Steve Bannon and Keith Ellison: Do the Democrats Really Care About Anti-Semitism?

A timely post about from www.jihadwatch.org about Steve Bannon and Keith Ellison. This follows this post about Hillary Clinton's loss.This follows this article about American energy independence and preventing money from going to hostile countries. For more, you can read two very interesting books HERE.You can follow me here.

Robert Spencer in FrontPage: Steve Bannon and Keith Ellison: Do the Democrats Really Care About Anti-Semitism?

 By Robert Spencer 37 Comments

The record is clear. My latest in FrontPage:

When is anti-Semitism not anti-Semitism? When it comes from the Left, of course.
President-elect Trump has enraged the establishment media by choosing Steven K. Bannon as his chief strategist, because Bannon, they claim on the flimsiest of evidence, is a white supremacist and an anti-Semite. Meanwhile, that same media is hailing Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) for announcing his candidacy for Chairman of the Democratic National Committee – despite Ellison’s very real links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, two groups that are outdone by no one in anti-Semitism.
“A chorus of critics took to Twitter,” said the New York Times, “to lament what they said was a frightening normalization of the fringe views that Mr. Bannon promoted as the chairman of Breitbart News. The site has for years given voice to anti-Semitic, racist and white nationalist ideology.”
The evidence? Slim to none. As David Horowitz pointed out Monday, the source for the claim that Bannon is anti-Semitic is “a one sentence claim from an angry ex-wife in divorce court no less, that Bannon didn’t want their kids to go to school with Jews.” Horowitz noted in response that Bannon had wanted to produce a Horowitz biopic: “I find that particularly amusing since Bannon wanted to make a film to celebrate this Jew’s life.”
Horowitz also noted that CNN hit Bannon over “a headline at Breitbart.com calling Bill Kristol a ‘renegade Jew.’” Surely that proves Bannon’s anti-Semitism, right? Wrong. Said Horowitz: “In fact, neither Breitbart nor Bannon is responsible for that statement. A Jew is. I wrote the article, which was neither requested nor commissioned by Breitbart. And I wrote the headline: ‘Bill Kristol, Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew,’” because “Kristol and his friends betrayed the Republican Party, betrayed the American people, and betrayed the Jews when he set out to undermine Trump and elect the criminal Hillary Clinton. Obama and Hillary are supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization that launched the Arab drive to destroy Israel and push its Jews into the sea (that was their slogan).”
Joel B. Pollak, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart News and an Orthodox Jew, declared: “I have worked with Stephen K. Bannon, President-elect Donald Trump’s new chief strategist and senior counselor, for nearly six years at Breitbart News. I can say, without hesitation, that Steve is a friend of the Jewish people and a defender of Israel, as well as being a passionate American patriot and a great leader.”
Meanwhile, the same Democrats who are howling about Bannon are applauding Ellison’s announcement that he is running for DNC Chair, despite the abundant evidence of Ellison’s links to anti-Semitic groups. Ellison has spoken at a convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Yet ISNA has actually admitted its ties to Hamas, which styles itself the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Justice Department actually classified ISNA among entities “who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood.”
It gets worse. In 2008, Ellison accepted $13,350 from the Muslim American Society (MAS) to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The Muslim American Society is a Muslim Brotherhood organization: “In recent years, the U.S. Brotherhood operated under the name Muslim American Society, according to documents and interviews. One of the nation’s major Islamic groups, it was incorporated in Illinois in 1993 after a contentious debate among Brotherhood members.” That’s from the Chicago Tribune in 2004, in an article that is now carried on the Muslim Brotherhood’s English-language website, Ikhwanweb.
Also, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) raised large amounts of for Ellison’s first campaign, and he has spoken at numerous CAIR events. Yet CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups.
Hamas has declared: “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah.” Ellison has spoken before several groups that have ties to Hamas, and has accepted money from a Muslim Brotherhood group; Hamas styles itself the Muslim Brotherhood for Palestine. Does Keith Ellison also, then, think that “killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah”? No establishment media “journalist” would ever dream of asking him that question, but it’s a fair one: Hamas repeatedly demonstrates genuine and murderous anti-Semitism, and Ellison has repeatedly shown himself willing and even eager to associate himself with Hamas-linked groups.
That’s the real story of anti-Semitism in American politics this week. But the media propagandists are most certainly not going to pause in their hysteria over Trump and Bannon to take any notice of it. Their hypocrisy is obvious, their dishonesty unrelenting, and their moral authority absolutely nil.

