News German Government Adopts Resolution… German Government Adopts Resolution Against Anti-Semitism

Germany’s government passed a resolution committing itself to renewed action against anti-Semitism.

The resolution highlights the special relationship between Germany and Israel and condemns Israel-related anti-Semitism and terrorist organizations like Hezbollah. It was adopted Thursday with support from the Christian Democratic Union, the Social Democratic Party, the Free Democratic Party and the Greens. The Left Party abstained from voting.

Deidre Berger, head of the Berlin office of the American Jewish Committee, said in a statement that “an action plan is now urgently needed from the federal government and Ministry of Education and the Arts, on how and when the measures that have been agreed on will be carried out.”

Also Thursday, Germany’s Minister of the Interior Hans-Peter Friedrich said that the fight against anti-Semitism must involve all of democratic society.

Friedrich’s comments were made at a conference in Berlin on security for Jewish institutions in Europe sponsored by the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe. The conference included sessions about how Jewish communities communicate their security concerns and how states respond to them.

(Source: jspace.com)

Kim Jong-un endorses Mein Kampf as guidebook for economic growth

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un handed copies of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf to a host of the country’s top officials last January. The website New Focus International reported the controversial volume was printed especially in the format of a “hundred-copy book,” meaning a limited edition of banned books that have been published in secret for the consumption of members of the country’s elite.

Mein Kampf, published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926 offers an amalgam of its author’s autobiography with an exposition of his political ideology. Owing due to its blatantly racist content, and the historical consequences of the ideologies it espoused it is a hugely controversial volume, banned in many countries.

Kim Jong-un with Korean military’s top brass (Photo: AP)

The gifting took place at the leader’s birthday party on January 8. According to New Focus International, what attracted Jong-un to the book was the laying out of the tenets that enabled Germany to achieve considerable economic growth in the early years of Hitler’s reign.

“Kim Jong-un gave a lecture to high-ranking officials, stressing that we must pursue the policy of Byungjin (Korean for ‘in tandem’) in terms of nuclear and economic development. Mentioning that Hitler managed to rebuild Germany in a short time following its defeat in WWI, Kim Jong-un issued an order for the Third Reich to be studied in depth and asked that practical applications be drawn from it,” the site quoted an inside source as saying.

Israel’s Negev Facing Alarming Changes

By Anav Silverman
Tazpit News Agency

Although the Negev desert makes up 60 percent of the Israel’s land mass, it is a sparsely populated area in the south that holds only 8% of the country’s population. Home to the biblical Abraham and Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, there are approximately 700,000 people who live in the Negev today including over 200,00 in the desert’s capital Beer Sheva.

While the Negev is known for its natural beauty as well as its historical and archaeological sites, there are several factors that are changing the region’s scenery. According to Regavim, an Israeli NGO dedicated to preserving Israel’s state land and national properties, the Bedouin population’s construction of thousands of illegal buildings is spreading rapidly across the Negev.

“The area of illegal Bedouin expansion reaches up to 800,000 dunams (200,000 acres) in the northern Negev between Beer Sheva, Dimona and Arad,” stated Meir Deutsch, Regavim’s Regional Director to Tazpit News Agency during a recent tour of the region. “The Jewish population remains in much more concentrated areas like Beer Sheva. The Bedouins simply build wherever they want to.”

“Israel’s backyard desert is in a terrible mess,” Deutsch says.  “If Israel allows this building to continue, it will lose its sovereignty over the northern Negev.”

“Part of the problem is the rapidly expanding Bedouin population,” explains Deutsch. Bedouin families are large, averaging six to ten children and have one of the highest fertility rates in the world. While Israel bans polygamy, Bedouin men often marry two to three wives and can have families with as many as 25 children.

In 2008, Israel together with leading figures in the Bedouin community initiated a state program to address the phenomenon of Bedouin polygamy and its severely harmful implications on family structure.

It is estimated today that there are nearly 200,000 Bedouins living in the Negev, of which half reside in seven existing towns established by the Israeli government. The other half of the population lives in unauthorized communities with no municipal status on desert land that the Bedouins have never formally owned.  Deutsch explains that 60,000 illegal structures have been built by Bedouins across the Negev and 2,000 new illegal structures are added every year. These areas are rampant with poverty, crime and lawlessness.

In addition, because the Bedouins are dispersed over extensive areas and not in permanent housing, they are not connected to Israel’s electricity grid or public services.

Another major problem Deutsch pointed out is the collaboration between Sinai and Negev Bedouins who work together to smuggle in illicit drugs and weapons for terrorists, jeopardizing Israel’s security.

“There are solutions to these problems,” Deutsch tells Tazpit News Agency. “But it must begin with the government taking appropriate action to address these issues in an effectiveway. This hasn’t happened yet.”

