European Meltdown Threatens Jews: Isi Leibler, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 20, 2016 — Today, Diaspora Jewish communities are suffering severe trauma as they experience erosion of the acceptance and security they enjoyed over the past half century.
Political Revolution Is Brewing in Europe: Geert Wilders, Gatestone Institute, Dec. 21, 2016 — Yesterday, the Islamic State claimed the Berlin terror attack of Monday evening, in which twelve people were killed with a truck at a Christmas market.
DENK: A New Muslim Anti-Israel Party in the Netherlands: Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, Arutz Sheva, Dec. 9, 2016 — The massive non-selective immigration of Muslims into Western Europe is the worst that happened to Jewish communities in Western Europe since the Holocaust.
Don’t Open the Immigration Floodgates: John Robson, National Post, Nov. 7, 2016— The suicide bombing at the Coptic church in central Cairo on December 11, 2016
In Aftermath of Berlin Christmas Market Attack, Germany’s Resilience Tested: Joanna Slater, Globe & Mail, Dec. 21, 2016
Angela Merkel is Our Strongest Ally — But She Messed Up : Ralph Peters, New York Post, Dec. 21, 2016
Will Europe Stand for Freedom or Submission? Ask Wilders: Giulio Meotti, Arutz Sheva, Dec. 14, 2016
Europe Needs Its Realist Past: Walter Russell Mead, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 30, 2016
EUROPEAN MELTDOWN THREATENS JEWS
Isi Leibler
Jerusalem Post, Dec. 20, 2016
Today, Diaspora Jewish communities are suffering severe trauma as they experience erosion of the acceptance and security they enjoyed over the past half century. Whether it be Paris, Johannesburg, New York, Melbourne or any city with a Jewish community, the anti-Semitism expressed as feverish hatred of the Jewish state — incubated over the past decade by a witches’ brew of Muslim, far-left and traditional anti-Semitism — is again transforming many Jews into pariahs.
However, the epicenter is undoubtedly Europe where the situation has been aggravated over the past year as a consequence of the immigration of huge numbers of migrants from Syria and North Africa, enabled by the open-door policy of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Many are not refugees but able-bodied young Muslims seeking to improve their standard of living and include supporters and, in some cases, activists of global jihad. They are dramatically destabilizing the social cohesion and security of countries harboring them.
In past decades, most Middle Eastern immigrants to the West were drawn to democracy and sought to integrate with their new surroundings. But many who are coming now display no inclination to integrate, regard democracy with contempt and have been indoctrinated with vile anti-Semitic prejudice. Indeed, moderate Muslims are intimidated, silenced and some even murdered while others who are second-generation offspring of law-abiding immigrants, including university graduates, have been radicalized into perpetrating terror.
Setting aside the 1,750 European jihadists who, according to an EU report, have returned from Syria with orders to engage in terror in their own countries, the aggressive demands, violence and criminal activities of the “refugees” have already impacted in every community in which they reside. Regrettably, in a futile effort to minimize tensions, governments and the media understate and even cover up the extent of their damage to the social fabric. With the indigenous population shrinking and the Muslim birthrate alarmingly high, unless the flow of migrants is stemmed, there is every possibility that by the end of the century the foundations of European civilization will be destroyed…
It is the Jews who are the primary targets for terrorists and proportionately suffer the greatest number of casualties. Yet, ironically, many liberal Jews are at the forefront of campaigns to open the door to widespread immigration of Muslim “refugees” and even make ridiculous bleeding-heart analogies to the plight of Jews during the Holocaust. In so doing, they are facilitating the entry into their communities of hordes of embittered anti-Semites who have been brought up to consider Jews as the “offspring of apes and pigs.”
They also enrage many of their neighbors who loathe these “refugees” and fear that this flood of immigration will destroy their way of life. Many Europeans are not merely outraged by the accelerating crime levels but deeply resent the government censorship imposed in the futile efforts to avert Islamist violence by acts of appeasement. Any critique of Muslim behavior is automatically condemned as Islamophobia and it is now effectively illegal to criticize Islam, as exemplified by the spurious Dutch court conviction of Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders for the “crime” of “hate speech”.