UK: Sharia court orders woman to return to abusive, rapist husband

Pro-Israel artist threatened with 5 years in jail for anti-terror posters at GMU

A timely post about from www.jihadwatch.org about Google and Islam. This follows this post about the Clinton Foundation. This follows this article about American energy independence and preventing money from going to hostile countries. For more, you can read two very interesting books HERE.You can follow me here.

How Google’s search engines use faked results to manipulate people’s views of jihad

By Robert Spencer 92 Comments

This post by Jihad Watch tech expert Marc offers extraordinary insight into how Google skews its presentation of information in order to manipulate people into accepting half-truths and falsehoods that serve the Left’s agenda. He explains how Google deliberately manipulates its results when one searches for the word “jihad” — and doubtless this is just one of countless examples of how Google advances the Leftist/Islamic supremacist line while burying the truth.

“How Google’s Search Engines use faked results for social engineering,” FreeSpeechDefense.net, September 4, 2016:

So how does it work, I’ll use one example, a simple Google search for the word “Jihad”, but first I’d like to give you some background on how Google search is understood and intended to work. My knowledge comes from a variety of sources, but is in line with the well known public authority on the subject of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), an employee and till recently the public voice of Google and its search engine, Matt Cutts, he now works for the Pentagon (yeh, I know). Google has published an “overview” of how it all works, but that’s a lot to get through.
So in a nutshell, Google is looking for the freshest, most authoritative, easiest to display (big screen and mobile) content to serve its search engine users, it crawls them, caching (grabbing) content, looking at the speed of download, the textual content, counting words to find the relevance, checking what it looks like on different sized devices. It also looks at what other sites link to it, both number of and “quality” of those links. When I say quality, it wants to see how authoritative the linking in sites are. They also have a number of algorithms in place that block the listing of “spammy” sites, but spam would not be relevant here. Additionally they also have recently claimed to boost sites using HTTPS to promote security and privacy (fox, henhouse – lol).
There are a few exceptions which I don’t think anyone could have issue with, a search for a single word might bring up a dictionary or encyclopedia, but more often, they add Wikipedia to the list of results, especially if it’s a busy wiki page with constant updates.
There is a way to beat these results and get to the top, and that’s by paying for the Google Adwords service, these ads at the top are clearly identified with a little “Ad” button, that is not the case here.
I am not in the US, so used a VPN to proxy my research from the US, as searches from other locations provide different results.
So search the word “jihad”, and you will see at the top of a list of 32 million results a list as this:

1. A dictionary definition
2. Wikipedia
3. A link to a page of the “Islamic Supreme Council”
4. A link to “Jihad Watch”

So we know how the dictionary definition and Wikipedia got there, but how did the “Islamic Supreme Council” and “Jihad Watch” get 3^rd and 4^th place? JihadWatch.org I know well, I do the server and site management, following SEO best practice, here are the major pertinent reasons for its high listing in such a competitive search, 32 million is huge in this game:

• Robert Spencer, an accomplished author is a prolific blogger, adding a minimum of 10 posts of current jihad related news stories of the day.
• It’s part of the domain name, that always gives a massive boot (searching “free speech defense”, my tiny, low volume blog always comes top).
• Doing a jihad site:jihadwatch.org shows that the word “jihad” is mentioned on the site 35,000 times, proving its main focus of discussion is “jihad”.
• A search for just jihadwatch.org shows that it is mentioned on 631,000 other sites pages (linking in), proving it is very authoritative and often referenced.
• Jihadwatch.org is currently the 10,488^th most popular website in the US, this fluctuates, but not much.
• The site uses HTTPS and a responsive (mobile friendly) theme, so it looks great on any device.

So how about the “Islamic Supreme Council”, I’d never heard of them. I asked a few people who have studied Islam, they hadn’t either, so lets look at the comparative statistics:

• The site is run by Sheik Kabbani, a Naqshbandi Sufi. It has additional posts added a couple of times a year, the latest news panel lists an event in 1996.
• It has “Islamic” in the domain name, understandable that Google maybe has confused the two words. /sarc off
• Doing a jihad site:islamicsupremecouncil.org shows that the word “jihad” is mentioned on the site 123 times, whereas searching the word “Sufi” brings up over 200 results proving it’s main focus of discussion is not “jihad”.
• A search for just islamicsupremecouncil.org shows that it is mentioned on 79,000 other sites pages (linking in), showing it is as 1/10th as popular/authoritative as jihadwatch.org.
• This is confirmed with an Alexa popularity search, showing it is the 307,832^_th most popular site in the US.
• The site does not use HTTPS, and it is very mobile unfriendly, using technology from a previous millennium (I’m not kidding, it’s using web standards from 1999 if you look at the source files).

