The Front Page Cover
2016 The truth will set you free
Featuring:
Inconvenient Genocide
Caroline Glick
~~~
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nObamaCare Cost Curve Hits The Patriot Post Again
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is working toward euthanizing health savings accounts (HSAs). Democrats have barely attempted to hide their preference for a single-payer health insurance system, so it only stands to reason they'd work to pull the plug on the most attractive market option standing in the way.
Democrats have always hated HSAs because they put patients in charge of their own health spending (to a point — in some ways, HSA users are still swimming upstream against the health system's lack of price transparency.) But the market-driven approach has become increasingly popular in the last decade.
"In the past seven years, [HSA] enrollment has climbed 18% a year on average," notes Investor's Business Daily. "Today, there are almost 20 million enrollees who have more than $24 billion in their HSA accounts. Even the number crunchers in the Health and Human Services Department admit that these 'consumer-directed' health plans are helping to hold down costs." Imagine where we'd be without them.
Back in March, just in time for nObamaCare's six-year anniversary, HHS issued new rules that will effectively end HSAs. Roy J. Ramthun, an expert on the subject often known as "Mr. HSA" — president and founder of HSA Consulting after having led the U.S. Treasury Department's implementation of HSAs upon enactment in 2003 — explains the impact of the rule changes:
1) Plans must apply specific deductibles and out-of-pocket limits that are outside the requirements for HSA-qualified plans.
2) Plans must cover services below the deductible that are not considered "preventive care."
In other words, HSAs will still be legal, but ever fewer plans will meet the requirements. Ramthun writes, "[I]t is only a matter of time before the HSA-qualified plans completely disappear. That could happen as early as 2017 even though the standard benefit designs are optional. By 2018, when the designs likely become mandatory, HSAs will cease to exist in the marketplace."
So we weren't the least bit surprised to find out this week that we face a major rate increase this summer for renewing our small business health insurance plan. Here's a peek into the window of the internal operations of our humble shop:
Our full-time employees range in age from about 25 to 60 — the median age is 37. All of us are married, and some of our families include children (as in younger than 26 years of age). We're all of reasonable health and don't unduly burden the health care system with claims. Our plan is a high-deductible HSA, and it doesn't include eye or dental insurance.
One would reason, therefore, that our premiums would be low. And one would be dead wrong. That used to be true, but that was before nObamaCare. For last several years, our premiums have gone up by double digits annually, and this year's 33% increase is among the highest so far. On top of that, our deductibles also rose last year. Since the "Affordable" Care Act came along, we now pay nearly four times as much — for less coverage.
Another note: Our plan doesn't actually qualify under nObamaCare's requirements, but it's "grandmothered" for the time being. Changing anything will only make either the price go up or the coverage go down — or both.
It would be one thing if our experience were an outlier, but it's not; it's the norm. Health insurance premiums around the country are going up by double-digit percentages every year, and some by 50% or more. What ever happened to "bending the cost curve down" as Barack nObama and his fellow Democrats regularly promised? "We'll lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year," he guaranteed. Reality is just the opposite. How is that in any way "affordable"?
Or how about being able to keep one's doctor or one's plan? While millions of patients have been told to look for other doctors, millions of insurance plans have been canceled in recent years. Indeed, a large portion of the people signing up for coverage under nObamaCare had coverage they liked but lost. This is all just part of the nObamaCare web of lies.
In 1785, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "[H]e who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him." And that above all else defines nObama's pathetic legacy — not just on health care, either.