“The illegal building has to stop. On Google Earth, anyone can see how the Bedouin communities in the northern Negev are continually expanding. If something isn’t done soon, the impact will be felt everywhere,” he added.

It is important to note that Bedouin citizens are a minority within the Arab minority in Israel. Most of the Bedouins in the Negev were nomads who originally came from Hejaz, a region in the northern Arabian peninsula and immigrated to Israel between the 14^th and 18^th centuries. Bedouins in northern and central Israel hail from the Syrian desert, with northern Bedouin tribes fighting alongside Israel during the 1948 War of Independence.

While much fewer Negev Bedouins serve in the IDF, an estimated two-thirds of their brethren living in northern Israel serve in the army as elite trackers and scouts along the country’s borders.

(Source: jewsnews.co.il)

Streisand Slams Hareidim for Anti-Women Stances

Barbra Streisand speaking at Hebrew University

Alexi Rosenfeld, AJR Photography

In a speech at Hebrew University Monday, singer Barbra Streisand expressed her dismay at what she called the “discriminatory behavior” against women by members of the hareidi community. “There are women who are forced to sit at the back of the bus,” Streisand said, adding that it was just as shocking to her to hear that women who tried to pray at the Western Wall were attacked. Streisand called for full, equal rights for men and women in all corners of Israeli society – including hareidi-religious groups.

Streisand is in Israel to perform at two concerts, being given in honor of President Shimon Peres’ 90th birthday. She was presented with an honorary doctorate at Hebrew University Monday.

“I realize it’s not easy to fully grasp the dynamics of what happens in a foreign land. Israel and the United States have much in common: Two great and noble countries, each with problems of course, but always striving to shine as a beacon of hope,” Streisand said. “So it’s distressing to hear about women in Israel being forced to sit at the back of a bus, or when we hear about Women of the Wall having metal chairs hurled at them when they attempt to peacefully pray, or when women are banned from singing in public ceremonies.”

This was in contrast to Hebrew University itself, Streisand said. “One of the things I’ve always admired about this university is the fact that here, women and men, Jews and Arabs, Christians and Muslims, native-born and immigrants, sit together in classes, share the same cafeterias, learn from the same professors, and dream together of a good and meaningful life,” she said.

In 1984 Streisand established the Emanuel Streisand Building in memory of her beloved father, whom she praised at the time as “a teacher, scholar and religious man who devoted himself to education. I think he would be very proud to know that this esteemed institution is honoring his daughter,” she said.

G8: Putin rips the West for supporting Cannibals in Syria; West… has… no… Coherent… Response

As the leaders of western nations remain mired in a toxic tank of groupthink that says Syria’s Bashar al-Assad must go and that if you disagree, you’re a heartless and ridiculous twit who doesn’t know anything, Russian President Vladimir Putin explained that it’s the rebels who are making Assad’s supporters heartless – by eating them in front of video cameras. What do these geniuses of elitist western thought come back with? Well, nothing, really.

The seven words underlined below represent a “Bingo” moment for Putin.

Via U.K. Guardian:

A diplomatic breakthrough on the Syrian civil war at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland appeared unlikely when the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, chastised the west for considering arming Syrian rebels, saying they ate human organs. He said Russia by contrast was arming the legitimate government of Syria.

Speaking after a difficult meeting with Putin in Downing Street, David Cameron claimed both men were in agreement on the need to end the human catastrophe of the civil war. But there was little to suggest the two men made progress on how to convene a fresh Syrian peace conference in Geneva, let alone who should attend, or its agenda.

In icy exchanges at a press conference, Putin said: “You will not deny that one does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines in front of the public and cameras. Are these the people you want to support? Is it them who you want to supply with weapons? Then this probably has little relation to humanitarian values that have been preached in Europe for hundreds of years.”

Putin’s remarks will find an echo on the Conservative benches, where there is strong resistance to arming the Syrian opposition. Cameron has argued that it is possible to arm the pluralist democratic elements of the opposition, and he too wants to drive al-Qaida from Syria.

The Russian President – regardless of what you think of him – was spot on about that humanitarian part. So, if as Putin says, arming the Syrian rebels is not about humanitarian concerns, what is it about?

The simple answer is: Resurrecting the Ottoman Empire and re-establishing an Islamic caliphate. Assad is a nationalist. The rebels want to erase Syria’s borders and have the land absorbed by the same forces behind the Arab Spring. Western leaders are willingly ceding their own power.