So what’s up? How does the site get this boost, if you search the word Sufi, the “Islamic Supreme Council” isn’t even listed in the top 10 pages. Funny thing about the meaning of the word “Jihad”, to the fast majority of Muslims they themselves know of two meanings, the Google dictionary definition at the top of the results is correct:

1. (among Muslims) a war or struggle against unbelievers.
2. the spiritual struggle within oneself against sin.

Often differentiated as the greater and lesser Jihad, but Sunni and Shia Muslims, who make up the vast majority of Muslims, understand when the word Jihad is used alone they mean the violent kind, world conquering imposing of Sharia law, blowing stuff up and cutting heads of infidels, and they accept the lesser Jihad as a false construct, but that’s another debate, you can read more here at wikiislam.
But what is unique about Sufis, a tiny minority of Muslims, if in fact they are Muslims, as the vast majority of Muslims do not accept Sufis as such, and many Sufis themselves do not identify with being Muslim, is that they are unique in only having this peaceful, lesser Jihad, being somewhat pacifists, ironically often violently targeted for their beliefs in Muslim majority countries.
So in conclusion, how are you being socially engineered by Google? Anyone doing a search for Jihad will think they are seeing an opposing, authoritative view of Jihad Watch’s, but the “Islamic Supreme Council” is of no authority, it’s poor in every way. Nonetheless, the Googler will read all about all this peaceful unrepresentative Jihad, trusting Google will live by their moto “Don’t be evil”. Former Google CEO and current executive chairman Eric Schmidt once said, “it was a dumb rule merely because the word ‘evil’ isn’t really defined, and Google doesn’t quite know what evil is.”
So how about another site which might be more of an authority on Jihad in the US, cair.com (Council on American-Islamic Relations) is constantly being updated, is far more popular at 146,590th place, actually probably even more so, as it has a vast network of sites. A search for jihad site:cair.com gives 342 results, and is mentioned and linked to a whopping 60 million times, it’s mobile friendly and has HTTPS enabled, and it’s not even on the top 10 pages of results for a search on Jihad. Odd, that except their own political agenda is for Americans to believe the Sufi understanding of Jihad is a common Muslim understanding, rather than their own aggressive one, with proven ties between CAIR, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Some would say “a war or struggle against unbelievers” Jihad was CAIR’s main purpose, advertising that fact doesn’t help their agenda, much better American Googlers read the Sufi version for them. I think I have described in detail how this subtle manipulation works.
It’s not a secret. Facebook has been at it also. The connections with the Obama administration and now Hillary Clinton are well documented. My enemy’s enemy is not my necessarily my friend, but here is what Julian Assange has to say on the collusion between the US administration and Google.

DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson addresses ISNA, Muslim group linked to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood

UK journo: Syrian kidnapper who shot me twice is now a CIA-vetted "moderate"

Shut down Clinton Foundation over Hizballah link

A timely post about from www.jihadwatch.org about the Clinton Foundation. This follows this post about a downplayed story about Virginia. This follows this article about American energy independence and preventing money from going to hostile countries. For more, you can read two very interesting books HERE.You can follow me here.

Trump campaign: Shut down Clinton Foundation over Hizballah link

 By Christine Williams 105 Comments

Trump’s Senior Communications Advisor, Jason Miller, states: “The fact a major Clinton Foundation donor was denied entry into the U.S. over ties to the terrorist group Hezbollah is deeply troubling, especially when this individual had access to top aides at Hillary Clinton’s State Department.”
Miller went on to say that the Clinton Foundation should be shut down in light of the Hizballah jihadist link.
It’s becoming increasingly challenging to keep up with the staggering volume of public scandals surrounding Hillary Clinton — including calls for her to be jailed (even from the mother of a Benghazi victim). It is remarkable to witness such a character actually running for the presidency during a full-scale jihad against the United States that Clinton not only refuses to admit exists, but also accepts funding for her campaign from a highly questionable donor who appears to be on the other side of that jihad.