If there's a silver lining, it's this: With increasing frequency, Americans of every political stripe who have any issue with health care, whether a hangnail or heart transplant, a delay in a doctor's office or in critical care for a loved one, will tie blame for their discontent like a noose around the necks of nObama and his fellow Democrats, who are solely responsible for forcing this abomination upon the American people. -The Patriot Post
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OPINION IN BRIEF
David Limbaugh: "We will not recapture America's greatness through powerful determination alone. We must discipline ourselves to work within the constitutional framework, or we will forfeit the system that has made us unique in history. Some may dispute that slump-Trump supporters care only about certain core issues and are willing to employ extraordinary measures to address them. Well, a new Quinnipiac poll reveals that 53 percent of slump-Trump supporters agree with this statement: 'What we need is a leader who is willing to say or do anything to solve America's problems.' This is consistent with what I hear from far too many slump-Trump supporters. Frankly, I would hate to be so pessimistic about our ability to overcome our problems that I'd be willing to compromise the rule of law and constitutional order to do so. ... You don't have to be a policy wonk to be a good president, but I would hope that you would have at least given serious consideration to important issues beyond the few that brought you to prominence. You must have at least rudimentary knowledge on issues before you can make proper decisions, even with the best advisers available." -The Patriot Post
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NEW REPORT could
DESTROY Democrats’ bid for White House…
Allen West
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{allenbwest.com} ~ This is the kind of stuff that doesn’t make for the dramatic stories the media loves to glom onto, but it’s certainly a dramatic impact to every American — and should be very disconcerting to anyone who’s paying attention... That infamous date is coming next week: April 15th, tax day — well, that is if you didn’t get an extension. You must be asking, where are my tax dollars going in America? When we continue to experience this massive debt and growing deficits — the deficits are set to hit trillion dollars again by 2020 — what are we getting for these “investments?” I truly find it humorous that the progressive socialist left would hijack language and try to make us believe government invests — it spends. It government invests, then please, send me a statement that shows my ROI, my return on investment. My girls are educated in private schools — that we pay for out of our pockets directly. The military is being decimated. The best roads around here in the Dallas-Ft Worth metroplex are the toll roads, which I gladly pay for. Well, here’s an answer, as reported by the Washington Examiner — and if Americans are paying attention, it should give even the Democrat electorate serious pause before voting in the likes of Hilly Clinton or Bernie Sanders, who are only going to exacerbate the situation...
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Navy Charges Maritime Recon
Officer with Espionage in Rare ‘National Security Case’
Sam LaGrone
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The interior of the Naval Consolidated Brig Chesapeake, Va
.
{news.usni.org} ~ The Navy has charged an active-duty maritime reconnaissance officer with passing U.S. military secrets to a foreign government, service officials told USNI News... On Friday, the service outlined several charges – espionage being the most serious — against an unidentified lieutenant commander during an Article 32 hearing in Norfolk. Typically, as part of the military Article 32 charging process, an accused service member is identified in court-martial documents. But the service is not releasing the information in this instance because “this has been designated a ‘National Security Case’,” a Navy official told USNI News on Friday... https://news.usni.org/2016/04/08/navy-charges-maritime-recon-officer-with-espionage-in-rare-national-security-case?utm_source=USNI+News&utm_campaign=ab4087fdc5-USNI_NEWS_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0dd4a1450b-ab4087fdc5-231491269&mc_cid=ab4087fdc5&mc_eid=3999f18767
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The UAE's Fragile Good Life
Daniel Pipes
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{danielpipes.org} ~ In a region of civil war Syria, Yemen, Libya, hardening dictatorship Turkey, Egypt, nuclear build up Iran, and potential water calamity Iraq, where in the Middle East outside Israel can one find the good life?... Surprisingly perhaps, in the United Arab Emirates, a country in the Persian Gulf... Despite the country's many challenges – proximity to Iran and Iraq, almost no natural fresh water, oil prices tanking, 8/9ths of the population foreign, violent Islamists lurking – its 10 million inhabitants live well. Two basic facts set the scene. First, the UAE has the near-unique distinction of being along with Switzerland, a country ruled by committee, a unique one: the seven rulers of the seven individual emirates. Further, those rulers are embedded in extended and influential families. This combination makes it difficult for one individual to dominate the country or to rule as a narcissist. At the same time, each sovereign notably, the emir of Dubai enjoys wide latitude within his own domain, giving each emirate a distinct character...
