While Prince Charles enjoyed himself  in Saudi Arabia dressed up and posing as a Sunni Arab, real Sunni Arabs were carrying out  human sacrifice in Syria.

If you have the stomach for it, you can see two highly graphic videos of the ritual killings  here at Halal Pork Shop.

In one, bound victims are shot, each getting a bullet in the back of the head, after a prayer is intoned which makes it clear that it is religious human sacrifice.

In the other, the victim has his throat deeply cut, and lives on for a while squirming and gurgling.

The perpetrators proudly recorded their deeds.

(The picture is from The Religion of Peace. Technical difficulties prevent us from reproducing the videos.)

A Palestinian Muslim spells out what is wrong with “the Kerry plan” for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.  It could not be clearer, but we don’t expect Secretary of State John Kerry to understand it. Even if he could and did, we doubt that he’d change or abandon his silly and evil plan, because – plain to see – the intention of Obama and his coven is to destroy the State of Israel.

This is from Gatestone, by Daoud Assaf:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently warned that “the status quo between Israel and the Palestinians” cannot continue, noting that while there is prosperity and momentary security in Israel, it is “an illusion” that is bound to change if [peace] talks flounder. “The risks are very high for Israel,” Kerry said. “People are talking about boycott. That will intensify in the case of failure. We all have a strong interest in this conflict resolution.”

In short, Kerry is threatening Israel with a boycott and even security unrest if it does not accept the peace plan he says he will deliver in two weeks. Is Kerry actually endorsing the anti-Israeli boycott that delegitimizes America’s only stable and democratic ally in the region? Also, what is the peace plan Kerry is so determined to force on the Israelis and Palestinians?

Kerry’s talk of boycotting Israel comes at a time when the anti-Israeli boycott rhetoric is becoming shrill; one day after Kerry’s talk, two major European banks decided on actions against their Israeli counterparts. Sweden’s Nordea Bank, the largest in Scandinavia, asked for “clarifications” from Israel’s Bank Leumi and Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank regarding their activities in the West Bank. Also Denmark’s largest bank, Danske Bank, said on its website that it was boycotting Israel’s Bank Hapoalim for “legal and ethical” reasons, again in reference to its operations in the West Bank.

Recently, the $200 billion Dutch pension fund PGGM also decided to divest from the five largest Israeli banks, ostensibly because of their involvement in the West Bank.

Kerry’s comments were not only a stab in the back that any country would not expect from its closest ally; they also provided support to the enemies of Israel – such as the smiling, racist members of the European Union.

For decades, the EU and many European nations have been secretly funneling hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ euros to organizations that work towards overthrowing Israel. The EU also, despite mountains of evidence, could not even bring itself to declare Iran’s proxy organization, Hizballah, a terrorist group; and if Iran is legitimized, so probably will be Iran’s other proxy terrorist group, Hamas.

Joining this club of racists is the United Nations, whose record of one-sided anti-Israel hostility is so pronounced that even one of its own translators commented on it. This record not only includes the frequent resolutions condemning Israel, as opposed to any other nations that commit far worse human rights violations than those Israel is [falsely] accused of committing, but also the openly racist Durban Conferences, ostensibly organized to counter racism, but which, as anyone can see, in fact promote it.

The cumulative effect of this pile-on against Israel only provides approval for the enemies of Israel to intensify their attacks — including anti-Israeli boycott, divestment and sanctions [BDS] campaigns — even more.

Kerry, and many others in the West, understand perfectly well that boycotting Israel reduces job opportunities not only for Jews, but also for Palestinians who work for in Israeli factories, farms and settlements, inside Israel as well as in the West Bank. The Palestinians who work there often receive ten times the remuneration, as well as better working conditions, than they would find among their own people, as has been revealed recently by the workers at companies that have actually been building real bridges of peace such as SodaStream, rather than organizations that have been sanctimoniously blowing up the bridges for peace, as Oxfam has. As usual, the Europeans know what will happen if there are fewer ways for the Palestinians to earn a decent living, as they knew when they left all their colonies. … The Europeans evidently care more about flagellating Israel than helping Palestinians. …

The question then arises: Why do those in the West who claim such hand-wringing concern for the Palestinians seek to harm Israeli businesses that offer them jobs? Do they forget that the Arabs refused to accept a partition plan in 1948, and started all subsequent wars to prevent Israel’s existence? Do they think that if Israel just withdraws to the 1967 line that the Palestinians will disregard their Charters, which view Israel as one big settlement and which assume a Palestine “from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea”?

In our view, it is past time that Israel set its borders – and they should be from the river to the sea.

In other words, is the Arab-Israeli Conflict — which it is, far more than a Palestinian-Israeli Conflict — actually about territory, or about the existence of Jews who have come home to the land given to them by the Holy Qur’an, Sura 7 [Al-A’raf; “The Heights”] 137: ” And We made those who had been persecuted inherit the eastern and western lands which We had blessed. Thus your Lord’s gracious promise was fulfilled to the children of Israel, for they had endured with patience; and We destroyed all that Pharaoh and his people had wrought, and all that they had built.”

