Dear Family & Friends,

Some strong pieces of news. Some good for us. Some violent & vile against us.

Have a lovely night. The moon is still quite full. Enjoy a mid-Sukkot holiday. Take your family to the Zikit Family Adventure Park in Ma’ale Adumim during Sukkot.

All the very best, Gail/Geula/Savta/Savta Raba x 2/Mom

7.Anti-Semitism on Campus: Part 2 by Jerrold L. Sobel

9/28/15

During the first half of 2015 Iran is reported to have executed nearly 700 people according to reports compiled by Amnesty International. this number far exceeds the 246 deaths officially declared by authorities in Tehran. I wonder whose figures you can trust on this one?

Nine young Saudi men have each been sentenced to more than 2,000 lashes and at least five years in prison for deviant sexual behavior, a police officer said last Sunday. A court in the western city of Qunfuda on Saturday sentenced five of the men to six years in prison and 2,600 lashes. The men are to be flogged 52 times in 50 sessions, the officer said on condition of anonymity. The four other defendants were sentenced to five years and 2,400 lashes. They are to be flogged 48 times in 50 sessions.

Constant victims of turpitude, regardless who’s in power in Egypt, Christian Copts live in constant fear. According to Coptic Media, a Coptic, advocacy publication: Muslim mobs in the Minya village of Nasreya descended on the homes of five Coptic students, throwing stones and chanting they had “insulted” Islam.

Without belaboring the point, the message is quite clear. Persecution of Christians, Jews, Gays, and minorities in Muslim countries throughout Africa and the Middle East is rampant and on a scale predating modern times. This is irrefutable and it begs certain questions.

With all the atrocities committed by Assad, ISIS, the aforementioned and 199 other countries cited by Amnesty International for human rights violations, why is Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East the target of such animus on American campuses?

By speaking up and defending the Jewish state, why are Jewish kids faced with so much malevolence at universities? In the very halls American academia where a free interchange of ideas was once encouraged, intimidation now reigns if thought is counter to the far left’s, anti-Israel/anti-Jewish narrative.

Who are these agitators? What’s their motivation? What groups do they belong to and who are they affiliated with?

An organization called the Canary Mission, was created by students and concerned citizens to answer these very questions. According to their mission statement: “The purpose of the website is to expose those who promote lies and attacks on Israel and the Jewish people. We pursue our mission by presenting the actions and records of individuals and organizations at the vanguard of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.”

Their database recounts 9 main anti-Israel/American groups entrenched on American Campuses: To be certain there are many, many more groups and propagandist publications disrupting Jewish life on campus. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) lists their top 10 such as: CODEPINK; Neturei Karta; Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, Friends of Sabeel-North America, and so on, but for the sake of brevity, let’s examine 5 listed in the Canary Mission database.

According to their research (SJP) is the primary student organization engaging in anti-Israel activism on American campuses. Amongst other things, the group’s main focus is on Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions(BDS) campaigns; Israel-Apartheid programs; drives comparing Israel to Nazi Germany; and disruptive, mock checkpoint demonstrations.

(SJP) members frequently intimidate and harass pro-Israel supporters. Members have been responsible for physically assaulting Jewish students, vandalizing communal property and violently disrupting pro Israel speakers and events. Under the guise of anti-Zionism, their rhetoric and actions expose anti-Jewish hatred possibly exceeded only by their sister group, (AMP).

(AMP) was created by a radical professor named Hatem Bazian at the ground zero campus of anti-Israel/anti-Semitic thinking, UC Berkley. He created the group as an adjunct to (SJP). At a conference in 2010 the (AMP) urged members regardless of the consequences to hold fast on their tactics of disruption and intimidation. The AMP board includes at least two members, Salah Sarsour and Osama Abu Irshaid, with ties to the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), whose assets were frozen by the U.S. Treasury in 2001 after the discovery that its money was being funneled to Hamas. At the same conference a year later their Board recommended that firing rockets from Gaza into Israel should be legal.

The Muslim Student Association (MSA) is the premier national Muslim student organization in North America. In a 1991 memo authored by the Muslim Brotherhood, the (MSA) was listed as an affiliate. A 2007 NYPD report lists MSA as an incubator for radicalization since it provides a platform through which American-born imams can “present a radical message in a way that resonates with the students.”

