by Phyllis Chesler

I disagree with my colleague Jonathan Kay’s recent article “American super-hawks demand to know: ‘Are you Jew enough?’”

First, let me thank him for referring to me as “a feminist-turned anti-Islamist” and not as “anti-Muslim” or as an “Islamophobe.” However, in becoming an “anti-Islamist” I did not check my feminist credentials at the door; my work on honour-based violence, including honour killing among Muslims and Hindus (mainly in India) is pure feminist work. The victims are primarily women of colour, and yes, in the West, they are primarily Muslims. I am championing their cause just as I have championed the cause of non-Muslim Western women. I work with Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents who share my Enlightenment values, a single universal standard of human rights, and who, like me, have taken a stand against the persecution of girls, women, homosexuals, free thinkers and pro-Israel advocates in the Muslim world.

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by Alexander H. Joffe*

The recent boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) event at Brooklyn College featuring professional Palestinian Omar Barghouti and celebrity anti-Israel academic Judith Butler was true to form. A dual purpose was served. For one, students and staff were treated to calls for the destruction of Israel, conducted in a quasi-academic setting, with the implicit endorsement of the institution. Second, as always, trap was sprung on opponents of such campus abuses. Having successfully planned the event and represented it as an intellectual exploration of the one state solution, in which Israel is made extinct, the inevitable complaints regarding its one-sidedness and borderline antisemitism were met with the usual howls of censorship and demands for academic freedom. Politicians became involved on both sides. City Council members were opposed to the campus and tax dollars supporting an anti-Israel recruitment rally. Mayor Bloomberg then came out in favor, and with characteristic tact and insight, condemned the event’s content and scolded the presumably close-minded opponents, wittily telling them to apply to school in North Korea.

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

Reports of Christian persecution by Muslims around the world during the month of November include (but are not limited to) the following accounts. They are listed by form of persecution, and in country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity:

Church Attacks

Egypt: Following Friday afternoon prayers in northern Cairo, Salafi Muslims went to the construction site of a Coptic Orthodox Church service center, hanging a sign that read, “Masjed El Rahman,” or “Mosque of the Merciful.” They claimed that the church did not have the necessary permits to exist, even though local officials confirmed the church did have them. The Salafis occupied the construction center for some 24 hours. One of them reportedly said: “We have a small mosque at the end of the street and the presence of a church here will offend us.”

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by Steven Shamrak

Sometimes I am criticized for using the description “international anti-Semites” too often. I do substitute it with the words “bigots” or “idiots” from time to time. I shall continue to call things by their true names. Regardless of the terminology, there are many facts pertaining to unfair, genocidal and prejudicial treatment of Jews even during recent history that support my use of the term “international anti-Semites:”

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by Michael M. Gunter*

Shortly after the World War II, genocide was legally defined by the U.N. Genocide Convention as “any… acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”[1] The key word from the perspective of this article is “intent.” For while nobody can deny the disaster wrought on the Armenians by the 1915 deportations and massacres, the question is whether or not it can be defined as genocide—arguably the most heinous crime imaginable.

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by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi*

Recently a video emerged in which pro-Assad militiamen can be seen beating and shooting a prisoner to death. What might seem remarkable is that the militiamen are insulting Islam in the process, mocking the takbir — that is, the cry of “Allahu akbar” — the Islamic conception of paradise for martyrs. In the first half of the video, one of the executioners — disparaging Muhammad — shouts, “F—k you and your prophet.” Later, another of them yells, “Damn your God.”

It may come across as odd that pro-Assad militiamen would disparage the Islamic religion in such a crude manner, but it should be noted that there are many videos like this in which the anti-Islamic sentiment takes a more subtle form.

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by David J. Rusin*

A detailed analysis of FBI statistics covering ten full calendar years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks reveals that, on a per capita basis, American Muslims, contrary to spin, have been subjected to hate crimes less often than other prominent minorities. From 2002 to 2011, Muslims are estimated to have suffered hate crimes at a frequency of 6.0 incidents per 100,000 per year — 10 percent lower than blacks (6.7), 48 percent lower than homosexuals and bisexuals (11.5), and 59 percent lower than Jews (14.8). Americans should keep these numbers in mind whenever Islamists attempt to silence critics by invoking Muslim victimhood.

