this week&#8217;s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><em>Glazov Gang</em></a> with <strong>Gavin Boby,</strong> of the <a href="http://lawandfreedomfoundation.org/"><em>Law and Freedom Foundation,</em></a> who shared his fight against <em><strong>Muslim Rape Gangs and Mosque Building</strong><strong> in the U.K</strong>.</em>:</p>
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		<title>Islamizing Britain’s Schools</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-bawer/islamizing-britains-schools/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islamizing-britains-schools</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Apr 2014 04:35:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The media blows the lid off a scheme by extremists to hijack U.K. schools. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Panorama-British-Schools-Islamic-Rules.WnA_.avi_000083800.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-222370" alt="Panorama - British Schools, Islamic Rules.WnA.avi_000083800" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Panorama-British-Schools-Islamic-Rules.WnA_.avi_000083800-450x322.jpg" width="360" height="258" /></a>“Give me the child until he is seven, and I will show you the man.“ </span></p>
<p>– Jesuit aphorism</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Real Muslims understand the critical importance of teaching the young. The critical importance, that is, of teaching them the “right” things and not teaching them the “wrong” things. The most important single element of stealth Islamization is the effort to convert Western schools from centers of secular education into hubs of Islamic indoctrination. Fortunately, there are plenty of dhimmi teachers and school administrators eager to help out, convinced that they’re serving the interests of multicultural peace and harmony. These days, for some reason, this form of dhimmitude seems to be most prevalent – and to take its acutest form – in England.  </span></p>
<p>Take, for example, Lynn Small, headmistress of a state elementary school in Huntington, England, who last November wrote a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2511841/Children-8-racist-miss-Islam-trip-Schools-threatening-letter-parents-met-outrage.html">letter</a> to parents of fourth- and sixth-grade students warning that if they didn’t let their children attend an “Explore Islam” workshop at Staffordshire University, a “Racial Discrimination” note would be placed in the kids’ permanent records. Fortunately, parents kicked up a fuss, and the media took notice, and Small backtracked – kind of – while still insisting that since some of the school’s “pupils and teachers…belong to the Islam faith,” it was only “right for the children to understand and appreciate their faith as well as their own.”</p>
<p>Obviously, Small realized she’d miscalculated. Slightly. Apparently there were no repercussions for her. She <a href="http://www.littletongreen.staffs.sch.uk/Contact+Us">still</a> has her job, and there’s no indication that school authorities even put a note in her permanent record chiding her for making Stalinist-type threats against parents. No, her heart was plainly in the right place, as far as the British educational establishment is concerned – she just went about things the wrong way, confronting parents directly instead of taking a more crafty approach.</p>
<p>In any event, Small, it turns out, is decidedly small-time. In the last couple of weeks, investigations by the <i>Telegraph </i>and <i>Daily Mail </i>have uncovered something far more serious than Small’s little workshop: namely, a long-term, broad-based conspiracy to Islamize schools in the city of Birmingham. The conspiracy is so widespread, and involves so many high-level people in the school system and the Muslim community, that – well, put it this way: if you were to suggest to a typical European multiculturalist that any such plot were brewing anywhere in the Western world, you’d be mocked and reviled, accused of racism, paranoia, and sheer unadulterated foolishness.</p>
<p>Yet the facts are there. As <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10700041/Muslim-extremists-and-a-worrying-lesson-for-us-all.html">revealed</a> in a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10716855/Government-intervenes-at-school-taken-over-by-Muslim-radicals.html">series</a> <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10732434/Teachers-assaulted-and-marginalised-in-Islamising-plot.html">of</a> <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2587304/Birmingham-state-school-probed-amid-claims-70-000-spent-playground-speakers-call-pupils-Islamic-prayers.html">articles</a>, there’s “an organised group of Muslim teachers, education consultants, school governors and activists” who are involved in what they themselves call a “Trojan Horse” campaign to further an “Islamising agenda” by “remov[ing] secular head teachers and install[ing] Islamic practices in Birmingham state schools.” The participants’ ongoing discussions of this campaign have taken place on a private online message board, whose contents have been seen by the <i>Telegraph</i>. Among the conspirators’ short-term objectives is to install Muslim worship in the schools; their explicit long-term goal, as they have made clear in postings on the message board, is the total Islamization of Britain.</p>
<p>The key figure in this scheme is Razwan Faraz, a deputy head teacher at a Birmingham school who, in the days before the <i>Telegraph </i>exposé, had made something of a name for himself by vociferously denying that any such effort was underway. Faraz has another claim to fame, as it happens: his brother, Ahmed Faraz, was the owner of a shop in Birmingham, since closed by police, that “distributed extremist literature to many involved in terror plots, including one of the 7/7 bombers.” Ahmed was himself jailed in 2011 “for multiple terror-related offences.” Razwan assailed his brother’s incarceration as “an attack on free speech.”</p>
<p>Among Faraz’s collaborators are a number of Muslims in positions of local power. Many belong to the Muslim Parents Association and/or the al-Hijrah Trust, groups that work actively, and openly, to increase the Islamic influence in British schools. A leading member of the conspiracy, Tahir Alam, is a senior figure at the Muslim Council of Britain and is vice-chair of the Association of Muslim Schools – and that’s not all. If parents’ complaints about the efforts to Islamize their kids’ schools have been ignored repeatedly, it may be at least in part because Alam is also an official school inspector for Ofsted (the government agency responsible for such matters) as well as a<b> </b>“specialist in school governance” for the Birmingham city council (whose leader, a fellow named Sir Albert Bore, has rejected the “Trojan Horse” charges as “defamatory” and insists that Birmingham schools are doing just fine).</p>
<p>The conspirators appear to be a patient lot. About a newly appointed Muslim school head, one participant in the message board wrote: “Please don’t pressurise her to start the Islamising agenda first. That will be a lot easier when she is respected as leader. She has to establish herself with minimum controversy for the first six months, and lead the people to believe in her before they believe in her policies.”</p>
<p>The results of these people’s efforts speak for themselves. At one school, Park View, which has been praised by Prime Minister David Cameron for its purported “educational excellence, a senior teacher who publicly eulogized terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki is now in the running to become head teacher. “Extremist preachers” have addressed school assemblies; girls have been pressured to cover their hair; £70,000 was spent on loudspeakers to summon students to Friday prayer. “It felt like a faith school. Islam permeated everything,” one source “close to the investigation” told the <i>Telegraph</i>. “All the citizenship teaching was about being a good Muslim.” All this, mind you, at a nominally secular state school.</p>
<p>Then there’s Oldknow, a primary school where an excellent, non-Muslim head teacher was driven out “by a concerted campaign to remove her and Islamise her school.” Oldknow now has Muslim prayers every Friday and has organized at least three taxpayer-funded school trips to Mecca. Arabic classes are compulsory for all pupils. The school even has its own madrassah. Teachers engage in “blatant belittling of Christianity.” Sources spoke about teachers who introduce religion into “every lesson” and whose insistence that music is sinful has led some children to refuse to take music classes. Last December, the school’s traditional Christmas tree and pantomime were cancelled because they were adjudged “un-Islamic,” and a teacher gave a talk at which he led students in a chant: “Do we believe in Christmas? No! Do we give out Christmas cards? No! The seven days of Christmas, they [Christians] can’t even count!”</p>
<p>Things aren’t as far along yet at another school, Springfield, where the non-Muslim head teacher, according to his colleagues, is “under ‘non-stop attack’ by radical members of the governing body” and has received anonymous death threats and had his tires slashed. Meanwhile, at a fourth school, Anderton Park, where the governing body recently voted to “Islamize” collective worship, “the lives of successive non-Muslim head teachers have been made a ‘misery’ by radical religious governors and parents determined to stop the teaching of PE and music, regarded as sinful by hardline Muslims.” At Anderdon Park, there were also several “assaults on staff” (no details provided).</p>
<p>In response to the accounts of the “Trojan Horse” conspiracy laid out in the <i>Telegraph</i> and <i>Daily Mail</i>, Alam complained that he was – what else? – the target of an Islamophobic witch hunt. For his part, Michael White, a former teacher at Park View, had blistering words for the British government and for the Birmingham city council, saying that both were so “afraid to upset communities” that they chose “to sweep things under the carpet.” (Note that even White felt a need to avoid spelling out which “communities” the authorities were loath to offend.)</p>
