The siege of London: inside the gates

The New Neo Posted on by

Islam has long been a religion determined to expand to encompass the world. Initially that was done mostly by the sword, and Muslims had their sights on Europe. Spain was an early target and a successful one, and they controlled that area for many hundreds of years, whereas the later Muslim expansion from the east was only stopped at Vienna in 1683.

In recent years the conquest of Europe has been “soft.” No Muslim country could conquer Europe through regulation warfare. Some of the Muslim arrivals in recent years are just people looking for a better way of life. But some – and the numbers are not small – are determined to bring their former way of life to their new home.

Right now England seems to be losing and even seems to have lost the battle. I recommend two articles about that. The first appears in Commentary and is written by Seth Mandel; the second is by Melanie Phillips and is at her Substack.

The occasion was a vote on whether to call for a ceasefire in the war in Gaza. Some parliamentary rules were abandoned in order to protect members from the jihadi mob. From Mandel’s article:

Members of the Tories and SNP walked out. The speaker found himself fighting to keep his job, offering emotional apologies. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak scolded the cowards of the Commons: “I think the important point here is that we should never let extremists intimidate us into changing the way in which Parliament works. Parliament is an important place for us to have these debates. And just because some people may want to stifle that with intimidation or aggressive behavior, we should not bend to that and change how Parliament works. That’s a very slippery slope.”

But a Jewish member of parliament delivered some harsh truths on Thursday. “If we have a rerun of the debate we had yesterday, we will have exactly the same thing happen again, which is that members will not vote with their hearts because they are frightened and they are scared,” Tory MP Andrew Percy said on the House floor. “And what do we expect? For months I’ve been standing up here talking about the people on our streets demanding death to Jews, demanding jihad, demanding intifadas as the police stand by and allow that to happen.”

Percy then called attention to something that had happened the night before, an episode both deeply shameful to Britain and chillingly dystopian. Pro-Hamas protesters projected the genocidal slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” onto parliament’s Elizabeth Tower, better known as Big Ben.

“This is going to continue happening, because we’re not dealing with it,” Percy admonished.

And Melanie Phillips writes:

Parliamentary rules were torn up and democratic debate scrapped under the pressure of threats to murder British members of parliament in connection with a foreign war, as I commented here.

While the mob in Parliament Square waved a phalanx of Palestinian flags and bayed abuse of Israel, the words “from river to sea” were projected onto parliament’s Elizabeth Tower, or “Big Ben”.

The symbolism was devastating and appalling. The slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is the infamous cry, by those waging Islamic holy war and their western supporters, for the destruction of Israel and the Jews within it. Yet it was being projected onto the structure that symbolises democracy and the nation. No less terrible than using parliament to stage a call for the genocide of the Jews, this was also a gloating statement that the Islamists were now in control of Britain. …

On Saturday, the police closed Tower Bridge for an hour as the “ceasefire now” mob blocked traffic and let off flares.

And the police stood back and let this happen — even though they have legal powers to prevent such “disruption to the life of the community”, just as they have powers to prevent demonstrators from screaming “death to the Jews” or “globalise the intifada” as they have done every week since the October 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel.

Criticised for standing by while “from river to sea” was projected onto parliament, the police responded:

“This is a chant that has been frequently heard at pro-Palestinian demonstrations or many years and we are aware of the strength of feeling in relation to it. While there are scenarios where chanting or using these words could be unlawful depending on the specific location for context, its use in a wider public protest setting such as [Wednesday] might is not a criminal offence.”

Does that last bit sound familiar? Does it not greatly resemble what the infamous three US elite college presidents said in our own Congress?

The British stood up to the Nazis with great courage. But those days are gone – and besides, this group advocating death to the Jews are not in a distant country dropping bombs on Britain; they are residents of Britain and very numerous. Britain has less robust laws than ours protecting free speech, but it nevertheless has them and the jihadi supporters are counting on those laws to protect them – plus of course fear. They mean to intimidate and they have succeeded in doing so.

The threats are also reminiscent of Nazis prior to World War II in Germany itself during the early 1930s, when the Reichstag still existed as a somewhat-functioning legislative body. They created a violent and intimidating atmosphere for members of the Reichstag. Now, in Britain, according to Mandel’s piece:

“I will defend every member in this House. Every member matters to me in this House,” Speaker Lindsay Hoyle explained. “And it has been said, both sides, I never, ever want to go through a situation where I pick up a phone to find a friend of whatever side has been murdered by a terrorist.” Then he referenced a 2017 terror attack on parliament and said: “I also don’t want another attack on this House. I was in the chair on that day. I have seen, I have witnessed.”

