Ben Weingarten

Reader. Writer. Thinker. Commentator. Truth Seeker.

Tag: Jihadism (Page 2 of 4)

We’re All Infidels Now (and Forever): A Dire Message from Rudyard Kipling and Middle Eastern Christians to the West

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On January 5, 2016

In Defense, Foreign Policy, National Security

Father George William Rutler has written a piece over at the Catholic Crisis Magazine worthy of the West’s attention, and therefore consequently unlikely to get it in these times of willful blindness and unblissful ignorance.

In it, he pens a critical passage linking the prescient poet Rudyard Kipling to the persecuted Christians of the Middle East [emphasis mine]:

[O]ne still might echo Rudyard Kipling: “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.” The Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul, Amel Shumoun Nona, has warned from exile in Kurdistan: “Our sufferings today are a prelude to what even European and Western Christians will incur in the near future. Your liberal and democratic principles here (in the Middle East) are not worth anything. You need to rethink our reality in the Middle East because you are receiving in your countries, an increasing number of Muslims. You too are at risk. You have to take strong and courageous decisions, at the cost of contradicting your principles. You think that men are all the same. It is not true. Islam does not say that all men are equal. Your values are not their values. If you do not understand in time, you will become victims of the enemy you have welcomed into your home.”

East is East and West is West. Yet the Wise Men in their wisdom outwitted King Herod and such wisdom, mated with self-neglectful virtue, melts all physical and ideological boundaries with a charity that gives hope to the most helpless. That is why Kipling continued with his ballad:

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!

Jews have served as the historical canary in the coal mine of Western civilization, with the nation of Israel today’s first line of defense against Islamic tyranny.

But the unheeded cries of persecuted Christians in the Middle East are a harrowing reminder that Islamic supremacism’s enemy is Judeo-Christianity in toto.

We’re all infidels now, and indeed have been for all time.

There is a slow-motion global jihad being waged against us all, and we ignore the Islamic supremacist ideology that animates its soldiers abroad and at home at our own peril and to our own great detriment.

‘Inequality’ Does Not Cause ISIS, Or How Our Western Materialist Worldview is Killing Us

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On December 8, 2015

In Economy, National Security, Podcast, Politics

Recently, world-renowned French socialist economist Thomas Piketty proffered the argument that “inequality” is the cause of ISIS.

While it may not be surprising given that Piketty’s life work has been dedicated to studying inequality (and arguing that to eradicate it we ought to tear down the capitalist system), Piketty revealed a critical insight about the Western elite: It believes global jihadism is attributable to materialist factors.

I challenge this thesis in my latest piece over at the indispensable City Journal titled Did Inequality Cause ISIS?, and argue that in order to effectively combat the global jihad, we must look at the world through the same prism as Islamic supremacists, not the materialist one apparently subscribed to by our entire foreign policy Establishment, including but not limited to the Obama administration (see “jobs for jihadis”).

Also, the great Dan Bongino spoke about my piece during his Conservative Review podcast. Listen starting at 21:13 below:

 

Featured Image Source: LiveLeak screengrab.

PJ Media: Serial Islamic Supremacist Enabler Lindsey Graham’s Laughable Attack on Ted Cruz

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On December 6, 2015

In Defense, Foreign Policy, National Security

Check out my latest at PJ Media, where I delve into the long overdue foreign policy battle between the “right-wing” Wilsonianism espoused by Sen. Lindsey Graham et al, and in my opinion the superior policy articulated best by Jeane Kirpatrick, and I believe being represented most faithfully by Sen. Ted Cruz.

A taste:

[Sen. Lindsey] Graham may be a marginal figure in the polls, but his comments come in context of a critical and long overdue battle that has broken out within the Republican Party to define a conservative foreign policy superior to the “right-wing” Wilsonianism of George W. Bush, and left-wing Wilsonianism of Barack Obama under which mortal enemies have ascended.

In particular, a spat has broken out between Cruz and what may prove his stiffest competition, Sen. Marco Rubio. Graham, though perhaps less articulate and more impolitic than Rubio, serves as something of a stalking horse given that their positions on issues in the Middle East are largely indistinguishable.

Graham’s attack was in fact reminiscent of similar rhetoric we have seen from those in the Rubio camp in recent days.

For my money, I take Cruz’s judicious and clear-eyed policy over a third and fourth term of George W. Bush’s well-intentioned but ultimately detrimental democracy spreading.