<p>Birmingham, of course, isn’t the only locality in Britain where children are being subjected to Islamic indoctrination in the guise of education. The other day the <i>Daily Mail</i> <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2592441/Fury-fanatic-trained-7-7-bomber-sets-Islamic-PRIMARY-SCHOOL-Britain.html">reported</a> that one Sajeel Shahid, who has trained terrorists – including “the ringleader of the 7/7 terrorist bombings” and four persons who tried to blow up a Kent shopping center and a London nightclub – has for several years been running the Ad-Deen Primary School, a Muslim institution in Essex, whose pupils are between three and eleven years old. Because he ran the school under a pseudonym, inspectors didn’t see anything fishy about the version of Islam being taught to his charges, and accordingly gave the school passing grades. Of course they did: the only difference between the version of Islam taught at approved Islamic schools and the version preached by Islamic terrorists is the terrorism itself.</p>
<p>British parents owe a debt of gratitude to the <i>Telegraph</i> and <i>Daily Mail</i> for uncovering these repulsive stories – and owe no debt at all to their spineless elected officials, both national and local, or to school authorities, who, if it were up to them, would presumably have been content to see Islam overrun the country’s classrooms, all the while ridiculing the very concept of stealth Islamization as hysterical bigotry.</p>
<p>Then there’s the <i>Guardian</i>, the proud flagship of the British left. On March 7, over a week before the <i>Telegraph</i> began to report the results of its investigation, the <i>Guardian</i>, which had come into possession of a letter outlining the Trojan Horse conspirators’ activities, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/07/alleged-plot-birmingham-schools-islamic-principles">summed up</a> the whole business in an article whose headline led with the word “alleged,” whose subhead focused on Alam’s characterization of the charges as “a malicious fabrication and completely untrue,” and whose final sentences were devoted to a condemnation of the “alleged plot” by longtime Islamic activist Inayat Bunglawala, whom the <i>Guardian</i> carefully identified as “chair of Muslims4UK, a group which aims to promote active Muslim engagement in British society.”</p>
<p>Unlike the <i>Telegraph, </i>however, the <i>Guardian </i>apparently didn’t proceed to investigate the charges. Instead, it dutifully noted that the police and school officials were looking into them. And that was that. Perusing the <i>Guardian</i>‘s coverage, one cannot avoid the conclusion that its chief concern was to cast doubt on the allegations and to underscore that, whether they were true or not, mainstream Muslim leaders like Bunglawala are, of course, utterly opposed to such shady subterfuges. There was no mention that Bunglawala, this supposed stalwart of “Muslim engagement in British society,” had in fact called Osama bin Laden a “freedom fighter” and Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman “courageous”; no mention that he’d passionately campaigned to get Yusuf al-Qaradawi a British visa; no mention that, in addition to being head of Muslims4UK, he’s the longtime media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, the same group of which Alam is a leading member. In short, Bungalawala’s brand of “engagement in British society” is not really significantly different from that of the Birmingham conspirators. By pretending that there exists appreciable ideological distance between the likes of Bunglawala and Birmingham’s Trojan Horses, the <i>Guardian</i> isn’t just misleading its readers – it’s participating itself in the whole nefarious ruse to which these creeps are committed. But what else is new?</p>
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		<title>Heading Toward the EU Exit?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-bawer/heading-toward-the-eu-exit/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=heading-toward-the-eu-exit</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-bawer/heading-toward-the-eu-exit/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Feb 2014 05:35:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[european union]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[eurosceptics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[exit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[netherlands]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=218581</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Promising news from both Britain and the Netherlands.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/z.hashemi20111224155640827.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-218615" alt="z.hashemi20111224155640827" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/z.hashemi20111224155640827.jpg" width="270" height="180" /></a>On the European Union front, things are getting more and more promising. For years now, a majority of Brits have favored their country&#8217;s withdrawal from the EU, compelling Prime Minister David Cameron to promise a renegotation of the terms of UK membership and a referendum on the question of withdrawal after next year&#8217;s general election. In recent days, the Telegraph has </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/10621168/Tell-us-why-you-support-Ukip.html" target="_blank">noted</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that the rise in voter support for the UK Independence Party – which favors a quick EU exit – may well become “the political story of 2014”; meanwhile <em>Le Monde</em> </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2014/01/30/le-parti-europhobe-ukip-utilise-l-immigration-pour-bousculer-le-jeu-politique-anglais_4356821_3214.html" target="_blank">described</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the UKIP as having “the wind in its sails” (while characterizing its supporters, in a news story no less, as “irrational”). Observers suggest that the UKIP, in May elections to the European Parliament, may well win more votes than the Tories.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One sure measure of the UKIP&#8217;s success is that EU stalwarts are now taking it seriously – and making it an object of their usual brand of disinformation and demonization. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who has referred to EU opponents as “brainless people who call themselves eurosceptics,” </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/457893/Ukip-s-a-threat-to-European-peace-say-the-Germans" target="_blank">warned</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the other day that when those Eurosceptics form parties “while Europe is in a crisis,” it “doesn’t make our work any easier.” (There&#8217;s a man who understands how democracy works!) The EU, insisted Steinmeier, has kept European countries from going to war with each other since 1945 – the usual baseless claim, which is now pretty much the only legitimate-sounding argument that pro-EU politicians have left. (After all, they can&#8217;t say, “Dissolving the EU would hurt my career.”)</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Meanwhile, Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Justice, who has made no secret of her desire to see the EU become the United States of Europe, is so perturbed by Cameron&#8217;s actions that she </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10562740/David-Cameron-lying-to-British-voters-about-the-EU-and-immigration-Viviane-Reding-claims.html" target="_blank">accused</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> him recently of promoting “populist myths,” aligning with “populist movements,” and making “populist speech[es]” – the standard European-elite way of slamming politicians who actually listen to their constituents. </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2556397/Britons-ignorant-EU-referendum-Top-official-says-debate-Europe-distorted-people-not-make-informed-decision.html" target="_blank">Speaking</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> in London on Monday, Reding loftily informed British voters that they&#8217;re too ill-informed about the EU to make a wise decision about EU membership: “The fact is that very often, I see a completely distorted truth being presented and then how do you want people to take an informed decision? They simply cannot.” (Why, by the way, is Reding such a fervent EU supporter? Could it have anything to do with the fact that she&#8217;s from Luxembourg, a country two-thirds the size of Rhode Island and with a population slightly larger than Fresno&#8217;s – meaning that without the EU, her political career would be toast?)</span></p>
<p>Euroskeptics aren&#8217;t just being maligned by a few European politicians. On the contrary, the superstate itself, in defiance of its own rules, is systematically – and clandestinely – targeting its critics. As the Telegraph <a title="" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/9845442/EU-to-set-up-euro-election-troll-patrol-to-tackle-Eurosceptic-surge.html" target="_blank">reported</a> the other day, secret EU documents describe a planned “propaganda blitz” designed to counter Euroskepticism in the run-up to the EU elections. Millions of taxpayer dollars willl be spent to identify and monitor anti-EU blogs and other media and to post pro-EU comments – undercover, of course – to balance out the criticism with the message “that the answer to existing challenges&#8230; is &#8216;more Europe&#8217; not &#8216;less Europe.&#8217;”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">With shenanigans like this afoot, it&#8217;s no wonder that it&#8217;s not just Britain that may be headed toward the exit. