Former U.S. National Security Advisor Asks Why British Royals Refuse to Visit Israel

By Shiryn Ghermezian

The British royal family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, June 2013. Photo: Carfax2 via Wikimedia Commons.

A senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), in an article published Thursday, asked why Britain’s Royal Family refuses to visit Israel when they make frequent stops throughout the Arab world.
“In just the month of November 2014 we found Prince Andrew and Prince Harry at what the Foreign Office must have considered a diplomatic necessity: the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix,” wrote Elliott Abrams, who worked in both the administrations of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. “Prince Andrew also visited Saudi Arabia (at the request of the Foreign Office, it was announced). And Prince Harry also visited Oman.” Abrams then pointed out that the Queen has never set foot in Israel and Prince Charles visited the Jewish state only once: for Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral.
According to Abrams, there are only three “logical explanations” for the gross omission. One, he said, is that the Royal Family only likes to visit other royals and tries to stay away from republics. However, Abrams said Prince Charles visited Egypt more than once, “so there goes that theory.”
A second possible explanation is that the Royal Family fears a visit to Israel may harm the United Kingdom and its business with Arab dictators. But such reasoning is absurd, Abrams explained. “Given the current tacit alliance of Israel and the Gulf monarchies against Iran and ISIS, the likelihood that such visits would have harmed the UK is impossibly small.”
Abrams’ final suggestion is that the Royal Family won’t visit Israel because either they or the Foreign Office “harbor deep and undying enmity toward the Jewish state.”
The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank and publisher. Other CFR members include Brian Williams, Angelina Jolie and Chuck Hagel.
 algemeiner

Canadian-Israeli Woman 'Abducted by ISIS'

 

Jill Rosenberg

Facebook photo

According to unconfirmed reports on jihadist websites cited by Channel 2 News, Islamic State (aka ISIS) terrorists have captured Jill Rosenberg, a Candian-Israeli woman who volunteered to join the Kurdish fighters in Syria that are struggling with Al Qaeda in the battle for Kobane.
The reports – which have no official confirmation – said that ISIS abducted Rosenberg after it carried out three suicide attacks on rebel-held positions.
It was Voice of Israel public radio that first reported, earlier in November, that Rosenberg, 31, had joined the Kurdish fighters. She reportedly made aliyah in 2006 and served in the IDF's Home Front rescue unit. She was arrested in 2009 and extradited to the US, after being charged with taking part in an international scam which tricked American pensioners out of funds totaling $25 million.
She was convicted and sentenced to four years in jail, but was released and expelled from the US.
“I have decided to contribute my share to the Kurdish national effort,” the woman said. She told Voice of Israel that she joined the Kurdish resistance after contacting them through the internet. She claimed that she left Tel Aviv, reached Irbil in Iraq a few days later, and was then taken to the mountains near the border to be trained before being sent to fight. She has crossed the border into Syria, she added.
"I reached the IPG, a Kurdish army in the war against ISIS,” she said. “Now I am about 3,000 kilometers from ISIS.”
Asked what led her to join the Kurds, she replied: “They are our brothers. Good people who love life just like us.” She said that she is undergoing a sort of boot camp and that she has met female Kurdish fighters.
 israelnationalnews

UK: "Rupert Murdoch ... Is A Zionist Jew" & other fables as told by a party leader

Pippa Bartolotti is the fanatically anti-Israel leader of the Wales Green Party. She stood unsuccessfully for leadership of the Green Party of England and Wales in 2012 in succession to the equally anti-Israel Caroline Lucas, and, again unsuccessfully, for the European Parliament in this year's May elections.

Ms Bartolotti's speeches to the Welsh Greens (see the opening words of one in the link above, for instance) often include references to Israel, despite that having absolutely no relevance to green issues in Wales. In the video at the foot of this post (a video which consists of a 65-minute demonisation of Israel) Ms Bartolotti centres the narrative of her recent address to an audience in Newport, Gwent, as a "fundraiser evening" for the Gwent Greens, entitled "Why Gaza?" largely on her participation in the "Viva Palestina" convoy of 2010.

Here's one of the many photographs that she shows to her audience; it was taken when the convoy passed through Turin:

More: Daphne Anson blog

 

antisemitism-europe

Baroness Warsi's Obsession

By Douglas Murray

What seems odd is this obsession with Israel, with which she has no ties. Yet this Baroness, who claims to be motivated only by moral outrage, is considerably silent on the far worse moral outrages that go on day in and day out in a country with which she does have ties — of which she made a virtue while in office. Yet Baroness Warsi ignores entirely the horrific and continual human rights abuses in her own family's homeland of Pakistan. Whether it is Christians being burned alive or the practice of "bonded labor" (slavery), Warsi appears utterly unconcerned. At present, a Christian mother of four is due to be hanged for blasphemy.
What is far more important is that the obsessions and blind spots of Baroness Warsi are the obsessions and blind spots being taught to a generation.

Moral equivalence must be one of the overriding curses of our age. Even those who are capable of making moral judgements now often find it easier to make equivalences between sides than to study facts and work out who may be or right or wrong. So whenever any conflict breaks out, much of the world can be relied on – from the United Nations downwards (or upwards) – to call for a cessation of the "cycle of violence." In Britain last week, there was an especially flamboyant example of this trend, courtesy of the noble Baroness Warsi.
This is the woman who was promoted by Conservative party leader David Cameron seven years ago; once the Conservative party became the party of government in 2010, she became the first Muslim woman to attend Cabinet in Britain. She could have done an immense amount of good in that role. She could have led reformist trends within the Muslim communities in the UK. She could have acted as a demonstration that Muslims can be loyal British citizens without side clannish, religious or sectional interests overriding other interests. Instead she turned out to be a force of extraordinary regression, and someone who turned out to bang some very predictable drums.
This summer, when Israel was forced once again to engage in a highly targeted air and ground operation against Hamas terrorists in Gaza, the British government held fairly firm in support of our ally, Israel, in doing what it needed to do to a terrorist group that was kidnapping and murdering teenagers and heavily rocketing Israel.
But Baroness Warsi – who had only ever reached Cabinet because of David Cameron's personal championing – resigned in protest. She claimed in her resignation that Britain's ongoing support for Israel was morally indefensible.
It is always fascinating seeing this tug occur within the political identity of someone who presents themselves as a "progressive." Baroness Warsi's parental country of origin is Pakistan, and she made a fair amount of play during her time in office as someone who could uniquely advance the cause of Britain inside Pakistan and other Muslim-majority countries. But it was Israel that caused her to resign.
This month she cropped back up when four civilians were murdered in the most brutal fashion while praying in a synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood in West Jerusalem. This slaughter – which occurred in territory that any and every peace plan would place indisputably under Israeli jurisdiction – included the slaughter of one Druze policeman, three American rabbis, and one rabbi, Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Goldberg, who had been born in Britain and had a joint British and Israeli passport.
While the blood from the attack was still on the floor of the synagogue, Sayeeda Warsi was out of the starting gate. She began to tweet British pro-Israel groups and also, crucially, British Jewish communal figures, to express a moral equivalence between the people who had just hacked four rabbis to death while they were praying in a synagogue, and those Israelis who have been protesting that it is outrageous that the Temple Mount in Jerusalem – a site holy to both Muslims and Jews – is allowed to benefit Muslims only.
She first tweeted: "Israeli extremists storm Al Aqsa & intimidate worshippers Palestinian extremists storm synagogue & kill 4 worshippers #Tragic #peacenotwar." She then tweeted: "Both @David_Cameron & @Ed_Miliband say a Palestinian life is equal to an Israeli life so let's ALL condemn the killing on BOTH sides."
The fascinating thing is that it is all part of a pattern for the Baroness. On her Twitter feed, both before and since leaving office, she has used the networking site to micro-comment on all things Israeli. Barely a conservatory can be built in Israel without the Baroness butting in from London to condemn Israel.
As is her right, of course. Even people paid by the taxpayer to fulfill no particularly discernible purpose are free, in their downtime, to vent their opinions on Twitter. What seems odd is this obsession with Israel. It is not a country or a region with which she has any special ties. She has no reputation as an expert on the conflict, or on ending conflicts in general. Yet here she is, week in and week out, micro-commenting on Israel. Given the window onto the soul that Twitter can provide, does it seem unfair to ask why this obsession? And to raise a curious disparity.
What is odd is that this Baroness, who claims to be motivated only by moral outrage, is so silent on the considerably worse moral outrages that go on day in and day out in a country with which she does have ties — of which she made a virtue while in office.
Yet Baroness Warsi ignores entirely the horrific and continual human rights transgressions in her own family's homeland of Pakistan. Whether it is Christians being burned alive, or the practice of so-called "bonded labor" (slavery), Warsi appears utterly unconcerned.

