ISRAEL: UPPING THE ANTE ON PALESTINIAN PAY-FOR-SLAY TERRORISM

ISRAEL: UPPING THE ANTE ON PALESTINIAN PAY-FOR-SLAY TERRORISM 

BY HUGH FITZGERALD

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/12/upping-the-ante-on-pay-for-slay; 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research 

purposes:

The Israeli government has begun to react to the terrorist murders by inflicting some mild economic pain on the Palestinian Authority, but it is hardly enough.

Israel collects taxes on all the goods that arrive in the country for delivery to the Palestinian Authority,  and then transfers, with its usual scrupulosity, those taxes to the Palestinian Authority. In March 2018, President Trump signed into law the Taylor Force Act, which withheld all American economic aid to the Palestinian Authority as long as it continued to pay stipends to imprisoned terrorists, or to the families of terrorists who were killed. On July 2, 2018, the Knesset followed suit, and passed by a vote of 87 to 15 (with the far-left Meretz Party and the Arab MKs naturally opposed) its own “Pay For Slay” bill. By its terms, the Israeli government is to withhold from the amount of taxes it transfers the exact amount that the Palestinian Authority provides either to imprisoned terrorists or to the families of dead terrorists.

For some reason, the Israeli government did not immediately implement the bill, but began to do so in February 2019. The family of Khalil Yusef Ali Jabarin, the terrorist who murdered an Israeli named Ari Fuld, a 45-year-old father of four, stabbing him in the back, will receive NIS (New Israeli Shekels) 1,400, or $400 a month, for the next three years, from the Palestinian Authority, as part of its policy of funding what they call “martyrs” for the Palestinian cause. Withholding that sum — $400 a month —  from the PA is not going to have the slightest effect on discouraging terrorist murder. Israel needs to cause real economic pain both to the PA, which incites such terrorism, and to the families of terrorists. The PA’s terror-reward budget for 2017 and 2018 amounted to NIS 1.2 billion, or $336 million, for each year, according to its Finance Ministry’s website. $4800 less, in a total pay-for-slay budget of $336 million, is a derisory amount.

The Israelis have to adopt a very different mindset. They could, for example, charge the PA for the full cost, running into millions of dollars, of collecting and transferring those taxes. Instead of a deduction in the taxes transferred equal to the amount given to the family of Khalil Jabarin, they could decide to withhold ten, or fifty, or a hundred times, the amount that his family will receive from the PA. That should get the attention of Mahmoud Abbas. The Palestinians are already reeling from the ending of all economic aid to the PA from the United States, the ending of  American aid to UNRWA, and the closing of the PLO office in Washington. They will whine and complain no matter how little or how much is withheld by the Israelis, so why not provide the PA with something to really harm them economically, while reminding the world that even if these measures hurt, they are as nothing compared to the anguish felt by the families of Ari Fuld and other victims of “Palestinian” terror.

While Mahmoud Abbas is loudly proclaiming to the world the damage this new Israeli policy will cause the “impoverished Palestinians,” Prime Minister Netanyahu might suggest before the cameras of the world that Mahmoud Abbas and his two “businessman” sons could easily make up for these steeper cuts in the tax revenues by contributing to the PA part — “giving something back” in the literal sense — of the $400 million fortune they have somehow managed to accumulate. That fortune is a very sore point among many “Palestinians” who despise the Abbas family’s corruption, and Netanyahu’s remarks will find favor among  them, and leave Abbas speechless with impotent rage.

When there is another terrorist attack, and another promise by the PA to pay the terrorist or his family, the Israelis should again increase the amounts to be withheld. Not 100 times, but 200 times the amount given by the PA to the terrorist (if alive), or to his family (if he is dead), ought now to be withheld, with the threat that, with each subsequent terrorist attack, and commitment  by the PA to pay that terrorist stipend, there will again be a doubling of the amount of taxes withheld by Israel. When the Pay-For-Slay program stops, then the deductions from taxes transferred will also stop. It’s a very simple calculation. How much economic pain can the PA take?

ERDOGAN'S PHONY PROPAGANDA: A MUSLIM CANNOT BE A TERRORIST; ISLAM DOES NOT PRODUCE TERRORISTS

ERDOGAN'S PHONY PROPAGANDA:  

A MUSLIM CANNOT BE A TERRORIST; 

ISLAM DOES NOT PRODUCE TERRORISTS

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/12/erdogan-a-muslim-cannot-be-a-terrorist-islam-does-not-produce-terrorists; 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research 

purposes:

“You cannot bring the words terror and Islam together. If you keep doing it, then we are condemning those who do it.”

