Tired of listening to the PC
driven whose culture has
been appropriated?
===
Obama is the first 'war' president unwilling to place a name tag on the enemy. (See 1 below.)
===
No surprise to me. (See 2 below.)
From a dear friend and fellow memo reader in response to my prior memo: "Hi Dick,
Thanks for the material you have sent to consider. I too am very concerned with the way American Jews are distancing themselves from Israel. While many, particularly younger Jews, have become critical of Israel and its treatment of the Arab population, they ignore the basic premise of most Palistinians that Israel simply has no right to exist and should therefore be destroyed. I challenge any country, when faced with that intention by its immediate neighbor, to do better for that neighbor than Israel has done.
From my perspective, there is a very basic misunderstanding of how simply miserable the people of the "Occupied territories" truly are. I have been to Israel quite often and marvel at the progress that has been made, despite the inclusion of a huge population that do not consider themselves to be citizens.
They accept the benefits...education, housing, medical...but that's it. They don't add a whit to the value of the country and God forbid, they will not part with their Israel ID card.
I think that some of the issues among younger Jews is that they have never lived at a time where there was no Israel. And they are very comfortable in America as Jews but are slowly distancing themselves from the faith as well. And they have never experienced first hand, anti-Semitism. A--"
My response: "Youth is wasted on the young and those who are politically blind only see what they want."
Finally, a response to the review I previously posted by Elliot Abrams. (See 3 below.)
==Finally, a response to the review I previously posted by Elliot Abrams. (See 3 below.)
A warning that will probably not be heeded until too late. (See 4 below.)
===
St Paul Minneapolis schools have become a war zone. Why? Because the authority replaced discipline in pursuit of equality thanks to the preachings of our community organizer president. (See 5 below.)
===
Again, I hope you will come meet Peter Muller, at our home, April 30 at 4PM. Peter is running against the incumbent for a Chatham County Circuit Judge Position. Marolyn Overton is also joining in with her invitees.
===
Dick
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1)
Dr. Sebastian Gorka: We Will Lose a 'Winnable' War Against Jihad If We Refuse to 'Talk About the Enemy as They Are'
By John Hayward
Breitbart News National Security Editor Dr. Sebastian Gorka, author of Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War, appeared on Breitbart News Sunday to answer host Stephen K. Bannon’s challenge that, contrary to the title, his book doesn’t make the war against jihad sound very “winnable” at all.
Gorka said he was motivated to write the book because he has seen “sixteen years of right-wing Administrations and left-wing Administrations punt the ball, or completely drop the ball, on this war.”
“But we can win it, if we have the leadership,” he contended, saying his book contains “the recipe to win this war rapidly.”
Gorka argued that the “history of modern jihad” began in 1979. “If you want to understand September 11th, if you want to understand the Boston bombing, the Ft. Hood massacre, the recent massacre in San Bernardino, the recent attack in Brussels, it all begins in 1979,” he said.
“It begins with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that triggers the first organization that predates al-Qaeda, which was the Arab Services Bureau, the mujahadeen. That’s where al-Qaeda begins in 1979. Then we have the Iranian revolution, hugely important because we have one nation-state that says Islam can be re-integrated into politics. It’s the Shia, yes, but this is a model for all Muslims: we can create theocracies, and be successful, and reject the Western model of politics,” Gorka continued.
He added a third highly significant event from that era, which most Americans haven’t heard of: “Three hundred jihadis, in 1979, armed with automatic weapons, sieged and captured the most important site in all of Islam, the Grand Mosque at Mecca. And it is the consequences of that siege, in which the Saudi regime signed a pact with the devil, if you will, with the extremist fundamentalist clerics in Saudi Arabia — that’s where it all begins.”
The understanding between the Saudi regime and jihadis had the effect of turning both violent terrorism and Islamist ideology outward, buying peace for the Saudis at the rest of the world’s expense. As Bannon noted, the siege was also a huge media event across the Muslim world, giving the radicals who captured the Grand Mosque a platform to express their beliefs and win converts.
Gorka proposed two reasons why the Western media has never assigned the proper historical significance to the siege of Mecca: it’s too complicated to explain for a mainstream press interested primarily in quick sound bites, and it reflects poorly on America’s nominal ally, Saudi Arabia.
“We made a strategic decision after World War II that Saudi Arabia would be our partner, would be our so-called ally, so we don’t want to talk about the fact that Saudi Arabia is, in part, responsible for the export of the most totalitarian ideology active today, which is global jihadism,” he said.