No criticism here... Above: Baroness Warsi meets with Shahbaz Sharif, the Chief Minister of Punjab, Pakistan, in October 2012. (Image source: UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office)

There are around 350,000 Pakistanis who have become refugees since the launch of a major Pakistani military offensive in the tribal region of North Waziristan. Yet not a peep from Warsi. Nor has she bothered to find out how many Pakistanis have died as a result of air strikes. This revealing lapse occurs despite the fact that if there is one thing of which we can be sure, it is that Pakistan's military does not warn civilians in advance of an attack, as the Israeli Air Force does. As a result, Pakistan's aerial campaigns will undoubtedly be killing a far higher ratio of civilians to terrorists than in Gaza.
At present, a Christian mother in Pakistan is due to be hanged for blasphemy. I can find no stirring campaign or comment by the noble Baroness. Nor can I find any persistent campaign run by her to highlight the despicable ongoing case against a Christian woman in Pakistan, Asia Bibi, who has been charged with the capital offense of "blasphemy." And that despite the fact that there are Muslims in Britain who support the case against Asia Bibi and who could do with being opposed by a prominent British Muslim.
Why does Baroness Warsi not use her position to fight against these hourly injustices and outrages being committed in the country to which she is so closely tied? Hangings for "blasphemy," as well as the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, may be common occurrences in Pakistan, but what increasingly obsesses Warsi appears to be only Israel.
In this she is hardly alone. Making moral equivalences about Israel and her enemies today almost always goes hand in hand with a blind spot to the real human rights atrocities occurring almost everywhere else in the Middle East other than in Israel, not to mention many countries farther afield.
In many ways the story of Sayeeda Warsi is just a story about the diminution of an already diminished figure. But it also points to something far more important: the obsessions and blind spots of Baroness Warsi are the obsessions and blind spots being taught to a generation.
To persuade people that the human rights outrages of our time are happening not in places such as Pakistan, where she could actually do some good, but in Israel — where alleged outrages are often proven not even to have existed, as with the Goldstone report or the UN's exoneration of Israel's actions in the Turkish Flotilla boat, the Mavi Marmara.
A person of real character would stand up to this trend. Instead, Warsi is instead using her position to whip up anti-Israel activity and, accidentally or otherwise, helping to develop the world's growing ethical blind spots. She has become a one-woman walking demonstration of why Britain's House of Lords needs reform.
 gatestoneinstitute

Muslims Discovered Earth is Round, says Religion That Believes It’s Flat

By Daniel Greenfield 

Turkey, these days better known as Erdoganistan, is all over this science thing.
First its thuggish Muslim dictator Erdogan claimed that Muslims discovered America. Now his Science Minister is claiming that Muslims discovered the earth is round.

Muslim scientists working around 1,200 years ago were the first to determine that the Earth is a sphere, Turkey’s science, industry and technology minister, becoming the latest Turkish official to inform the world about apparent scientific firsts on the part of Islamic world.
Speaking at a reception for business leader in the Central Anatolian province of Konya late Nov. 28, Minister Fikri Işık stressed the contributions of the Islamic world to science throughout history. “Some 700-800 years before Galileo, 71 Muslim scientists led by al-Khwarizmi convened by the order of the Caliph Al-Ma’mun and revealed that the Earth is a sphere,” he said. Işık added that a copy of the original document is currently in the Museum of Islamic Science and Technology in Istanbul.

Al-Khwarizmi was not a scientist, he was an astrologer who practiced astronomy. The Greeks and Indians had known that the earth was a sphere. Muslim “science” consisted of restating ideas from Greek and Indian scientists, who unlike them actually practiced science.
The Koran however claimed that the earth was flat like a carpet. Here are views from modern Muslim scientists on the subject.

The earth is flat. Whoever claims it is round is an atheist deserving of punishment.
That is a well-known religious edict, or fatwa, issued two years ago by Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz, the supreme religious authority of Saudi Arabia.

Also Baaz claimed that anyone who denied that the sun orbited the earth could be killed as an infidel.

In 1982 Ibn Baz published a book, “Treatise on the textual and rational proofs of the rotation of the sun and the motionlessness of the earth and the possibility of ascension to other planets”.
“I only deemed it lawful to kill whoever claims that the sun is static and refuses to repent of this after clarification. This is because denying the circulation of the sun constitutes a denial of Allah (Glorified be He), His Great Book, and His Honorable Messenger. It is well established in the Din (religion of Islam) by way of decisive evidence and Ijma` (consensus) of scholars that whoever denies Allah, His Messenger or His Book is a Kafir (disbeliever) and their blood and wealth become violable. It is the duty of the responsible authority to ask them to repent of this; either they repent or be executed. Thanks to Allah that this issue is not debatable among scholars.”

And if you still have any doubts, here is noted Iraqi astronomer researcher Fadhel Al-Sa’d to explain it to you.

Fadhel Al-Sa’d: The sun circles the Earth because it is smaller than the Earth, as is evident in Koranic verses.
[...]
Have you ever seen how the sun moves? I have seen the sun moving. The sun makes one move every 24 hours.
[...]
What I say is based on Koranic science. He bases his arguments on the kind of science that I reject categorically – the modern science that they teach in schools. This science is a heretic innovation that has no confirmation in the Koran. No verse in the Koran indicates that the Earth is round or that it rotates. Anything that has no indication in the Koran is false.

Not only did Muslims not discover that the earth is round, they remain the only religious group that still claims it’s flat.
Not counting liberals.

 frontpagemag

Al Qaeda plot to blow up 5 passenger planes in Christmas 'spectacular'

Terrorists are plotting to blow up five European passenger jets in a Christmas "spectacular", security experts say.The threat has been taken so seriously it came close to leading to an outright ban on all hand luggage, a senior insider has revealed. Mobile phones and electronic devices could still be banned from plane cabins, with the threat of a 9/11-style coordinated attack on London and other major cities feared imminent. The warning comes as Whitehall officials admit that a terror strike on the UK is now "almost inevitable" particularly with British jihadis returning from fighting alongside the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. An airport security source told the Sunday Express: "We've been told that five planes are being targeted in a high profile hit before Christmas. They've been waiting for the big one. "We have many scares but this one nearly got hand baggage pulled from all airlines. The threat is still alive and real." The plot, which has been known about for the past two months, is thought to involve Islamists smuggling bombs on to planes bound for major European destinations before Christmas. The well-placed security insider said talks had been held about how to deal with it, with suggestions made to ban hand luggage. The source said: "High level negotiations are continuing at Governmental level but at the moment there has been little done to respond. "There is paralysis because of the difficulty of banning hand luggage which is one of the strongest weapons we have against the new threats. "All electronics may be banned from hand luggage and placed in the hold, that has been considered, and there has been behaviour analysis training at airports but while it's effective, it's difficult to roll out quickly and is not a sufficient safety net. "The threat is aimed at Europe. The U.S has improved their security over the summer but we have not. "Everyone is expecting something catastrophic very soon".Threats of bombs hidden in toothpaste tubes caused huge disruption to travellers to the Sochi Winter Olympics and stringent security checks at UK airports will cause huge queues during what is the busiest time of the year for airlines. Security experts also warn that future terror attacks could be carried out by sleepers - western converts as likely to have blond hair and blue eyes as dark skin and beards. The latest threat is understood to have been uncovered by American intelligence officers who fear that despite success in taking out key Al Qaeda bomb-makers, the genie is out of the bottle and sleeper cells are currently preparing for a doomsday scenario. David Drugeon, a 24-year-old Frenchman and one of Al Qaeda's most trusted bomb-makers was killed by a cruise missile strike earlier this month to the west of the Alepo, Syria. Drugeon, who was part of an Al Qaeda off-shoot called the the Khorasan group, and was said to be targeting US and UK airlines with non-metallic explosive devices, which could be concealed in mobile phones, computers and printer cartridges. Although now dead his work remains a huge threat as his skill set is likely to have been spread among a number of terror apprentices, including an unidentified Saudi-born bombmaker. Last night leading terrorism expert Dr Sally Leivesley said the banning of hand luggage and hand held electronic devices is unlikely to be accepted by the airlines despite the risks.She explained: "Efforts to ban all electronic devices including computers from business class passengers which reaps huge revenue for the airlines is nearly unsustainable in their business model. "However, I would contend that even a mobile phone in the hold is capable of being used as a trigger for a bomb or used as a bomb in its own right. "The most likely scenario is a plane heading towards a major European capital. "There is likely to have been dry runs already with terrorists testing airport security." Dr. Leivesley, a former Home Office risk adviser, said that terrorists are now more likely to be "white, blond and blue eyed" who are radicalized in as little as five weeks. She also claimed that female terrorists were becoming a significant risk, adding: "Crime profiling shows that white, middle class women, who are better than averagely educated, are susceptible to the terrorist narrative. "They see themselves at the forefront of attempts to change the world and are represent a very dangerous tool for the terrorists. "These sleepers will have been from ordinary and not very religious families and not only is the threat from them here but also when they return battle hardened from Syria and Iraq."In a speech earlier this week, Home Secretary Theresa May warned that numerous Islamic militants were looking to attack the UK. She said: "Now the threat is more diverse in terms of the number of groups out there who will be looking to carry out attacks in the West. "It's also more diverse in that not everybody's affiliated to a particular group - some are self-starting groups and you do have individuals, perhaps the "lone wolves" or the volatile individuals. 'We have to look across the board at all sorts of threats that are out there." Scotland Yard would not comment on the claims. A spokeswoman for the Department for Transport, which looks after air security, said she could not comment on the specific allegations. But she added: "We keep airport security under constant review."
 express

Netherlands: Young Jews feel threatened and want to leave

A British delegation visiting the Netherlands says that many young, Dutch Jews feel threatened and want to leave.

