Palestinian Leaders Have Created a Culture of Death That's Motivating the Latest Violent Terrorism

I think Jeffrey Goldberg's phrase, "the stabbing intifada," really captures it.

And here's more, from Tzipi Hotovely, at the Wall Street Journal, "Abbas: ‘We Welcome Every Drop of Blood Spilled in Jerusalem’":

The latest surge of Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis has come in the immediate wake of explicit calls by the Palestinian leadership to “spill blood.” This well-orchestrated campaign of violence follows many years in which Palestinian children have been taught to idolize the murder of Jews as a sacred value and to regard their own death in this “jihad” as the pinnacle of their aspirations.

Such violence has deep roots. It goes back to the rampages at the behest of Haj Amin al-Husseini, a Muslim activist and at one point grand mufti of Jerusalem, in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. It continued with the fedayeen Palestinian militants in the 1950s and ’60s, and evolved into the terrorism of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Fatah under Yasser Arafat and now Mahmoud Abbas. Anyone who claims that Palestinian terror against Jews dates only to 1967, or is a response to Israeli settlements, should become more informed of the conflict’s history.

Yet the apathy shown by the international community to the death-culture fostered by Palestinian elites, and the unbalanced manner in which subsequent violence is often treated by the international media—as if there is any kind of symmetry between terrorists and their victims—is doing long-term, and possibly irrevocable, harm to generations of Palestinians.

A few recent examples underscore the depth of the problem.

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Bella Thorne on Instagram

At Hollywood Tuna, "Now that Bella Thorne is officially 18 and her Instagram is no longer an LAPD sting operation waiting to happen, I can do things like repost the bikini pictures she puts up there."

Well, yeah, considering Ms. Thorne used to be on the Disney Channel's "Shake It Up!"

But she's 18 now, so there you go.

Hot Shots Calendar 2016 (VIDEO)

Last year some of these babes got some folks in trouble, "'Hot Shots' Calendar Under Fire for Photo Shoot on U.S. Military Base."

But they're still going strong, apparently.

Watch, "Hot Shots Calendar 2016 - Behind the Scenes."

The Overwhelmingly Female Press Corps Covering Hillary Clinton's Campaign

That's so sexist, heh.

At Politico, "The women in the van."

Hat Tip: Glenn Reynolds, "ANNALS OF MEDIA SEXISM: Hillary Clinton attracts a rarity on the campaign trail — an overwhelmingly female press corps."

Why Israel Will Never Be Able to Separate from the Palestinians

From Caroline Glick, at FrontPage Magazine, "KERRY, ISRAELI ARABS AND THE SEPARATION DELUSION."

And her latest book is most timely, at Amazon, The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.

Syria Broadens Offensive

At WSJ, "Syrian Regime, Backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, Expands Ground Offensive to Aleppo":

Syrian pro-regime forces backed by Russian airstrikes have expanded their ground offensive to the strategic city of Aleppo, one of the clearest signs yet of how Russia’s recent military intervention has emboldened President Bashar al-Assad and his loyalists.

In the bitterly fought multi-sided war, Aleppo is among the most coveted prizes. Losing partial control of the city, which was once Syria’s largest and its commercial capital, was an embarrassment to the regime. But with the backing of Russian warplanes, Iranian forces and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, Mr. Assad’s forces could now be in position to regain large parts of the city and the surrounding countryside.

“I suspect Assad always wanted to take back Aleppo because it is such an important city and retaking it has such strategic and symbolic importance,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based military and security think tank. “And it would deny the rebels a foothold in any major city.”

The battle for Aleppo, launched on Friday, is an extension of two weeks of other ground offensives in the provinces of Hama, Latakia and Homs aided by Iranian forces and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. Mr. Assad is attempting to retake territory once considered out of his control, showing a new confidence with his growing international support.