An interesting quotation that, of a sura that most Muslims seem to ignore.

Of course, even though we Muslims might prefer it if the Israelis were someplace else, as a Muslim, I must ask why are Israelis always found guilty for defending themselves? Could it be that the old, politically-incorrect anti-Semitism has now simply been replaced by a new, supposedly politically-correct anti-Israelism?

Also, what is this peace plan Kerry is so determined to force on Israel?

Kerry’s plan, recently outlined in the media, includes: the division of Jerusalem; Israel’s withdrawal from most of the West Bank, while it would retain control over the largest Jewish settlements there; a land swap to compensate the Palestinians for the settlement bloc [one can only imagine the years of wrangling about what a “commensurate piece of land” would consist of in each instance, thereby perpetuating the conflict a few more millennia]; recognition by the Palestinians of Israel as a “Jewish state”, and compensation for Palestinian refugees who would no longer have a “right of return” to Israel.

But it does not include compensation for the Jews who were expelled from Arab lands or forced to flee, and had all their property confiscated.

In addition, the London-based newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, reported on January 8, 2014 that Kerry’s plan actually revolved around solving the Palestinian refugees’ problem through “settling them in Jordan under Jordan’s king and granting the king $55 billion for hosting the Palestinians for five decades.”

And where would they go after that, Mr Kerry?

Actually, that is where they belong. Jordan was created to be Arab Palestine by the British. They took some 80% of the Palestine region over which they were granted a mandate by the League of Nations after World War I,  and handed it to Emir Abdullah, the Hashemite Sharif of Mecca, to be – as “the Emirate of Transjordan” –  an Arab-only area in which no Jews would be allowed to live, although the explicit provision of the Balfour Declaration was that Jews should be “settled closely” on the the land. And it was for that purpose the League of Nations had given Britain the mandate.

A careful look at the [Kerry] plan, however, raises the following issues: 

Palestinian Authority President Abbas has already said he would never recognize Israel as a Jewish state. But the real problem is that even if he did, he or his successor could easily change his mind and retract the recognition of Israel after it had already given back the West Bank …  as in the time-honored tradition of Hudaibiyya which his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, repeatedly invoked in Arabic to justify signing the Oslo Accords.

“Hudaibiyya,” a footnote explains, “is the story of Mohammed’s promise to the tribe of the Qurayesh in Mecca not to attack for ten years; but after assembling a powerful army, Mohammed returned after three years, conquered the tribe, occupied the city and gave tribes’ members the choice of either becoming Muslims, or leaving their homes and going elsewhere.”

So much for treaties, as can presently also be seen in the ongoing Palestinian abrogations of UN Resolutions 242 and 838, as well as of bilateral agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel — again endorsed by Secretary Kerry.

Palestinians also say Abbas does not represent them because he has overstayed his four-year term by six years, and therefore has no legitimacy, or mandate, to sign anything. Abbas would undoubtedly also be regarded by many Palestinian hard-liners as a traitor — as was Egypt’s President, Anwar al Sadat — and almost certainly be assassinated. …

Kerry also wants Israelis, including those who live in settlements, to be surrounded by a Palestinian state. If I were a Jew, I would frankly not want to be living in a tiny country or a settlement surrounded by people who are incited day-in and day-out [by being told that] that their mission in life is to kill you, let alone that the entire country is regarded by many Arabs as one big settlement …  It is bad enough when a country — now home to over a million Arabs, who have all the same opportunities as the Jews — is slandered in a lie that it is [an] apartheid [state], but for a new Palestinian state to be legally born [an] apartheid [state], officially free of Jews, after having had to listen to the international community unjustly hurl that word around all those years — seems both legally and morally indefensible.

Last of all, it is important not to forget that historically, whenever Israel gives land for “peace,” as in Egypt, southern Lebanon and Gaza, instead of rewards it gets concussions. …

Despite everything, the Israeli government has recently exhibited a willingness to accept Kerry’s plan.

As a tactic only, we hope.

The Palestinians have, as usual, rejected the plan: senior Palestinian Authority official Yasser Abed Rabbo called Kerry’s plan “Israeli ideas.” In addition, last month, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told an audience at a conference in Munich he could never agree to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

To this author, Kerry’s peace plan seems to be based on assumptions that are likely not to materialize or … The Palestinians have been offered a state many times since 1947; each time they have rejected the offer. It seems, looked at dispassionately, that they are less interested in having a Palestinian state than in destroying a Jewish state.

At the same time, Kerry’s boycott threats only embolden Israel’s many adversaries, including the Europeans, who seem to enjoy colluding with the Arabs, probably for the money, to launch new BDS campaigns, as they high-handedly compromise the interests and legitimacy of Israel, the only ally on which America can actually depend in the unstable Middle East.

We return to the subject of our yesterday’s post Curious and curiouser. Even our source, DebkaFile, now expresses puzzlement about the story. While it is certain that Israel did intercept and capture a ship carrying Iranian arms, there are things about the event and its aftermath that just don’t add up.