John Mann (MP for Labour), says that they visited a Jewish school and were surprised at the number of students who said they wanted to move to Israel.  The British delegation couldn't understand why the Dutch government didn't deal with the issue.

More: Reformatorisch Dagblad / antisemitism-europe

UK: Do mention the war! Lord Tebbit wants migrants' WW2 background in new 'cricket test'

Migrants could be asked who their grandfathers fought for in the war to decide if they are allowed entry to the UK, as incomers face police station checks to help deport them.Tory stalwart Lord Tebbit has put forward a new take on his famous “cricket test” which would highlight immigrants’ commitment to the British way of life. He believes his radical intervention - to only let in selected applicants based on their family background - would go some way to stem the ever–growing influx continuing to swamp Britain. The Conservative grandee spoke out last night as new details emerge of a proposal to make new arrivals register with the police. By 'signing-on' at police stations when entering the UK, officials hope it will make it easier to later track down EU migrants if they have to be sent back home because they haven't found work. The idea comes as part of David Cameron’s bullish proposals to limit the number of migrants moving into the UK from other EU countries.Yesterday he set out plans to deport migrants if they didn’t find work within six months. Questions were asked of how the Government would keep tabs on incomers. But a Cabinet minister told The Telegraph that migrants would have to register with the police on arrival so they could check up with them after six months. They said: “We are considering all options. “And requiring migrants to sign in and register at police stations is one of the things we are looking at.” But Cameron was told to retreat from plans for a cap on migrants by German chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commissioner president Jean-Claude Junker, it has been claimed. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond this morning denied the claims. Lord Tebbit told Newsnight last night he didn’t think immigration would come down to below 100,000 as promised by the Tories, as the benchmark was “simply going the wrong way”. He said EU migrants should be asked who their fathers or grandfathers fought for in World War Two to decide whether to allow entry. The former Tory party chairman proposed a similar “cricket test” in 1990 which suggested immigrants who didn’t support the English cricket team shouldn’t be allowed to stay in Britain as they hadn’t integrated into society. He said: “You will find the Poles, Czechs and Slovakians were all on the right side so that’s a pretty good test isn’t it? “Perhaps we will even teach them to play cricket gradually over the years.”
 express

Erdoganistan Sentences Physics Professor to 12-Years-in-Jail for Opposing Hijab

 

 By Daniel Greenfield 

The Hijab, like every other practice in Islam is imposed through coercion, brutality and terror. There is nothing free about any part of Islam.

A prominent Turkish professor on Thursday began a jail sentence after being convicted of preventing a female student wearing a Muslim headscarf from entering the university where he worked, his lawyer said.
Rennan Pekunlu, a former professor of astrophysics at Ege University, was sentenced to two years in prison in 2012 for violating a headscarf-wearing student’s “constitutional right to education” by barring her from entering the faculty.
Pekunlu began his sentence in a prison in the western city of Izmir, becoming the first individual in Turkey to be jailed for such an offence, his lawyer Murat Fatih Ulku told AFP.
Before heading to prison, the 64-year-old professor gave a public lecture on the “universe and evolution” to an audience including his former students, colleagues as well as members of several labour unions.
“This is not our last lecture. We have a lot more to do. This is not the end,” Pekunlu said before bursting into tears, as gasps and sobbing erupted inside the packed hall.
“Professor Rennan is not alone,” the crowd chanted, according to the website of Hurriyet newspaper.
“AKP dictatorship is doomed to collapse,” they shouted, referring to the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party.

There can hardly be a clearer contrast with what Turkey was, with what it is turning into under Erdogan’s Islamist tyranny. There is no longer a Turkey. Only an Erdoganistan that sends physics professors to jail for opposing Islam’s abuse of women.
 frontpagemag

The Only Way to Control Immigration is to Leave the EU

By Steven Woolfe 

Thursday's astronomical migration figures show an abject failure by this Government to control immigration, despite countless promises to the public.  Once again the British pubic have been deceived by this Conservative-led government. Cameron promised to cut immigration to ‘tens of thousands’, when in fact we’ve seen it rise to more than when he took power. This has proven once again that you cannot control immigration while being inside the European Union.
I knew from Mrs May’s round of interviews last Sunday that the ‎Conservative Party would try to get their excuses in early and often before the general election on broken promises on immigration. 
First, Mrs May reduced David Cameron's ‘no ifs, no buts’ pledge to reduce immigration on behalf of the ‎Government to a mere 'comment'. Now that these migration figures once again demonstrate their abject failure to deliver on this on that promise.
There is a simple way of controlling mass unskilled uncontrolled migration. First control our borders by making sure that we properly resource the UK Border Agency by hiring at least 2,500 more frontline staff.
Second, exit the EU and ensure we negotiate fair and ethical immigration criteria for all peoples of the world based on implementation of an Australian-like points based system, making it a fairer, more ethical and sensible policy.
Messing around with in-work and out-of-work benefits won’t deter people away, we’ll still see high levels on immigration. The only way we could control it is if we had major treaty changed and stopped the free movement of people, and our major European partners have repeatedly said that enshrined Treaty migration rules are not up for negotiation. For any UK government to ignore this objective aspect of reality is counterproductive and self-defeating.
We in UKIP have a plan on immigration, one where we will implement an Australian point’s style immigration policy with a cap of 50,000 per year, with an extra 2500 border staff, making our borders stronger and making our immigration policy fairer. These are real changes that can happen and are legal as we will leave the EU, unlike Mr Cameron’s plans.
 breitbart

Bill Cosby & His Love for Islam

 

By Rebecca Gold 

The sexual assault claims against Bill Cosby continue to multiply, and are causing the cancellation of many projects. As of Monday, November 24, the number of women publicly accusing the comedian of sexual assault reached 16, some reporting anonymously, according to The Washington Post.
The number spiked after the 77-year-old cultural icon finally broke his silence on the recent accusations. On Friday, November 21, Cosby’s lawyer denounced the claims as "unsubstantiated, fantastical stories."
Cosby told Florida Today, on Friday right before his standup show, "I know people are tired of me not saying anything, but a guy doesn't have to answer to innuendos. People should fact check. People shouldn't have to go through that and shouldn't answer to innuendos."
In addition, the spotlight on Cosby has led many to take a closer look at his past, including an op-ed written for the New York Post last year in which Cosby details modern society’s flaws and suggested we take a life lesson out of the Koran.
According to Breitbart, Cosby wrote, “I’m a Christian. But Muslims are misunderstood. Intentionally misunderstood. We should all be more like them. They make sense, especially with their children. There is no other group like the Black Muslims, who put so much effort into teaching children the right things, they don’t smoke, they don’t drink or overindulge in alcohol, they protect their women, they command respect. And what do these other people do?”
Maybe if people did do a better job of protecting their woman from Cosby, this whole mess of accusations wouldn’t be in play.
He concluded, “They complain about them, they criticize them. We’d be a better world if we emulated them. We don’t have to become black Muslims, but we can embrace the things that work.”
Cosby seems to support a world where woman are objects, and victims would never bring rape allegations against him because they would be stoned to death for being sexually assaulted.
No criminal charges have come against Cosby from any of the allegations, which go back as far as half a century. Cosby has repeatedly denied accusations of assault in the past, and was only publicly accused for the first time 10 years ago. The allegations have come into the spotlight in the last few weeks due to a significant number of woman coming forward in a concentrated time frame.
 jewishvoice