“During the siege, the King managed to identify the fact that these aren’t just a bunch of Koran-beating yahoos. These 300 jihadis had the blessing, had the support, of key members of the Saudi clerical class, the ulamaa, the wise theologians – who said, ‘yep, Islam’s lost its way, we’re surrounded by apostates, the King is a puppet of the West, and we need a holy war to cleanse Islam,’” Gorka explained. “When the King found that out, he invited these clerics to the palace for a little chat, and he said to them, ‘Gentlemen, I know who you are, and I know your connection to these jihadis. Let me offer you a deal. If you guarantee for me that my nation — my country, Saudi Arabia, and my family — will never, ever be threatened again by this kind of extremist violence, this jihadism, you will become the court ulamaa. You will become the clerics to the House of Saud. You, your sons, and your grandsons will have jobs for life.’”
Crucially, the Saudi monarchy also offered the help finance the export of jihad ideology around the world, “and for the last 25 years, we have been paying the price for that deal,” Gorka said, counting among those toxic imports Salafism, Wahabbi Islam, and the Deobandi sect, which is far more influential in European and American mosques than most outsiders realize.
Gorka said it was crucial for Western leaders to “jettison this fantasy that you hear all the time, after 9/11, that Islam needs a ‘Reformation.’” As he explained, the Christian Reformation was driven by the urge to “get back to basics,” such as studying the Bible and developing a fundamental understanding of the faith. That is precisely the message of the Islamic “extremists” and jihadis of today. In their eyes, they are the Reformation.
The “dirty little secret that nobody wants to tell you,” as Gorka put it, is that the Islamist ideology of al-Qaeda or ISIS “is not fundamentally un-Islamic because it is the Seventh Century interpretation of Islam that comes straight from the Koran.”
“The second half of the Koran is uber-violent. It’s about killing infidels,” he explained. “As a result, we don’t need more reformation to get back to basics because then we will empower the jihadis.”
In order to cut through political correctness and Washington static, Gorka had a provocative request for listeners: “Every American citizen who cares about the republic, after 9/11, you don’t have an excuse. Buy a Koran. Don’t listen to the conventional wisdoms that are being spewed out by the mainstream media. Go to the primary source, and make a judgment for yourself about this religion.”
He also stressed the importance of understanding that, unlike the Bible and most other religious texts, the Koran is meant to be the unchallengeable word of God, dictated to Mohammed by the archangel Gabriel, rather than a series of stories and prophetic revelations that might be subject to reinterpretation by later authorities. Gorka suggested it might be helpful to think of the entire Koran as if it were the Ten Commandments — except, of course, that the Koran is much more comprehensive, detailed, and particular than the rather terse Commandments.
In a similar vein, he challenged the common talking point that “jihad” refers to constructive, non-violent internal struggles against temptation by noting that on “twelve times as many occasions in the Koran, when the word ‘jihad’ is used, it’s not about peaceful inner striving,” but instead describes “martial war, kinetic war, defeating and suppressing the enemy until they convert to the One True Faith, or until you have successfully destroyed them.”
He noted that jihad is certainly understood that way by terrorists and Islamist leaders, such as ISIS, which waged an aggressive war of conquest to re-establish the Islamic “caliphate” abolished by Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk a century ago.
“The Islamic State now holds territory in multiple countries of the Middle East and Africa,” Gorka observed. “This is stunning. They hold territory in Iraq, in Libya, in Syria, and now Boko Haram has become part of the caliphate, which means anything that belongs to Boko Haram in Nigeria is part of the new caliphate. That means we have more than six million people living on the territory of the new Islamic empire.” He further noted that empire boasts some 76,000 fighters, many of them foreign recruits, and is making between $2 million and $4 million per day, with income streams ranging from banditry to legal taxation.
In Gorka’s estimation, the refusal of Western political leaders to understand the unique nature of Islam, and the significance of such historic events as the Grand Mosque siege, lies at the heart of the leadership vacuum that might cause us to lose the war against jihad, despite our enormous military, technological, and economic advantages.
For example, Western leaders have deliberately blinded themselves to the penetration of Western mosques by radical imams, refusing to ask critical questions about where immigrant clerics were educated. Gorka said the Obama Administration is also politically aligned against one of the few successful examples of de-radicalization in the Middle East, the “coup” conducted against the Muslim Brotherhood by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt.