The federal government defines a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin, or sexual orientation.” Though statutes mandating harsher punishments for hatred-inspired acts raise the specter of thought crimes, emphasize group identity over the individual, and seemingly favor certain victims over others, the FBI’s tracking of such deeds shines important light on the state of the nation. Annual reports assembled from local law enforcement data are accessible on the website of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Especially useful is Table 1 of each compilation, which summarizes the number of incidents, offenses, victims, and known offenders for hate crimes committed against members of different groups.

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by Efraim Karsh*

October 1, 2000, was a watershed in Arab-Jewish relations in the state of Israel. On that day, as most Israelis were celebrating the Jewish new year, their Arab compatriots unleashed a tidal wave of violence in support of the ‘al-Aqsa intifada’, an all out war of terror launched by Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority a couple of days earlier.

For full ten days, Israeli Arabs blocked several main roads, cutting off Jewish localities and forcing some of them to defend against armed assaults by neighbours with whom they had maintained cordial relations for decades. Scores of Jewish families spending the holiday season in the Galilee found themselves attacked by frenzied Arab mobs wielding Molotov cocktails, ball bearings in slingshots, stones, even firearms. Stores, post offices, and other public places were ransacked as rioters clashed with police. Forests were set ablaze. In Nazareth, thousands of Arabs marched in the streets chanting, ‘With our souls and our blood we will redeem Palestine’. Jaffa and Haifa, the showcases of Arab-Jewish coexistence, were rocked by violence and vandalism.

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By Gary Gerofsky

Like the name “Kennedy” in the USA, the name “Trudeau” evokes warm feelings and fond memories within the “liberal” sector of Canadian society. They think of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau as an intellectual playboy bachelor who eventually married a young, pot-smoking hippy-chick to start a family on Parliament Hill. On a more salient note, they also see him as a legal expert and visionary who patriated the Canadian Constitution, implemented multiculturalism, and promoted state-directed, French-language legislation across the country at great cost. For people who actually lived through the Trudeau era and those who are able to detach themselves from the make-belief world of leftism, the Trudeau years meant deficits, watching Trudeau visit his leftist friends such as Fidel Castro, tolerating arrogant leadership, and observing Trudeau’s use of the f-bomb against Canada’s western population as he plundered their energy reserves for the benefit of elites in Quebec and Ontario. Looking at his pragmatic side, Trudeau was hated in Quebec because he was a federalist (actually a progenitor of Quebec-centrism across Canada) who stood against the militant Separatists. He effectively dealt with nascent terrorism from Quebec by putting into place the War Measures Act to prevent further bloodshed (carried out by the Front de libération du Québec [FLQ] during the October Crisis of 1970) — beyond the kidnapping and murder of the Deputy Premier of Quebec, Pierre Laporte, and the kidnapping of British diplomat James Cross.

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

These reports of the persecution of Christians by Muslims around the world during the month of October include (but are not limited to) the following accounts, listed by form of persecution, and by country, in alphabetical order—not according to severity.

Church Attacks

Canada: As happens regularly in Egypt (see below), a Molotov cocktail was hurled through the window of a newly opened Coptic church near Toronto. Unlike in Egypt, however, firefighters came quickly and little damage was done: “Police have no suspects or motive in the incident.”

Egypt: A Muslim mob, consisting mostly of Salafis, surrounded St. George Church in the Beni Suef Governorate. Armed with batons, they assaulted Christians as they exited the church after Sunday mass; five were hospitalized with broken limbs. The Salafi grievance is that Christians from neighboring villages, who have no churches to serve them, are traveling and attending St. George. The priest could not leave the church for hours after the mass, even though he contacted the police; they came only after a prominent Coptic lawyer complained to the Ministry of the Interior concerning the lack of response from police. “I want the whole world to know,” he said, “that a priest and his congregation are presently held captive in their church, afraid of the Salafi Muslims surrounding the church.” Separately, a group of Muslims, led by Mostafa Kamel, a prosecutor at the Alexandria Criminal Court, broke into the Church of St. Mary in Rashid near Alexandria and proceeded to destroy its altar, on claims that he bought the 9^th century church; in fact it had earlier been sold to the Copts by the Greeks, due to the Greeks’ dwindling numbers in Egypt. Two priests, Fr. Maximos and Fr. Luke, rushed to the police station to try to bring the police to help. Kamel and his two sons also came to the police station, where they openly threatened to kill the two priests and their lawyer. “We stayed at the police station for over six hours with the police, “Fr. Maximos said, “begging prosecutor Kamel and his two sons not to demolish the church.” Fr. Luke said that the prosecutor had so far lost all the cases he brought against the church, “So when this route failed, he tried taking the matter into his own hands.”