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders&#8217;s Freedom Party – which, like the UKIP, has been steadily growing in public support in recent months – did something interesting: it commissioned a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.pvv.nl/images/Rapport_NExit_full_ENG.pdf" target="_blank">report</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by Capital Economics, a macroeconomics research firm in Britain, to determine what kind of economic impact the Netherlands would experience if it left the EU. The report, released on February 6, came to an unambiguous conclusion. Among the main points: eliminating EU overregulation in the Netherlands would “reduce the cost of doing business in the Netherlands by a minimum of €20 billion annually by 2035”; post-EU revisions in Dutch immigration policy would “reduce public expenditure by a minimum of €7.5 billion annually” by 2035; extra-European exports would climb; and macroeconomic cycles would be managed more effectively, resulting in €309 billion in added national income by 2035. Yes, there would be costs, but they&#8217;d be “modest and manageable.” Nor would banking stability or sovereign debt be imperiled.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In short, Dutch withdrawal from the EU (dubbed “NExit”) would represent “a long-term benefit to the Dutch economy and, more than likely, a short-term help in easing the Netherlands out of its current economic ills.” The Freedom Party succinctly summed up the impact NExit would have on Dutch households: “the Dutch economy will be 10 per cent bigger by 2024&#8230;.The average annual benefit is almost 10,000 euros per household over the next two decades.” Wilders himself commented that, at a time when the Dutch economy is stagnating, the report “shows that leaving the EU is our way out of the crisis.” Freed from Brussels, “the Dutch will be able to cut taxes and reduce VAT and excise duties. The Dutch will no longer have to ship their tax money to Greece and will be able to stop paying welfare benefits to Romanians and Bulgarians.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The report has had its critics. Mathijs Bouman, a classical liberal economist, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.z24.nl/ondernemen/mathijs-bouman-vreemde-veronderstellingen-in-wilders-eu-rapport-432536" target="_blank">finds</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it thorough and professional but strongly disputed many of its assumptions and conclusions. Then again, he&#8217;s a staunch champion of both the EU and the euro, so his response is hardly surprising. Yernaz Ramautarsing, the one-man anti-leftist juggernaut at the University of Amsterdam whom I </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/the-dutch-academy-vs-the-heretic/" target="_blank">wrote</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> about here in December and met with in Amsterdam earlier this month, told me that while the report “will not convince opponents,” it will “force them to be more concrete about their plans for Europe.” Yernaz&#8217;s concern is that while the EU is anti-capitalist and anti-individual rights, so are most members of national parliaments across Europe. The Freedom Party supports free markets at the EU level, Yernaz said, but it “fails to protect free markets on a national level.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Fair enough. Still, I can&#8217;t help taking immense pleasure at these anti-EU developments in both Britain and the Netherlands – because it seems crystal clear to me that the absolute and total demise of the corruption-ridden, regulation-happy, power-hungry EU is the necessary first step toward a Europe in which politicians who actually heed voters&#8217; opinions aren&#8217;t reflexively smeared as low-life populists, in which sensible immigration policies aren&#8217;t routinely condemned from the bully pulpit in Brussels as unutterably racist, and in which the continent, from Cyprus to the Shetlands, isn&#8217;t ruled by remote, arrogant technocrats who view individual liberty as an antiquated concept and the democratic process as a hindrance to progress. </span></p>
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		<title>ObamaCare: A Word of Warning from Britain</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/enza-ferreri/obamas-disastrous-healthcare-model/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-disastrous-healthcare-model</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 11 Dec 2013 05:12:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Enza Ferreri]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health Care]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=212795</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The NHS: A "remedy" that has become far worse than the illness. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/nurse_1470102c.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-212957" alt="nurse_1470102c" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/nurse_1470102c.jpg" width="291" height="228" /></a>In light of the ongoing ObamaCare debacle, it can be interesting to see how a state-run national health system free for all, like Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) – Obama’s favourite model &#8211; has failed to deliver.</p>
<p>The UK is one of the few countries in the world – mostly concentrated in Europe &#8211; to have completely free universal health. It sounds cuddly and comfy, but, like in all utopias and fairy tales, reality is a different matter.</p>
<p>The NHS is Britain&#8217;s sacred cow. No party, if it wants to be elected, can scrap it or reform it in any real sense. All parties have to recite the mantra: &#8220;The NHS is safe with us. We are ring-fencing the NHS.&#8221;</p>
<p>In 2009, British Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan, interviewed on Fox News (see video below) about the impending Obamacare bill, warned Americans that the NHS is a “60-year-old relic” and claimed he “would not wish it on anyone.” Hannan was then condemned back home as “evil,” “unpatriotric” and “a traitor.”</p>
<p>Former Chancellor Nigel Lawson said that the NHS is “the closest thing that the British have to a religion.”  And Labour politicians have managed to create a climate in which this institution is considered sacrosanct, untouchable by criticism.</p>
<p>But it’s becoming increasingly impossible now to keep that pretence.</p>
<p>The NHS, born on 5 July 1948, is the first system of free universal medical care ever established. The 1942 Beveridge Report, influential in founding the UK’s modern welfare state of which the NHS is part, was conceived and implemented during a special time, when the population was not only ethnically and culturally homogenous, but also feeling like a great family, bound together by the heroic struggle of WW2.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_National_Health_Service_(England)">fundamental principles of the NHS</a>, then as now, have been: 1) services provided free at the point of use; 2) services financed from central taxation; 3) everyone eligible for care (even people temporarily resident or visiting the country).</p>
<p>According to Treasury figures, NHS spending almost doubled in real terms from £57 billion in 2002/03 to £109 billion in 2012/13, and is forecast for £129 billion in 2014.</p>
<p>Britain spends 18.5% of its annual budget on health, the second highest expenditure.</p>
<p>The NHS has always been beleaguered by problems and cash crises, and needing reform.</p>
<p>All “reforms” attempted through the years have only amounted to internal changes and restructurings &#8211; giving similar bodies different names. The current “reform” is no exception. Crisis has always been the NHS’s permanent condition.</p>
<p>Its original ideal is too expensive even in the best conditions and, with health care becoming more costly and population aging, the conditions are going to worsen.</p>
<p>But more money doesn’t mean better care. The Department of Health admits that, despite significant and consistent increases in funding, <a href="http://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/1011491.pdf">hospital productivity has fallen</a>.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)60355-4/abstract">study in the prestigious <i>Lancet</i></a> of health data over 20 years in 19 countries shows Britain lagging behind in 12<sup>th</sup> place.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21654536">BBC reported on the research</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Many deaths happen because the NHS is not good enough at preventing people getting sick or because treatment does not rival that seen elsewhere in Europe, says Mr Hunt who is responsible for health policy in England.</p></blockquote>
<p>By cancer survival rate comparisons, the NHS is one of the worst health systems in the Western world, even overtaken by former European communist countries.</p>
<p>The remedies are worse than the ills. After having created problems and produced terrible results, governments, to save their face and not risk losing votes, try to find band-aid solutions that make things even worse.</p>
<p>One instance of that is <a href="http://melaniephillips.com/how-the-welfare-state-undermines-altruism">setting targets</a>, which has led to patients being neglected to meet them:</p>
<blockquote><p>Another example occurred at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust, where over three years from 2005 between 400 and 1,200 patients died needlessly as managers ruthlessly cut costs — particularly nursing numbers — to meet targets the Labour government laid down to win ‘foundation’ hospital status.</p>
<p>Doctors were diverted from critically-ill patients in order to deal with less serious cases to meet the target of discharging all patients from Accident &amp; Emergency units within four hours of admission.</p>
<p>Vulnerable patients were left starving, in soiled bedsheets or screaming in pain. Some became so dehydrated they drank from flower vases…</p>
<p>Apparently, the [Francis] report will damn not just the Mid-Staffordshire management but a ‘culture of fear’ from Whitehall down to the wards, as managers became fixated on meeting targets and protecting ministers from political criticism.</p>
<p>Countless families in Mid-Staffordshire have been left grieving for loved ones who were, in effect, killed by the National Health Service.</p></blockquote>
<p>This is by no means an exceptional case. Inquiries follow scandals and are followed by new horror stories.</p>
<p>Top public health officials, from the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt down to Medical Director of NHS England Sir Bruce Keogh, have acknowledged that in many cases patients were abused, neglected and bullied, and have expressed serious concerns about the service at some NHS trusts.</p>