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How American Jews Have
Detached Themselves from Jewish Memory
Daniel Gordis
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{mosaicmagazine.com} ~ Elliott Abrams is clearly correct in asserting both that American Jews are moving away from support of Israel and that this tectonic shift is traceable much less to Israel’s policies than to the manner in which American Jews now constitute their worldview and their Jewish identities... As it happens, I am somewhat more critical than Abrams of the policies or lack of policies pursued by the Netanyahu government. Admittedly, there are few if any good moves that Israel can make on the international chessboard these days; but the optics have been significantly worse than they could have been. Still, nothing one might say on this point diminishes the rightness, or the importance, of Abrams’ thesis: the root cause of the growing gulf between the world’s two largest Jewish communities lies in the way that most American Jews now conceive of themselves and their Jewishness. The nature of the phenomenon is complex, but Abrams points to one significant dimension... http://mosaicmagazine.com/response/2016/04/how-american-jews-have-detached-themselves-from-jewish-memory/
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The FCC’s copy-paste job on privacy
Roslyn Layton
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Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler (R) and
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai testify at a House Appropriations Financial Services
and General Government Subcommittee hearing in Washington
.
{techpolicydaily.com} ~ There is so much regulation on the books today that federal agencies can essentially copy-paste content from one commission to another, making duplicate regulatory regimes for different industries... But excessive imitation is the mark of an amateur, as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) showed with its recent, mind-numbing, 147-page-long notice of proposed rulemaking (0) (NPRM) on broadband consumer privacy. Not only does the FCC demonstrate a lack of understanding of the technologies and business models it thinks need to be regulated, it does not protect privacy. Instead, by copy-pasting the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) privacy regulations and applying them in an asymmetrical, ex ante fashion to a single actor, the FCC effectively insulates established Internet companies from competition (1) by creating new barriers to entry in concentrated advertising markets. Furthermore, as is par for the course with this FCC (2), the commission failed to provide evidence of consumer complaints and did not conduct an investigation to see whether abuse is actually occurring... http://www.techpolicydaily.com/internet/the-fccs-copy-paste-job-on-privacy/
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Honesty on pension debt: It’s now or never
Andrew G. Biggs
Andrew G. Biggs
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Members of the Committee of retired Teachers of Puerto Rico’s
Teachers Federation protest against the underfunding of their pension system in San Juan
.
{aei.org} ~ Governments don’t go bankrupt for one reason alone. But every financially troubled government in recent years has had a poorly managed pension plan in the background... Detroit’s public-employee pensions were essentially looted via bonus benefit payments. The city borrowed to fill the gap, then defaulted on the borrowing. Similarly, the bankrupt California cities of Stockton and San Bernardino granted massive, retroactive pension-benefit increases during the stock-market bubble of the late 1990s. Emanuel’s Chicago is itself in the midst of a pension crisis. Despite layoffs, unpaid furloughs, and budget cuts, Chicago’s public schools recently instructed principals to stop spending money to help fund a large pension contribution due June 30. Just last week, the Illinois Supreme Court overturned a Hail Mary Chicago law to reduce pension benefits and raise employee contributions. As for Puerto Rico, its government-employee plans are practically broke, through a combination of insufficient contributions, excessive investment risk, and sweetheart deals for participants. Indeed, one of the plans’ main “assets” today is low-interest loans made to public employees to take overseas vacations... http://www.aei.org/publication/honesty-on-pension-debt-its-now-or-never/?utm_source=paramount&utm_medium=email&utm_content=AEITODAY&utm_campaign=041116
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How slump-Trump’s Dimwitted
Outrage Peddlers are Fomenting Violence
Leon H. Wolf
.
{redstate.com} ~ I don’t think I’m going out on much of a limb here when I say that the average Donald slump-Trump supporter does not really understand the delegate allocation process... And, really, who can blame them when it’s clear that Donald slump-Trump himself does not understand the delegate allocation process. Nothing whatsoever has transpired thus far that is not completely within the rules, and yet slump-Trump has convinced his followers that the election is somehow being “stolen” from them. See, the handful of people on team slump-Trump who have two brain cells to rub together know that intimidation of GOP delegates is the last play they have, and they know that the best way to do that is to whip a bunch of angry, loud, profane people who will unironically be waving signs proclaiming themselves the “silent” majority into a frenzy. So every time slump-Trump loses delegates under the rules because his campaign sucks and is run by incompetents which were hired by the Incompetent-in-chief himself, Donald slump-Trump, they ratchet up the rhetoric even further... http://www.redstate.com/leon_h_wolf/2016/04/10/trumps-dimwitted-outrage-peddlers-fomenting-violence/?utm_source=rsmorningbriefing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
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America’s Trade Debate
Carl Delfeld
Carl Delfeld
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{wallstreetdaily.com} ~ Trade is proving to be a major flashpoint for voters on the left and right. And, it’s not something that can be examined in isolation because it’s intrinsically related to investment, capital, currencies, influence, and wealth – not to mention national and economic security... America’s role as the world’s leading player in trade is closely connected to the dollar being the world’s reserve currency. The U.S. dollar is on one side of 90% of all global trade transactions. It’s also the reason why we have deep and liquid financial markets enabling us to finance our budget deficits without interest rates rising. Nevertheless, let’s dig into the rather dry 2015 trade numbers...