UK: Patients at Risk as NHS Hires Nurses who Can't Speak English Properly

By A.B. Sanderson 

The NHS is hiring nurses from abroad, even if they don’t speak English, potentially putting patients at risk. A Daily Mail investigation found that NHS trusts were going to recruitment fairs, especially in recession hit eurozone countries such as Spain and Portugal, and helping applicants fill in the English application forms using online translations services.
Even if they admitted to managers that their English was poor, they were being falsely reassured it ‘won’t matter’ as ‘doctors and patients will speak slowly’.
And even without this vital need to be able to communicate with patients, many of whom will be older and vulnerable, it is reported that trusts are fighting over the foreign intake, offering them bonuses of £3,000 to pick their’s over another.
They have also promised to double nurses’ salaries from £1,000 a month to £2,100 a month and told them they can do a third less work than the current staff, with some saying they will promise to find work for husbands or partners.
And while nursing students have to pay their own accommodation while they study and work on wards, the foreign nurses are being offered a month’s free accommodation, paid for by the tax payer.
Figures from the Royal College of Nursing last year found that 6 per cent of nursing posts in hospitals were vacant, that’s around 20,000 nurses. The shortfall is resulting in trusts using recruitment agencies to hire nurses en masse at £50,000 a time, on a commission basis of £2,000 per nurse.
And it’s EU legislation which allows for this risky venture to be used, because it prevents the Nursing and Midwifery Council regulator from performing language checks on the European nurses; such testing would be restricting their ‘freedom of movement’.
Nurses not covered by the EU’s ‘fundamental freedoms’ have to sit a rigorous exam and score highly in tests for the four main communication components vital to the proper functioning of a hospital ward, including reading, writing and listening.
Some nursing officials say that the bar is being pushed lower because of the nursing shortfall, with physical numbers on wards deemed more important in the wake of the Mid-Staffordshire hospital report which criticised understaffing.
Last year a whistleblower at Colchester hospital revealed how most of the fifty Spanish nurses the trust had recently hired couldn’t read an patient’s drug chart and had been banned from working without a supervisor.
Patients have also spoken of frustrations at being unable to communicate with the staff responsible for their health and care.
The reliance on foreign nurses has been blamed in part on the Government cutting the number of training posts by 15 per cent since 2010 so there are fewer graduating.
Any perceived short term savings in the training budget, however, is a false economy, since the money is used in golden handshakes to foreign nurses.
And the sourcing of staff from other countries, particularly the developing world, has also been criticised with campaigners saying it is wrong to cut training opportunities for British students and then take much needed medical staff away from poor countries where their expertise is desperately needed.
But nursing students in UK universities have to pay tuition fees, accommodation costs as well as the usual costs of living to train to join a profession which does not have a very impressive salary scale.
The father of one nursing student in London told Breitbart London: “My daughter worked hard to secure her place and has to work long hours as a care assistant to pay for her accommodation while training. It is completely wrong that places are being handed to foreign nurses on a plate, and even worse that they escape many of the financial struggles which are the every day lot of British nursing students.”
Dr Peter Carter of the Royal College of Nursing accused the trusts of “papering over the cracks that formed when the UK was failing to train and retain its own nurses”.
‘There is no excuse for having nurses arrive on wards without good communication skills and all the clinical skills needed to deliver high levels of care.’
And Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association warned that “there can sometimes be communication difficulties which increases the chances of something going wrong or patients receiving less than optimal care.”
‘We are wasting precious NHS money on overseas recruitment firms when we should be investing in training more British nurses.’
 breitbart

The Turkish Governor's "Huge Hatred"

By Burak Bekdil

"It is shameful for a public official to make such remarks. Hate-speech and anti-Semitism have seized the state. The hate-speech often exhibited by the ruling politicians encourages public officials to follow suit." — Aykan Erdemir, lawmaker, Republican People's Party.
"This governor has a lot to learn from Sultan Abdulhamid... They [Jews] are our people. This is Turkey's synagogue, not Israel's." — Young Civilians group.
The governor has probably scored good points to get a future promotion for the "huge hatred inside" him.
Once again, hate-speech in Turkey will not be prosecuted because it targets people who are not Sunni Muslim Turks.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, Edirne, a Turkish province in Thrace, hosted a prominent community of some 20,000 Jews – a larger community than the entire Jewish population of about 17,000 in Turkey today. Most of the Jews of Edirne were forced to leave the city after the pogroms of 1934. In 2000, the Jewish population in Edirne had dropped to 2 (no typo: two) people.
Earlier, in the Ottoman Turkey of 1907, Sultan Abdulhamid had ordered the construction of what would become one of the world's two biggest synagogues (and Europe's biggest), known in Turkish as "Buyuk Sinagog," or the "Great Synagogue", in Edirne. As the Jews left the town, the Great Synagogue turned into a sorrowful wreck.

A view of the Great Synagogue" of Edirne, from 2010. (Image source: Wikipedia Commons/Yabancı)

In late 2000s, the Jewish community in Turkey applied to the governor's office in Edirne to have sermons and wedding ceremonies at the synagogue. Luckily, in 2010, the Great Synagogue was declared a historical site and brought under a $1.7 million restoration program to reopen for prayers and visits – not that the Turks thought the building would serve the (literally) couple of Jews left in town, but that they thought it could lure tourists (and money). The restoration work is almost complete.
Last week, most Turks learned that there even was a synagogue in Edirne when the governor of the city threatened to forbid post-restoration prayers at the Great Synagogue and instead turn it into a museum.
Governor Dursun Sahin said he would not allow prayers at the synagogue because Israeli security forces had attacked the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem -- although Israeli police denied walking into the house of worship.
Sahin said: "While those bandits (Israeli security forces) blow winds of war inside al-Aqsa and slay Muslims, we build their synagogues. I say this with a huge hatred inside me. We clean their (Jewish) graveyards, send their projects to boards. But the synagogue here will be registered only as a museum, and there will be no exhibitions inside it."
At least the vengeful governor was honest. He said what he said admittedly "with a huge hatred inside him." Not a hatred of what he perceives "as the Israeli government's actions against poor Palestinians," but what he evidently perceives as anything Jewish. As this author reminded readers here last week: "For most of Turkey's Islamists, there is no difference between the words 'Israel,' the 'Israeli government,' 'Jew' or a 'Turkish Jew:' They are all the same and are all regarded with hostility."
Once again, the Turkish government silently nodded to the governor. Despite calls for his resignation, he remains in office. No investigation has been launched for his hate speech, which literally contained the words "huge hatred." On the contrary, he must have won the hearts and minds of many important Turks in Ankara.
But once again, a few brave Turkish men stood up and the governor had to retreat. "I was misunderstood," the governor later said, apologetically.
An opposition lawmaker had called for the governor's resignation for his remarks and demanded, in case the governor did not resign, that he be sacked by the government. "If Sahin does not resign to save the dignity of his post and Turkey's honor, he should be removed from his post immediately," Republican People's Party lawmaker Aykan Erdemir said in a written statement. "It is shameful for a public official to make such remarks. Hate-speech and anti-Semitism have seized the state. The hate speech often exhibited by the ruling politicians encourages public officials to follow suit."
Erdemir was right. Only recently, a school teacher was caught having hung a signpost at the gate of the Neve Salom synagogue in Istanbul that read: "Building to be destroyed." The man was not prosecuted.
Erdemir has suggested that a parliamentary commission should be formed to investigate "the rising anti-Semitism in Turkey." It is unlikely that the Islamist-majority parliament will agree with him.
Erdemir was not the only one to defend the Great Synagogue. On Nov. 22, a group of activists who call themselves the "Young Civilians," a bunch of liberals, rushed to the Great Synagogue to protest against the governor. They issued a press release demanding, like Erdemir, the governor's resignation.
The governor will not resign but will have to endure the embarrassment of what the Young Civilians, in a powerful line, recommended him to do: "This governor," they said, "has a lot to learn from Sultan Abdulhamid... He has a lot to learn from the young [Turkish] gendarmerie corporal who lost his life while protecting the Jews in Edirne from the looters during the 1934 pogroms." They also placed at the gate of the Great Synagogue placards that read, "They [Jews] are our people," "This synagogue was here when [the state of] Israel did not exist," and "This is Turkey's synagogue, not Israel's."
The few brave men of Turkey did it, and the government had to step back. Adnan Ertem, the director general of the General Directorate of Foundations, the government department in charge of the synagogue, said that: "Our intention is to keep that building as a house of worship to serve all visitors."
The synagogue, for the time being, is saved. The governor has probably scored good points to get a future promotion for the "huge hatred inside him." The opposition member of parliament, Erdemir, has probably added to his career of being a "Zionist" politician. The Young Civilians may soon have to go through a meticulous auditing of their books by government tax inspectors. And once again, hate speech in Turkey will not be prosecuted because it targets people who are not Sunni Muslim Turks.
 gatestoneinstitute