“We have to support those regimes, whether it’s Egypt or whether it’s King Abdullah in Jordan, who have a different understanding of Islam and modernity,” Gorka urged. “We need more people like Ataturk — people who say, ‘Look, I’m the democratically elected head of this country, and I don’t care what the Koran says about killing infidels right now. We don’t do that because we like America, we like the West, and I’m going to tell you what Islam is.’ The State Department doesn’t like to hear that because they want to have freedom of religion, but if you’re dealing with Islam that has a Seventh Century original version that is violent, we cannot do that.”
The Department of Homeland Security doesn’t like to hear that, either. Gorka related an astonishing story of being approached by a DHS official, after he delivered an eight-hour presentation on jihad to law-enforcement officials, who told him the real threat facing America was not Islamist terror but “right-wing extremists” and offered the 21-year-old Oklahoma City bombing as evidence of this imminent threat.
“I doubt the average law-enforcement officer, or American taxpayer, would agree with the government line in Washington,” he observed.
Gorka compared that government line on Islamism to the authorities informing American troops to avoid potentially offensive terms like “Nazi” as they were preparing to storm the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, or the authorities in the Fifties telling law enforcement to avoid terms like “white supremacist” when dealing with the Ku Klux Klan because they were really just “misguided Democrats.”
“Today we can’t use the world ‘jihad.’ We can’t talk about religion. It is banned. And if you can’t talk about the enemy, you will not win,” he warned.
It’s no laughing matter that the enemy shares no such reticence when it comes to discussing us. Gorka discusses Islamist godfather Sayyid Qutb and his landmark book Milestones, which can be downloaded in its entirety from The Gorka Briefing. He remarked on how Qutb offered a savage critique of America as a land of decadence that had to be destroyed by the jihad –and he was writing in the 1950s, after visiting idyllic, wholesome small towns in the West. Qutb’s work is almost universally read by jihadis, who, he noted, tend to be far better educated and deliberate in their ideology than the U.S. State Department gives them credit for.
“It is a totalitarian ideology that defines itself against us,” Gorka said of jihad. “We are the antithesis. Everything America stands for — individual liberty, based on the dignity of the human being made in the image of God — that is what must be destroyed or enslaved. This is not random acts of violence. It has a plan. It has a strategy.”
In other words, and in summation, jihadis believe they are in a war, and they believe they have a workable strategy to win it. Those are the two elements most sorely missing from the West’s political leadership, which, Gorka noted, does not like to speak in terms of defeating a jihadist enemy and is often profoundly uncomfortable with using terms like “enemy,” “victory,” or “war.”
“Think about one thing. This is provocative, but I believe it. Why do we have 22 vets commit suicide every 24 hours in America?” Gorka asked. “Why do we have unprecedented levels of PTSD in this nation? Our grandfathers saw some bad stuff in World War II, especially in the Pacific, especially when they liberated the death camps. But when they came home in the 1950s, they didn’t eat the barrel of a 1911. Why? Because they knew they were on the side of the angels. Their President, their commander, told them, ‘This is a war against evil, and what you are going to see may be nasty, but it’s okay, guys, you’re on the side of Right.’ We don’t say that any more.”
“If we don’t have a sense of victory, if we don’t talk about the enemy as they are, we could lose this war,” Gorka warned before sadly concluding that Europe, from whence he hails, has already lost it. “America is ten years behind Europe, if you look at the threat internally, and not just from terrorism… We’ve got, tops, five years. If the next Administration doesn’t go to war — with our Muslim allies — against the jihadists, we could lose this, either kinetically, or from the inside through subversion. Five years, maximum.”
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2)
Is Israel forming an alliance with Egypt and Saudi Arabia?
By Ben Caspit
Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud (L) welcomes Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at Riyadh International Airport, Nov. 10, 2015.
(photo by FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/Getty Images)
Egypt's April 9 announcement of the transfer of two islands, Tiran and Sanafir, to Saudi Arabian sovereignty came as a complete surprise to many in the Middle East. The only country that was not surprised was Israel. A top-level official in Jerusalem told Al-Monitor on April 12 that Israel had been privy to the secret negotiations. Israel had given its approval to the process and did not ask to reopen the peace agreement with Egypt, even though the agreement dictates that any territorial change or transfer of Egyptian sovereignty of lands that Israel gave back to other hands constitutes a violation of the treaty.
