Latest Analysis and Commentary

Is a Tolerant Culture Being Replaced by an Intolerant One?

by Saher Fares  •  August 18, 2017 at 5:00 am

  • One need not go back centuries to the Muslim conquest of the Christian late classical world -- the medieval Barbary corsair raids, the Ottoman yoke in Central and Eastern Europe or the slave markets of Kaffa in Tatar Muslim Crimea -- to understand that this violence clearly predates the European colonial era, the creation of the modern state of Israel, or the issue of climate change.

  • Countries such as China, Nigeria or Kenya that are not Western, not "imperialist", not whatever the excuses that Islamists make, are still spectacularly attacked by similar stabbings. Month on month, there seems almost nowhere that Islamic terror did not strike.

  • Volumes of revered Islamic texts establish in great detail the grounds of violence and oppression of non-believers and those deemed heretical. These supposed grounds -- made alive daily in madrassas and mosques across the world before being acted upon by religiously-trained terrorists -- are childishly dismissed by Western liberals as immaterial.

  • The first step towards a solution is to question the received knowledge tirelessly dished out by media pundits in the West. What is lacking is simply seeing a huge body of evidence of theological justification for Islamist terror.

On June 4, British PM Theresa May said, "It is time to say enough is enough" and promised a review of her country's counter-terrorism strategy. In the absence, however, of an honest look at the root causes of this terrorism, and a painful soul-searching by Muslims of the grounds in their religion that give rise to such violence, it will never be "enough". (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

How thin can excuses wear every time an atrocity is committed in the name of Islam?

When 13 people were killed and scores more injured this week in a vehicle-ramming attack in Barcelona, Spain, and stabbing men shouting "This is for Allah!" on London Bridge and in Borough Market in June, what the victims least cared about was the Western elite pontificating that the latest atrocity "had nothing to do with Islam".

British Prime Minister Theresa May said, "It is time to say enough is enough" and promised a review of her country's counter-terrorism strategy.

In the absence, however, of an honest and tempered look at the root causes of this terrorism, sacred or not, and a painful soul-searching by Muslims themselves of the grounds in their religion that give rise to such violence, it will never be "enough".

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The Palestinian Authority is a Genocidal Terrorist Entity and Should be Treated as Such

by Guy Millière  •  August 17, 2017 at 5:00 am

  • The PLO became the first terrorist organization to have a seat at the UN and diplomatic representation in a Western country.

  • Daniel Pipes suggested measures to move the conflict in a constructive direction without causing major conflagration: require the Palestinian Authority (PA) pay for all damages inflicted by terrorists, including a very high price for each stolen life; burying the dead terrorists without returning them to their families; severely limiting access to West Bank territories ruled by the PA; banning PA leaders from entering Israeli airports if they make inflammatory remarks and each time there is anti-Israeli violence, or even asking them to use Jordanian airports from now on.

  • Why not tell European leaders that the Palestinian Authority is still a genocidal terrorist organization? Why not ask them how they can agree to finance in the Middle East what they claim to reject with horror in Europe?

President Donald Trump told Mahmoud Abbas what no other Western leader dared to say. He knows that there is nothing to expect from the Palestinian Authority and that Jason Greenblatt's mission is destined to fail. Pictured: Trump and Abbas give a joint statement on May 3, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Image source: Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)

The latest slaughter in the land of Israel took place in Halamish, Samaria, on July 21. A Palestinian stabbed to death a Jewish grandfather and two of his children. The grandmother was injured seriously. Countless similar attacks occurred in Israel in the recent and not-so-recent past.

Once again, thousands of Palestinian Arabs joyfully celebrated the murders. Some handed out candy.

The murderer was praised by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas. If he had been shot to death, he would have instantly become a martyr of Islam. A street in Ramallah would be named after him. His picture would be posted in storefronts in the territories occupied by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, and his family would be rewarded with a high "salary" for life.

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Turkish Education: Jihad In, Evolution Out

by Burak Bekdil  •  August 17, 2017 at 4:30 am

  • Turkey has now become the first and only NATO member state that teaches "jihad" in its schools. Although the Turkish government claims that "jihad" means a "spiritual inner struggle for salvation," the official Turkish dictionary defines it as a "war fought in the name of religion."

