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Australia’s Morrison Gov’t is Expected to Recognize J’slm as Israel’s Capital

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Australia’s Morrison government is expected to formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital following a cabinet meeting Tuesday, according to The Australian news site.

Australia’s Conservatives website heralded the decision as “another great result for the Conservative Party which has been running a petition for recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,” reported it was “unclear” if the government would only recognize the western part of Jerusalem or settle on a broader definition. .

A decision on moving Australia’s embassy from Tel Aviv may be delayed, however, the site reported.

“Sources confirmed that it was likely a consular office would be established in Jerusalem as a sign of support for Israel until the full embassy was relocated,” the Conservatives site said.

On October 15, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison revealed the possibility of moving the embassy in a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I’m very thankful to him for this. We will continue to strengthen ties between Israel and Australia,” Netanyahu tweeted.

Morrison received criticism from Palestinians and several Muslim countries, with Indonesia reportedly warning that if Australia moved its embassy to Jerusalem it could harm trade negotiations between the two countries.

If Australia moved its embassy it would join a growing list of countries that have done so, starting with the United States in May.

The Conservatives website said, “Conservative Party leader Cory Bernardi has told Paul Murray Live on Sky News the embassy move makes sense.”

Prime Minister Morrison took office in late August after the ruling Liberal Party turned on his predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull, over frustration in the party’s conservative wing with his leadership.

Shortly after he entered office, it was reported that Morrison was weighing the possibility of recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, as well as the relocation of the Australian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The report Tuesday states that the Australian government approved recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital Monday night, though the cabinet is only expected to ratify the decision sometime Tuesday night.

While Australia will recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, sources told The Australian that the embassy will not be relocated in the immediate future, due to the $200 million estimated cost of moving the facility.

Instead, Australia is reportedly planning to open a consular facility in the Israeli capital in lieu of an embassy move.

If Australia does recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, it will join a small but growing number of countries to do so, including the United States, Guatemala, the Czech Republic, and Honduras.

            (WIN & INN)

Pregnant Mother Wounded in Arab Drive-By Shooting is Recovering

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The condition of the pregnant woman critically wounded in Monday’s terror attack is improving.

Shira Ish-Ran, the 21-year-old pregnant woman seriously wounded in a drive-by shooting on Sunday evening, is recovering, doctors at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem said Tuesday morning.

Ish-Ran, together with six others, including her husband, were wounded while waiting at a hitchhiking stop near the town of Ofra in Samaria.

The drive-by was caught on camera as gunfire opened up from a passing white sedan, sending those waiting running for cover. Some hid behind a stone memorial for a man killed by terrorists at the same spot a year ago.

Ish-Ran and the other wounded were rushed to Shaare Zedek. She was one of the worst injured and initially listed in critical condition.

“She lost a lot of blood, received blood transfusions, was stabilized and was taken to the operating room for urgent emergency surgery. She underwent a caesarean section and then surgery to treat her injuries,” said Dr. Alon Schwartz, a senior surgeon at Shaare Tzedek.

Ish-Ran was seven-and-a-half months pregnant. The baby boy was taken to the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit. He is still in critical condition.

Shira and her husband Amichai were visiting his parents in Ofra and were on their way home to their town of Elon Moreh.

On Monday, Shira’s father Chaim Silverstein told the media, “She opened her eyes and asked for Mom, so we rushed in. She got teary-eyed when she saw us. She got so emotional that we had to leave, because her pulse went up too much.”

He said that the family had not yet told her about the critical condition of her baby, who was delivered nearly two months early following the attack. She has asked about the child.

“Shira woke up a few minutes ago and this is the first time they met when she was conscious, they held hands and smiled but could not talk,” the father said. “We have no words to describe this joy, even though her condition is still difficult, but her life was saved and we welcome this miracle.”

Silverstein added, “The baby’s condition has not changed since yesterday. His life is still in danger and he is fighting for it, a small baby who was born prematurely along with a great trauma, and he started his life in a very difficult situation and we pray that he will survive.”

“We do not want to let her get too excited,” he said. “We consult with psychologists and social workers, and hope that we will know how to deal with this difficult situation.”

Liora, Shira’s mother, said, “She opened her eyes and tried to talk. It’s hard for her to have the tubes, but she calls and asks us to come and hold our hands and cry and smile.”

The husband’s father, Raphael Ish-Ran, said that when the shooting started, “Amichai started running along with everyone else, but then he looked around and saw his wife wasn’t with him. He ran to her and saw her on the floor. He stopped her bleeding with his hands until help arrived.”

Raphael Ish-Ran believes the terrorists targeted his daugther-in-law, adding, “Apparently, the terrorists studied the habits of settlers and they approached, as we’ve seen in videos, slowed down and then fired. They saw a pregnant woman and thought, ‘Great, that’s what we should hit’ and fired.”

            (WIN)

Meretz Demands Criminal Investigation Against Yair Netanyahu

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Left-wing party demands A-G investigate PM’s son for calling leftists “traitors.”

The left-wing Meretz faction asked the attorney general to open a criminal investigation against Yair Netanyahu, the son of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, after he called leftists “traitors.”

“The identification of such enemies by a person with a broad public presence, on a platform in which the audience of the person in question is particularly large, raises a real concern for violence against left-wing activists and activists in Israel,” the faction wrote.

Yair Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook account: “It’s so beautiful that now that you can finally use that word. I’ll say what everyone in the country thinks.”

“Left-wing organizations financed by foreign governments and hostility, politicians on the left and media people who always support the enemy side and always against the Jewish interest. Their hearts are full of contempt the victims of terrorism or the victims of the infiltrators, and on the other hand their hearts are full of compassion for every Palestinian rioter who is wounded on the Gaza border.

“It’s time to tell the simple truth. According to every basic human standard and agreed upon every nationality in history, they are traitors to all intents and purposes,” added the prime minister’s son.

Prime Minister Netanyahu responded: “I reject the use of the term ‘treason’ on any side of the political debate.”

“Since the investigation of the Submarine Affair, which Prime Minister Netanyahu has never been suspected of being involved in, Ehud Barak, the leftist demonstrators and others have accused Prime Minister Netanyahu of “treason,” Netanyahu’s office said.

Several weeks ago, INN reported that Yair Netanyahu, the son of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, published a “reminder” to MK Ahmed Tibi (Joint List) after Tibi published a Facebook post against Yair.

“Ahmed Tibi, the best friend of the greatest murderer of Jews since Hitler, Yasser Arafat, wrote a post about me. That’s very exciting and flattering,” wrote Yair Netanyahu.

“I want to remind Ahmed that all the Arab communities in Israel without exception sit on the ruins of ancient Jewish communities, and often preserve the previous Jewish name,” he continued.

The son of the prime minister added, “For example, the village of Battir sits on the spot where the last battle of Bar Kokhba and the Romans took place – Beitar. The Arabs themselves call the archaeological hill in the village Khirbat el-Yahud (meaning ‘ruin of the Jews’ -ed.). The Tibi family came to Israel from Syria. We are called Jews because we came from this country–Judea. And you are called Arabs because you came from another country–the Arabian Peninsula.”