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, founded in 2005, is self-described as “a campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it complies with international law and Palestinian rights” and “a truly global movement against Israeli Apartheid.” Its founder, Omar Barghouti, is a professional student at Columbia. His movement is to compel institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli affiliated companies; to discourage cultural and academic exchanges between the international community and Israel. Yet irony of ironies, Barghouti is currently enrolled at the University of Tel Aviv Ph.d program in ethics of all things.

Having grown up listening to my parents’ mantra: “There is no Anti-Semite like a Jewish Anti-Semite”, I’m perplexed but far from shocked reporting on two Jewish affiliated groups, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Mondoweiss.

JVP, like other prominent Jewish anti-Zionist individuals and groups, uses its Jewish identity to deflect allegations of anti-Semitism leveled against the anti-Israel movement in order to provide it with a greater degree of legitimacy and credibility. In this guise JVP views itself as the “Jewish wing of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement (PSM).” Like other aggressively anti-Israel organizations, JVP members regularly attempt to shut down dissent by disrupting pro-Israel events such as a 2010 talk by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a 2011 Birthright reunion in New York and a 2012 AIPAC meeting.

Here again fitting my parents often heard intonation to a tee is the blog Mondoweiss. Created and edited by two Jewish former New York Observer columnists, Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz. Like the aforementioned (JVP), the editors’ Jewish pedigrees lend cover to those in the anti-Israel lobby who seek to evade accusations of anti-Semitism. Vehemently anti-Semitic, Weiss was ignominiously described as a Jew baiter by Tablet Magazine. Not concerned with true, horrific human rights violations mentioned at the beginning of this essay, their deceiving mission statement reads: “We provide news and analysis unavailable through the mainstream media regarding the struggle for Palestinian human rights.”

Make no mistake about it, there is a jihad taking place on American campuses which far exceeds the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. This jihad is a war for the minds of young American students. It pits Islamists and far left radical groups on campus; several of which are Jewish themselves against Jewish students that love Israel and believe in her righteous cause and culture. It is time long overdue that we support a return to the day when a college campus was for learning not intimidation.

With the recent anniversary of Al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, internal Palestinian discourse revolves around radical Islam and America’s actions. It relates to the slaughter, rape and millions of refugees who have fallen victim to Al-Qaeda, the humanitarian calamity and the Islamist terrorist organizations to which it gave birth, such as ISIS. Today a disaster of apocalyptic proportions is unfolding in territories that used to be Arab states but are now the battle grounds for feuding Arab tribes, whose only objective is to destroy one another.

In their heart of hearts, the Arabs living in Israel and the Palestinian Authority territories know, although it is a bitter pill to swallow, that we have been favored by fortune because under the State of Israel we live in security. This reality is brought home to us by the feeble international response and the strange behavior of U.S. President Barack Obama and the leaders of the Western world who have abandoned the Arabs to the atrocities of the Sunni Islamists (and their supporters in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar), and to the murderous proxies of the Iranian Islamic Revolution (mainly in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon).

In view of what is happening in neighboring countries, it is clear to us what will happen if Israel is in danger of destruction: no Western state will come to its aid and no Arab state will come to our aid. Our fate will be the same as that of our brothers beyond Israel’s borders. It is hard not to identify and sympathize with Israel’s efforts to fight terrorism and with its objections to the nuclear agreement with Iran.

Despite the chaos and worse than chaos in the Middle East, the EU’s foreign policy representative, Federica Mogherini, recently announced that the EU had decided to mark products made in the Israeli settlements. That is mind-boggling, so say the least. In the face of the ongoing mass murders in the Middle East, what arcane consideration, apart from Mogherini being a racist, could possibly bring the EU, now, to deal with something as blatantly marginal to global issues as the provenance of face cream and cookies?

In the final analysis, if the Europeans harm Israel’s ability to market goods manufactured in the West Bank, the first victims will be the Palestinian workers in the Israeli settlement factories. Every time the Palestinians have taken steps against the Israelis, we have hurt no one but ourselves. The last time we boycotted Israeli products we wound up buying them on the black market at double and triple the price. When we refused to work on construction sites, the Israelis switched to modular, prefabricated units, and the Palestinian construction workers who went on strike are unemployed to this day. When we refused to work in Israeli agriculture, they brought in workers from Thailand, who took our jobs and left us with — nothing.