Talks between Saudi Arabia and Egypt on the transfer of these islands have been going on for years, with Israel firmly opposing the move. The fact that the transfer has now earned Israeli support reflects the depth of the shared interests between the three sides: Cairo, Riyadh and Jerusalem — although the Egyptians and Saudis prefer the label “Tel Aviv.”
This is a real geostrategic and diplomatic drama. Former Shin Bet chief Knesset member Avi Dichter of the Likud Party said on April 12 in an interview with the Israeli Kol Yisrael radio station that this step is one of the most important, dramatic diplomatic occurrences that have taken place between two Arab countries in the Middle East. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon, in a small pre-Passover celebratory toast with military reporters, updated and confirmed that Israel had, indeed, agreed to the course of action and had even received a written document, signed by all sides. The document confirmed Israel’s continued freedom of navigation in the Strait of Tiran, in which the two strategic islands are situated; the Strait of Tiran led to the important Israeli port city of Eilat. In addition, Ya’alon noted that the Americans had been partnered to the negotiations and are also signatories on the agreement. Thus, Ya’alon said, Israel had received all the requisite guarantees.
According to a senior security official, who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, Ya’alon emphasized to his associates that security cooperation between Israel and Egypt had reached an all-time high. The security systems of the two countries share the same interests. Egyptians, for instance, help Israel contain and cord off Hamas in Gaza.
The recent move — the transfer of the two islands to Saudi Arabia — reveals part of the dialogue that has been developing between Israel and its Sunni neighbors. A highly placed Israeli security official, who spoke to Al-Monitor anonymously, added some details: Israel's relationships in the region are deep and important. The moderate Arab countries have not forgotten the Ottoman period, and are very worried about the growing strength and enlargement of the two non-Arab empires of the past: Iran and Turkey. On this background, many regional players realize that Israel is not the problem, but the solution. Israel's dialogue with the large, important Sunni countries remains mainly under the radar, but it deepens all the time and it bears fruit.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's action has aroused sharp public criticism in Egypt. The president’s opponents argue that under the Egyptian Constitution he has no authority to give up Egyptian territory, but Sisi rightly warded off this criticism: These islands originally belonged to Saudi Arabia, which transferred them to Egypt in 1950 as part of the effort to strangle Israel from the south, and prevent the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from taking control of them. Israel embarked on two wars (the Sinai War in 1956 and the Six Day War in 1967) for navigation rights in the Red Sea. It took over these islands twice, but then returned them to Egypt both times. Now events have come full circle, and the Egyptians are returning the islands to their original owner, Saudi Arabia. This is a goodwill gesture from Sisi to King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, after the Saudis committed themselves to the economic solvency of the Egyptian regime for the next five years. The Saudis are making massive investments in Egypt and providing financial support to save the Egyptian economy from collapse.
There is another aspect to the Egyptian transfer of the islands to Saudi Arabia: In the past, several proposals were raised regarding regional land swaps, with the goal of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The framework is, in principle, simple: Egypt would enlarge Gaza southward and allow the Gaza Strip’s Palestinians more open space and breathing room. In exchange for this territory, Egypt would receive from Israel a narrow strip the length of the borderline between the two countries, the Israeli Negev desert region from Egyptian Sinai. The Palestinians, in contrast, would transfer the West Bank settlement blocs to Israel. Jordan could also join such an initiative; it could contribute territories of its own and receive others in exchange. To date, this approach was categorically disqualified by the Egyptians in the Hosni Mubarak era. Now that it seems that territorial transfer has become a viable possibility under the new conditions of the Middle East, the idea of Israeli-Egyptian territorial swaps are also reopened; in the past, these land swap possibilities fired the imaginations of many in the region. In his day, former head of Israel's National Security Council Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland led a regional initiative on the subject. But he was stymied by Egypt.
Still, not everything is coming up roses. There are no simple equations in the Middle East, and this holds true in this case. In Israel there are those who are concerned about the growing Saudi Arabian influence in Egypt. This is reflected in the founding of Saudi-inspired Islamic madrassas (religious Islamic schools), and Saudi-type Sunni radicalization in Egypt. But these pessimists are the minority. “It is important for Sisi to strengthen and survive, he is the key to the stability of the entire region,” said a diplomatic source in Jerusalem who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.
In light of America distancing itself from the region and the cold shoulder that Egypt has received from Washington in recent years, Saudi assistance and Israeli support to Egypt are viewed as critical to Sisi’s continued grip on the regime. And to complicate the situation even more, we can add the reconciliation attempts between Israel and Turkey; these have continued for many long months in marathon negotiations between the sides.