On Friday, Netanyahu’s son criticized the police and wrote on Facebook that they do not enforce building laws in the Arab sector.

“In the Galilee, the Negev and the Triangle, there is a big problem that the Israeli police simply do not enforce the building laws in the Arab sector,” he wrote, attaching to the post an aerial photo of the Arab village of Tamra.

“Take, for example, the village of Tamra in the Western Galilee. The village itself is shown in the yellow circle. The red circle shows the area on which the illegal construction of the village was built. The area of ​​expansion and takeover is more than two times larger than the entire village of Tamra itself! For comparison, Akko is shown in a green circle,” noted Yair Netanyahu.

(INN)

Agreement To Bring Up To 1K Filipinos To Work In Israel’s Hotel Industry

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Tourism Minister Yariv Levin and Philippines Labor and Employment Minister Silvestre Bello signed a bilateral agreement Tuesday that will bring up to 1,000 Filipino nationals to work in Israel’s burgeoning tourism sector. Photo by Oded Karni / Courtesy Tourism Ministry on 11 December, 2018

Tourism Minister Yariv Levin and Philippines Labor and Employment Minister Silvestre Bello signed a bilateral agreement Tuesday that will bring up to 1,000 Filipino nationals to work in Israel’s burgeoning tourism sector.

A statement put out by the Tourism Ministry said the increase in manpower quotas was in order to cope with rising demand for hotel accommodation, due to the significant increase in the number of incoming tourists to Israel.

Employing workers from the Philippines joins an agreement already in place to employ Jordanian citizens working in hotels in the Eilat area and the workers will be designated to hotels in the Dead Sea area, which will receive top priority, followed by the Tel Aviv and Central regions and, finally, Jerusalem and the North.

“Incoming tourism to Israel continues to rise and break records, the hotels are full, and as a result of the concessions and grants given by the Tourism Ministry for hotel construction, we are also seeing unprecedented momentum in the number of hotel rooms being built after years of stagnation,” said Tourism Minister Yariv Levin. “The main obstacle that the ministry has had to contend with is the shortage of manpower. Therefore, today the government signed an agreement to increase the quota of foreign workers for the hotel industry, thus providing a solution to the labor shortage in both cleaning and housekeeping.

“The agreement signed today is the first round of cooperation and we have no doubt that this will directly affect the lowering of prices,” he added.

Philippines Labor and Employment Minister Bello said: “This is a welcome cooperation between the two countries and I am certain that this will lead to additional agreements, in the field of tourism and manpower, and of course in other areas as well.”

Incoming tourism to Israel is expected to reach an all time high of 4 million by the end of 2018. There is currently a shortage of some 1,500 non-skilled employees in the hotel industry with around 1,600 jobs to be filled by professional workers such as cooks and waiters.

In other news, the start-up nation is turning increasingly towards its Arab sector to support high tech industry initiatives and integrate their potential in the high tech industry, CEO of the Israel Innovation Authority, Aharon Aharon, said Tuesday speaking at a conference on high-tech in the Arab sector in Nazareth.

“We believe in the Arab sector’s enormous potential to further integrate into the high-tech industry, both as employees and as entrepreneurs.” he said. “Support for entrepreneurs from the Arab sector is vital for economic and social development and further facilitates the creation of jobs in the periphery. This dedicated program, intended to encourage more research and development within the Arab community, helps promote innovative technological initiatives and helps them recruit funds from private investors,” he concluded.

   (TPS)

Israel Joins FATF Anti-Terror Financing Organization

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Israel has become the 38th full member of The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global inter-governmental body that combats money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system, Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked announced Monday.

Shaked said the access of the State of Israel as a full member of FATF will influence policy against regional enemies, money laundering and terror financing.

“The accession of the State of Israel as a full member of FATF is a strategic international achievement. In terms of the scale of the achievement, it is parallel to our joining of the OECD,” Shaked said. “Being member of the organization places the State of Israel in line with a limited number of countries, most of them the G20 countries, which lead the global fight against money laundering and financing of terrorism and set international standards, enabling us to take an active role in shaping global policy in the fields of combating terrorism financing and money laundering.”

Shaked also said that being part of FATF will strengthen Israel’s economy and improve cooperation between Israel and other countries on the financial intelligence and legal fronts.

“Joining the organization also significantly advances the interests of the Israeli economy – it will improve the ability of our financial sector to operate in the international economic arena, will help the economy and the financial and business sectors, will position Israel as a safe and attractive place for investments and will improve cooperation between Israel and other countries on the economic level,” she said.

Shaked added that Israel is the first country that has succeeded in being accepted by the organization at the first time of asking.

“The State of Israel is at the forefront of countries committed to the global fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism and is a source of knowledge and leading expertise. In a short time the State of Israel has reached a place of world leadership – we are the first country to succeed in joining the organization in the first and third place in the world in terms of effectiveness of the regime, immediately after the United States and England.

Israel became an observer to the FATF in February 2016. Until then it had already been closely involved in the work of the FATF through its participation in the FATF-style regional body MONEYVAL.

FATF President Billingslea applauded Israel new membership to the organization:

“I congratulate Israel on becoming a FATF member,” Billingslea said in a statement.

“Israel has undergone a rigorous assessment of its measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. During this demanding process, the country demonstrated its commitment to protect the integrity of the financial system. Israel has established a robust anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing framework that is achieving good results in identifying and responding to the risks the country is facing. As a member of the FATF, the country’s experience and perspective will make a valuable contribution to our work to prevent the misuse of the financial system.”

The decision to include Israel as a member follows the publication of a report by the FATF which found that Israel is among the leading countries in the fight against money laundering and terror financing.

“Due to its geographic location, Israel faces a particularly high terrorist financing risk from sources outside Israel, while fraud, tax offences, organized crime, public sector corruption and the use of cash are among the sources of money laundering risk for the country. Israel has successfully identified and understood these risks, which is reflected in the country’s anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing (AML/CFT) policies and activities,” according to the assessment.

            (TPS)

PepsiCo Seals $3.2B Acquisition Of SodaStream, Commits To Remaining In Israel

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PepsiCo announced last Wednesday afternoon that it has completed its $3.2 billion acquisition of Israeli-based SodaStream.

In August, the snack and drinks company confirmed it was buying out the Israeli carbonated drinks company for $144 per share.

Following the completion of the acquisition Sodastream CEO and director Daniel Birnbaum said that the company was “thrilled to become part of PepsiCo and join its diverse and talented team. “SodaStream was founded to bring healthy, convenient and environmentally friendly beverage options to consumers around the world – and PepsiCo will help us deliver and expand on this mission,” he said last Wednesday. “With some of the world’s leading marketing and R&D teams, and access to new markets and channels, we are excited to grow hand-in-hand with PepsiCo in the months and years to come.” Photo Credit: United With Israel

In a statement released last Wednesday, PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta said they he couldn’t be “prouder or more excited” to welcome SodaStream to the “PepsiCo family.”

