"Thirst for blood"

I missed this story yesterday in The Hill.

Los Angeles police over the weekend arrested a man who was allegedly caught on video repeatedly trying to run over two men near a synagogue.

Authorities are investigating the incident as a possible hate crime, CBS Los Angeles reported.

Video from a security camera shows the driver apparently trying to hit two men dressed in clothing typically worn by Orthodox Jews on Shabbat. The driver, who has been identified as 32-year-old Mohammed Mohammed, reversed and tried to hit them again, according to the local outlet.

Ace of Spades notes,

You'll never see Jake Tapper or CNN cover this story -- antisemitism is only a problem when it can be associated with white devils or Trump supporters. They all have endorsed the "intersectionalist" argument that only whites can be racist (and that racism against whites isn't a bad thing, but a necessary and virtuous thing).

Women, Jews, and Gays: key Democrat constituents, and all are targets of Islamists!

Yet, they keep voting for the people who allow this cancer (aimed at them) to continue to grow! Do the Democrats want freedom for homosexuals, or dependency? In Obama's America, gay lives rank below Muslim feelings.
View the latest Right Angle with Bill Whittle, Stephen Green and Scott Ott here.

Consequences of America derogating from its leadership of the free world

Ruth Wisse writes for Mosaic Magazine. She asks,

What are we to make of the current flight of Jews from the country that gave us enlightenment, emancipation, religious tolerance, political liberty and freedom of thought?

That is the main question of Alain El-Mouchan’s essay on the rise of anti-Jewish violence in France and consequent increased Jewish movement to Israel.

...French authorities and the French media refuse to identify openly Islamist perpetrators as Muslims or their targets as Jews:

This refusal to identify either the culprits or their victims by their proper names—a refusal typical also of the Obama administration—has perversely combined with the swift posting of police and military guards at Jewish institutions to make Jews feel that at best they have become “protected citizens” in their own country, reinforcing the idea that they are no longer at home in France but are rather a new kind of dhimmi.

In at least two respects, I believe that America is becoming more vulnerable to the politics of blame that undermine democracies from within. One is the impress of a twice-elected president who has staked his foreign policy on an alliance with Iran as opposed to Israel. That the leaders of Iran link their promise of “death to America” to their intention of obliterating Israel has merely quickened Barack Obama’s resolve to accommodate the attackers. Some ascribe his behavior to error, others to the so-called school of “realism,” still others to an ideological dislike of precisely the political exceptionalism that both America and Israel represent. Motives aside, however, President Obama has clearly courted America’s Muslim and anti-democratic antagonists at the expense of its strongest allies, Israel foremost among them.

For its part, the political left blends its anti-capitalist, anti-religious “internationalism” with support for autocratic, religious, and xenophobic Arabs on the basis of a common opposition to Judaism and Jews. American universities are only now beginning to acknowledge the anti-Israel agitation they have condoned for decades, much of it fueled by professors who teach inverted history and perverted politics.

...Obama’s Jews may not have been able to prevent him from weakening America, but as an early-warning system of freedom, they were duty-bound to try. Instead they have earned his contempt and history’s judgment.

As America increasingly derogates from its leadership of the free world, the alliance with Israel, once upheld as a point of national pride, has become instead a reason for affronting the Jewish state and slighting its concerns. Future presidents will no doubt try to reclaim America’s global preeminence and to reverse the policies that have withered it. But both Americans and their enemies will have seen the cracks in the foundation of what had long seemed so unshakeable a commitment to unshakeable standards, principles, values—and friends.

Read more here.

Best satire of 2015

Do we recognize it?

Thanks to Mostly Cajun, All American and Opinionated, who writes an essay this week on how history repeats itself.

What's new?

Photo via NRO
Victor Davis Hanson writes that

World War II was the most destructive war in history. What caused it?

The panic from the ongoing and worldwide Depression in the 1930s had empowered extremist movements the world over. Like-minded, violent dictators of otherwise quite different Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, and the Communist Soviet Union all wanted to attack their neighbors.

Yet World War II could have been prevented had Western Europe united to deter Germany. Instead, France, Britain, and the smaller European democracies appeased Hitler.

The United States turned isolationist. The Soviet Union collaborated with the Third Reich. And Italy and Japan eventually joined it.

The 1930s saw rampant anti-Semitism. Jews were blamed in fascist countries for the economic downturn. They were scapegoated in democracies for stirring up the fascists. The only safe havens for Jews from Europe were Jewish-settled Palestine and the United States. Does all this sound depressingly familiar?

...After the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, America has turned inward. The Depression and the lingering unhappiness over World War I did the same to Americans in the 1930s.

Premodern monsters are on the move. The Islamic State is carving up Syria and Iraq to fashion a fascist caliphate.

Vladimir Putin gobbles up his neighbors in Ossetia, Crimea, and eastern Ukraine, in crude imitation of the way Germany once swallowed Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.

Theocratic Iran is turning Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon into a new Iranian version of Japan’s old Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

After the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, America has turned inward. The Depression and the lingering unhappiness over World War I did the same to Americans in the 1930s.

Premodern monsters are on the move. The Islamic State is carving up Syria and Iraq to fashion a fascist caliphate.

Vladimir Putin gobbles up his neighbors in Ossetia, Crimea, and eastern Ukraine, in crude imitation of the way Germany once swallowed Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.

Theocratic Iran is turning Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon into a new Iranian version of Japan’s old Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

America has convinced its European partners to drop tough sanctions against Iran. In the manner of the Allies in 1938 at Munich, they prefer instead to charm Iran, in hopes it will stop making a nuclear bomb.