“Clinton Foundation donor denied entry to US on terrorism claims”, By Marisa Schultz, August 28, 2016:

A Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire who donated millions to Clinton-family nonprofits was denied a visa to enter the United States last year on terrorism-related grounds, according to a new report.
Gilbert Chagoury, who donated millions to the Clinton Foundation and in 2009 pledged $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative, was denied entry last summer amid a review of his ties in Lebanon to Hezbollah, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.
The Trump campaign quickly renewed its call for a shutdown of the Clinton Foundation.
“The fact a major Clinton Foundation donor was denied entry into the US over ties to the terrorist group Hezbollah is deeply troubling, especially when this individual had access to top aides at Hillary Clinton’s State Department,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller said Sunday, calling for the release of Clinton’s schedules and the shutdown of the charity.
The Trump team also released a new Web ad Sunday accusing the Clinton Foundation of being a “slush fund” that “sold access to the State Department.”
“Hillary Clinton’s corruption has been exposed again,” the ad says.
Chagoury, who owns Africa’s largest construction company, had unique access to the State Department, Hillary Clinton’s e-mails revealed.
The billionaire was on the Department of Homeland Security’s no-fly list in 2010 and was pulled off a plane. He’s now on the “selectee” list that allows him to fly with extra scrutiny. Chagoury has denied any support for the terrorist group.
Clinton maintains she never took action as secretary of state because of any donations to the foundation. The Clintons have announced they will stop accepting foundation donations from foreign interests if Clinton wins the White House.
Meanwhile, new e-mails show a top Clinton Foundation official, Doug Band, handpicked mega donors to attend a State Department lunch with then-Chinese President Hu Jintao in January 2011, ABC News reported.
Band e-mailed Clinton aide Huma Abedin in December 2010 suggesting names of Clinton Foundation donors to attend the high-profile event: Bob McCann, the then-president of wealth management at UBS; Dr. Judith Rodin, the president of The Rockefeller Foundation; and Hikmet Ersek, the CEO of Western Union.
He asked if one guest could be seated by Vice President Joe Biden. “I’ll ask,” Abedin replied
It wasn’t clear if the special favor for Clinton donors resulted in their attendance at the luncheon.’…

Kerry: Media should cover terrorism less so that "people wouldn't know what's going on"

German army has admitted over 60 suspected Islamic State jihadis into its ranks

World News and Trends: Can Gaza stay quiet?

An interesting article from http://www.ucg.org/ about Gaza. This follows this post about the Lost 10 Tribes.  This follows this post about Zika. For a free magazine subscription or to get the books recommended for free click HERE! or call 1-888-886- 8632.

World News and Trends

Can Gaza stay quiet?

 by Jerold Aust, John Ross Schroeder Estimated reading time: 1 minute

Arab militants in the Gaza Strip, located on Israel's southwestern border, have again been striking at the Jewish state, spurring Israeli retaliation.

Arab militants in the Gaza Strip, located on Israel's southwestern border, have again been striking at the Jewish state, spurring Israeli retaliation.
This poses a threat to the position of Gaza's Hamas rulers, so they indicated on April 2 that “they were trying to keep attacks on Israel in check, in an apparent attempt to keep a recent spate of violence from spiraling into open conflict” (Rizek Abdel Jawad, “Hamas Tries to Keep Attacks on Israel in Check,” Associated Press, April 2, 2010).
Both Israel and the Hamas governments would benefit by maintaining the peace. Israel's southern communities would benefit since they live so close to the border where terrorists have lobbed their rockets. The Hamas government would benefit since 80 percent of the population relies on United Nations food handouts to survive.
Israel holds Hamas accountable for maintaining peace in the Gaza Strip. Yet will they really be able to keep cool many hot-headed extremists who ache for an all-out war with Israel—especially when they are extremists themselves? (Source: Associated Press.)

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Current Events & Trends: Israel: A nation in dire peril

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article by Jerold Aust, John Ross Schroeder

The year 1948 saw the birth of the modern state of Israel, transforming a significant portion of the Jewish people from a scattered nation (a diaspora or dispersion) into a nation-state with real sovereignty.

For nearly 2,000 years the Jews had no permanent liberties and no kingdom they could call their own. Again, 1948 changed this, but there were many wars and political trials to come in maintaining this gain. And now in 2014, the Israeli state still faces both external and internal threats to its very existence.
Israel's economic miracle must be balanced against a number of negative factors. Begin with the religious animosity of many of the world's Muslims. Also this tiny country remains surrounded by hostile Arab states with a combined population of some 370 million. And then, too, many Palestinians think of Israel as an alien interloper that has no place in "Palestine."
Israel's relationship with its longtime protector, the United States, has encountered some rocky shoals. The Israeli leadership is far from assured that Washington will stand by Jerusalem should the tiny nation encounter a time of severe crisis. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains extremely skeptical of the ongoing U.S. nuclear negotiations with Iran.
Some observers even think that the deal with Iran will drive Israel into an informal entente with Saudi Arabia. The latter might agree to this as part of the great divide in Islam between the majority Sunni branch and the minority Shiite branch concentrated in Iran and Iraq. Noted foreign policy professor Walter Russell Mead commented on the matter in The Wall Street Journal:
"Riyadh and Jerusalem have common interests that are not limited to preventing Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The Saudis believe Iran is leading Shiites in a religious conflict with Sunnis now engulfing the Fertile Crescent. They fear that the [Iranian] Islamic Republic, nuclear or not, poses an existential threat to their security as the Shiite tide rises . . .
"Israel is . . . concerned about . . . the prospect of a Hezbollah-Tehran-Syria axis along its northern frontier . . . Both countries think that a naive Mr. Obama's unicorn hunt for nuclear disarmament is leading him to sacrifice vital geopolitical interests in the hope of what will turn out to be a very bad nuclear deal with Iran" ("A Riyadh-Jerusalem Entente," Dec. 6, 2013).
Our free Bible study aid booklet Are We Living in the Time of the End? shows that the establishment of the state of Israel is one of the key prophetic benchmarks for the fulfillment of end-time prophecy. (Sources: The Wall Street Journal, author Ari Shavit.)