Our sources discount the overblown claims that this unquestioned IDF success in capturing dozens of Syrian-made 302mm rockets carried by the ship saved four million Israelis from attack.

For two years, the IDF refrained from cutting short the incessant stream of mobile Grad rockets and other weapons systems flooding into the Gaza Strip from Libya via Egypt. Those weapons had already imparted to Hamas, Jihad Islami and the al Qaeda affiliates in Sinai the ability to strike Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Rishon Lezion, an ability exhibited during Israel’s 2012 Gaza operation.

Two puzzling questions are raised by the Iranian missile ship episode suggesting that there was more to it than meets the eye.

The capture of a small merchant with a crew of 17 unarmed seamen scarcely warranted a naval commando force of the size employed, especially as it sailed without an Iranian naval escort; nor was there any sign of Iranian naval units based in Port Sudan coming to its rescue.

The original report indicated the size of the force, and the importance attached to the capture:

The operation was carried out under an air umbrella by hundreds of naval commandos without casualties.It was directly commanded by the IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz from high command headquarters and the Navy Chief Maj. Gen Ram Rottberg from a floating command post at sea.

Then there is the second puzzling question, the answer to which would probably explain the first:

It is also strange that, in their comments on the operation, neither Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon nor any Israeli general offered a word of thanks to Washington for its cooperation, after the White House spokesman Jay Carney described how the US military and intelligence had worked with Israel to track the missile ship and were even under orders to arrange its interception, should the Israeli Navy for some reason opt out.

Is this a sign that US cooperation was inconsequential – or even conjured up post factum?

We think it was made up after the event. What we cannot work out is why.

What sense can be made of this story?

Syria flies rockets to Iran: Iran loads them on a ship and sends it sailing down the Gulf, south-west on the Arabian Sea, and north up the Red Sea.

Israel intercepts the ship, commandos board it, find the rockets, re-route the vessel to the Israeli port of Eilat.

Where was it bound for? For whom were the rockets intended? Gaza? How the hell would they get there?

Look at the map showing the path of the arms to the point of interception, search and capture:

Next we are told that the Israelis didn’t accomplish the whole feat alone – gathering the intelligence, setting up the capture. No, suddenly Jay Carney claims that it was a US-Israeli joint venture.

In an unusually frank disclosure, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday night, March 5, that US intelligence services and military had worked with Israel to track the Iranian Panama-flagged ship KLOS C, which was apprehended by Israeli naval commandos on the Red Sea earlier that day carrying missiles for Gaza via Sudan. The ship was boarded by the Israeli elite Shayetet 13 (Flotilla 13) and found to be carrying dozens of 302mm rockets with a range of 150 km made in Syria. It is now on its way to Eilat.

Just how would they get from Port Sudan to Gaza? Through Sinai? Then through tunnels? Isn’t the Egyptian army patrolling Sinai? Hasn’t Egypt closed the arms-smuggling tunnels? Why would Egypt allow arms to reach Hamas, the rulers of Gaza and a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood when the MB is the present Egyptian government’s enemy?

And even more curious, why would Obama suddenly co-operate with Israel against Iran when his whole policy towards those two countries for at least the last four years has been to co-operate with Iran against Israel?

Has he had a sudden change of heart and mind? If so, what will his party, his base, his hurrah-chorus the mainstream media, say to this 180 degree turnabout?

It’s really very hard to believe.

The White House spokesman said that Washington worked with Israeli through intelligence and military channels, and at the national security adviser level, as soon as it knew the shipment was on the move. He said that President Barack Obama also directed the US military to work out contingencies in case it became necessary to intercept the vessel (therebysanctioning military action).

Obama? Military action?

“Our Israeli counterparts ultimately chose to take the lead in interdicting the shipment of illicit arms,” Jay Carney said. …

This was the first time in four years that the US and Israel have collaborated in an operation against Iran – ever since the Stuxnet virus attack in 2010 on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Until now, the Obama administration steadfastly refused to act against Iran for fear of jeopardizing the international diplomatic track for curbing its nuclear program.

The unusual frankness with which the Obama administration announced its coordination with Israel is both dramatic in itself and a road sign pointing the way to a radical change in its Iran policy.

The US and Israel appear to be lining up – in their military policies as well – against the Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah bloc.

This radical turnabout was most probably the high point of the conversation between the US president and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the White House Monday, March 3, after which Netanyahu raised comment by showering Obama with praise during his speech to the AIPAC conference in Washington the next day. …

Whereas  Obama had shown impatience, irritation, and antipathy towards Netanyahu in an interview just one day before the meeting.

US and Israeli intelligence sources report that both countries are braced for a swift and stinging response from Tehran … As Carney put it: “We will continue to stand up to Iran’s support for destabilizing activities in the region in coordination with our partners and allies.These illicit acts are unacceptable to the international community and in gross violation of Iran’s Security Council obligations.”

Israel’s elite Shayetet 13 (Flotilla 13) early Wednesday, March 5, boarded [the] Iranian Panama-registered cargo vessel KLOS C. Concealed in its hold under sacks of cement were dozens of 302mm rockets with a range of 150 kms, manufactured in Syria and destined by Iran for the Gaza Strip after being offloaded in Sudan.