Putin presented facts about what the Syrian rebels are doing while Cameron’s argument is that by arming al-Qaida in Syria, al-Qaida can be driven from Syria, which makes as much sense as the infamous line about ‘leading from behind’. Cameron’s position is not only incoherent; it’s irresponsible and completely belies his stated concern for human rights. Yet, western groupthink labels as idiots, those who don’t want Assad gone? Perhaps Mr. Cameron’s new clothes have a conspicuous resemblance to underwear.

Speaking of leading from behind, the guy leading the pro-Muslim Brotherhood, western, groupthink wagon is playing a very influential role relative to Cameron’s stance:

The talks (with) Putin followed a decision by President Barack Obama’s administration to arm rebels trying to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad after the US said it had obtained proof that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons. Some of the proof was provided by British scientists at Porton Down, and Cameron has now accused Assad of committing war crimes.

Perhaps if ever a case could be made for using chemical weapons, it might include an enemy that eats the organs of its victims for video cameras. Despite this, the only proof we’ve seen that chemical weapons have been used in Syria shows that it was Syrian rebels who used them. Another red flag in this regard is that if Assad used chemical weapons, the death toll would likely be so large that we would have video footage for the whole world to see.

That we don’t should be a cause for pause, not more groupthink.

Speaking of Cameron, yes, he must consider strongly the position of any U.S. administration when setting foreign policy but that doesn’t mean he should accept it blindly and at all costs. Perhaps Cameron should dust off the bust of Sir Winston Churchill that Obama sent back to the U.K. in 2009 (despite White House attempts by Dan Pfeiffer – the guy who said the president’s whereabouts during the Benghazi attacks was “irrelevant” – to debunk this charge, it has been confirmed). Considering what Churchill wrote about Islam, Cameron might be well served to read it:

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live… No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.” – Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).

Nonetheless, it appears that western emperors are being led from behind from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue down an untenable path… and without clothes.

Obama Doctrine: America Allies with Muslim Brotherhood to Promote Middle East ‘Stability’

Barry Rubin - June 16, 2013

Here is what I wrote in October 2010, when the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood — Muhammad al-Badi — had just given a sermon calling for the overthrow of Egypt’s government (which happened four months later) and a jihad against the United States, a country he considered weak, foolish, and in retreat from the Middle East:

[Al-Badi’s sermon is] one of those obscure Middle East events of the utmost significance that is ignored by the Western mass media, especially because they happen in Arabic, not English; by Western governments, because they don’t fit their policies; and by experts, because they don’t mesh with their preconceptions.

Two and a half years ago, who would ever have thought that the United States would enter an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood? There were hints in President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech, yet now it is clear that this is the new basis for regional security sought by the Obama administration.

For all practical purposes the closest allies to the United States are no longer Israel, Saudi Arabia, and a moderate Egypt, but an Islamist Egypt, an Islamist regime in Turkey, and the Syrian rebels led by the Brotherhood.

And literally every mainstream media outlet, every expert who speaks in public, every Democrat, and the majority of Republican politicians still don’t realize that this is true.

American history has witnessed the Truman Doctrine (help countries fight Communist takeover), the Nixon Doctrine (get local middle-sized powers to take part of the burden of the Cold War from the United States), the Carter Doctrine (defend Gulf Arab states from Iranian aggression), and the Reagan Doctrine (go on the offensive against Soviet expansionism).

Now, we have the Obama Doctrine: ally with the Muslim Brotherhood to transform the Middle East.

Is this an improvement on a strategy based on alliances with pro-Western dictators? We are still working with dictators, but now they are also anti-American and even more oppressive than their predecessors. The old dictators, as horrible as they were, were content with the status quo (except for Iraq, where the overthrow came without a new extremist regime taking power), whereas the Islamist dictators want the fundamental transformation of their societies. The old dictators were resigned to the regional situation; the Islamist ones want a wave of new revolutions, terrorism, wars against Israel.

And sooner or later they will strike out against America, just as they give their Salafist allies free rein to do so.

The occasion for declaring that an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood and similar groups is the new Obama Doctrine is, of course, the decision to supply arms to the Syrian rebels. As recently as April 28 – a mere six weeks ago! — the New York Times was talking of an imminent rebel victory. Now, panic has set in regarding a total rebel collapse.  This has prompted a rush to give weapons to the rebels even as they seem to have stopped the government advance without additional American weapons. In some parts of the country the rebels are the ones advancing.

The weapons will be given to the Supreme Military Council, which runs the Free Syrian Army (FSA). But while the FSA is nominally led by defected military officers, most of its soldiers hold views closely aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The fig leaf will be that these guns are being given to “moderates” — like the people Senator John McCain met with. The truth is that  they will be given to people whose politics encompass hatred for Jews, Christians, and the West generally, and who are ready to engage in what, in American politics, has come to be known as homophobia and a War on Women.