Since Friday, the regime has netted a number of villages on the southern outskirts of the city and thousands of civilians are fleeing fighting in the area. On Sunday, the regime captured one additional village and U.S.-backed rebels destroyed two regime tanks using American-supplied weapons as they tried to stem the regime’s progress.

The regime appears to be advancing westward toward the strategic highway linking Aleppo with the capital Damascus, rebels said.

In a rare move, the offensive is being led by regime-allied Iranian fighters, according to Ahmad al-Ahmad, a spokesman for the moderate Islamist rebel group Faylaq al-Sham, which is involved in the battles.

Aleppo is about 30 miles south of the Turkish border and has been the site of battles between the rebels and regime since 2012. The countryside north of the city was one of the first areas where rebels gained a territorial foothold in the war, giving them access to border crossing with Turkey and a key road from the border that served as an important supply line.

The city of Aleppo is now divided in two, with an array of rebel factions controlling the eastern half and the regime holding the western half.

In July, Mr. Assad conceded that his forces were stretched too thin and could no longer defend the entire country, adding that priorities needed to be set. The acknowledgment came after years of desertions and draft dodgers and more than half the country slipping out of his control.

But Moscow’s intervention has allowed Mr. Assad to modify his earlier objective. Russian airstrikes are supporting his efforts to hold on to the stronghold around Damascus and to preserve a strategic corridor along the Lebanese border.

They are also aiding regime attempts to regain full control over the central provinces of Homs and Hama and the western region on the Mediterranean coast.

But Aleppo “is outside of the bounds one would think would be the point of restabilization for the regime,” said Christopher Kozak, a research analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, a think tank...

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The Paranoid, Supremacist Roots of the Stabbing Intifada

From Jeffrey Goldberg, at the Atlantic:

Knife attacks on Jews in Jerusalem and elsewhere are not based on Palestinian frustration over settlements, but on something deeper.

*****

The current “stabbing Intifada” now taking place in Israel—a quasi-uprising in which young Palestinians have been trying, and occasionally succeeding, to kill Jews with knives—is prompted in good part by the same set of manipulated emotions that sparked the anti-Jewish riots of the 1920s: a deeply felt desire on the part of Palestinians to “protect” the Temple Mount from Jews.

When Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem in June of 1967 in response to a Jordanian attack, the first impulse of some Israelis was to assert Jewish rights atop the Mount. Between 1948, the year Israel achieved independence, and 1967, Jordan, then the occupying power in Jerusalem, banned Jews not only from the 35-acre Mount—which is known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, the noble sanctuary—but also from the Western Wall below. When paratroopers took the Old City, they raised the Israeli flag atop the Dome of the Rock, but the Israeli defense minister, Moshe Dayan, ordered it taken down, and soon after promised leaders of the Muslim Waqf, the trust that controlled the mosque and the shrine, that Israel would not interfere in its activities. Since then, successive Israeli governments have maintained the status quo established by Dayan.

There is another status quo associated with the Temple Mount, however, that has been showing signs of weakening. This is a religious status quo. The mainstream rabbinical view for many years has been that Jews should not walk atop the Mount for fear of treading on the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum of the Temple that, according to tradition, housed the Ark of the Covenant. The Holy of Holies is the room in which the Jewish high priest spoke the Tetragrammaton, the ineffable name of God, on Yom Kippur.

The exact location of the Holy of Holies is not known, and Muslim authorities have prevented archeologists from conducting any excavations on the Mount, in part out of fear that such explorations will uncover further evidence of a pre-Islamic Jewish presence. This mainstream rabbinical view concerning the Mount—that it should be the direction of Jewish prayer, rather than a place of Jewish prayer—has made the lives of Jerusalem’s temporal authorities easier, by keeping Muslim and Jewish worshippers separated.

In recent years, however, small groups of radical religious innovators who oppose the mainstream rabbinical view have sought to make the Mount, once again, a site of Jewish prayer. (Here is a New York Times Magazine story I wrote about these radical groups.) These activists have gained sympathizers among some far-right political figures in Israel, though the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not altered the separation-of-religions status quo.

