A victim speaks About Islamic Abuse of Women

In early April of this year, Brandeis University, under pressure from student activists and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, reversed its decision to give an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a global advocate for women’s rights.

The decision was triggered by Hirsi Ali’s outspoken criticisms of Islam. The Somali-born activist has sounded alarms about the prevalence of extremism in Muslim countries and the misogyny that pervades even mainstream Islam.

During the Brandeis controversy, a CAIR spokesman called her “one of the worst of the worst of the Islam-haters in America.”

But Hirsi Ali’s warnings about Islamic extremism were quickly supported by world events, as just a week after Brandeis rescinded her honorary degree, the Islamist terrorist organization Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls in the first of many such abductions throughout the summer. A few months after the kidnappings began, news spread that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, another terrorist group, was selling Yazidi women into sexual slavery.


In recent years, as part of its efforts to leverage its historical electoral advantage with female voters, Democrats in the United States have promoted the idea that Republicans have been waging a “war on women.” At various times, the term has been associated with politicians who oppose late-term abortions; conservatives who defend the right of religious business owners to decline to provide contraception coverage to employees; and those who question the assumptions behind the statistic that women on average earn 77 cents for every dollar that men earn. During the 2014 midterm election season, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz even claimed Tea Party Republicans were “grabbing [women] by the hair and pulling us back.”

Many on the Right have responded to this campaign either by mocking the idea that a war on women exists or by challenging many of the claims liberals make to perpetuate the narrative — pointing out, for example, that nearly all of the gender wage gap can be explained by the career choices women make. But the truth is that there is a war on women. It just isn’t occurring where American liberals claim it is, but rather in countries where women are forbidden to leave their homes without a male escort; seen as nothing more than chattel to be sold or abused; killed if they disobey their family’s wishes; mutilated to prevent them from having sex; and attacked with acid when they try to escape.

If American liberals were as concerned about women’s rights as they claim to be, they would have to shift their focus to other countries, but that would mean giving up a cherished narrative about conservatives here at home and acknowledging the threat radical Islam poses to women worldwide.

From Earlier: Ayaan Hirsi Ali slams modern American feminism's "trivial BS"

The real horrors facing women in the world aren’t discussed in America, where those who try to point out what is going on in other countries or criticize the trivial nature of feminist obsessions are sidelined from the public debate.

But recent events have cast a glaring light on the brutal treatment of women by those claiming to act in the name of Islam, posing a challenge to the American Left by creating a conflict between the liberal desire for women’s equality and a multicultural reluctance to criticize other cultures. This philosophical tension gained national attention in October, when HBO’s liberal host Bill Maher noted the connection between Islamic ideology and violence, igniting a bitter argument with celebrity guest Ben Affleck.

Bundled up and fearful of shaking hands because of a cough, Hirsi Ali sat down with the Washington Examiner in November before being presented an award by the Independent Women’s Forum at its Women of Valor Dinner in Washington. She noted that where extremist ideology spreads, death and mayhem flourish.

“That consequence you see today in parts of Iraq and Syria,” Hirsi Ali said. “You see it in what Boko Haram is doing. You’ve seen it with the Taliban and al Qaeda. Everywhere where that idea is implemented it has a sudden pattern.”

Critics have attacked Hirsi Ali as Islamophobic and have argued that the portrait she paints is not representative of Islam at large. But her disagreements with Islam are rooted in her own East African upbringing.

Hirsi Ali was subjected to female genital mutilation at the age of 5 in her home country, Somalia, while her father, who opposed the traditional practice, was in prison. Her father escaped and moved the family to Saudi Arabia, then to Ethiopia and finally to Kenya when Hirsi Ali was 11 years old.

MORE: The real "war on women": A victim speaks

She grew up as a Muslim woman, reading and accepting the Quran and its teachings. But when her family prepared to force her into an arranged marriage, she fled to the Netherlands. She eventually became a translator, speaking on behalf of Somali women who, like her, were seeking asylum.

Hirsi Ali discovered many women continued to suffer under Islam even in the secular, liberal Netherlands. She decided to enter politics to bring attention to the plight of Muslim women and girls, and in 2003 she was elected to the Dutch parliament.

Her charisma and criticism of Islam as a member of parliament gained the attention of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. She wrote and narrated his film “Submission” about oppressed women in Holland, a film that outraged Dutch Muslims. On Nov. 2, 2004, an Islamist shot and stabbed van Gogh to death in Amsterdam as he rode his bicycle to work. A letter was pinned to van Gogh’s dead body with a knife, a letter that included a death threat against Hirsi Ali.

She moved to the United States in 2006 following her resignation from parliament amid accusations that she lied on her asylum application. But even in America, a security detail accompanies her wherever she goes.

Hirsi Ali has a reputation as a fearless critic of Islam, but she spoke quietly, almost timidly, even though her security detail was on alert just outside the secluded room where our interview took place.

