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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Israel and the Structural Islamic
Discrimination of the UN
by Daniel Greenfield
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Friday Top Headlines
by Media Editors: Shutdown deadline looms as Trump, Democrats fight over wall money (Agence France-Presse)
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Humor: Disappointed soldier was looking forward to hanging out in Syria for another 20, 30 years (The Babylon Bee)
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~The Patriot Post
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Trump throws government funding deal into
doubt, presses anew for border wall funding
by Alex Pappas
{foxnews.com} ~ A potential deal on Capitol Hill to avert a government shutdown with a short-term spending measure hit a roadblock Thursday... as the White House said President Trump “does not want to go further” with anything that does not include sought-after funding for border security. “The president is having a meeting with Republican House members at noon today,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement. “At this moment, the president does not want to go further without border security, which includes steel slats or a wall. The president is continuing to weigh his options.” Congress faces a Friday deadline to fund a portion of the government or risk a partial shutdown. Lawmakers had been at a standstill over the president’s demands for $5 billion to fund the border wall. But the Senate late Wednesday approved an interim spending bill that would keep several key departments of the federal government funded through February and avert a partial shutdown. It now heads to the House. The stopgap measure, though, doesn’t include new funding for a border wall – something Democrats have opposed... https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-throws-government-funding-deal-into-doubt-says-trump-does-not-want-to-go-further-without-border-security.
Open Records Lawsuits Probe Into Russian
Support for U.S. Green Groups
by Kevin Mooney
{freebeacon.com} ~ The Treasury and State Departments have failed to respond to open records requests seeking "certain correspondence and related records discussing Russian funding... of environmental pressure groups' advocacy in the United States," according to lawsuits filed today against Treasury and Monday against State. Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas), who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, and Rep. Randy Weber (R., Texas), chairman of its energy subcommittee, sent a letter dated June 29, 2017, to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin asking him to "conduct a full and complete investigation" into allegations the Russian government has been funneling tens of millions of dollars into U.S. environmental groups to support misinformation campaigns aimed at suppressing U.S. natural gas development. Smith's letter describes how the Russian government has "executed a political agenda with little or no paper trail" that allows funding to flow from Russia through a shell company into Bermuda and from there to U.S. environmental groups in the form of grants distributed through the San Francisco-based Sea Change Foundation. The "disinformation" efforts cited explicitly target the process of hydraulic fracturing, widely known as "fracking," which makes it possible to access large deposits of natural gas in shale formations throughout the U.S. The Institute for Energy Research, a nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C., that favors free market approaches to energy policy, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Treasury Department in October asking Treasury officials to provide records pertinent to Smith's letter, their response to the letter, and any other information providing insight into the allegations of Russian collusion with environmental groups. The deadline for Treasury to respond to the FOIA came and went on Nov. 23 without the release of any records responsive to IER's request... https://freebeacon.com/issues/open-records-lawsuits-probe-into-russian-support-for-u-s-green-groups/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=0b04c51489-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_19_10_29_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-0b04c51489-45611665.
D.C. Attorney General Sued for Documents
Related to Bloomberg Scheme
by Todd Shepherd
{freebeacon.com} ~ A D.C.-based think tank filed suit Wednesday against D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, claiming his office has refused to produce any kind of response to several Freedom of Information Act requests... seeking documents related to an environmental legal scheme largely funded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In that scheme, Bloomberg funded a new "center" of the New York University School of Law, and the school provides the funding for certain attorneys to be placed within attorney general offices (OAGs) around the country with the sole purpose of pursuing litigation and other legal work related to climate change. The payment for these attorneys includes their ongoing salaries, so that the OAGs are able to essentially add an extra full-time staff member without having to dip into their budget. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has led the way in obtaining records to uncover the activities across the country, filed the suit asking a judge to compel Racine's office to fully comply with the requests made under the district's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which closely mirrors the federal law of the same name... https://freebeacon.com/issues/d-c-attorney-general-sued-for-documents-related-to-bloomberg-scheme/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=0b04c51489-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_19_10_29_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-0b04c51489-45611665.