And if Graham or Rubio for that matter takes issue with Cruz’s foreign policy in Syria in particular, one would be interested to hear what they would say to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for whom what goes on in Syria has direct consequences. Netanyahu said recently:

If I see a situation where I don’t have a clear concept, I don’t charge in. In Syria, I do not see a simple concept because you choose here between a horrible secular dictatorship or the two other prospects that would be buttressed by Iran, and you would have Iran run Syria, a horrible prospect for us, or Da’ish, which is also touching our borders on the Golan. When two of your enemies are fighting each other, I don’t say strengthen one or the other. I say weaken both, or at least don’t intervene, which is what I’ve done. I’ve not intervened.It is hard to argue with that.

Read the whole thing here.

No, Islamic Supremacism is not ‘Nihilistic,’ and Syrian Refugees Aren’t Like Jews in World War II

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On December 1, 2015

In Defense, Foreign Policy, Media, National Security, Podcast

Recently I had the chance to appear on SiriusXM’s “Steele & Ungar” to take up a spirited debate with my lefty pal Rick Ungar and ally Ron Christie on American policy vis-à-vis Syrian refugees, Ungar’s contention that to bar such refugees from America is akin to FDR preventing Jews fleeing Europe from entering the country during World War II and Islamic supremacism more broadly.

Because it’s always good to attack the callers, this was one of my favorite parts of the show in which I challenge the idea that Islamic supremacism is a “nihilistic” ideology:

My appearance began with a back-and-forth between myself and Rick on what is in America’s national interest with respect to the Syrian refugees, and why I take issue with his World War II analogy:

We later continued that debate:

Lastly, here is what I think the most compassionate thing we can do for refugees in the Middle East is:

Me to Malzberg: Remove Violent Extremist Right-Wingers and Replace Them With Refugees

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On November 24, 2015

In Foreign Policy, Media, National Security, Politics

Just kidding!

Last night (11/24) I had the opportunity to speak with Newsmax host Steve Malzberg and former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) on the topic of Syrian refugees and the global jihad more broadly.

Check out our conversation below:

PJ Media: Israel, the Media’s Hard Bigotry of ‘High’ Expectations and the Obama Intifada

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On October 27, 2015

In Foreign Policy, Media, National Security, Politics

The notion that a video caused a jihadist attack, or that jihadism more broadly is tolerable or understandable given socioeconomics, “climate disruption” or anything else evinces a soft bigotry of low expectations.

Conversely, the notion that Israel’s defensive action in response to jihadism is always and everywhere “disproportionate” – that unless Israel acts in a self-righteously suicidal manner it is in the wrong – evinces a hard bigotry of “high” expectations.

I explore this outrageous double standard in context of the Third Intifada — in which the media is effectively complicit — in a new article for PJ Media titled Israel, the Media’s Hard Bigotry of ‘High’ Expectations and the Obama Intifada.

Here’s a taste:

As the Lutheran pastor and courageous Nazi resistor Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Not to speak is to speak.” Today he might say of Israeli-Arab coverage, “Not to judge is to judge.” That is, in trying to appear “even-handed,” the media actually explicitly judges when it comes to Arab jihadists versus Jews in Israel.

In drawing moral equivalence between two morally unequivalent sides, the media downgrades Israelis while upgrading jihadists, and worse judges the Israeli as the oppressor and the Arab as the oppressed. The media judges jihadist savagery as tolerable, but Jewish defensive action as unacceptable. The media judges the Arab right to a state (for a Palestinian people that has never existed) as inviolable, but Israel’s right to exist as unconscionable.

Read the whole thing here.

Featured Image Source: MEMRI.

Allah and Man at Yale

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On October 5, 2015

In Culture, National Security, Politics

Here’s a taste of my latest at The Federalist, in which I question why Yale University is taking $10 million from a jihadi-tied Saudi billionaire to build an Islamic (read: Sharia) Law center that propagates an ideology under which Yale itself could not exist:

While America remains financially and militarily the mightiest nation on Earth, it is losing the war Islamic supremacism is waging against her because it is chiefly an ideological one. We have the strength to defend ourselves, but we lack the knowledge and the will to defeat our enemies. We are morally relativistic and therefore unable to acknowledge that different peoples are different and that not all ideologies are equal or seek the same ends.

But people like Saleh Kamal surely understand us. In the conquest ideology inherent to Sharia—Islam compels Muslims to extend the Islamic sphere, the ummah, over all the world—America has found an enemy able to best take advantage of our deeply held freedoms. Sharia explicitly calls for the use of the very tactics against which America is most vulnerable.