Liberals, she said, protect Islamic extremists partly because the Left has no idea what really goes on in Muslim countries.

“They feel all religions are the same, and they’re not,” she observed. “I think if I adopt the position in good faith to multiculturalists and leftists, I would say [they take the position they do] because they see them [Muslims] as victims. They see them as victims of the white man and so they think: ‘Let’s protect them from the white man. Let’s protect them from capitalism.’… That is misguided at best and malicious at worst.”

One need only remember the tragic shooting at Fort Hood in 2009 to see such indifference to extremism in action. U.S. Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people and wounded many more after becoming radicalized and corresponding with Yemeni-American terrorist leader Anwar al-Awlaki. Despite evidence that Hasan’s rampage was religiously motivated — he shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is great”) before opening fire — the Obama administration classified the attack as “workplace violence.”

The Left’s kid-glove treatment of even radical Islam exposes the logical flaw at the heart of multiculturalism. How does one tolerate the murderous intolerance of another culture? Is someone really a principled supporter of diversity, of women’s rights, of gay rights, if he refuses to resist or even acknowledge the mortal threat that is posed to those causes by a different culture?

More from Ashe Schow: 5 things to be thankful for as a woman in America

Many liberals downplay the threat of Islamic extremism that they claim in principle to find abhorrent.

If women’s equality and homosexual rights are important to the Left, why are liberals hesitant to criticize an ideology that threatens both groups? Homosexuals are subject to judicial execution in several Muslim countries including Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Although homosexuality is legal in more than 20 Muslim-majority nations, it is still viewed as shameful and sometimes punished by private citizens, who are forgiven for persecuting homosexuals and even for killing them.

Being a woman is not a sin or illegal in Islamic countries, but women are treated more as property than as human beings. In Somalia, where Hirsi Ali was born, 98 percent of women and girls have undergone genital mutilation, a procedure that involves removing the clitoris and labia and sewing the area closed, leaving only a small hole for urination. Somalia has the highest percentage of women and girls who have undergone the procedure, according to a July 2013 report by UNICEF.

Millions of young girls in East Africa are treated as property and forced into marriage in exchange for wealth or status. Women who refuse to marry a husband selected by their familiescan be slain by their own parents and siblings in an “honor killing.” In some cases, the man she prefers is slain as well.

'Honor killing': Pakistani newlyweds decapitated for marrying without family's consent

These situations are not isolated but are, rather, spreading into Western cultures. Between 25 and 28 honor killings occur in the United States each year, according to Hirsi Ali’s human rights organization. The United Nations estimates that more than 5,000 honor killings occur worldwide each year and that 800 million women and girls live under the constant threat of such violence.

“Wherever [Islamists] gain power, you see exactly what they do: The first thing they do is they chase women out of the public space, force them to cover up, beat them up, rape them, sell them into slavery,” Hirsi Ali said.

Such violence against women needs to be exposed, and Western liberals need to “review their thinking,” she said.

That will prove difficult. In her speech to the dinner guests in Washington, Hirsi Ali recalled meeting Vice President Joe Biden. He informed her that “ISIS had nothing to do with Islam.” When she disagreed with him, Biden actually responded: “Let me tell you one or two things about Islam.”

“I politely left the conversation at that,” Hirsi Ali said, to laughter. “I wasn’t used to arguing with vice presidents.”

Perspective: The 8 biggest losers of the war on women

In trying to educate Americans about the dangers of radical Islam and its encroachment on Western society, Hirsi Ali created the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Foundation in 2007. Focusing specifically on honor violence, genital mutilation, and forced marriages, the foundation lobbies Congress, trains law enforcement officials to handle these kinds of domestic abuse cases, and connects women to crisis centers. The foundation’s main goal, according to its website, is to “help protect and defend the rights of women in the U.S. from religiously and culturally instigated oppression.”

Hirsi Ali expanded on comments the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the United States made in September, when he likened Islamic extremism to a “cancer.”

“Do you know how cancer comes in stages — stage one through four?” Hirsi Ali asked. “ISIS, Boko Haram — they have now achieved the stage of mayhem. But the earlier stages [are] sometimes undetectable. That is what we have here in the U.S. We have it in the UK. We have it in the rest of the Western countries. We have it all over the world.”

She wants Americans to understand how the cancer can spread in just a few years and “lead to something you really don’t want.”

“And we need to engage them and we need to argue with them,” she added. “I want, through this foundation, to achieve that awareness and then also to protect the rights of the women who come to us.”

Part of that awareness comes from a lobbying campaign working to eradicate genital mutilation in the United States. Female genital mutilation is illegal under federal law, but just 22 states have their own laws barring the practice. Hirsi Ali’s foundation is working with the remaining states to enact their own laws. So far, Louisiana, Kansas and New Jersey have passed laws based on language provided by the foundation, and Pennsylvania legislators are working on a similar bill.