• Good News Magazine
• News and Prophecy

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A very interesting post from www.debbieschlussel.com about the store that was robbed in Ferguson, MO. This follows this post about Robin Williams' take on Islam. This follows this article about American energy independence and preventing money from going to hostile countries. For more about what you can do to get more involved click here and you can read two very interesting books HERE.
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Ferguson Market Brown Robbed Laundered Money to Palestinian Terrorists

By Debbie Schlussel
The Ferguson, Missouri store Michael Brown robbed likely financed Palestinian Islamic terrorism and was used as a front to illegally transfer funds to entities in the Palestinian Authority. The store sold stolen cigarettes (and other contraband), often a scheme by American Muslims to finance HAMAS and Hezbollah.


Ferguson Market & Liquor Was the Gateway to Palestinian Terrorism
When I learned that the market Michael Brown robbed was called “Ferguson Market & Liquor,” the name rang a bell. And one of my twitter followers (follow me on Twitter) reminded me that I’d written about its owners’ 2008 indictment for laundering money to and financing of Palestinian Islamic “entities” after an FBI Terrorism Task Force investigation, using the store as a front for that operation. They later pleaded guilty to the scheme. Here’s a flashback:

Fourteen people have been indicted on charges of using convenience stores to trade in stolen goods and contraband cigarettes, sending the profits to groups in the Palestinian territories. Five stores were raided Tuesday as part of an alleged racketeering organization and at least nine people were arrested, authorities said. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force was involved in the investigation.

The indictment . . . said that since 2000, the organization profited from bank and wire fraud, receipt of stolen property and sales of contraband cigarettes. The organization, led by 33-year-old Bassam Hamed, operated convenience stores that were used to sell stolen goods, Hanaway said. He and two of his brothers were among the 14 people charged.
The indictment . . . said members of the “Hamed Organization” transferred money to “entities” in the Palestinian territories. Officials would not disclose those entities but said they were not individuals.

As I noted then, the “entities” probably had names like HAMAS, Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, etc. Sadly, the men got very light sentences after pleading guilty to racketeering and money-laundering.
Since the current owners and managers of the store have repeatedly refused to give their names–and since they hired a lawyer who insists that the store did not “narc” to the cops about Brown’s robbery or release the video–I wondered who owns the “we didn’t snitch” market and whether it is still in the business of Islamic terrorism high finance.
I did a little research, and found that “Ferguson Market” is an alias used by a company called Roshan, LLC, founded in 2009, after eight of the 14 Palestinian-Americans pleaded guilty to using the store as a Palestinian money-laundering front. Roshan is organized by someone named Mahesh Patel, which is typically a Hindi Indian name. I don’t know if he is the only owner (an LLC can have several “members” with ownership interests). And while Roshan can be a Muslim name of Persian origin, it is also a Sanskrit/Hindi word for “light,” the apparent usage here.
So, it appears that once the Palestinians pleaded guilty Mr. Patel’s company acquired the store. His “we didn’t snitch” line is clearly something he felt he had to say, lest the violent Fergie protesters put him out of business permanently.
In any event, it’s good to know that Ferguson Market & Liquor no longer finances Islamic terrorism. But, sadly, now, it’s the victim of American terrorism by vandalous thugs on the streets of Ferguson.
Same difference. Or close enough.

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An interesting article from http://www.ucg.org/ about smuggling across borders. This follows this post about the reality of the Bible. This follows this post about Germany's future designs. This follows this post about previous World Cup expenses. For a free magazine subscription or to get the books recommended for free click HERE! or call 1-888-886- 8632. You can follow me at blogspot here and at twitter here https://twitter.com/brianleesblog. Please consider following both in case one goes down!

