TOPPLING THE WORLD’S TOP COP

TOPPLING THE WORLD’S TOP COP:

China Has Re-Defined the Meaning of Law for All of Us.

By Paul Merkley.

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Triumphs of Engineering.

In recent days, we have witnessed a breath-taking acceleration of the  state-planning project of the Communist regime in China.

Co-incidentally, we are witnessing great strides towards political and social absolutism — a vindication of the sober fantasy envisaged by George Orwell back in 1948. (See Paul Merkley, “Orwell Didn’t See The Half Of It, Bayview Review, September 22, 2018.)  China is actively promoting around the world a fantasy about record-breaking economic consequences that are expected to follow from the building of its “Belt Road Initiative.”  (See , Matt Brown, “New Silk Road seemingly built on good intentions, but some fear a China  ‘debt trap,” October 14, 2018, https://www.stuff.co.nz.

A Chinese government spokesman for this project pledges that the highway itself, plus a global infrastructure to be built around it, will usher in “the Silk Road spirit of peace and co-operation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit.”

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ORWELL DIDN’T SEE THE HALF OF IT.

ORWELL DIDN’T SEE THE HALF OF IT.

By Paul Merkley.

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For 1984¸ his now-classic book describing the dystopian possibilities for totalitarian thought, George Orwell lifted information about recent technology and extrapolated its possibilities to describe the life that would await his descendants — that is to say, us.

1984 is certainly the best-known of the works of Eric Blair (1903-1950), the short-lived genius who wrote under the nom-de-plume, George Orwell. The futuristic novel describes a state-of-the-1940s-art universal two-way communications system, which, in the book, cannot be turned off and from whose eye one is never allowed to turn away. All agree that it would be awful to live under such circumstances.

Yet the painful truth is that some parts of Orwell’s vision-of-the-future are far too benign. One quaint feature is that Orwell has had to imagine giant, in-your-face -television screens as venues for give-and-take between the regime and the citizen, whereas the instruments of control today are those ubiquitous tiny hand-held electronic devices.

But if you really want to get yourself worked up about the possibilities for mass control in the world today set aside Orwell and consider what is actually happening in China as we speak. (https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12988/china-social-credit-system; https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/google-and-china-made-for-each-other.)

As far back as 1995 President Jiang Zemin spoke of the Party’s intention to meet the challenge of “informatization, automation, and intelligentization.” What he had in mind, apparently, were the newest means by which non-compliance with the regime’s wishes could be rendered literally impossible. In theory, violent force should  never be required to accomplish these ends. Instead, all means necessary to the accomplishment of total compliance with the Party’s would soon exist as Chinese society becomes encompassed, with no loose ends left over, in a massive totalitarian system of knowledge about the actual behavior of each-and-every citizen.

Some first fruits of this effort can already be seen in China’s new “social credit” system. Over the years, each and every Chinese citizen has been dragooned into an ever-more-exhaustive information-gathering system run by the State. And now the acquired details are being sifted, with the result that each citizen can now be assigned a numerical score for reliability, based upon the regime’s reckoning of the “social value” of each and every activity in which he is engaged or to which he admits to being drawn.

Keep in mind that Xi Jin-ping appears by name in the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China as China’s President-at-will — Dictator for Life. He believes and declares that the Party must have absolute control over society and he must have absolute control over the Party. Not a peep of dissent is being heard.

How will this be accomplished? Well, for starters, the plan is to have about 626 million surveillance cameras operating throughout the country before the end of next year. Those cameras will, among other mercies, feed information into a national “social credit system.” That system, when it is in place in perhaps two years, will assign to every person in China a constantly updated score based on all observed behavior. For example, an instance of jaywalking, caught by one of those cameras, will result in a reduction in one’s “social credit” score – helping to establish one’s place along a scale culminating in over-the- top virtue —sainthood,” we might almost be tempted to say. China will then be truly what the Economist called “the world’s first digital totalitarian state.”