The foundation also worked with Rep. Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y., to introduce the Transport for Female Genital Mutilation Act, which amended existing law to include punishment for “vacation cutting,” the practice of sending a girl back to a home country to undergo the procedure.

The foundation trains police, teachers and social workers how to understand and combat such violence against women and girls from abroad, and to ensure authorities recognize that this type of violence is distinct from other kinds of domestic violence.

“Everyone we’ve been in touch with — prosecutors, lawyers, people in the government, activists — they now understand what honor violence is, what female genital mutilation is, that it is a special type of domestic violence,” Hirsi Ali said. “It is ideology-driven. It is founded on this religion, or the abuse of this religion.”

“I don’t care what you call it, whether it is the abuse or the core of the religion, but it is happening,” Hirsi Ali said. “And it’s happening to real women in real time. And that’s what we plan to fight, with very little means.”

One of the organization’s biggest projects is the launch of a national helpline for survivors and women at risk of honor violence.

The helpline would be set up in partnership with an existing national crisis center, and the foundation would train operators in the specifics of this type of violence and assess whether Arabic-speaking operators would need to be brought in. Fundraising for the hotline is expected to begin shortly after the partnership is lined up.

Asked where she believed the war on women is taking place, Hirsi Ali said: “I would start with the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia — where Muslim extremists are dominant. And by dominant I don’t mean necessarily that they control everything. I mean wherever they can get their politics through, women’s rights are compromised. That is a real war on women.”

“They hate us for just being women and girls,” she said. “That’s what we need to fight.”

MORE: Is Utah as bad for women as Saudi Arabia?

During the dinner, Hirsi Ali said that modern American feminists, who continue to promote the idea that there is a war on women in the United States, are focusing on “trivial bullshit” such as the shirt (printed with a motif of scantily clad women) that a scientist wore to a television interview after he helped land a robot on a comet.

Hirsi Ali argued for reclaiming feminism. “Because I come from a world where I cannot take access to education for granted, I can’t take economic opportunity for granted, I can’t take personal freedoms for granted — I mean, I have to pinch myself every day to think about how it’s great to be here,” she said, adding that feminists achieved a lot in the 18th and 19th centuries.

But she reminds American feminists that the modern West has a population of nearly 1 billion people, while societies that haven’t achieved similar breakthroughs in equality are vastly more numerous.

“These societies are really the minority, and it’s scary,” Hirsi Ali said of Western cultures.

The rest of the world, which doesn’t enjoy the rights that Americans do, is where feminists should focus their attention, she said.

“They should be focusing on the rights of women in China; the girls who are being aborted before they’re even born,” Hirsi Ali said. “The culture of rape in India. Latin America in the Western world, with all its problems with it being where the West was four or five decades ago. And then, Islamic extremism, which is like a cancer and it’s spreading all over the world.”

Hirsi Ali noted that she has been warning Westerners about the dangers of Sharia, or Islamic law, for more than a decade but wasn’t taken seriously.

“Nobody really believed me. They thought I was exaggerating,” she said. “But now they can see when these people come to power what they do.”

Her message: “I’m just saying — let’s get serious.”

Fending Off Chaos

“The safety of the people shall be the highest law.” (Cicero, De Legibus, Book iii, sec. 3)[1]

Even after the Palestinian Authority Presidentyet again demanded a one-state solution for “Palestine” – in April 2015, Mahmoud Abbas repeated publicly that all of Israel is “Occupied Palestine” – Barack Obama managed to reaffirm his faith in a mythical “Two State Solution.”  Speaking at a press conference in Camp David on May 14, 2015, the U.S.president ignored that Abbas’ exterminatory stance toward Israel was long-codified inofficial PA maps of the region. Somehow, Mr. Obama neglected to mention that Israel had already been eliminated cartographically by the Palestinians.

Such cartographic elimination of Israel is not a palpable infringement or direct assault upon an existing state. It is, however, forbidden by pertinent international law. Jurisprudentially, from the standpoint of both the bilateral 1993 Oslo Agreements, and the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, this calculated excision represents various prohibited forms of genocidal “intent” and “incitement.” In essence, it gives irrefutable “testimony” to certain assorted and still-contemplated Arab crimes against humanity.

On its face, such egregious violations are conspicuous and unassailable. Seemingly, for this particular administration, all core matters of Middle East security must first be brought kicking and screaming before the judgment seat of reason. Without even a scintilla of serious legal assessment or strategic analysis, this president stubbornly adheres to the continuously contrived Palestinian narrative of an Israeli “occupation.”

Accordingly, Barack Obama maintains, no matter how explicit the Palestinian side may be about harboring genocidal inclinations toward Israel, that Arab side – despite exhibiting a determinedly lascivious mens rea – is still entitled to a sovereign state of its own.