He made it clear that SodaStream would remain based in Israel for at least 15 years, “if not indefinitely,” adding that it is planning to open a further manufacturing facility in Israel following the closure of the deal.

“With its customizable options, SodaStream empowers consumers to personalize their preferred beverage in an environmentally friendly way and provides PepsiCo with a significant presence in the at-home marketplace,” Laguarta said. “Together with SodaStream, I’m confident we can accelerate progress on our shared goal of curbing plastic waste and building a more sustainable future.”

With the acquisition completed, SodaStream will be delisted from the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq.

Following the completion of the acquisition Sodastream CEO and director Daniel Birnbaum said that the company was “thrilled to become part of PepsiCo and join its diverse and talented team.

“SodaStream was founded to bring healthy, convenient and environmentally friendly beverage options to consumers around the world – and PepsiCo will help us deliver and expand on this mission,” he said on Wednesday. “With some of the world’s leading marketing and R&D teams, and access to new markets and channels, we are excited to grow hand-in-hand with PepsiCo in the months and years to come.”

Prior to the deal, SodaStream shares had risen by 85% since the beginning of the year

The deal is expected to close by January 2019.

    (TPS)

US Amb to Israel David Friedman Celebrates Chanukah with Yeshiva Aish HaTorah

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Following the Menorah lighting ceremony at the Western Wall on the 5th night of Chanukah with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US Ambassador David Friedman, Aish HaTorah hosted the Ambassador, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, Yoav Horovitz, and Senior Advisor to Ambassador Friedman, Aryeh Lightstone, along with their families for a festive dinner. The ceremony at the Kotel marked one year since the US officially recognized Jerusalem as the Capitol of Israel.

At the dinner, Ambassador Friedman toasted the special partnership between the US and Israel. The Ambassador also addressed 300 Aish HaTorah yeshiva students at the annual Chanukah party and reminded them to include in their prayers of thanksgiving during this auspicious time of gratitude and praise for the Almighty, the United States of America, “a moral country and a moral people” who has been “good to Israel and good to the Jewish people.” He added that we all must pray for the United States, noting that everything that happens in this world is ordained by the Almighty.

Rabbi Steven Burg, CEO of Aish HaTorah said, “It was an honor for Aish HaTorah to once again host the US Ambassador, David Friedman, on this historic occasion of his lighting the Menorah at the Western Wall in the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem. Like the Maccabees of the Chanuka story, Ambassador Friedman has fought hard on behalf of the Jewish Nation and we are eternally grateful to him and to the United States of America.”

Aish HaTorah operates about 35 full-time branches on five continents, providing seminars, singles events, executive learning groups, Shabbat and Jewish holiday programs, and community building.

In Jerusalem, the Aish HaTorah yeshiva offers both beginners’ drop-in classes and full-time, intensive study programs for Jewish men and women of all backgrounds and levels of knowledge. It has a high-tech main campus and outreach center that features a rooftop vista overlooking the Temple Mount, and the Kirk Douglas Theatre, which houses a dramatic film presentation of the Jewish contribution to humanity. Aish HaTorah runs the Discovery Seminar. The four-hour seminar reviews Jewish history, Jewish philosophy, and Jewish philosophy questions.

David Friedman served as an advisor to President Trump during his successful presidential campaign. In December 2016, President-elect Trump’s transition team announced that Friedman was Trump’s nominee for ambassador. He was confirmed by the full Senate on March 23, 2017, with a 52–46 vote, officially sworn in by Vice President Mike Pence on March 29th and presented his credentials on May 15th.

(This article was provided by Aish.com)

Israeli Researchers Uncover Rare, 1500-Year-Old Wick; One of the Oldest in the World

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New research by the Israel Antiquities Authority has discovered a unique wick, used to light lamps and dated to the Byzantine period, some 1,500 years ago. Although it is small, its importance is great both because it has been securely identified as a wick and because precious few such wicks have survived from antiquity.

The wick was examined for the first time in the framework of a comprehensive research project on Byzantine settlements in the Negev, conducted by the University of Haifa and led by Prof. Guy Bar-Oz and Dr. Yotam Tepper. As part of the research, Dr. Tepper located finds as yet unpublished from the excavation of the American Colt expedition to the Negev site of Shivta, conducted in the 1930s. The wick was sent for examination to the laboratories of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Dr. Naama Sukenik of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who studied the wick says: “It seems that this rare find was preserved thanks to the dry climate in the Negev. Oil lamps played a key role in daily life in antiquity, illuminating homes and public buildings after sunset. Lamps made of pottery or glass are often found in archaeological excavations, but to find a wick from ancient times is rare. That’s because they’re made of organic fibers, which normally disintegrate quickly and disappear into the soil, as well as because they are so small and are usually consumed by fire.”

The wick was found in its holder – a small copper tube in which it was inserted when it was lit. Microscopic examination by Dr. Sukenik showed that the wick was made of linen, which comes from the flax plant and is known for its use in textiles and clothing as well as for wicks in oil lamps.

“The Mishnah, tractate Shabbat discusses what materials may and may not be used as wicks to light Sabbath lamps. There too, linen is mentioned as a high-quality material for wicks, because it burns long and beautifully. The Mishnah mentions other wicks, which were made of lesser quality materials and were therefore prohibited for use in Sabbath lamps. Among these were fibers made from the plant called Sodom’s apple, which to this day grows in the Dead Sea area. It seems that the inhabitants of Shivta also chose to light their public buildings with linen wicks. Because flax doesn’t grow in the Negev it probably came from farther north in the country through commerce,” Dr. Sukenik added.

Tests on the quality of the fibers lead Sukenik to believe that the inhabitants of Shivta in the Byzantine period purchased lower-quality linen for their wicks, reserving better quality fibers for the garment industry. “The rare wick examined belongs to a type of glass lamp typical of the Byzantine period – a kind of glass cup or bowl that was filled with oil and provided ample light, even after dark,” Sukenik says.

“Despite the tiny size of the wick from Shivta – only a few centimeters long – it sheds light on one of the most essential and common objects of antiquity, which has almost disappeared from the world, but survived at Shivta,” Dr. Sukenik adds.

The wick and other objects from the Colt expedition at Shivta will be on display beginning on January 24, 2019, at the Hecht Museum in Haifa.

To Europe: Iran is Your Enemy; Not Trump!

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Europeans view America and its citizens as beneath them. Their continent is classy, filled with culture, writers, art, and a history we can never imagine. When poor outcast stragglers from Europe settled in the New World, they barely survived. They lived in log cabins built from living trees. They had to depend on the savage native Indians to teach them how to grow crops. And now look at us. We elected a president whom they feel is an ignoramus who gives them ultimatums. ”Just who does he think he is?”…..they ask openly. And you and I, the ”ugly Americans” who spread our repulsive wealth on sightseeing trips overseas, are no better. These superior people view us as uneducated slobs. After all, we bow to no regal kings and royalty who inherit their positions from G-d. Americans have no prefixes to their names such as Lord, Prince, Queen or Count. How dare we dominate the uber continent when we are not even 250 years in existence?

