Tag Archives: Zionism

Robert Spencer: Elle Magazine Puts White Linda Sarsour on Its List of ‘Women of Color in Politics to Watch in 2020’ 0 (0)

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by Robert Spencer

Elle magazine seems somewhat embarrassed by its list, published last week, of “20 Women of Color in Politics to Watch in 2020.” The article now carries this prominent disclaimer: “The below list was compiled by She the People, a national non profit network of women of color committed to social justice and voter mobilization. A previous version of this story did not make clear that the list was compiled by She the People and not ELLE magazine.” This was added because Elle faced a backlash for including the vehemently anti-Semitic Leftist activist Linda Sarsour on the list. But no one seems to have noticed another problem: the list is of “women of color,” and Sarsour is white.

Such minor quibbles will fall on deaf ears among Leftists. For the Left is at war not just with conservatives, but with reality itself. This has been clear for quite some time. Instead of trying to achieve some reconciliation with the nature of things as they are, the Left is growing ever more divorced from truth, reason, and ineluctable facts. For example, witness the hijab-wearing feminist (an oxymoron just as much as a white “woman of color,” as white is not a color in the Left’s world) Linda Sarsour’s magical race transformation.

It has been absurd enough to see Sarsour, a hijab-wearing defender of that most misogynistic of legal codes, Sharia, emerge as a champion of women’s rights and a feminist leader. But that was rational compared to the weapons-grade absurdity that Elle, or She The People, is now serving up regarding this palest of “women of color.”

The stage was set for Elle to anoint Sarsour as a “woman of color in politics to watch in 2020” several years ago, when the blogger Elder of Ziyon made an amazing discovery: Linda Sarsour claimed she “magically changed from white to a ‘woman of color’ in an instant,” just by putting on a hijab.

It’s true: in a Vox video published in January 2017, Sarsour said: When I wasn’t wearing hijab I was just some ordinary white girl from New York City.

But in an April 2017 interview of this hero of feminism, there is this: After watching Michelle Pfeiffer’s character in Dangerous Minds, Sarsour decided to become a high school teacher, “inspiring young people of color like me, to show them their potential.” She graduated a year early, gave birth to her eldest son, and enrolled in community college.

In the ensuing controversy, Linda Sarsour doubled down, saying: I’m Palestinian. If I want to say “I’m black,” I’m black!

What did being Palestinian have to do in Linda Sarsour’s crowded mind with her spurious claim of blackness? Well, it’s a fictional nationality, so Sarsour might as well take on a fictional race to go along with it. Maybe she was saying that since she had already made one fantasy a cornerstone of her public identity, adding another couldn’t hurt. As The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process demonstrates, the “Palestinians” as a people were indistinguishable from the neighboring Arabs. The “Palestinian” ethnicity or nationality was never known or mentioned throughout human history until the 1960s, when Yasser Arafat and the KGB invented it as a stick to beat the Israelis with. Tiny Israel arrayed against 22 hostile Arab countries looked like the plucky, heroic underdog; but the tinier “Palestinian” people facing the massive Israeli war machine reversed the narrative.

PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein said this in 1977: The Palestinian people does not exist.

The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a “Palestinian,” I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem.

However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

If Islamic jihadis (with considerable help from Marxist strategists) can invent an entire ethnic group, why can’t Linda Sarsour, a proud member of this invented ethnic group, change races? For “tactical reasons,” in order to identify with the fashionable victim classes instead of with the universally designated oppressor, white people?

Elle’s article shows that Sarsour’s tactic has worked wonderfully, and reality can take the hindmost. The Left left it behind long ago, and if you still pay attention to it, you’re just not woke.

PJM: https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/elle-puts-white-linda-sarsour-on-its-list-of-women-of-color-in-politics-to-watch-in-2020/

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His new book is The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS. 