Israel and Arab Gulf state relations:
'Extraordinary times'
by Eliran Aharon
{israelnationalnews.com} ~ Foundation for Ethnic Understanding President Rabbi Marc Schneier spoke to Arutz Sheva about his groundbreaking work bringing understanding and normalization between Israel and the Arab Gulf states... "We're living in extraordinary times," Rabbi Schneier said. "There's a warming of relations between the Arab Gulf states and Israel. And one particular area where I think I've been very, very successful is making it clear to both Gulf leaders and to Muslim interfaith leaders that you cannot separate out Israel from Judaism. "Meaning, Israel's not a seventy-year-old political reality for the Jewish People. Israel's at the very core; it's at the very center of Judaism, of our religion. So that asking to break out Israel from Judaism is like my asking halal and shariya to be broken out of Islam."Rabbi Schneier described the changes in attitudes he has observed over the years of his work: "So I've been involved with the Gulf states for close to twelve years. And ten years ago I would hear comments like, 'You know, Rabbis, we have nothing against Jews; it's the Zionists, it's the Israelis.' I no longer hear those comments, I no longer have that conversation. There is a recognition that if you want to engage in dialogue with the Jewish People, with the Jewish community; if you want to engage in an interreligious dialogue between Islam and Judaism, that you also need to acknowledge that Israel is very much at the core of the Jewish religion." "Things are changing. I'm not going to sit here and to represent that 'we have arrived at the Promised Land' of Jewish/Muslim relations, or the Promised Land of Gulf/Israel relations. And if I can remind our viewers that in the Torah it took forty years to get to the Promised Land. I'm not suggesting that it will take that long to get to the Promised Land in terms of relations between Israel and the Gulf, but the wonderful news is that the journey has begun. And it's a journey that's moving in a very positive direction today."....
Afghan And Iraqi Interpreters Risk Death, Wait
Years For Legal US Visas While Migrant Caravan
Demands Immediate Entrance
by Joshua Gill
{dailycaller.com} ~ Over 60,000 Afghan and Iraqi interpreters risked death to serve U.S. forces, but still wait amid lethal danger for the American visas they’ve earned... all while migrants caravaning along California’s border demand immediate entrance based merely on their desire for jobs. Afghan and Iraqi men who aid U.S. military forces as soldiers and translators do so at the risk of assault and murder from the radical Islamic terrorists who wage war in their respective countries. The silver lining? Aside from the chance to help fight for a better future for their homelands, Afghans who serve U.S. service members as well as cultural guides, translators and brothers in arms qualify for the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, through which they can gain U.S. citizenship. Iraqi interpreters can also apply through the Direct Access Program (DAP). The SIV program is arduous, however, often requiring interpreters to run lethal risks to themselves and their family members over a period of years simply to go through what the interpreters and U.S. service members alike say is an opaque and tedious application process. Given that many of these interpreters still languish in SIV processing amid threats to their lives, the cry to afford immediate asylum to the Central American migrants amassing at California’s border seems outrageous, according to former Army Staff Sergeant James Miervaldis....
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Israel and the Structural Islamic
Discrimination of the UN
by Daniel Greenfield
{sultanknish.blogspot.com} ~ What do Cuba and Iran, Venezuela and Qatar, Vietnam and Somalia, and China and Pakistan have in common? They all voted to protect Hamas, a genocidal Islamic terrorist group, at the United Nations General Assembly against a United States resolution condemning “Hamas for repeatedly firing rockets into Israel" and for abusing civilian infrastructure to attack Israel instead of dealing with its supposed humanitarian crisis.
Muslims condemn terrorism. But they do so in general terms while supporting it in specific cases.
The United Nations resolution condemning Hamas was a typical example of the problem. Despite complaints about bias at the UN, the American resolution actually picked up a majority of the votes with 87 countries voting for the resolution, 57 countries voting against it and 33 countries abstaining.
It did not however manage a two-thirds majority because a bloc of Muslim and leftist countries voted against it. 38 out of 58, the majority of the votes defending Hamas, came from majority Muslim countries: Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, Libya, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, UAE, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Gambia, Niger, Comoros, Guinea and Djibouti.
65% of the pro-Hamas votes came from majority Muslim nations.
Another 5 of the votes came from Muslim minority countries: Mauritius, Suriname, Nigeria, Congo and Mozambique.
That means 74% or three-quarters of the pro-Hamas vote came from majority or minority Muslim countries accounting for the vast majority of the total.