And now, as the ultimate military and economic power in the world, we had the stupid audacity to elect a common businessman to basically run the world. Europeans are mortified by our president. He has no manners. He is ignorant. He is belligerent. He is without manners and through his own efforts, he is very wealthy. But they have a real problem putting down America as a nation of bumpkins. They have to forget and close their eyes when they drive past the hundreds of American military cemeteries that dot Europe. They try as hard as they can to erase the two wars initiated by their own incompetence that we had to win for them. They must feign amnesia about how we also rescued them from the Soviets who, without our military strength would have commissars directing their governments today. Shamelessly, they are forgetful and ungrateful for the sacrifices our nation has made on their behalf.

But Trump is here to stay and he is trying in his own way and harsh manner to warn Europe that it is heading in the wrong direction, again. They are catering to Iran. They are permitting millions of alien Muslims to overrun their continent. They are shamefully, anti-Israel, although it was they who 80 years ago looked on and permitted their own Nazis to nearly exterminate the Jewish people. Trump, in less than two years in power has attempted to lead them to see the dangers with which they are flirting. Sadly, if history teaches us anything, it is that the haughty, snobby, elitist Europeans are digging their own graves by ignoring the examples set by President Trump elected and supported by us common-trash Americans. Get ready to bail them out again.

Israel’s Failure to Confront Hezbollah

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A picture taken with a fisheye lens on January 18, 2018 from the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip shows a tunnel that Israel says was dug by the Islamic Jihad group leading from the Palestinian enclave into Israel, near southern Israeli kibbutz of Kissufim. Israel uncovered and destroyed the tunnel in late October. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / JACK GUEZ

We’ll ask the question for which we know we’ll receive no forthright answer, but here goes: ”Why are the active, threatening terrorist forces of both Hamas and Hezbollah, both on the very borders of Israel still around? Why have they not yet been eradicated?” There is no other modern country on the face of this earth that has had to endure the daily possibility of facing extinction since the day it was born. And it still continues with no end in sight.

The Hamas terrorist forces in Gaza initiate attacks geared to kill Israelis whenever the feeling comes over them. They can fire rockets, unleash mortars, utilize fire-bombing kites to incinerate thousands of acres of farmland and civilian homes, dig concrete fortified tunnels into Israel to infiltrate terrorists whose goal is to kill as many Israelis as possible and when Israel retaliates, they hold up their hands and with the support of the U.N., a ceasefire is called for and they go back to rearming for and planning the next attacks. And Israel, is left holding the bag with an airstrike or two against Hamas targets known to them well before the terrorist attacks were initiated. Why not obliterate those bases in preemptive attacks to safeguard its citizens?

But the threats posed by Hamas is nothing compared to the Iran backed Hezbollah terrorist group swarming in Syria and Lebanon. They are a well-trained, battle hardened army with an arsenal of over 150,000 rockets that can reach most every part of Israel. Their troops have fought alongside Assad’s forces and should be considered a formidable foe. Recently, the IDF uncovered and destroyed tunnels dug into Israel from Lebanon similar to those utilized by Hamas to attack Israel.

These are not good signs. Is Iran, now firmly planted in Syria, planning to send Hezbollah forces into action against Israel? But strangely, there is good news associated with these threats. And that is the United States, with President Trump at the helm will support any actions that the Jewish state feels necessary to undertake in order to protect its people. Just last week, PM Netanyahu met with Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State, to update him on the situation in Gaza and Lebanon. We must assume that Netanyahu was getting the OK from Washington to act. Would Hillary, when she was in that diplomatic position, have shown and support for Bibi?

Times have changed since President Obama left office. Israel is no longer alone in the United Nations nor in its fight for survival. We will finally back Israel in whatever its plans are to thwart, not retaliate against Hamas, Hezbollah or Iranian sponsored terrorism. It’s about time Israel flexed its military muscle to stop the murderous attacks against them. They can no longer be reactive. They must become pro-active and neutralize the enemy before he even contemplates an attack. It’s about time!

Silicon Valley Sharia – How Social Media Rigs the Free Speech Playing Field

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This is a tale of two young, outspoken women in media.

One is a liberal tech writer. The other is an enterprising conservative new media reporter. One has achieved meteoric success and now works at a top American newspaper. The other has been de-platformed and marginalized. Their wildly different fates tell you everything you need to know about Silicon Valley’s free speech double standards.

In a new statement posted to her website, journalist Laura Loomer said, “I am just one example of someone who has been banned for discussing issues on social media that big tech companies have deemed as untouchable. All across the world, people are being silenced, censored, and even jailed for having online discussions about Islam, immigration, jihad, and Sharia. I was banned for posting facts about Islam. In other words, non-Muslims are being subjected to Islamic blasphemy laws on social media, progressively.»

Some smug elites will downplay Twitter’s disparate treatment of these users by arguing that private tech corporations can do whatever they want and that no First Amendment issues have been raised. But this battle is about much more than free speech rights. It’s about whether the high-and-mighty progressives who monopolize global social media platforms truly believe in nurturing a free speech culture.

By punishing politically incorrect speech and making punitive examples of free thinkers, tech titans are enforcing their own authoritarian version of Silicon Valley sharia — a set of both written and unwritten codes constricting expressions of acceptable thought in the name of “safety” and “civility.”

Laura Loomer was suspended permanently from Twitter over the Thanksgiving holiday for this tweet — and I quote in full:

“Isn’t it ironic how the twitter moment used to celebrate ‘women, LGBTQ, and minorities’ is a picture of Ilhan Omar? Ilhan is pro Sharia(.) Ilhan is pro-FGM(.) Under Sharia, homosexuals are oppressed & killed. Women are abused & forced to wear the hijab. Ilhan is anti Jewish.”

Ilhan Omar is the newly elected Democratic Muslim congresswoman from Minnesota who is indeed pro Sharia. Omar equivocated on a state bill to increase penalties against female genital mutilation. It is a fact that gay people are oppressed and killed under Sharia. It an undeniable truth that women are abused and forced to wear the hijab. Omar has accused Israel of hypnotizing the world, attacked its “evil doings,” and has said she supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against the Jewish state.

Twitter booted Loomer, who is Jewish, off its site for expressing her well-supported opinions, which the social media giant called “hateful conduct.” She has been labeled a “far-right activist” for her mainstream views. As she noted in a new statement posted to her website Tuesday:

“I am just one example of someone who has been banned for discussing issues on social media that big tech companies have deemed as untouchable. All across the world, people are being silenced, censored, and even jailed for having online discussions about Islam, immigration, jihad, and Sharia. I was banned for posting facts about Islam. In other words, non-Muslims are being subjected to Islamic blasphemy laws on social media, progressively.”

If Loomer were a left-wing “Islamophobia”-invoking feminist who practiced undercover or gonzo journalism to go after Republicans, she’d be hailed as an innovative disruptor instead of dismissed by establishment elites on both sides of the political aisle.

Now contrast the fate of 30-year-old Sarah Jeong, who was named an editorial writer at The New York Times in August 2018. Her left-wing colleagues and admirers applauded her “verve and erudition.” And they made much of her diversity status as a “young Asian woman.” This person-of-color shield gave Jeong immunity to post several years’ worth of hateful tweets attacking white people.

