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Seeing Red: Jewish Blood on the West Bank, Its Portrayal in the Western Media

September 1, 2010  •  Pajamas Media

Four young civilians: human beings, fathers, mothers, one of whom was also pregnant, collectively the parents of seven children, were brutally gunned down by armed, masked terrorists. Their murders were openly celebrated in the streets by their attackers and by thousands of their supporters.

You would think that the world would recoil in horror—or that those who report the news, world-wide, would do so. Think again. These four precious souls were Israeli "settlers" and, as such, have already been so demonized that they are now seen as having provoked their bloody, pitiless deaths.

First, they came for the settlers. Then, they came for the secular Israeli pro-peace demonstrators in Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv. And then they came for….you and me.

Predictably, sadly, my three local area New York City newspapers present this tragic news in very different ways.

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The Nightmare Gets Worse for An American Woman and Her Child Trapped In Bahrain

August 27, 2010  •  Fox News

On Thursday, August 26 in Bahrain, the country's police stormed into the home where Yazmin Maribel Bautista was hiding her five-year-old daughter, Fatima, an American citizen. She was hiding her child to keep her from being handed over to her Bahraini father for weekend visitation as ordered by a local court. Yazmin, an American citizen from Arizona, was helpless to prevent this from happening.

Her lawyer, Majid Shehab, who nobly took on the case pro bono, was arrested for trying to report the police and keep them from taking the child away. The lawyer has since been bailed out. Yazmin does not know whether her daughter, Fatima, will be returned to her. She also does not know whether it is safe for her to remain in the country. Yazmin has no money, no job, no financial resources, and no powerful relatives who can help her fight for her daughter.

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Is Time a Muslim Magazine?

August 24, 2010  •  Arutz 7

I did not think that the pro-Muslim/pro-Islamist and anti-Western propaganda could get any worse—and yet it just has.

TIME magazine has an August 30 cover story titled "Is America Islamophobic?" Within, the article is titled: "Islam in America: It's part of the fabric of life, but protests reveal a growing hostility to the religion of Muslims."

President Obama's rather strange assertions that "seven million" Muslims live in America (only 2.5-3 million actually do), and that "Islam has always played a role in America," actually contradict the point of this piece, but no matter.

One might wonder why any "hostility" to a productive, historically significant Muslim presence in America exists. TIME magazine does not tell us.

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Islamist Aggressors Are Really the Victims

August 23, 2010  •  NewsRealBlog

Things are getting ugly and more surreal far more swiftly than anyone thought possible.

Just today, roving male vigilante squads are menacing women in Chechnya for not wearing headscarves during Ramadan; they are attacking women verbally, punching them, spraying them with paintballs, and taunting them with automatic rifles.

So much for those who insist that wearing a headscarf or a face veil are free "choices" and have no consequences for those who do not exercise the same "choice."

Is this the same Russian province that was once ruled by Catherine the Great, the woman who sought to emulate French and European Enlightenment values? Is this even the same bloody Russia that once sought to elevate women, however drearily, into the Soviet Party, the Russia in which women became tractor drivers, factory forewomen, doctors, lawyers, high-level apparachniks, engineers, magnificent ballet stars and athletes?

I think not.

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Only Cowards Stone People To Death
An Islamic Religious Ritual

August 19, 2010  •  Pajamas Media

Yesterday, I appeared on FOX-TV's "The Strategy Room" to discuss a recent stoning in Afghanistan and the issue of stoning in general. Kimberly Guilfoyle interviewed me both skillfully and graciously. The subject is a very distressing and somewhat mysterious one for most westerners.

What does it mean when a mob of men, numbering anywhere from 50 to 200, stone a female child to death—as happened in October of 2008 in Somalia? That poor soul was not only a 13 year-old child—she had also just been raped. Indeed, that was her sole "crime" and the reason for her torture-execution. She was forced into a hole and buried nearly up to her neck. She took a long time to die and kept crying out for her life. In addition to the 50 active stoners, 1000 more men cheered them on.

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Is Wanting to Marry the One You Love a Crime?
Is Stoning the Proper Punishment?

