Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Popular Israeli Musician and Columnist Joins Zehut: It Is Time for Moshe Feiglin

The following are excerpts from an interview on Arutz 7 with Dudu Elharar, who recently joined Zehut:

Until now you have been in the Likud. Why did you join Zehut?

Last year a group of people, including myself, met with Moshe Feiglin in Tel Aviv. We asked all the questions and he answered all the answers. Since then, I couldn’t stop thinking about Zehut. I followed Feiglin, read the Zehut platform, did some investigation and reached the conclusion that from among all the politicians and parties in Israel today, he is the only one who is consistent. He doesn’t change his views, he is respectful, speaks clearly and is understandable. So I left the Likud and joined Zehut.

Are you disappointed with the Likud?
The Likud has attempted to realize some sort of policy for which it was elected, but does not succeed. It has always implemented the policies of the Left. I think that it is time for us to take the initiative and say that we strive to create a sovereign, Jewish, democratic, pluralistic, enlightened state here in Israel. But without basing it on our Jewish identity, we are pulling the rug out from under our feet. The only justification for the establishment of the State of Israel is its Judaism – both as a religion and a nationality.

A person who calls himself a Zionist, says the word, ‘Zion’. Zion is the Land of Israel, Zion is Jerusalem, Zion is the Temple Mount. Zionism called itself so because only a vision that envelops within it thousands of years of prayers whispered by Jews throughout the Diaspora can motivate the masses. Throughout the generations Jews thrice daily prayed, “And may our ours see when you restore Your Divine Presence to Zion” – in Kuchin, in Kazakhstan, in Morocco, in Warsaw, all over the world. Communities that had no connection for hundreds of years. They all gathered under the umbrella called Zion. That is Zionism.

Zehut has no previous electoral experience. We know that the voting threshold is a significant danger for new parties. So why don’t you join one of the existing parties?
I reviewed all the parties and all of their leaders. I found in Moshe Feiglin the only leader who is true to what he says. He does not contradict himself. He says the truth, without trying to change it. It is no coincidence that he was able to plumb the depths of Israel’s difficulties and come up with the one word that describes the solution: Zehut, identity. Identity is the ultimate truth. It is who you are. A Jew is a Jew. This identity was determined by Abraham, who brought monotheism to the world. It has continued with us throughout the generations and has remained firm. I do not like politics of saying one thing and doing something else.

Common political wisdom states that in order to succeed, a political party has to appeal to a broad political base –even at the expense of its ideology. It is very nice to say the truth as it is and not to compromise, but that is the way not to get past the voting threshold and make it into the Knesset.
I am not so sure. I think people are tired of politicians who say one thing and mean the other. I have also analyzed why the masses vote for Netanyahu. It is not because they like him so much. I think that many people vote for him because they cannot stand the Left’s positions and they are disgusted with how the media attacks the Likud, the Right, the Nation and everything that smacks of Judaism. I think that things are changing. We have a new generation that wants to understand what it is doing here and why. Slowly but surely, it is filtering down. I believe that Moshe Feiglin’s time has come. With his detailed and exact platform, his time has come. People want to vote for something that is true, straightforward, fair-minded, not blurred, says things as they are – that is how it should be.

Do you think that these things can really take hold in the Tel Aviv milieu, of which you are a part?
Moshe Feiglin is the most accepted of all the rightist leaders. Many leftists say that they do not agree with his views, but they respect his integrity, his fairness, his simplicity and his pointed and exacting eloquence.

Rav Kook on Parashat Ki Teitzei: Drafting Yeshiva Students



The Arab Legion attacking the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, May 1948 (John Phillips, Life Magazine).

“When you wage war against your enemies...” (Deut. 21:10)

Rabbi She'ar Yashuv Cohen, ZT"L former Chief Rabbi of Haifa and son of the Rav HaNazir, told the story of his part in defending Jerusalem during the 1948 War of Independence:

During the winter of 5708 [1947-1948], I was one of the younger students at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva. I was also a member of the Haganah, the pre-state Jewish defense organization. This was during the period of Arab rioting and attacks that erupted following the United Nations’ vote on the 29th of November, 1947, to establish a Jewish state.

In those days, there was much discussion in Mercaz HaRav whether the yeshiva students should enlist to fight and defend. Both my father, the Rav HaNazir, and Rav Tzvi Yehudah were of the opinion that everyone as obligated to go out and fight. This was a milhemet mitzvah, a compulsory war in which all are expected to participate.

However, those close to the head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Charlap, argued that yeshiva students should continue their Torah studies in the yeshiva, and the merit of their Torah learning would bring victory in battle. They would quote the verse in Isaiah 62:6, “On your walls, Jerusalem, I have posted watchmen,” explaining that these watchmen protecting the city are in fact scholars, diligent in their Torah study.

At that time, the situation in the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City was desperate. I came up with the idea of organizing a group of yeshiva students to establish a “Fighting-Defense Yeshiva” in the Jewish Quarter. The yeshiva’s daily schedule would be comprised of eight hours for defense and guard duty, eight hours for Torah study, and eight hours for rest and sleep.

The proposal was brought before the Haganah command and was approved. But those close to Rabbi Charlap were vehemently opposed to the idea. The controversy within Mercaz HaRav disturbed me deeply and caused me great anguish.

One day, as I exited the yeshiva, I saw huge notices posted at the entrance to the yeshiva. It was a broadside quoting Rav Abraham Isaac Kook, of blessed memory, that yeshiva students should not be drafted into the army. When I read the notices, I was in shock. Was I acting against the teachings of our master, Rav Kook?

Agitated and upset, I made my way down the road toward Jerusalem’s Zion Square. There I saw a figure walking toward me, slightly limping. As he came closer, I saw that it was Rav Tzvi Yehudah. I felt very close to Rav Tzvi Yehudah; he was like an uncle to me.

When he saw my shocked face, Rav Tzvi Yehudah became concerned. “What happened, She'ar Yashuv? Why do you look like that? Don’t be afraid. Tell me!”

Under the pressure of his questioning, I told him about my efforts to organize a “fighting yeshiva” in the Jewish Quarter, and my distress when I saw the posters which indicated that we were acting against his father’s guidance.

When he heard my words, Rav Tzvi Yehudah was horrified. He grabbed me by my shoulders and roared, “This is a complete forgery! A distortion and utter falsehood!” He was so upset, his shouts echoed down the street.

After calming down, he explained that the notices had quoted a letter his father had written in London during the First World War. The letter dealt with drafting yeshiva students who had escaped from Russia to England. Rav Kook felt that these students should be exempt from the draft, just as the British exempted other clergy students.

But here — Rav Tzvi Yehudah motioned emphatically with his hands — here we are fighting for our hold on the Land of Israel and the holy city of Jerusalem. This is undoubtedly a milhemet mitzvah; whereas in England, the demand was that the yeshiva students fight for a foreign army.

The rabbi’s words reassured me. I asked if he would be willing to write them down so that they could be publicized. He agreed. The rabbi publicized a broadside in which he objected to the use of his father’s letter to Rabbi Hertz, Chief Rabbi of England, during World War I.

I also asked Rav Tzvi Yehudah to publish his views on the matter in a more detailed and reasoned format. He replied that there is no point in composing an article when the city is under siege and the printing presses are closed down. However, I was able to obtain a special permit from the Defense Board, so that a pamphlet containing five articles was published soon after.

In his article, Rav Tzvi Yehudah explained that joining the army at that time was important for three reasons:
  • To save lives (pikuah nefesh);
  • To fulfill the mitzvah of conquering and settling the Land of Israel (mitzvat yishuv ha’aretz);
  • Due to the great public kiddush Hashem, sanctification of God’s Name, when the nation of Israel is redeemed from danger.
Even though I was the one who had initiated the pamphlet’s publication, I did not receive a copy when it was printed. Due to special circumstances, several months passed before I received a copy.

I was one of the volunteers who succeeded in finding a way to slip inside the walls of the Old City. I joined the fighters there, and I was seriously wounded in battle.