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Competitive Enterprise Institute
Targeted by “AGs United For Clean Power”
Leslie Eastman
Leslie Eastman
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{legalinsurrection.com} ~ Last week, I noted that a coalition of 17 state attorney generals had formed, which intended to promote the climate change agenda by targeting the fossil fuel industry... The first victim of the Climate Change purge is the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a wonderful non-profit organization dedicated to protecting free enterprise from being undermined by progressive activists of all stripes. Attorney General Claude E. Walker of the U.S. Virgin Islands has issued a subpoena in an attempt uncover the content of CEI’s comprehensive work on climate change policy. “CEI will vigorously fight to quash this subpoena. It is an affront to our First Amendment rights of free speech and association for Attorney General Walker to bring such intimidating demands against a nonprofit group,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. “If Walker and his allies succeed, the real victims will be all Americans, whose access to affordable energy will be hit by one costly regulation after another, while scientific and policy debates are wiped out one subpoena at a time.”... http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/04/competitive-enterprise-institute-targeted-by-ags-united-for-clean-power/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LegalInsurrection+%28Le%C2%B7gal+In%C2%B7sur%C2%B7rec%C2%B7tion%29
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In Indiana, McCon-nell Allies Move to
Block “Another Cruz”
Fuzzy Slippers
Fuzzy Slippers
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{legalinsurrection.com} ~ Rep. Marlin Stutzman is a member of the anti-leadership House Freedom Caucus, a conservative in the mold of Ted Cruz and a three-term Indiana congressman who voted against John backstabber-Boehner as speaker... Now, he wants a promotion to the Senate — and Majority Leader Mitch McCon-nell and his allies want to stop that. Privately, McCon-nell has made clear to his confidantes that he wants to bolster the candidacy of Stutzman’s chief GOP rival, Rep. Todd Young, and push him over-the-top in the May 3 primary, according to sources familiar with the conversations... http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/04/in-indiana-mcconnell-allies-move-to-block-another-cruz/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LegalInsurrection+%28Le%C2%B7gal+In%C2%B7sur%C2%B7rec%C2%B7tion%29
..
Inconvenient Genocide
Caroline Glick
.
.
{frontpagemag.com} ~ The Christian communities of Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon are well on the way to joining their Jewish cousins. The Jewish communities of these states predated Islam by a millennium, and were vibrant until the 20th century. But the Arab world’s war on the Jewish state, and more generally on Jews, wiped out the Jewish populations several decades ago.
And now the Christian communities, which like the Jews, predate Islam, are being targeted for eradication.
The ongoing genocide of Middle Eastern Christians at the hands of Sunni jihadists is a moral outrage. Does it also affect Israeli national interests? What do we learn from the indifference of Western governments – led by the nObama administration – to their annihilation? True, after years of deliberately playing down the issue and denying the problem, the nObama administration is finally admitting it exists.
Embarrassed by the US House of Representatives’ unanimous adoption of a resolution last month recognizing that Middle Eastern Christians are being targeted for genocide, the State Department finally acknowledged the obvious on March 25, when Secretary of State John hanoi-Kerry stated that Islamic State is conducting a “genocide of Christians, Yazidis and Shi’ites.”
hanoi-Kerry’s belated move, which State Department lawyers were quick to insist has no operational significance, raises two questions.
First, what took the nObama administration so long? Persecution of Christians in Iraq began immediately after the US-led coalition brought down Saddam Hussein in 2003. With the rise of Islamic State in 2012, the process of destroying the Christian community went into high gear. And now these ancient communities are on the brink of extinction.
In Iraq, Christians comprised 8 percent of the population in 2003. Today less than 1% of Iraqis are Christians. In Syria, the Christian community has lost between half and two-thirds of its members in the past five years.