August 17, 2010  •  Pajamas Media

Even the New York Times got it right and put the news on their front page. The Afghan Taliban is back in business, and they just ordered two hundred men to stone two human beings to death for the crime of loving each other and wanting to marry. The all-male mob happily obliged them and included the couple's closest relatives and neighbors.

Amazingly, the Newspaper of Record does not use the word "Muslim." They refer to "religious authorities," "a religious court," and to "religious scholars," but they name no religion. Is it Buddhism, perhaps, which once flourished widely in Afghanistan? Or, is the unnamed religion paganism, perchance? Alexander the Great for example was a proud pagan, and he cut through Afghanistan on his way to India, leaving shamanistic and pagan practices in his wake. The Sassanids, who once also ruled in Afghanistan, were Zoroastrians.

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How to Keep the USA From Becoming the United States of Arabia

August 16, 2010  •  Fox News

On August 9, the SPEECH Act became the law of our land. This Act protects American authors from having foreign libel judgments against them enforced in America—especially when they have criticized Islam or documented the funding sources for jihadic terrorism.

The Act was a bipartisan Senate accomplishment, but one driven by the fearless and determined Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, the Director of the American Center for Democracy. Ehrenfeld is the force (and the name) behind "Rachel's Law" which became law in 2008 in New York State and in six other states.

This Act is an important first step in the West's battle against "lawfare." At stake is nothing less than the American and Western right to speak freely and truthfully on any subject, including religion, culture, and war. If we are kept uninformed about Islam and jihad, we will not be able to understand our options or defend ourselves. It is as simple as that.

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Murdered Christian Humanitarians Memorialized in Kabul
What Do Their Murders Really Tell Us?

August 13, 2010  •  Pajamas Media

When I fled Afghanistan at the end of 1961, I thought I was the only American who had ever been there or heard about the country—other than Herman Melville who opens Moby Dick with a reference to "Bloody Riots in Afghanistan."

Now, nearly 50 years later, (well, 48 years to be precise), Afghanistan seems to be following me. I cannot pick up a newspaper without reading at least one, often two articles about it. This is true day after day, year after year.

Just today, I read about the memorial services for the six American, one British, one German foreign aid workers and the two Afghans who worked with them. Three were women. They were all buried at the British Cemetary in Kabul. With the exception of the Afghans, the medical team were all Christians but they had not come to proselytize. They came to do for the impoverished Afghan people what their own leaders could not or would not do: Provide free and expert dental, medical, surgical, and eye care.

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What Only The Jews Can Do About Anti-Semitism

August 12, 2010  •  Pajamas Media

In a world filled with floods, mudslides, tornadoes, oil spills, small airplane crashes, non-stop wars, allegations of political corruption from Harlem to Kabul–Israel still remains front page news.

Today, according to Israeli Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the "Turkish flotilla activists fired first." The evidence (as seen on live action video, and based on the non-Israeli ammunition, cartridges, and bullets found on board) backs him up. While Israel investigates its right of self-defense, key American (not Turkish) congressmen are calling for an investigation of the Turkish charity that sponsored the Turkish freedom flotilla "for its possible ties to terrorism," specifically to Al-Qaeda.

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Israel At War: 586 BCE-1982-2010

August 10, 2010  •  Pajamas Media

Imperfect, tiny Israel is truly a "light unto the nations." If only "the nations" would see it this way!

Israel is attacked by Turkey — and Israel, not Turkey, launches an investigation into the role its military played in defending their country. Yesterday, Prime Minister Netanyahu took "overall responsibility" for what happened. He said that although professional mistakes were made at intelligence and operational levels, the killings were justified.

Turkey has yet to admit its genocidal massacre of the Armenians; we are still waiting for Turkey to launch its own internal investigation—and for the United Nations to demand that they do.

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Summer in the City, Summer in the Middle East

August 9, 2010  •  NewsRealBlog

For more than forty years, when summer came, I always left town, either for long weekends or for the entire summer. In other words, I simply took my work to another location—to New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, or to East Hampton, Long Island, where once I had a place, a pre-revolutionary cottage: charming, low-ceilinged, uncomfortable, absolutely authentic. Sometimes, I would travel to Europe and the Middle East.