When the Old City fell to the Arab Legion on May 27th, 1948, I was taken prisoner. The Jordanian commander was shocked to discover that only 26 of the surrendering Jewish soldiers survived the battles without serious injury. Embarrassed to return victorious to Jordan with such a small group of prisoners, he decided to also take wounded soldiers.

After seven months as a prisoner in Jordan, we were returned to Israel in a prisoner exchange deal. I was taken to Zichron Ya’akov to recuperate, and Rav Tzvi Yehudah came to visit me the first morning after my arrival.

The morning of Rav Tzvi Yehudah’s visit, as I was removing my tefillin after morning prayers, I peered out the window and saw Rav Tzvi Yehudah slowly making his way up the mountain. Afterward, I found out that he had taken the very first bus from Jerusalem, and had traveled early in the morning all the way to Zichron Ya’akov in order to greet me.

I ran toward him, and he hugged and kissed me. He cried over me like a child. The truth is that my situation was so grave that my family and friends had nearly given up all hope. Until then, such a thing had never happened — returning alive from captivity in an Arab country. But the Jordanian King Abdullah had wanted to show the world that he was an enlightened monarch who respected international law....

After recovering from his outburst of emotion, Rav Tzvi Yehudah put his hand in his coat pocket and brought out a small pamphlet containing his article about defending the country. Inside was a personal inscription:

“For my dear beloved friend — the initiator, advisor, and solicitor [of this tract]. This pamphlet is set aside, from the day it was printed, until “God’s redeemed will return in peace, and joyfully come to Zion.”

Decades later, I still have that treasured pamphlet carefully stored in my possession.

Gathering the Ten Tribes from faraway lands

BS”D 
Parashat Ki Taitzai 5777
HaRav Nachman Kahana



Devarim 22:1-2:

לא תראה את שור אחיך או את שיו נדחים והתעלמת מהם השב תשיבם לאחיך:
ואם לא קרוב אחיך אליך ולא ידעתו ואספתו אל תוך ביתך והיה עמך עד דרש אחיך אתו והשבתו לו
If you see your brother’s (fellow Jew) ox or sheep straying, do not ignore it but return it to its owner. If your brother (the owner) is not close to you or if you do not know who owns it, take it into your home to be with you until your brother seeks it out, then return it (after receiving convincing signs of description).


What is HaShem’s master plan for His people in Eretz Yisrael?

In our unpredictable, erratic world one immutable principle has stood the test of time, with no indication that it will change in the future – that everything and anything of consequence or significance has involved, is involving or will involve the Jewish people!

Past empires, distant or near in time or space, rose and fell, and future ones will rise and fall because of the Jewish nation. If we can’t always discern the historical connections of all great historic events with the Jewish people, it is only due to our intellectual limitations. But the principle is intact – humanity and its march in time revolves around HaShem’s chosen nation as the planets orbit the sun. And just as each planet revolves in its particular orbit contingent on the gravitational energy exerted on it by the sun, so too do the nations of the world develop in relation to the direct or indirect Jewish influence on them.

The descendants of Yishmael and Aisav have always been closely involved with the descendants of Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya’akov. Hence, their development is more sophisticated than cultures which were less involved with the knowledge of HaShem as passed on through the Jewish people.

Numerous studies have been made into the genealogy of major European leaders and found that Jewish blood flowed in their veins.

Yishmael and Aisav as individuals, had a love-hate relationship with their Jewish brothers – Yitzchak and Ya’akov – that they passed on to their descendants. The Christians and Moslems have so much to be indebted to the Jewish nation and our teachings, but the scratch in their brains makes it impossible for them to live with us or to live without us. When we are in the galut, they say “Go back to Eretz Yisrael”; and now that we have returned to Eretz Yisrael they say, “You do not belong there”.

I wish to point out three nations in particular: England in Western Europe, Turkey with one foot in Europe and the other in Asia, and Iran (Persia) deep in Asia. There is no apparent connection between them, save for one – they are the most anti-Israel nations in the world today.

England is the seat of intellectual anti-Israel feeling. Their universities boycott ours, and every Israeli is in danger of being arrested, which prevents ranking army officers and cabinet ministers from going there. Turkey is regressing into Islamic darkness, with the initiation fee being the severing of its ties with the Jews in Eretz Yisrael. Iran is Shi’ite, removing them from the thought processes of rational people.

But why just these three nations?

I suggest:

They have a common historic experience. Each was an empire with colonial holdings, which included Eretz Yisrael. Until HaShem’s stopwatch of history sounded and the Holy Land expelled them. Their insatiable jealousy at losing the fulcrum of human activity leaves them little room for rationality. Their anti-Semitic and anti-Israel policies will be the cause of their destruction as national entities.

The prophets predicted the fall of the great empires of their times: Assyria, Babylon, Egypt and Phoenicia. Would they be alive today, the prophets would speak of the downfall of all the nations that are preventing the fulfillment of our God mandated obligation to return and rebuild the Biblical lands in our possession.

To return to the question of HaShem’s master plan for us in the Holy Land…

With every passing day, our gentile enemies become more bold in their alienation. In addition, many Jews in the United States – orthodox and otherwise – being so fearful of their frail status as accepted equals there, are competing with the worst of our enemies in mudslinging at our holy Medina.

The prophecy of what will be our destiny in the generation of the Mashiach was delivered by HaShem through the foul mouth of the evil Bil’am, when he said (Bamidbar 23,9):

כי מראש צרים אראנו ומגבעות אשורנו הן עם לבדד ישכן ובגוים לא יתחשב:
From the highest plateau, I will view him (the Jewish people) and from the high places I will acknowledge him. A people that shall dwell in isolation and will not regard the (gentile) nations.


Herein lies the master plan of the Creator.

As we in Eretz Yisrael are increasingly excluded from international forums designed to de-legitimize the Jewish state, we will draw ever closer to the God of Israel.

The evil Bil’am saw the future return of the Jewish nation to HaShem and the Torah. It will be brought about by our non-reliance on foreign “friends”, coupled with HaShem’s miraculous intervention in unprecedented military victories.

The RaMBaM (hilchot Melachim) states that the Mashiach will lead us in our final wars, that is to say the Mashiach will have a military background. This puts an entirely new perspective on who to expect to be HaShem’s messenger to redeem His people.

Who will populate Eretz Yisrael in the future?


The wide expanse of the Golan is waiting for millions of Jews to settle there and infuse the area with Torah life. Yehuda, Shomron, the Negev and Galil, will be settled by tens if not hundreds of millions of Jews returning home.

From where will all these Jews come?

For this we have to think “outside of the box”.

They will not come from the Jewish community in the United States which is quickly dwindling through inter-marriage, coupled with apathy and antagonism of most orthodox Jews towards God’s greatest miracle of the last 2000 years. The Jews of Western Europe and South America are following suit.

The 70 plus years of opportunity for the Jews in the West to return home is rapidly ending, for the timetable of HaShem waits for no man.

The big numbers will come from the hundreds of millions of Jewish descendants of the Ten Tribes and Anusim (people forced to abandon Judaism and adopt a different religion), who will awaken one day to their Jewish heritage. They are the Jewish nation of the future, as prophesied by Yechezkel (11:17):

לכן אמר כה אמר א-דני ה’ וקבצתי אתכם מן העמים ואספתי אתכם מן הארצות אשר נפצותם בהם ונתתי לכם את אדמת ישראל:
Therefore say: ‘This is what the LORD says: I will gather you from the nations and bring you back from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you back the land of Israel again.’