Hugh Fitzgerald: The Israeli Air Force “Mows the Lawn” in Gaza 0 (0)

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by Hugh Fitzgerald

In Gaza, on November 11, having endured many attacks on its civilians by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Israel struck at the terror group with pinpoint accuracy, firing a missile at a particular room on the third floor of a residential building, which turned out to be the very bedroom of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander in northern Gaza, Baha Abu al-Ata, killing only him and his wife. Confirming his death, a PIJ spokesman said he was just about to undertake “a heroic jihadist action.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Abu al-Ata an “arch-terrorist” and said he was “the main instigator of terrorism from the Gaza Strip. He initiated, planned and carried out many terrorist attacks. He fired hundreds of rockets at communities in the area adjacent to the Gaza Strip, whose suffering we have seen,” he told a news conference in Tel Aviv. “He was in the midst of planning additional attacks in the immediate short term. He was a ticking bomb.”

The PIJ is the second-largest terrorist group in Gaza, and also has offices abroad  in Damascus, Tehran, and Khartoum. It is even more extreme than its rival Hamas, in that – unlike Hamas — it refuses even to consider a ceasefire, and it has recently been firing hundreds of rockets into southern Israel, always into civilian areas, in its determination to prevent a shaky ceasefire between Hamas and Israel from taking hold. Israel has previously held Hamas accountable for attacks by the PIJ, and would attack Hamas targets in retaliation for PIJ rocket attacks on Israeli towns and cities. The idea was to inflict so much pain on Hamas that it would then target PIJ in Gaza itself, to prevent its attacking Israel. But now, with the killing of Baba Anu al-Ata, Israel appears to have concluded that Hamas has been not unwilling but, rather, unable to halt PIJ attacks on Israel, so the IDF will have to do the job itself. The Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Lt Gen Aviv Kochavi, said that Abu al-Ata had undermined recent efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which runs Gaza and is considered a rival to PIJ.

An hour after the Israelis announced the attack on Abu al-Ata in northern Gaza, an Israeli plane fired two rockets at the house of Akram al-Ajouri, a senior member of the terror group PIJ, in the Mezzeh area of Damascus. Al-Ajouri managed to survive, but his son and Ajouri’s bodyguard were killed.

What do these attacks signify? First, that Israel wants to do its utmost to ensure that no innocents are harmed. In both cases, the rockets struck with pinpoint accuracy. In Gaza, not only did the IDF manage to limit the attack to Abu al-Ata’s apartment on the third floor, but, with even greater accuracy, to the very bedroom where he and his wife were sleeping. In Damascus, a similar surgical strike on the home of Al-Ajouri killed only his son and his bodyguard. Many hours later, the Syrians claimed that Al-Ajouri’s granddaughter had also been killed; it’s unclear if this is true, or if it was fabricated in an attempt to elicit more anger against Israel.

Compare these Israeli strikes to how the PIJ struck back. In just the six hours after the killing of Abu al-Ata, PIJ fired more than 170 rockets into civilian areas of Israel. Workplaces and schools were shut down as far north as Tel Aviv. There was no attempt by PIJ to hit a particular target, no “pinpoint accuracy” to these attacks; every Israeli in southern and central Israel was a potential target, including those in the country’s hub, Tel Aviv. Half the country closed down, including schools and workplaces from Tel Aviv south; with sirens intermittently sounding, and people taking cover on the streets or in one of the many bomb shelters that Israelis have built everywhere in their permanently imperiled country

Israel has now retaliated, in turn, for those PIJ rocket attacks. It did not do so right away, holding its fire for six hours, possibly in the hope that after the targeted killings, and having vented its anger with its volley of rockets, the PIJ might rethink its strategy. But it was not to be: and so, with 160 rockets having been fired at Israel, the IAF finally struck back, only at strictly military targets of the PIJ. The IAF hit arms warehouses, a training center for Islamic Jihad’s naval force, a shaft of a PIJ terror tunnel in northern Gaza, and a digging site of another PIJ terror tunnel in the central Strip. Only five people have been reported killed in those attacks, all of them PIJ terrorists. Here, again, in Gaza, the IAF has shown itself to be exceedingly accurate, with no civilian deaths among the Palestinians reported so far.