<p>In July of this year, 14 trusts were found to have <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/health/news/article3817753.ece">unusually high mortality rates</a>. In August, up to 42,000 deaths a year due to kidney failure were linked to dehydration in <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2419563/Thousands-dying-sepsis-poor-NHS-care-Delays-diagnosis-means-chances-save-lives-missed.html">patients who were not given water by NHS staff</a>. In September, it was discovered that 13,000 every year die of sepsis because of <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2419563/Thousands-dying-sepsis-poor-NHS-care-Delays-diagnosis-means-chances-save-lives-missed.html">delays in diagnosis and treatment</a> – negligence which also costs the NHS more money.</p>
<p>In October: the previous Labour government was accused of a pre-election cover-up about <a href="http://metro.co.uk/2013/10/04/labour-covered-up-nhs-hospital-scandal-before-election-4134031/">hospitals with higher-than-normal death rates</a>, “with inspectors finding blood stains on floors and curtains and badly soiled mattresses”; NHS doctors were discovered to have been <a href="http://www.networks.nhs.uk/editors-blog/nhs-doping-scandal-they-were-all-at-it">routinely giving performance-enhancing drugs to patients</a> to “enhance their recovery rates”; and NHS managers getting hundreds of thousands of pounds in redundancy <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/nhs/10419406/NHS-couple-received-1-million-payoff-before-being-given-new-management-jobs.html">just before being given other NHS jobs</a> – this was due to the latest NHS “reform,” which is simply a reshuffling.</p>
<p>In November, it was found that <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2514942/Dementia-patients-left-hungry-hours-scandal-hit-NHS-trust-staff-running-like-headless-chickens.html">NHS dementia patients were left hungry</a> for hours and not given medication at the right time; a <a href="http://www.sundaypost.com/news-views/scotland/anger-over-200-million-nhs-fraud-scandal-1.151559">£200 million NHS fraud scandal</a> was uncovered, with patients illegally claiming free services, and dentists, agencies and firms working for the NHS committing fraud and sending false invoices; 19 more <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/nov/29/hospitals-investigated-jimmy-savile-allegations">hospitals were investigated over their links to allegations of sexual abuse</a> by late TV celebrity Jimmy Savile; it was discovered that the NHS spent nearly a fifth of its budget for maternity services on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24863160">clinical negligence insurance</a> in England in 2012, nearly £500m; there was news that <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2013/nov/07/colchester-cancer-scandal-nhs-culture">Colchester hospital has been fiddling with patient records</a> to improve its waiting times for cancer treatment, with potentially life-threatening consequences. In December, it’s been disclosed that up to <a href="http://checklist.co.uk/170-operations-cancelled-each-day-as-nhs-struggles-with-lack-of-beds/">170 operations are cancelled at the last minute each day by NHS hospitals</a> for bed shortages, faulty equipment and lack of staff.</p>
<p>This is just a sample, in no way a complete record. Not bad for less than a half year’s work.</p>
<p>A former London correspondent for <a href="http://business.time.com/2013/10/28/foroohar-what-obamacare-can-learn-from-britains-national-health-service/">Time</a> sounds very reassuring:</p>
<blockquote><p>Health care was more psychically seamless in the U.K. Nobody worried about going bankrupt if they got sick.</p></blockquote>
<p>Nobody goes bankrupt individually, but everybody will go bankrupt with the rest of the country because the NHS and the whole welfare state are taking Britain on the verge of economic collapse, with an unsustainable and growing national debt.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10162848/NHS-is-about-to-run-out-of-cash-top-official-warns.html">Tim Kelsey</a>, a director at NHS England, the central body in charge of the health service, warned in July:</p>
<blockquote><p>We are about to run out of cash in a very serious fashion&#8230;  our analysis will disclose that <b>by 2020 there will be a £30bn funding gap in the healthcare system</b>. [Emphasis added]</p></blockquote>
<p>Senior NHS doctors and managers said that up to 20 hospitals across the country may have to close to save the NHS from financial ruin.</p>
<p>Although the American system of employer-provided medical care is different from the British system, comparisons of the latter with Medicare, Medicaid and Obama’s “vision” for public healthcare can be made. When healthcare is mostly paid by a third party, there’s little incentive to economize on it, and as a consequence expenditures rise dramatically. Late US economist Milton Friedman would call the NHS a plan for the “socialisation of medicine,” flawed like all government programmes to control social fields.</p>
<p>Two weeks ago, during a visit to Vladimir Bukovsky, I asked him if he thought that looking after the health of a whole country is a task a government can be efficient at. He replied: &#8220;There are very few things that governments are efficient at.&#8221;</p>
<p>Interestingly, the US has always been used as a bogeyman to scare Europeans into believing that they need universal healthcare. Look at what happens in America, where there is no state-run health system, Leftists and media say.</p>
<p>However, that the question &#8220;Are you insured?&#8221; asked in US hospitals is caused by lack of free healthcare for all, European-style, is far from the truth. It was free medical care provided by employers during the war &#8211; to attract workers at a time of price and wage controls &#8211; that led to the current situation in the US. Most Europeans have never heard of the existence of Medicare and Medicaid, and believe that Americans who can’t afford insurance are practically left to die.</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315"src="//www.youtube.com/embed/00mCXaG8-rg"frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Spencer and Geller Banned from Britain for Supporting Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-spencer/banned-from-britain-for-supporting-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=banned-from-britain-for-supporting-israel</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-spencer/banned-from-britain-for-supporting-israel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Dec 2013 05:56:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banned]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[entry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pamela Geller]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[robert spencer]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=212329</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The disturbing extent of far-Left domination of the Cameron government revealed. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ty1.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-212363" alt="ty" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ty1.jpg" width="400" height="226" /></a>New revelations about why I was banned from entering Great Britain reveal how deeply compromised the British government is to hard-Leftists and Islamic supremacists – including the most virulent haters of Israel.</p>
<p>As faithful FrontPage readers may <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-spencer/britain-bans-freedom-fighters/">recall</a>, last June I was banned from Britain because, as a letter from the U.K. Home Office told me, “your presence here is not conducive to the public good.” Why not? Because I said (quite factually) that Islam “is a religion and is a belief system that mandates warfare against unbelievers for the purpose for establishing a societal model that is absolutely incompatible with Western society.” And also because, the letter said, “you are the founder of the blog Jihad Watch (a site widely criticized for being Islamophobic),” and “you co-founded the Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamization of America, both of which have been described as anti-Muslim hate groups.”</p>
<p>Note the passive voice: the Freedom Defense Initiative (actually the American Freedom Defense Initiative, AFDI) and Stop Islamization of America “have been described as anti-Muslim hate groups” by whom? The letter didn’t say. And Jihad Watch has been “widely criticized for being Islamophobic” by whom? The letter gives no hint, instead attempting to establish these charges as the judicious assessment of neutral observers.</p>
<p>Now, however, newly released documents relating to our case, as Pamela Geller discussed in a <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/01/documents-reveal-british-banned-geller-and-spencer-because-of-their-pro-israeli-views/">recent Daily Caller article</a>, reveal that the Home Office’s decision was guided by far-Left agitation groups with a deep animus against Israel.</p>
<p>Of course, this was already obvious from the Home Office’s repetition of the charge that Jihad Watch is “Islamophobic” in its letter to me. “Islamophobia” is a manipulative and propagandistic neologism designed to intimidate non-Muslims into thinking that there is something “bigoted” and “racist” about resisting jihad terror and opposing Sharia oppression of women, non-Muslims, gays and others. The only people who use it at all are Islamic supremacists who want to clear away all obstacles to the advance of jihad, their Leftist allies, and those whom they have bamboozled into thinking it is a legitimate term of discourse – such as the British Home Office.</p>
<p>So it was obvious already who was whispering into the Home Office’s ear, but now it is confirmed. As Pamela Geller noted, in the newly revealed documents “all reference to the identities of those who asked that we be banned have been blacked out.” However, “their black marker missed one reference, revealing that one of the groups complaining about us was Faith Matters. Faith Matters was founded by a Muslim named Fiyaz Mughal, who also heads up Tell Mama, a group dedicated to tracking ‘Islamophobia.’ <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/andrew-gilligan/10108098/Muslim-hate-monitor-to-lose-backing.html">Tell Mama lost government funding in June</a> after making false claims of waves of attacks ‘Islamophobic incidents.’”</p>