The Israeli commandos seized the vessel in open sea on the maritime border of Sudan and Eritrea, 1500 km south of Israel, and have set it on course for Eilat.

Sudan has [become] in the last two years …  a major Iranian weapons manufacturing and logistic depot, which supplies Syria, Hizballah and Hamas. Port Sudan is the hub for the smuggling of Iranian arms to various Middle East locations.

The IDF [Israeli Defense Force] said the Iranian missile cargo was destined for the Palestinian Hamas which rules the Gaza Strip. If this is so, it would mean that Iran had gone back to arming Hamas with missiles and rockets after a two-year pause during which the Palestinian extremists were cold-shouldered by Tehran for their animosity to Syria’s Bashar Assad. …

[But] it is hard to believe the Assad would consent to relay Syrian-made missiles to this antagonist.

Some Middle East military sources believe the shipment was not destined for Palestinian terrorists for use against Israel, but rather for Muslim Brotherhood activists fighting the Egyptian army from their forward base in the Gaza Strip.

They don’t rule out the possibility of Al Qaeda affiliates fighting in Sinai as being the address. Western intelligence has recorded instances of Iran entering into ad hoc operational collaboration with al Qaeda elements when it suits Tehran’s book. …

The rockets were flown from Syria to Iran, then loaded on [the] ship where they were concealed under sacks of cement inside containers. From the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, the ship headed into the Red Sea bound for Sudan where it was intercepted by Israeli commandos.

The Iranian arms ship’s progress was tracked all the way.

By Israel, apparently. By the US, easily if that’s what Obama wanted. But why suddenly does he want to “jeopardize the international diplomatic track for curbing Iran’s nuclear program“?

Will Jay Carney, standing there among the flying pigs, do something he has never done before – tell the truth and explain everything?

That’s not very likely, but then much is not very likely in these bizarre events.

Pat Condell is as outspoken as ever about his contempt for Islam. Perhaps even more so. We find it therapeutic just to listen to him.

We are in principle against intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. But we are not for isolationism or pacifism – we regard either philosophy as a formula for national suicide. If other countries become belligerent, build up their armed strength, send their warships towards our shores, establish bases in countries on our borders, and declare their aggressive intentions towards us, the politics of those countries become our business. That is happening now. We are under threat – because Obama is deliberately weakening America. And his reaction to the result is to weaken America even more.

The conditions for major war develop much more easily when the U.S. is too weak. They are developing as we speak. 

To a meaningful extent, the significant increase we’ve seen in unrest around the globe since 2010 has been made possible, and inevitable, by the retraction of American power. Even where we still have power in place, it has become increasingly obvious that we aren’t going to use it. 

We quote from a website interestingly named Liberty Unyielding. The article on the extreme folly of the Obama administration’s moves to weaken America is by Commander Jennifer Dyer, now retired from the US navy. (Her own blog is at Theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com):

The collapse of order in the Arab nations in 2011 was the first significant stage of the process. The perception that the United States would do nothing about a Hezbollah coup in Lebanon was tested in January of that year. The perception proved to be true, and when protests erupted in Tunisia and Egypt, for causes both natural and manufactured, a set of radical Islamist actors – the “establishment” Muslim Brotherhood, Sunni jihadists, Iran – saw an opportunity. The establishment Muslim Brotherhood has largely won out in Tunisia, but the battle still rages among these radical actors for Egypt, Syria, and now Iraq. Lebanon is being incrementally sucked into the maelstrom as well.

In multiple venues, Russia has watched the U.S. and the West effectively back Islamists in Russia’s “near abroad”: in Turkey (with support for the now struggling Erdogan government); in the Balkans, especially Bosnia and Kosovo; and in Syria. …

There was a time when the implicit determination of the U.S. to enforce the “Pax Americana” order – the post-World War II alignments of the region – held Russia in check. The Russians still derived some security benefit from that order, after all … It appears to me, however, that 2014 will be the year in which it becomes clear that, according to Russians’ perception, they no longer benefit from the old order. If we’re not going to enforce it, Russia will do what she thinks she has to.

In fact, Moscow’s pushback against the plan for Ukraine to affiliate with the EU constitutes just such a blow for perceived Russian interests. It is of supreme importance for Westerners to not misread the recent developments. The EU and the U.S. did back down when Russia pushed hard last fall. The only ones who didn’t back down were the Ukrainian opposition. I predict Vladimir Putin will try to handle the opposition factions cleverly, as much as he can, and avoid a pitched battle with them if possible. He respects what they are willing to do. But he has no reason to respect Brussels or Washington.

And that means he has more latitude, not less, for going after the regional props to the old order, one by one. As always, Russia’s inevitable competition with China is a major driver, along with Russia’s concern about Islamism on her southern border. The whole Great Crossroads – Southwest Asia, Southeast Europe, Northeast Africa, the waterways that snake through the region – is, if not up for grabs, at least in ferment. Look wherever you like: there are almost no nations where there is not a very present menace from radicalism, or where governments and even borders are not gravely imperiled by internal dissent.