Looking ahead, one reasonable scenario should come quickly to mind. At some point, goes this very plausible prediction, whenever the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are able to smooth over their most refractory disagreements, they will jointly announce the official arrival of “Palestine.” Of course, several years back, the U.N. General Assembly had already elevated the PA to status of a “nonmember observer state,” but that particular elevation had still fallen short of authentic statehood.

Nonetheless, this expected Palestinian announcement, with the predictably full support of President Obama, will summarily mock the binding expectations of international law, especially the governing treaty on statehood. This 1934 agreement is known as the Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, or (less formally) The Montevideo Convention.

To be sure, a new state of Palestine will promptly seek territorial extensions beyond its initially constituted borders. At the same time, the “civilized” world will sheepishly look away. After all, according to the ritualistic Palestinian narrative accepted by President Obama, any such aggressive extensions could remain consistent with “global fairness.” More than likely, the Vatican, too, will be silent on such a long-planned Palestinian aggression. Very recently, Pope Francis, in expressing his own enthusiastic support of Palestinian statehood, identified the Holocaust denier and unabashedly murderous Mahmoud Abbas as “an angel of peace.”

Just as the official PA map identifies all of Israel as part of Palestine, theofficial logo of PA Television shows all of Israel as Palestine, and the Palestinian capital in Jerusalem. Here, Fatah’s designated insignia remains Israel smothered by a grenade, a bayoneted rifle, and a submachine gun. Significantly, all PA school textbooks still use a map of the Middle East in which Israel simply does not appear, and where it has simply been replaced byPalestine.

Undergirding the Palestinian Authority, Fatah’s Charter states unambiguously: “Our struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished, and Palestine is completely liberated.”

Why, then, does the president of the United States persistently doubt this unhidden genocidal intent? Why doesn’t Mr. Obama dare look at theofficial PA maps of “Palestine?”

Any Palestinian state would have a deeply injurious impact on Israel’s physical survival, especially if in “synergy” with Iranian nuclearization. After Palestine, Israel would require ever-greater increments of national self-reliance, and aptly corresponding refinements of its traditional Order of Battle. In turn, such complex requirements would demand, among other things:

(1) a substantially more nuanced nuclear strategy involving deterrence, defense, preemption, and war fighting capabilities; and

(2) a corollary and interpenetrating conventional war strategy.

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Almost by definition, as any Palestinian state would make Israel’s conventional capabilities increasingly problematic, the national command authority in Jerusalem would likely need to make the country’s still-implicit nuclear deterrent less ambiguous.

There are intersecting risks and benefits to discarding nuclear ambiguity. Taking the Israeli bomb out of the “basement” could enhance Israel’s security for a while, but such an ending to “deliberate ambiguity” could also heighten certain chances of nuclear weapons use. When Iran is finally allowed to “go nuclear,” as now seems assured (thanks especially to U.S. led P5+1 diplomacy), any resultant nuclear violence might not necessarily be limited to the immediate areas of Israel and Palestine.  Rather, such catastrophic harms could ultimately be unleashed in some form or other on the U.S. homeland, perhaps even as a wholly unprecedented instance of nuclear terrorism.[2]

For Israel, a nuclear war could arrive not only as a “bolt-from-the-blue” missile attack from Iran, but also as a result, intended or inadvertent, of escalation. If an enemy state such as Iran were to begin “only” conventional and/or biological attacks upon Israel, Jerusalem might then respond with fully nuclear reprisals.  If this enemy state were to begin with solely conventional attacks upon Israel, Jerusalem’s conventional reprisals might still be met, in the future, with certain enemy nuclear counterstrikes.

After Palestine, the regional correlation of forces would inevitably become more-or-less markedly less favorable to Israel. Now, the only credible way for Israel to deter large-scale conventional attacks would be by maintaining visible and large-scale conventional capabilities, including what professional strategists would call “escalation dominance.” Ironically, however, those enemy states contemplating first-strike attacks upon Israel using chemical and/or biological weapons might also be inclined to take more seriously Israel’s nuclear deterrent.

Will this deterrent still be obscured in Israel’s “basement?” Whether or not the country’s nuclear ordnance and doctrine had remained undisclosed could meaningfully affect Israel’s overall threat credibility. In this connection, Washington’s altogether predictable posture will be to endorse Israel’s continued nuclear ambiguity.  Any such endorsement, however, would also be contrary to Israel’s long-term deterrence and survival requirements.

A strong conventional capability is needed by Israel to deter or to preempt conventional attacks, non-nuclear infringements that could readily lead, via escalation, to an unconventional war.  In these inherently unstable circumstances, President Barack Obama’s misconceived Peace Process would impair Israel’s already-minimal strategic depth, and, when fully exploited by enemy states, the Jewish State’s corollary capacity to wage conventional war.