<p>So around the same time that Tell Mama was being stripped of its government funding for lying about the prevalence of “anti-Muslim hate crimes,” that same government was accepting its advice and counsel in favor of banning Pamela Geller and me from the country. Was the Home Office unaware that Tell Mama was wildly exaggerating “Islamophobia” in Britain, and was thus an untrustworthy source for any information related to it, or did it simply not care?</p>
<p>As the Home Office makes its case against us, it also cites as authorities two pro-jihad smear sites, Loonwatch and Islamophobia Today – both of which have published numerous false charges, distortions, and outright lies about me, my public stands on various issues, my activities, and my associations. Both are devoted to completely discrediting anyone who dares to criticize jihad and Islamic supremacism, and to portraying those who oppose jihad terror as just terrible, terrible people. Generally they do this in the context of lurid ridicule of and furious hatred and contempt for their targets, larded with risible pseudo-scholarly “refutations” of their works recalling nothing so much as <i>Der Stürmer</i>. And true to their Nazi prototype, both are relentlessly anti-Israel, retailing Palestinian jihad propaganda with the same clownish fury and disregard for the facts that marks their analyses as a whole.</p>
<p>That anyone regards such sites seriously, with their gleeful flouting of accuracy and genuine analysis, and willingness to retail any smear to discredit their targets, is strange enough. That the British Home Office would be among those who do is a telling indication of just how thoroughly David Cameron’s Conservative government has been compromised, and how abjectly it has capitulated to a far-Left agenda.</p>
<p>The prime confirmation of this comes from one email from the Home Office’s massive team investigating Geller and me. The author (name redacted, of course) notes that the subject profiles that were prepared on us cite our “pro-Israeli views,” and argues that this material be removed, lest the wicked Zionists Geller and Spencer “argue publically that their exclusion is on the basis of their support for Israel.”</p>
<p>Well, that let the cat out of the bag. So here goes: I am hereby arguing publically that my exclusion was on the basis of my support for Israel, along with my “Islamophobia.” In banning me from the country, the British government capitulated to far-Left and Islamic supremacist pressure groups that are both virulently anti-Israel and enraged about the trumped-up phenomenon of “Islamophobia,” while making excuses for or ignoring altogether the reality of Islamic jihad and the numerous human rights abuses perpetrated daily in its name.</p>
<p>Were this a Labour government, this capitulation might be understandable – after all the Leftist/Islamic supremacist alliance has been noted in numerous quarters for years, and people nowadays more or less expect liberals and Leftists to be anti-Israel and anti-counterjihad, if not outright pro-jihad. But the Tories?</p>
<p>The Conservative government of David Cameron has failed the British people as thoroughly and resoundingly as the Republican Party has failed the American people. Both could have and should have constituted themselves as a loyal opposition, departing from the Leftist line. Instead, they have parroted it in innumerable ways, and disenfranchised millions of their constituents by offering no alternative to the dominant paradigm.</p>
<p>Whether or not I ever get into Britain again, the Conservative collapse revealed in the Home Office documents relating to my ban reveal a ruling party, and a society, that is profoundly confused, deeply compromised, and facing far greater crises to come.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Gypsies, Camps and Thieves</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/gypsies-camps-and-thieves/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=gypsies-camps-and-thieves</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/gypsies-camps-and-thieves/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Nov 2013 04:25:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[camp]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gypsy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sheffield]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UK]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=211009</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Multiculturalism's toll on one British community. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/article-2029909-0D29431800000578-838_634x370.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-211024" alt="article-2029909-0D29431800000578-838_634x370" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/article-2029909-0D29431800000578-838_634x370-450x308.jpg" width="315" height="216" /></a>Last week, people in the U.K. got to take a break from worrying about the Islamization of their country. Instead they were offered a fresh chance to ponder the massive influx into the scept&#8217;red isle of Eastern European gypsies – or, to use the politically correct term of the moment, Roma. First, Labour Party MP and former Home Secretary David Blunkett, in a rare departure from the usual see-no-evil establishment rhetoric, acknowledged the “frictions” between gypsies and natives and worried aloud that it would eventually kindle riots. “We have got to change the behaviour and the culture of the incoming community, the Roma community, because there&#8217;s going to be an explosion otherwise,” Blunkett said. “We all know that.” The next day fellow Labourite Jack Straw, also a former Home Secretary, agreed, admitting that he and his colleagues in government had made a “spectacular mistake” in 2004 when they permitted unrestricted labor immigration from new EU member states in Eastern Europe. (The only other countries to do the same were Sweden and Ireland.) Straw &amp; co. thought that only 13,000 people would come; the number turned out to be more than a million, with a quarter million immigrants arriving in 2010 alone. Alas, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of Poles, Czechs, and others who moved to Britain in sincere search of work, there was a small army of gypsies who came to beg, steal, and freeload.</p>
<p>Until recently, to be sure, things didn&#8217;t seem as dicey in Britain as in France, where gypsies have established sprawling encampments in and around major cities, all of which have turned, in no time at all, into ordure-suffused, rat- and lice-infested trash heaps. And whenever officials, if only out of concern for the public health, have tried to get the situation in hand, the media have served up sob stories like <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/08/15/gypsies-trapped-in-misery-as-france-demolishes-camps/">one</a> put out by the Associated Press last year: “The camps weren&#8217;t much to begin with&#8230;.Rats ran rampant and fleas gnawed on young and old alike&#8230;.But they were home – and they were better than the new reality for thousands of Gypsies who have been forced into hiding after France launched its latest campaign this week to drive them from their camps.” Rarely, it seems, do the journalists responsible for this sort of drivel ever ask the gypsies questions like: “Um, if you&#8217;re going to live in this place, why can&#8217;t you at least try to keep it sanitary?” No, it&#8217;s almost always either implied or stated outright that, if the gypsies live in such filth, it&#8217;s because they&#8217;re poor and oppressed; virtually never is it acknowledged that this way of life is a fundamental element of gypsy culture.</p>
<p>In September, French interior minister Manuel Valls defied the sob sisters, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2432217/Frances-Interior-Minister-calls-Roma-gypsies-return-Romania-Bulgaria-integrate.html">calling for</a> the return of gypsies to their homelands and insisting that “we must tell the truth&#8230;these populations have a way of life that is extremely different to ours, and they are obviously in confrontation with local populations.” Politicians and commentators professed to be appalled by Valls&#8217;s remarks, although the French public, by and large, seem to have reacted with enthusiasm. Most Englishmen, similarly, to judge by online reader comments, were glad to hear Blunkett and Straw finally owning up to the fact that they&#8217;d created a catastrophe. Exhibit A in last week&#8217;s media coverage was Sheffield, the city in South Yorkshire that Blunkett represents in the House of Commons, where gypsies from a cluster of villages in eastern Slovakia have transformed the face of a neighborhood called Page Hall. On Thursday, the <i>Express</i> reported that a gypsy teenager had walked into a fish-and-chips shop in Page Hall and offered to sell the proprietors a baby for £250; on Friday, the same newspaper <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/443124/Immigrant-Roma-girl-offers-baby-for-sale-in-public-park">informed readers</a> that a retired English teacher in Page Hall had received a similar offer. The teacher went to the police, whose response was to suggest that the offer may have been a joke. (Sure, the old “want to buy a baby” gag – which one of us hasn&#8217;t pulled <i>that</i> one on a total stranger?) “We are as satisfied as we can be that no criminal offences have taken place,” said a police spokesperson. As for the teen who walked into that fish-and-chips shop, the cops, according to the <i>Telegraph</i>, “found no evidence to support the claim.” (What kind of “evidence” did they expect to find? Nappy fibers in the cooking oil?)</p>