Israel is the chief standout for politically sustainable stability and continuity. Romania and Turkey seem likely to at least retain their constitutional order in the foreseeable future, but Turkey’s geopolitical orientation, in particular, is less certain. Greece and Kosovo – even Bosnia – have serious internal problems. Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia all remain in crisis at various levels. Jordan and Saudi Arabia are relatively stable, and the Arab Persian Gulf states relatively so as well. But their neighborhood is going downhill fast. Iran is riding a wave of radical confidence, and the Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan.

In this tumultuous region, it’s actually a little funny that Pakistan looks stable and staid compared to Iran, Afghanistan, and neighbors west. We can hope that Islamabad’s perceived need to maintain a symmetrical stance against India will keep Pakistan’s loose federation of intransigents federated, and the nukes under central control. But as we move across South Asia, we near another boiling pot. Thailand – long an American ally and pillar of stability in the region – has been rocked in recent months by national unrest of a kind not seen in Southeast Asia for decades. Islamist radicalism is a growing threat in Indonesia, and an unpacified one in the Philippines, after more than a decade of U.S.-Philippines collaboration in fighting it.

And, of course, China is making real, transformative moves against regional security with her proclamations about air space and maritime rights off her southeast coast.

This disruptive process, like the battles for many of the Arab nations, is already underway. We’re not waiting for something to happen; it’s started.

China assumes, quite correctly, that there will be no effective pushback from the United States. But two other nations with power and means will regard it as intolerable for China to dictate conditions in Southeast Asia: Japan and Russia. The dance of realignment among these nations has implications for everyone in Central Asia and the Far East. The day may be on the horizon sooner than we think when maintaining a divided Korea no longer makes sense to at least one of the major players. The day is already here when Chinese activities in Central Asia are alarming the whole neighborhood, just as Chinese actions are in the South China Sea. …

Russia and Iran are advancing on the US through Central America:

It’s no accident that as radical leftism creeps across Central America (falsely laying claim to a noble “Bolivarian” political mantle), the maritime dispute between Nicaragua and American ally Colombia heats up – and Russia shows up to back Nicaragua and Venezuela – and so does Iran – and unrest turns into shooting and government brutality and violence in Venezuela – and Hezbollah shows up there to openly support the radical, repressive Maduro government.

Now Iran has a naval supply ship headed for Central America, very possibly with a cargo of arms that are not only prohibited by UN sanction, but capable of reaching the United States if launched from a Central American nation or Cuba.

We’re not still waiting for the shocks to start to the old order. They’ve already started. I haven’t surveyed even the half of what there is to talk about …

She looks at the latest defense cuts with dismay and considers what the consequences will be:

This is the world in which the United States plans to reduce our army to its lowest level since before World War II, and eliminate or put in storage much of its capabilities for heavy operations abroad (e.g., getting rid of the A-10 Warthogs, moving Blackhawk helicopters into the National Guard). It’s in this world that DOD proposes to cease operating half of our Navy cruisers, while delaying delivery of the carrier-based F-35 strike-fighter to the Navy and Marine Corps. These cutbacks come on top of cuts already made to training and maintenance expenditures in the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force that will affect unit readiness for years to come. …

Then comes what should be a shocking observation:

By cutting back on defense so drastically, America is deciding, in essence, to “fight fair”: to give whatever opponents emerge more of a chance to kill our soldiers, damage our interests, and drag out conflicts. …

That would be hard to believe of any American leadership – until now. It is ludicrous. Worse, it is lunatic. But Obama has never concealed or disguised his wish to weaken America’s military capacity.

The decision “to further limit our capabilities to use power in politically relevant ways” will result in “even more global unrest: more conflict, more shooting, more blood, more extortion and political thuggery menacing civil life in the world’s poorer and more vulnerable nations”, and that cannot be good for America. The point is that –

These unpleasant trends will spill over into civil life in the wealthier nations soon enough …

As it has, she points out, in Ukraine, Thailand, and Venezuela, “whether directly or through second-order consequences”.

Peace and freedom have to be tended constantly; they are not the natural state of geopolitical indiscipline, but its antithesis. …

We’re extraordinarily unprepared for the world that is shaping up around us. …

[And] a world that doesn’t want quiescent trade conditions, tolerance of dissent, the open flow of ideas, and mutual agreements, peacefully arrived at, will not have them.

That’s the world we are sentencing ourselves, for now, to live in. Perhaps we will learn from the consequences how to think again: about what it takes to guard freedom, and indeed, about what freedom actually is. 

It is Obama who needs to think again, but there is no reason to hope that he will. It could hardly be more obvious that he does not care for freedom.

The State Department has spent millions of taxpayers’ dollars acquiring Art. That is to say, paying for objects that its resident or consultant aesthetes swear are works of Art, worth every penny.

The acquisitions were apparently a priority for Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State. If you would see her monument, tour US embassies and look about you.