"Intifada of the Crossings"

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article by Cecil Maranville

Tiny, but forever pivotal to world politics, Israel is struggling with a new intifada, a concerted attack on all the Gaza crossings and one in particular—the crossing at Rafah. The strategic importance of "crossings" is identified in Bible prophecy, only by another name.

Biblical Abraham was the common ancestor of both Arabs and Jews. Genesis 22 records a momentous event, when Abraham demonstrated his absolute loyalty and trust for God; it's celebrated by Arab and Jew alike (although they differ on whether the child involved was Ishmael or Isaac).
Verses 16-17 relate directly to explosive events unfolding in Israel today: "By Myself I have sworn, says the L ord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son—blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies."
A few decades later, when the son of Abraham was taking a wife, her relatives pronounced this unusual-sounding blessing on her: "Our sister, may you become the mother of thousands of ten thousands; and may your descendants possess the gates of those who hate them" (Genesis:24:60And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.).
A "gate" in this context is symbolic of a choke point, a pivotal passageway, one that controls entrance and exit from the nation. If a nation controlled the "gates" of its enemies, it could defend against attacks.
The "gates" are today's "crossings"
Today in Israel, a term for these gates is crossings . When the political arm of the terrorist group Hamas took power in Gaza in 2005, Israel sealed all crossings going to and from this narrow strip, home to 1.5 million Palestinian Arabs.
One of these has been in the news all year—the crossing at Rafah, located in the southeast corner of the Gaza Strip. Rafah is Gaza's main gateway to the outside world, since Gaza has no seaport or airport.
You can pull up a satellite view of it on Internet map programs and witness a sprawling city of 200,000 on the Israeli side of the border and a much smaller city of 40,000 on the Egyptian side. You can even see the wall that Hamas breached in late January this year.
Until 1982, Rafah was one city. It was divided into two as part of the Camp David Peace Accord. But instead of guaranteeing peace for the families and friends living in Rafah, it ended up dividing them. Initially, they traversed the border with relative ease, but mounting violence within Gaza by the late 1980s and early '90s changed that and the border tightened.
By 2000, Gaza's Rafah was one of the region's most violent cities, and the Israelis constructed the present wall (destroying a swath of homes to open up enough land to do so). And when Hamas took power, the Rafah crossing was almost completely closed.
Terrorists and thieves continue to cross the border through a network of tunnels to smuggle arms and other contraband. But the average citizen is unable to go back and forth easily if at all; many haven't seen relatives or friends for years.
When Hamas broke open the border in January, one Gazan resident of Rafah told of reuniting with his six siblings after an 11-year separation, as well as of visiting his father's grave in Egypt's Rafah for the first time. The man wasn't permitted to cross to attend his father's funeral at the time (Ibrahim Barzak and Omar Sinan, "Border Town United by Gaza Border Breach," AP, Jan. 26, 2008).
Among the first to cross was Naimeh Bayah, a wheelchair-bound mother, traveling from Jabaliya refugee camp to Egypt for surgery. A 52-year-old woman from central Gaza came to Egypt to buy the cement she needed to construct a proper Muslim grave for her son who had been killed in fighting between Hamas and Fatah. (Cement is but one of countless essentials in short supply in Gaza.)
Another Gazan on crutches slipped and fell in front of TV cameras, knocked down by the press of bodies rushing to get through the breaches in the wall between the two Rafahs.
Eighty percent of Gazans must rely on international charity for food. They poured into Egypt for nearly everything imaginable, including cows, camels, electronics, fertilizer, building materials and medicine.
But compelling as they are, these stories give only part of the picture.
Breaching the wall at Rafah far from spontaneous
The Egyptian government believes that Hamas conspired with the Muslim Brotherhood (an Egyptian-based terrorist group and the parent organization of Hamas) to breach the wall at Rafah. An editorial in the Middle East Times cast doubt on the suggestion that anything about it was spontaneous.
"Hamas knew that Egyptian troops guarding the Rafah border crossing would not fire on fellow Arabs and Muslims. Had they done so, the results would have reverberated across the Muslim world" ("Gazans' March on Israeli Border," Feb. 25, 2008).
The word conspired may seem inappropriate in light of how Hamas' action was portrayed in the Western media and even more so in the Arab press. Blasting and bulldozing holes in the border wall was described in heroic terms, including, "The greatest jail breakout in history."
However, the reason that Israel closed the Gaza Strip crossings is the continuing terrorist acts upon Israel by Hamas and various other Arab terrorist cells. Hamas hardly should receive praise for pulling people from a burning building that Hamas itself set on fire!
That seems lost on throngs who poured through the 15 holes Hamas blasted through the wall at Rafah. Estimates run as high as several hundred thousand people, or nearly half of the entire population of the Gaza Strip! Hamas gunmen are thus both the liberators of the Gazans and also the cause of their captivity.