If the rebels were to win, this would mean imposing a Muslim Brotherhood government on Syria. The Syrian political opposition organization the United States recognizes and has financially supported is overwhelmingly run by the Brotherhood, and it refuses to admit real moderates and Kurds on a serious level.

Note that this is the second Muslim Brotherhood entity the U.S. government has provided with weapons. The first was the Egyptian government, which — despite its questionable human rights record–  the Obama administration has no objection to helping. The shipment of weapons was not even postponed as a gesture.

Egypt is an anti-American client state. And so is Tunisia. So, too, is Turkey, which is sort of a Muslim Brotherhood regime in Turkish style. (The Turkish regime, it should be remembered, is the chief adviser to the Obama administration on Syrian affairs, and its favorite government in the region.)

Why did Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Egypt endorse an American no-fly zone in Syria? In Islamic terms, to invite an infidel power to “invade” an Arab land cannot be justified by any Islamist, in contrast to a non-Islamist Muslim-majority state. The Muslim Brotherhood can justify this support, however, because the goal of this action will be to install a Muslim Brotherhood government in Syria.

In four other places, U.S. policy is not — yet? — backing the Brotherhood.

– Because of pro-Israel sentiment in the United States, the Obama administration is still anti-Hamas — the Muslim Brotherhood group which rules the Gaza Strip. Hamas has also committed too many terrorist attacks, and is in revolt against the U.S.-backed nationalist Palestinian Authority.

In an unguarded moment, Obama’s then-counterterrorism adviser let slip that he would engage Hamas if he thought he could get away with it. But this would be too big a step for even pro-Obama Democrats to accept. Besides, right now Hamas is in a conflict with Egypt, so that doesn’t have to be addressed by the U.S. yet.

– In Jordan, the Obama administration still supports the monarchy, though it often seems to do so only absent-mindedly. The Brotherhood, which is the chief opposition group, wants to overthrow the king, but is afraid — precisely because the regime is so south — to try violence. Who knows what will happen, though, if Syria is ever taken over by the rebels.

– In Lebanon, the leadership of the Sunni Muslims is pro-Western and moderate. Radical Islamists are in a small minority. Both Sunni groups hate Hizballah, which is of course the ally and now co-belligerent of Iran and the Syrian regime. Still, there is no sign that the United States is going to do anything on Hizballah’s home court.

It is somewhat ironic that the one place where the Sunni Muslim leadership is most moderate is where Obama isn’t acting, even though Hizballah (another force Brennan declared moderately not long ago) is now a proven enemy beyond denial.

– The Obama administration has not yet supported the Muslim Brotherhood against Israel. The strategy on this point is to get a two-state peace agreement and thus defuse the issue. Of course, the Islamists will not be satisfied with that result even if it happens, which it won’t.

Why is the United States backing the Brotherhood in Syria? Most immediately, it is being done in order to prevent an Iranian bloc victory in Syria, even though the Brotherhood and al-Qaeda are on the same side there. Except in Iraq, U.S. policy is backing the Sunnis over the Shia.

Beyond that, however, the Obama administration has argued that backing the Brotherhood is the best way to defeat al-Qaeda, which wants to attack America directly. Obama has also claimed that the Brotherhood will inevitably moderate — the same argument that was once heard about Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Yasir Arafat, Ruhollah Khomeini, and Saddam Hussein.

Are the Sunnis the lesser of two evils compared to Iran?

Arguably, yes. But that doesn’t mean that the Sunni Islamists are better than the non-Islamists, who range from nationalist army officers to traditionalist conservatives and pro-democratic liberals.

At any rate, the new policy is in place. America has had many unlikely allies in its history, including Stalin and a number of Third World dictators. But have any been such strange partners as those who would like to kill all the Jews, wipe out Christianity, reduce women to permanent second-class citizens, and murder gays?

Indeed, these are not only strange, but unnecessary and mistaken allies.

——————————————–

An interesting MEMRI piece gives an example of Sunni closing of ranks: Muslim Brotherhood and chief Sunni Islamist guide Yusuf al-Qaradawi attacks Hizballah (Islamist, but on the Shia side) and extols his friendship with King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia (anti-Islamist but on the Sunni side).

And here’s another Sunni Islamist, a Kuwaiti, wishing in a MEMRI video that he could personally slit the throats of Hizballah soldiers. Why is this significant? Because Kuwait has a lot of Shia with whom the Sunni Islamists have worked pretty well. The new Sunni-Shia conflict may also bitterly divide Kuwait.

What this all means is that the Sunni Islamist war against the Shia supersedes the Islamist war against the non-Islamists.

On demonstrations in Turkey, see this source: Turkish demonstrations for English-speakers.

(Source: pjmedia.com)