  • "Why would a young man, indeed a young woman, would want to return to a country where there are 50,000 [political] people in prison, including 200 journalists, opposition media is gagged, women are second class citizens, and where Darwin's theory of evolution has been taken off academic curriculum because it contradicts teachings of Islam? To these bright young kids, returning to Turkey must appear like hopping on H. G. Wells's 'Time Machine' and travelling back a few centuries." — Fuad Kavur, London-based Turkish-British film producer.

At Robert College in Istanbul, a private high school, 151 of 196 seniors recently applied to study abroad. (Image source: Wikipedia)

Turkey's Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, draws such a rosy picture of his war-torn country that his audiences might think the world's youth, in envy, should be flocking to Turkey to breathe an air of academic excellence and freedoms. On the other hand, however, he complains of a massive brain drain in the Muslim world, including Turkey, heading to the Western countries, which he explicitly despises. A gross contradiction? Just an Islamist's usual ideological impasse.

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Minimize Islamic Terrorism in America? Just Manipulate Statistics

by A.Z. Mohamed  •  August 17, 2017 at 4:00 am

  • While Islamist terrorists have committed fewer attacks in America since 9/11 than "far-right-wing violent extremists," they have killed more victims. — United States Government Accountability Office report, released on April 6, 2017. Titled "Countering Violent Extremism: Actions Needed to Define Strategy and Assess Progress of Federal Efforts".

  • Both right-wing and Islamic extremists are the enemies of Western civilization; all must be investigated and penalized. The attempt by the Left to minimize the dangers of the jihadists among us is not only counter-productive; it is immoral.

On April 15, 2013, Islamic terrorists detonated two bombs at the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring several hundred others. (Image source: Aaron Tang/Wikimedia Commons)

Well before Donald J. Trump was elected to the U.S. presidency, many have been claiming that more Americans have been killed by "right-wing extremists" than by Islamic terrorists.

A study released in June 2015 by the New America Foundation on "Terrorism in America After 9/11" ostensibly gave credence to this assertion. Focusing on one graph in the study and the authors' summary of the statistics – that the "death toll [from attacks since September 11, 2001] has been quite similar to other forms of political, and even non-political, violence that Americans face today" -- a number of media outlets and progressive groups pounced on the data.

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Europe: Migrant Crisis Reaches Spain

by Soeren Kern  •  August 16, 2017 at 5:00 am

  • "The biggest migration movements are still ahead: Africa's population will double in the next decades. A country like Egypt will grow to 100 million people, Nigeria to 400 million. In our digital age with the internet and mobile phones, everyone knows about our prosperity and lifestyle." — German Development Minister Gerd Müller.

  • "Young people all have cellphones and they can see what's happening in other parts of the world, and that acts as a magnet." — Michael Møller, Director of the United Nations office in Geneva.

  • "If we do not manage to solve the central problems in African countries, ten, 20 or even 30 million immigrants will arrive in the European Union within the next ten years." — Antonio Tajani, President of the European Parliament.

Migrants wait to be rescued by crewmembers from the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) Phoenix vessel on June 10, 2017 off Lampedusa, Italy. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Spain is on track to overtake Greece as the second-biggest gateway for migrants entering Europe by sea. The sudden surge in migration to Spain comes amid a crackdown on human smuggling along the Libya-Italy sea route, currently the main migrant point of entry to Europe.

The westward shift in migration routes from Greece and Italy implies that Spain, situated only ten miles from Africa by sea, may soon find itself at the center of Europe's migration crisis.

More than 8,300 illegal migrants have reached Spanish shores during the first seven months of 2017 — three times as many as in all of 2016, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

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The Anti-Semitic Jewish Media

by Bruce Bawer  •  August 16, 2017 at 4:00 am

  • Almost everyone in a position to do something is a coward. Politicians continue to recite the mantra that "Muslims are today's Jews," even though in Europe today Muslims are far more often the tormentors than the tormented, and Jews lead the list of victims of public abuse.

  • Needless to say, the immigrants Trump wants to keep out of the U.S. are precisely the type who, in Europe, are currently Jew-bashing people like Stephen Miller -- and Rob Eshman. But Eshman doesn't want to think about this ticklish fact, which challenges his own simplistic, self-righteous pontifications.