A highly placed Israeli official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that the Egyptians don’t want to see the Turks in the Gaza Strip, and are strongly opposed to a rapprochement between Jerusalem and Ankara. This is the reason, according to the source, that the reconciliation agreement has not yet been completed, and that there are gaps between the sides. In the current state of affairs, it is possible that the Turks and Israelis will accept the fact that they can’t come to a full agreement, and will settle for a partial rapprochement: an exchange of ambassadors, limited warming of relations and nothing more. Israel is sitting on the thorns of a dilemma: between its desire to normalize relations with Turkey, which could also facilitate the signing of an agreement to supply natural gas from Israel to Turkey, following discoveries in recent years of natural gas reserve off the Israeli coast; and its desire to promote the emerging Israeli-Sunni understandings that are becoming a strategic cornerstone in Israel’s national security.
Ben Caspit is a columnist for Al-Monitor's Israel Pulse. He is also a senior columnist and political analyst for Israeli newspapers, and has a daily radio show and regular TV shows on politics and Israel.
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3) Unspoken Reasons for the American Jewish Distancing from Israel
By Martin Kramer
Elliott Abrams has put his finger on the main cause of American Jewish “distancing” from Israel, and the answer is discouraging. He picks up on this passage from one of the two books he surveys, Dov Waxman’s Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel:
By Martin Kramer
Elliott Abrams has put his finger on the main cause of American Jewish “distancing” from Israel, and the answer is discouraging. He picks up on this passage from one of the two books he surveys, Dov Waxman’s Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel:
Perhaps the biggest reason why young American Jews tend to be more dovish and more critical of Israel is because they are much more likely than older Jews to be the offspring of intermarried couples. . . . Young American Jews whose parents are intermarried are not only more liberal than other Jews, but also significantly less attached to Israel.
Abrams rightly calls this the “crux of the matter,” and the evidence he musters from surveys is unequivocal. With a 50-to-60 percent rate of intermarriage, Jewish communal solidarity in America is steadily eroding, with regard both to religious practice and to engagement with Israel. The children of intermarriage are less in touch with everything Jewish; their “sheer indifference” to Israel, in Abrams’ phrase, has nothing to do with the “occupation.”
But let me introduce two additional demographic explanations for the “distancing,” even among American Jews who do remain affiliated and committed. When the state of Israel was established in 1948, there were six million American Jews and 700,000 Israelis: a proportion of nine to one. Israelis were those feisty little cousins, and while American Jews admired their grit, they didn’t let Israelis forget who had the numbers (and the money). When American Jewish leaders talked, Israeli leaders listened—and when the two parties disagreed, the burden of proof fell on the Israelis.
What a difference 70 years have made! Over that time, the number of American Jews has hardly budged, due to low fertility and intermarriage. In Israel, by contrast, the number of Jews has increased almost tenfold through immigration and high fertility. The result is that today, the ratio of American to Israeli Jews is one-to-one—about six million in each country. In another twenty years, there will be well over eight million Jews in Israel, and probably fewer than six million in America. And these Israelis are economically prosperous and militarily powerful in ways no one could have foretold in 1948.
American Jews are rightly proud of the important role they played in Israel’s transformation, and Israelis are grateful for it. But as Abrams admits, American Jewry “is in significant ways growing weaker.” Demographic stagnation and geographic dispersion aren’t just taking their toll within the community; they are eroding Jewish political clout more broadly.
So it is hardly surprising that, from the prime minister down, Israelis entrusted with the exercise of sovereign power are less attentive to what American Jews think Israel should do. Israeli Jews have worked out a successful survival strategy, and while it’s not perfect, the numbers don’t lie. The American Jewish survival strategy is struggling. As Abrams concludes, the day won’t be long in coming when the Jewish state will have to assume the direct burden of sustaining Jewish communal identity in America, “for Israel’s sake and for ours.”
Old patterns in relationships die hard. It’s not easy for many American Jews to recognize the stupendous shift in the balance, and when they don’t, this is often expressed in disappointment, disillusionment, and even dissociation from Israel. These are the discontents of gradual decline. Israelis should empathize with the deeper dilemma of American Jewry, but it should surprise no one that they discount some of its symptoms, and certainly don’t intend to change their own national priorities in a futile attempt to alleviate them.