I now see the loveliness of New York City in summer: It is lush and leafy, there are more fountains and parks than I ever realized and, despite the onslaught of tourists, fewer people are actually waiting in line for museums and restaurants. So, how does a working intellectual spend her time off? Well, here's how I just spent this past weekend.

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Lord God, Free At Last: Rifqa Bary's Victory in Ohio

August 5, 2010  •  Pajamas Media

Christmas arrived early this year for this brave, young ex-Muslim convert to Christianity. Judge Mary Goodrich in Columbus, Ohio has just decided that Rifqa, who will turn eighteen in five days, does not have to return to her family (all of whom are here illegally from Sri Lanka). According to breaking local news,

"Goodrich also said it's not in the girl's best interest to return her to her native Sri Lanka. Bary is (also) an illegal immigrant. The ruling allows her attorneys to file for a special immigration status to allow her to stay in the U.S. while she continues medical treatment following recent surgery for uterine cancer."

Allow me to congratulate her hard-working, dedicated, and skillful lawyers: Angela Lloyd and Kort Gatterdam. But most of all, allow me to congratulate Rifqa herself for her extraodinary strength and courage.

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What Rifqa Bary's Case Tells Us

August 4, 2010  •  Fox News

America prides itself on religious tolerance. We welcome all houses of worship.

Increasingly, however, Islamist leaders are demanding even more religious tolerance, more mosques.

However, there is absolutely no reciprocity in the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, do not allow Christians, Jews, or other "infidels" to pray openly or to build any or new houses of worship.

Currently, the Arab Muslim Middle East is almost completely "Judenrein," (free of Jews) since more than 800,000 Arab Jews were exiled or forced to flee their countries between 1948-1968.

Currently, Christians are being savagely persecuted in Egypt, the disputed Palestinian territories, Somalia, Algeria, Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia.

Christians have literally been crucified, teenaged Christian girls have been kidnapped, raped, then forced to marry their rapists and convert to Islam.

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What Happens to Women if We Leave Afghanistan?
Time Magazine Gets it Wrong

August 3, 2010  •  NewsRealBlog

We take our freedoms for granted in America and assume that everyone is either like us or wants to be. We find it hard to believe that this is not so.

Of course, I am not talking about thee and me but about all those American journalists, academics, and politicians who actually believe that the Cordoba House (the Mosque at Ground Zero) is a great idea; that women should have the "religious right" to wear the burqa in the West; that Muslims as a group must not be viewed as terrorists—even if most terrorists today happen to be Muslims who commit their bloody deeds in the name of Islam; above all, I am brooding about the American inability or refusal to distinguish between real Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents and feminists and those who pretend to come in peace (in English) but who preach hatred and war within their mosques and in Arabic.

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Leave and We'll Kill You: Islam and Apostates in America

August 2, 2010  •  Pajamas Media

Many battered women stay with their batterers because they have been warned that if they ever leave, turn to the police, or "tell" anyone what is really going on, their batterer will then be justified in killing them.

Cult members are routinely warned that if they break free and "tell" anyone about abusive cult practices, not only will they be shunned, stalked, and punished, but their relatives, including children, who are still prisoners of the cult, or true believers, will be punished too.

By now, many Westerners may believe this is true about batterers and about cults; but they will not believe that it is also true about fundamentalist Islam. Trained in favor of religious tolerance, concerned that if one religion is restricted that all religions might be; genuinely uninformed about non-western religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shintoism, etc., they assume that all religions are alike in terms of their virtues and that sinners of every religious persuasion exist despite—not because of–their religion.

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Three Americans Held Captive in Iran: One Year and Counting

July 30, 2010  •  Pajamas Media

One year ago, Shane Michael Bauer/Bower, Joshua Fattal (whose father is of Iraqi descent), and Sarah Emily Shourd, three young American hikers, were arrested by Iranian forces for having wandered too close to the Iranian border. Charged with "espionage," they remain in the dreadful Evin Prison. Today, Amnesty International has finally demanded their release. Malcolm Smart, Amnesty's International Middle East and North Africa Program director says:

"It appears clear that the Iranian authorities do not have substantial grounds to prosecute these three individuals, and we fear that they may be held on account of their nationality."

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