As Malbim explains this verse:

שלעתיד יאסוף את עשרת השבטים שהם בארצות רחוקות ולא שבו בבית שני, ונתתי לכם את אדמת ישראל לא כמו שאמרו לנו נתנה הארץ למורשה
“In the future HaShem will gather the Ten Tribes from faraway lands, those who did not return at the time of the second Temple, and I will give them the land of Israel”


With this in mind, I would like to suggest an additional understanding of the verses quoted at the beginning of this message:

לא תראה את שור אחיך או את שיו נדחים והתעלמת מהם השב תשיבם לאחיך:
ואם לא קרוב אחיך אליך ולא ידעתו ואספתו אל תוך ביתך והיה עמך עד דרש אחיך אתו והשבתו לו


The first verse deals with lost articles that belong to your brother Jew. The second verse deals with a Jewish brother or sister who is seemingly lost to our people:

ואם לא קרוב אחיך אליך ולא ידעתו ואספתו אל תוך ביתך והיה עמך עד דרש אחיך אתו והשבתו לו
If your bother Jew is far from you (in the spiritual sense), to the extent that you can no longer recognize any Jewish features in his life. Bring him into your home (Eretz Yisrael) until his heart is opened and he begins to seek out his Jewish roots. Then be prepared to return him to those roots.


This is what will be in the near future, when HaShem will awaken the millions of our brothers so distant from their roots, and return them miraculously to us in Eretz Yisrael.

Shabbat Shalom,
Nachman Kahana
Copyright © 5777/2017 Nachman Kahana

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Hurricane Katrina, Harvey, and the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process

No sooner than the Trump trio, of White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner, Special Envoy Jason Greenblatt and Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategy Dina Habib Powell (born in Egypt and living in Texas), came to the Middle East, meeting with Israeli and Palestinian officials, then shuttling to meetings with leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan, to try and restart the Israeli-Palestinian “Peace Process,” Hurricane Harvey began to hit Texas, with it’s G-D given power of destruction. Now, exactly twelve years later, Louisiana is being hit again too.

In fact the G-D of Israel has been doing this, since the beginning of the “Peace Process”. In March 1991, President George H. W. Bush pushed Israel into attending the Madrid Peace Conference, later that year Hurricane “Perfect Storm” attacked the East Coast of the United States. Bush, staying at his vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine at the time, had to evacuate. His house was damaged.

In my September 2005 article, “Israel to America, I Warned You...” I wrote, “Well, it’s begun; less than a week after the Israeli army expelled thousands of Jews from their homes in Gaza and Northern Samaria, uprooting 25 communities, American troops were "evacuating" people from their homes in Louisiana and Mississippi. The greatest "natural" disaster has happened in American history. The Hand of G-D is written all over this one.”

Many in Israel and America, Jews and non-Jews had seen "G-D’s Hand," in the hurricane disaster [Katrina].

In 2005, Jerusalem Kabbalist, Rabbi David Batzri said about Katrina that, “Divine retribution is meted out according to the principle of “measure for measure,” just as the Jews were forced out of their homes as a result of US pressure on Israel, so too are Americans being forced out of their homes." Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel said, “He [Bush] brought about the expulsion [from Gaza], now he has his own expulsion.”

“Whenever this country encourages Israel to give up any part of their rightful God-given land we have suffered the consequences,” wrote a discussion-board participant on the website of the Christian Broadcasting Network.

John Green, senior fellow at a Washington Think Tank (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life) said, about half of Americans believe that a divine power sends judgment through hurricanes, floods and natural disasters. “The basic idea that God is in charge and he expects people to behave and he isn’t happy when they don’t, that’s a very common idea,” Green explained.

At the time, even Illinois’ liberal Democratic Congressman, Jesse Jackson Jr, said at a news conference, “God is responsible for this and in his own time he will reveal why.”

Well Jesse, we already know why...

I explained why in my earlier June 2005 article, “Israel, Tell America the cold, hard truth,” warning there, “America, your country is in danger. The G-D of Israel, who has brought His people (the Jews) home after 2,000 years, is watching your every move. Stop pushing Israel into suicidal concessions (giving away parts of its homeland to a non-existent group, the so-called Palestinians), before it’s too late, and your fate is sealed.”

As I said then, “The redemption of the Jewish People and their return to the Holy Land (Israel) is an unstoppable divine process...the "Palestinians" won´t stop it, the Europeans won´t stop it, and America won’t stop it. If America continues to promote the "rights" of the "Palestinians" (what the Bible calls "a non- people" - Deut. 32:21), know that you are going against the G-D of History and Jewish destiny. Beware!”

Just like when George Bush and Condi Rice worked to promote the expulsion of about 10,000 Gazan and Samarian Jews from their homes, destroying whole communities in the process, in 2005, to curry Arab favor (that time to gain support for America’s war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq); the Trump administration is continuing to work, to sacrifice Israel, on the Altar of “Middle East Peace,” to gain support of a Sunni coalition of states against Shiite Iran.

A US official cited in a Washington Post article by David Ignatius recently, explained that “The Trump administration is exploring new approaches for easing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that builds on talks with the budding Sunni Arab coalition of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan.”

The Saudi Ambassador to Washington, Khaled bin Salman, cited by the Washington Post, noted that his older brother, Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, was “optimistic in light of the commitment of Donald Trump to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.” 

The new American strategy seems to be, unite the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, under Abbas’ leadership, so that a united Palestinian bloc could renew negotiations with Israel. The Trump administration is trying to use it’s connections with the Sunni Arab states to exert pressure on all the Palestinian factions to join up. The Americans, in return, have pledged to bring Israel to the negotiating table when the Palestinians are ready. And to grease the squeaky wheel, the US is trying to bring Jerusalem and Ramallah together through joint economic initiatives.

Meanwhile, the Arab coalition has tried to move Hamas closer to Egypt and the UAE, and distance them from Qatar, which for years has been a major financial backer. Mohammed Dahlan, a Gazan now living in the UAE, has been the key intermediary. For years, floated as a potential successor to Abbas, he returned to Gaza and organized UAE-financed humanitarian aid there. Dahlan’s aid to Gaza is said to include about $15 million a month in food and social assistance for families, plus additional money for electricity and water.

The plan is to provide economic and social support, through Egypt, with Israel’s blessing, that can weaken the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence. Israel has allowed fuel and other shipments to pass from Egypt through the border crossing at Rafiah, signaling it’s tacit support. Dahlan and the UAE have larger plans. Dahlan said the UAE has pledged to finance a $100 million electricity plant, to be built on the Egyptian side of the border, to help power Gaza. Although Dahlan is a long-time rival of Abbas, US officials insist they don’t want to undermine the PA leader.

True, the Israeli government carried out the first internationally sanctioned ethnic cleansing of the 21st century, expelling Jews from Gush Katif and Northern Samaria in 2005, but did America have to encourage it?

True Netanyahu is going along with America’s latest plan, but the Trump administration is actively pushing the “Peace Process”.

Who cares what Sharon wanted, or Bush wanted, or the EU or UN wanted in 2005. Who cares what Netanyahu thinks he needs to do to preserve his Premiership, or the Trump administration needs to do to build his Arab coalition today.

What one, who has some sense in his head must consider is, what does the G-D of Israel want? And that, over the last one hundred years, has become abundantly clear. The G-D of Israel has been manipulating history to bring about what He promised thousands of years ago to our forefathers, as recorded in the Bible’s prophecies, Jews are returning to their Promised Land from the four corners of the earth, they are being redeemed.

America’s support for the expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif in Gaza ran counter to G-D’s Plan, and it’s clear that His "payback time" came swift and furious, as Hurricane Katrina uprooted whole communities along America’s Gulf Coast. So too now, America’s new attempts to promote “Peace,” with the threat of throwing Jews out of their homes from Judea and Samaria, has brought the catastrophe that is Hurricane Harvey, to Texas and Louisiana.

Just as Jews were made refugees from Gush Katif, so were Americans. Just as Jews lost homes and property, so did Americans...And now again with Hurricane Harvey!

As I warned Americans in 2005, “America is on the fast track to Hell, I couldn’t say it any clearer, unless you change your government’s policies toward Israel and the so-called "Peace Process"...Just as the Soviet Union fell, [by not letting it’s Jews leave for Israel] so too will America, if it causes a Palestinian State to come into existence.”

And all this is happening at a time, when America is ripping itself apart. Fighting in the streets between extreme left and extreme right, is slowly moving America closer to civil war. Then there’s North Korea destabilizing East Asia and threatening to nuke the US. Wake up America before it’s too late, stop kowtowing to your enemy, fanatic Islam, whether of the Wahhabi Sunni or Shiite version. Stop pushing your ally Israel into trying to commit suicide. You will just be the loser for it.