There is another demographic reason for “distancing.” In 1948, American and Israeli Jews were landslayt. They or their parents had come out of the same cities, towns, and shtetls of Europe. American Jews looked at Israeli Jews like family, and often they were: almost everyone in Israel had some (allegedly rich) uncle or cousin in America. True, other Jews began to arrive in the 1950s, as refugees from Arab and Muslim lands. But they were mostly out of sight in immigrant refugee camps and development towns. As for the political leaders, most were born in Russia or Poland—from David Ben-Gurion through Golda Meir, Menachem Begin through Yitzḥak Shamir. Levi Eshkol could hardly refrain from slipping into Yiddish in cabinet meetings. They all hailed from what Irving Howe called “the world of our fathers.”
All that has changed. Today, over half of all Israeli Jews identify themselves as being of Sephardi or Mizraḥi descent; less than half, of European or American descent. (Were it not for the immigration from the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the Ashkenazi share would be closer to a third.) Israelis today just don’t look as much like family to American Jews, 90 percent of whom are of Ashkenazi descent.
Because Israeli Jews are drawn from a wider spectrum of cultures, everything else about them is more diverse. Jewish religious practice, despite the formal monopoly of Orthodox, is more varied in Israel than in the United States. Nor are the historical legacies that inform politics limited to the Holocaust, so central to American Jewish identity. The forced Jewish flight from Arab and Muslim lands is just as relevant, and explains much of the present skew of Israeli politics with regard to the Palestinian Arabs.
On top of this, about 70 percent of Israeli Jews are Israeli-born. Israel is no longer primarily a nation of immigrants. The hybrid Hebrew-language culture nourished by native-born Jewish Israelis isn’t easy to pin down in a sentence, but it’s a lot edgier than the dominant culture of the blue-state suburbs where most of American Jewry resides.
One reason is that those suburbs are more peaceful and stable than any environment in the history of humankind since Adam. Israel, in contrast, sits on the crust of the world’s most active geopolitical fault line. It isn’t that American Jews are from Venus and Israeli Jews are from Mars. It’s that they reside on opposite ends of planet Earth, one nearing perpetual peace, the other leaning toward perpetual war.
So an American Jew, disembarked at Ben-Gurion airport for the first time, might have to stretch his or her imagination quite a bit to see Israelis as “my people” and Israel as “my homeland.” For some significant number of American Jews, indeed, this is precisely what makes contemporary Israel so exhilarating. If there is any meaning to ahavat Yisrael, love of the Jewish people, it is solidarity not with Jews who look and think like you, but precisely with those who don’t.
But other American Jews, seeing shifts in Israel that suggest to them the neighborhood may be changing, begin, as it were, to move out. Israel has become too this or too that, things seem more black than white, the people there sound too uncouth. The next thing you know, “progressive” American Jews are moving their Jewish identity elsewhere—to some place where they never have to rub elbows with people whose “Jewish values” differ from their own.
It’s not tragic: Israel will make good the loss elsewhere, through its own spectacular growth and the forging of new friendships. But it’s sad that there are Jews in America, however few or many, who do not stand in pure wonder that they live in a time when there exists a Jewish sovereign state. They would like a different one.
They must have millennia to spare.
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4) 'What is happening in the Middle East will happen in Europe'
By Robert Spencer
At last, a true bishop. Compare Isa Gürbüz, a man who isn’t afraid to face inconvenient truths, with Pope Francis and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who delude themselves and their people with soothing and suicidal falsehoods, telling themselves and those whom they should be warning and protecting that Islam is a Religion of Peace and that the cure for what ails the West is an inundation of Muslim migrants. Isa Gürbüz sees the future they are inviting, and sees why future generations of free people, if there are any, will regard them as dupes who helped bring about the destruction of Western civilization.
“‘What is happening in the Middle East will happen in Europe,'” translated from “Was im Nahen Osten geschieht, wird auch in Europa passieren”, Tages Anzeiger, April 14, 2016 (thanks to Othmar):
“‘What is happening in the Middle East will happen in Europe,'” translated from “Was im Nahen Osten geschieht, wird auch in Europa passieren”, Tages Anzeiger, April 14, 2016 (thanks to Othmar):
Isa Gürbüz, the Syrian Orthodox Church leader in Switzerland, calls Christians to be vigilant. The agenda of Islam is to take power.