This is a familiar sleight-of-hand. It is Islamic jihad terrorists who bring terror and Islam together. When they do that, Erdogan says nothing. But when non-Muslim foes of jihad terror point out that there are some Muslims who bring terror and Islam together, Erdogan cries “Islamophobia” and pretends that the non-Muslims are responsible for the equation. Erdogan is by far not the only one who employs this tactic.



“Erdoğan rejects reference to ‘Islamic terror,'” Anadolu Agency, December 6, 2019 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):


A Muslim cannot be a terrorist and Islam does not produce terrorists, the Turkish president said on Dec. 5, once again rejecting the term “Islamic terrorism”.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said racism, discrimination and Islamophobia have spread like poison ivy in countries once seen as cradles of democracy.

Erdoğan’s remarks came at the inauguration ceremony of the Cambridge Central Mosque which he attended with first lady Emine Erdoğan and a group of high-level Turkish officials….

Erdoğan said workplaces, homes and places of worships of Muslims and foreigners are targeted by racists and fascist almost every day.

“Muslim women are abused only because they are wearing headscarves” in Islamophobic attacks, Erdoğan said, adding Jewish, black people and whoever looks different are targeted in similar attacks.

Especially attacks targeting places of worships have reached “incredible dimensions,” he added, recalling the mosque attack in New Zealand, church attacks in Sri Lanka and synagogues in the U.S….

“You cannot bring the words terror and Islam together. If you keep doing it, then we are condemning those who do it,” he added.

A Muslim cannot be a terrorist; Islam does not produce terrorists, Erdoğan underlined.

“We do not accept the Islamic terrorism etiquette, [a term] some insistently try to keep popular.”

Erdoğan said Turkey has been fighting ISIL more effectively than any other country, noting that 3,000 terrorists were neutralized only in Syria’a Al Bab town.

Erdoğan said he rejects any distinction of “good or bad” terrorist and all terrorists of ISIL, FETÖ, PKK/YPG, even Neo-Nazis are “bloodthirsty vampires”.

Speaking about Europe’s first eco-friendly mosque built in Cambridge, Erdoğan said the mosque will be the “best response to rising Islamophobia”….

Also attending the ceremony, British singer Yusuf Islam said the Cambridge Central Mosque will promote understanding.

Underlining that he became Muslim more than 40 years ago and his conversion was a “spiritual step forward”, Islam thanked the Turkish president and Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate for assistance in building the mosque….

The road to building Europe’s first eco-friendly mosque began back in 2008, when the capacity of local churches and houses was unable to meet the worship needs of local Muslims….

More than 10,000 people and groups donated money for the landmark purchase, with Turkish groups donating most generously. The Qatar National Fund also was among the donors.

Abdal Hakim Murad, together with Islam (also known as Cat Stevens), sought support for the project from Erdoğan, who was then Turkey’s prime minister….

REP. RASHIDA TLAIB GIVES KEYNOTE ADDRESS AT CONFERENCE OF ANTI-SEMITIC GROUP DEDICATED TO DESTROYING ISRAEL

REP. RASHIDA TLAIB GIVES KEYNOTE ADDRESS AT CONFERENCE OF ANTI-SEMITIC GROUP DEDICATED TO DESTROYING ISRAEL

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/12/rep-rashida-tlaib-gives-keynote-address-at-conference-of-anti-semitic-group-dedicated-to-destroying-israel; 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research 

purposes:

Imagine the outcry if some Representative addressed the Ku Klux Klan. The outrage would be universal and he or she would be made to resign immediately. But although this is very much the same thing, no one will take any particular notice of this.

Find out the insidious agenda behind the hypocritical and deceptive “Palestinian” calls for “justice” in The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process.



“Rep. Rashida Tlaib Keynotes ‘American Muslims for Palestine’ Conference Devoted to Destroying Israel,” by Samantha Mandeles, Legal Insurrection, December 5, 2019:


Tlaib: “I’m incredibly proud to be here. The incredible work that all of you have done have opened doors for myself, somebody like me to serve in the United States Congress.”


In a recent post, I documented how American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) ejected me from its annual conference Thanksgiving weekend because it was afraid I would provide negative coverage. For background on the harassing treatment I received, see Fearing Negative Coverage, ‘American Muslims for Palestine’ Conference Ejects Legal Insurrection Reporter.

Now we know why AMP wanted to cleanse the audience of media who could report accurately on what was going on: The AMP conference was an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic hatefest, and the keynote speaker was Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib, who has worked with the group on many occasions.