With Syria, Libya and Yemen prominently in shambles, and the unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still unraveling, Jerusalem must finally understand the vital imperatives of strategic self-reliance. Of course, Israel should continue to do whatever it can to maintain its mutual defense arrangements with the United States, but it must also remain aware that in certain steadily evolving matters of existential urgency, promised American support should never simply be taken for granted. Indeed, the apparent failure of American diplomacy in dealing with Iran is precisely what recently led the Arab League to create a unified military force.

Although the principal rationale of this joint military command involving Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait and the Persian Gulf Emirates is to provide a measured Sunni counterweight to Iran, Hezbollah, and ISIS – a compelling rationale, understandably shared by Israel – the consequent U.S. promise of more advanced weapon sales to Arab command authorities is also worrisome to Jerusalem. For Prime Minister Netanyahu, in this ever-complicated regional theatre, the enemy of my enemy is still my enemy. For Israel, following Cicero, the “safety of the people,” not fealty to the United States, is still the “highest law.”

There is one further relevant observation concerning Israel and a Palestinian state. Unexpectedly, the principal impediment to any forthcoming bestowal or continuance of Palestinian sovereignty will not be Israel, but rather one or another irredentist Arab actor (state or sub-state) in the volatile region. Predictably, ISIS, as it ultimately begins to fight its way westward across a dismembering Jordan, will be able to supplant PA/Hamas/Islamic Jihad forces in the West Bank (Judea/Samaria).

Credo quia absurdum. “I believe because it is absurd.” Should this takeover happen after President Obama’s “Two-State Solution” had already been actualized, Palestine could conceivably find itself turning to the Jewish State for indispensable protection against Jihadists.

Equally odd, any such turn to a ritualistically sworn enemy could actually be made more likely if the Palestinian state authorities had faithfully adhered to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s stated requirement of demilitarization. In other words, a new Palestinian state that had acted in law-enforcing fulfillment of pertinent pre-state agreements with Israel could quickly prove to be even more injurious to the Jewish State.

Credo quia absurdum. Before any further arguments are thoughtlessly advanced in support of  Palestinian statehood, it would be best to acknowledge that the “success” of  any such arguments would come at the tangible expense of both Palestinian Arabs and Israelis (Arabs, Jews, and Christians).

Before a true peace can be born from the anticipated wreckage of any so-called Two-State Solution, only a gravedigger could wield the forceps.

Reprinted with author’s permission from Israel National News


Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/40818/fending-off-chaos-israels-future-in-world-politics-opinion/#W0Slml7cBWL8Mdyk.99

The Vatican’s decision should be read as an historic stance against the rights of the Jewish people to their own land.

Published: Thursday, May 14, 2015 3:02 AM

Giulio Meotti

The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly...

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It is since 2012 that the Vatican, under Pope Benedict XVI, spoke of the “State of Palestine” in its official documents. So the decision of the Holy See to recognize this non-existent state should not be a surprise. But the treaty is the first legal and bilateral document in which the Vatican speaks of the “State of Palestine” and no more of the “Organization for the Liberation of Palestine” (PLO): it is, in fact, an official recognition. A symbolic and historic breakthrough.

When the Vatican recognized Israel, at the beginning of the Nineties, it happened within the framework of Oslo Accords: Israel fatally recognized the PLO and the Catholic Church in exchange recognized the decades-old Jewish State. A big mistake, but many mistakes occurred in that period.
Today the situation is much different: the Palestinian Arabs are internationalizing the conflict with Israel and avoiding sitting at the same table with her, while the Arab-Islamic world feeds an enormous hatred for the “Zionists” and masses of Christians are driven out of Islamic lands, including the Palestinian Authority areas. The Vatican’s decision should be read as an historic stance against the rights of the Jewish people to their own land.
For over forty years after the Jewish State won independence in 1948, the Vatican adopted a diplomatic policy copying that of Israel’s enemies: total non-recognition of the Jewish statehood. Despite the acceptance by all Western nations, including, at the beginning, the 
For the Vatican, an independent Jewish State...and a renewal of life in the land of the Bible, has been the most complex theological Christian problem and a total contradiction to Church dogma.
Communist bloc, the Vatican’s recognition of Israel occurred only in 1993.
The same Church that didn’t recognize Israel opened diplomatic relations with the PLO, a terror organization whose goal is the “liberation” of the Holy Land from the Jews who live between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. The Church formally recognized Israel’s existence only two decades after Israel’s foe, Egypt, signed a peace treaty with the Jewish State.
And the Vatican had diplomatic relations with over 130 states. It acknowledged their legitimacy even as it disputed, in some cases, their borders.
Why has such a different standard been applied to Israel? Because of anti-Semitism and the aversion they felt upon seeing Israel again among the family of nations. For the Vatican, an independent Jewish State bearing the name “Israel,” with Jerusalem as its capital, and a renewal of life in the land of the Bible, has been the most complex theological Christian problem and a total contradiction to Church dogma.
And now, because of the same anti-Semitism, the Vatican has hurried to recognize the “State of Palestine”, this Trojan horse against the Jewish people, a tool to dismantle the State of Israel and a proto-Nazi entity from which all the Jews are to be cleansed.
We note in shock Pope Francis’ eagerness to recognize the “State of Palestine” before it has even yet arisen and we recall the eagerness of another Pope to recognize the Nazi regime just four months after it was established.
They are both declarations of moral war against the Jewish people.