  • Linda Sarsour is the very personification of stealth Islamization and an obvious anti-Semite. But as Davidson himself noted, she's acquired plenty of Jewish allies and defenders, "including Jeremy Ben-Ami, Mark Hetfield, Rabbi Jill Jacobs and Brad Lander."

Stephen Miller, Senior Advisor to the President for Policy, talks to reporters about President Donald Trump's support for creating a "merit-based immigration system", August 2, 2017. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

For years now, Jews across western Europe have been the targets of harassment by Muslims. Police officers stand guard outside of synagogues. Recently, when I stayed in the Jewish Quarter in Rome, I couldn't help notice the presence of multiple police kiosks, each manned by an armed cop. Many Jews in European cities have long since ceased wearing yarmulkes or Stars of David. Jewish kids are instructed by their parents to avoid identifying themselves as Jews at school lest they be beaten up by their little Muslim friends.

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What's next in Afghanistan?

by John R. Bolton  •  August 15, 2017 at 12:30 pm

U.S. Army soldiers fire mortars at a Taliban position in northeastern Afghanistan, September 2, 2011. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

As President Trump wrestles with America's role in Afghanistan, he should first decide what our objectives are today compared to what we wanted immediately after Sept. 11, 2001.

Initially, the United States overthrew the Taliban regime but failed to destroy it completely. Regime supporters, allied tribal forces and opportunistic warlords escaped (or returned) to Pakistan's frontier regions to establish sanctuaries.

Similarly, while the Taliban's ouster also forced al-Qaida into exile in Pakistan and elsewhere, al-Qaida nonetheless continued and expanded its terrorist activities. In Iraq and Syria, al-Qaida morphed into the even more virulent ISIS, which is now gaining strength in Afghanistan.

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Palestinians: The Honeymoon with the US is Over

by Bassam Tawil  •  August 15, 2017 at 5:00 am

  • The Palestinians have a condition for the US to be accepted by them as a mediator in the conflict with Israel: bias in favor of the Palestinians. This is the Palestinian state of mind: If you are not with us, you are against us.

  • The Palestinian leadership does not wish to talk about improving the Palestinian economy because Palestinians do not perceive themselves as engaged in an economic conflict with Israel: they perceive themselves as engaged in an existential, struggle-to-the-death conflict with Israel. In their view, for Palestinians to thrive, the State of Israel must go.

  • Notably, the Palestinians reject the idea of Israel making peace with its Arab neighbors. They fear that such peace would come at the expense of them achieving political supremacy over Israel.

In his recent meeting with US presidential envoys Jason Greenblatt (left) and Jared Kushner (center) in Ramallah, an enraged Mahmoud Abbas (right) rejected their demand that he halt payments to terrorists and their families. (Photo by Thaer Ghanaim/PPO via Getty Images)

US President Donald Trump's envoys, Jason Greenblatt and Jared Kushner, are planning to return to the Middle East soon to discuss ways of reviving the stalled "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians. Greenblatt tweeted last week that he was looking forward to returning to the Middle East "as we pursue peace." He added that Trump was "optimistic," but did not elaborate.

Pursuing peace sounds wonderful. Less wonderful, however, are the facts on the ground of "pursuing peace" with the Palestinians.

Not surprisingly, the Palestinians have returned to their old habit of accusing the US of being "biased" in favor of Israel.

As the US envoys prepare to head to the Middle East, Palestinians are saying that they have lost confidence in the Trump administration, as they have done with all previous administrations.

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The Real Lessons from Charlottesville

by Ruthie Blum  •  August 15, 2017 at 4:00 am

  • Although Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip, is shunned by U.S. negotiators, Fatah, the party headed by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, is considered a potential partner for peace with Israel.

  • Official Fatah social media pages, however, openly laud and encourage "lone wolves" to arm themselves with knives and vehicles with which to slaughter Israelis whenever and wherever possible.

  • Abbas and his henchmen in the PA do not allow freedom of expression. They do not "weep" over the "thuggish" and "deliberately murderous" conduct of their populace. Instead, they champion it and fund it. A Palestinian who uses his car as a deadly weapon is viewed by his peers and rulers as a hero. Physical violence is officially sanctioned and rewarded. An American who commits violence is demonized by everyone other than a handful of hard-core bigots.