I don’t know G-D’s timetable, if China will replace the US and become the next world superpower, or the Messiah will come first and destroy the Palestinian Authority, but what I can tell you is that the G-D of Israel will wreck havoc with any country that opposes His purposes in history...

The final redemption of the Jewish People has begun; America, join up or beware!

The Shamrak Report: Europe Died in Auschwitz and more....

Europe Died in Auschwitz
by Sebastian Vivar Rodriguez (translation by Viktoria Behrend)
November 2004
I went down the road in Barcelona and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz... WE KILLED 6 million Jews and replaced them by 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz, we have burned a culture, a way of thinking, a creativity, a talent. We destroyed the chosen people, the truly chosen, because it produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.
The contribution of these people is felt in all areas of life: Science, art, international trade and, above all, the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.
And under the guise of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates for 20 million Muslims who have brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance , crime and poverty, by a lack of willingness to work and to support their families with decency.
They blew up our trains and made our beautiful Spanish cities to the third world drowning in dirt and crime.
In the closed apartments, which you receive free from the government, you plan the murder and destruction of your naïve hosts. So, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive ability, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.
We have the ambition of the Jews of Europe after peace, and their talents for a better future for their children, their determined adherence to life, because life is sacred, exchanged with those who are running death, with people who are longing for Death for himself and others, for our children and theirs. What a terrible mistake this miserable Europe has made..."
FOOD for THOUGHT by Steven Shamrak
Why has the Jewish left always had this pathological need to twist facts and issues to confirm to their dogma? Nobody advocates genocide of the fake people, Palestinians - just their transfer from Jewish land to prevent genocide of Jews. Contradictorily, the intention of our enemies, which has been clearly and unambiguously declared numerous times by their leadership, is to exterminate Jews and destroy the only Jewish nation! Wake up guys - get rid of your self-hate, PTSD or the Stockholm syndrome mentality – Islamists hate godless leftists even more than ordinary Zionists!
"I do not intend to cease paying salaries to the families of prisoners and martyrs, even if it means I lose my position," Abbas said. "I will continue paying their salaries until my last day." US Special Middle East Envoy Jason Greenblatt and Jared Kushner met Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and Abbas in his Ramallah headquarters. (It is not a surprise but what is there to talk about? Peace talks must be over now – No negotiation with terrorists anymore! Remove enemies from Jewish land!)
Over 300 loudspeakers were removed from mosques in China, ignoring that it has angered Muslims in the area who have branded the locals as intolerant. Environmental protection inspectors allegedly received complaints about noise pollution from local mosques. Residents close to the places of worship have complained that Islamic calls to prayer wake them up early in the morning and they claim in some cases have aggravated heart conditions of some patients. (Why can't Israel do the same? Reduce noise pollution and improve quality of life!)

New Regulation Act Saves 3,500 Homes

The Regulation Act concerning claims against Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria was passed by the Knesset in February 2017. There are 3,455 homes and public buildings which could be saved by the Regulation Act. According to the new law, an unprecedented generous payment (120% of market value) or alternative land will be granted to the proven owners. The government argued that the law meets the criteria of both international and Israeli law, providing a humane response. (Let hope that this time the Israeli court will not support enemies!)

Senior Palestinian official Ahmad Majdalani says President Abbas is still waiting for Kushner - charged with brokering peace between Israel and the Palestinians - to provide an answer on the Trump administration's position on Israeli West Bank construction and support for a two-state solution; 'We hope they bring clear answers this time.' (They have never presented an acceptable to them map, but rejected all offers Israel made! They have always criticized and rejected suggested ideas, but like receiving financial aid, and did not fulfill any obligation under agreements they signed with Israel!)

Israeli Court Help Enemies

High Court blocks IEC from disconnecting Electricity supply to PA, despite massive debt. The Israel Electric Company (IEC) has accumulated debt of approximately 600 million dollars! The IEC provides 95% of the electricity to JDECO which then supplies 42% of PA residents with electricity. The IEC warned the Palestinian Authority twice that they would turn of the electricity, starting with Hebron, if the debt wasn’t paid.

Palestinian boxer Sultan Abu Al-Haj refused to compete and instead forfeited his match against Israeli Druze boxer Amit Madah on Aug. 8, 2017 in the ‘under 54 kg’ division at the Youth Muay Thai World Championships in Bangkok.
A statement that the United States remains concerned with an Israeli government decision to freeze a plan to build an egalitarian prayer area at the Western Wall, as is evident in the International Religious Freedom Report for 2016 issued by the State Department. (This is an internal matter! Anti-Semites of the US State Department are not concerned that Christians and Jews are not allowed to enter and practice their religion in Saudi Arabia and many other Muslim countries. “Drain the Swamp” must begin with the nest of Israel-haters!)
The PA, actually Mahmoud Abbas, sent three truckloads of medicine to “the Venezuelan people,” at the time when Gaza faces a pharmaceutical crisis.

Amnesty International criticized both the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas over their restrictions of freedom of expression. The group said both sides had launched “a repressive clampdown on dissent that has seen journalists from opposition media outlets interrogated and detained in a bid to exert pressure on their political opponents.”

Iran’s atomic chief warned the Islamic Republic needs only five days to ramp up its uranium enrichment to 20 percent, a level at which the material could be used for a nuclear weapon. The Obama administration and most independent experts said at the time of the deal in 2015 that Iran would need at least a year after abandoning the deal to have enough nuclear material to build a bomb. New Iranian threat 'exposes weakness of the nuclear agreement'‏

More Cuts of Aid to Egypt Needed!

Angry over $290 million aid cut, Egypt cancels Kushner meeting. Kushner had held a series of meetings with officials in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar and was on his way to hold several meetings with senior Egyptian officials. Egypt receives $1.3 billion annually in military aid from the United States and close to $250 million in economic assistance. (Egypt is an ally of Saudi Arabia which has been financing Islamic terrorism - why not Egypt?)

Quote of the Week:
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” - George Orwell
To My Fellow Jews
by Justin Amler.
I see a lot of fighting going in the virtual and the real world. I see Jews from the left and from the right arguing with each other about who is "better" for the Jews or who is "worse" for the Jews. So let me be clear about my thoughts on this.
The Nazis or white supremacists or neo-Nazis or whatever you want to call them, are NOT your friends. And even if they sometimes say good things about Israel, they would sooner see you and your country disappear into the ground and vanish into oblivion. Their goal is to "end Jewish influence in America."
Should they ever gain massive power again as they did in Germany - that will be a priority on their agenda, to go after the people they hate. That means YOU!
The fascist BDS, Black Lives Matter and other pro-Palestinian groups are NOT your friends either. And just because they fight the Nazis doesn't make them your friends, because while they talk about human rights and freedom, they are not talking about human rights and freedoms for YOU!
They will march against Nazis, sure, but they will march with even more passion against Jews and Israel. Their agendas always include anti-Israel blustering and claims of apartheid even when their movements have nothing to do with Israel.
The Nazi movements are open and don't disguise their hatred and most decent people reject them outright. They consist mainly of people with bad haircuts, father issues, and pants which are way too tight. They are loud and scary and confronting, but their numbers are relatively few.
The fascist liberals try to disguise their hatred with words like human rights and freedom and consequently many people get sucked into their rhetoric, including many fake 'rabbis' who think that "as Jews" they must side with them and those Jews who flock towards them are considered nothing more than "useful idiots." They consist mainly of people with equally bad haircuts, self-loathing issues and pants that are way too loose. They are far more numerous and very much infiltrated in universities across the country.
There are two sides in this conflict, but it's not simply left and right. The Nazis and fascist liberals are on the EXACT SAME SIDE - the side of hatred, intolerance and anti-Semitism, and on the other side, as they've often found themselves throughout history are the Jews.
Remember that no matter which country you live in, be it America, Australia, England or anywhere else our enemies - the ones above - will always see you as a Jew first before anything else.