Fashionable Art doesn’t come cheap. So there was no money left to pay for such a humdrum thing as effective protection of the US diplomatic and CIA missions in Benghazi. Denied the security they needed, four Americans, including the ambassador, were killed there by savage jihadis. Well – Hillary might say – there has to be human sacrifice on the altar of Art, it makes all the difference, and if you don’t understand that, you are a philistine bourgeois.

Look on the bright side. The Art is displayed in many a US embassy. Americans can be proud.

In London, there’s a granite wall built by Sean Scully that cost $1million. We couldn’t find a picture of it, but it’s like this one displayed in an art gallery.

Daniel Greenfield illustrates an article on the subject – which inspired this post – with these pictures of works by Cy Twombly. The  top one is at the embassy in Rome.  

From his text:   

Beijing [embassy] contains $23 million worth of art. Bern has $1.2 million and Luxembourg has $2.2 million.

And here is the grave of Ambassador Stevens, murdered at Benghazi. We don’t know how much it cost, or who paid for it.

*

Post Script: Here is some wall art that really has meaning. The wall is part of the US mission in Benghazi. The paint is blood. A hand put it there the night of the attack. It might have been the hand of Ambassador Stevens himself – or of one of his brutal killers. One does not have to read Arabic to know who signed in for the event on the other wall.

(Hat-tip: our reader and commenter donl)

Have you wondered why Muslim terrorists in Nigeria, calling themselves Boko Haram (which means “book-learning, ie Western education, is against the will of Allah and so is forbidden”), are slaughtering Christians, hacking them to death with machetes, gunning them down, throwing their children on to bonfires, by the hundred, by the thousand, and – they intend – by the million?

The explanation is given in an article by Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch:

Jama’atu Ahlus Sunnati Lidda’awati Wal Jihad [the official name of Boko Haram] means “the Party of the People of the Sunnah for Dawah and Jihad”.

[It’s leader] Shekau clearly is motivated entirely by Islamic principles, and he thinks shedding Infidel blood is a pleasure, that democracy is incompatible with Islam, and that he and his group must commit murder until Islamic law is established in Nigeria.

Where did he get these ideas? What programs do mosques and Islamic schools in the West have in place to teach against this understanding of Islam they ostensibly reject? Why, none. Now, why is that?

Spencer quotes Ameh Comrade Godwin’s transcription from a video, at the Daily Post:

Leader of the Jama’atu Ahlus Sunnati Lidda’awati Wal Jihad (otherwise known as Boko Haram), Abubakar Shekau, has vowed to launch more attacks on Nigeria and Nigerians.

This is coming barely 73 hours after its members wasted lives in renewed attacks in Adamawa and Borno States.

He said the state of emergency currently imposed on Adamawa, Borno and Yobe State would not prevent them from carrying out their attacks.

Shekau called on his members in other states, particularly Kano, to attack civilians and government institutions.

The full text of his 28-minute video, delivered in Hausa, reads thus:

My brethren, you should hold on to your weapons and continue fighting. Let them understand that our work is not confined to Yobe, Borno and Adamawa [states]. Make them understand that we are not restricted by emergency rule. They should understand we are under the canopy of Allah. This is the beginning. Yes, this is the beginning. We, Jama’atu Ahlus sunnati Lidda’awati Wal Jihad, are fighting Christians wherever we meet them and those who believe in democracy, those who pursue Western education wherever we meet them. By Allah, we will kill whoever practices Democracy. And you the infidels of Rivers state, Niger (Delta), the town of [President Goodluck] Jonathan, Shekau is talking to you. Shekau is talking to you, that small boy that has become the nightmare of infidels is talking to you. Oh you the leader of the Niger Delta, you will soon see your refinery destroyed. You will in the incoming days see your refinery you are boasting about bombed. Our refinery is Allah. Niger-Delta you are in trouble. Jonathan you are in trouble. Banki Moon [Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the UN] you are in trouble. Benjamin Natanyahu you are in trouble. Queen Elizabeth, you are in trouble.  Babangida, Kwankwaso, Shekarau, Kashim, Buhari, you are in trouble. Yahaya Jingir, the cleric of Jos, the advocate of ‘Boko Halal’ [‘Book-learning is blessed and permitted’], right? We are Boko Haram, you are Boko Halal. You will see, bastard. We killed Albani of Zaria. We killed Albani of Zaria. Shekau killed Albani of Zaria.Tomorrow he will kill Jingir, the day after tomorrow he will kill Dapchia, the next day he will kill Wapchama, next he will kill Shehu of Borno, Ado Bayero. We rebel against you, between us and you is enmity and rancor until you believe only in Allah. This is from the Qur’an, in which Abraham says to his pagan relatives: “We have rejected you, and there has arisen, between us and you, enmity and hatred for ever, unless ye believe in Allah and Him alone” (60:4). The reason why I will kill you is you are infidels, you follow Democracy. Whoever follows Democracy is an infidel. This is Shekau, this is why I’m in enmity with you. Buhari is an infidel, Babangida is an infidel, Atiku is an infidel, late Yar’adua was an infidel, Shehu of Borno is an infidel. You are all infidels. What makes you infidels is Democracy and constitution and western education. I therefore call on brethren in Kano to rise up and replicate the Baga attack. All these infidels we are the ones killing them. We enjoy shedding their blood. The Koran must be supreme, we must establish Islam in this country, not only in Borno. We will henceforth destroy any schools wherever we see them.