Convincing Palestinians that the Israeli government is not trying to alter the status quo on the Mount has been difficult because many of  today’s Palestinian leaders, in the manner of the Palestinian leadership of the 1920s, actively market rumors that the Israeli government is seeking to establish atop the Mount a permanent Jewish presence.

The comments of the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas—by general consensus the most moderate leader in the brief history of the Palestinian national movement—have been particularly harsh. Though Abbas has authorized Palestinian security services to work with their Israeli counterparts to combat extremist violence, his rhetoric has inflamed tensions. “Every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure, every martyr will reach paradise, and every injured person will be rewarded by God,” he said last month, as rumors about the Temple Mount swirled. He went on to say that Jews “have no right to desecrate the mosque with their dirty feet.” Taleb Abu Arrar, an Israeli Arab member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, argued publicly that Jews “desecrate” the Temple Mount by their presence. (Fourteen years ago, Yasser Arafat, then the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, told me that “Jewish authorities are forging history by saying the Temple stood on the Haram al-Sharif. Their temple was somewhere else.”)

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Israel Builds Temporary Security Walls Between Jewish and 'Palestinian' Neighbourhoods (VIDEO)

Postcards from the "Palestinian" peace process, via France 24:



Also, at Israel Matzav, "Breaking: Five Israelis wounded as two 'Palestinian' terrorists open fire in BeerSheva - UPDATED."

American Dominance is Being Challenged

I've enjoyed reading the Economist less and less these past few years, as the formerly august news magazine has succumbed to collectivist progressivism.

But I'm amazingly pleased with this analysis. It's good.

See, "Great-power politics: The new game."

Trey Gowdy's Benghazi Committee Leads Today's Hillary-Helping Outrage News (VIDEO)

We were seeing a huge leftist push-back against the Benghazi hearings even before the dimwad Kevin McCarthy idiotically blurted that it was all about political attacks against Hillary. Sure, there's that, but Gowdy's carried out the hearings with the utmost professionalism, mostly in the furtherance of ferreting out the truth. And that's the most important thing, considering the epic lies the Obama White House fostered on the American people after the attack. Remember, the so-called racist anti-Muslim video? Heh, good times.

At at Politico, via Memeorandum, "‘These have been among the worst weeks of my life’."

And video, from yesterday's Face the Nation:

Legendary Teacher Rafe Esquith Fired by Los Angeles Board of Education

Truly fucking ridiculous, at LAT, "Rafe Esquith fired: Former Teacher of the Year accused of inappropriately touching minors."

Also, "Teacher Rafe Esquith's misconduct investigation is a high-profile test for LAUSD's 'tiger team'." Right. "Tiger team."

And at EdWeek:

Jay Mathews, an education columnist for the Washington Post, is one of the teacher's high-profile defenders; he stated in a Thursday column that he doesn't think Esquith could ever be guilty of any of the "fuzzy" accusations.

"I have been in Esquith's classroom many times, seen his joyful multi-media plays, interviewed him for hours and talked to his wife, many of his students and educators he has mentored," Mathews said. "I have never detected a trace of improper behavior ... This is a classic witch hunt."

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."



Also at Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's SUNDAY FUNNIES," and Theo Spark's, "Cartoon Round Up..."

Cartoon Credit: A.F. Branco.

The Drone Papers (VIDEO)

There's a number of fascinating things about this new investigative report from the Intercept, "THE ASSASSINATION COMPLEX."

A lot of innocent people are being killed, for one thing, "Nearly nine out of 10 people who died in airstrikes were not the Americans' direct targets..."