Catholic Church: Haven for Child Molesters or Refuge for Terrorists?

Thousands of Catholic clergy and religious have raped and sodomized tens of thousands of children—perhaps more than 100,000 children—since 1950. These crimes were committed in secret, and bishops nurtured that secrecy. Over 17,000 survivors have broken through the silence, and their accounts have created an in-depth picture of the crisis, both in their own writings and in the work of journalists and law enforcement officials. Attorneys have obtained diocesan documentsthat reveal additional survivor witness and also document parts of a huge cover-up. But for every account that is known, hundreds are not yet public. Here are some numbers documenting the Church's role in molesting innocent boys and girls.

 25,383 – using the current USCCB rate of victims per priest (2.6) and the New Hampshire level of accused priests (8.9%)

  46,125 – using the Boston archdiocesan count of victims and the Boston share of U.S. Catholics

100,000 – using Rev. Andrew Greeley's 1993 partial estimate of 2,500 accused priests and 50 victims per priest

320,000 – using the USCCB's current count of accused priests (6,427) and Greeley's estimate of 50 victims per priest.

By any standard, this "church" is, to put it politely, incredibly immoral.

This is the same Church that aided and supported the Nazis in Germany.

Nazi leaders of Catholic background included Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Joseph Goebbels.

Hitler did well in monastery school. He sang in the choir, found High Mass and other ceremonies intoxicating, and idolized priests. Impressed by their power, he at one time considered entering the priesthood.

Rudolf Hoess, who as commandant at Auschwitz-Birkinau pioneered the use of the Zyklon-B gas that killed half of all Holocaust victims, had strict Catholic parents. Hermann Goering had mixed Catholic-Protestant parentage, 

Now the Catholic Church has announced they will support the Palestinian Arabs in their campaign to destroy Israel.

The Catholic Church is a disgrace to decency and the term "Christian".

Israel is the target of latter-day anti-Semites

Israel is the target of latter-day anti-Semites, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday evening at the opening of the fifth Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism.

Speaking to a crowd of more than 1,000 Jewish community representatives, diplomats and members of civil society gathered for the biennial conference, the premier said he believes “contemporary anti-Semitism doesn’t just slander, vilify and target Jewish people, it first and foremost targets the Jewish state.”

While there were those who believed that, following the Holocaust, “humanity would discard one of history’s oldest hatreds” – and, indeed, blatant anti-Semitism became far less common in the “liberal West” – “there is no doubt we are living in an age of resurgent anti-Semitism,” he added.

“Today’s anti-Semitism is not limited to the various sects of militant Islam or the xenophobic elements of the fringes of European society.

Today, it wears the mask of so-called progressive thinking in the West. The champions of tolerance are remarkably intolerant of Jews and the Jewish state,” he said. “Classic anti-Semitism portrayed Jews as the embodiment of all evil in world,” while contemporary anti-Semites “do the same with the Jewish state.”

Asking why Israel’s response to Hamas rocket fire elicits protests throughout Europe, while the massacres of civilians in Yemen and Syria do not bring out demonstrators in the streets of Paris and London, Netanyahu said: “There is something fundamentally wrong that this slander is reserved for the one country in the region where the death penalty is not even used against the most gruesome terrorist murderers.”

“All the boycotts and [UN] resolutions are reserved for the only true and most beleaguered democracy on earth, Israel,” he said. “The Jewish state is treated among [the] nations like the Jewish people were treated for generations.”



While he praised European leaders for taking steps to combat rising anti-Semitism, he also called out the continent’s elite for what he sees as their role in fomenting hate.

“Anti-Semitism, contrary to what people think, doesn’t just bubble up from below. It percolates also from the top, and that’s why it’s so important that there are leaders here... who are gearing up to fight this old obsession,” he said.

While there are some who pin the blame for the acceptance of anti-Semitic tropes on a lack of education and knowledge, that does not serve as a catch-all explanation, Netanyahu asserted.

“Some of most educated people in history believed” such things. “It starts with the elite, and that’s where it has to be challenged,” he said.

Following Netanyahu, German Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection Heiko Maas spoke, declaring that Germans guilty of war crimes against the Jews “shouldn’t be allowed to go to the grave without guilt being determined.”