The Islamic State has used almost a year of unchallenged aggression to remake the map of the Middle East. President Obama had variously dismissed it as a jayvee team or merely akin to the problems that big-city mayors face.

Europeans pay out millions to ransom their citizens from radical Islamic hostage-beheaders. Americans handed over terrorist kingpins to get back a likely Army deserter.

Putin, the Islamic State, and Iran at first glance have as little in common as did Germany, Italy, and Japan. But like the old Axis, they are all authoritarians that share a desire to attack their neighbors. And they all hate the West.

The grandchildren of those who appeased the dictators of the 1930s once again prefer in the short term to turn a blind eye to the current fascists. And the grandchildren of the survivors of the Holocaust once again get blamed.

The 1930s should have taught us that aggressive autocrats do not have to like each other to share hatred of the West.

The 1930s should have demonstrated to us that old-time American isolationism and the same old European appeasement will not prevent but only guarantee a war.

And the 1930s should have reminded us that Jews are usually among the first — but not the last — to be targeted by terrorists, thugs, and autocrats.

Read more here.

The challenge of liberal dogmatism requires a united and robust response

Paul Diamond writes:

This time we are not hearing the voice of tyrants, but the siren call of equality, diversity, and freedom from sexual prejudice and discrimination. What reasonable person would not want this? Anyone who opposes this, so the argument goes, must be a bigot and should be denied their human dignity (because such a person denies dignity to others).

In the midst of these developments, the intrinsic value of free speech has been lost, and government and quasi-government institutions seek to tell us what we can say, and even what we can think. In the process, the rule of law is subverted to this cause.

My American friends tell me that they have the First Amendment; and it is still strong. But we should not underestimate what judges can do. In my cases on the wearing of crosses at British Airways and at Exeter Hospital, a total of 13 British judges denied that the Christian cross was a manifestation of religion. In another case, a tribunal recently held that Sunday was not a core component of the Christian faith. These decisions were reversed either in Europe or in national courts, but an appeal was required on these basic issues.

The price of citizenship in the United Kingdom is indeed high for the religious adherent. In a case I took to the European Court (McFarlane v United Kingdom), Mr. McFarlane was dismissed for the mere expression of opposition to same-sex marriage, although he could have been easily accommodated in his work as a relationship counselor by only counseling different-sex couples. In another case, a housing trust worker was disciplined and demoted for expressing the view of belief in marriage.

The new liberal dogma says that a Jew or Christian is a bigot if they do not believe in the homosexual agenda.

The challenge of liberal dogmatism, like the challenge of national and international socialism before it, requires a united and robust response.

Please read more here

Leaflet being handed to Jews in eastern Ukraine asking them to "register" with the pro-Russian mikitants who have taken over a government office

By now you have probably heard about the leaflet being handed to Jews in eastern Ukraine city of Donetsk, asking all Jews to "register" with the pro-Russian militants who have taken over a government office in an attempt to make Ukraine part of Russia. Oren Dorell reports for USA Today that

Consequences for non-compliance will result in citizenship being revoked "and you will be forced outside the country with a confiscation of property," it said. A registration fee of $50 would be required, it said.

U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt called the leaflets "the real deal." But the man whose name appears on the leaflets, Denis Pushilin, identified as chairman of "Donetsk's temporary government," said he was not responsible.

Pushilin, who is a leader of the pro-Russian movement in Donetsk, acknowledged that leaflets were distributed under his organization's name but denied any connection to them, Ynet reported.

Donetsk is the site of an "anti-terrorist" operation by the Ukraine government, which has moved military columns into the region to force out militants who are demanding a referendum be held to join Russia.

Read more here.

The story of Middle Eastern shepherds updated

Kay Wilson, a British born Israeli, was the victim of a terrorist attack in 2010. She writes,

And it came to pass that in December 2010, two Palestinian shepherds left their little town near Bethlehem and set out to walk ten miles across the Judean Hills. There in the forest, they kept watch by night. The following day, at about the 6th hour (3pm) the shepherds saw two women walking along the Israel National Trail. With great fervour they took out their knives and attacked the women.

While shepherds held the girls that day and pinned them to the ground, their serrated blades glinted in the sun, shining all around. With knives to their throats, the women dare not move.

“Fear not,” said the men – for mighty dread had seized the women’s troubled minds – “we bring you good news that will cause great joy for our people.” What could these glad tidings be? Rape, a robbery, a beating? Anything was better than death the women pondered in their hearts.

And it came to pass that near the seventh hour, the shepherds said, “Behold, let us go forth and kill these Jews like Allah has told us to do.”

The shepherds gagged the women, removed their shoes, and bound their hands. They forced one woman to her knees, covered her head and pushed her neck forward. The woman knelt, and prepared herself to be beheaded. Suddenly she saw a great light – the blade of his knife glinting in the sun. The Jewish woman whispered, “Hear Oh Israel.” The Islamic host cried, “Allah HuAkbar,” and the Christian screamed “Jesus,” the name of a Jew born in David’s town.

Thirteen times the shepherds thrust their knives into the women, breaking bones, tearing flesh, even impaling one to the ground. As the Jew played dead, she watched the Christian friend hacked to death before her very eyes.

The shepherds returned home, glorifying and praising Allah for all that they had seen and spread the word concerning what had they had done. “Today near the town of David, two Jews have been slaughtered,” they declared. They plotted and schemed, boasting to their neighbours, “this will be a sign, they will find two of their own, all meanly wrapped in bloody clothes and in the bushes laid.” And everyone who heard of it, was amazed.

Read more by Kay here.