But the choice is to either risk that by taking a stand and stopping this behavior, or surrendering to it. At the moment, Britain has chosen the path of surrender. But as Winston Churchill said to Neville Chamberlain long ago:

You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.

Perhaps this time a war won’t even be necessary to conquer Britain; dishonor and cowardice will be enough.

Another ballet palate cleanser

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve recently discovered a YouTube channel featuring two sisters, dancers who speak about ballet. They are delightful as well as knowledgeable, in their very early twenties, and I’ve been having a good time watching their videos.

I was going to embed one or two of the video but discovered that embedding is blocked for this particular channel. Drat! So I’ll just post a link to one typical video of theirs; it’s about the ballet Giselle, and the two women explain it in a way that even those unfamiliar with ballet can understand and – I think – appreciate.

I recommend their whole channel, actually. But here’s the one about Giselle. Enjoy!

Anyone here know much about Jack Posobiec?

The New Neo Posted on by

A Democrat I know mentioned being highly alarmed at a speech Posobiec made at CPAC in which the latter said:

Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely,” he said Thursday. “We didn’t get all the way there on Jan. 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it.”

My first reaction was “who is this idiot Posobiec?”. Nothing like giving the left more ammunition for its accusations, and more fuel for fear of the right. I’d barely even heard of the guy before; he’s certainly not a highly-regarded figure on the right. His Wiki page is, as one would expect, very negative. I haven’t done any in-depth research yet, but he does sound as though he never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like, and strives to get attention from taking positions on what the left calls the “far right.”

I tried to find a video of his entire speech at CPAC because I’m curious if there’s any context that could explain it. I only found very brief clips such as this one. Watching just that part – the part that was widely quoted – it seems he’s making a joke. Later on Posobiec explained to NBC news:

… that his statements were largely satirical, poking fun at what he sees as a lack of democratic values from President Joe Biden’s administration.

“We are always supportive of a constitutional republic,” Posobiec said on Friday, referring to conservatives at large.

“What we’re trying to do is return it to the original system. We’re not destroying all of democracy, just their [Democrats’] democracy,” he added.

It certainly seemed satirical – or at least semi-satirical – in the clip. But I see it as extremely stupid and counter-productive satire. It provides fodder for the worst accusations of the left about the right, and I can see why. It’s a cheap shot for some momentary applause, and yet it has large costs.

Are any of you familiar with this guy and why he might be speaking at CPAC?

“Islamophobia”

The New Neo Posted on by

The first time I heard the term “Islamophobia” was right after 9/11 when suddenly there were many Muslim spokespeople on the news talking about how we had to combat “Islamophobia.” The idea was that many Americans were going to attack and/or discriminate against Muslims in this country in order to retaliate for 9/11. Except for a very few isolated cases – amazingly few, considering the size of the country and the seriousness of the crime committed on 9/11 in the name of Islam – it failed to materialize.

But it was a great talking point embraced by the left and many Muslims, which labeled Muslims as the victims rather than “oppressors.” Criticize Islam and you were Islamophobic: intolerant and bigoted and racist and all those other bad things. That effectively delegitimized criticism of Islam in an attempt to take such criticism off the table. Perfectly valid concerns about the teachings of Islam and the nature of Islam were labeled in that way, and the universities in particular made Muslims a very protected group.

Back in 2015 I wrote this post about whether Islam is a religion. I suggest you read the whole thing, but the summary version is that it is a religion but:

… [I]f Islam did not call itself a religion, it would not be so difficult to rally support for fighting against jihadis, who present the added problem of masquerading as being followers of a regular religion rather than a murderous apocalyptic death cult.

Are all Muslims followers of a “murderous apocalyptic death cult”? No, but (a) they are followers of a religion that in its most fundamental form can easily become one, and often has; and (b) they are followers of a religion which, if adhered to at all strictly, is antithetical to our Western doctrines of liberty and human rights.

That’s the problem in a nutshell.

Karol Markowicz to Jews: “Leave the Pews”

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter “Irish Otter.”]

About a month ago Karol Markowicz wrote this essay in which she said:

College campuses across the country were erupting in Jew-hating outbursts, and parents were rightly worried about their Jewish college-aged kids caught up in the frenzy of hate. On Facebook, a group called Mothers Against College Antisemitism (M.A.C.A.) was founded and grew quickly to over 50,000 members. …

What became clear within that Facebook group and in so many other quarters since Oct. 7 is that much of secular Judaism, in both the Reform and Conservative branches, had become overtly political and not really religiously based at all. For many Jews, their religious identity had become so intertwined with leftist politics that they couldn’t force a separation even when they themselves were being targeted with their own bad ideas.