The response has been the meteoric rise of radical right-wing movements in all European countries — Jobbik in Hungary and the Golden Dawn in Greece are outright anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi movements. In France, Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front (the largest political party in France today) has vigorously condemned and dissociated her party from its former anti-Semitism and even expelled her father because of his anti-Jewish and Holocaust-denying remarks. The right-wing U.K. Independence Party, which spearheaded the Brexit campaign, has sought to purge anti-Semites from its ranks. The Austrian Freedom Party, whose candidate was narrowly defeated in the presidential election, is seeking to distance itself from its former Nazi past.
Throughout Europe, extreme right-wing and anti-Muslim political parties are on the ascendancy. All, except the Hungarian and Greek neo-Nazis, even support Israel but many of their rank and file are unreconstructed traditional anti-Semites. The anticipated appointments in Trump’s administration combined with horrific examples of criminal behavior among immigrants (including gang rapes and murders) will undoubtedly polarize the situation and further strengthen populist forces in Europe. The bureaucrats who have arrogantly presided over the European Union have good reason to fear collapse of the entire EU structure. In France and Germany, Shariah courts are bypassing the state legal system and polygamy and child marriage proliferate. To placate public outrage, many governments are now toughening their stance towards the migrants in efforts to stem the flow of their support toward the radical right-wing parties. Even Chancellor Merkel is proposing to ban bourkas.
Under such circumstances in which the anti-Israeli Left is in decline and most radical right-wing groups – other than in Hungary and Greece — are seeking to distance themselves from anti-Semitism and concentrating on the Islamic fundamentalist threat, it could be suggested that Jews have less grounds for concern. However, in this utterly chaotic climate in which populism and instability reign supreme, historical precedents point to the scapegoating of Jews. The growing prejudice directed against Muslims and the efforts of the radical right-wing political parties to distance themselves from anti-Semitism will not lessen hatred for Jews, even if they try to conceal it.
Nor will it stem the growing anti-Semitism spearheaded by “progressives” and “liberals” who in the 1930s were the strongest opponents of anti-Semitism. Alas, the reality is that anti-Israelism, morphing into direct anti-Semitism, has now become indispensable to the political DNA of anyone purporting to be “progressive,” even including Jews. Moreover, Muslims have far greater power in numbers which will enable them to intensify their anti-Semitism with their leftist allies.
The situation for Jews is therefore only likely to deteriorate. As it is, they live in societies where horrific terrorist attacks against their schools, synagogues, museums and supermarkets have necessitated military or armed guards to provide security. Jews in some areas avoid wearing kippot and feel obliged to adopt a low profile to avoid being assaulted; many children attend Jewish schools in record numbers not because of the Jewish education but because of the anti-Semitism they encounter in public schools; students at universities are under continuous attack.
Public opinion is in general more hostile to Jews than most governments which augurs ill for the future. There was one small ray of sunshine recently when the British government adopted a realistic definition of anti-Semitism that could well serve as a model for other countries to emulate. But this has to be balanced by the fact that, for the first time, the opposition Labour Party in the U.K. could be headed by shamelessly open anti-Semites.
There are probably in the vicinity of 1.4 million Jews in Europe. What sort of life as Jews can they expect for their children and grandchildren when they live under such conditions and all indicators suggest an increase in anti-Semitism? While many are likely to remain, their communities are likely to shrink dramatically. Those who wish for their children to maintain pride in their heritage and not be brought up in an atmosphere where they are under social pressure to conceal their Jewish identity or turn against their own people would be well-advised to consider emigrating. If they are unable to do so, they should encourage their children to leave. They are fortunate that today they do not need to beg for entry visas; the Jewish state provides a haven for all Jews.
