Report: 15 Shot, 2 Killed, Tuesday Alone in Mayor Lightfoot’s Chicago
Fifteen people were shot, two fatally, on Tuesday alone in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) Chicago.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports the first of the two fatalities was a 26-year-old man who was shot while at “CTA Red Line station in Rogers Park” just after 6:10 p.m.
NBC 5 reports the man was standing inside the station “when a vehicle pulled up near the station…[and] a person inside the vehicle opened fire,” striking the victim in the abdomen. He was then transported to a hospital and pronounced dead.
The second fatality was as 21-year-old man who was killed while inside an apartment in the “4800 block of South Wood Street.” He was shot multiple times by “someone he knew” and pronounced dead at the scene.
Tuesday’s violence follows a Monday on which the Sun-Times reports 14 people were shot, two fatally, in Mayor Lightfoot’s Chicago. And Monday’s violence came on the heels of a weekend on which Breitbart News reported at least 50 were shot, eleven fatally.
Breitbart News reported more than 35 people were shot Friday, September 11, 2020, into the morning of Sunday, September 13, 2020, alone.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
An Apology is Owed in Chicago
On June 11, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot held a news conference with new Chief of Police David Brown. She was livid. She announced that she had been contacted by the office of Congressman Bobby Rush and presented with videos recorded on a night of rioting following anti-police protests at the end of May over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The videos revealed thirteen policemen in Rush’s office, two dozing, others making coffee and preparing popcorn. Bobby Rush, indignant and upset, spoke as well. He castigated the officers for their having had “unmitigated gall” to make themselves coffee and popcorn, “my popcorn in my microwave.”
The mayor accused these police officers of lounging in Rush’s office as their colleagues were being pelted with rocks while trying to prevent vandalism and looting. She demanded that the unidentified officers come forward for reprimand. She lamented that such police behavior confirms the impression that officers didn’t care about looting on the lower-income South Side, but only about the more affluent or high-profile locations. Lightfoot was sincere and emotional. She truly believed that the officers had done wrong.
The police chief stated his embarrassment and dismay over the incident. He asked, “If you sleep during a riot, what do you do on a regular shift when there is no riot?”
Immediately, John Catanzara, Jr., the president of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the city’s largest police union, defended the officers. He urged that the public not rush to judgment. He insisted that the officers were invited to the office by Rush staff members, asked to protect the office from further looting after the waves of rioting and theft had dissipated, and were told to “make yourselves at home.” The FOP accused the mayor of “attempting to throw a tank of gasoline on an already smoldering fire.”
As for the timing of events, Congressman Rush would only say that the images are from after midnight. From my TV screen, they looked like they were recorded at daybreak, around 5:00 or 6:00 A.M. That would seem to confirm the FOP claim that the officers gathered hours after the rioting. But were they invited?
Rep. Rush denied that any of his staff members summoned the officers. His director of communications made a statement to that effect. According to an article in Politico, Rush responded angrily that that the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) is the “number-one cause that prevents police accountability,” and that the FOP and the Ku Klux Klan are “like kissing, hugging and law-breaking cousins.” While this rhetoric is at least as disturbing as the incident itself, Rush did add a piece of information that may be of significance. He said that the officers left behind a one-dollar bill on his desk, as if to reimburse him in a disrespectful way for the use of the refreshments. What was that all about?
Rep. Bobby Rush
Photo credit: cropped from a picture by Daniel X. O'Neil CCA 2.0 License
The last time that these events have been discussed by the mayor, police chief and the Rush office was the middle of June. Three months have passed without a word of follow-up.
But many questions remain from that June press conference, at least in my mind. Why did it take two weeks for Bobby Rush’s office to turn in the surveillance video? Rush shared that he had lost a sibling during that time, and we certainly felt for him. But wasn’t there someone managing the office? Wasn’t there a desire to identify the looters in the aftermath of significant vandalism and theft, both in Rush’s office and around it? Weren’t the videos essential for investigation of the devastation of area business?
The surveillance videos were from the first rioting between May 30 and June 2. And the press conference on June 11 was followed by a second wave of looting from August 9 to August 11.
Why has there been no official determination, or at least one shared with the public, of the time that the officers were in the office? If it was after the general looting occurred, are they not owed an apology for being accused of cowering there while stones were thrown at other officers?
Close to the time of the incident, there was word from Rush’s office that the alarm service notified the police, but not the office. Is there any phone evidence or official notation of another call made to the police, of an invitation? Is there any testimony that a call was made? If not, why has this not been shared with the public?
And even if the Police Department had been called to the scene, was it a good use of thirteen personnel members to deploy them for hours to one office? Wouldn’t it have been better just to send most of them home to rest? Were they all paid overtime for this assignment? Did they leave the dollar as token thanks -- so token that no “reimbursement” would have looked better -- for the overtime?
Following the Lightfoot and Rush press conference on June 11, the Chicago Sun Times editorial board urged, on June 17:
"What we need is not a rush to judgment, but a full and prompt compilation of all the facts. “If…[the police] were there doing their jobs, the fact that they made themselves coffee and popcorn would not be a major issue. All this could easily be established by examining police calls, interviews, reports, timelines and other data…. A full and prompt investigation will tell us whether the officers conducted themselves reasonably, following some kind of order, or were hiding from their jobs.”