Israel, meanwhile, has also been careful not to hit a single target belonging to Hamas. Israelis have rethought their previous strategy of holding Hamas responsible for attacks by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and attacking it after enduring attacks by PIJ. Israeli commanders have become convinced that Hamas is trying, but not succeeding, in preventing PIJ from launching its rockets. So Israel briefly decided to return – but has made clear it is doing so only temporarily — to its former policy of “targeted assassinations,” that it used to employ with such effect against Hamas. The IDF is trying to deal forcefully and quickly with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, by cutting off the “head of the snake” – that is, killing its military commander in Gaza, Baha Abu al-Ata, and, in Damascus, the head of its political wing, Akram Al-Ajouri. It wants to weaken Palestinian Jihad, perhaps enough to encourage Hamas to finish the job the IAF has begun, and to return to trying to keep alive the tentative ceasefire that Egypt has been brokering between Israel and Hamas.

As the battle goes on, and both sides have already been “urged to exercise restraint” by the U.N., note that “restraint” is exactly what Israel has always been exercising, in these surgical strikes against PIJ leaders and military targets. It is the PIJ that has never exercised “restraint” in its attacks on Israelis, consistently shooting its rockets into Israeli civilian areas. If it has not caused more civilian casualties, it’s not for want of trying.

The remaining leadership of PIJ remains defiant, and issued a statement promising that “Our inevitable retaliation will rock the Zionist entity.” So far that “inevitable retaliation” has not led to any Israeli deaths, but only to fewer than a dozen wounded. This low number testifies to the efficacy of the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system, the country’s excellent warning system, and the shelters that are found  everywhere in Israel.

Hamas, the Palestinian organization that administers the Gaza Strip, said Israel “bears full responsibility for all consequences of this escalation,” and promised Abu al-Ata’s death “will not go unpunished.” This is the minimum that could be expected from Hamas, which though secretly pleased at the damage done to its rival, must pretend to be outraged by Israel’s attacks. It is noticeable that Hamas did not fire any retaliatory rockets itself, nor did it state that it would participate in “punishing” Israel. If Abu al-Ata’s death “will not go unpunished,” apparently Hamas will not be among those doing the punishing. Hamas could have said that “we will help punish Israel for its murder of Abu al-Ata,” but did not. That’s a significant public breach between Hamas and PIJ. How long Hamas will wait, until itself taking on the much-weakened PIJ, in order to assure itself that the ceasefire with Israel will hold, is anyone’s guess. The Israelis hope it is soon. They would themselves re-enter Gaza, to crush all the terrorists, what they call “mowing the lawn,” only most reluctantly. Hamas cannot afford to behave like PIJ, oblivious to the consequences of its acts, and willing to endlessly attack Israel even if the IDF’s retaliation is always more punishing than anything the PIJ can inflict. For Hamas is now more than a terrorist group; it bears all the responsibilities of rule in Gaza. And that includes trying to maintain the ceasefire with Israel, brokered by Egypt, for as long as it serves its interests.

Why do Israelis call these actions taken against the terrorists “mowing the lawn”? It’s because they know it is only a temporary solution to a permanent problem. The terrorists may be cut down, but will always reappear, like a lawn that regrows after being mowed. The Jihad, the Israelis know, is permanent. It’s been going on, somewhere in the world, for the past 1,400 years. If only the people in the chanceries of the West, so quick to round on Israel for daring to defend itself, could grasp that simple fact.

JW: https://www.jihadwatch.org/category/hugh-fitzgerald

Hugh Fitzgerald is a student of history and literature, primarily of America and Europe. He admires Jacques Barzun, J. D. Salinger, and Alan Bennett, reads dictionaries for profit and pleasure, and finds particularly appealing the words “recompense,” “quondam,” “magari,” and “degringolade.”

By far the best way to reach Hughun is through the offices at Jihad Watch. Fitzgerald has an email account, the address of which is hughfitz123@msn.com.

Bill Lockwood: Problems in Zion — Premillennialism 0 (0)

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by Bill Lockwood

Timothy P. Weber, in his even-handed review of the history of Zionism, or Dispensational Premillenialism (On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend, 2004) exposes the many contradictions of the system. Beginning with the inception of modern dispensational premillennialism by the “disgruntled” Irish Anglican priest John Nelson Darby in the 19th century (1830’s) through the current Messianic Jewish movement, Weber historically exposes the many flaws, contradictions and changing currents within the premillennial fold. Such is to be expected in an unscriptural doctrinal setting. The following are some of the points made by Weber.