“In 20 or 30 years there will be a Muslim majority in Europe. Half of European women will then wear a hijab.” This prediction doesn’t come from Michel Houellebecq or Thilo Sarrazin, but from Dionysos Isa Gürbüz, the Syrian Orthodox bishop in Switzerland. He resides in the idyllic Lake Zug Arth Capuchin monastery, with two monks and two nuns. From the monastery Mor Avgin, as it is called today, he oversees the 10,000 Syrian Orthodox faithful in Switzerland and 4,000 in Austria.
Isa Gürbüz is busy preparing for the Easter services, which are celebrated in his church in late April. Then his coreligionists will flock in the hundreds to Arth. Together they will pray, sing and debate – in the Aramaic native language, the sacred language that Jesus spoke. The Syrian Orthodox Church is the oldest of all. In her home in the former Mesopotamia, today Syria and Iraq, they are persecuted. “Arth has therefore become a center for the preservation of our endangered religion and culture,” says Gürbüz.
The fate of the Christians preoccupies the bishop.
Easter joy may not come easily for the bishop. He is too busy with the fate of Christians in the Middle East: “What today has caused thousands to join the terrorist groups of IS, Taliban or al-Qaida, is the extension of the genocide of 1915.” At that time nearly two million Christians – Aramean, Syrian and Greek Orthodox – perished, and millions converted to Islam. The Bishop continues: “What is happening to us today began 1,300 years ago.” In the 7th century, the genocide of Christians began, then in the darkness, now in the media spotlight. The agenda of Islam has remained always the same to him, namely to expel the Christians from the Middle East. Also in the coming years, the spirit of terror will reign there.
UN protection zone for Christians
The 51-year-old bishop comes, as do most Syrian Orthodox Christians living in Switzerland, from the eastern part of Turkey, which formerly belonged to Syria. Living at Turkey’s border with Syria at the beginning of the century were still 230,000 Syrians; today there are virtually none left. Turkey is the enemy of Christians, says Isa Gürbüz. He was first a monk at the famous monastery of Mor Gabriel, left in 1989, and then went Southeast to teach Syrian and liturgy at the theological seminary in Damascus. In 1997, he became the first Syrian Orthodox bishop in Germany, before he came to Arth a decade ago….
…Isa Gürbüz can hardly imagine a future Syria without Assad. A better man is not easy to find, he said. Before the war, Syria was the only country in the Middle East where Christians were left undisturbed to live their faith. “If Assad is eliminated, the same thing could happen as in Iraq, where after the fall of Saddam Hussein, democracy failed and Islamist groups took over the reins.” The Arab Spring was for Isa Gürbüz just a game, an interlude. “Because Islam ultimately accepts no democracy, but wants to impose Sharia law.”
The bishop is traumatized by the persecution in the Middle East, so that for him it is a matter of urgency to call for vigilance, especially to churches that are intent on political correctness. It is naive to think that the millions of refugees who are now coming to Europe via Turkey will all adapt and live with the Christians in Europe in peace. Also among the refugees there are terrorists. “Why have the Gulf states, the Emirates and Qatar not taken any refugees?” Because it is their agenda to convert Europe to Islam.
Isa Gürbüz already sees Eurabia in the mind’s eye: the number of Muslims with many children will grow rapidly, will take power and will begin the persecution, he believes. “What is happening today in the Middle East will happen here in Europe.” He do not call for hatred, insists the bishop. Only for him, 1,300 years of history of persecution have taught him not to trust Muslims. He sees the beginnings of fateful proselytizing in Europe by Wahhabi Saudi Arabia and the Turkish Ministry of Religion Diyanet, in mosques in this country….
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5)Mayhem in the Classroom
The most dangerous places in St. Paul, Minnesota, these days may not be the city’s tough East Side or Frogtown neighborhoods, but its public schools.
5)Mayhem in the Classroom
St. Paul's disastrous quest for 'equity' in school discipline.
The most dangerous places in St. Paul, Minnesota, these days may not be the city’s tough East Side or Frogtown neighborhoods, but its public schools.
At Como Park and Humboldt high schools, police have been called to quell riots involving dozens of students. At Central High School, a teacher was body-slammed by a student and hospitalized with a traumatic brain injury. "Classroom invasions" by students settling private scores have become a fact of life.
At elementary schools, meanwhile, out-of-control kids overturn chairs and attack their classmates, as teachers stand by helplessly. A teacher caught in a fistfight between two fifth-grade girls was knocked to the ground with a concussion.
Public schools should be among our communities' safest places. Why do St. Paul's schools increasingly resemble Lord of the Flies?