I could follow Markowicz’s piece quite well up to that second paragraph in the above quote, and then it began to be confusing because it contains a puzzling oxymoron: “secular Judaism, in both the Reform and Conservative branches … ” But Reform and Conservative are branches of the religion of Judaism rather than the secular identity of just being Jewish either by ancestry or culture.

Look, I know that being Jewish can be confusing, even to Jews (Markowicz is Jewish). It is many things. The first is a religion with three main branches but many offshoots, the main branches being Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox (perhaps ultra-Orthodox is a fourth main branch, but we won’t quibble about that). Jewishness is also a culture, or several cultures (Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrahi) that roughly parallel its main ethnicities, because for many Jews (although not all), it is an ethnicity: the result of centuries of in-group marriage from an original Middle Eastern source. Therefore, Ashkenazi Jews have Middle Eastern plus European ancestry, and Mizrahi Jews are almost entirely Middle Eastern, and some Jewish groups (such as Ethiopian Jews) very similar ethnically from the places they lived for ages and ages. And yet they are all indeed Jews – as are converts to Judaism, who can be of any ethnicity whatsoever. Converts are not sought in Judaism, but sincere converts are welcomed.

The Jews are also a people. That’s a different concept, not the same as an ethnic group. It’s a people, a group that generally identifies as having a historical trajectory with its origins in lands roughly equivalent to modern Israel and parts of the lands occupied by Arabs, such as the West Bank (known in ancient times by Israelites as Judea and Samaria).

On the other hand, secular Jews simply are not religious. But they might identify with some parts of Jewish identity, most likely ethnicity and culture. They are the children of Jewish parents or grandparents. Or, they might not even identify as being Jewish but the rest of the world sees them that way because of their ancestry. The world has had its own changing and varied definition of what makes a Jew. The Nazis, obsessed as they were with race, defined it quite precisely in the Nuremberg Race Laws, and had little to no interest in whether a Jew was secular or even had converted to Christianity. To the Nazis, a Jew was a Jew was a Jew, and the Nazis got to define who was what.

Today, someone like George Soros – an ethnic Jew raised without any religion by parents who were, according to him, anti-Semitic – is defined by many, especially those who hate him, as a Jew. He most definitely is an ethnic Jew despite being an anitsemite raised by antisemites. Many of those who defend him define any criticism of him as antisemitic, which it is not (although to complicate things, it sometimes is, depending on what form the criticism takes). Is that complicated enough?

But back to Markowicz’s piece. I find that she blends some of these aspects of Jewish identity in a way that leads me to have trouble understanding her points.

The way I would put it is that the Jewish religion isn’t political, but like any religion it – and its three or four divisions – is connected with the prevalence of certain political beliefs. The more Orthodox a Jewish person is the more likely to be politically conservative. The less Orthodox, the opposite. This makes sense for a host of reasons, including the fact that leftism is often a substitute for religion.

The liberals and/or leftists (that is, the Democrats) in the groups Markowicz concentrates on – a significant proportion of the parents fighting anti-Semitism in colleges – of course find some conflict between their desire to protect their children from anti-Semitism and their political beliefs as leftists. This reflects an actual dilemma; not a fake one. They probably haven’t been paying much attention to the growth of anti-Semitism on campus until recently, and may have even misunderstood or failed to notice that it comes almost wholly from the left rather than the right. That also represents a very painful cognitive dissonance, something that’s always hard to resolve.

They’re working on it. It takes time. But it’s no mystery. I’m certain that there are political conservatives in those parent groups, too. But to them the antisemitism is much less of a surprise, and they have no cognitive dissonance about it with which to deal.

In addition, Markowicz discusses the fact that in Reform and Conservative congregations, liberal/leftist politics is usually assumed, and is even sometimes preached from the pulpit. She suggests that shouldn’t happen:

To those who sat in the pews for years as their congregation became a shameless political operation, the time has now come to depart. Your synagogue must be a place of worship, not of political activity, and, unfortunately for you, who paid your dues and hoped to align with a community of your peers, the political movement your shul promotes is the one that hates you. You should have departed years ago, like when your rabbi couldn’t condemn constant rockets into Israel for years without also condemning the Israeli response. Or when your rabbi could stand up for every group other than our own.

I’m not sitting in any synagogue’s pews, so I can’t speak to personal experience of this. But if it happens in synagogues it wouldn’t be a surprise, because it also happens in many churches. Go to your local Unitarian house of worship and you’ll get a bellyful, and Unitarians are hardly the only ones. Many churches have turned to the left and make no secret of that fact. I would bet that the rabbis Markowicz describes, who had earlier condemned both the rockets and the Israeli response, were speaking not only from a leftist point of view but probably because they believed a modern Israel/Palestine “cycle of violence” point of view that they thought might and could lead to peace in the region. Many of them are probably experiencing a great deal of cognitive dissonance these days, too.