James Alex Fields rams his car into a crowd of "antifa" marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12. (Image source: Al Jazeera video screenshot)

A day before the car-ramming attack in Charlottesville, Virginia -- which left 32-year-old Heather Heyer dead and 19 others wounded -- the White House announced that it would be dispatching President Donald Trump's son-in-law and special adviser, Jared Kushner, Special Adviser on International Affairs Jason Greenblatt, and Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategy Dina Powell to the Middle East for the second time since June.

The stated purpose of their trip, the scheduled date of which has yet to be disclosed, is to revive the peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). Justifiably, the Trump administration's declaration that it would resume efforts to broker negotiations between Jerusalem and Ramallah was drowned out by the events in Charlottesville.

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The West Betrays U.S. Heroes Who Prevented Another 9/11

by Giulio Meotti  •  August 14, 2017 at 5:00 am

  • "Those who work as spies know the risks from America's enemies, but they shouldn't have to worry about politicized retribution from its friends" — The Wall Street Journal.

  • These officials should have never be prosecuted in a court; they should be protected from such actions. This prosecution is a betrayal of those who worked hard to prevent more massacres and to cripple the infrastructure of jihad.

  • That is the most important lesson: our spies and officials involved in the war against Islamic terrorism, like those who prevented another 9/11, now fear not only the wrath of the jihadists, but also the witch hunt of our media and judicial system.

In 2009, Spanish judges opened a criminal file against some senior Bush administration officials, including John Yoo (pictured) of the Justice Department. Yoo, now a professor at University of California, Berkeley, wrote the 2003 memorandum authorizing the CIA's interrogation techniques. (Image source: Commonwealth Club/Wikimedia Commons)

One of the most important chapters in the war on terror is being rewritten -- with a moral inversion. Islamic terrorists who were arrested and deported have become "liberal causes célèbres", while agents of the CIA who questioned them are not only being condemned but also financially crushed by punishment and legal bills -- for having tried, legally, to save American lives.

Guantanamo Bay has supposedly become "the Gulag of our time"; the psychologists who interrogated the murderer who sawed off Daniel Pearl's head have been charged with working "for money"; the "black sites" in the Polish and Lithuanian forests have been compared to Nazi concentration camps, and the U.S. jurists and officials who conducted the war on terror have been compared to the Germans hanged in Nuremberg.

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By His Own Admission, Wilkerson Cannot Be Trusted

by Dexter Van Zile  •  August 14, 2017 at 4:00 am

  • Lawrence Wilkerson is blaming Israel and its supporters for a problem for which he himself is culpable.

  • Despite his self-admitted involvement in these scandals, Wilkerson has become MSNBC's go-to source for testimony about what is going on in the corridors of power in Washington, D.C.

  • And if, by his own admission, Wilkerson was involved with efforts to distort the truth about the two of the biggest failures in American foreign policy -- the attack on 9/11 and the lack of WMDs in Iraq, then why is he a reliable source about the Iran nuclear deal or Israel today? Why is he qualified to appear on MSNBC, aside from his willingness to spout anti-Israel rhetoric?

Lawrence Wilkerson. (Image source: MSNBC video screenshot)

On July 23, retired U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson appeared on MSNBC and accused Israel of increasing the tension surrounding Al Aqsa Mosque by installing metal detectors nearby. "The ultimate [Israeli] goal with regard to the mosque is to drive the Palestinians and Arabs in general out completely," he said, adding that the Israeli government's "ultimate goal is to cause the Palestinians to react in a way that it can then react viciously and violently as it has in Gaza repeatedly."

With such invective, Wilkerson depicts metal detectors, which are used at holy sites throughout the Middle East, as a provocation against the Palestinians. He also inverts cause and effect, portraying the metal detectors (and Israel's attacks on Hamas in the Gaza Strip) as the cause, rather than the response to Palestinian violence.

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China Is Our Last Diplomatic Hope for North Korea

by John R. Bolton  •  August 13, 2017 at 1:00 pm

An inscription stone marking the border of China and North Korea, in Jilin. (Image source: Prince Roy/Wikimedia Commons)

Former National Security Advisor Susan Rice acknowledged last week that America's policies regarding North Korea's nuclear-weapons program over the last three administrations had failed. She said, rightly, "You can call it a failure. I accept that characterization of the efforts of the United States over the last two decades."