Monday, August 28, 2017

How to Get Out of the Iran Nuclear Deal

By John R. Bolton

A May 17, 2016 meeting between then U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in Vienna, Austria, to discuss the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. (Image source: U.S. State Department)
Although candidate Donald Trump repeatedly criticized Barack Obama's Iran nuclear agreement, his administration has twice decided to remain in the deal. It so certified to Congress, most recently in July, as required by law. Before the second certification, Trump asked repeatedly for alternatives to acquiescing yet again in a policy he clearly abhorred. But no such options were forthcoming, despite "a sharp series of exchanges" between the president and his advisers, as the New York Times and similar press reports characterized it.
Many outside the administration wondered how this was possible: Was Trump in control, or were his advisers? Defining a compelling rationale to exit Obama's failed nuclear deal and elaborating a game plan to do so are quite easy. In fact, Steve Bannon asked me in late July to draw up just such a game plan for the president — the option he didn't have — which I did.

US anti-Semitism superseded by civic foundations

By Ambassador (ret) Yoram Ettinger

Contrary to European anti-Semitism, the recent episodes of anti-Semitism in the US – such as hundreds of white supremacists, bearing torches and giving the Nazi salute - represent a negligible American minority, religiously, socially, ethnically and politically. These episodes defy the civic, moral and religious foundations of the US, as well as the US political, media and civic discourse, which have demonstrated high esteem for Judaism from the era of the early Pilgrims, through the Founding Fathers until today.

The Colonial Origin of the American Constitution, by University of Houston Prof. Donald Lutz, highlights "the continuity from the [November 11, 1620] Mayflower Compact to the American state and national constitutions of the late eighteenth century, [which] clearly evolves from basic symbols in the Judeo-Christian tradition…. Protestants writing [constitutional] documents viewed their work as equivalent to the Jewish biblical covenants… between God and his chosen people…. The political compact eventually evolved into what we now recognize as the American form of constitutionalism…."

For example, The 1641 Massachusetts Body of Liberties - the first modern day compilation of civil and religious liberties – which inspired the 1791 US Bill of Rights, "drew heavily on the Pilgrim Code of Law proposed by John Cotton in 1636, which was based on Mosaic principles…."

In fact, this week's Torah portion ("Shoftim," Deuteronomy 16:18 – 21:9) inspired a cardinal distinction of the US constitution: a government of laws, not of men. Moreover, the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy inspired the 1629 Salem Covenant, the 1637 Providence Agreement, 1650 Connecticut Code of Laws, the 1680 New Hampshire General Laws and Liberties, the 1701 Pennsylvania Charter of Liberties and additional codes of civil liberties compiled by the early Pilgrims, setting the Founding Fathers on the constitutional course.

In 2017, conservative Republican Vice President Mike Pence revealed that his faith is largely guided by the Jeremiah 29:11 verse, which hangs above his mantle: "For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

In 2014, liberal Democratic President Obama quoted Exodus 22:21 ("You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt"), in order to justify his decision to act unilaterally in deferring deportation of up to five million illegal immigrants.

In 2017, there are eight statues and carvings of Moses and the Ten Commandments in the US Supreme Court, in addition to similar monuments in the Chamber of the US House of Representatives, the US National Archives and additional government offices throughout the US. The Library of Congress features Micah 6:8 in its Main Reading Room: "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God."

The Story of Hebrew, by Dartmouth University Prof. Lewis Glinert, indicates that the first book written and printed (in 1640) in the British North America, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was Bay Psalm Book, a translation of the book of Psalms, documenting the prominent stature of the Old Testament and Hebrew among the early Pilgrims. "Familiarity with Hebrew was quite common among the intelligentsia and the better-trained of the clergy…. Harvard's first two presidents were Hebrew scholars, as were the first president of King's College (later Columbia) and Ezra Stiles, the first president of Yale… a world-renowned intellectual, the leading American-Hebraist of the era and a prominent supporter of the American Revolution…. The study of Hebrew marched hand-in-hand with the enlightenment principles of the American founding…. [President Stiles] learned much about Hebrew from his friend, Rabbi Hayyim Carigal from [the original] Hebron…."

While there is only one Hebron in the Land of Israel – King David's first capital - there are 18 Hebrons in the US, representing the thousands of locations in the US bearing Biblical names. This reflects the state of mind of the early Pilgrims and the Founding Fathers, who considered themselves to be "the modern-day Chosen People" and viewed the New World as "the modern-day Promised Land."

They established the 400-year-old foundation (since 1620) for the special affinity of the American people for the Jewish State, and America's high esteem for the Old Testament, which dwarf the significance of supremacists and any other form of anti-Israel or anti-Semitic sentiments.

Our Internal Enemy


By Rabbi Dov Berl Wein

Jewish homiletical tradition has dealt with the "enemy," who is being warred against in the opening verse of the parsha, as being the evil instinct of the "warrior" itself. In the immortal words of the famous cartoon character Pogo, "we have met the enemy and they are us!" This is in consonance with the words of the Talmud that the opening topic of the parsha – marriage to the attractive woman, a non-Jewish captive – has specific reference to one’s own struggle with the basic desires and evil instincts that bedevil us all.

The true struggle in life is therefore not really against others who may not wish us well as much as it is against our own conflict-torn nature. Temptations, both physical and monetary, and power-driven ambitions abound in our everyday existence. Falsehoods, lame excuses, or the feeling that "everyone does it" and that one will never get caught up and publicly exposed in the scam or scandal are the weapons of the enemy that lurk within us, preying on our built-in weaknesses.

Unless one truly realizes how vulnerable each and every one of us is regarding our internal enemy, there is little hope of creating effective defensive strategies to combat it. The haughty arrogance of unwarranted self-righteousness is one of the most serious moral and personal defects that a person may possess.

This is the message that the Talmud delivers to us when it states that one who sins and yet remains confident that one will later be able to repent and cancel the sin,is never able to truly repent of that sin.One should not underestimate the enemy that lies within us.

The month of Elul traditionally was set aside as a particular time when that internal enemy was to be identified and confronted. In our busy and crowded world, our schedules allow precious little time to think about our true selves - our goals and the purpose of our existence. Our enemy confounds and confuses us with all of the myriad details, pettinesses and distractions that our super busy world inflicts upon us.

Rabbi Yisrael of Salant was once asked if one has only ten minutes a day to study Torah, should one study Talmud or Mussar (the ethical teachings of Judaism.) He answered that one should study Mussar for then he would come to realize that he has much more time than just ten minutes in the day to study Torah. By that Rabbi Yisrael outlined his method of confronting the inner enemy that convinces us that we are unable to improve, that we are too weak or habit-stricken or that we are simply too busy and preoccupied with other issues to think about ourselves.

Ignoring the enemy is the surest way of being defeated by it. I think that tradition placed such an emphasis on the month of Elul, for it is the self-confrontation that this month indicates to us that is the strongest weapon in our spiritual arsenal. In preparation for the days of awe and judgment that are soon upon us, let us use this time wisely and efficiently.

You Wipe Out and I Will Wipe Out


By HaRav Shaul Yisraeli zt"l

We find two p’sukim in the Torah about wiping out Amalek: "You [Bnei Yisrael] shall wipe out the memory of Amalek" (Devarim 25:19); "I [Hashem] will certainly wipe out the memory of Amalek" (Shemot 17:14). There seems to be a contradiction as to who is responsible to rid the world of Amalek – Bnei Yisrael or Hashem? The Tanchuma (Ki Teitzei 11) answers that until Amalek raises his hands against the divine throne, Hashem leaves it to us; afterward, Hashem takes the matter into His own hands. In explaining how a human can raise his hands against the divine throne, the midrash answers that this is by destroying Yerushalayim.

Amalek’s strength is in his sword, in battle. Amalek seeks to nullify the significance of the spirit and to belittle it. War is his weapon, and we are to smite him with his own weapons. We are to show him that the power of the book has a positive impact even on our ability to hold the sword – "You shall wipe out."