Koran should be read at Prince Charles' coronation says top bishop: Critics attack proposal and accuse Church of England of 'losing confidence' in its own traditions

Prince Charles’s coronation service should be opened with a reading from the Koran, a senior Church of England bishop said yesterday. The gesture would be a ‘creative act of accommodation’ to make Muslims feel ‘embraced’ by the nation, Lord Harries of Pentregarth said. But critics attacked the idea, accusing the Church of ‘losing confidence’ in its own institutions and traditions. Lord Harries, a former Bishop of Oxford and a leading CofE liberal thinker, said he was sure Charles’s coronation would give scope to leaders of non-Christian religions to give their blessing to the new King. The former Bishop of Oxford, who continues to serve as an assistant bishop in the diocese of Southwark, made the suggestion about the Koran during a House of Lords debate. He told peers the Church of England should take the lead in ‘exercising its historic position in a hospitable way’. He said that at a civic service in Bristol Cathedral last year authorities had agreed to a reading of the opening passage of the Koran before the beginning of the Christian ritual. He said: ‘It was a brilliant creative act of accommodation that made the Muslim high sheriff feel, as she said, warmly embraced but did not alienate the core congregation. ‘That principle of hospitality can and should be reflected in many public ceremonies, including the next coronation service.’Lord Harries’ suggestion comes more than 20 years after the Prince first said he would prefer to be seen as ‘Defender of Faith’ rather than be known by the monarch’s title of ‘Defender of the Faith’. Charles said in 1994 he ‘always felt the Catholic subjects of the sovereign are equally as important as the Anglican ones, as the Protestant ones’. ‘Likewise, I think that Islamic subjects, or the Hindu subjects, or the Zoroastrian subjects of the sovereign, are of equal and vital importance.’ In 2006 the Prince made known that he wanted a multifaith coronation that would be more ‘focused and telecentric’ than his mother’s in 1953. However traditionalist Christians condemned Lord Harries’s idea.Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute think-tank said: ‘Most people will be amazed at the idea that a Christian leader would consider the use of the Koran at a Christian service in a Christian abbey. People are just so disappointed when senior Church of England figures lose confidence in the claims of the Christian faith.’ Andrea Minichiello Williams, a member of the CofE’s parliament, the General Synod, and head of the Christian Concern pressure group, said: ‘At a time when we are looking at what British values mean, we cannot have values in a vacuum. British values stem from our Christian heritage. ‘We cannot pretend all religions are the same, or have the same benefits and outcomes for the nation.’ Douglas Murray, associate editor of the Spectator, said if Muslims were included in the coronation service, there must be room to for Hindus, Sikhs, and atheists. He added: ‘If there were to be a reading from the Koran at the coronation, surely as a matter of reciprocity, all mosques in the UK should have prayers for the King and the Armed Forces every week at Friday prayers.’
 dailymail

Danes Collect Welfare While Fighting For ISIS

By AWR Hawkins 

 On November 27, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) indicated 28 Danes have collected unemployment benefits while fighting with ISIS in Syria.  According to AFP, PET said 15 of the welfare recipients have "been ordered to pay the money back, eight people [are] still being investigated, and five cases [have] been dropped due to insufficient evidence."
Denmark has two different unemployment systems, one of which is the dagpenge--a system which pays $134 "per day for up two years." It appears some of the jihadists were on this system and some were on "a more modest...unemployment benefit."
In June PET said "more than 100" Danes had gone to Syria to fight alongside ISIS. However, Naser Khader--"a Danish commentator on Middle Eastern affairs"--believes that number needs to be "revised upward." It is believed Denmark has "the second largest number of foreign fighters in Syria relative to its size among Western nations."
Breitbart News previously reported that Austrian police raided various homes and mosques on November 28, arresting 13 jihadist recruiters and seizing propaganda and funds being used for the benefit of ISIS. This followed a September OE24 report claiming Austria has become a "terror hotspot" and that "hundreds of [ISIS] supporters were...in Austria."
breitbart

UK Muslim Sex Groomer Says Raping Little Girls is a “Religious Requirement”

 

By Daniel Greenfield 

 He has a point.
Mohammed’s most famous marriage did involve raping a little girl and plenty of Islamic clerics have made a case for doing it today. Just one more way that Islam is incompatible with the West. (via Religion of Peace)

Thirteen Muslims have been found guilty in Bristol for a whole catalogue of sexual offences including child rape and grooming  under age school girls. Two separate grooming gang trials took place with a complete media blackout being enforced.
A slight variation from the Muslim grooming gangs we are becoming so used to now. The repulsive paedophiles committing the sex offences were all Somali immigrants.
One nonce who had sex with multiple victims told the court at his trial that sharing girls for sex “was part of Somali culture” and “a religious requirement”.

I believe him.
Plenty of Muslim rapists have made the argument in the past. I documented it in detail in Muslim Rape Culture.

Esmatullah Sharifi, an Afghan refugee, offered an Australian woman a ride home and then put his right hand around her neck and his left hand over her mouth and raped her. Sharifi’s lawyers claimed that due to cultural differences he was confused about the nature of consent.
This wasn’t Sharifi’s first misunderstanding of the difference between rape and sex. He had already been sentenced to 7 years in jail for raping an Australian teenager on Christmas Day in 2008.

In the Ashfield rapes, four Pakistani brothers raped eighteen women and girls. Their father urged that his sons be pardoned because they “did not know the culture of this culture.” Our culture and religion however tells us to keep men who behave like the Prophet Mohammed away from our families and our children.
Surely the Somalis and Pakistanis will agree to respect our culture.
 frontpagemag

Nobel laureate calls for immigrants to be housed with German families

Gunter Grass, the writer, former member of the Waffen SS and Nobel laureate who has been described as Germany's "moral conscience", has proposed his own solution to the country's growing refugee crisis, suggesting asylum-seekers should be billetted with ordinary German households.

Germany is struggling to find accommodation for an unprecedented influx of refugees. Many cities have resorted to housing them in tent cities with winter looming, and there have been calls to limit the numbers.

The 87-year-old Mr Grass suggested Germany should take inspiration from Zwangseinquartierungen, the compulsory billeting policy in the aftermath of the Second World War, under which refugees were sent to live with ordinary families.
 telegraph

Why John Cleese Daren't Make Jokes about the Religion of Peace

 
By James Delingpole 

 Ex-Python John Cleese has admitted on Bill Maher's show something which his fellow comedians generally won't: that the reason they don't make jokes about Islam is that they're frightened of being killed.

"The problem is if you make jokes about people who are going to kill you, there is a sort of tendency to hold back a little isn't there?"

Cleese's remark prompted criticism from the usual suspects, among them someone called Bashir Chaudhry, from the League of British Muslims, who was quoted in the Mail thus:

"Killing people, that's not in Islam...John Cleese must be very desperate to get his name mentioned to make such a comment."

'Killing people, that's not in Islam'. Now where have I heard that phrase before? Ah yes. I remember. It was in the cab on the way to recording that godawful BBC Free Speech debate programme the other week.
Both of my companions - the driver and my fellow panelist Mobeen Azhar - were young Muslims, so I was very interested to hear their views on the jihadists heading to Syria and Iraq to fight for Islamic State.
"They're not Muslims," said the driver.
"Well I think they think they are," I gently suggested.
"They're not," said Mobeen, in fervent agreement with the driver. "What Islamic State are doing is contrary to the Koran. You're not allowed to behead or rape innocent people like that."
"You say that. But I think if you spoke to Islamic State, they'd say they were following the purist version of Islam there is," I said.
Neither Mobeen nor the driver were having it though. Jihadists chopping people's heads off for Islamic State had nothing whatsoever to do with Islam or Muslims. End of.
"Where do these kids get this nonsense?" I wondered.
The answer, depressingly, is people like David Cameron and US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Islamic State, Cameron told a Muslim audience recently, "has nothing to do with the great religion of Islam, a religion of peace."
John Kerry, speaking on a visit to Iraq, said that Islamic State "claims to be fighting on behalf of Islam but the fact is that its hateful ideology has nothing to do with Islam."
Nothing to do with Islam? Really? Is it any wonder that comedians such as John Cleese daren't tell the truth when our politicians set such a craven example?
They would all do well, I think, to read this superb essay by Tom Holland called How Do We Prevent Radicalisation?
The first step, Holland suggests, is for everyone to stop playing this "nothing to do with Islam" game.