<p>How bad have things gotten in Page Hall? Here&#8217;s how bad: as the <i>Daily</i> <i>Mail</i> <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2504472/Fears-civil-unrest-Sheffield-locals-action-Roma-migrants.html">noted</a> on Tuesday, “the local Pakistani community association is running ‘official’ warden patrols between 8pm and 10pm every weekday with the intention of ‘educating’ the Roma population about ‘how to behave in England.&#8217;” (If it weren&#8217;t so tragic, it would be funny.) On Saturday, the <i>Telegraph </i><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/10452130/Roma-in-Sheffield-When-it-goes-off-it-will-be-like-an-atom-bomb-here.html">called</a> the local atmosphere “poisonous.” Vast groups, each consisting of dozens of Roma, congregate on the streets every single night, “shouting, smoking, fighting,” blocking traffic, and throwing refuse everywhere. There&#8217;s a curfew for minors, but it&#8217;s totally ineffective, with police making only the most perfunctory, lackadaisal efforts at enforcement. As for the daytime situation, some Roma work, but most do not; “hordes” of them gather at gambling machines in a local shop, while others “walk the streets, content to pick up benefits” amounting to $800 a head per week. At a pub visited by the <i>Telegraph</i>&#8216;s reporter, the language about the Roma was “incendiary,” with one patron warning: “There is going to be a battle eventually.” A shopkeeper agreed: “When it goes off, it will be like an atom bomb here.” The above-mentioned fish-and-chips merchant concurred: “If something doesn&#8217;t change round here there will be a pitched battle&#8230;.This is a boiling pot ready to explode.”</p>
<p>The <i>Guardian – </i>which, along with the BBC, of course, is Britain&#8217;s premier bastion of noble left-wing lies – couldn&#8217;t allow this kind of blatant truth-telling to go unchallenged, so it sent reporter Helen Pidd up to Sheffield. Her Friday <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/15/sheffield-page-hall-roma-slovakia-immigration">summing-up</a> of the earlier reports in the <i>Telegraph, Daily Mail, </i>and other low-rent outlets read like one long sneer; we were plainly meant to understand that if there were tensions in Page Hall, they were the fault of hysterical bigots. Pidd interviewed 64-year-old Barrie Rees, who with fellow members of the Page Hall Residents Association regularly patrols the streets at night in an effort to maintain order. Rees, protesting that he and his colleagues had been labeled “vigilantes,” insisted that they were “just a group of ordinary local people who don&#8217;t like being intimidated in our own neighbourhood, trying to make the newcomers understand how life works here.” Pidd wasn&#8217;t buying it: she compared their attempt “to &#8216;educate&#8217; the Slovakian incomers in how to behave” with  “the terrifying militia that have tried to drive gypsies out of villages such as Gyöngyöspata in Hungary.” Yes, she affirmed that Page Hall is a mess: “rubbish fills the gutters, and stained mattresses and sofas are piled up in gardens”; there are garbage bins “crawling with maggots”; garden furniture is being nipped out of people&#8217;s yards and garments stolen off of clotheslines. But Pidd preferred to close her article by focusing our attention not on the hundreds of sticky-fingered, labor-allergic newcomers who have turned Page Hall into a toxic- waste site, but on a handful of exceedingly unrepresentative gypsies whom she somehow managed to track down: a factory worker who told her he wants his kids “to be lawyers and doctors”; two teenagers who also said they have career aspirations; and, finally, a 10-year-old (always end with a kid!) who had “already picked up a South Yorkshire twang” and wants to be “a paid interpreter.” This was activist journalism with a vengeance, utterly and willfully blind to the basic realities of gypsy culture.</p>
<p>But the <i>Guardian </i>wasn&#8217;t done yet. On Saturday its sister publication, the <i>Obsever</i>, ran a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/17/roma-page-hall-sheffield">piece</a> by Mark Townsend headlined “The real story of Britain&#8217;s Roma: excluded, ignored and neglected.” Any school of journalism that wants to teach its students just how to turn the truth on its head in the service of ideology could do worse than to use Townsend&#8217;s article as a template. He starts off by telling us that the official London address of the Roma Support Group (RSG), “Britain&#8217;s biggest Roma charity,” is a post-office box because “fear of reprisal against Britain&#8217;s Roma community, even in the capital&#8217;s most multicultural borough, remains real.” In the wake of Blunkett&#8217;s statement last week, he adds, the RSG received one (1) nasty e-mail – which, to Townsend, is proof that “the rhetoric of hostility towards the Roma throughout Europe is escalating” and that the Roma are “the continent&#8217;s most persecuted ethnic minority.” Quoting Blunkett&#8217;s comments about the need for Roma to integrate, and similar recent remarks by the UK Independence Party&#8217;s Nigel Farage and by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Townsend makes it clear that we should find such statements downright abominable. “David Cameron,” he notes approvingly, “judged the rhetoric so inflammatory that he ordered &#8216;sensible and calm language&#8217; around immigration.” The real story, argues Townsend, is that the Roma are “a community whose needs have met official indifference.” Townsend is magisterial in his blithe dismissal of gypsy reality: anecdotes about gypsy crime in Page Hall are “rumours” and “lurid tales” (“there is little,” he actually says, “to substantiate the perception that Roma cause crime”); if there&#8217;s a danger in the presence of gypsies in Britain, “[o]ften the risk is to the Roma themselves.” But Townsend&#8217;s piece reaches its exquisite climax when he shares with us his take on an investigation by British police of what they described as the gypsies&#8217; illegal “trafficking of over 1,000 children from Romania.” Townsend is appalled – not by the trafficking, but by the investigation, which, in his view, “fosters the perception of the Roma as a criminal community.” Those few words encapsulate the moral obscenity of multiculturalism, which teaches its adherents that it&#8217;s an act of extraordinary virtue to tacitly accept another culture&#8217;s systematic abuse and corruption of its young. Fortunately, most British subjects don&#8217;t share Townsend&#8217;s views; unfortunately, it&#8217;s Townsend and his ilk who are calling the shots. And yes, if they keep on putting ideology above reality in this way, it&#8217;s not hard at all to believe that before too long there&#8217;ll be an explosion.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Better to Be Wrong Than Right?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walterlaqueur/better-to-be-wrong-than-right/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=better-to-be-wrong-than-right</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walterlaqueur/better-to-be-wrong-than-right/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Nov 2013 04:10:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Walter Laqueur/Mosaic]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Isaac Deutscher]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Isaiah berlin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=209252</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A new book chronicles the battle between a pro-American British intellectual and a Stalin apologist. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/isaiah_isaiah.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209253" alt="isaiah_isaiah" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/isaiah_isaiah-445x350.jpg" width="267" height="210" /></a>How many pages of print need be devoted to an event that amounts to no more than a small footnote, if that, in the history of British academic life? In the case of the dueling protagonists of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Isaac-Isaiah-Covert-Punishment-Heretic/dp/0300192096" target="_blank"><i>Isaac &amp; Isaiah</i></a>, a new book by the British historian and novelist David Caute, the unfortunate answer is: quite a few. Luckily, there is much else of inadvertent interest in the story Caute tells.</p>
<p>Both Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) and Isaac Deutscher (1907-1967) were born to Jewish parents in Eastern Europe, but otherwise they had little in common. Berlin, who arrived in England as a schoolboy, eventually became a central and much celebrated figure of the British intellectual and academic establishment and was knighted in 1957. Deutscher, who arrived in his thirties, established himself within a few years as a well-known biographer and political commentator and a self-proclaimed exemplar of the human type known as the “non-Jewish Jew,” a term he may have coined.</p>
<p><strong>Read the rest at</strong><em><strong> <a href="http://mosaicmagazine.com/supplemental/2013/10/better-to-be-wrong-than-right/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&amp;utm_campaign=0ca5dcdcf2-Mosaic_2013_10_31&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-0ca5dcdcf2-41165977">Mosaic</a>.</strong></em></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Stealth Anti-Israelism from the British Media</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ari-lieberman/stealth-anti-israelism-from-the-british-media/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=stealth-anti-israelism-from-the-british-media</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 20 Sep 2013 04:19:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ari Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[BBC]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[yom kippur war]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=204764</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Telling errors from the BBC on the jihad against the Jewish State. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/BBC-sfSpan.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-204765" alt="BBC-sfSpan" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/BBC-sfSpan.jpg" width="225" height="174" /></a>October 6<sup>th</sup> 2013 will mark the 40th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. Forty years ago on that fateful Yom Kippur day, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack on Israel. In the south on the Egyptian front, artillery shells rained down on Israeli positions along the border at an astounding rate of 10,000 per minute. One-hundred thousand Egyptians, armed with the latest Soviet weaponry, then crossed the Suez Canal and overwhelmed the 500 or so Israeli troops unfortunate enough to have been stationed in the area.</p>