“White men are bull——”;

“#CancelWhitePeople”;

“oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men” and “f—- white women lol.”

She has tweeted “f—- the police” and “cops are a—holes,” derided fraternity members and athletes wrongfully accused of rape and fumed about “dumb—- f—-ing white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.”

Let’s review: Loomer was kicked off Twitter for calling out Sharia and a culture that promotes hatred of gays, boycotts of Jews and subjugation of women. Before the permanent suspension, Loomer — who had built up a following of more than 250,000 — had her blue check removed and was silenced during the midterm elections when her investigative work was making a difference. She called out Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey for anti-conservative bias at a congressional hearing and was mocked by establishment detractors in both parties.

Meanwhile, Jeong sits on her perch on The New York Times editorial board after using Twitter to spew hatred against all men, all cops, the entire white race — and Twitter. Jeong denies Silicon Valley’s political bias and selective speech suppression, which she has dismissed as a “paranoid fantasy.”

Every day that blue check marked hate-monger Sarah Jeong gets to tweet while Laura Loomer remains silenced reminds us of how powerful social media conglomerates have rigged the free speech playing field.

It’s no fantasy. It’s a nightmare.

            (Front Page Mag)

More United Nations Chicanery

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In Britain, the rage over Muslim rape gangs and Theresa May’s Brexit foul-up is spreading. In Germany, anger about Merkel’s recklessly transformative refugee policies is mounting. In France, the growing cost of immigrant freeloaders to taxpayers has sparked the most sensational public demonstrations since 1968. In Italy and Austria, opponents of the Islamization of Europe now hold the reins of power. Elsewhere in Western Europe, more and more citizens are standing up to their masters’ open-borders dhimmitude.

Yet much of this principled and patriotic resistance may turn out to be for naught, thanks to the so-called Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which is scheduled to be signed by representatives of the UN member states at a December 10-11 conference. Supporters of the compact are quick to reassure its critics that it is not a binding treaty and that it reaffirms the concept of national sovereignty. Nevertheless, when you come right down to it, it is nothing more or less than a dangerous effort to weaken national borders, to normalize mass migration, to blur the line between legal and illegal immigration, and to bolster the idea that people claiming to be refugees enjoy a panoply of rights in countries where they have never before set foot.

As for the 34-page-long document itself, it is written in the kind of numbing, abstraction-heavy prose that will be familiar to anyone who has ever read anything issued by the UN. It declares that “migration is a defining feature of our globalized world, connecting societies within and across all regions, making us all countries of origin, transit and destination.” It states that the goal of the Global Compact is “to create conducive conditions that enable all [!] migrants to enrich our societies through their human, economic and social capacities, and thus facilitate their contributions to sustainable development at the local, national, regional and global levels.” It also affirms that:

“[w]e must save lives and keep migrants out of harm’s way. We must empower migrants to become full members of our societies, highlight their positive contributions, and promote inclusion and social cohesion. We must generate greater predictability and certainty for States, communities and migrants alike. To achieve this, we commit to facilitate and ensure safe, orderly and regular migration for the benefit of all.”

There is a lot more where this came from, and it is not entirely clear what most of it means. Is it just a load of empty, feel-good rhetoric, or is it meant to commit signatories to specific action? What does it mean to say that the Global Compact “mainstreams a gender perspective” or that “a whole-of-government approach is needed to ensure horizontal and vertical policy coherence across all sectors and levels of government”? On the other hand, the document certainly does appear to encourage illegal migration. It unambiguously urges governments to feed their citizens propaganda about the delights of migrants and migration and to “sensitize and educate media professionals on migration-related issues and terminology” and, in effect, to strong-arm journalists who refuse to play ball. Some readers of the document say that it calls for the criminalization of any criticism of migration, although its backers deny this.

One thing about the agreement, in any event, is irrefutable: almost nobody in the Western world has been clamoring for this. It is, quite simply, a project of the globalist elites. It is a UN power-grab. As the Guardian reported last year, Louise Arbour, the hack put in charge of this project, “regards the global compact as a chance to shift world opinion on the need to address future migration, in the same way that the UN had managed to persuade the world it needed to address climate change.” In short, this is yet another reminder that the UN is run by power-hungry busybodies who see it as their job not to respond to and act upon world opinion but to shape it and, if necessary, punish it.

It is something else, too: it is an effort to enhance the clout of the UN’s largest and most influential power bloc – namely, the Arab and Muslim states. Just check out the UN website devoted to this Global Compact — it’s illustrated by a picture of a young man and woman holding their index fingers and thumbs together to form a heart. She is in hijab. Repeat: she is in hijab. Briefly put, whatever this deal is or is not, it is definitely not good news for the West, for freedom, or for national identity and security. It seems fitting that the December 10-11 signing ceremony will take place in Marrakesh, Morocco.

President Donald J. Trump, to his credit, saw through this mischievous piece of work last December, when he announced that the U.S. wanted nothing to do with it. He got flak for that move. In a UN vote this past July, the Global Compact was approved by every member nation except for the U.S. But then at least some media starting paying attention and a resistance formed. In recent weeks, more and more governments have said that they are not going to sign the deal after all. So far, the list includes Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Poland, Slovakia, and Switzerland.

In several other Western European countries, the issue is still being debated. I suspect the situation in Norway, where I live, is not unique. Most of the political parties here ardently support the Global Compact and, in the run-up to the signing ceremony, have striven — with the collaboration of the country’s mainstream media — to keep this potentially controversial agreement out of the public eye in the run-up to the signing ceremony. After a handful of alternative news and opinion websites sounded the alarm about the deal, however, it was reported on December 5 that the Progress Party had forced the government to allow a parliamentary discussion of the proposed accord.

Alas, the Big Three countries of Western Europe are all in. Theresa May has committed her government to the deal. Ditto Angela Merkel. Emmanuel Macron has stuck to his line that the Global Compact is “admirable.” What’s more, thanks to Justin Trudeau, whose mantra continues to be “diversity is a source of strength,” Canada is on board as well.

So while there is no need to worry that the Global Compact will supersede the U.S. Constitution any time soon, there is legitimate reason for concern that this devious deal will constitute yet another obstacle to citizens of the free world who care about protecting and preserving their countries — but whose elites are dead set on thwarting their will.

(Gatestone Institute)

Bruce Bawer is the author of the new novel The Alhambra (Swamp Fox Editions). His book While Europe Slept (2006) was a New York Times bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. His other books include A Place at the Table (1993), Stealing Jesus (1997), Surrender (2009), and The Victims’ Revolution (2012). A native New Yorker, he has lived in Europe since 1998.

Trump-Haters Smell Blood Over Michael Cohen Charges

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The chorus of Trump-haters rushing to brand President Trump a criminal has gotten considerably louder since last Friday. That was the day prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office separately filed their sentencing recommendations against ex-Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen. Cohen had pleaded guilty to a variety of charges, including of lying to Congress. The Mueller sentencing memo contained some teasers on the Russian collusion investigation.