"The intifada of the crossings"
The crossing at Rafah is under a strange security arrangement. Supposedly, the control of it passed from the hands of the Israelis after 40 years in November 2005.
At that time, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the new crossing "is intended to give the Palestinian people freedom to move, to trade, to live ordinary lives," adding, "for the first time since 1967, Palestinians will gain control over entry and exit from their territory" (David Morrison, "How the EU Helps Israel to Strangle Gaza," The Electronic Intifada, Feb. 14, 2008).
In reality, it's a mess and far from Palestinian control. The Palestinian Authority has only a token force of police at Rafah. Egypt, by treaty can have only a small military contingent on the border. The entire operation is under the supervision of the EU, which also garrisons a small military contingent at Rafah.
However, even though the Israeli Defense Force no longer guards the crossing, the treaty stipulates that Israel must have personnel monitoring TV cameras posted at the crossing—or the EU won't open it! So, to shut the border, all Israel has to do is not make anyone available to watch the TV monitors! As silly as that might sound, it effectively leaves the power to close the crossing in the hands of the Israelis.
And for the present, Israel still possesses this gate of its enemies (the terrorists within the Palestinians).
Roni Shaked wrote in an opinion piece for Ynetnews.com, "The battle of the crossings, launched several months ago [the Rafah 'breakout' being part of it], took a great leap forward Thursday [May 22, 2008]. Hamas leaders, disappointed with the failure to bring about a ceasefire and remove the blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip, are encouraging the ongoing activity against the crossings and are trying to instigate a third intifada— the intifada of the crossings" ("Thursday's Truck Bomb Part of Hamas' Attempt to Force Israel to Lift Seize on Gaza," May 24, 2008, emphasis added).
So, it's war on the crossings, on "the gates" spoken of in the ancient Scripture, showing that the Bible is remarkably relevant to this perennially peaceless land.
The breaching of Rafah's wall was part of a strategic effort by Hamas, calculated to bring international pressure on Israel to open all the crossings. In late May, Hamas demanded that Israel open Rafah immediately or that Egypt step in to take over. Hamas believes that Egypt can't openly resist such pressure, lest it seem to be against fellow Arab Muslims.
However, Egypt has good reason to resist, because it is afraid of Hamas. How could that be, when Egypt has more than 50 times the population of Gaza and 2,800 times the landmass?
A Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy against Egypt
Bret Stephens, a reporter for The Australian wrote in January: "Egypt—not Israel—is the country that has the most to fear from a statelet that is at once the toehold, the sanctuary and the springboard of the Islamist revolution" ("The Gaza Breakout," The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 29, 2008).
Stephens noted that Egypt's reaction to the Gaza breach was "near hysterical." Hamas' parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, launched approximately 70 demonstrations of support in Egypt simultaneously with Hamas' blasting open the border.
Stephens called the Hamas plan "a masterstroke." Breaching the wall was technically an act of war against Egypt, but Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood masterfully presented it as a humanitarian crisis and a bid for freedom. Because of the abundant publicity gained by Hamas in framing the crisis as precipitated by "cruel Israeli policies," Egypt would have great difficulty turning Gazans away.
Internal politics in Egypt put the government in a precarious position. The Muslim Brotherhood has a political foothold there, as well as continuing to sponsor terrorism. With the help of Hamas and the international publicity over the Rafah crossing, the Muslim Brotherhood has a real chance of seizing control of Egypt, making it an Islamic state.
The octogenarian Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has groomed his son to succeed him in the presidency, but the younger Mubarak has no military experience in a country where the generals have a great deal to say about who will lead the nation.
Only the beginning of trouble at the crossings of Israel
So, the intifada of the crossings is on. For its part, Israel recently announced plans to build yet another wall at Rafah within the next 18 months; it will be as large as the wall Israel has been building in the West Bank!
God warned Israel of old that should it fail to live by His laws, He would allow Israel's enemies to "besiege you at all your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust, come down throughout all your land"; that "your enemy shall distress you at all your gates" (Deuteronomy:28:52And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land, which the LORD thy God hath given thee., 55).
Like its brother and great ally, the United States, the nation of Israel today is a generous and prosperous nation. Yet these descendants of the people to whom Deuteronomy was written break the laws of God in countless ways. Although they are both powerful nations still, the handwriting is on the wall for trouble "at the gates."
For more information, see our booklets The Middle East in Bible Prophecy , The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy and You Can Understand Bible Prophecy . WNP

DID I MOVE?