The most interesting thing, though, is that had the CIA/Pentagon drone program advanced this far during the early days of the George W. Bush administration, we'd be hearing about "Nazi" targeted killings until the cows come home, and the mainstream collectivist media would be reporting cries for war crimes tribunals non-stop. But since it's Obama's drone program, crickets. I mean, Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, et al., are anti-Americans who like nothing more than to put American lives are risk to get their "scoops." And honestly, while I don't love the loss of innocents as collateral damage in the War on Terror, I have no problem taking out bloodthirsty jihadis, of which there's a never-ending supply. Greenwald, et al., see most of the terrorists as victims of America's imperial aggression.

So you can see why the whole thing's pretty amazing. See the full report, "The Drone Papers."

In any case, here's a segment from communist Amy Goodman's Democracy Now:

Radical Leftists Demand 'Justice for Palestinians' at Anti-Israel Protest in London (VIDEO)

Behold the complete moral bankruptcy of the contemporary "progressive" left. When you're protesting to defend Palestinians murdering innocent Jews with butcher knives and meat cleavers, there's something deeply wrong with your fundamental values.

Previously, "New Palestinian Intifada 'is drenched in the fever of martyrdom and faith-based hate...' (VIDEO)," and "Fanatical Palestinian Slams Car Into Bus Stop, Jumps Out and Hacks Israeli to Death (VIDEO)."

And at the video, hate-mongering ghoul George Galloway leads despicable, demonic leftists in London's anti-Israel demonstration, via Ruptly:

Competition Among Major Regional Players Fuels Rise of Islamic State

At WSJ, "Regional Discord Fuels Islamic State's Rise in Mideast":

Pretty much everyone in the Middle East is supposed to be fighting against Islamic State. Yet, the Sunni extremist group retains large swaths of Syria and Iraq and is spreading elsewhere in the region.

This isn’t because of its military might or strategic sophistication. The explanation is different: For most of the major players in the complicated conflicts ravaging the Middle East, the defeat of Islamic State remains a secondary goal, subordinate to more pressing objectives.

For some of these powers, Islamic State’s existence and its barbarism are actually useful, for now, because they serve as a lever in conflicts with more immediate and dangerous foes.

Though able to take advantage of sectarian fissures in Syrian and Iraqi societies to carve out a territory the size of the U.K., Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, isn’t strong enough to represent a conventional military threat to the region’s biggest nations.

But these countries do live in existential fear of some of their neighbors.

In particular, the Saudi-led bloc of Sunni Arab nations bitterly competes with Shiite-dominated Iran in what has become a zero-sum contest for influence—a contest that Russia has now entered on the Shiite side by supporting the Syrian regime.

That contest is also playing out in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition has been battling Iran-supported Houthi militants while Islamic State affiliates strengthen their position and attack both sides.

“Everyone hates their neighbor more than they hate ISIL,” said a senior Obama administration official.

Among the powers involved in the conflict, the U.S. is probably the only one, together with its European allies, focused on degrading and eventually destroying Islamic State as a primary goal.

But that effort, too is subordinated to the Obama administration’s overriding concern about preventing American casualties. This severely limits America’s ability to help forces fighting against Islamic State. It has also given rise to widespread theories claiming that Washington, too, doesn’t actually want the group to be defeated because it supposedly seeks to perpetuate regional instability.

The gap between American objectives and means has bolstered Islamic State’s narrative of invincibility, allowing it to draw thousands of recruits.

“We have an interest in defeating ISIS, but we don’t want to do that ourselves: We want other people to go in and lose their lives in doing it,” said Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy...

More.

On Equality

George Will points us to Professor Harry G. Frankfurt's new book, On Equality.

And see will's full essay, at WaPo, "What Bernie Sanders doesn’t understand about economic equality."

Also, from Darleen Click, at Protein Wisdom, "George Will speaks the obvious to Bernie Sanders..."

Books Returned to Portland State Univeristy Library, with Unsigned Note, After 52 Years

I guess the guy didn't want to get hit with a book fine, so he left an unsigned note.

The flat rate for lost books is $110 replacement fee. Ouch.