As a consequence of our willful blindness (contrasted with Islamic supremacists’ comparable clarity), we are constructing Islamic law centers, inviting Muslims to immigrate by the hundreds of thousands without recognition that Hijra is a form of jihad, and, 14 years after 9/11, our top military minds are arguing that we back al-Qaeda against ISIS—that is, the newly “good jihadists” against the “bad jihadists.” For the coup de grace, we are actively aiding, abetting, and enabling Iran’s Twelver jihadist regime in its quest for nuclear domination of the Middle East and beyond.

Read the whole thing here.

Featured Image Source: YouTube Screengrab/Firing Line.

Apparently ISIS Doesn’t Realize What The Fed Has Done to the Dollar

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On August 31, 2015

In Economy, Government, Politics

I grant that ISIS may be more knowledgeable about the “enslaving, imperialist dollar” than it appears, given that they feature a clip from former Rep. Ron Paul in their latest propaganda video about bringing down our currency and replacing it with ISIS’ gold money, but one gets the sense that the jihadists are unaware of The Fed’s historical record.

Namely, since its founding in 1913, The Fed has utterly debauched the dollar.

Had ISIS consulted the handy US Inflation Calculator, they would have learned that it takes roughly $2,400 today to purchase what would have cost $100 at the inception of the Fed. 

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No Worries, the Would-Be French Train Terrorist’s Mosque Wasn’t Radical…Women Can Pray There

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On August 28, 2015

In Defense

In the wake of the courageous takedown of a would-be (likely) jihadist on a Paris-bound train by three Americans, the New York Times published a piece on the Spanish mosque to which Ayoub El Khazzani belonged.

I think the following excerpt speaks for itself:

But while the authorities point to the mosque as a crucial part of Mr. Khazzani’s transformation from onetime petty hashish dealer to someone suspected of being a radical, Mr. Mohamed Ahmed said the preaching here was not to blame.

“Women are also allowed to pray here,” he said, “which certainly wouldn’t happen if this was a radical place.”

Methinks that Mr. Mohamed Ahmed is lacking in self-awareness.

Ahmed’s defense of Khazzani is perhaps even better:

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Hamas Lawyers Up With the Help of the Red Cross While Israel Unilaterally Disarms

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On August 19, 2015

In Government

Michael Freund has the details in the Jerusalem Post:

This past Sunday, The New York Times ran a story encapsulating all that is wrong with the Western world’s approach to extremist Islamic fundamentalism.

In a report appearing in its first section, the paper revealed a startling bit of news: “Red Cross offers workshops in international law to Hamas.”

That’s right. The global institution, which claims that it works “to prevent suffering by promoting and strengthening humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles,” is busying conducting seminars for terrorists in Gaza on how they can be, umm, more humanitarian when attacking Israel.

What’s next? Teaching table manners to the Taliban? The Times article goes on to describe the three-day seminar that the Red Cross conducted for Hamas last month. It included role-playing and case studies, noting that “one exercise involved an armed group firing on an invading tank from the garden of a civilian home near a hospital.” How educational! Mamadou Sow, head of Red Cross operations in Gaza, breezily noted to the Times that earlier this year, when he presented Hamas leadership with a critique of their conduct during last summer’s Gaza war, they “welcomed it” and “indicated that they are a learning organization.”

The article does not indicate whether Sow was able to maintain a straight face while uttering such inanity.

But lest you suspect that Hamas’ indiscriminate firing of thousands of rockets at Israel may indicate that it is somewhat indifferent to the value of human life, Red Cross leaders went out of their way to stress that “they have seen an increasing commitment from Hamas leaders and linemen alike” to respect international humanitarian law.

“For the first time,” said Jacques de Maio, Red Cross director for Israel and the Palestinian territories, “Hamas is actually, in a private, protected space, expressing a readiness to look critically at a number of things that have an impact on their level of respect for international humanitarian law.”

Curiously, de Maio made no mention of the two Israelis Hamas is believed to be holding captive, Avraham Mengistu and an unnamed Beduin, or of the organization’s refusal to take responsibility for their fates. So much for their “respect for international humanitarian law.”

The gathering was one of six such workshops organized by the Red Cross for Hamas’ Kassam Brigades this year, in addition to two more for other, unnamed terrorist groups.

These are the kinds of stories you get in a fundamentally sick society of dupes, useful idiots and worse.

Perhaps the Red Cross’ legal aid for Hamas is something our federal government should look into, on top of the organization’s failed efforts to stymie a Government Accountability Office (GAO) inquiry into its activities, the subject of a recent report from ProPublica:

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