A timely post about from www.anncoulter.com about immigration's affect on the U.S. This follows this post about gym membership being taxed under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). In the meantime, you can get more involved if you like here and read an interesting book HERE.

DID I MOVE?

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With all the smirking on the left about their electoral victories, it's important to remember that Democrats haven't won the hearts and minds of the American people. They changed the people. If you pour vinegar into a bottle of wine, the wine didn't turn, you poured vinegar into it. Similarly, liberals changed no minds. They added millions of new liberal voters through immigration. So why are Republicans like Trey Gowdy, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and John Boehner making fools of themselves in order to spot the Democrats three more touchdowns?
The House Republicans' "Standards for Immigration Reform," for example, contains this fat, honking nonsense: "One of the great founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents."
As the kids say: WTF?
That may be a pleasant-sounding sentiment, but it has absolutely nothing to do with our country's history. Not the first thing. Did Republicans really think they could palm off the idea that our forefathers fought and died at Valley Forge so that illegal aliens wouldn't have to live in the shadows? 
Yeah, it was a long shot. We didn't know you guys had read the Constitution. We'll be quiet now.
Apart from the fact that protecting children from the mistakes of their parents has not the slightest connection with the nation's founding, it's a ridiculous concept.
Yes, children suffer when their parents break the law. Also when their parents get divorced, become alcoholics, don't read to them at night, feed them junk food and take them to Justin Bieber concerts. None of that is the child's fault.
But it's not the country's fault either.
If we have to excuse lawbreaking so as not to "punish the children," there's no end to the crimes that have to be forgiven—insider trading, theft, rape, murder and so on.
How do you think kids feel when their father has to "live in the shadows" because he committed a rape? The kids did nothing wrong, but they have to go to bed every night wondering: Is tomorrow the day Dad is going to be caught?
How do you function like that? And how awful it must be when their dad is sent to prison! How do you think Jack Abramoff's kids felt? What about Martha Stewart's kid?
Why not just forgive the crimes of all perpetrators who have kids? At a minimum, shouldn't we allow criminals to defer their sentences until their kids turn 26 so they can stay on Dad's health insurance? Or at least until their kids have gone to college? Chris Christie can give them in-state tuition!
"It's not the kids' fault" proves too much. People can get away with anything if they're willing to use their children as trump cards to avoid the force of law.
The once-respected Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., compared illegal aliens brought here as kids to children who steal a grape or scream in a restaurant:

"When children wander into neighborhood yards, we don't call that trespassing. When children cry and yell and scream at restaurants or on airplanes, we don't call that a violation of the noise ordinance. When children eat a grape at the grocery store or eat a piece of candy waiting in line before Mom or Dad pays for it, we don't have them arrested for petty larceny." 

Yes, but in those cases, both the child and his parents had a right to be where they were—the yard, restaurant or grocery store—when the child suddenly behaved like a child. With illegal aliens, the parents are more like Gypsies teaching their kids to beg and pick pockets. The parents forced the kids into being lawbreakers.
Similarly, Palestinians use their children to commit acts of terrorism against Israel, so that when Israel responds, the parents can wail, "They're bombing children!"
(I thought only liberals couldn't do analogies.)
Americans are under no moral obligation to admit huge numbers of people who have no particular right to be here just because the Democrats need 30 million new voters.
Why shouldn't Republicans oppose mass immigration on the grounds that immigrants will vote Democratic? The only reason the Democrats want mass immigration is because they know immigrants will vote Democratic. (Also for the cheap nannies and gardeners.)
Immigration is the "single issue" that decides every other issue. If this country were the same demographically today as it was in 1980, Romney would have won a bigger victory in 2012 than Reagan did against Carter. And we wouldn't have to hear about soccer all the time.
We're living in a different country now, and I can't recall moving! Had I wanted to live in Japan, I could have moved there. Had I had wanted to live in Mexico, Pakistan or Chechnya—I could have moved to those places, too.
(Although maybe not. They all have stricter immigration policies than we do.)
I'm sure they're lovely, but I wanted to live in America. Now I can't. At the current rate of immigration, it won't exist anymore. The Democrats couldn't win elections there, so they changed it. 
With the repeal of Obamacare in the balance, I have argued that it's insane for Republicans to waste resources primarying their own guys in 2014. Even the most heinous Republican can usually argue, "Would you really rather have a Democrat in this seat?"
But any Republican who supports mass immigration—whether with Marco Rubio's amnesty bill, or idiotic arguments about "not punishing the children"—has forfeited that claim. If the country is going to be ruined anyway, it could not matter less who wins any particular seat on this Titanic.