In their own words, Chinese officials describe the goal of their finished work as “to allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.” Hou Yunchun, a former deputy director of the State Council’s development research center, said at a forum in Beijing in May that the social credit system should be administered so that “discredited people become bankrupt”. As early proof of the system and how it works we are told that as of the end of April 2018, authorities had blocked individuals from taking 11.14 million flights and 4.25 million high-speed rail trips.

And by the way: Xi Jin-ping, the Lord-High-Everything-Else-for Life of China,  does not believe in second chances for those who fall short: “Once untrustworthy, always restricted,” he proclaims.

But of more immediate concern to us are signs of early cooperation between the Chinese regime and certain zealous entrepreneurs in our own midst who are attracted by marketing possibilities in such pioneering work.  Roger Simon, writing for pjmedia, September 13, 2018, has caught wind of this, story, virtually ignored by our media. Documents leaked to a source called Intercept disclose that Google plans to substantially expand its role in the Chinese market through the potential launch, as early as next year, of “Dragonfly,” a  Chinese search app for Android devices..  https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/google-and-china-made-for-each-other.)

Prototypes and negotiations with the Chinese government are already far along, laying the groundwork for the potential service to launch as soon as early 2019.

Simon notes:

In its attitude toward political dissent, the Chinese Communist Party has proven much harsher than the old Soviet regime of the Brezhnev era. Modern Chinese sentences are longer, the prospects for early release are far worse, and the Chinese authorities are generally unmoved by pleas for leniency from foreign diplomats. None of this seems to bother Google…

https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/google-and-china-made-for-each-other/

It is a chilling thought: collaboration between the mighty Google empire and the Chinese Communist party in preparation of two-way information systems for sale to governments and merchandizers alike. Right out of 1984!

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SOME REASONS WHY ISLAM IS WINNING

Some Reasons Why Islam is Winning.

By Paul Merkley.

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I can say categorically that there never was a moment in my life when I could detect anything appealing in Islam.

To begin with,  I am far too respectful of the positive accomplishments of our civilization to be tempted by “orientalism” in all of its forms. The manly accomplishments as well as the thoughts of Lawrence of Arabia are wasted on me. But as for the substance: Muslims seek to change our minds about the allegiances that we might have inherited from four  two thousand years of the history of Christianity by directing our attention to Islam’s sacred history – which, quite apart from being 3400 years shorter, has to me the aesthetic appeal of desiccated fruit.

According to Islamic teaching, “God created man from clot of blood. “Surah 96. How did blood get onto the scene of human history before or any  part of the animal creation did? Whose blood, then?

There is an Islamic answer to this and other mysteries. It is: Shut up!   

Consider that, by contrast, for several centuries radical criticism of our own sacred texts has taken place, not only in our academic world and in our general culture but perhaps most aggressively in our theological seminaries.  A Christian intellectual knows that his faith has been fully examined — inside-out and upside-down  – not  always with profit, but certainly exhaustively — by all branches of scholarship. That it seems to lack appeal among intellectuals today is owing to the shallowness and frivolity of secular scholarship.

In Islam, the merest gesture towards  criticizing a text or doubting a truth allegedly based upon a text puts the questioner at immediate liability to death at the hand of the nearest male member of family. This duty is mandated by Islamic scripture.

( sheikyermami.com/apostasy-whoever-changes-his-islamic-religion-kill-him’;www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/quran/apostasy.aspx/)

It is true that many young people in our part of the world are converting from Judaism and Christianity to Islam, Still, this is not happening at the  rate that young people all around the world are turning from traditional faith systems to Christianity. (According to one scholarly source, “since the 1960s, there has been a substantial increase in the number of known conversions from Islam to Christianity. Most of these conversions have been to forms of evangelical or Pentecostal Christianity Duane Alexander Miller. “Believers in Christ from a Muslim Background: A Global Census, St.  Mary’s University San Antonio, Texas. WEC International Singapore Abstract.)