One of the appalling aspects of ISIS’s deliberate, open targeting of Christians for destruction is how little resistance it has received from local Sunni populations. As Raymond Ibrahim from the David Horowitz Freedom Center has scrupulously documented, the local Sunnis have not stood up for their Christian neighbors, who have lived side-by-side with them for hundreds of years. Rather, in areas that have been conquered by ISIS, the local Sunnis have collaborated with their genocidal masters in raping and murdering Christian neighbors, plundering their property, destroying their churches, and driving them from their ancestral homes.
Although precise data is hard to come by, it is clear that thousands of Christians have been slaughtered. Thousands of Christian women and girls have been sold as sex slaves in ISIS slave markets, subjected to continuous, violent rape and beatings. Nuns and priests have been enslaved, crucified, mutilated, kidnapped and held for ransom, as have lay members of Christian communities. Christians have been burned alive.
For years, the administration said that the persecution doesn’t amount to genocide because according to ISIS’s propaganda, Christians are allowed to remain in their homes if they agree to live as dhimmis – that is, without any human rights, and subjected to confiscatory taxation.
But as Nina Shea from the Hudson Institute has reported, these claims were shown to be false in Mosul, Nineveh and other places where ISIS has claimed that such practices were instituted.
The jihadist genocide of Christians isn’t limited to Iraq and Syria. Boko Haram – ISIS’s affiliate in Nigeria – is undertaking a systematic campaign to annihilate Christianity in Africa. ISIS’s affiliates in Sinai and Libya have similarly targeted Christians, staging mass beheadings and other monstrous acts.
And of course, a region needn’t be under direct ISIS control for Christians to be targeted for destruction. The Easter massacre in Pakistan was further evidence that wherever radical Islamists gain power, they use it to murder Christians.
And as Larry Franklin from the Gatestone Institute noted in a recent article, the exodus of Christians from the Palestinian Authority is the direct consequence of deliberate persecution of Christians by the PA.
Given the prevalence of Christian persecution, why is the West – which is overwhelmingly Christian – so reticent about mentioning it? And why are Western leaders loathe to do anything to stop it? There are two ways to end genocide. First, you can defeat those conducting it on the battlefield.
If you destroy the forces conducting the genocide, then the genocide ends.
The second way you can stop genocide is by evacuating the targeted population and providing its members with refuge.
After stipulating that ISIS is carrying out a genocide, hanoi-Kerry made clear that the US will not defeat ISIS to end it. Instead, hanoi-Kerry said, “We must bear in mind... that the best response to genocide is a reaffirmation of the fundamental right to survive of every group targeted for destruction. What Daesh [ISIS] wants to erase, we must preserve. That requires defeating Daesh, but it also requires the rejection of discrimination and bigotry.”
hanoi-Kerry then explained that the US’s plan is to cultivate the formation of a multicultural society in Syria. Given the brutal nature of the war, hanoi-Kerry’s plan is tantamount to saying the US intends to defeat ISIS and rescue those it is currently exterminating by bringing unicorns and leprechauns to the slave markets of Raqqa. Substantively, hanoi-Kerry’s plan is to deny Christians refuge, and to abandon them to the mercy of their murderers.
While delusional, hanoi-Kerry’s statement was in line with the nObama administration’s timid, feckless military campaign against ISIS. Everyone knows that the US military could take down ISIS in a matter of weeks if nObama ordered it to do so.
But rather than act decisively, the US has limited its operations to timorous aerial bombing.
By conducting a barely there campaign, nObama tells the world that although he will be happy to take credit for any defeat ISIS suffers, he will not allow the US to lead the fight against the jihadist death machine.
As for providing refuge to the populations targeted with genocide, the raw data make clear that nObama does just the opposite. He is providing refuge for Sunni Muslims, who are not being targeted for genocide, which is being conducted by Sunni Muslims.
As Ibrahim has documented, although Christians made up 10% of the Syrian population in 2011, they comprise a mere 2.7% of the Syrian refugees the nObama administration has allowed into the US. And when presidential hopeful Senator Ted Cruz called for the US to provide refuge to Christians, who pose no security threat and are targeted with genocide and persecution while banning Muslim immigration, nObama accused him of bigotry.