<p>In the north on the rocky plateau of the Golan Heights, the situation was no less grim. In tanks alone, the Syrian attackers outnumbered the Israeli defenders by a factor of nearly ten to one. One hundred and seventy-seven Israeli tanks was all that stood between the Syrian army and Galilee. As with all of Israel’s wars, various other Arab countries temporarily set aside their tribal-fed, blood feud differences and sent contingents to join the <i>Jihad</i> against the <i>Kuffars</i>.</p>
<p>The Israeli army quickly mobilized to meet the threat and eighteen days later, when the guns on the field of battle fell silent, the situation appeared markedly different from those first grim and desperate days. In the north, the Syrians were in full retreat. The carcasses of modern Soviet Syrian T-62 and T-55 tanks littered the battlefield and Israeli forces were a mere twenty miles from Damascus. In the south, the situation for the Egyptians was even bleaker. With their Third Army Corps surrounded by Israeli troops and their air defenses shattered, the Egyptians were on the verge of collapse. Egyptian soldiers surrendered in droves preferring captivity in Israel rather than death by bullet or thirst, and the road to Cairo, some 50 miles away, was clear of enemy troops.</p>
<p>The Yom Kippur War was a clear-cut Israeli military victory and is regarded as one of the most stunning military turnarounds in modern military history.  As author Abraham Rabinovich insightfully notes in his critically acclaimed book on the subject, “Israel’s recovery from the edge of the abyss was epic.” A surprise attack of such ferocity and magnitude would have brought “stronger nations to their knees” but Israel nonetheless absorbed the first deadly blows, stabilized the front and initiated successful two-front counterattacks that sent the enemy scurrying.</p>
<p>Of course, Egyptians, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/egypts-latest-conspiracy-theories-target-the-countrys-syrian-refugees/279585/">mired in endless conspiracy theories</a> and <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/1130507/egypt-conspiracies-are-paranoid-and-stupid">delusional fantasy</a> don’t see it that way. To them, the war began and ended with the crossing of the Suez Canal and those first few euphoric days. Everything post-crossing remains a blur. Given their proclivity to indulge in Alice in Wonderland-like fantasy, the Egyptian version of events is certainly unsurprising. What more can we expect from people who believe that man eating, Yarmulke-wearing <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/8185915/Shark-sent-to-Egypt-by-Mossad.html">Mossad sharks</a> prowl the warm waters of the Mediterranean to feast on tasty Egyptians?</p>
<p>The problem, however, becomes more acute when the fantasy emerges not from Egyptian sources that virtually no one takes seriously but rather from putatively respectable Western sources. Consider the case of the BBC’s “Learning Zone” website, an online resource for educators and researchers. In its brief synopsis of the Yom Kippur War, Learning Zone noted the following; <i>“During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Egypt and Syria acted pre-emptively against Israel at the Suez Canal…”</i></p>
<p>The BBC’s summary is flawed on several levels. First, Syrian forces operated nowhere near the Suez Canal and were engaged in an area that was roughly 390 miles north of the Canal. More importantly, the Arab assault was an unprovoked surprise attack and Israel’s military posture on the eve of battle was anything but threatening.  At war’s outbreak, Israel’s frontline positions along the Canal were manned by a paltry 500 soldiers and 3 tanks. Israel’s military prowess is known far and wide but the thought of 500 reservists making a mad dash for Cairo in a “Light Brigade,” Balaclava-like charge is a stretch even for the most imaginative.</p>
<p>To its credit, the BBC, when challenged, <a href="http://bbcwatch.org/2013/09/18/bbc-removes-claim-of-pre-emptive-yom-kippur-strike/">partially corrected</a> its erroneous characterization of the war but inexplicably left intact the false claim that Syria attacked Israel on the Suez Canal. Moreover, the BBC directs its readers to Benny Morris, Robert Fisk and Noam Chomsky for further insight on the subject. Morris is a <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/benny-morris-on-why-he-s-written-his-last-word-on-the-israel-arab-conflict-1.465869">reputable historian</a> with centrist views who takes his job as a historian quite seriously. Chomsky and Fisk, however, are rabid partisans who subscribe to fringe anti-Israel views. Fisk has been accused by colleagues of <a href="http://blog.camera.org/archives/2012/03/antiisrael_journalist_robert_f.html">fabricating facts</a> while Chomsky has been aptly described as a <a href="http://thedailybanter.com/2013/09/some-astute-criticism-of-noam-chomsky/">one-note song</a> and a one-trick pony. Their fringe views on Israel make one wonder why the BBC would defer to them for knowledge on the subject matter, unless of course, the BBC subscribes to these views.</p>
<p>Further evidence of fantasy finding its way into the stream of conventional discourse comes from that other British news stalwart, The Economist. In an article addressing Hamas’ growing isolation, The Economist <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21585015-islamist-movement-runs-gaza-has-rarely-felt-so-isolated-lonely-hamas">notes</a> the following; “<i>Israelis still loathe Hamas, which carried out scores of suicide-bombings against Israelis in the early 2000s. Hamas, meanwhile, reviles Israel for its assaults on Gaza and its leaders.”</i></p>
<p>While the former sentence is accurate, the latter is pure drivel. The <a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=56&#038;x_miscitem=20">Hamas charter</a>, which reads like <i>Mein Kampf</i> on steroids and is filled with a combination of hate-filled vitriol and Islamist dogma, was written and adopted by Hamas well before Israel’s “assaults on Gaza and its leaders.” Hamas does not need an excuse to hate Jews. Anti-Semitism is an integral part of their philosophy and ideology.</p>
<p>Glaring “mistakes” of this nature by the BBC and The Economist are just the tip of the iceberg and are indicative of either a poor vetting process or something more nefarious. The danger is not the narrative per se but its adoption by mainstream media. If left unchallenged by those of us who are informed, it becomes part of accepted discourse and that must be prevented at all cost.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Halal: A Taste of Terror</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/enza-ferreri/halal-a-taste-of-terror/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=halal-a-taste-of-terror</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Aug 2013 04:10:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Enza Ferreri]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Funding]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[halal meat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.K.]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=199636</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The growing alarm over where the funds of the multi-billion-dollar industry end up. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/halal-meat-460.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-199710" alt="halal-meat-460" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/halal-meat-460.jpg" width="279" height="201" /></a><a href="http://www.restoreaustralia.org.au/beware-halal/">&#8220;Beware! Halal food funds terrorists.” Stickers</a> with this slogan were sold in July by a candidate of the <a href="http://www.caboolturenews.com.au/news/one-nation-candidate-linked-islam-sticker-terroris/1958615/">Australian political party One Nation</a>, and condemned by the country’s Multicultural Affairs Minister Glen Elmes as &#8220;offensive, grotesque and designed to inflame hatred.&#8221; He added: &#8220;People are encouraged to put the stickers on food products in supermarkets, which isn&#8217;t just racial discrimination, it&#8217;s also vandalism.&#8221;</p>
<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/joe-kaufman/can-buying-food-contribute-to-terrorism/">What the sticker says, though, is apparently taking place in the USA</a> and <a href="http://pointdebasculecanada.ca/articles/10002592-muslim-association-of-canada-a-contributor-to-hamas-fund-collector-controls-halal-certification-in-quebec.html">Canada</a> where Campbell’s Soup and other companies have paid the <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/07/isna-nait-admit-ties-to-muslim-brotherhood-hamas.html">Hamas-linked</a> Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) for their halal certification, in <a href="http://www.cbn.com/tv/1397750218001">France,</a> where it is claimed that 60% of halal food is controlled by organizations belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood and the so-called <a href="http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/halal-tax.html">“halal tax”</a> is the organization&#8217;s main source of funding. In <a href="http://www.boycotthalal.com/boycott-morrisons-for-directly-funding-zakat/">the UK,</a> major supermarket chain Morrisons is not only indirectly but even directly giving money to the Islamic National Zakat Foundation. I’ll explain what that is about in a minute.</p>
<p>“Ritual slaughter” is the slaughter of animals for food following religious prescriptions. The Muslim method to produce halal (“lawful” or “permissible”) meat consists of cutting fully conscious animals’ throat while the name of Allah is uttered and letting them bleed to death. The Jewish method of producing kosher meat shares with the Muslim one the fact that the animal is not stunned before being killed.</p>