Behind each defection from Christianity in our part of the world is usually a story of parental failure and\or the success of our now aggressively-atheist school systems. It is rarely impelled by philosophy.

The record of history, as well as contemporary political reality, bears out the fact that the religion of Islam offers no materials out of which stable society can be built. The famous Nineteenth Century French philosopher and Sociologist, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 – 1859) saw this clearly:

I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. As far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself

Winston Churchill’s bloody-minded judgment on Islam, formed in his youth as a soldier in India and Sudan, is frequently quoted:

Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.

Our contemporary, Robert Redeker, an academic philosopher who writes for Le Figaro, brings this indictment up to date:

A merciless war chief, plunderer, slaughterer of Jews and a polygamists, such is the man revealed through the Koran… The stoning of Satan, each year at Mecca, is not just a superstitious phenomenon… Here in effect is a rite, which each Muslim is invited to submit himself to, emphasizing violence as a sacred duty in the heart of the believer. This stoning, annually accompanied with deaths by trampling of the faithful, sometimes in several hundreds, is a ritual which nurtures archaic violence…

(As it happens, I write this on the day when the  hajj begins in Mecca, and when authorities are predicting the probability of hundreds of deaths though the crushing effect of these exalted crowds. (https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/724211/Hajj-pilgrimage-Mecca-Medina-Saudi-Arabia.)

Islam is a religion which, even in its sacred text, as well as in its banal rites, exalts violence and hate. Hate and violence inhabit the book with which each Muslim is educated, the Koran. (Robert Redeker, “Face aux intimidations islamistes, que doit faire le monde libre?”, Le Figaro, september 2006.)

Not surprisingly, death threats poured down upon this man for these words, and he was forced into hiding under police protection. “The West is under ideological surveillance by Islam,” Redeker concluded. “I have the impression that I’ve been drafted against my will into a conflict from the 17th or 18th century. It’s all about opposing religious intolerance.”

As so often, Mark Twain gets to the heart of the matter:

That is a simple rule, and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters.

But returning to my opening thought: why does this embarrassingly barbaric teaching appeal to so many young people?

The question answers itself! It is because it is barbaric. We live in an age in which all moral advantage belongs to those who most viciously attack received faith in any and all its forms. This is increasingly an age of barbarism. The news-media , the journals of opinion, the universities – and even increasingly the pulpits – are commanded by barbaric souls – that is, souls who are self-consciously aware of themselves as in revolt against received culture and tradition. The most barbaric of these barbarians, having captured the castles of elite opinion, are now finding sustenance for their barbaric suppression of thought in the mindless pages of the Qur’an.

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“THEY BURNT OUR TREES. Let’s Plant Even More.”

 

‘THEY BURNT OUR TREES. Let’s plant even more….”

By Paul Merkley.

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The organization United with Israel  is putting out an appeal for funds based on this message:

Thousands of trees have been destroyed from devastating kite and balloon fires sent from Gaza. Now more than ever, Israeli farmers need your help… so that they can buy over 20 kinds of fruit trees to replace the thousands of trees that have been destroyed from devastating kite and balloon fires sent from Gaza Together, let’s plant many more trees than were destroyed.

Bring them on, this says to the terrorist-arsonists. Just keep on burning. As you do so, we will go on for ever, on a matching basis, buying and planting and buying and planting. Singing in the rain until the end of time…

Am I alone in thinking this is madness?

Apart from other more complicated considerations: does it not occur to these people that a planted tree does not replace a mature tree immediately.?

United With Israel describes itself as a “Jewish organization, open and welcoming to all people, Jewish and non-Jewish, regardless of race, religion or region… a global, grassroots movement comprised of individuals who are deeply committed to the success and prosperity of Israel.”