His ministry has established a commission to investigate its conduct during the decades following the Holocaust “to find out why German systems allowed so many Nazi criminals to go free.”

“The results won’t be flattering for the German justice system, but we want the historical truth to come to light.

If we want to tackle anti-Semitism in the present, it is vital to take a self-critical look at the failings of our past,” Maas explained.

“One of these failings is that present-day Germany still has laws in force drafted by Nazi jurists. I find this absolutely unacceptable, which is why I set up a commission to set up new proposals for our criminal law, and I’m hopeful we will soon be able to root out the last remnants of Nazi law from our books once and for all,” he said.

In response, Efraim Zuroff, a Nazi hunter with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, praised Maas, telling The Jerusalem Post he fully endorses and supports efforts to finally de-Nazify the German justice system.

Among the laws that should be changed, he said, is one that grants German citizenship to ethnic Germans from abroad who served in the SS. On several occasions, the German citizenship that war criminals obtained allowed them to escape extradition and punishment for their crimes.

The Jerusalem Post

Op-Ed: Megyn Kelly – And Who Else For Free Speech?

It’s getting lonely out there for Megyn Kelly. At the moment she’s about the only American journalist defending Pamela Geller and, by the way, free speech.

The rest of American Journalism agrees that the First Amendment is okay, so long as it comes with a dash of restrictive Sharia Law. Speak your mind but do not take your opinions to Texas or any place that might offend people who go crazy at the sight of a cartoon.

In other words, as we’ve been listening to the clobber-fest against Pamela Geller, freedom of expression, we’re being advised, must be exercised with caution. So they tell us, these opinion makers, who without a sense of shame insist that they love the First Amendment – but conditionally, fitfully, reluctantly, sporadically.

Who says this? People who by the luck of the draw have the Bill of Rights to sustain their livelihoods.

But apparently Judeo/Christian values are not worth savoring and fighting for, particularly if you are a journalist.

From Moses’ declaration in Leviticus, to “proclaim liberty throughout the land,” how quickly we’ve gone to proclaiming the suppression of liberty.

Who saw this day coming? I did. Not because I’m smart, but because I’m a pessimist. Pessimists are correct 98.7 percent of the time. Novelists are pessimists and that’s what gets us in trouble so much of the time, when we use fiction or part fiction to get digging into the truth – like this book that spills the beans about news media dishonesty and what really goes on in our newsrooms.


From “Half The News That’s Fit To Print” we can hardly be expected to make up our minds intelligently.
We are a misinformed public and nothing is more dangerous than a people being misled by liars and fakes…in this case ideologues of the Left.

The shift may have begun when Edward R. Murrow brought down a Senator, Joseph McCarthy, but it certainly began when Woodward and Bernstein, back in the 1970s, brought down a President, Richard Nixon. A generation wanted to “do good” and found journalism as the perfect means to “repair the world,” quicker than dentistry and root canal.

Now we are still in the clutches of news being presented by social activists who, starting with The New York Times, hardly pretend to be neutral.

From “Half The News That’s Fit To Print” we can hardly be expected to make up our minds intelligently.

Take George Stephanopoulos, please. This is a journalist? Yes, this is a journalist. ABC-TV hired him straight from the Clinton White House (the old one, not the new one quite yet) where he served as a political advisor. They offered him big money, and presto; he is a journalist, indeed the leading voice at ABC.

You expect both sides of the story?

Or take Geraldo Rivera, who specialized in trash sensationalism, like the search for Al Capone’s Vault, and now reports for Fox News.

But Fox News must be forgiven because despite the presence of Juan Williams and Shepard Smith, it’s all we’ve got for news and opinion fair and square.

This is where we find Megyn Kelly. This is where steady customers to the network were astonished to find Miss Kelly all alone doing battle for Pamela Geller. One by one, the rest fell like dominoes for limits to free speech, while for Kelly it is all or nothing.

We sense her frustration as even the most tough-minded conservative speakers clobber away at Pamela Geller and the First Amendment.

Kelly must have thought she stumbled into the wrong studio when colleagues Greta Van Susteren and Bill O’Reilly sounded like Chris Matthews.

It’s good that we have her, but sad that we have her practically all alone.

Jack Engelhard

Sharpton Compares Himself to MLK

The Baltimore riots raged out of control, thanks to an atmosphere created in part by Al Sharpton and other race profiteers who line their pockets by stirring black communities into violence, he made an awfully ridiculous statement about himself.

As Sharpton took the stage, he compared himself to the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — an actual, respected civil rights leader who made effective changes without burning down U.S. cities.


But Sharpton’s comparison didn’t sit well with King’s niece, Dr. Alveda King, who recently told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto that Sharpton was sorely mistaken when he told his followers that violence, like the kind that took place in Baltimore, did happen when MLK was around and that people should “do their research” before claiming that it didn’t.