Varieties of Premillennialism

First, there are countless varieties of the Premillennial doctrine, most of which contradict one another. Through this contradiction, however, all varieties share one basic flaw—crass materialistic concepts of the kingdom of God.

This materialistic view, with predictions of a new Judaized state in the future complete with animal sacrifices and legalistic practices, is featured in the NT as the primary reason for the Jewish rejection of the Messiah. Caiaphas counseled the murder of Christ to his fellow Sanhedrists on the grounds that if Christ were not taken out of the way, “the the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation” (John 11:47-51).

Nevertheless, this materialism is the primary ingredient of all the flavors of Premillennial thought; from the Shakers (19th century) to the Mormons (whose ‘inspired’ writings included the fulfillment of the scheme in the state of Missouri) to the 7th Day Adventist Movement began by William Miller and continued by Ellen G. White to the popular Left Behind brand now current in denominationalism; and all of the rest.

Weber highlights this materialistic concept for us. “Because of their basic hermeneutical decision that all earthly prophecies belonged to Israel and not the church, dispensationalists believed that the ‘saints’ referred to a newly restored nation of Israel that would be regathered in Palestine” (70).

Note carefully: Weber is explaining that it is the false presumption that the entire OT prophetic program referred to physical Israel which is the base of Premillennialism.  That the kingdom of God is a political entity with physical boundaries—as Judaism at the time of Christ believed—has even caused many prominent dispensationalists, such as James Gray, C.I. Scofield and others to reject our “democratic government” while declaring favor for a “monarchy” (p. 84) Many wearing the name of Christ have not moved much further in spiritual thinking than Caiaphas.

Hijacking Conservatism

If materialism lies at the heart of Premillennialism, very close to it is the supplanting of missionary work with a political program that regards international meddling as part of the gospel. This is what Weber calls the “Hijacking of Conservatism” by Zionism. Simple Constitutional conservative values are ignored.

While many American evangelicals remain politically conservative on a social scale, their belief-system drives them to support America’s much “unconstitutional meddling” in the political affairs of foreign nations. Thus, the Constitution of the United States is thrown behind the Zionist backs.

Tied to this is the falsely-labeled missionary effort of the evangelical world. Converting individuals to Jesus Christ is the biblical idea of missions. It is very different however, among Zionists.

For example, foreign “intermeddling,” flying beneath the banner of evangelism, was the planting of an “American colony” in Jerusalem, Israel in 1881. No ordinary missionary movement this, it was an actual “American colony” led by the Spafford family (p. 106-08) and supported by such evangelical preachers as William Blackstone.

“By the 1930’s the colony ceased being primarily a religious community and started operating more like a family business” (109). The primary aim, of course, was the effort, not to convert Jews to Christ, but to “relocate in order to be present when God’s promises to Israel were fulfilled.”

To say the least, it is a skewed vision of the word of God that transforms evangelism into nothing more than a sitting in the hills waiting for the Lord to bless Israel.

This fostering of the political state of Israel is the hallmark of Zionist “evangelism.” In 1917 British forces were poised to capture Jerusalem in armed conflict.  Lord Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, wrote to Lord James Rothschild, a leader in the International Zionist Movement.

“His Majesty’s government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best efforts to facilitate the achievement of this object …”

Foreign interference was in full swing. Five weeks after the Balfour Declaration, Jerusalem was surrendered by the Turks to British forces.  Thus began a career of national intermeddling in the Middle East which is being happily continued by the American government with full backing of evangelicals. Constitutional it is not. Evangelistic it is not. But it does demonstrate how conservatism, which at one time was marked by non-interventionism, has been hijacked and now fits an internationalist mold.

As presented by Weber, the history of “evangelical missionary intermeddling” is rife with similar examples. The Likud Party in Israel recognized evangelical preachers such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson with awards all the while laboring to outlaw missionary work (245).