The Western pressure on Israel and the Palestinians to establish a Palestinian state as soon as possible, when viewed through the prism of the mass murders and uncertainty in the Middle East, is incomprehensible. The initiative, and the obsession, to promote such a dangerous project at a time when everyone understands that the conditions on both sides are not yet ripe is dangerous; and the motives involved, whatever they really are, are suspicious. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not new, it has been waged in an atmosphere of terrorism and violence, hostility and complete lack of trust for a hundred years. So why exert pressure now?

Everyone, at least everyone living in the Middle East, knows full well that the conflict will not end with a “peace for our time” agreement forced on the two sides and accompanied by a handful of empty, meaningless documents; the dynamics are too dangerous. For both us and the Israelis it is a matter of life and death, not semantics; and it will probably take another hundred years before enough trust can be built on both sides to find a just solution.

The irony is staggering. At a time when the Arab states that were artificially created after the First World War crumble to dust, the EU is pressing for the creation of another artificial Arab state, this one called “Palestine,” to be carved out of territories once belonging to Jordan and Egypt.

If “Palestine” is granted the status of statehood, it will force not only Israel but the rest of the world to grant it complete control over its borders, airports and a seaport. That will expose the new weak “state” to a rapid and certain takeover by Hamas, ISIS and various other terrorist organizations.

Given the current situation in the West Bank, the elected government of “Palestine” will be controlled by Hamas. It will overthrow the Palestinian Authority, the way it did in the Gaza Strip, take over the West Bank, use its airports and seaport to import missiles, various other weapons and Islamist terrorists, and help Islamist terrorism in general, and ISIS in particular, to operate from its territory. The Islamists will proceed to attack Israel and Jordan the way ISIS is currently attacking Egypt in the Sinai Peninsula. Worse, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad will enter the new “Palestine” and strengthen its relations with Iran, just as it has in the Gaza Strip and Syria, and with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Evidently the Israeli withdrawal in 2005, which led directly to Hamas’s bloodbath and takeover of the Gaza Strip, the expulsion of the Palestinian Authority and the entrenchment of Islamist terrorism, was not enough for Europe. Now the EU and U.S. President Barack Obama want to bring the catastrophe of the Gaza Strip to the West Bank. The American Food and Drug Administration is more careful with experiments on animals than the White House is with experiments on the people living in the Middle East.

In view of the events in the Arab countries, it is clear to the Palestinians that American and European actions in the Middle East are the direct result of stupidity and complete ignorance of the Middle Eastern mindset, if not outright racism and malevolence. What is inescapable is that under Obama, both America and Europe brought the Arabs to the brink of chaos and beyond, destroyed regimes which, even though they were not democratic utopias like the United States, at least provided governance and public order. That is ultimately the cause of the tsunami of refugees beating at the gates of Europe, all of it caused by the United States and its failed foreign policy.

All the signs indicate that the Middle East disaster is hardly far from over. It is actually just beginning. it will get worse because of the tens of billions of dollars that will now pour into the Ayatollahs’ coffers from the insane agreement with Iran. Much of this money will go directly not only to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force, Iran’s arm of international terrorism, but to the various proxy terrorist organizations Iran supports, thus hastening the total destruction of the Middle East and eventually large swaths of Africa.

The wave of refugees will increase, and the price will be paid by the Europeans, already faced with legions of refugees and no plan for dealing with them. Eventually Gaddafi’s prophecy will come true: Islam will conquer Europe without firing a shot.

Bassam Tawil is a scholar based in the Middle East.

Dr. Ben Carson’s recent assertion that the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya encourages Muslims “to lie to achieve your goals” has prompted the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler to quote a number of academics to show that the presidential candidate got it wrong:

The word “taqiyya” derives from the Arabic words for “piety” &“fear of God” and indicates when a person is in a state of caution, said Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles and a leading authority on Islam.