Whereas in Israel their Jewish future is almost assured, sadly, many decide to emigrate to other Diaspora Jewish communities where there is no guarantee that they will maintain their Jewish identity. One of the main reasons for this is that the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency have failed to provide adequate facilities for middle-class and professional immigrants. Israel has one of the most successful economies in the world and failure to make maximum efforts to absorb more of these immigrants will be recorded as a tragic lost opportunity. Rectifying this situation must become a top priority for the government. Alas, the European situation for Jews is dismal and we must hope that many will leave and join us in Israel and participate in the historic renaissance of our people.
POLITICAL REVOLUTION IS BREWING IN EUROPE
Geert Wilders
Gatestone Institute, Dec. 21, 2016
Yesterday, the Islamic State claimed the Berlin terror attack of Monday evening, in which twelve people were killed with a truck at a Christmas market. The killer managed to escape. However, in the truck the police found identity papers belonging to Anis A., a Tunisian who came to Germany as an asylum seeker in 2015. When last year German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened Germany's borders to almost one million refugees and asylum seekers, she invited the Trojan horse of Islam into her country. Among the so-called refugees were many young men of Islamic background, filled with hatred for the West and its civilization. One of them was Anis A.
It took almost a year for the German authorities to reject his asylum request, but meanwhile the man had disappeared. The police are now looking for him as a prime suspect of Monday's attack in Berlin. The German authorities are dangerously underestimating the threat of Islam. They signs are there for all to see. In October, an Afghan asylum seeker raped and murdered a 19-year old German girl in Freiburg. And a 12-year old Iraqi boy was caught before he could explode a nail bomb at a Christmas market in Ludwigshafen.
Last Summer, an Afghan with an axe attacked train passengers in Heidingsfeld, a Syrian murdered a pregnant woman with a machete in Reutlingen, another Syrian detonated a suicide bomb at a music festival in Ansbach, a Palestinian attempted to decapitate a surgeon in Troisdorf. And who has forgotten last New Year's eve, when migrant sex mobs assaulted hundreds of women in Cologne? This year, 1,500 police officers will be patrolling the streets in Cologne on New Year's eve. Ten times more than last year. But how many police officers will be needed next year? And the year after that? And what will happen when they are outnumbered? What is needed are not just more police officers; what is needed is a democratic political revolution.
Let no-one tell you that only the perpetrators of these crimes are to blame. The politicians, who welcomed Islam into their country, are guilty as well. And it is not just Frau Merkel in Germany, it is the entire political elite in Western Europe. Out of political-correctness, they have deliberately turned a blind eye to Islam. They have refused to inform themselves about its true nature. They refuse to acknowledge that is all in the Koran: the permission to kill Jews and Christians (Surah 9:29), to terrorize non-Muslims (8:12), to rape young girls (65:4), to enslave people for sex (4:3), to lie about one's true goals (3:54), and the command to make war on the infidels (9:123) and subjugate the entire world to Allah (9:33).
Instead of informing themselves, they have opened their country's borders to mass immigration and invited asylum seekers in, despite the fact that IS had announced that it would send terrorists to the West as asylum seekers. They even allowed Syria fighters to return to Europe, instead of denaturalizing them and blocking their re-entry. They have not even imprisoned them. In short, they are guilty of serious negligence. They have betrayed their own citizens.
The asylum tsunami of 2015 has only exacerbated an already terrible situation. Almost a decade ago, in 2008, a study by the (very leftist) University of Amsterdam revealed that 11% of all Muslims in the Netherlands agree that there are situations in which they find it acceptable for themselves to use violence for the sake of their religion. This means that, in my country, the Netherlands, alone, there are 100,000 Muslims who are personally prepared to use violence. The Dutch army, however, is less than 50,000 soldiers strong. Hence, even if we deploy the entire army to protect Christmas markets, theaters, night clubs, festivals, shopping malls, churches and synagogues, we cannot guarantee the safety of all our citizens.