AMP – Key Anti-Israel Connector

American Muslims for Palestine is a key connector of anti-Israel Islamist and radical leftist groups, including fringe anti-Zionist Jews who provide cover.

Though it has a long history of opaque funding, staff overlap with now-shuttered ‘charities’ found to be connected to terrorist groups, and persistently disseminating classic anti-Semitism, AMP managed to maintain its connections with ‘intersectional’ social justice activists by hijacking the language of human rights and claiming to fight for “oppressed peoples everywhere” (in the words of AMP speaker Linda Sarsour).




[Screenshot from AMPs Palestine Convention Facebook page, November 2019.]


You can read more about AMP and the groups it works with in some of my earlier posts:

Investigation: Anti-Israel groups plan disruption of Christians United for Israel Annual Summit
Anti-Israel groups lock down planning for disruption inside Christians United For Israel Summit
VIDEO: Anti-Israel Protesters Surround and Try To Intimidate Journalist Outside CUFI Summit
Investigation: Anti- ICE “Never Again Action” Not The Spontaneous Grassroots Group It Claims To Be
Investigation: ‘Students for Justice in Palestine’ Locked Down Its Annual Conference, What Was It Hiding?
Anti-Zionist Jews ban ‘Jewish Pride’ flag but embrace Palestinian flag in name of “intersectionality”


AMP’s Annual Anti-Israel Hatefest

As in the past, AMP’s 2019 Palestine Conference was chock full of historical falsehoods and thinly veiled anti-Semitism. This is shocking to precisely nobody; this year’s speakers’ roster featured some of the most noxious anti-Israel agitators active today, including ‘intersectional’ activists:

CodePink national co-director Ariel Gold, freshly returned from yet another of CodePink’s mullah-enabling tours of Iran (see Code Pink sells out women and exploits Jews on propaganda tour of Iran)
Ex-CNN correspondent Marc Lamont Hill, who was fired after repeating Hamas’ favorite adage—”From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”—during a speech at the UN (see CNN Fires Marc Lamont Hill After Calling for Israel’s Destruction in UN Speech)
Students for Justice in Palestine founder and UC Berkeley lecturer Hatem Bazian, who has called for an intifada in the U.S. and is well-known for infusing lessons with anti-Israel propaganda
Columbia University professor Joseph Massad, who infamously wrote an article for Al Jazeera in which he charged that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis in exterminating non-Zionist Jews during World War II
Friends of Sabeel North America director Tarek Abuata, who recently forced security to carry him bodily from the Christians United for Israel conference after he began shrieking exhortations for the “people of God” to “wake up” to the claim that “Zionism is racism” right in the middle of the event (see Investigation: How anti-Israel groups tried to turn failure at CUFI Summit into social media success)


Despite the behavior of her fellow AMP speakers, when Rep Tlaib took the stage at the annual Palestine Conference, she gushed about her pride in being invited to keynote, saying:


I’m incredibly proud to be here. The incredible work that all of you have done have opened doors for myself, somebody like me to serve in the United States Congress.


As Rep. Tlaib continued, she demonstrated a favorite rhetorical trick of the ‘intersectional’ far-left: “movement hijacking“—the appropriation and exploitation of unrelated social justice causes (frequently by BDS supporters) in order to subsume those causes within a broader left-wing movement in which anti-Israel activists are then revered as leaders.


I would remember the history here in this country…still, the oppression of our black brothers and sisters. Every time I saw the different color license plates, the dehumanization at the checkpoints, everything. So interconnected…So when you think about the border, you gotta understand how interconnected it is with the oppression, of what’s happening in Falastine, the oppression that’s happening to our people. When I see…like, the police going after, killing innocent people, innocent, treating African American brothers and sisters like they’re disposable, I think of Filastine and what happens to our brothers and sisters in the occupation.


Tlaib’s remarks echoed longstanding efforts by anti-Israel activists to stoke racial tension against Israel by falsely accusing it of being responsible for local police shootings of blacks in the U.S. As we documented, that campaign went into overdrive during the Ferguson riots, after the Michael Brown shooting in the summer of 2014.

You can watch Rep Tlaib’s entire AMP speech here and below.



There is much more. Read the rest here.