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Reproduced with permission of HonestReporting:

Much of the media covered the weekend’s events in Gaza, where Hamas leader Khaled Meshal commemorated his terror organization’s 25th anniversary.

What is Hamas really celebrating? Here are 25 facts to remind you:

1. Hamas takes its name from an acronym that means “Islamic Resistance Movement” in Arabic.

2. Hamas refuses to recognize the State of Israel’s right to exist as an independent, sovereign nation, and is totally opposed to any agreement or arrangement that would recognize its right to exist. At the beginning of its charter there is a quotation attributed to Hassan Al-Bana, the Muslim Brotherhood’s founder, that “Israel will arise and continue to exist until Islam wipes it out, as it wiped out what went before.”

3. Hamas is committed to jihad. Its charter stresses the importance of jihad (holy war) as the main means for the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) to achieve its goals: An uncompromising jihad must be waged against Israel. Jihad is the personal duty of every Muslim.

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By Barry Rubin

The Palestinian leadership, abetted by many Western governments, has now torn up every agreement it made with Israel. Once the efforts of two decades of negotiations — including irrevocable Israeli compromises in giving the Palestinian Authority control over territory, its own armed forces, dismantling settlements, and permitting billions of dollars of foreign aid to the Palestinians — were destroyed, the world has decided to focus the blame on Israel approving the construction of 3000 apartments.

In 1993, Israel signed an agreement with the PLO to make peace in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The accord, known as the Oslo agreement, included the following passage in Article 31:

“Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.”

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By Fern Sidman

The Swedish culture and news magazine, Filter, ran a 17-page article in its most recent issue in an apparent attempt to revive medieval anti-Semitic blood libels. The article vindicated the author of a 2009 polemical piece that charged Israel with, “stealing human organs,” from young Palestinian men, and then killing them.

Originally appearing in another Swedish magazine called, Aftonbladet, author Donald Boström leveled accusations at the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for purportedly absconding with human organs belonging to 69 Palestinian men in the early 1990s. Asserting that the IDF conducted, “macabre operations,” in the West Bank, Boström told his readers that these unnamed Palestinian men in the, “occupied territories,” were, “being captured and tortured, subjected to involuntary autopsies, and then robbed of their organs before being killed.”

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by Steven J. Rosen*

Much has been made of the Palestinian exodus of 1948. Yet during their decades of dispersal, the Palestinians have experienced no less traumatic ordeals at the hands of their Arab brothers. As early as the mid-1950s, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Libya expelled striking Palestinian workers. In 1970, Jordan expelled some 20,000 Palestinians and demolished their camps; in 1994-95, Libya expelled tens of thousands of long-term Palestinian residents in response to the Oslo process; and after the 2003 Iraq war, some 21,000 Palestinians fled the country in response to a systematic terror and persecution campaign. As recently as 2007, Beirut effectively displaced 31,400 Palestinian refugees when the Lebanese army destroyed the Nahr el Bared refugee camp during fighting between the militant Fatal al-Islam group and the Lebanese army.[1]

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By Fern Sidman

On Monday, November 26, far-right member of Hungary’s parliament, Marton Gyongyosi, sent shock waves around the world when he told the country’s legislative body that a, “list of Jews,” who he believes pose a, “national security risk,” should be compiled.

Gyongyosi, 35, the leader of the Jobbik party, which is the third-largest opposition party in the Hungarian parliament, voiced these sentiments during a parliamentary debate following a discussion of the recent fighting in Gaza, when the Hamas terrorist organization launched a week-long war against Israel. According to published reports, Foreign Ministry State Secretary Zsolt Nemeth said Budapest favored a peaceful resolution to the Middle East conflict as it would benefit Jews and Palestinians in Hungary and Israelis of Hungarian descent.

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