The tragic irony in all of this is that evangelicals demonstrate a complete lack of interest in Palestinian Christians but seem more interested simply in removing them from their ancestral territory (246).  Evangelicals show more interest in political and physical wars with Palestinians over who owns the Temple Mount than in spiritual teaching (250); or more interest in how the state of Israel is partitioned (168) than in law and justice as we know in America.

These are just a few items among dozens more that could be mentioned. If one wishes to know where conservatives lost their way, look no further than the seeming complete takeover of the Evangelical churches by Zionists.

Gathered in Belief or Unbelief?

Another of the many self-inflicted confusions of Zionism is the question as to whether fleshly Israel should be gathered back to Palestine only after belief in Christ or would their reconstitution to a state be accomplished before the nation believes? Gathered in belief or unbelief? Converted to Christ, then gathered? Or, gathered, then converted?

Historically, reaching back to its inception with John Nelson Darby, dispensationalism believed the Bible to be clear to teach that Jews would be converted first, then gathered to Israel. But this changed in the 20th century.

Weber explains:

In the nineteenth century, dispensationalists overwhelmingly believed that the final restoration would not occur until after the second coming, when Jews who survived the great tribulation would accept Jesus Christ …and would return to the Promised Land… for a thousand years. After the founding of Zionism, however, dispensationalists were faced with the possibility that significant numbers of Jews might return to Palestine prior to Christ’s return and without faith in Christ. (p. 168)

Zionism was organized in the 1890’s and came to full flower immediately after World War I. This question is not merely academic. First, it involves the trustworthiness of common-stock Premillennial interpretation of OT prophecies. Specifically, should we place any confidence in the interpretive keys that Zionists utilize in examining the Old Testament? Witnessing the many and vast confusions on this topic, particularly their contradictions as to whether Jews would be gathered in belief or unbelief, the answer is a resounding “NO.”

For example, the Weekly Evangel, a dispensationalist paper, editorialized in 1940 that of a truth “God swore that Israel would be re-gathered in her own land, unconverted, in the latter days. Ezekiel 36:24-38.”  Note carefully that the writer felt certain that Ezekiel 36 teaches a re-gathering while in unbelief.

Yet, as Weber points out, only one year later the editors took the opposite position and cited Luke 21:24 to establish the point!

We have all been thrilled to watch the rebuilding of Palestine and the return of many Jews to that land through the efforts of Zionism. … God’s Word teaches that ‘Jerusalem will be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.’ Luke 21:24. Not until Christ returns will the Jewish nation go to Palestine as a whole, nor will the Jews get full sovereignty over the land.

Something is vastly wrong with the entire interpretation system when it pits one passage against another. It needs to be realized that the political movement of Zionism, not Scripture, caused millennialists to change their mind!

Second, and more importantly, evangelical support today for the state of Israel is somehow thought to be the mandate from prophecy. Yet, Israel has not accepted Christ. Premillennial preachers, however, unanimously tell us that when Christ comes again all the Jews will accept Christ and be re-gathered to their ancient homeland. If that is so, then supporting the state of Israel while in their current state of repudiation of Christ has nothing at all to do with prophecy! In other words, if prophecy says that Christ is going to convert all Jews when He returns and then gather them in Palestine, then supporting Israel today has nothing to do with fulfilling prophecy.

Arno C. Gaebelein, one of the leading exponents of Premillennialism in the 1940’s, saw this problem. He insisted that the political movement of Zionism was not the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Unwilling however, to relinquish his doctrine, Gaebelein would say only that the current Zionist movement was somehow a “first step” in that direction. (Weber, p. 169).

Based upon Gaebelein’s “first step” concept, let’s pose this question for Premillennialists. If Christ is to return literally to the earth, convert the Jews, and re-gather them to Palestine—according to prophecy—how will any man or even nation of people possibly “assist” the Lord’s future judgment by political brokering today?  To suggest such is haughtiness in the extreme. Just as well assist the Lord on the throne of judgment.

Premillennialism is false doctrine. Let members of the Lord’s church beware!