It is also, apparently, an organization that imagines that zealous contributors are as countless as the sand:  they stand ready to respond with zeal  to the challenge of replacing any and all of the trees that the enemy, in his madness,  decides he must destroy – from now until doomsday. “They burn. We will plant more, is the motto that they recommend.

Perhaps we need to take a deep breath ad think back to how we got to this point.

First we must reflect on how Gaza became  the fully-owned fiefdom of one of the darkest of all that host of dark Islamist gangs whose names only a tiny group of security experts know but whose numbers are growing daily.

Try counting back  twenty-five years or three and one-quarter Presidents to September 13, 1993, when President Bill Clinton  held a fabulous reception for three thousand guests on the White House Lawn — witnessed on television by virtually all of the grown-ups in the world. The entire Congress (both houses), the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, the entire diplomatic corps and several hundred other dignitaries were also there to be seen, enjoying the champagne and canapés on the American taxpayers’ dime. On this occasion, the Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, and Yasir Arafat, the head of the Palestine liberation Organization, each declared his commitment to “the Peace Process.”

What followed upon that festive reception is a long story: the simple version is that Israel, coaxed at every step by the American President and his State Department, began at once giving over to Arafat’s gangster regime custody of more and more of the land painfully acquired by Israel in the wake of several failed invasions of its sovereignty by armies of the Arab world. The concessions  inevitably made Israel, more vulnerable to terrorism. The Palestinian side has conceded nothing but taken everything that the U.S and the United Nations  could dream up to give away.

Early in this process, Israel invited Yasir Arafat, the exiled Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization to “return”, at first to Jericho, and then to Ramallah, in order to preside over the Palestine Authority — pending conclusion of  diplomacy between Israel and Arafat’s organization over a few matters that needed agreement before sovereignty was ceded over Arab “Palestine.”

But from the moment when he set foot on the ground of “sacred Palestine” Arafat made it clear that he had no intention of living at peace with the People of Israel and that he would not release his followers from their sacred duty of ceaseless warfare to the death against Jews until every inch of what we have called Israel now for seventy years should be incorporated into the Muslim world.

The PLO has turned the “Palestinian” educational system into a propaganda machine dedicated to preparing subsequent  generations of local children into regimented, anthem-singing uniformed robots – along Hitlerian lines.

Like every other Arab ruler in a comparable situation – a virtual dictator in a one-party-State — Arafat, and then Mahmoud Abbas, failed so completely at governing the Palestine Authority” that, after several seasons of brutal inter-party conflict, Abbas went to his corner while a new champion took over the other corner and “Arab Palestine”  broke in two. The new contender was Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of  Hamas, a terrorist organization beloved by the masses of Palestinian people.

Without doubt, Gaza is today on the very short list of places in the world where none of us would want to find himself. It is an Islamic theocracy, a dictatorship sustained by fear of eternally-active consequences, where governmental thugs enforce (selectively)  Islamic notions of good behavior.  Think of Yemen or Central African Republic or Somalia. Think of at least twenty other Muslim polities in the Arab world today. What they all have in common is their incapacity to govern. The appearance of government is achieved through extorted acquiescence of the masses. Like the leaders of all these other Arab-Muslim states – and like Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Arab Palestine and the leader of Fatah —  Gaza’s leaders wallow in billions of dollars of undeclared personal wealth, acquired over the years by ruinous taxation and extortion, (See “Gaza’s Millionaires and Billionaires,” www.algemeiner.com, July 28, 2014; http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/134537/lifestyles-rich-and…Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous. … Mahmoud Abbas ) while holding out the begging bowl on behalf of their “oppressed citizens”- “oppressed,” that is by Israel, which has not an iota of legal responsibility for the care and feeding of the people of Gaza.

Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the government of Gaza and the head, of course,  of Hamas has the Jewish state next door to blame for everything that his regime is too incompetent or too indifferent to achieve. Judgment of the character of that Jewish state is a matter left to the most prestigious of Muslim clerics. A representative voice is that of Sheikh Ibrahim  Mujdeiris, the Imam of the al-Aqsa  Mosque, a paid appointee of the Palestine Authrhoity, who reminds his flock:

We have ruled the world before, and by Allah, the day will come when we will rule the entire world again. The day will come when we will rule America. The day will come when we will rule Britain and the entire world – except for the Jews. .. Listen to the Prophet Muhammad, who tells you about the evil end that awaits Jews … . And the day of resurrection will not come without the victory of the believers [the Moslems] over the descendents of the monkeys and pigs [the Jews] and with their annihilation.

To the Muslim-Arab population of Gaza, living in expectation of this ultimate War to End All Jews of which the Prophet speaks, Ismail Haniyeh looks like being the man of that hour. Since  April, the gangs of  Hamas, operating at all times within camera range of the  BBC, have been spilling  out of Gaza to set fire to the length and breadth of Israel. Kites and balloons carrying containers of burning fuel and several kinds of explosive devices have sparked several hundred fires in southern Israel, burning more than 2,600 hectares  of Israel’s limited, precious  forest and farmland and causing hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage.

Today, after several weeks of being jerked about by Haniyeh and his theologically-driven pyromaniacs, Prime Minister Netanyahu  is speaking of ”using a “heavy hand” against Hamas.

Let’s hope that Netanyahu uses that heavy hand soon for the purpose of toppling this monster.

The worst possible plan is that recommended by Friends of Israel. Their call for a no-holds-barred contest between planters and killers of trees sounds as heroic as all-get-out. But it concedes all freedom of action to the forces of darkness while consigning the forces of light  forever  to rushing about with fire-hoses. in the desperate hope of keeping ahead of the great conflagration.

The secret to the Hamas strategy is their contempt for the lives of their enraged masses. We see it over and over again. Totally defenseless zealots dashing out into the Israel defensive forces, seeking the bliss of entering heaven before the sun sets. We cannot reason with this demonic mindset. But we have an obligation to keep our own spirits under rational and ethical control.

United With Israel is promoting the idea of challenging THEM to a contest with US. You go one burning and we will go on planting. This is mindless—a surrender of everything moral so that we can enter into the kind of game that children are playing out today in schoolyards.

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THE GAZA CRISIS AND WHAT IT MAY MEAN FOR CANADIAN POLITICS

THE GAZA CRISIS AND WHAT IT MAY MEAN FOR CANADIAN POLITICS .

By Paul Merkley.

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Shortly before he spoke to the Economic Club in New York on May 17, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau learned that a Canadian citizen, Dr. Tarek Loubani,  had been shot and wounded during  two days of Palestinian mob activity in Gaza that had already resulted in the deaths of 62 Palestinians (50 of whom, according to a senior Hamas spokesman, were Hamas operatives. Afterwards, Dr. Loubani opined: “It’s very hard to believe that I wasn’t specifically targeted.”

The Doctor fell, said Trudeau “along with so many unarmed people, including civilians, members of the media, first responders, and children.” Trudeau said that his government was “engaging with Israeli officials to get to the bottom of these events.” What was already clear to him was that the “reported use of excessive force and live ammunition is inexcusable … Canada calls for an immediate independent investigation to thoroughly examine the facts on the ground — including any incitement, violence, and the excessive use of force.”

When he said these words, Trudeau must have known that the Hamas  leadership was boasting that the mobs were indeed armed and intent on carrying a massive human wave into Israel’s territory. The evident purpose behind sending these poor souls to their deaths was to create conditions under which Israel, acting in self-protection, would be held responsible for large –scale carnage. In characterising the Arab rioters as “unarmed” Trudeau is taking no account of the lethal missiles that are shot from Arab sling-shots. And more significantly he was contradicting the testimony of Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Zahar who insists consistently that all the talk about the confrontations at the Gaza fence being part of nonviolent and peaceful protests was “a lie”. A few days ago, this same Hamas leader bragged about the large quantities of major weapons in the hands of Hamas, and re-iterated: “This is not a peaceful resistance.”