At the Oregonian, "Borrower returns books 52 years late to Portland State University's library, with unsigned note."

Why Isn't America Working?

From JCCarlton, at the Arts Mechanical.

Linked there, at the Atlantic, "How America's Workforce Has Changed Since 1977."

Hat Tip: Sarah Hoyt, at Instapundit, "SOCIALISM IS THE ANSWER: Why Isn’t America Working? It always ends inequality by sharing poverty."

Niall Ferguson's New Biography of Henry Kissinger

I admire Kissinger greatly, and I'm as much intrigued by his theoretical legacy in (and for) political science as I am his historical legacy during the years in power.

Kissinger's weekend's essay at the Wall Street Journal is a classic piece of commentary that showcases the power and perception of his work. See, "A Path Out of the Middle East Collapse."

In any case, Niall Ferguson's new biography thus looks all the more interesting.

At Amazon, Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist.

How you approach this book will obviously be influenced by your ideological orientation, which is demonstrated by the couple of reviews I just read, one by Tom Rogan, at Free Beacon, "Kissinger in Full," and the other by Greg Grandin, at the Guardian, "Kissinger 1923-1968: The Idealist by Niall Ferguson review – a case of wobbly logic."

(Ferguson is interviewed at the Guardian as well, "Niall Ferguson interview: ‘Public life these days is a cascade of abuse’."

A Path Out of the Middle East Collapse

From Henry Kissinger, at the Wall Street Journal, "With Russia in Syria, a geopolitical structure that lasted four decades is in shambles. The U.S. needs a new strategy and priorities":

The debate about whether the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran regarding its nuclear program stabilized the Middle East’s strategic framework had barely begun when the region’s geopolitical framework collapsed. Russia’s unilateral military action in Syria is the latest symptom of the disintegration of the American role in stabilizing the Middle East order that emerged from the Arab-Israeli war of 1973.

In the aftermath of that conflict, Egypt abandoned its military ties with the Soviet Union and joined an American-backed negotiating process that produced peace treaties between Israel and Egypt, and Israel and Jordan, a United Nations-supervised disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria, which has been observed for over four decades (even by the parties of the Syrian civil war), and international support of Lebanon’s sovereign territorial integrity. Later, Saddam Hussein’s war to incorporate Kuwait into Iraq was defeated by an international coalition under U.S. leadership. American forces led the war against terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States were our allies in all these efforts. The Russian military presence disappeared from the region.

That geopolitical pattern is now in shambles. Four states in the region have ceased to function as sovereign. Libya, Yemen, Syria and Iraq have become targets for nonstate movements seeking to impose their rule. Over large swaths in Iraq and Syria, an ideologically radical religious army has declared itself the Islamic State (also called ISIS or ISIL) as an unrelenting foe of established world order. It seeks to replace the international system’s multiplicity of states with a caliphate, a single Islamic empire governed by Shariah law.

ISIS’ claim has given the millennium-old split between the Shiite and Sunni sects of Islam an apocalyptic dimension. The remaining Sunni states feel threatened by both the religious fervor of ISIS as well as by Shiite Iran, potentially the most powerful state in the region. Iran compounds its menace by presenting itself in a dual capacity. On one level, Iran acts as a legitimate Westphalian state conducting traditional diplomacy, even invoking the safeguards of the international system. At the same time, it organizes and guides nonstate actors seeking regional hegemony based on jihadist principles: Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria; Hamas in Gaza; the Houthis in Yemen.

Thus the Sunni Middle East risks engulfment by four concurrent sources: Shiite-governed Iran and its legacy of Persian imperialism; ideologically and religiously radical movements striving to overthrow prevalent political structures; conflicts within each state between ethnic and religious groups arbitrarily assembled after World War I into (now collapsing) states; and domestic pressures stemming from detrimental political, social and economic domestic policies.

The fate of Syria provides a vivid illustration...

Most excellent.

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