However, the teasers seem to have fallen flat, including the Moscow tower project promoted by Cohen, which never got off the ground, and a cryptic reference to “political synergy” offered by a Russian official as early as 2015 that Cohen apparently did not pursue. Instead, the Trump-haters have turned their attention to the portion of the New York prosecutors’ sentencing memorandum regarding Cohen’s admitted federal election campaign finance law violations, which the Trump-haters are counting on to spell trouble for the president.

The prosecutors in New York accepted as true in their sentencing memorandum Cohen’s claim that he had arranged for the payment of hush money to two past alleged Trump paramours in violation of federal election campaign finance laws, doing so “in coordination with and at the direction of” President Trump (referred to as “Individual #1” in their sentencing memo). That is all the Trump-haters had to hear before declaring that it was curtains for the president. Smelling blood in the water, they are looking beyond impeachment to possible jail time once the president leaves office.

On Sunday morning’s edition of CNN’s Reliable Sources, for example, Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, still living on his reputation from that decades-old scandal, said, “There’s something much more important than just impeachment going on, and that is the fact that Donald Trump for the first time in his life is cornered.”

The Obama administration’s former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal said on CNN: “Even if a sitting president can’t be indicted, he’s got to know his future looks like it’s behind bars unless he cuts some sort of deal with the prosecutors.”

Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), likely to become the next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when the Democrats assume control of the House in January, painted his own grim picture for President Trump once he leaves office. “There’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him. That he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time,” he said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Former CIA Director John Brennan, an avowed enemy of President Trump, tweeted that he took “great solace” in knowing “how impossible it will be” for the president “to escape American justice.”

Former FBI Director James Comey, another avowed enemy of President Trump who has his own legal problems stemming from his possible perjury before Congress and his leaking of government documents, declared that the president was in serious legal jeopardy of being named an unindicted co-conspirator. “The government wouldn’t make that sponsoring allegation if they weren’t seriously contemplating going forward with criminal charges,” he told Nicolle Wallace, host of MSNBC’s “Deadline White House,” during a discussion at the 92nd Street Y in New York Sunday night.

Ironically, under the criminal “specific intent” standard that Comey himself applied in evaluating whether Hillary Clinton’s e-mail transgressions were worthy of criminal prosecution, federal prosecutors will have a very hard time proving that President Trump criminally violated the federal election campaign finance laws. They will need credible corroborating evidence proving beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump had specific criminal intent to direct Cohen to violate the contribution and disclosure provisions of the federal election campaign finance laws, or that he persuaded Cohen to perjure himself under oath. Just proving Cohen’s claim that the president directed Cohen to make the arrangements for paying off his two alleged paramours means nothing in and of itself.

            (Front Page Mag)

EJA Head ‘Not Shocked’ at ‘Shocking’ EU Anti-Semitism Report

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Rabbi Menachem Margolin says anyone shocked at latest EU report on anti-Semitism is ‘disconnected from reality.’

Rabbi Menachem Margolin, Chairman of the European Jewish Association (EJA), on Monday said that anyone who is shocked at the latest EU Report on discrimination and hate crime against Jews in the EU is ‘”disconnected from the reality on the ground.”

He also urged Member States to adopt the EJA’s Jewish Red Lines as a concrete sign that they are committed to making a difference.

The headline figures in the latest report make for stark reading

  • 89% of Jews think Antisemitism is most problematic on the internet and on social media
  • 28% of respondents have been harassed at least once in the past year;
  • 79% of Jews who experienced antisemitic harassment in the past five years did not report this to the police or another organization;
  • 34% avoid visiting Jewish events or sites because they do not feel safe;
  • 38% have considered emigrating because they did not feel safe as Jews in Europe;
  • 70% consider that efforts by Member States to combat Antisemitism are not effective.

In a statement from Brussels where the EJA attended the launch of the report at the Council of the European Union, Rabbi Margolin said,

“We thank the EU and the Fundamental Rights agency for confirming what we already knew, Europe as a whole is failing in its fight against antisemitism, and failing in ensuring the safety and security of the Jewish people that live on the continent.

Anybody who is shocked at this report must have their head in the ground or else is badly disconnected from the reality on the ground. This news is not a lightning bolt out of the blue, but instead is a confirmation of everything that our association members and people who approach us have been reporting to us on their daily experiences.”

Rabbi Margolin urged Europe’s leaders to immediately sign up to the “Jewish red lines” ratified by the members of the European Jewish Association at their conference in Brussels in November. The red lines are:

  • Political parties and their leadership must sign up to the fullI HRA definition of Anti-semitism.
  • Every European Country must appoint a dedicated Special Representative to combat anti-Semitism where one already doesn’t exist
  • All political parties pledge to exclude from government parties or politicians that espouse anti-Semitism as defined by the IHRA definition.
  • All political parties to pass, in accordance with their respective rules of procedure, binding resolutions that reject BDS activities as fundamentally anti-Semitic.
  • All political parties to support in writing and in party documents their support for freedom of religion and freedom of practice at Member State level and EU level.

“These red lines are the base camp, the bare minimum that is needed to make a real difference. Europe’s principal leaders and parties were sent them, will be aware of them, and should adopt them immediately if they are serious about tackling the unshockingly ‘shocking’ figures in this sad report on European Jewry”, concluded Rabbi Margolin.

(INN)

Stars Shine as 2019 Jewish Golden Globe Nominees Take Center Stage

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Timothee Chalamet played a meth-addicted teen in “Beautiful Boy” and is nominated for best supporting actor. Photo Credit: Shutterstock

The Golden Globes are almost here, and there’s no shortage of Jewish actors and culture that will be represented this year. The New York Post highlighted some of the most notable Jewish actors up for awards and Jewish representations in films featured this year.

Timothee Chalamet played a meth-addicted teen in “Beautiful Boy” and is nominated for best supporting actor.

Troye Sivan’s song “Revelation,” featured in “Boy Erased” is up for best original song. Mark Ronson also made the category with his song “Shallow” from “A Star Is Born.”

Adam Driver, probably best known as Kylo Ren from the new Star Wars movies, isn’t Jewish himself but is nominated for playing a Jewish cop in “BlacKkKlansman.” The Spike Lee movie is based off of the real-life story in which Driver’s character works with a black law enforcement official to secretly get into and expose the Ku Klux Klan, the notorious American white supremacist organization that traffics heavily in anti-Semitism and racism. The film itself is one of the best film category nominations.

Composers Justin Hurwitz and Marc Shaiman’s musical work got them nominations too. Shaiman composed a score for the “Mary Poppins” sequel, and “First Man” has Hurwitz to thank for its original score.

“The Kominsky Method” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” both got nominations for best musical or comedy television series. Rachel Brosnahan portrays a Jewish character in Amazon’s “Maisel,” although she isn’t Jewish herself. Her work as the protagonist in this series was good enough to put her in the category for best actress. Alex Borstein, the veteran comedienne from “Mad TV” and the voice of Lois from “Family Guy” got a nomination for best supporting actress. She’s the sidekick to Brosnahan Jewish character in the Amazon series. Brosnahan will face competition in her category from two well-known Jewish actresses, Alison Brie for her work in “Glow” and Debra Messing for playing “Grace” in the reboot of the popular 90s sitcom “Will & Grace.”