And then there’s Russia and China, which along with their satellites like Belarus, Latvia, Mongolia and Laos, backed Hamas. The Russians effectively created the “Palestinians” and are hostile to America so any other vote would have been unimaginable. And China also finds it useful to support Islamic terrorists in Israel even as it ruthlessly cracks down on its own domestic Muslim population. In a cynical tradeoff, Muslim countries don’t object to China’s Islamic repression as long it backs them on Israel.
But while Russia and China aren’t Muslim minority countries because their overall populations are so large, their Muslim minorities are still huge enough to be larger than some of the countries on this list with over 10 million Muslims in Russia more in its areas of influence and over 20 million in China.
Add Russia, China and their satellites to the list, and 49 out of 58, or 84%, the vast majority of the pro-Hamas votes, came from countries with large percentages or numbers of domestic Muslims.
This sums up the structural problem of religious discrimination that Israel faces at the United Nations.
Only 1 majority Muslim country, Albania, and four minority Muslim countries, Eritrea, Malawi, Singapore and Macedonia, voted to condemn Hamas.
Albania is however that extremely rare Muslim majority country whose constitution not only does not state that it is based on Islamic sharia law, but declares that it has no official religion making it the least Islamic Muslim country around. At 12%, its Muslim population has a lower support level for Sharia law than Russia, where support hovers in the 40% range.
Nor do any of the minority Muslim countries have Muslim leaders or governments.
Aside from Israel’s various other problems at the United Nations, it faces a structural problem of Islamic religious discrimination. And as long as religious Muslim countries vote in lockstep to support Islamic terrorists and oppose their Jewish victims, UN votes will be inherently discriminatory and illegitimate.
A/73/L.42 Activities of Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza failed, but its failure brought attention to the core of the problem. As UN Watch documented, some countries undermined the resolution by voting to require a two-thirds majority, or abstained from the vote, and then voted against Hamas, even as they knew their votes would be irrelevant. But that’s just the symptom of a bigger problem.
In the final vote, a coalition of Muslim majority and minority countries, supplemented by a few Marxist leftist governments joined forces to protect Hamas. The Marxists in Bolivia, Cuba, Laos, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zimbabwe and South Africa would not have been enough to make a difference on their own.
And Russia has a lot fewer satellites these days than it used to.
In the seventies, Kosygin could deploy Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Albania and a laundry list of Soviet bloc countries to impose the UN's infamous 'Zionism is Racism' resolution. While Putin has to be content with Belarus, Mongolia and Latvia, while fighting for control of little pieces of Ukraine which voted against Russia and Hamas.
The Left and the leftovers of its old regimes in Russia and China make very useful Islamic allies, but the days when the Left was the center of the anti-Israel bloc ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Islamic countries used to be the tail that Moscow wagged. These days, Moscow is the tail of the Islamic dog with Russia spending blood and treasure in Syria to help the Shiites hang on to Damascus, and then, after all that work, having to be satisfied with playing second fiddle to Iran in Syria.
During the Cold War, Islamic countries were the collaborators in a leftist war against the free world. These days it’s the leftist leftovers that have become collaborators in an Islamic war against the West.
That is the simple fact that drives everything from geopolitics to domestic terrorism. Where leftists once recruited Muslims into its global and domestic war, they have become accomplices in the Jihad.
As the clash of civilizations shifts from a secular to a religious war, Israel’s role only grows more pivotal.
And that also transforms the character of United Nations hostility to Israel from an ideological anti-Semitism to a theological anti-Semitism. The Albanian exception at the Hamas vote is significant because it shows that the character of Islamic hostility to Israel is not merely nationalistic or cultural, but religious. When religious Islamic countries, but not a secular Islamic country, vote to protect an Islamic religious movement’s terroristic war against Israel, that is an act of religious discrimination.
Israel’s inability to get a fair hearing at the UN is no longer a matter of ideology or politics, but a manifestation of structural Islamic supremacism due to the makeup of the UN General Assembly.
Every discussion of UN resolutions targeting Israel must begin and end with that simple fact.
And, as Islamic migration transforms Europe, and then America, Canada and Australia, the structural problem of religious discrimination will only worsen to become thorough and overwhelming.
The UN frequently condemns Israel. It had the opportunity to condemn Islamic terrorism against Israel. Instead a coalition of Islamic countries and their leftist camp followers stood with Islamic terrorism making it clear that this is not about human rights or justice, it’s about Islamic supremacism.
As long as the UN remains a vehicle for Islamic supremacism, it will remain illegitimate.
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