Despite the fact that FBI Director James Comey told Congress that the US lacked the capacity to effectively screen Muslims from Syria for ties to jihadist groups, nObama said that a policy of saving those marked for extinction over those who come from the population conducting the genocide is “shameful,” and “not American.”
Beyond refusing to take the necessary steps to ensure that persecuted Christians are rescued from annihilation, the State Department has been rejecting visa requests from Christian activists and leaders from persecuted communities to visit the US to share information about their suffering with the American public. This, at the same time that the administration has welcomed Muslim jihad sympathizers, including Muslim Brotherhood members, to Washington.
For instance, last May, the State Department denied a visa to Sister Diana Momeka, an Iraqi nun and ISIS survivor. Momeka was the only Christian member of a delegation of persecuted minorities. Representatives of every other group received visas. It took a public outcry to force the State Department to reverse its decision.
Also last year, the State Department gave visas to all Muslim regional governors in northern Nigeria to participate in a conference sponsored by the US Institute of Peace. They denied a visa to the region’s only Christian governor, Jonah David Jang. Christian activists alleged that Jang was denied a visa because he spoke up to US officials about anti-Christian persecution in 12 states in northern Nigeria that have instituted Sharia law.
What accounts for this behavior? The answer is not ignorance, but ideologically- motivated bigotry. The Aid to the Church in Need organization explained in its 2015 report on Christian persecution, “Christians have been targeted because... Christianity is seen as a foreign ‘colonial’ import. Christians are seen as linked to the West, which is perceived as corrupt and exploitative.”
In another report, the group explained that the Western media has avoided covering the story of the Islamic genocide of Middle East Christians because of “misplaced embarrassment about the 19th-century colonial powers evangelizing ‘the natives’ in far flung places.”
In other words, Middle Eastern Christians, whose communities predate Islam, are targeted because they are perceived as Western implants.
And the West ignores their suffering, because the Left in the West perceives them as Western implants.
In both cases, prejudices, rooted on the one hand in jihadist Islam, and on the other hand in Western self-hatred and post-colonialism, reach the same bigoted conclusion: the only “authentic” people in the Middle East are Muslims.
Everybody else is a colonial implant. And as such, they deserve what they get.
This then brings us back to Israel, and the Jews.
The same ideological prejudice that refuses to recognize that the Islamic State is Islamic, refuses to recognize that jihad is unique to Islam, refuses to recognize that Christians as religious minorities are being targeted for annihilation, and refuses to recognize that the Christians of the Middle East are ancient peoples who have lived in their communities since the dawn of Christianity, also refuse to recognize the rights of the Jewish people as the indigenous people of the land of Israel.
This is the reason that Western governments, led by the nObama administration, are unwilling to defeat ISIS. This is why they are giving preference to Muslim asylum-seekers, who they are incapable of screening, over Christians, who it is unnecessary to screen.
This is the reason that the same governments are far more willing to attack Jews for living beyond the 1949 armistice lines, in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria – the cradle of Jewish civilization and the heartland of the land of Israel, than they are willing to end their support for the PA which sponsors and celebrates terrorism. This is why the same governments eagerly embrace every allegation of Israeli racism, real or imagined, while they ignore, or even fund racist Palestinian efforts to deny Jewish history, a history which leads to the inevitable conclusion that the Jews are the indigenous people of the land of Israel.
The reason nObama refuses to protect Middle East Christians from extinction is because he cannot rescue them – either on the ground or by ensuring they can flee to safety – without abandoning his ideological faith that the only “natives” of the Middle East are the Muslims.
And now the Christian communities, which like the Jews, predate Islam, are being targeted for eradication.
The ongoing genocide of Middle Eastern Christians at the hands of Sunni jihadists is a moral outrage. Does it also affect Israeli national interests? What do we learn from the indifference of Western governments – led by the nObama administration – to their annihilation? True, after years of deliberately playing down the issue and denying the problem, the nObama administration is finally admitting it exists.