Dr. Alveda King told Cavuto, “I’m astounded, because when Rev. Sharpton says you need to do research — research will show that my uncle, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. … who actually came from a background where it would have been easy for him to be violent — they were trained in non-violence, conflict resolution.”

She continued defending her uncle, along with her father and other civil rights leaders who were able to make change without raising a hand, looting drug stores or throwing bricks at police officers.


“So yes, do your research, and every time, you will see … young people following non-violent conflict resolution. Did they want to riot?” she said. “Yes — but there was a standard, there were teachers, there were leaders who helped them not fight.”

“So Reverend Sharpton might have to do some research himself,” she said (H/T IJ Review).


Its laughable that Sharpton would compare his actions to those of MLK, as Sharpton’s only true intention is to grow the bottom line of his National Action Network.

Dr. King did it for the betterment of humanity.

Are Baltimore charges about justice or crowd control?

By Alan M. Dershowitz   MAY 05, 2015

WHEN BALTIMORE’S STATE attorney Marilyn Mosby announced charges last week against six officers in the death of Freddie Gray and proclaimed to the city that “I heard your call for ‘no justice, no peace,’” it’s possible that her decisions were based, at least in part, on the understandable goal of preventing further riots. This goal is commendable, but the mean selected to achieve it — hearing the call of demonstrators — raises fundamental questions regarding the due process right of those charged with serious crimes.

No decision on charges should ever be made on the basis of satisfying the demands of demonstrators or under the threat of violent demonstrations. Crowd control is not a proper component of prosecutorial discretion and is inconsistent with due process. Prosecutorial discretion should be exercised on the basis of an objective application of the law to the facts and not on the basis of the impact it may have on the crowd.

Our nation has a sordid history of justice by mob rule, particularly in the South where the threat of violent demonstrations and lynching too often influenced the outcomes of trials. African-Americans were commonly the victims of mob injustice. But the denial of due process is no less serious when the demonstrators are largely African American. Nor is it less serious when the demonstrators are generally right in demanding equal treatment from the police, as they are in Baltimore.

I recall observing a criminal trial in Beijing in 1980, where, before the judges rendered their decision, they opened the doors of the courtroom and welcomed in “the masses.” A group of 50 or so demonstrators demanded a conviction and long sentence, which the judges then duly imposed. “This is real democracy,” my official guide insisted. But democracy, real or otherwise, has only a limited role to play in a justice system governed by the rule of law, rather than the rule of the crowd.

No one can know for certain what motivated Mosby to charge six police officers with crimes ranging from second-degree murder to manslaughter to assault, in the unnecessary death of Freddie Gray. Perhaps she knows facts that justify these serious charges, though it is difficult to square her description of the timeline with the “depraved heart” murder charge against the driver of the van. But the appearance of crowd influence flows inexorably from her ill-chosen words, and the appearance of injustice must be avoided as studiously as the reality of injustice if our legal system is the maintain its credibility.

 The short-term benefits of Mosby’s announcement are obvious and positive: violent rioting quickly turned to joyful celebration. But the long-term implications are less clear. They will surely invite motions by the defense attorneys for a change of venue and for the appointment of an independent prosecutor.

Many in the crowd were quoted as saying that they will never be satisfied unless the police officers are convicted. Jurors should not have to worry that if they decide to acquit, they would be placing businesses, homes, and even lives at risk. Jurors should have no stake in the outcome of the case beyond doing justice based on the law and the facts. There is a strong argument, therefore, for moving the trials to a city that is not threatened by riots. There is also a strong case for substituting a prosecutor who does not appear to base her discretionary decisions on the call for “no justice, no peace.”

Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School (emeritus), is author of “Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law.”

Related:

ISIS supporters: Morons or Imbeciles?

Posted at 4:08 a.m., May 5 

"High;lyBrandon Wade / AP

Highly trained ISIS fighters armed with automatic rifles gunned down by one American Policeman armed with only a handgun

ISIS criminals are pretty good at murdering women and children, but when ever the odds are even these terrorists are always outfought by normal people.

These two cowardly losers had planned to murder as many innocent, unarmed people as possible at an art exhibition'

They jumped out of the car armed with AK47s and body armor.

One cop, armed only with a pistol, sent them both to Hell.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the attempted attack on Tuesday, CNN reported.

The group justified the actions by the gunmen, identified as Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, saying in their al-Bayan Radio news bulletin that the exhibition “was portraying negative pictures of the Prophet Muhammad,” according to the BBC. An audio statement on the group’s radio states said that “two soldiers of the caliphate,” carried out the attack and promised for more attacks in the future, according to the Associated Press.

This is the first time ISIS has claimed responsibility for an attack in the U.S., according to AP, but U.S. officials have not confirmed whether or not the extremist group was behind Sunday’s shooting.

I'll confirm it.

These clowns were pretty typical of ISIS criminals, stupid and cowardly.