Henry Winkler, who played “The Fonz” on “Happy Days” and the bumbling lawyer for the Bluths on “Arrested Development” is up for a nomination in the best supporting actor category for his role on the HBO series “Barry.” Winkler is particularly active within the Jewish community.

Sacha Baron Cohen, a satirist who performed in the Habonim Dror Jewish theater during his time at Cambridge University, turned heads with his jaw-dropping satirical character bits on his show “Who Is America.” He duped a number of prominent American politicians to be interviewed by the various characters he portrays, posing as real people, with some of the video clips like the “Kinderguardians” segment going viral. His work on the show got him a nomination for best musical or comedy television actor.

Tune into NBC on Jan. 6 at night to watch the awards shows, cheer on your favorite people and films, and see who actually wins.

New Age & The Nazis; Compelling Book Offers Much to Civilizational Debate – Part I

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Nazis play a major role in the culture wars. Anyone arguing for the value of Western Civilization, the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Enlightenment, and the heritage of the Ancient Greeks will eventually be confronted with the Nazis. If cultural relativism is wrong, if it is wrong to say that Islam or Communism or New Age are not all equally valuable options on the cultural menu, then what about the Nazis? After all, the Nazis were Christians, weren’t they? Wasn’t the Holocaust informed by Christian theology? How dare Western Christians criticize jihad or communism’s purges? You have the worst crime in history on your team’s scorecard.

About that claim that the Nazis were the worst. The Nazis were compulsive record keepers. Hollywood directors and Soviet cameramen participated in the liberation of concentration camps. Their films have been required viewing for generations of students. We lack comparable documentation for others’ crimes. When I inform students of the cost of the establishment of communism or the advance of jihad, they indicate to me that they have never been exposed to these facts before. Historian Stephen Kotkin’s conservative estimate is that communism cost 65 million lives, while historian David Satter estimates that “the greatest catastrophe in human history,” killed 100 million. Bill Warner estimates that the death toll from jihad is 270 million.

His figure is controversial, but supported with citations. Any other honest estimate will be similarly overwhelmingly vast. Tamerlane, the fourteenth century “Sword of Islam,” is estimated to have killed five percent of the entire population of the world. There are two hundred million untouchables, or Dalits in India, and, even as India modernizes, their victimization continues. Hinduism mandates that Dalits must suffer to pay for their sins in their past lives. On November 17, 2018, The New York Times ran an account of a Dalit scalped by higher caste Hindus. Yes, worldviews besides Nazism have resulted in mass graves. We are less aware of those mass graves. So we assume that Nazism’s mass graves are the worst.

Without understanding this relationship between Nazism and the supernatural, one cannot fully understand the history of the Third Reich … Hitler’s Monsters is the first book to address this rich, fascinating, often extraordinary relationship from the party’s origins to the end of the Second World War … the Third Reich would have been highly improbable without a widespread penchant for supernatural thinking.»

If the Nazis did not carry out their crimes as integral and predictable expressions of Western Civilization and Christian theology, what did ground them? What were their guiding beliefs and principles? The extent to which Nazism was informed by neo-paganism is made clear in Eric Kurlander’s 2017 book Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich, published by Yale University Press. Hitler’s Monsters is a dense, ambitious, scholarly tome. There are over one hundred pages of footnotes and bibliography. Kurlander acknowledges that previous authors have documented Nazism’s involvement with New Age ideas and practices, and he draws on these authors’ work. Kurlander also acknowledges that without the perfect storm of historical circumstances exploited by Hitler, including Germany’s defeat in WW I, the punitive Versailles Treaty, and the Depression, Nazism probably never would have risen to power. And Kurlander notes that New Age beliefs don’t cause a believer to become a Nazi.

But Kurlander is unafraid to state the importance of his research. “No mass political movement drew as consciously or consistently as the Nazis on … occultism and … pagan, New Age, and Eastern religions, folklore, mythology … Without understanding this relationship between Nazism and the supernatural, one cannot fully understand the history of the Third Reich … Hitler’s Monsters is the first book to address this rich, fascinating, often extraordinary relationship from the party’s origins to the end of the Second World War … the Third Reich would have been highly improbable without a widespread penchant for supernatural thinking.”

You can get a sense of what the Nazis believed by walking through any given New Age store. On such a visit, you will encounter astrology, reincarnation, hypnotism, Chinese massage, and yoga how-to books, next to homeopathic flower “cures,” vegetarian recipes, and magical gardening manuals advising you to harvest your crops in tune with the movement of celestial bodies. There will be alternative histories of the universe and planet Earth, including books about the lost city of Atlantis. For teens, there will be lurid witch, vampire and werewolf novels.

Allegedly “non-fiction” books will inform you of your secret, spiritual Tibetan or Indian ancestry or past lives. The Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu classic, will be in an honored place. There will be books by or about Madame Blavatsky and Nostradamus, as well as Zoroastrian, Zen, Shinto, and Buddhist scriptures. Friendly pamphlets will extol the virtues of Islam in contrast to degenerate, oppressive Christianity. There will be a “serious,” “scholarly” tome insisting that witches were descendants of a pagan nature religion, and that the witch trials were really the Catholic Inquisition’s efforts to wipe out paganism.

Gurus will promise that Enlightenment concepts like objective reality and the scientific method are mere dogma created and exercised by lesser minds. These gurus will insist that you are somebody special, with a special destiny, and you need not be hidebound by conventional reality, science, or religion. Only lowly people believe in objective reality. You can use the power of your will to create any reality you want. Gravity is for lesser mortals. You can levitate.

Continuing your stroll through the New Age shop, you will encounter invitations to worship Satan. Satan is misrepresented by those stuffy, Christian prudes. Why should you, as special as you are, obey a God who orders you to rein in your appetites? Satan will strengthen your wildest urges. You’ll find materials on ley lines, special magical places exuding special geographic magic known only to a privileged few. You’ll find out how to use ancient runes in divination, and how to dowse, that is, how to find water, lost objects, and magical energies using only a forked stick.

Now imagine yourself a top Nazi, a Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels or Hess. You’d buy every single one of these products. Himmler “carried around with him” the Norse Edda, the Hindu Vedas and Bhagavad Gita, and the speeches of Buddha. Nazis participated in orgies aboard a yacht named after “The Indian goddess of love” the “Aryan Schakti [Shakti].” Nazi yoga. Nazi Buddha. Yes. The Nazis were that nuts. And they were that New Age.

An eclectic mélange of New Age beliefs and practices were in the roots that vomited up Nazism’s toxic tree. These beliefs and practices were harnessed to support Nazism’s most consequential, and most evil, acts. These beliefs and practices inspired daily life in concentration camps, human medical experimentation that violated every tenet of ethics and reason, weapons research and development, and military decisions. New Age beliefs and practices influenced Nazism’s bloody demise. Any understanding of Nazism that does not include New Age’s influence on Nazism is incomplete. Any understanding of New Age that does not take into consideration its influence on Nazism is incomplete.