You see now? Perfectly clear, isn’t it? It’s because of the religion. 

Islam requires literacy to be stamped out. The world will then be the good place Allah wants it to be.

So stop carping about those dismembered bodies, those burnt babies, the pools of blood in those churches and villages.

Or are you – ugh! – an Islamophobe?

*

News just in Wednesday 2/26/2014 – Reuters reporting :

Gunmen from Islamist group Boko Haram shot or burned to death 59 pupils in a boarding school in northeast Nigeria overnight, a hospital official and security forces said on Tuesday.

“Some of the students’ bodies were burned to ashes,” Police Commissioner Sanusi Rufai said of the attack on the Federal Government college of Buni Yadi, a secondary school in Yobe state, near the state’s capital city of Damaturu.

Schoolboys, all of them.

What a rotten job the official representatives of Jewish communities in Western countries are doing!

British Jews are still so grateful to Oliver Cromwell for letting them into the country some 350 years ago, that they’d rather put up with anything – slander, humiliation, threats, even physical attack – than complain. Their official representatives play along with the phony “interfaith” racket in the stubborn (but forlorn) hope that it will soften Islamic hatred of them, although that hatred is ineradicably doctrinal as well as political. If it wasn’t for the excellent institution Stand For Peace under the inspired directorship of  Sam Westrop exposing the racket for what it is, there would hardly be any resistance at all to the intensifying anti-Semitism and advancing stealth-jihad in the United Kingdom.

And it’s far worse in France and Sweden.

How well are “official Jews” doing to earn their salaries in Canada and the US?

Abraham Foxman recently announced after 27 years steering the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) he will retire next year. How well has he done?

Andrew Bostom, writing at American Thinker, said of Foxman in 2011 that he is –

… the most blindly agenda-driven organizational Jewish “leader.” The Anti-Defamation League (ADL)’s Foxman sprays defamatory charges – rooted in willful ignorance – against all those legitimately concerned with the ceaseless efforts of mainstream institutional American Islam to insinuate Sharia mores and jurisdiction into US society.

Today Mark Steyn says what needs to be said about this self-blinkered Official Jew:

Canada’s “official Jews” [are] among the most useless people on the planet. Under Bernie Farber, for example, the Canadian Jewish Congress was obsessive about the last three neo-Nazi losers living in their mum’s basement and contributing unread blog posts to obscure “white supremacist” websites. But it had nothing to say about the broad-daylight mass Jew-hatred and, indeed, brazen incitement to murder of large groups of people parading through downtown Calgary, Toronto and Montreal. Farber & Co were cardboard warriors, capable only of fighting the battles others had already won long ago.

And so it goes for America’s “official Jews”:

Anti-Defamation League chief Abe Foxman believes that anti-Semitism is at its height since the Holocaust, and threatens the lives of Jews all around the world.

He got that right. He got everything else wrong:

Europe is where the Jewish people have paid the highest price for anti-Semitism, and it’s sort of an old-new phenomenon,” he said, defining it as “nationalists, anti-government people, neo-fascists, neo-Nazis of anti-immigration and anti-government coming together with a glue and cement of anti-Semitism. I think it’s a serious threat to Jewish life.

Is it really possible in 2014 even for the capo di tutti capi of official Jews to be so blind? Foxman is either the most wicked dissembler or, to be more charitable, he reflects merely the blinkered parochialism of America’s liberal Jewish elites. Unlike the head of the ADL, I have no special interest in or responsibility for the welfare of the Jewish people, but I have been to Toulouse, Antwerp, Malmö and the old Jewish East End of London, and I know what I have seen there.

I would like Foxman to go to Toulouse, a city the size of Jacksonville, Florida, where in recent years one synagogue has been firebombed, another set alight when two burning cars were driven into it, a third burgled and “Dirty Jews” scrawled on the ark housing the Torah, where a kosher butcher’s was strafed with gunfire, and a Jewish sports association attacked with Molotov cocktails, and three Jewish children murdered outside their grade school, I would like Foxman to go to Toulouse and tell any Jew he finds there (they are advised by their rabbis not to wear identifying marks of their faith) that it’s all the work of “anti-government people”.

I would like him to go to Malmö – once the first Christian city in Norway and soon to be the first Muslim city in Sweden – and tell such Jews as he can find (they are abandoning the city) that the desecration of Jewish cemeteries and the ugly reinforced steel doors at the Jewish kindergarten and the rocket-proof glass in the windows of the synagogue are all the fault of “neo-Nazis”. Sweden is renowned for its neo-Nazis, isn’t it? Doubtless they were the reason why a year or two back at the Davis Cup the Israeli tennis players had to play their match behind closed doors, in a Baltiska Hallen stadium without a single spectator. For had they opened the doors, the seats would have filled up with Swedish “nationalists” and Swedish “neo-fascists” and all hell would have broken loose.