“Yes, it is permissible to hide the fact you are Muslim” if a person is under threat, “as long as it does not involve hurting another person,” Abou El Fadl said.

The other academics whom Kessler quotes — including Omid Safi, director of the Duke University Islamic Studies Center, and Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School— make the same argument: yes, taqiyya is in the Koran but it only permits deception in the case of self-preservation, nothing more.

Not exactly.

Although the word taqiyya is related to the Arabic word “piety” and its root meaning is “protect” or “guard against” — and the Koran verses that advocate it (3:28 and 16:106) do so in the context of self-preservation from persecution — that is not the whole story.

Unfortunately, none of the academics quoted by Kessler acknowledges that the Koran is not the only textual source to inform Muslim action. They ignore the Hadith, the collected words and deeds of Muhammad. Koran 33:2, for instance, commands Muslims to follow Muhammad’s example, and his example — also known as the prophet’s Sunna — is derived from the many volumes of Hadith.

The importance of Muhammad’s example is seen in that the Sunnis, approximately 90% of the world’s Muslim population, are named after his Sunna. As one Muslim cleric puts it, “Much of Islam will remain mere abstract concepts without Hadith [whence the Sunna is derived]. We would never know how to pray, fast, pay zakah, or make pilgrimage without the illustration found in Hadith…”

It is therefore either careless or disingenuous for Kessler and his “experts” to ignore Muhammad’s example as recorded in the Hadith in their discussion of taqiyya.

As usual, for the complete truth, one must turn to scholarly books written in Arabic. According to Dr. Sami Mukaram, an Islamic studies professor specializing in taqiyya, and author of the only academic book exclusively devoted to it, “Taqiyya in order to deceive the enemy is permissible.”[1]

This sounds quite close enough to Carson’s assertion that taqiyya allows Muslims “to lie to achieve your goals.”

As proof, Mukaram documents two anecdotes from Muhammad’s Sunna — his example to Muslims — that make clear that the prophet allowed his followers to lie and deceive non-Muslims above and beyond the issue of self-preservation:

The Assassination of Ka’b ibn Ashraf

An elderly Jewish leader, Ka’b ibn Ashraf, mocked Muhammad, prompting the prophet to exclaim, “Who will kill this man who has hurt Allah and his messenger?” A young Muslim named Ibn Maslama volunteered on condition that to get close enough to Ka’b to murder him, he needed to be allowed to lie to the Jew.

Allah’s messenger agreed. Ibn Maslama traveled to Ka’b and began to complain about Muhammad until his disaffection from Islam became so convincing that Ka’b eventually dropped his guard and befriended him.

After behaving as his friend for some time, Ibn Maslama eventually appeared with another Muslim pretending to have apostatized, slaughtered Ka’b’ and brought his head to Muhammad to the usual triumphant cries of “Allahu Akbar!”

The Disbanding of the Confederates

In another account, after Muhammad and his followers had attacked, plundered, and massacred a number of non-Muslim Arabs and Jews, the Jews and Arabs assembled, poised to annihilate the Muslims, to try to neutralize the Muslims once and for all (at the Battle of the Trench, 627). But then Naim bin Mas’ud, one of the leaders of these “confederates,” as they became known in history, secretly went to Muhammad and converted to Islam. The prophet asked him to return to his tribesmen and allies — without revealing that he had joined the Muslim camp to try to get the Jews and Arabs to abandon the siege. “For,” Muhammad assured him, “war is deceit.”

Mas’ud returned, pretending to be loyal to the Arabs and Jews, and began giving them bad advice. He also subtly instigated quarrels between the various tribes until, no longer trusting each other, they disbanded.

Mas’ud became a hero in Islamic tradition. He is often seen as being responsible for helping an embryonic Islam grow at a time when its existence was threatened. One English language Muslim site even recommends his actions as illustrative of how Muslims can subvert non-Muslims.

In the two examples above, Muslims deceived non-Muslims not because they were being persecuted for being Muslim — according to the Washington Post’s definition of taqiyya — but in order to make Islam supreme. (The Arabs and Jews met Muhammad at the Battle of the Trench because Muhammad and his followers first attacked them at the Battle of Badr and massacred hundreds of them on other occasions.)