That is why there is little doubt that 2017 will bring Germany and the entire West more violence, more attacks on our women and daughters, more bloodshed, more tears, more sorrow. The terrible truth is that, in all likelihood, we ain't seen nothing yet. But this does not mean that there is no hope. Just as the present dangerous situation has been created by politicians refusing to see the horrible reality of Islam and refusing to do their duty, the solution to the gigantic self-inflicted problem the West is currently suffering from, needs to be a political one…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
DENK: A NEW MUSLIM ANTI-ISRAEL PARTY IN THE NETHERLANDS
Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld
Arutz Sheva, Dec. 9, 2016
The massive non-selective immigration of Muslims into Western Europe is the worst that happened to Jewish communities in Western Europe since the Holocaust. It has also led to the most evil attacks on Israel’s standing in Western Europe. A new development in the Netherlands adds further to the latter.
The new national party DENK (Think) party aims mainly at Muslim voters. Its initiators are two Turkish-born parliamentarians Tunahan Kuzu and Selçuk Öztürk. They were expelled from the Labor party (PvdA) faction at the end of 2014 because they opposed the integration policy for immigrants of Deputy Prime Minister Lodewijk Asscher (PvdA). He had criticized the role of some Dutch Turkish organizations concerning integration of immigrants. Kuzu got some international attention when, during Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to the Netherlands on 7 September 2016, he refused to shake his hand.
DENK favors the recognition of the non-existing Palestinian state. This policy has the support of all Dutch parties on the political left. These include the extreme left SP socialist party, the Green Left party, the party for the Animals, the Labor party and the D66 left-liberals. A recent parliamentary motion to recognize Palestine was defeated by 76 against 71 votes. The supporters of the motion know well that there exist two different Palestinian entities in respectively the 'West Bank' and Gaza. They are humanitarian racists who wish to ignore the fact that the largest Palestinian party Hamas, which controls Gaza, aims in its covenant for the genocide of all Jews.[4] The only other significant Palestinian party Fatah, which controls the 'West Bank', glorifies violence against Israeli citizens.
DENK takes a more extreme anti-Israeli position than all other parliamentary parties. It wants to prohibit the import of products from “illegal” Israeli settlements. It also wants the Dutch government to request the Israeli government to reimburse the Dutch investment “in development projects in ‘Palestine’ which have been destroyed by proven actions of the Israeli government.”
The DENK program is a lengthy document. If one reads it carefully it doesn’t accept the Dutch culture as a lead culture. It expresses that in glib ways, which do not explain exactly what that may mean in practice. It states that not only the immigrants have to listen to the Dutch but also the reverse. One example of such a glib statement is: “When I think about the Netherlands I dream about a healthy Netherlands where the nurse Thea takes into account the desires and demands of aunt Latifa.” That may mean that Latifa is not willing to be treated by a male doctor. It may also mean that Latifa is an anti-Semite who doesn’t want a Jewish nurse to care for her. I once interviewed a Jewish nurse from Amsterdam. She said: “A Moroccan man whose child I took care of went to his general practitioner. The father said that he did not want his child to be treated by a Jewish nurse. So his doctor sent him to another hospital.” It was one among many cases of Muslim anti-Semitism in the Netherlands…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
DON’T OPEN THE IMMIGRATION FLOODGATES
John Robson
National Post, Nov. 7, 2016
There’s this idea out there, and I mean way out there, that Canada should have a population of 100 million people by the year 2100. The idea has been endorsed by commentators I respect, like Andrew Coyne and Terence Corcoran, as well as by politicians I don’t. And while the latter may be motivated partly by visions of ethnic masses gratefully supporting them until 2100, I find the intellectual arguments weak and weirdly restless.
Let’s start with the claim that population growth is natural in a great nation. It may be, but papering over domestic fertility rates that are way below the level of replacement by throwing open the gates is cheating. So is propping up the crumbling welfare state by luring in millions of energetic people to work like blazes to support the home-born geezers who got the math wrong. Besides, the newcomers are likely either to succumb to the same perverse incentives that created the problem in the first place, or use their growing ballot box clout to repudiate the whole deal.