As further proof of the intention of Hamas, the organization MEMRI has produced  videos showing Hamas’ leaders stirring up children to offer themselves as “sacrifice for the sake of Jerusalem.”  In an interview one Hamas  leader says:

When we decided to embark on these marches, we decided to turn that which is most dear to us – the bodies of our women and children – into a dam … to prevent the racing of many Arabs towards the normalization of ties with the plundering entity, which occupies our Jerusalem, plunders our land, defiles our holy places, and oppresses our people day and night. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5YHo2oep_4

Pushing children to the forefront of a mob intent on drawing the firepower of Israel stands as an example of what Islam imagines is the best use of “that which is most dear to us.”

As for Doctor Loubani, we all understand the principle that medical professionals must give aid to any and all  persons whom they may encounter along life’s way. But the Hippocratic oath surely does not cover the case of a doctor who imbeds himself inside a mob that is aggressively seeking martyrdom. Instead, such a person –medical doctor or plumber – has made himself accessory to violent death.

When he made the statement quoted above, Mr. Trudeau knew that only an investigation under UN auspices would appease public opinion on such a matter; and he knew that in the aftermath of all encounters between Israel and its demented neighbours the outcome of such an enquiry is always the same – a document, replicated in whole or in part and read aloud by every news agency in the world, whose principle theme is that Israel is a vicious and dangerous outlaw.  And, of course, that is exactly what the UN quickly issued.  [https://www.unwatch.org/full-text-un-draft-resolution-gaza-omits-hamas

Co-incidentally, the Gaza Crisis has brought on a little-noticed mini-crisis in the long-standing love-relationship  between the Jewish groups here in Canada and the Liberal Party. In the early days of the Trudeau government, Shimon Fogel, CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) chided those of us who regretted out loud the defeat of the Harper government and who expressed reservations about the prospects for Israel under the aegis of Mr. Trudeau. Now, Mr. Fogel tells us that Trudeau’s stance “contradicts the government’s long-stated position that, as a close ally and fellow liberal democracy, Israel can count on Canada’s support when its security is threatened.  It also contradicts the government’s long-stated position that, as a close ally and fellow liberal democracy, Israel can count on Canada’s support when its security is threatened.”

Mr. Fogel is a humane individual, and so he does not take satisfaction in seeing Israel having, once again, to answer with violence the mindless Palestinian assault on Israel’s peace. ” As Jews,” says Fogel, ” we believe every human being is infinitely valuable and of equal worth. The situation in Gaza is grim and cannot be ignored. On the other  hand, we  know that Hamas’ goal is not to improve life in Gaza,  but to make life more miserable for      Israelis – even if it  hurts Gazans in the process.

Those who persist in portraying the Israelis as sadists and the Gazan people as innocent bystanders, Fogel argues, “make no mention of the detailed instructions Hamas has provided to would-be kidnappers and murderers, or the cache of weapons carried by terrorists attempting to breach the border. And they completely overlook the Palestinian leadership’s cynical strategy that includes using human shields, forcing school children to the frontline, and blocking aid from entering the Gaza Strip.”

In the same vein, Avi Benlolo, CEO of the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center,  says “It’s disappointing that our prime minister did not condemn Hamas in his statement … for inciting violence and for attempting to enter a sovereign nation to carry out terrorism.”

Likewise, Michael Mostyn of B’nai Brith Canada says that  it was “utterly inexcusable for Trudeau to pretend Hamas had nothing to do with the riots when its leaders proudly admit the opposite.”