A mind is a difficult thing to change.

Who built the January 6 gallows?

The New Neo Posted on by

Darned if I know. But the government has shown little interest in answering the question. This is odd, but in line with all the other government secrecy about January 6 and the role that government – and/or its informants and agents – may have played in the events of that day:

Among the most widely distributed images from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill is the photo of a gallows that supposedly was built for the purpose of hanging Vice President Mike Pence, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other congressional leaders. …

But why don’t we know who built the gallows? Why did the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) allow the gallows to remain on the Capitol grounds even though they had multiple hours to remove it before the riot began?

Why is it that three years after the riot, the FBI has no suspects for who built the gallows even though there is a video beginning at 6:30 a.m. on January 6 of the structure being built?

Those are just some of the questions that demand answers …

You can demand all you want, but so far the government has been pretty good at refusing such demands.

from Barry Loudermilk, Republican of Georgia:

“It is inconceivable that a gallows could be constructed on U.S. Capitol property and left up all day,” Loudermilk said in a statement. “These men arrived early in the morning, several hours before the rally even started or anyone had gathered, to construct the gallows platform, yet this structure was allowed to stay intact for all to see.

“These actions raise more serious and troubling questions. Why didn’t the U.S. Capitol Police take down the gallows once it was seen on Capitol property, and why have the individuals never been identified? I plan to get to the bottom of this,” Loudermilk added.

Best of luck.

January 6 was an incredibly valuable an event to the Democrats, and they have been quite successful at controlling the information that has subsequently come out about it – but not totally successful.

Netanyahu’s plan for “after Hamas”

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s about what you’d expect [emphasis mine]:

In the immediate time frame: The IDF will continue the war until its goals are achieved: The destruction of the military capabilities and governmental infrastructure of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, the return of the hostages and the prevention of a threat from the Gaza Strip for a lengthy period of time.

In the interim period:

On the security level – Israel will maintain operational freedom of activity in the entire Gaza Strip, without a time limit, for the purpose of preventing the renewal of terrorism and thwarting threats from Gaza. …

Israel will maintain a “southern closure” on the Gaza-Egypt border in order to prevent the re-intensification of terrorist elements in the Gaza Strip. … [and] to prevent smuggling from Egypt both underground and above ground …

Israel will have security control over the entire area west of Jordan, including in the envelope of Gaza, to prevent the strengthening of terrorist elements in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip …

There will be a complete demilitarization in the Gaza Strip of any military capacity, beyond what is required for the needs of maintaining public order. …

On the civil level – as much as possible, the civil administration and responsibility for public order in the Gaza Strip will be based on local officials with administrative experience. These local entities will not be identified with countries or entities that support terrorism and will not receive payment from them.

A comprehensive de-radicalization program will be promoted in all religious, educational and welfare institutions in the Gaza Strip, as much as possible with the involvement and assistance of Arab countries which have experience in promoting de-radicalization in their territory.

Israel will work to shut down UNRWA, whose operatives were involved in the October 7 massacre, and whose schools educated to terrorism and the destruction of Israel. Israel will work to end UNRWA’s activities in the Gaza Strip and replace it with responsible international aid agencies.

The rehabilitation of the Strip will only be possible after the demilitarization is completed and the de-radicalization process begins. The rehabilitation programs will be financed and led by countries that are acceptable to Israel.

The world will howl. And it will be very very difficult to find “responsible international aid agencies.” But the entire thing is not only reasonable but required, if peace is ever to come to the region. Everything else has been tried, but the international community – and the Biden administration – will pretend that something like offering a “2-state solution” will somehow work now although it’s never worked before and we have more and more evidence that at this point it would guarantee Israel’s destruction.

The UN will scream about UNRWA.

And “occupation” will be the cry heard round the world.

But Israel has no choice if it wants to survive. It seems it stands nearly alone at the moment – although, somewhat ironically, some Arab nations such as the UAE and the Saudis might be secretly supportive although publicly critical.

If Biden is re-elected I don’t see any support for this sort of proposal, and if Trump is elected I’m not totally sure how it would go. He certainly has an excellent record on supporting Israel. But in looking for Trump’s views on the Gaza war, I find this sort of thing, which indicates he hasn’t made too many clear statements as to how he would handle it:

“So you have a war that’s going on, and you’re probably going to have to let this play out,” Trump told Univision. “You’re probably going to have to let it play out because a lot of people are dying.”