The transformation dates from 2011, when superintendent Valeria Silva launched her "Strong Schools, Strong Communities" initiative. The plan sought to engineer a dramatic reduction in the suspension rate for black students, who here, as nationally, are far more likely to be suspended than white students.
Silva's "Strong Schools" initiative was at the forefront of the crusade for racial "equity"—a top priority of the Barack Obama administration's Department of Education. Equity in this context does not mean fairness, but racial statistical parity in school discipline rates, regardless of students' actual conduct.
Equity proponents claim that teachers' racial biases are the primary cause of the discipline gap. Silva maintains that "defiance, disrespect and disruption" are "subjective" student behaviors, which teachers perceive and punish in discriminatory ways.
Silva's campaign to eliminate racial disparities had two components. First, she retained a "diversity" consultant called the Pacific Educational Group—at a cost of at least $2 million to date—to compel teachers to confront their "white privilege" and develop "a true appreciation" of their students' cultural "differences."
Second, she dropped meaningful penalties for student misconduct. That signaled to kids they could wreak havoc with impunity. For example, "continual willful disobedience" was removed as an offense punishable by suspension in 2012. The new plan provided that disruptive students generally just chat with a behavior "specialist" before returning to class, or be moved to another classroom or school, where they would likely act up again.
The Obama administration now aims to impose Silva-style discipline policies at schools across the nation. Longtime secretary of education Arne Duncan made clear that his department considered racial differences in discipline rates "simply unacceptable" and a violation of "the principle of equity." "It is adult behavior that needs to change," he declared in 2014. The Department of Education is investigating a number of school districts on equity grounds and threatens to sue or withhold federal funds if racial numbers don't match up.
The results of this campaign are on display in St. Paul. In the words of one teacher: "We have a segment of kids who consider themselves untouchable."
At the city's high schools, packs of kids—who come to school for free breakfasts, lunches, and WiFi—roam uncontrolled through the halls. A City Pages article related this revealing anecdote: At Harding Senior High School, a petite female teacher—who has been attacked, threatened with death, and smashed into a shelf by marauding teens—now instructs her students to use a "secret knock" to enter her classroom to keep invaders at bay.
At elementary schools, kids spew obscenities, beat up classmates, and upend trash cans. One parent told City Pages that on a visit to her second-grader's classroom, she saw anarchy so extreme that it took the teacher an hour and a half to read two pages to the class
A few brave teachers have taken their concerns to the St. Paul school board. But those who criticize publicly must be prepared to pay a price.
Roy Magnuson, an outspoken high school teacher, says that school authorities' reflexive response is to accuse critics like him of being against racial equity. Aaron Benner, a black teacher who has voiced concerns, was branded a racist by the local NAACP. Benner says he was pressured out of the district and now works at a charter school.
The greatest victims of "equity" rules are the disproportionately poor and minority students who must struggle to learn in increasingly chaotic classrooms. Minnesota's racial achievement gap—already one of the nation's widest—will likely continue to grow until policies change.
Equity proponents blame teacher bias for the racial discipline gap and claim that discriminatory treatment contributes to a "school-to-prison pipeline." But a 2014 study in the Journal of Criminal Justice—which utilized a large national data set and was one of the first to assess student misbehavior longitudinally—found that "the racial gap in suspensions was completely accounted for by a measure of the prior problem behavior of the student." That problem behavior manifests itself in many ways. Nationally, for example, black males between 14 and 17—high-school-aged—commit homicide at 10 times the rate of their white and Hispanic peers combined.
The most significant problem behind the racial discipline gap is taboo to mention. Nationally, 71 percent of black children are born out of wedlock. For white children, the figure is 29 percent. While the city of St. Paul will not release out-of-wedlock data, Intellectual Take-out—a Minnesota-based public policy institution—determined through a FOIA request that a jaw-dropping 87 percent of births to black, U.S.-born mothers in St. Paul are out-of-wedlock, compared with 30 percent of white births
Research makes clear that young people in fatherless homes are far more likely to engage in antisocial behavior than their peers. Tragically, the problem we face is best characterized not as a "school-to-prison pipeline," but as a "home-to-prison pipeline."
If we continue to ignore family breakdown and excuse disruption and defiance as mere "cultural differences," we will undermine the ability of well-behaved students to learn and drive good teachers from urban schools. If we lead disruptive kids to believe their misconduct has no adverse consequences, we will give them a distorted vision of reality that prevents their ever becoming productive, law-abiding citizens.
Katherine Kersten is a senior policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment in Minneapolis.
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