The grim truth is that sanctions can be found in the Qur’an, in the biographies of Muhammad and in the histories of early Islam for much that strikes the outside world as most horrific about the Islamic state. “Kuffar are afraid we will slaughter yazidis,” a British jihadi tweeted recently from Syria, “our deen [religion/ law] is clear we will kill their men, take their women and children as slaves insha Allah.” That this reading of assorted qur’anic verses and episodes from the life of the Prophet is the most brutal one imaginable does not necessarily invalidate it. To be sure, there are other, richer, more nuanced interpretations possible – and yes, the bone-headed literalism of those who would interpret the Qur’an as a license to maim, enslave and kill represents a challenge to everyone who prizes it as a revelation from God, supremely compassionate and supremely wise. That is no reason, though, to play the jihadis’ own takfiri game, and deny them a status as Muslims. The very appeal of their sanguinary interpretation of Islamic scripture is far too lethal to permit such a tactic. It is not enough to engage with the jihadis solely on the battlefield. They must be defeated as well in mosques, and libraries, and seminar rooms. This is a battle that, in the long run, can only be won by theologians. - See more at: http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2014/09/28/how-do-we-prevent-radicalisation-by-tom-holland#sthash.eH7mynK3.dpuf

The grim truth is that sanctions can be found in the Qur’an, in the biographies of Muhammad and in the histories of early Islam for much that strikes the outside world as most horrific about the Islamic state. “Kuffar are afraid we will slaughter yazidis,” a British jihadi tweeted recently from Syria, “our deen [religion/ law] is clear we will kill their men, take their women and children as slaves insha Allah.” That this reading of assorted qur’anic verses and episodes from the life of the Prophet is the most brutal one imaginable does not necessarily invalidate it. To be sure, there are other, richer, more nuanced interpretations possible – and yes, the bone-headed literalism of those who would interpret the Qur’an as a license to maim, enslave and kill represents a challenge to everyone who prizes it as a revelation from God, supremely compassionate and supremely wise. That is no reason, though, to play the jihadis’ own takfiri game, and deny them a status as Muslims. The very appeal of their sanguinary interpretation of Islamic scripture is far too lethal to permit such a tactic. It is not enough to engage with the jihadis solely on the battlefield. They must be defeated as well in mosques, and libraries, and seminar rooms. This is a battle that, in the long run, can only be won by theologians.
How best to establish, for instance, that the actions of jihadis in beheading their foes are indeed contrary to Islam? Fighters for the Islamic State might well point out that the Qur’an describes angels decapitating unbelievers with the aim of spreading terror; that the first Muslims are described as harvesting heads on the battlefield of Badr; that Muhammad himself is said to have owned a sword that can be translated as ‘Cleaver of Vertebrae’. It is not enough, within such a context, merely to insist that Islam is a religion of peace, and leave it at that. Muslim scholars have an urgent responsibility to demonstrate in the most painstaking detail exactly where and why the jihadis are wrong. Just as Christian intellectuals, in the wake of the Holocaust, were obliged to confront the evil purposes to which the New Testament had been put, and recalibrate their understanding of it on a theological level, so do their Muslim counterparts today need to redeem their own scriptures from the taint of savagery that is doing so much to blacken the image of their religion.

Amen, bro.
 breitbart

More Knives Out For Miliband, Labour MPs Doubt Leadership Skills

 
By Andre Walker 

Ed Miliband faced new questions over his leadership today, after weeks of serious concerns about his ability to lead the party into the General Election next year. A former shadow cabinet member admitted in the Guardian that it is a "challenge" to get voters engaged with Mr Miliband, whom the paper described as a “Hampstead intellectual and policy wonk”. Tom Watson, who resigned as Miliband's campaign co-ordinator in 2013, said: “Positioning and speeches in Westminster are not going to cut it. We’ve got to do it totally differently. What should the shadow cabinet be doing? Getting out into the country and explaining Labour’s message!
“We know there are people out there who like the policies of Labour, but are slightly concerned about whether the team at the top are going to deliver it. Get out there and convince them! Get into the town halls, get on soap boxes, get out there and explain what Labour stands for.”
He continued: “I’m very frustrated because I just want them to be fired up and get out there, because it’s a compelling offer we’ve got. So explain it! If I’m sounding frustrated it’s because I want us to win. And I want the shadow cabinet to want to win as well. I want it to be fired up and get out there, because there are people out there that need us!”
The comments come on the same day Stephen Kinnock, son of the former Labour leader Lord Kinnock, criticised the Labour leadership in the Huffington Post. He said: “I accept that we are not where we should be... We are missing a trick. I don't think it is too late.
"There is time to do some of that outreach and get two or three big business leaders to endorse us, and endorse what we stand for, going into the next election.”
Serious concerns about Miliband's leadership continue to circle amongst Labour MPs in Westminster. A number have privately admitted they would force Miliband's resignation if there were a credible alternative but so far all the mooted candidates have ruled themselves out.
 breitbart

Over 4-year jail term sought for German Islamic State suspect

A state prosecutor on Friday demanded a prison term of over four years for a 20-year-old German man accused of fighting with Islamic State insurgents in Syria, in the first trial of its kind in Germany. The defendant, identified only as Kreshnik B., who was born in Germany to parents from Kosovo, has shown no remorse about his actions, prosecutor Dieter Killmer told the court. Islamic State (IS) has captured large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, beheaded some Western prisoners, massacred many non-Sunni Muslims and declared a caliphate ruled under sharia, or Islamic law, in the heart of the Middle East.
 jpost

The Disturbing Heroes of Dutch Muslim Youth

By Abigail R. Esman 

For American teens these days, the biggest heroes are no longer baseball players or even Lady Gaga: they are mostly YouTube stars, like the comedy team Smosh, followed by Katy Perry and – surprisingly – 92-year-old actress Betty White. But for hundreds of thousands of Dutch youth, the heroes of the day are neither film stars nor comedians: they are the jihadists of the Islamic State.
That is the result of a recent study by Dutch research company Motivaction, which found that 90 percent of Dutch Turks ages 18-35 consider the Islamic State (IS or ISIS) members heroes, and enthusiastically support their friends and neighbors who travel to Syria to join them. And 48 percent of Holland’s 18-35-year-old Moroccan immigrants agree.
(For reference, the latest official figures count more than 368,000 Moroccan immigrants – first and second generation – in the Netherlands, and more than 395,000 Turks in a national population numbering 16.8 million.)
This is not the first time European Muslims have been shown to support the horrors of violent jihad: earlier this year, British research group ICM determined that up to 15 percent of French youth (between the ages of 18-24) approve of ISIS, as do 11 percent of British between the ages of 35-44.
Such findings help explain much of what drives European Muslim youth to join ISIS and other extremist jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq, but the Motivaction study also lends insight to the general mindset of Holland’s – and likely most of Europe’s – upcoming Muslim generation. Oddly, while 87 percent of Turkish Dutch youth support jihad in general, and the same 87 percent support IS, 90 percent oppose an Islamic state or caliphate (versus 67 percent of Dutch Moroccans). In fact, according to Motivaction, 93 percent of Dutch Turks believe that “democracy is essential” to progress. Hence, like Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan (whom they overwhelmingly admire), they see the fight in Syria as a revolution against Bashar al-Assad. They want to see him overthrown, replaced by a democratic government. This position suggests they somehow remain oblivious to IS’s real intent: to replace the Assad regime with an Islamic caliphate, which it seeks to spread by conquering other countries in the region – including Turkey.
Still, for all of Dutch Turks’ defense of democracy, the Motivaction survey also showed their strong Islamic identity – stronger than among Dutch Moroccans. This finding comes as a surprise, given that the majority of known radical Muslims in the Netherlands, such as the members of the radical Hofstadgroep, are of Moroccan heritage. Despite Turkey’s historic friendship with Israel, Dutch Turks, like Erdogan, blame Israel for the violence in the region, and a whopping 89 percent view Hamas’ armed battle against Israel as “positive” (vs. 49 percent of Moroccans). Turkish Dutch are also likely to view Jews generally as the enemy, and do not believe that peace or friendship is possible between Muslims and Jews – even in the Netherlands.
These findings come at a moment when the Turkish community in the Netherlands is under particular scrutiny, as studies into the most influential Turkish groups indicate possible ties not only to the Turkish government, but to extremism. A Dutch government report released in September, “Turkish Islam: insights into religious streams and organization in the Netherlands,” suggests that while these organizations may have helped promote integration, encouraging Turkish first- and second-generation immigrants to excel in school, business, and politics, they have also urged them to achieve and exercise “one-sided (political) power and influence of their own group, and to strengthen their Turkish-Islamic identity.” Much of this action comes through direct financial support of the Turkish government and the Diyanet, or Turkish Office for Religious and Islamic Affairs. As a result of the “Turkish Islam” study, Minister of Social Affairs Lodewijk Asscher recently called for a five-year surveillance of the largest Turkish organizations in the country – a demand that has also led to drama and disruption within the Dutch Parliament.
Despite the differences between Dutch-Turkish and Dutch-Moroccan views of IS and jihad, the larger picture painted by the Motivaction survey is one in which shockingly large numbers of Muslims in the Netherlands – and presumably across Europe – openly favor violent jihad. If 87 percent of Turkish Dutch youth consider it “good” that “groups fight for change in the name of jihad” while 80 percent see “nothing wrong” with the use of violence against non-believers, and if 39 percent of Moroccan Dutch agree, we are looking at a few hundred thousand potential jihadists in this one small country alone.
What’s important here isn’t just the numbers: it’s the people those numbers represent – young men and women raised in Europe, with Western values, Western ideals, who nonetheless worship those who slaughter and rape and torture for Allah. As Europe’s leaders must worry about what to do about their Muslim citizens as they return from the Syrian jihad, perhaps it’s time, too, that they consider what do about the ones who stayed at home.
 algemeiner