Yet there is another intention. Some see this commandment as inconsistent with the attribute of mercy that we are supposed to have. The Torah is coming to instill in us that just as mercy is critical, so too, for the world to survive, there must be cruelty against the foundations of the corrupt. Misplaced mercy is itself the greatest cruelty. Do not think that if one shows Amalek the beauty of the Torah, he will be inspired to change his ways. This is a total mistake that will just boomerang back against us.
Therefore, "wipe out" without questioning or distinguishing. Amalek does not hate us because we lack a land. The Torah tells us that even when we are secure in our Land, the battle against Amalek will be very relevant. The more successful we will be, the more he will hate us.

On the other hand, the Torah is teaching us to remember that the battle against the forces of evil cannot be won with our own strength. At the end of the day, just based on nature, the expert of the sword will naturally defeat the expert of the book, no matter how much we practice military tactics. We must enlist the divine spirit which gets involved in all areas of life – the divine providence that is in every phenomenon. Wickedness is only one of the passing phenomena that Hashem deals with – "I [Hashem] will wipe out."

This is what Yehoshua should be told. Without knowing the Hand of Hashem is involved, he will not succeed. He is fighting a nation that is brought up with militarism from the cradle, to whom success on the battlefield and having dominion is everything. We are missing all of that. We are missing the ambition to win at war; we did not drink that in our mother’s milk. We did not learn to march to the beat of military songs. We cannot win unless we add to our strength, specifically by recognizing the divine correctness of the battle – "Hashem will wipe out." It is a mistake to think we will win by relying on our strength and that we will do better if we forget that Hashem is behind us.

The Mood Music of Mohammed


It's what? ten? no, eleven days since the attacks in Spain that left 14 people dead in Barcelona plus one woman in the nearby seaside town of Cambrils. For once there wasn't even the pretense that this was a "lone wolf" terrorist. It was an extremely large cell, organized by an imam called Abdelbaki es Satty, who prematurely self-detonated the night before when he and his conspirators accidentally blew up the house they'd filled with TATP.

I thought these novel aspects might hold the attention of the media. The imam/cell leader would seem to belie the view of the US National Security Advisor H R McMaster that Muslim terrorists who commit terror in the name of Islam do so out of "ignorance" of their faith - a view so fiercely held by Mr McMaster that it has resulted in the systematic cleansing from the White House of all those who dissent therefrom. And had Imam es Satty managed to get the TATP into the back of the van the death toll would have been many times higher.

But he didn't, so it wasn't. And fifteen dead on a glamorous and glittering European boulevard at the height of the tourist season now barely rates a #JeSuisWhatever hashtag, never mind an all-star pop concert with an audience of sorrowful, tilty-headed locals promising that no matter how often you blow us up we won't change - by, say, adopting a less tilty-headed and sorrowful expression. The imam's plan - to destroy the spectacular landmark church of the Sagrada Família - is oddly similar to the plot of Brad Thor's new thriller, Use of Force, where the equivalent Spanish target is the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. Indeed, the imam's van driver has the same name as Mr Thor's key plotter: Younes. But what's thrilling in a thriller in now just the humdrum background music of real life in the new Europe.

So Barcelona came and went before I had a chance to write about it. So did Finland. You don't remember that one? No imams, no TATP. Just a lone stabber going full Allahu Akbar in a shopping mall in Turku. Two women dead, eight injured. As it happens, I was in Turku last year, driving up the west coast of Finland all the way to Kemi, a somewhat unprepossessing burg at the top of the Bay of Bothnia, where I'd had an extensive conversation, in the pedestrian shopping arcade, with an elderly "refugee" in a dingy dishdash. And I'd intended to write something about how absurd it was that clothing designed for the deserts of Araby was now a not unfamiliar sight in southern Lapland, in a town that's more or less the last stop before Santa's Grotto.

But ten stabbing victims in Finland barely makes the papers at all: Foot-of-page-27 "News in Brief" stuff. Just the umpteenth confused fellow acting out of "ignorance" of his religion. If only H R McMaster had become a bigshot ayatollah and opened a seminary in Qom or Cairo, all this "ignorance" could have been avoided.

There was more "ignorance" afoot in Europe last night. On the boulevard Émile Jacqmain in the heart of Brussels a Somali was shot dead after yelling "Allahu Akbar" and taking his machete to a bunch of soldiers, and Buckingham Palace was reported to be in "lockdown" after another guy with another machete and another cry of "Allahu Akbar" took on another security detail. As A A Milne put it:

They're stabbing the guard at Buckingham Palace
Christopher Mahmoud went down to kill Alice...


Lest you detect a pattern of behavior here, the Palace perp is reported to be "a 26-year-old man from Luton". The Brussels stabber is not from Luton. So no general conclusions can be drawn: It's not like Charlottesville, where one Caucasian in an automobile is an indictment of the entirety of American history necessitating the demolition of Stone Mountain and Mount Rushmore.

The Queen is older than almost all those around her, certainly older than her guards and the 26-year-old Lutonians lunging at them with machetes. And she must occasionally reflect that not so long ago one didn't hear words like "machete" and "lockdown" in connection with Buckingham Palace: "baldachin", "porte-cochère" certainly; but not "lockdown". Yet, if such thoughts should rise unbidden in one's mind, it is prudent to suppress them. Consider the cautionary tale of Sarah Champion, Member of Parliament for Rotherham and spokesperson for "Women and Equalities" in Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet. Ms Champion penned a column for The Sun earlier this month:

Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls.


There. I said it. Does that make me a racist? Or am I just prepared to call out this horrifying problem for what it is?

Whether or not it makes her a racist, it makes her ineligible to be "Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities" in Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. Jeremy Corbyn fired Ms Champion. If you wish to prosper on Mr Corbyn's front bench, be less like Sarah Champion and more like her fellow northern MP Naz Shah. In the wake of Ms Champion's sacking, Ms Shah failed to spot that the following Tweet was intended satirically, and so clicked "Like" and reTweeted it:

Those abused girls in Rotherham and elsewhere just need to shut their mouths. For the good of diversity.

Poor Ms Shah. As the late Ayatollah Khomeini sternly instructed, "There are no jokes in Islam." Why should she be expected to recognize the mordant wit for which the English were once famed? The sentiment obviously struck her has eminently sounded. Queen Victoria is said apocryphally to have advised her daughter on her wedding night: "Lie back and think of England." Her great-great-granddaughter's subjects are enjoined by Naz Shah to lie back and think of the vibrant diversity of the new England.

In the current issue of the Mark Steyn Club newsletter, The Clubbable Steyn, I recount my visit to Rotherham to meet some of those "raped and exploited white girls". Actually, I'm not sure the general term "raped and exploited" quite covers the particular horrors inflicted on them - urinated on by groups of Muslim men, dangled over balconies, doused in petrol as their tormentors danced around them with cigarette lighters, etc. As Steyn Club members will know, Sarah Champion was the politician who accompanied the girls I spoke to on a blackly comic visit to Downing Street to meet with David Cameron. I'm gratified by the response to the piece from readers. Kevin Smith:

Just finished The Clubbable Steyn. "Asia Minor" is stunning.

David Ross:

Nestled amongst the good stuff in my first issue of The Clubbable Steyn is the masterpiece "Asia Minor". Brilliant and sad.

Messrs Smith and Ross are too kind. Tracking down the victims of Rotherham required a bit of elementary detective work on my part, but it's not that difficult. What struck me, as my time in town proceeded, was how few members of the British media had been sufficiently interested to make the effort: The young ladies were unstoppably garrulous in part because, with a few honorable exceptions, so few of their countrymen have ever sought them out to hear their stories. To damn with the faintest of praise, the victims had a more favorable view of Ms Champion than they did of the rest of officialdom - council, police, social workers, etc - who colluded with the Muslim gangs in covering up the town-wide "grooming" and blaming it on the girls. That parody Tweet above about the "need to shut their mouths. For the good of diversity" is, in fact, the unspoken belief of almost everyone who matters in Britain. Which is one reason why Ms Shah fell for it. And also why, as I explained in my report, the sexual exploitation of children is still going on in Rotherham. In broad daylight.