SHERIFF "WON'T BOW" AFTER FREEDOM FROM RELIGION FOUNDATION ASKS HIM TO STOP PROMOTING PRAYER FOLLOWING TRAGEDIES

SHERIFF "WON'T BOW" AFTER FREEDOM FROM RELIGION FOUNDATION ASKS HIM TO STOP PROMOTING PRAYER FOLLOWING TRAGEDIES

BY HEATHER CLARK

SEE: https://christiannews.net/2019/12/07/sheriff-wont-bow-after-freedom-from-religion-foundation-asks-him-to-stop-promoting-prayer-following-tragedies/; 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research 

purposes:

JASPER, Ala. — An Alabama sheriff’s office says that it “won’t bow” to the bidding of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) after it received a letter requesting that Sheriff Nick Smith cease promoting prayer on social media as it favors religion over non-religion.

FFRF contacted Sheriff Nick Smith of the Walker County Sheriff’s Office on Nov. 26 to advise that a citizen had expressed concern that Smith’s office “has a pattern of calling on citizens to pray during times of tragedy.”

“We write to encourage your office to use more inclusive language when posting on social media,” it wrote.

Specifically, FFRF pointed to two recent posts: One lamented the tragic shooting death of fellow Sheriff “Big John” Williams and commented, “Our prayers are with the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office family as they deal with this senseless tragedy.” Another was an official statement regarding a 14-year-old boy who was accidentally hit by a sheriff’s deputy as the teen was riding his four wheeler.



“It’s at this very trying time that we, as a county, should fall to our knees and pray fervently for mercy and peace,” Smith urged. “Now is not the time to place blame. Not on the deputy, not on the young boy, and most definitely not on his parents.”

“Instead of wasting our breath condemning and judging, we all need to use it to cry out for God to place His hand on this young boy, and return him home to his family [and] to bring peace and calm to a deputy who is absolutely broken,” he continued.

“As your sheriff, I’m responsible for speaking for my department, and all I ask is that you pray. Pray hard, and pray from the deepest parts of your heart, because there are two good people that need it now more than ever.”

FFRF said that while it found it commendable for the sheriff to support those in mourning, “a senseless and tragic death is not an excuse to disregard the Constitution, which prohibits government entities like the sheriff’s office from promoting religious activities.”

“By couching its posts in specific religious terminology, the Walker County Sheriff’s Office is excluding a significant portion of the community,” it also asserted. “[B]y calling on a God to intervene, the sheriff’s office is sending a message to nonreligious citizens that they are outsiders within their own community and that their participation in the healing process is not valued.”

FFRF told Smith that he is free to personally turn to religion in trying times, but he “cannot encourage others to do the same.”

“Observing a strict separation of Church and State excludes no one and honors the First Amendment,” the organization contended. “It is not the government’s job to promote religion over non-religion.”

However, T.J. Armstrong, the community relations officer with the Walker County Sheriff’s Office, took to social media (his personal page) on Tuesday to note that Smith would not be backing down.

“We consider it a great honor to be considered and to have received a wonderful letter from the ‘Freedom From Religion’ organization. Proud to have a sheriff that won’t bow to political pressure or the devices of the enemy!” he wrote.

“As our Chief Deputy Anthony Leach quoted from Matthew 16: ‘Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.'”

Armstrong also told local television station CBS 42 that he doesn’t see the department promoting a singular religion by calling the community to prayer.

“I believe that when we ask people to pray, people see our hearts and they see that compassion and they respond to that,” he stated.

As previously reported, while some state that God and government must remain separated, others note that the nation was founded by many who believed that America could not expect to be blessed if it failed to acknowledge and honor Almighty God.
Adams

On March 23, 1798 — less than 12 years after the signing of the U.S. Constitution — John Adams, the second president of the United States, called for a day of national repentance, prayer and fasting.

“[T]he safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him, but a duty whose natural influence is favorable to the promotion of that morality and piety without which social happiness cannot exist nor the blessings of a free government be enjoyed,” he wrote.

James Madison, the fourth president of the United States, similarly called for a national day of prayer on July 9, 1812.

“I do therefore recommend the third Thursday in August next as a convenient day to be set apart for the devout purposes of rendering the Sovereign of the universe and the Benefactor of mankind the public homage due to His holy attributes; of acknowledging the transgressions which might justly provoke the manifestations of His divine displeasure; of seeking His merciful forgiveness and His assistance in the great duties of repentance…”

President Abraham Lincoln also proclaimed a national fast day in 1863.

“[I]t is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord,” his proclamation read.

“[I]nsomuch we know that by His Divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people,” Lincoln said.

YELLOW VEST PROTESTS SURGE AS MACRON'S FRANCE IS COLLAPSING

YELLOW VEST PROTESTS SURGE 

AS MACRON'S FRANCE IS COLLAPSING

REPORT & ANALYSIS BY DR. STEVE TURLEY