Despite these stories being part of the Sunna to which Sunnis adhere, UCLA’s Abou El Fadl — the primary expert quoted by the Washington Post in an effort to show that Islam does not promote deceit — claims that “there is no concept that would encourage a Muslim to lie to pursue a goal. That is a complete invention.”

Tell that to Ka’b ibn Ashraf, whose head was cut off for believing Muslim taqiyya. The prophet of Islam allowed his followers to lie to the Jew to slaughter him.

Dr. Ben Carson got it right when he said that taqiyya “allows, and even encourages, you to lie to achieve your goals.” The prophet makes that clear.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Judith Friedman Rosen writing fellow at the Middle East Forum.

[1] (At-Taqiyya fi’l-Islam, or “Dissimulation in Islam,” p. 32) Follow Raymond Ibrahim on Twitter & Facebook

& also

10.Republicans Attempt New Tactic to Stall Iran Nuclear Deal

New legislation would see frozen Iranian assets used to pay American victims of Iranian terrorism instead of being returned to Iran.

US Republicans said Tuesday they were introducing legislation that would use frozen Iranian assets to pay American victims of Iranian terrorism before billions of dollars are returned to Tehran as part of the nuclear deal.

Congressional Republicans are furious over President Barack Obama’s landmark accord with world powers that aims to rein in Iran’s nuclear program, in exchange for an easing of sanctions that have crippled the Islamic Republic’s economy.

They see the Justice for Victims of Iranian Terrorism Act as a way to stall the deal, or at least take a major bite out of funds that would be returned to Tehran.

The bill will be introduced this week, according to its sponsor, House Republican Pat Meehan.

“There are some $43.5 billion in judgments which have been rendered under American law for victims of acts of Iranian terror,” with more than 80 lawsuits successfully prosecuted through US courts, Meehan told reporters.

“Despite this, not one cent has been paid by Iran,” he said. “This is an opportunity to change that dynamic.”

In backing the bill, House Speaker John Boehner said it would be unfair for Obama to “provide Iran with about $150 billion of their assets locked up in Western banks, without first paying the victims of Iranian terrorism.”

Meehan said he had virtually unanimous support in his caucus, and expected the measure also to be introduced this week in the Senate, where its fate remained less certain.

US courts have awarded vast sums to victims’ relatives who have accused Iran’s government of sponsoring terrorist activities around the world, yet Iran has refused to pay, and extracting the compensation has remained a challenge.

Last year a US appeals court in New York ordered that $1.75 billion in Iranian funds held in Citibank be handed over to families of Americans killed in the 1983 attack on a barracks in Beirut.

The Iranian central bank has petitioned the US Supreme Court for a review of the case.

AFP contributed to this report.

Republicans Attempt New Tactic to Stall Iran Nuclear Deal

11.Hamas: All of Israel is Ours

Ismail Haniyeh threatens entire Jewish state with ‘punishment’ for ‘taking Palestinian land,’ hours before Temple Mount riot. By Dalit Halevi First Publish: 9/29/2015, 8:04 AM

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh pushed for Palestinian Arabs to rededicate themselves to resisting the “Zionist Occupation” on Sunday, in a speech in honor of the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Adha.

In his speech, Haniyeh claimed that Israel was attempting to “Judaize” Jerusalem, as well as Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount.

“The occupiers want to change the characteristics of the history, geography and culture in Jerusalem, but our people, led by men and women clinging to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and around Beit al-Maqdis, stand against this attack and this war, with heroism and courage in their hearts, and they stress that this is our country,” he said.

Haniyeh also said that Gaza, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and “conquered lands of 1948” (i.e. Israel within 1949 Armistice lines – ed.) exist only for the sake of Jerusalem, and that, “regardless of price or victims,” and that the “Occupation will not escape the punishment of our struggle.”
Echoing Hamas’s stance on security coordination with Israel, Haniyeh called on the PA to disassociate itself completely with the Jewish state and foment an open war against Israel.

Haniyeh gave his speech hours before a large terrorist mob camped out overnight on the Temple Mount – many wearing green Hamas regalia – with a stockpile of firebombs, rocks, and other weapons, and attacked Israel Police forced early Monday morning at the site.

Hamas: All of Israel is Ours