Trudeau’s comments were equally lambasted by Andrew Scheer, the leader of the opposition Conservative Party. “In condemning the Israeli forces, Justin Trudeau ignores the role that the terrorist organization Hamas has played in inciting these clashes,” Scheer said in a statement. “In responding to these events with nothing but criticism of Israel, Justin Trudeau has failed Canadians on the international stage once again.” A few days later, during a session of the House of Commons, both leaders had an opportunity to speak again on Gaza and Israel, and both re-iterated their original responses.

The Conservative Party of Canada clearly calculates that a consistent pro-Israel attitude is what the public wants from its government.

The many commentators who imagine they are neutral as between Israel and Hama are taking no notice of the blatant demands for Israel’s unconditional surrender and Israel’s preparation for liquidation which are clearly promulgated by Hamas´ leaders:

                    Oh Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, destroy the                  Americans and their supporters. Oh  Allah, count them one by one, and kill them all, without leaving a single one” – Ahmad Bahr, Deputy Speaker of the Palestinian Parliament in Gaza, 2012

There is no concession to Jerusalem, no alternative to Palestine, and no   solution but to return. This is the Palestinian people  taking the initiative for the sake of Jerusalem and the right    of return” – Ismail Haniyeh, Chairman of  Hamas Political             Bureau.

Over is the time Hamas spent discussing recognizing Israel. Now Hamas will discuss   when we will wipe out Israel” –   Yahya Sinwar, Hamas Political Leader in           Gaza, 2017.

And trumping all other possible arguments is this:

                     Removing the Jews from the land they occupied in  1948 is an immutable principle because it appears in   the Book of Allah” –  Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas Co-Founder, 2016.

Such declarations are not hard to find—and yet our journalists and the editorialists for our news papers and journals seem utterly oblivious to them. They carry on as though both Israel and her enemies are equally rigid in purpose.

Only the sturdy anti-Jewish spirit that still hovers close to the surface of our media culture can explain the perverse neglect of these mad declarations against Israel and Jews, made in full light of day every day in our own midst.

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A MOST MIRACULOUS ANNIVERSARY

A Most Miraculous Anniversary.

BY Paul Merkley.

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The Lord shall set His hand for the second time to recover the remnants of His people and He shall set up an ensign for the nations and shall assemble the outcast of Israel and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. (Isaiah 11:11.)

 

On May 14, 2018, Israel will be observing its seventieth anniversary. Then, as now, Israel’s enemies will be asserting that the circumstances attending its birth are dubious and/or discreditable and will be insisting on a recount.

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THE NEW PURITANISM AND ITS VICTIMS.

THE NEW PURITANISM AND ITS VICTIMS.

By Paul Merkley.

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The crude hedonism that overtook our popular culture in the 1960s is now turning-back upon itself and issuing in a new Puritanism, promoted by a new generation of accusers and punishers. 

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ANDREW SCHEER’S VISION

ANDREW SCHEER’S VISION

By Paul Merkley.

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We are rapidly moving away from the notion that political parties in a democracy listen to the opinion of the people and serve as vehicles of their will. The thinking now is that political parties serve as enforcers of correct thinking.

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CLOSING DOWN CHRISTIANITY AT ITS SOURCE

CLOSING DOWN CHRISTMAS AT ITS SOURCE.

by Paul Merkley.

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I have been ordered to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah’s Prophet, and offer prayers and give obligatory charity, so if they perform all that, then they save their lives and property. (From the “Sayings” (ahadith ) of Muhammad.)

 

The Muslim campaign to extirpate Christianity has been inaugurated at the place of the birth of Jesus– and no one seems to have noticed.   

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IS CHINA ABOUT TO BECOME “THE LARGEST CHRISTIAN NATION IN THE WORLD”?

IS CHINA ABOUT TO BECOME “THE LARGEST CHRISTIAN

NATION IN THE WORLD”?

By Paul Merkley.

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In the months leading up to the election of Donald Trump as President, just one year ago this month, some commentators associated with “Christian media” sought to persuade us that Donald Trump, as President, would prove a champion of Christian faith.

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