No matter. Ms Shah is the future of the Labour Party, and Ms Champion, a telegenic modern woman and formerly a rising Labour star, has been taught a hard lesson in the hierarchy of identity politics. Amid all this Mohammedan mood music - Barcelona, Turku, Brussels, Buckingham Palace, Rotherham - you'll be glad to hear a real news story occasionally breaks through. Brendan O'Neill writes in The Spectator of a thwarted airline passenger called Mohammad Khan:

I wonder how Mohammad Khan is getting on in his legal action against Virgin Atlantic. Mo — a Muslim, the clue's in the name — was waiting to board a flight when he started 'harmlessly' talking about 9/11. There is no reason to believe he has any connections with extremists, but he was kicked off the flight because of security concerns and had to fly out of the UK with another airline. Although he was later offered a refund, he is now suing, claiming he was 'racially and religiously profiled' by the Virgin staff. 'I know this wouldn't have happened if I'd been a white man in his sixties,' Mo complained. No, probably not. But if the world were comprised entirely of white men in their sixties, then 9/11 might not have happened. The world might also be a nicer place to live, although there might be too many bridge tournaments for my own taste.

It's entirely reasonable to be less suspicious of a white man in his sixties than a younger man called Mohammad burbling about 9/11. Indeed, it's so reasonable that it's now verboten. In the comments section below another Spectator column, readers speculate on what it will take for anything to change. But all the scenarios have already happened: mass murder at pop concerts, national holidays, Christmas markets; the industrial-scale sex slavery of young girls in Rotherham; the deliberate targeting for death of young girls in Manchester...

And still the most obvious mitigation of future slaughter - an end to mass Muslim immigration - cannot even be raised in public by Europe's establishment.

So on we go: Rotherham, Paris, Nice, Berlin, Manchester, London, Barcelona... Because these mysterious unconnected events keep happening, officialdom now thinks it advisable to give the citizenry a head's up. Brendan O'Neill notes the latest genius innovation:

Has your child read Moggy's Coming yet? That's a book being distributed to infant school children in order to prepare them for the next Muslim attack. It features a school of mice being menaced by a large cat and includes some words — to be sung to the tune of 'Campfire's Burning' — about what to do: 'Moggy's coming, Moggy's coming, we're in danger, we're in danger, run hide and tell! Treat the hurt mice, treat the hurt mice!'

There is also a poem which advises the toddlers on how to deal with wounds inflicted by this 'cat'. 'You can pack a wound and press/to stop the bleeding for success!' The cat just looks like a cartoon cat; it isn't screaming 'Allahu Akbar' or anything. The cat is simply a random hazard, nobody and nothing to blame for its murderous existence just beyond the school gates. It's just what cats do. They kill mice. Part and parcel of living in a big city, isn't it, Sadiq?


Moggy's Coming? My own foray into this territory, Feline Groovy, has done pretty well for me, but, if we ever do a sequel, it's clear the big bucks are in Feline Jihad. One final comment on my trip to Rotherham:

I am really enjoying my 1st edition of The Clubbable Steyn. That Rotherham story shows us pure evil exists!

No, sir. It shows us how easily a once civilized people get used to pure evil - at first declining to notice it, to let it catch your eye, and then accommodating it and incubating it. You'll be surprised how quickly such an attitude becomes universally understood, so that the few who insist on noticing, on not accommodating it become the real problem. See no evil, hear no cries of the victims, speak no forbidden thought of the motivations behind today's terror attack, and tomorrow's, and the day after...

So female shoppers in Finland get stabbed by murderous Muslims, and Buckingham Palace is in lockdown because of a man from Luton. Lie back and think of a lost England - and a lost Europe.

Friday, August 25, 2017

Israel-Jordan peace agreement: The emperor has no clothes



Israel sees Jordan as a security asset, because Jordan acts as an eastern buffer zone between the Jewish state and the violent chaos in Iraq, Syria and Iran. Israel is making a big mistake.

From Israel's prime minister down to the lowliest clerk, from the Commander in Chief down to the lowest ranking officer, from the Mossad down to the police by way of the Shabak – since 1994, everyone has been been chanting the same mantra about peace with Jordan. The prevalent reasoning is that peace with Jordan is Israel's most important strategic resource for the following reasons:

1. Security: The 500 kilometer border between Israel and Jordan is Israel's longest border with another country, reaching from Hamat Gader and the Yarmouk River in the north down to Eilat in the south. Jordan makes sure the border is quiet along its entire length and prevents hostile forces from approaching it and continuing west into Israel. If not for the peace declared between the two states, Israel would have to keep large forces along the border to guard it from infiltration.

Israel sees the very existence of Jordan to its east as a security asset in itself, because Jordan acts as a buffer zone between the Jewish state and the violent chaos in Iraq, Syria and Iran.

There is full cooperation between the Jordanian and Israeli armies, including visits by officers, the handing over of information, and coordinated activity along the border, under the assumption that radical groups are a shared enemy. In exchange for this, it is said, Israel played a part in guarding Jordan's northern and eastern borders during the years 2014-16, the period when ISIS posed a threat to Jordan.

2. Jordan is the second Arab nation to have signed a peace treaty with Israel, proving that Israel can find itself accepted in the Middle East as a sustainable country with whom former enemies can make peace by rethinking their previous positions. This could occur despite the August 1967 Khartoum Arab summit where it was declared that the Arab nations would not recognize Israel, would not negotiate with Israel and would not make peace with it. King Hussein of Jordan was a party to these decisions but carried on negotiations with Israel, recognized it and signed a peace treaty, as did Egypt before him. The obvious conclusion is that any Arab nation can do the same, making peace with Jordan a significant accomplishment,

3. There is a wide array of cooperative ties between Israel and Jordan, mostly in the economic sphere. Three issues are involved: a. Israel has a multi-billion dollar contract with Jordan according to which it sells gas extracted from Israel's Mediterranean gas fields to Jordan's electricity company; b. Israel recognized "Qualified Industrial Zones" in which Israeli funds are invested, Jordanians are employed and Americans are the buyers, providing employment for thousands of Jordanian families; c. cooperative ventures such as the Water Canal, tourism, flights, trade and academia – thousands of Israeli Arab students attend Jordanian Universities and their degrees are recognized in Israel.

In exchange for recognition, Israel granted the Hashemite Kingdom, and especially its king, special status in the Jerusalem sites considered holy by Islam, mainly the al Aqsa Mosque, giving Hussein and his son Abdullah today, a significant stamp of approval in the Islamic world. This stamp of approval is especially important in granting much-needed legitimacy to the Hashemite Kingdom. The Palestinian majority and even some Bedouin groups question that legitimacy, since the Hashemites are not originally Jordanian, having come from the western section of the Arabian Peninsula, Hijaz, where the two Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina are located.

The British gave the Transjordan Emirate to Abdullah I, great grandfather of today's Abdullah. He is considered a foreign transplant, giving rise to questions of legitimate rule, and the special status at al Aqsa is intended to give him a shot of legitimacy, stabilizing his regime. The king pays the salaries of hundreds of Jerusalem Waqf officials.

Another payment Israel took upon itself is the handing over of 50 million cubic meters of drinkable water to Jordan every year. The plan was to bring this water from the Sea of Galilee, but the drought of the last few years has lowered the level of the water in the lake, so Israel has substituted expensive desalinated water instead. Jordanian agriculture in the Jordan Valley is made possible in part because of this Israeli water.

All the points raised here give Israel the feeling that the peace agreement with Jordan is successful, certainly more successful than the one with Egypt, with whom there is much less cooperation on non-security related issues. Israel's payment for this by handing over water and securing Jordan's status in Jerusalem is one Israel can handle in exchange for the premise that peace with Jordan serves Israeli interests. All the parties to Israel's government are united in supporting the maintenance of peace with Jordan at all costs.

Where did we go wrong?