Police Raid Mosques in Counter-Terror Operation in Austria

By Nick Hallett 

Austrian police have launched a mass raid on mosques and prayer rooms in a crackdown on suspected jihadists who trying to radicalise young people. Nearly 500 officers raided religious centres in Vienna, Graz and Linz early today, detaining 13 people. Reuters reports that authorities also seized "terrorist propaganda material", illegal iron knuckles and cash.
The Austrian capital Vienna is increasingly being seen as major centre for global jihad, with counter-terrorism analyst John R. Schindler writing that Islamists are attracted to the country due to its "permissive laws and weak enforcement mechanisms".
Nine jihadis were arrested in August in the country for planning to join ISIS, while the country's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism (BVT) warned in June:
"Religiously motivated extremism and terrorism – above all of Islamic character – as well as Salafi-jihadi groups continue to present a great potential threat…The number of young radicalized followers of violent Salafism continues to rise.
"In this context, the conflict in Syria is of urgent relevance for Austria, since systematic efforts are being made within [Austria] to radicalize and recruit people for the war in Syria…The conflict in Syria has become very popular among violent extremist Salafis.
"The spectrum of recruits to the conflict in Syria is broadly ethnically diverse. The motivation, however, seems to be uniformly jihadi."
People from the Balkans, especially Bosnia, constitute a high percentage of extremists in the country, the BVT added.
 breitbart

Cameron's Plan to End the Migration Surge. Yeah, Right.

 
By James Delingpole 

David Cameron has talked a good game in his speech today on immigration and Britain's relationship with the EU. He had to, obviously, because if he hadn't pulled something out of the hat everyone who hasn't already left the Conservative party to join UKIP would have done so by now. But his mistake, according to seasoned EU watcher Richard North, is that he failed to address perhaps the biggest elephant in the room: the vast number of dependents who accompany all these migrants.
According to Eurostat, there are now 7.8 million first generation migrants living in Britain. Of these, around two million are dependents - from children to the elderly. In other words, more than one quarter of Britain's immigrant population are an unproductive burden on our overstretched welfare, benefits, healthcare and education system.
And under current European Court of Human Rights legislation there is nothing we can do about it. Article 8 declares that Family Reunification is yet another of those unalienable rights which take precedence over our right to decide who does and doesn't come to live in our own country.
I think I know the answers to these questions already. But just so I can amuse myself reading the comments: Is there anyone out there, anyone at all, who believes that Cameron's tough talk today will remotely impress, cow, or have any effect whatsoever on our Brussels masters? And does anyone trust his promise to pull us out of Europe if he doesn't get his way?
 breitbart

Israel Boycott Motion Shot Down in Local British Council

A local British municipal council has dropped a motion to boycott all products from the State of Israel, UK's Jewish News reported Thursday - amid a rising trend of British councils, chains, and groups supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against the Jewish State.
The Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (DMBC) of West Midlands - near Birmingham in West Midlands [Central England, between Liverpool and London - ed.] - was considering adopting a boycott, days after Leicester city council adopted a similar motion.
Dudley Labor councillor Qadar Zada's proposal urged the municipality to cease “existing and future procurement of goods and services where there is a direct benefit to the State of Israel, including through the supply chain, subject to legal compliance with all relevant procurement, contractual, legislative and regulatory requirements until such time as the State of Israel complies with international law."
Announcements that the DMBC was considering the move were met by strong protests from Jewish leaders, Tory (conservative) party members, and UK Independence Party (UKIP) representatives.
Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) head Simon Johnson welcomed the news that the motion had been dropped Thursday night.
“We welcome the decision of Dudley Council to withdraw their proposed boycott motion," Johnson stated. "We thank the Councillors for taking account of the concerns expressed in the letter from the JLC and BOD."
"The proposed motion would have been illegal, contrary to the policies of the leaders of all major political parties and contrary to the stated aims of the Palestinian Authority," he continued. "We hope that such a motion will not be reintroduced in future."
Support from conservative Tories and UKIP was strong for Jewish leaders' opposition to the motion. Some seven UKIP councilors were set to vote against the BDS motion, and at least one Tory representative stated that the party would oppose similar motions again if the issue reared its head in the future.
“I believe it will now be kicked into the long grass," Tory Councillor Patrick Hurley added. "Needless to say if they are stupid enough to bring it back at anytime then the Conservative Group will vote against."
UKIP representative Paul Brothwood added that the BDS motion was likely "illegal," given equal opportunities laws in England, and that the left-wing parties' support for the bills sets dangerous precedents.
“The local Labor party seem to be caring more about the West Bank than the West Midlands," he said. "They are being narrow and divisive."
"In reality this motion is unworkable," he added, "as the council would need to throw out most computers, most modern phones, a quarter of NHS generic drugs and all their latest scanners.”
 israelnationalnews

Turkey and the Kurds

By Uzay Bulut

For decades Turkey's official policy was: There are no Kurds -- so there is no problem.
"They wanted to send us a message through a beheading, a throat-cutting. This was an organized attack against our party. The [Turkish] state wanted to behead our party administrator in our party building. Behind this attack was the state itself." — Selahattin Demirtas, co-Chairman of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP).