“There is no hatred like the Palestinian hatred of Israel and Jewish people. And probably the other way around also, I don’t know. You know, it’s not as obvious, but probably that’s it too. So sometimes you have to let things play out and you have to see where it ends,” he added, calling what was taking place in Gaza “unbelievable.”

Trump did suggest in the Univision interview that Israel had to “do a better job of public relations, frankly, because the other side is beating them at the public relations front. That’s a very important front worldwide. That’s a very important front. So they do have to do a better job.”

“And probably the other way around also, I don’t know”? That’s an odd sort of equivalency tightrope-walking from Trump; sounds more like Biden.

Trump has said this, however:

Trump has pledged at recent campaign events that his administration would “revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities, and we will send them straight back home.”

I think Trump would be likely to handle the situation quite well, based on previous actions he took while president regarding Israel. But I can’t say for sure. One thing I can say is that I think he’d do a lot better than Biden.

Cellphone records implicate Willis and Wade in perjury

The New Neo Posted on by

Note the way the AP frames the story: “Trump submits cellphone records allegedly showing Nathan Wade and Fani Willis’ interactions before hiring.” In other words, Trump pounces:

Former President Donald Trump on Friday submitted a request to enter new evidence in his Georgia election interference case based off Fulton County prosecutor Nathan Wade’s cellphone records, which the filing claims show that Wade visited the home of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis approximately 35 times during an 11-month period in 2021.

The records could be used to dispute Willis and Wade’s claims about their relationship timeline.

The new filing from Trump comes in the wake of an evidentiary hearing over efforts to disqualify Willis and Wade from the case, during which both Willis and Wade testified under oath last week that their romantic relationship did not begin until after Wade was officially hired in November 2021, and that the relationship started in 2022.

Sure does sound as though it “could be used” that way.

But Willis said under oath that she didn’t consider her relationship with Wade to be “romantic” prior to hiring him, although she said they were friends. And yet the cell phone records seem to show “2,000 calls and nearly 12,000 texts messages” in 2021, mostly prior to Wade’s hiring. Plus:

Mittlestadt said he also looked at “geolocation activity” of Wade’s phone, which he said revealed “a minimum” of 35 instances in which Wade’s phone connected “for an extended period” to the towers near a home in Hapeville, Georgia, where Willis was allegedly living at the time.

“The data reveals he is stationary and not in transit,” the affidavit states.

This is far more visits than Wade testified to under oath. Oh, and also:

…[T]he investigator claims in his affidavit that records show Wade’s phone arrived in the area of Willis’s apartment at 10:45 pm in September 2021, and remained there until approximately 3:30 in the morning. The investigator claimed the records show Wade’s phone arrived back to the area of his apartment just after 4:05 a.m., and that Wade “sent a text at 4:20am to Ms. Willis.”

Wade wasn’t hired until November of 2021.

Of course, maybe it wasn’t actually “romantic.” Maybe it was just “friends with benefits.”

Or maybe the two are just night owls. Doesn’t everyone visit friends till 3:30 AM? Maybe college students; but these weren’t college students.

So, what were the pair thinking when they denied all of this? Surely, as prosecutors and lawyers, they know full well that cell phones contain this sort of evidence. I’m not certain whether text messages always can be found even if deleted, but my guess is that they can. We haven’t heard anything about the substance of those texts, but 12,000 is a whole load of them.

I suppose Willis and Wade felt immune from investigation, although they were engaged in trying to bring down highly influential people – not just Trump, but others as well. Had they always been protected prior to this? Will they continue to be protected, or is this just too egregious?

Hamas sadism; plus the spread of pro-jihadi thought in US universities

The New Neo Posted on by

Words such as “sadism” to describe what Hamas – and some Gazan civilians – did on October 7 are not strong enough. No words are strong enough. If you want to read a new report on the subject, which will turn your stomach, go here.

There’s also this, which omits the worst parts:

How is it that so many people in the West either deny what has happened or excuse it or even support it? I think there are many elements that have made this possible: for example, the spread of “truth is relative” as well as the idea that people labeled “oppressed” can do no wrong, and the timeless appeal of scapegoating the Jews.

But this didn’t happen by accident; not at all. Here’s a video that describes how the educational system in this country was hijacked by the anti-Jew and pro-Hamas forces, a campaign which started many decades ago and has been funded mainly by Qatar although not solely by Qatar:

For a long time, too many people on the right ignored the rot that was going on in US universities, believing the fiction that when students there grew up and got out into the “real world” they’d shake it off. This was a possibly fatal error.