Not all Nazis were interested in New Age beliefs, and not all Nazis were interested in all expressions of New Age. Some might prefer astrology; others homeopathy. On May 10, 1941, Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, known as “The Yogi from Egypt,” after consulting an astrologer and inspired by a supernatural dream, flew to Scotland in an attempt to make peace with the British. He was captured and imprisoned. Less than a month later, beginning on June 4, 1941, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Main Security Office, launched the “Hess Action.” Heydrich wanted to purge the occult from the Nazi party as well as the general public. Heydrich’s timing of the Hess Action indicates how seriously he took the issue. Heydrich initiated the Hess Action two weeks before Germany’s ultimately disastrous invasion of the Soviet Union. As a result of Heydrich’s action, some astrologers ended up in concentration camps. Some of those same practitioners were later released and went to work for top Nazis. Curt Munch was released from Sachsenhausen in order that he could use his psychic powers to locate Mussolini.

Hitler himself, Kurlander argues, didn’t want to restrain the occult because it was meaningless; he wanted to limit and control common people’s access to the occult because of its power. Goebbels exemplified this power-centric approach to the occult. Goebbels used Nostradamus for propaganda purposes.

Decades before Hitler arrived on the historical scene, many German seekers had partially or completely rejected Judeo-Christian cosmology, morality and worldview. They also rejected Enlightenment values and the scientific method’s insistence on objective facts. Many chose to find meaning and structure in pre-Christian paganism, Eastern religions, and new gurus like Madame Blavatsky. The Brothers Grimm, Wagner’s folklore-inspired operas, Nietzsche’s philosophy, and Herder’s writing on nationalism are partial expressions of, and, in turn, inspirations for, these trends. Kurlander writes, “Folklore, mythology, and neo-paganism rushed to fill an important gap in the German spiritual landscape, helping to occupy ‘the transcendental realm of mystic life’ vacated by Judeo-Christian traditions … Folklore and mythology facilitated fascism.” “By the end of the nineteenth century, folklore, mythology, and Ario-Germanic religiosity was etched into the consciousness of millions of ordinary Germans.” In this search for new paradigms, universal values were rejected in favor of moralities based on identity, place, and race. “I am a German, therefore I should or I can …” might be the preface to any moral statement.

The senseless mass destruction and humiliating defeat of WW I, and rapid modernization and upheaval, helped the previous century’s turn to nationalism, magic, myth, and folklore take center stage. Nazis saw a ripe opportunity to jettison the past, adopt a scorched earth mentality, and impose their new paradigm. In his 1930 book The Myth of the Twentieth Century, Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg declared the “collapse” of all that had come before and a “new dawn” and a “new faith” a “new light” a “new mission:” “blood and blood, race and race, folk and folk.” “That is the task of our century; to create a new human type out of a new view of life.”

Social Darwinism and biological racism were interwoven with New Age spiritual beliefs. Not only would old, impure ideas be jettisoned. Human beings deemed racially unfit to participate in superior souls’ upward thrust to perfection also had to be eliminated. “‘One could insist that the race to which one belonged had primarily to do with one’s degree of spiritual maturity’ … the lost civilization of Atlantis was considered to be the prehistoric source of divine (possibly extraterrestrial) racial and spiritual perfection,” writes Kurlander, quoting another author about Theosophy, a New Age belief system that predated, and influenced, Nazism’s rise. “Cosmic eugenics” blessed the destruction of that “‘which is unworthy to take part in the ascent of humanity … Humanity has risen by throwing out the lower forms in order to purify itself … dark skin is due to demonic interference’ … Luciferian remnants’ must be elevated ‘as a wise guiding force left behind for the evolution of mankind in general’ … Nazi religious theorists would make nearly identical arguments,” Kurlander says, quoting another New Age author who also wrote decades before Nazism’s rise. Other New Age thinkers, again, decades before Nazism, advocated selective breeding, and the elimination of inferior races and the handicapped. This culling was supported by a New Age theory that humanity was the result of breeding between angels and animals. Nordic people contained a higher percentage of angel. Indeed, New Age thinkers (and Friedrich Nietzsche) adopted a Hindu caste system term, chandala, for “untouchable” to talk about “lower races.”

A weakening of the influence of Judeo-Christian morality and a return to pagan norms appeared to be foreseen by at least one concerned observer. German poet Heinrich Heine, who was born Jewish but converted to Lutheranism, wrote in 1834 that “When once the taming talisman, the Cross, breaks in two, the savagery of the old fighters, the senseless Berserker fury of which the Northern poets sing … will gush up anew … the old stone god will rise from the silent ruins and … Thor, with his giant’s hammer, will at last spring up and shatter to bits the Gothic cathedrals.”

Hermann Rauschning, a former Nazi, diagnosed Hitler’s success. “Every German has one foot in Atlantis [and one in Tibet], where he seeks a better fatherland.” Pre-Nazi New Age societies and thinkers sometimes voiced their awareness that Hitler was mining and benefitting from the paths they had paved.

The Thule Society, or Study Group for Germanic Antiquity, was founded in 1918. Its purpose was an unsavory mix of biological racism and flakey, folkloric concepts of German origins. The Thule Society symbol was a swastika, an ancient, pagan symbol often found in Hindu and Buddhist art. Thule Society member and fan of Nordic folklore and “the wisdom of India,” Dietrich Eckart, argued that the “racially superior ‘Indo-European people’ had been corrupted by the ‘Jewish desert spirit’ embedded in mainstream Christianity.” Eckhart said on his deathbed that “Hitler will dance, but it is I who will call the tune.” In other words, Eckart and other New Age Germans saw Hitler as fulfilling their goals. Germany’s occult magazines supported Hitler, even before he took power. They lent whatever legitimacy they had to his seizure of power by predicting a “‘world turning'” “‘Third Reich'” lead by “‘a single prophet who preserved the German essence against all odds.'”

Top Nazis were not only not believing Christians, they were anti-Christian and determined to extirpate Christianity from their Reich. As Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach said, “the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement.” Alfred Rosenberg dreamed of a day when “Nordic sagas and fairy tales will take the place of the Old Testament stories of pimps and cattle dealers.” Nazism’s anti-Christian, pagan worldview was obvious to contemporaries. Christopher Dawson, “the greatest English-speaking Catholic historian of the twentieth century,” warned in 1935 that Nazism could “develop a mythology and ethic” that may “take the place of Christian theology and Christian ethics.” On January 13, 2002, Joe Sharkey, writing in The New York Times, reported on then-recently released documents outlining “How Hitler’s Forces Planned to Destroy German Christianity.”

In addition to rejecting, and hoping to overturn, Christianity, Nazis also rejected the Enlightenment ideal of objective reality. Konrad Heiden, a historian of Nazism, said that Nazism incorporated a hodgepodge of political theories. (To Be Continued Next Week) –

            (Front Page Mag)

Danusha Goska is the author of Save Send Delete, Bieganski, and God through Binoculars.