Turkey: A Laboratory of Various Methods of Oppressing the Kurds
In Turkey, the approximately 20 million Kurds do not have any national rights, autonomy, or even primary schools where they can be educated in the Kurdish language.
The real population of Kurds in Turkey is not known; the Turkish state has not carried out a census of Kurds.
That policy may be deliberate: the Turkish regime seems to prefer to deny everything that is related to Kurdish existence. Turkey's state authorities, before the AKP came to power in 2002, said that when the Turkish republic was established, there were no Kurds – just "mountain Turks," and that Kurdish is not a "real" language. Since then, however, thanks to pro-Kurdish parties, the Turkish government can no longer refer to them that way. The problem remains, however, that the government still does not officially recognize the Kurds and still keeps denying them the autonomy they feel is their right.
For decades, that was Turkey's official policy: There are no Kurds – so there is no problem.
Denial was accompanied by state terrorism, carried out in massacres, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, unlawful arrests and, of course, torture.
In the 1990s, for instance, scores of Kurdish villages were razed and residents forcibly evacuated.
At least three million Kurds were displaced and left homeless, with 3,438 Kurdish villages destroyed and burned down by Turkish soldiers. [1]
Even a Turkish parliamentary commission concluded that in the 1990s, more than 3,000 villages and farm settlements were burned, razed and emptied of their inhabitants, and some 378,000 people displaced.
Velat Demir, the president of the Association of Solidarity and Assistance for the Families of Missing Persons, and one of the victims, says that due to the Turkish state violence he lost four members of his family.
Demir explained that estimates of the number of disappeared, between 1990 and 1994, range between 850 and 1.300. "Different figures are given because in Turkey there has not yet been a joint effort among civil society organizations to develop a database. Some say 500, some say 5.000 people. We think this is a big shortcoming."
As the Turkish pressure on Kurds has been huge and its methods of subjugation have been varied, many have become assimilated. But a great many have resisted assimilation, and demand that their rights for autonomy be recognized.
Turkey still does not recognize the Kurds, but in the 2000s, had somewhat to change its ways – albeit insidiously. In some of his public speeches now, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan refers to Kurds as "his Kurdish brothers," but still denies their rights just as former Turkish leaders did. In Turkey's constitution, for instance, Kurds are not recognized as a distinct ethnic community.
On September 15 of this year, when Kurds tried to open three primary schools in the Kurdish provinces of Diyarbakir, Sirnak and Hakkari finally to get some education in their native language, the schools were forcibly closed down and sealed by the Turkish Ministry of Interior and Turkish police the following day.
The Turkish state, which has not built a school for Kurds, has, however, built hundreds of jails in which to incarcerate them when they demand national or human rights.
Between 2009 and 2012 alone, hundreds of Kurdish activists, politicians, academics and journalists were arrested and imprisoned, and Turkish jails are still filled with Kurdish political prisoners.
Turkey's killing of Kurds also still continues. The Diyarbakir branch of the Human Rights Association (IHD) reported that since 1988, at least 580 Kurdish children have been killed by the Turkish state. Of these, 197 children have been killed during the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) since 2002.
The policy of the Turkish state toward the Kurds, ever since Turkey was established more than 90 years ago, in 1923, has been as follows:
Deny the Kurdish identity. Assimilate the Kurds into the Turkish culture. If they refuse, humiliate them until they get sick and tired of being Kurdish. If they do not get sick and tired, terrorize them into silence. If they refuse to be silent, just kill them off: You will either be a Turk, or I'll destroy you.
Attacks against Kurds by Turkish nationalists, police or troops all across Turkey have been on the rise in recent weeks and seem to result from of this mindset.
The Death of Kader Ortakaya
Kader Ortakaya, 28-year-old Kurdish sociologist and human rights activist, was shot dead on the Urfa-Kobani border on November 6, after the Turkish army reportedly attacked both sides of the border with gas bombs and bullets.
Ortakaya was an M.A. student in Istanbul's Marmara University, and also a member of the Social Freedom Platform and Free Art Initiative.
Members of the Free Art Initiative had been in the Kurdish town of Suruc for 25 days, and sleeping in tents in the border villages as a "peace guard." They reportedly wanted to form a human chain between Suruc and Kobani (in Syria) to show solidarity with the people of Kobani and to attract the world's attention to the dangers of the Islamic State (IS).
During a gathering, Ferhat Tunc, a well-known Kurdish singer, who had been forbidden to make a statement, was making one anyway. Turkish troops attacked the protesters with gas bombs and bullets, and opened fire on the people in Kobani on the other side of the border, as well.
Turkish troops shot Kader Ortakaya just after she had crossed the border from Turkey into Syria..
She was declared dead at the Kobani hospital; it is not known if she died in the hospital, or was dead upon arrival.
Several other artists and activists, including Ali Baran, Adil Aslan, Naif Aslan and Mustafa Kilic, age 75, were wounded and hospitalized.
Video Footage of Turkish Troops Meeting with ISIS
This video footage (here and here) of Turkish troops meeting with ISIS members was released on October 27. The footage shows the soldiers and ISIS members chatting and saluting each other on October 22.
The Turkish army issued a statement saying that the soldiers were "merely warning two persons that the area was a minefield."
Kurdish protestor shot and lynched in Izmir as police stand idly by
JINHA, a Kurdish news agency based in Diyarbakir, broadcast a video about Ekrem Kacaroglu, a father of three, shot in the head in the province of Izmir on October 7 while protesting ISIS attacks against Kobani.
The video shows Turkish nationalist mobs lynching the 38-year-old Kurd after he was shot. Wounded, he fell to the ground. While he was lying wounded on the ground, a mob of Turkish nationalists lynched him. The police just stood by as the aggressors kicked him while shouting, "Allahu Akbar!" ["Allah is Greater!"]
Kurdish Footballer Deniz Naki flees Turkey for Germany after attack
Deniz Naki, a Kurdish footballer born in the Kurdish province of Dersim in Turkey, was attacked in Ankara for posting anti-ISIS statements on social media and expressing his support for the Kurdish town of Kobani in Syrian Kurdistan.
After the attack, Naki cancelled his contract with Genclerbirligi, an Ankara team for which he had been playing for a year, and fled to Germany, where his family resides.
Naki has a tattoo of Dersim (the Kurdish name of the province where Kurdish people were massacred in 1937-38) and Azadi (a Kurdish word for "Freedom") on his arm, which caused him to receive threats.
For about six months, Naki had been exposed to threats and insults for his postings about his Kurdish and Alevi identity on Facebook, and said he thought he was being followed.
Last week, he was physically attacked as he left the facilities of his football team:

"As I just left the facilities, three people shouted at me: 'Are you the Kurdish, Alevi Naki?' They surrounded me, constantly swearing at me about my being Kurdish and Alevi. They shouted at me about Kobani and asked why I wrote 'Dersim' but not 'Tunceli' [the Turkish word for the same province] on my arm. As I tried to calm them down, the man on my left suddenly punched me in the face. I was shocked. I punched him back and ran away," he told Turkey's daily Birgun.
"There were three people and I was afraid that they might have guns or knives. They continued swearing at me as I ran. They said 'ISIS will f…k you.' And they said that this was just a warning".

Shortly after, Naki boarded a flight to Germany, and said that the attack would not cause him to give up his values, but that he would continue his career there out of concern for his safety.
An ISIS-Style Attack against a Kurdish politician in Ankara
On November 3, a Turkish nationalist stabbed Ahmet Karatas, a member of the Party Assembly of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), in his throat. Seriously wounded, Karatas was taken to the hospital.
The attack came after President Erdogan, on November 2, warned the HDP that, "Our patience has limits. If that limit is crossed, I do not even want to think about what might happen." Earlier, the HDP had asked its supporters to take to the streets on November 1 to protest ISIS attacks on Kobani and the government's reported support of ISIS. [2]
After the attack, Yalcin Akdogan, Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey, stated that the attack on Karatas was a "provocation" -- supposedly by people who want to start armed conflicts between the PKK and the Turkish army again, and to end the "resolution process" to resolve the Kurdish wish for autonomy through negotiations with Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the PKK.
The "resolution process" is the name of proceedings that reportedly got started in 2012. The government claims that it has been negotiating with Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the PKK, to end armed conflicts between the PKK and the Turkish army.
But no concrete steps for constitutional and legal reform towards the recognition of the Kurds' right to self-rule have been taken ever since.
So Akdogan was implying that Karatas was attacked because "some people" – whether Turks or even Kurdish nationalists -- wanted to end the negotiation process with Abdullah Ocalan and restart violence and armed conflict.
Selahattin Demirtas, co-chairman of the HDP, replied in a press conference on November 5:

"This was not a provocation. It was an organized attack against our party. The [Turkish] state wanted to behead our party administrator in our party building. Behind this act is the state itself.
...
The prime minister said that he was calling on everyone to react to the HDP. He launched a lynching campaign against us. But apparently, this was not enough, so they wanted to send us a message through a beheading, a throat cutting
The aggressor did everything to behead Karatas. He attempted to murder him in a calm manner. He did not even feel the need to hide his identity. He left his phone there. This is the message they are sending to us: They tell us that 'we will cut off your heads.' And this is our reply to them: Even though you cut off our heads, our bodies will not surrender to you.

Moustafa Mohamad, a Syrian Kurd, on a hunger strike for Kobani in Washington D.C.
Meanwhile in Washington D.C., as Kurds in Turkey and Syrian Kurdistan are exposed to attacks by ISIS and Turkish nationalists, Moustafa Mohamad, a Kurdish activist from Syrian Kurdistan, has been on a hunger strike for Kobani since October 21.
"I am on a hunger strike to take part in the pain and suffering of my people," Mohamad said. "To honor its resistance, to share its agony, to show its daily grunt and deprivations, I decided to go on a hunger strike to tell Washingtonians, who visit a popular site called Dupont Circle, that Kobani is fighting and they should support it."
"I want Kobani to prevail in the way [West] Berlin did during the Cold War. I also want the Islamic State out of Kurdish lands in Rojava as well as southern Kurdistan," said Kani Xulam, the spokesperson of the American Kurdish Information Network (AKIN), who is helping Moustafa Mohamad during his hunger strike.
"I think the international community is realizing that the Turkish ruling circles are not bothered or threatened by the extremism of Islamic State. What billions of dollars could not have accomplished for the Kurds and Kurdistan has been delivered to us: healthy and honest political recognition, on a silver platter.
I curse the Islamic State today and want them to be destroyed. Tomorrow, I will thank it and the Turkish ruling circles for the services rendered."[3]

Uzay Bulut is a Turkish non-Kurdish journalist based in Ankara.

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[1] According to the Migrants' Association for Social Cooperation and Culture.
[2] These were Erdogan's exact words:
"It has been five years since we started this process. First, we called it the 'opening process,' then the 'national unity and brotherhood process,' and now we call it the 'resolution process.' The HDP calls on people to take it to the streets. It says 'this is not for violence.' Then why are you calling on people to pour into the streets? [Instead, you can] hold a demonstration. When you say "take to the streets,' it means 'wear a mask, take your stick, take your molotov cocktail, and burn down certain shops.' The security forces and citizens are worried. That is why; I say the patience has its limits. If that limit is crossed, I do not even want to think about what might happen."
[3] From an interview with both men by the author.
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