Embarrassed by the US House of Representatives’ unanimous adoption of a resolution last month recognizing that Middle Eastern Christians are being targeted for genocide, the State Department finally acknowledged the obvious on March 25, when Secretary of State John hanoi-Kerry stated that Islamic State is conducting a “genocide of Christians, Yazidis and Shi’ites.”
hanoi-Kerry’s belated move, which State Department lawyers were quick to insist has no operational significance, raises two questions.
First, what took the nObama administration so long? Persecution of Christians in Iraq began immediately after the US-led coalition brought down Saddam Hussein in 2003. With the rise of Islamic State in 2012, the process of destroying the Christian community went into high gear. And now these ancient communities are on the brink of extinction.
In Iraq, Christians comprised 8 percent of the population in 2003. Today less than 1% of Iraqis are Christians. In Syria, the Christian community has lost between half and two-thirds of its members in the past five years.
One of the appalling aspects of ISIS’s deliberate, open targeting of Christians for destruction is how little resistance it has received from local Sunni populations. As Raymond Ibrahim from the David Horowitz Freedom Center has scrupulously documented, the local Sunnis have not stood up for their Christian neighbors, who have lived side-by-side with them for hundreds of years. Rather, in areas that have been conquered by ISIS, the local Sunnis have collaborated with their genocidal masters in raping and murdering Christian neighbors, plundering their property, destroying their churches, and driving them from their ancestral homes.
Although precise data is hard to come by, it is clear that thousands of Christians have been slaughtered. Thousands of Christian women and girls have been sold as sex slaves in ISIS slave markets, subjected to continuous, violent rape and beatings. Nuns and priests have been enslaved, crucified, mutilated, kidnapped and held for ransom, as have lay members of Christian communities. Christians have been burned alive.
For years, the administration said that the persecution doesn’t amount to genocide because according to ISIS’s propaganda, Christians are allowed to remain in their homes if they agree to live as dhimmis – that is, without any human rights, and subjected to confiscatory taxation.
But as Nina Shea from the Hudson Institute has reported, these claims were shown to be false in Mosul, Nineveh and other places where ISIS has claimed that such practices were instituted.
The jihadist genocide of Christians isn’t limited to Iraq and Syria. Boko Haram – ISIS’s affiliate in Nigeria – is undertaking a systematic campaign to annihilate Christianity in Africa. ISIS’s affiliates in Sinai and Libya have similarly targeted Christians, staging mass beheadings and other monstrous acts.
And of course, a region needn’t be under direct ISIS control for Christians to be targeted for destruction. The Easter massacre in Pakistan was further evidence that wherever radical Islamists gain power, they use it to murder Christians.
And as Larry Franklin from the Gatestone Institute noted in a recent article, the exodus of Christians from the Palestinian Authority is the direct consequence of deliberate persecution of Christians by the PA.
Given the prevalence of Christian persecution, why is the West – which is overwhelmingly Christian – so reticent about mentioning it? And why are Western leaders loathe to do anything to stop it? There are two ways to end genocide. First, you can defeat those conducting it on the battlefield.
If you destroy the forces conducting the genocide, then the genocide ends.
The second way you can stop genocide is by evacuating the targeted population and providing its members with refuge.
After stipulating that ISIS is carrying out a genocide, hanoi-Kerry made clear that the US will not defeat ISIS to end it. Instead, hanoi-Kerry said, “We must bear in mind... that the best response to genocide is a reaffirmation of the fundamental right to survive of every group targeted for destruction. What Daesh [ISIS] wants to erase, we must preserve. That requires defeating Daesh, but it also requires the rejection of discrimination and bigotry.”
hanoi-Kerry then explained that the US’s plan is to cultivate the formation of a multicultural society in Syria. Given the brutal nature of the war, hanoi-Kerry’s plan is tantamount to saying the US intends to defeat ISIS and rescue those it is currently exterminating by bringing unicorns and leprechauns to the slave markets of Raqqa. Substantively, hanoi-Kerry’s plan is to deny Christians refuge, and to abandon them to the mercy of their murderers.
While delusional, hanoi-Kerry’s statement was in line with the nObama administration’s timid, feckless military campaign against ISIS. Everyone knows that the US military could take down ISIS in a matter of weeks if nObama ordered it to do so.
But rather than act decisively, the US has limited its operations to timorous aerial bombing.