The first and main point is that Israel ignores the fact that the peace agreement is totally dependent on the continuation of the illegitimate Hashemite dynasty. In 1994 that meant Hussein, today it is Abdullah II, but the future is unclear, because there are quite a few people in Jordan and outside it who see Abdullah as the last Hashemite monarch. What comes next? There are several possible answers to that query, ranging from a military junta made up of local Bedouin ruling the various populations, on to a civil war that leads to the country splitting in two, with a Palestinian state rising in the northwestern part of the country where there is a Palestinian Arab majority.

It is no secret that the Palestinian majority in Jordan is opposed to the peace treaty with Israel. One reason is the recognition a treaty grants Israel and another is the fact that it does not include the so-called "right of return" of the 1948 refugees to within Israeli borders, including compensation for the possessions they left behind them and the years of suffering they underwent in refugee camps.

The Palestinian majority in Jordan feels no commitment to the peace agreement; it was signed by King Hussein, not by them. For this reason, most of the professional associations in Jordan – lawyers, journalists, doctors and others – do not allow their members to partner with Israelis. Most of their members are Palestinian Arabs who see the peace agreement as the result of the king's betrayal of their cause.

The peace agreement upon which Israel and Jordan are signed and everything Israel has paid, is paying and is willing to pay to preserve and guard that peace will be utterly worthless the day a rebellion breaks out against the king, or some assassin or suicide bomber, G-d forbid, succeeds in killing him. The house of cards Israel built around him will collapse instantaneously, the peace agreement and any others signed in its wake will become fond memories. Whoever takes the king's place will restart the process and expect Israel to pay even more than it had originally paid – that is, if the country remains united. If that new leader is a Palestinian Arab, the price will entail the return of a significant number of 1948 refugees to the state of Israel, not to the Palestinian State that may exist by then.

The king knows full well that the possibility that he could be assassinated by a Palestinian Arab, as his great grandfather was in 1951 in Jerusalem, is not farfetched. That is the reason his armed bodyguards are not Arabs, but members of the Circassian ethnic minority who stem from the Caucasian Mountain region and do not have their eyes on the throne, meaning that they are not suspected of planning to murder the king or poison his food. The king's mistrust of the Palestinian Arabs, who make up the majority of his subjects, has led him to keep them out of the armed forces, police, foreign ministry and especially from internal security organizations and intelligence.

There are several Palestinian Arabs in the government and parliament who serve as token representatives, but the majority of them know exactly what the Hashemites think of the majority of Jordan's citizenry, those who define themselves as Palestinians – never calling themselves Jordanians because that is used for Bedouin, viewed as lower class by the Palestinians, who are farmers and city dwellers.

The Palestinian Arabs in Jordan are the economic engine of the country. They make up most of the merchants, manufacturers, businessmen, lawyers, accountants, academics, journalists, arts and media personalities, and they generally avoid contact with Israel and Israelis. They conduct a consistent and strict boycott of Israel. The king respects their position for two reasons: One, he has no way to force the peace agreement upon them, and two, he is quite content to show Israel that the peace agreement is not secure because of Palestinian opposition, allowing him to demand more and more from Israel in order to guard its interests and keep the king in power.

The cost of the peace agreement to Israel is prohibitive. First, Israel respects the status it granted the kingdom in Jerusalem, even though there is no precedent in the entire world for a sovereign state granting another country special rights in its capital city on that state's most holy site. In 1994, when this was decided during the peace talks, Israel wasn't worried about Hussein who hated Arafat and agreed with Israel that there must never be a Palestinian state. The status Israel granted him on the Temple Mount was in order to prevent Arafat and the Islamic Movement from taking over the site.

King Abdullah II has turned Jordanian policy around and is an ardent supporter of the establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria., one that will be able to look over at Israel and threaten it with missiles and short range mortars that hit from Dimona and Beer Sheva in the south, up along the coastal plain from Ashkelon, the Ashdod port, greater Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion airport, to Haifa and its port and all the way to Afula and Beit She'an. Long range weapons will threaten all the rest of Israel. Abdullah is actively creating a strategic threat to the state of Israel that will most probably be ruled by Hamas, which won most of the seats in the Palestinian legislature in 2006 and led a violent takeover of Gaza in 2007. Abdullah would like to see these scenarios repeat themselves, a most realistic possibility.

King Abdullah displayed his hostility towards Israel overty in two recent events. This past March he freed the Jordanian soldier who, in cold blood, murdered seven school girls from Beit Shemesh in 1997 as they took part in a class trip to the "Peace Island" (!!!) in Naharayim. His father, King Hussein, came to pay a condolence visit to the families in Beit Shemesh, while his son let the murderer go free. What price did he pay for this slap in the face to Israel? Zilch. Nothing.

Jordan acts against Israel as a matter of course in international circles, especially UNESCO and the UN Human Rights Council, two places that constantly attempt to delegitimize Israel. Jordan encourages and pushes for the decisions that deny Jewish tradition in Jerusalem, undermining the historical and religious foundations for the existence of the Jewish State. This is meant to spread the feeling in the world that Israel's establishment is a result of British colonialism, one that must be cancelled so that "Falestin" is restored to its "historical owners" – the Palestinians. Abdullah, like the Palestinian Arabs, thinks that if he succeeds in removing Jerusalem from the State of Israel, the resulting demoralization will send the Jews packing.

Establishing a Palestinian Arab state that will threaten Israel's security and destroy the Jewish state, is the strategic objective of King Abdullah, because it will prevent a Palestinian State from arising in Jordan. If a Palestinian state is created in the hills of Judea and Samaria, the king intends to get rid of all the Palestinian refugees who entered Jordan in the 1948 war, about one and a half million people, plus several hundred thousand who entered Jordan over the last seventy years. Demographic pressure in the Palestinian state will become terrorist pressure that turns life in Israel into Hell - exactly what Abdullah wants.

He coordinates his activities with Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas, seeing eye to eye with them on the main goal – destroying Israel in order to save the Hashemite Kingdom from becoming a nation of Palestinians.

We would do well to remember what most of us have long forgotten: The clueless group of irresponsible Israeli politicians who gave Jordan its unconditional and unlimited special status in Jerusalem is the same group whose idiotic policies brought terrorist Arafat back from the garbage bin of politicians in Tunisia and granted him the closest thing to a state, The stars of this stellar group included Shimon Peres, Yossi Beilin and Alon Liel,who dragged Yitzchak Rabin into the most dangerous poitical trap, endangering the continued existence of the State of Israel.

Jordan today, it must be concluded, is working non-stop behind the cover of its peace treaty with Israel to destroy the Jewish State and create a Palestinian one instead. What is worse is that Israel refuses to admit to the situation and continues most carefully to keep the agreement, hoping calm will prevail along the border until the next elections. Every politician knows that if, during his term, relations with Jordan deteriorate, the media – our shallow, slanted and agenda-ridden media – will accuse him of being the cause of the agreement's nullification, making him pay the price in the next round of elections. That is why politicians bolster up the temporary tactical quiet, ignoring the strategic threat to the very existence of the state posed by the peace agreement.

If Israel's leaders felt endangered by the actions of Abdullah, they would do something to prevent his destructive activities, cleverly disguised as military and economic cooperation. The problem is that in their view, short term tactical advantages are preferable to attending to strategic problems that affect the long term. We are all going to pay a high price for this way of running things on the part of Israel's decision makers – as can be seen by the security equipment crisis last month in Jerusalem.

King Hussein was all for Israel's continued existence and did not question Jerusalem 's status. That's why peace with him was positive in general. His son Abdullah changed his father's strategy and works tirelessly to create a Palestinian state on the ruins of the destroyed Jewish one. Now that King Abdullah's nefarious scheme has been revealed, Israel must rethink its Jordanian route and work to create a Palestinian Arab state in all or part of Jordan, since the majority of the people there are Palestinian Arabs.

The alternative is establishing a Palestinian state on Israeli territory with its capital in Eastern Jerusalem, a strategic danger to Israel.

There is no reason that the Jewish people, who returned to its land after 2000 years of exile, should pay with its very existence for the survival of the Hashemites brought by the British from Hijaz to rule the most artificial country in the world – Jordan.