I also find the economic arguments odd, and not just because if all these immigrants are energetic and honest like Canadians, their homeland should be like Canada already. We’re continually told they’ll bring dazzling growth and endless, wonderful, game-changing innovations we can’t accomplish on our own, which will free us from the shabby confines of the current economy. This would include, I presume, those flying cars that were so popular in the 1950s, so Montreal and Toronto can have 3D traffic jams. Yet our per capita GDP has doubled since 1970.
So if our economy is still a rusty heap of junk, as Finance Minister Bill Moreau implied in announcing a deficit-fuelled lunge into “a new modern economy,” life must have been unendurable in the 1920s, let alone the 1870s. And what hope is there for the future? If conditions today are almost intolerable because we don’t have, I don’t know, bar codes on fish, holographic smart watches or memory implants, why do you suppose we’ll be happy once we do? Or, rather, once our descendants do. At what point will they say our cities are big and sparkly enough, our nightclubs loud enough, our wilderness sufficiently crowded, our social habits sufficiently chaotic and post-modern?
As Aleksandr Herzen pointedly asked in the 1840s, “If progress is the aim, then for whom are we working? Who is this Moloch who, as the toilers approach him, instead of rewarding them, draws back, and as consolation to the exhausted, doomed multitude crying, ‘Morituri te saluant,’ can only reply ‘After your death it will be beautiful on earth’? … Progress is infinite. This alone should serve as a warning to people; an aim which is infinitely remote is not an aim but, if you like, a brilliant trick; an aim must be more immediate — it ought to be, at the very least, the labourer’s wage, or pleasure in the work done. Each age, each generation, each life had and has its own fullness.”
Life? Don’t talk to me about life. The enthusiasm for mass immigration is not just fuelled by an apparent conviction that money will bring happiness, but that it will only bring happiness if it’s over $100,000 a year. There’s also a consensus that we need “social change” morning, noon and night, a hurricane of creative destruction that never subsides to a warm, gentle breeze. Hence the determination to bring in millions of people who do not share our way of life, and indoctrinate young people to be “agents of change.” Does no one wish to be an agent of preservation? Was there nothing good about the habits and beliefs of those who built this country over many centuries without iPads or genetically engineered pets, their values of liberty, toleration, self-government in the political and personal sense, their Judeo-Christian heritage that made Canada so attractive to immigrants?…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
In Aftermath of Berlin Christmas Market Attack, Germany’s Resilience Tested: Joanna Slater, Globe & Mail, Dec. 21, 2016—Authorities cast a Europe-wide net in a frantic search for a suspect in Monday’s deadly attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, an act of violence that will test Germany’s commitment to tolerance and openness.
Angela Merkel is Our Strongest Ally — But She Messed Up : Ralph Peters, New York Post, Dec. 21, 2016 —Angela Merkel is the last man in Europe. The German chancellor is also our strongest ally on the continent. And she made one colossal mistake that the continent’s pro-Putin forces wield against her. We shouldn’t help them.
Will Europe Stand for Freedom or Submission? Ask Wilders: Giulio Meotti, Arutz Sheva, Dec. 14, 2016—The lowest point in Geert Wilders’ life in hiding was when he was forced to live in a state prison, the Zeist, after the killing of Theo van Gogh. Wilders lost his freedom and since then, for ten years, he lives under police protection 24/7. Wilders could go to a restaurant with his wife, but the police would check it first.
Europe Needs Its Realist Past: Walter Russell Mead, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 30, 2016—As Europe’s troubles deepen and pose more of a threat to the vital interests of the U.S., Americans are recycling their tried and tested critiques of the European Union: It is too statist and bureaucratic. Its instincts are too protectionist. Its decision-making bodies are too slow and secretive.