I would like Abe Foxman to go to Tower Hamlets in London’s East End, where on Holocaust Memorial Day a couple of years ago a visiting New Yorker had to be taken to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel after a Jewish tour group was pelted with stones by a group jeering “If you go any further, you’ll die.” I would like Foxman to tell those Jews that their attackers were an “anti-immigration” group.

I would like him to go to Villiers-le-Bel, where a Jewish girl was brutally attacked by a gang shouting “Jews must die!”, or to Odense, where the headmaster says his school can no longer take Jewish pupils for security reasons, and tell them it’s the fault of Danish “nationalists” and French “neo-Nazis”.

But I don’t suppose Abe Foxman will go anywhere outside his bubble, will he? Is it really too much to expect him somewhere in that long laundry list of antiquated irrelevances to utter the “M” word? As Laura Rosen Cohen writes of this contemptible nothing of a man:

Shame on you, Abraham Foxman. Shame on you.

These Jews are a danger to the Jewish people.

Their denial is so thick and so amoral that it is difficult sometimes to find the words to express my utter disgust and contempt.

By fighting the last war against the German Nazis over and over in their heads, they endanger living Jews. But they will never learn.

It’s so cozy to be a professional Jew, fighting the ghosts of WW2 over and over and never facing the real threats to the Jewish people.

Though the Holocaust must never be forgotten, it must not so obsess generation after generation that they fail to see what is happening all about them. 

Jewish groups missed the threat 80 years ago, too. But why wouldn’t they? There’d always been anti-Semitism in Europe: You can’t buy property here, you can’t stand for parliament there, and everywhere always a certain sliver of people who just don’t want to be around Jews. But it didn’t turn genocidal until the 1930s, and, after a millennium of low-level Jew hate, you can understand why nobody saw it coming.

But the violent, murderous phase of the new Jew-hatred is already here – in the emergency ward of the Royal London Hospital; in the corpse-strewn schoolyard of Toulouse; in the synagogue in Brussels set alight by Molotov cocktails; in a pleasant Jewish home in Antwerp, where burning rags were pushed through the mail flap; at the RER train station in Auber, where a commuter was savagely assaulted by a mob taunting, “Palestine will kill the Jews”; in the suburban home where a young Frenchman was tortured to death over three weeks while his family listened via phone to his howls of agony as his captors chanted from the Koran; in the stairwell of the apartment house where a Paris disc-jockey had his throat slit, his eyes gouged out, and his face ripped off by a neighbor who crowed, “I have killed my Jew!” 

Those “anti-government people” get around, don’t they? The groups who perpetrate this violence come from a minority community – larger than the Jews but not yet larger than everyone else. They are telling you what they will do when they have the numbers to do it. …

Abe Foxman has not had his eyes gouged out, but he is blind, utterly blind.

Continuing the theme of the post immediately below, here’s a story of how the big Shiite terrorist organization Hizballah is terrified of being attacked by terrorists.

This comes from DebkaFile:

The Lebanese Shiite Hizballah, itself a listed terrorist group, was forced Thursday, Feb. 13 to cancel its most solemn annual event in memory of fabled “special security chief” Imad Mughniyeh, over an inability to keep the event safe from terrorist attacks. …

Hizballah and its Shiite following in Lebanon live in fear of devastating suicide bombing attacks by al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists. Since last July, they have staged 10 attacks and claimed scores of lives in Beirut and other parts of Lebanon over Hizballah’s participation in the Syrian war. In a single attack last year, the bombing of the Iranian embassy, 25 people were killed.

Its Syrian expedition has left the Hizballah short of manpower for self-protection. This situation has become more acute since an intelligence tip was received disclosing that the terrorists were now gunning for Nasrallah [present leader of Hizballah] and other top operatives. This has necessitated doubling up security on their persons.

A special counterterrorism command center has begun operating at the Iranian embassy in Beirut. …

This center was set up by a high-ranking Iranian intelligence delegation … [which] had arrived in Beirut to tackle the terrorist threats to their Lebanese proxy. It was composed of senior IRGC Al Qods Brigades [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Jerusalem Brigades] operatives and high officials of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).

The decision to cancel the Mughniyeh memorial assembly was taken by the new counterterrorism center at the Iranian embassy for four reasons:

1. Iranian undercover agents in Syria discovered that al Qaeda elements were plotting to hit the assembly for mass casualties.

2. This information was confirmed Wednesday, Feb. 12, by three women captured in the Lebanese Beqaa on their way to conduct suicide bombings at the Beirut event. Under interrogation, the captives revealed that several more female suicide bombers were heading for Shiite targets across Lebanon.

3. Hizballah is in the middle of a campaign to raise additional Shiite volunteers for the different Syrian warfronts … A new wave of anti-Shiite terrorism in Lebanon would quickly derail this effort, especially in view of the hundreds of Hizballah fighters who have already laid down their lives in Syria. The organization is intent on concealing the real figure, but cannot hide all the funerals.

4. Its Iranian bosses understand that … Hizballah’s manpower resources cannot be stretched both for providing security at home and for augmenting its fighting personnel input for the Syrian war.