By conducting a barely there campaign, nObama tells the world that although he will be happy to take credit for any defeat ISIS suffers, he will not allow the US to lead the fight against the jihadist death machine.
As for providing refuge to the populations targeted with genocide, the raw data make clear that nObama does just the opposite. He is providing refuge for Sunni Muslims, who are not being targeted for genocide, which is being conducted by Sunni Muslims.
As Ibrahim has documented, although Christians made up 10% of the Syrian population in 2011, they comprise a mere 2.7% of the Syrian refugees the nObama administration has allowed into the US. And when presidential hopeful Senator Ted Cruz called for the US to provide refuge to Christians, who pose no security threat and are targeted with genocide and persecution while banning Muslim immigration, nObama accused him of bigotry.
Despite the fact that FBI Director James Comey told Congress that the US lacked the capacity to effectively screen Muslims from Syria for ties to jihadist groups, nObama said that a policy of saving those marked for extinction over those who come from the population conducting the genocide is “shameful,” and “not American.”
Beyond refusing to take the necessary steps to ensure that persecuted Christians are rescued from annihilation, the State Department has been rejecting visa requests from Christian activists and leaders from persecuted communities to visit the US to share information about their suffering with the American public. This, at the same time that the administration has welcomed Muslim jihad sympathizers, including Muslim Brotherhood members, to Washington.
For instance, last May, the State Department denied a visa to Sister Diana Momeka, an Iraqi nun and ISIS survivor. Momeka was the only Christian member of a delegation of persecuted minorities. Representatives of every other group received visas. It took a public outcry to force the State Department to reverse its decision.
Also last year, the State Department gave visas to all Muslim regional governors in northern Nigeria to participate in a conference sponsored by the US Institute of Peace. They denied a visa to the region’s only Christian governor, Jonah David Jang. Christian activists alleged that Jang was denied a visa because he spoke up to US officials about anti-Christian persecution in 12 states in northern Nigeria that have instituted Sharia law.
What accounts for this behavior? The answer is not ignorance, but ideologically- motivated bigotry. The Aid to the Church in Need organization explained in its 2015 report on Christian persecution, “Christians have been targeted because... Christianity is seen as a foreign ‘colonial’ import. Christians are seen as linked to the West, which is perceived as corrupt and exploitative.”
In another report, the group explained that the Western media has avoided covering the story of the Islamic genocide of Middle East Christians because of “misplaced embarrassment about the 19th-century colonial powers evangelizing ‘the natives’ in far flung places.”
In other words, Middle Eastern Christians, whose communities predate Islam, are targeted because they are perceived as Western implants.
And the West ignores their suffering, because the Left in the West perceives them as Western implants.
In both cases, prejudices, rooted on the one hand in jihadist Islam, and on the other hand in Western self-hatred and post-colonialism, reach the same bigoted conclusion: the only “authentic” people in the Middle East are Muslims.
Everybody else is a colonial implant. And as such, they deserve what they get.
This then brings us back to Israel, and the Jews.
The same ideological prejudice that refuses to recognize that the Islamic State is Islamic, refuses to recognize that jihad is unique to Islam, refuses to recognize that Christians as religious minorities are being targeted for annihilation, and refuses to recognize that the Christians of the Middle East are ancient peoples who have lived in their communities since the dawn of Christianity, also refuse to recognize the rights of the Jewish people as the indigenous people of the land of Israel.
This is the reason that Western governments, led by the nObama administration, are unwilling to defeat ISIS. This is why they are giving preference to Muslim asylum-seekers, who they are incapable of screening, over Christians, who it is unnecessary to screen.
This is the reason that the same governments are far more willing to attack Jews for living beyond the 1949 armistice lines, in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria – the cradle of Jewish civilization and the heartland of the land of Israel, than they are willing to end their support for the PA which sponsors and celebrates terrorism. This is why the same governments eagerly embrace every allegation of Israeli racism, real or imagined, while they ignore, or even fund racist Palestinian efforts to deny Jewish history, a history which leads to the inevitable conclusion that the Jews are the indigenous people of the land of Israel.
The reason nObama refuses to protect Middle East Christians from extinction is because he cannot rescue them – either on the ground or by ensuring they can flee to safety – without abandoning his ideological faith that the only “natives” of the Middle East are the Muslims.
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