<p>Laws of Western countries generally require that animals are stunned to render them unconscious before slaughter, but allow exceptions for both Jewish and Muslim ritual slaughter.</p>
<p>Government advisory bodies, like the Farm Animal Welfare Council and the British Veterinary Association in the UK, have produced reports and made declarations saying that ritual slaughter causes ”intolerable cruelty” and have repeatedly demanded that it be banned.</p>
<p>The Muslim Council of Britain claims that most halal meat comes from stunned animals, but in reality a very low voltage is used in their electrocution, resulting in inadequate stunning.</p>
<p>This makes it objectionable to most non-Muslims on animal welfare grounds. Christians and others – Sikhs in Britain currently have an anti-halal petition &#8211; also consider the utterance of Allah’s name at the moment of slaughter as idolatry.</p>
<p>And a major concern is that halal meat is just no longer for Muslim consumption, but is sold to “infidels” in ever greater quantity the world over.</p>
<p>To get an idea of the extent of this phenomenon, one of the most influential halal certification bodies, the Halal Food Authority, now estimates that <a href="http://www.academia.edu/2290093/The_development_of_halal_and_kosher_meat_markets_in_the_UK">a staggering 25% of the entire UK meat market is halal</a>. But Muslims are about 5% of the UK population, therefore there is as much as 5 times more halal meat than Muslims.</p>
<p>In Britain halal meat is routinely served and sold to non-Muslims who don’t even know that they’re eating it, let alone want to do so. Schools, hospitals, hundreds of restaurants and pubs, sporting venues like Wembley football stadium and Ascot race course, all the main supermarkets chains – none excluded &#8211; fast-food and pizza chains have been drawn into what commercially must look like a win-win situation for them: Muslims complain and demand halal, non-Muslims don’t complain, adapt and tolerate. Especially if they’re not informed and food is not properly labelled.</p>
<p>In dhimmi Britain, when pork or other non-halal food is accidentally discovered in school menus, as recently happened,  it causes a fervor, hits headlines, <a href="http://meatinfo.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/15616/Halal_lamb_burgers_removed_from_school_menus.html">the food is immediately removed</a> and the responsible sacked, but it&#8217;s nearly impossible to have halal meat &#8211; which non-Muslims don&#8217;t want &#8211; removed from schools or at least not served to unbelievers. <a href="http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/10334813.Halal_meat_served_in_three_quarters_of_council_supported_schools/">In an increasing number of schools halal is the only meat served</a>. Is the only way to ban halal food in schools to &#8220;contaminate&#8221; it with pork, as someone suggested?</p>
<p>What’s happening with halal is that we are experiencing for the first time in the West Islamization on a large scale. Great numbers of people are forced to live according to Sharia law whether they like it or not, which is the essence of Islam and its supremacist nature.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.christianconcern.com/our-concerns/islam/petition-against-halal-meat">Christian Concern</a> reported the words of the Operation Nehemiah Halal Campaign, run by the Barnabas Fund:</p>
<blockquote><p>There is an open campaign by Islamic food agencies to integrate halal into the mainstream market and to extend it to non-Muslims. The World Halal Forum held its annual conference in London earlier this month (November), and has identified the UK as a pilot project for halal in Europe…</p>
<p>The spread of halal is often part of the commitment to Islamic mission (dawa) and the Islamisation of non-Muslim societies. The imposition of sharia practices on non-Muslims may be interpreted as an act of Islamic supremacy.”</p></blockquote>
<p>That it is a question of supremacy and economic profit and not religious compliance is shown by the fact that Islam specifically exempts its faithful from the obligation to eat halal food if none is available:</p>
<blockquote><p>He hath only forbidden you dead meat, and blood, and the flesh of swine, and that on which any other name hath been invoked besides that of Allah. But if one is forced by necessity, without wilful disobedience, nor transgressing due limits,- then is he guiltless. For Allah is Oft-forgiving Most Merciful. <a href="http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/quran/verses/002-qmt.php#002.173" target="_blank">Quran (002:173)</a></p></blockquote>
<p>Every time you drive around London you are subjected to the sight of myriad halal signs, a constant reminder of the transformation of Britain into an Islamic country. You can even measure this process of Islamization by the number of halal signs that you see multiply in the same streets and areas.</p>
<p>If women in the hijab and burka are the visible representation of Muslim presence in the West, halal signs are the visible symbol of Muslim supremacism taking hold of it – at least women who veil themselves don’t impose their dress code on others.</p>
<p>We are witnessing a Muslim takeover of an increasing share of the food industry and other industries, with consequences on the job market of Britain, a nation with a high level of unemployment, especially among the young. Halal products include not just meat, but also a long list of goods containing slaughterhouse by-products like gelatin and collagen, which are ingredients in many various foodstuffs – from Easter eggs to cat food &#8211; cosmetics, toiletries, pharmaceuticals, and other products.</p>
<p>It is a multi-billion dollars industry, and growing.</p>
<p>All halal products require certification by a Muslim agency, which the agency is paid for.</p>
<p>The principle of &#8220;zakat&#8221; in Islamic law makes it obligatory for all Muslims to give 2.5% of their income to charity – only in aid of their coreligionists, of course. Zakat has to be distributed among 8 categories of recipients, one of which is the jihadists fighting in Allah’s cause. From <a href="http://www.missionislam.com/knowledge/zakat.htm">Mission Islam</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Zakat can be given in the path of Allah. By this is meant to finance a Jihad effort in the path of Allah, not for Jihad for other reasons. The fighter (mujahid) will be given as salary what will be enough for him. If he needs to buy arms or some other supplies related to the war effort, Zakat money should be used provided the effort is to raise the banner of Islam.</p></blockquote>
<p><span><span>A</span><span style="color: #000000;">ccording to Islamic law, it would not be permissible, or &#8220;halal,&#8221;</span></span><span style="color: #000000;"> <span style="color: #333333;">for Islamic organizations providing halal certification not to pay zakat, which <span style="color: #000000;">under Islamic law </span>is obligatory for all Muslims, on the fees they charge.</span></span></p>
<p>Therefore, whenever you buy one of the many halal-certified products increasingly found in our Western countries, even without your knowledge and against your will, you are indirectly contributing to Islamic terrorists, killers of Christians in the Middle East, al-Qaeda-linked groups and so on. Buy halal and you fund jihad against Israel.</p>
<div><span><span>Many Islamic &#8220;charities&#8221; have known links to terrorism and Islamic extremism. I</span><span style="color: #000000;">n early July the Gatestone Institute published a report documenting the many links discovered between the </span></span><a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3792/islamic-relief-worldwide-terrorism" target="_blank"><span><span style="color: #000000;">Islamic Relief Worldwide charity, with headquarters in the UK, and terror groups</span></span></a><span style="color: #000000;"> with an anti-Western agenda. </span><a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3792/islamic-relief-worldwide-terrorism" target="_blank"><span style="color: #000000;"><span><span>Islamic Relief Worldwide</span></span></span></a> (IRW) consists of a &#8220;family of fifteen aid agencies&#8221; which &#8220;aim to alleviate the suffering of the world&#8217;s poorest people.&#8221; What looks like an innocuous &#8212; indeed philanthropic &#8212; charity is, according to this report, “an extremist organization with a pro-terror agenda&#8230; [which] has worked with a significant number of organizations linked to terrorism.” Western governments, the United Nations and the European Union should be more careful about whom they donate their money to, since they all gave tens of millions of dollars to IRW, whose most important branches include Islamic Relief UK and Islamic Relief USA. The report says:</div>
<blockquote>
<div>IRW&#8217;s accounts show that it has partnered with a number of organizations linked to terrorism and that some of charity&#8217;s trustees are personally affiliated with extreme Islamist groups that have connections to terror.</div>
</blockquote>
<div>Those organizations and groups, over the years, have included Hamas and Hamas-related bodies like Al Wafa and Al Tzalah; terrorists in Chechnya; al-Qaeda; the Yemeni Al-Eslah organization, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood; terrorist and Muslim Brotherhood groups operating in various European countries; and many more.</div>
<div></div>
<div>What makes IRW, which is one of the world’s largest and most influential Islamic charities, more dangerous is that it has acquired legitimacy among Western politicians and public figures. Even heir to the British throne Prince Charles has expressed support and appeared at IRW events. But there has been very little scrutiny of IRW and its branches.</div>
<p>In sum, although halal is on its surface an animal cruelty concern, it is also a crucial area of conflict between the West and those who want to force Islam, literally, down our throats. It also empowers Muslims culturally, ideologically, politically and, last but not least, economically, in a terrifying way.</p>
<p><iframe src="http://cbn.com/tv/embedplayer.aspx?bcid=1397750218001" height="300" width="425" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
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