Former Vice President Al Gore said much the same. They should know. They served under President Bill Clinton, who started things rolling downhill with the Agreed Framework of 1994. This misbegotten deal provided Pyongyang 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil annually and two light-water nuclear reactors in exchange for the North's promise to abandon its nuclear-weapons efforts.

Pyongyang violated its promise before the ink was dry. In 1999, former Secretary of State James Baker denounced Clinton's approach as "a policy of appeasement." Baker's characterization also applies to much of the subsequent U.S. diplomacy. North Korea has always been willing to promise to abandon its nuclear ambitions to get tangible economic benefits. It just never gets around to honoring its commitments.

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Europe: Burkini War Continues

by Soeren Kern  •  August 13, 2017 at 5:00 am

  • Those in favor of the burkini argue that women should be allowed to wear whatever they choose. Critics of the garment say it is an Islamic religious and political symbol which impedes integration and is incompatible with the liberal principles of secularism and gender equality. In recent months, the debate has added another dimension: public health and hygiene.

  • "Secularism and religion are irrelevant here. The burkini is not a Koranic prescription, but another manifestation of political Islam, militant, destructive, seeking to question our way of life, our culture, our civilization." — French commentator Yves Thréard in Le Figaro.

  • Europe's burkini debate has now spread to the Middle East. In Algeria, thousands of women have joined a "bikini revolt" to reclaim the public space from Islamists who oppose the bikini as a symbol of Western values.

(Image source: Eric Baker/Flickr)

A woman who wore a burkini to swim in a pool in southern France has been charged €490 ($580) to pay for cleaning costs at the facility. The incident, which sparked accusations of Islamophobia, is the latest salvo in an ongoing debate over Islamic dress codes in France and other secular European states.

Those in favor of the burkini argue that women should be allowed to wear whatever they choose. Critics of the garment say it is a religious and political symbol which impedes integration and is incompatible with the liberal principles of secularism and gender equality. In recent months, the debate has added another dimension: public health and hygiene.

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While Trump Tweets, the 'Cold Monster' Returns

by Amir Taheri  •  August 13, 2017 at 4:00 am

(Image source: White House/Wikimedia Commons)

How is Donald Trump doing?

In the past couple of weeks, this question has been making the rounds in political and punditry circles pondering the first six months of the new US President.

The answer depends on whose point of view one has in mind. From Trump's point of view things are going well for him. He has managed to keep himself at the center of global media coverage almost non-stop, thus satisfying his seemingly insatiable craving for attention. At the same time, he has made it impossible for political foes to challenge him in the field of policies. Not doing anything in that field, he is not exposed to scrutiny and criticism. To avoid being labeled as a do-nothing president, however, he fills the policy vacuum with a deluge of tweets and an avalanche of executive orders while highlighting his few surprising successes, including the ability to name a man of his choice to the US Supreme Court.

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Palestinians Escalate War on Journalists

by Bassam Tawil  •  August 12, 2017 at 5:00 am

  • They said they did not know what "sensitive information" Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) were trying to hide.

  • Today, it is safe to say that the situation of the freedom of the media under the PA and Hamas is not much different than that under Bashar Assad's Syria or even North Korea.

  • Palestinian journalists' hateful obsession with Israel brings them no dividends. Rather, such venomous bias diverts attention from the true challenges and threats they face from the PA and Hamas. By expending their efforts in this twisted fashion, the journalists aid and abet their leaders in building dictatorial regimes that suppress public freedoms.

The presence of Israeli reporters in Ramallah last week, to cover the visit of Jordan's King Abdullah II, enraged several Palestinian journalists, who took to social media to condemn the Palestinian Authority leadership that gave them permission to cover the visit. (Image source: Palestinian President's Office)

As part of its overarching effort to silence critics, President Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority (PA) has resumed its war against Palestinian journalists who refuse toe the line or are suspected of being insufficiently loyal to their leaders in Ramallah.

But this is nothing new: Abbas and his team have long been notoriously intolerant of news stories that reflect negatively on them in particular and on Palestinians in general.

In the past few days, PA security forces arrested six Palestinian journalists from Bethlehem, Nablus and Hebron. The journalists -- Mamdouh Hamamreh, Qutaiba Kassem, Tarek Abu Zeid, Amer Abu Arafeh, Thaer Al-Fakhouri and Ahmed Al-Halaykeh -- are suspected of "leaking sensitive information to hostile parties."

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