But it has been almost three months and the Sun-Times has not offered any follow-up to the press conference, except to note that that event brought Lightfoot and Rush together after they had been feuding.
Does one editorial exempt a newspaper from investigative reporting? Why have reporters from all media not been pounding the pavement to get answers?
Bobby Rush’s office has yet to make a final statement on those events, except for Rush’s inflammatory comparison of the Chicago Police with the KKK and his remark that the FOP is “the most rabid, racist body of criminal lawlessness” by police in the United States.
Lightfoot’s airing of Rush’s grievance was, to him, the ultimate conciliatory act because he had long accused her of “representing” the Fraternal Order of Police. He therefore praised Lightfoot for her attack on the officers and on the FOP.
As of this writing, Mayor Lightfoot’s office, like Rush’s, has yet to offer any follow-up. There was another round of angry exchanges between Lightfoot and Catanzara following protests in downtown Chicago that turned violent when a mob trying to pull down a Christopher Columbus statue threw frozen cans and bottles at police and then accused the police of excessive force. Lightfoot condemned the violence by a “portion of the protesters” together with the police response as brought to her in “reports.”
When Catanzara accused her of inaccurately condemning the police, she texted him that he was “officially a clown,” calling him that three times and dismissing him as a “total fraud.” She then defiantly told the news media that she wrote her texts hoping that Catanzara would share them with the public. For his part, Catanzara texted Lightfoot that “99.9% of the department has zero respect for you, what you say, what you stand for and even less confidence you give a rat’s a** for their well-being.”
Catanzara has made his Republican loyalties known while Lightfoot, a staunch liberal Democrat, has courageously broken ranks with other mayors and governors in her party by condemning violence and looting and vowing that the perpetrators will be brought to justice no matter how many months pass before they are found. She has been most supportive of Police Chief Brown.
Lightfoot prudently removed and safely stored the Columbus statue in order to avert violence at what had become a flashpoint, and wisely lifted the bridges over the Chicago River and curtailed public transportation so that looters could not converge further upon the city. Of course, she was under tremendous pressure to do so after two devastating, business-destroying rampages through parts of the city, including the pricey downtown, after which many taxpayers threatened to leave, thus crippling the tax base. Lightfoot finally agreed to accept the help of Federal agents and officers to solve gang shootings in the city, but stopped short of utilizing Federal help against rioting.
So far, Lightfoot has responded to the “defunding police” movement with common sense. She understands that a large and crime-challenged city requires a strong police force, though in interviews she focuses more on how defunding the police would lead immediately to the elimination of black and brown officers, the newest with the least seniority, thus decimating further middle-class incomes in minority communities. But in a New York Times interview where she makes some good points, she could not refrain from attacking the FOP as “idiots” who are “trying to spread a defense” that Bobby Rush invited the cops into his office.
Again, what happened that night? The Chicago public deserves a report. Even more, the Chicago public deserves a process by which evidence can be presented, the episode can be closed and an apology tendered by the party who had the facts wrong, with a pledge to work together. That would be a fine example for the entire nation.
For three months now, I have been wondering about how or whether this will be resolved. But particularly now, in the ancient Hebrew month of Ellul, the month of reconciliation before the High Holy Days, a period of repentance and forgiveness, I cannot shake my sense of the urgency of this matter, which all parties, including (shamefully) the press, have been delaying.
Nolte: BLM Riots Are Officially the Most Costly Manmade Damage to American Property in History
The domestic terrorists in Antifa and Black Lives Matter have accomplished one thing: the most costly riots in the history of our country, reports the far-left Axios.
Property Claim Services, a company that tracks insurance claims filed due to riots and the like, found that the left-wing riots that occurred between May 26 and June 8 of this year could reach $2 billion in insurance claims.
Obviously, because the left’s domestic terrorism extended well beyond June 8 and is still ongoing, the company acknowledges “this is still happening, so the losses could be significantly more.”
Most importantly, these estimates are all being compared based on 2020 dollars. Meaning, previous riots, like the 1992 Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles, cost $775 million in 1992 dollars. That adds up to $1.42 billion today, which is still lower than the $2 billion Black Lives Matter Riots estimate — which again only covers eight or nine days of rioting that has never really stopped.
Here’s a piece of perspective that shocked even me…
If you add up the insurance cost in 2020 dollars for all six major American riots during the turbulent 1960s, the total is a little shy of $1.2 billion — which means the terrorists in Antifa and Black Lives Matter caused more mayhem and property damage in a little over a week than this country saw throughout all of the 1960s.
To the surprise of no one, Axios still uses the term “mostly peaceful” to describe what’s happening.
There’s also this helpful non sequitur: “Yes, but: These losses are small compared with those stemming from natural disasters like hurricanes and the wildfires that are consuming the U.S. West.” [emphasis original]
So even in the face of all this murder, property damage, assaults, looting, and burning, the clown show at Axios proudly marches onward.
“Mostly peaceful.”
Man alive.
Another thing to keep in mind is that these estimates are based only on insurance claims, so near the bottom of the piece, we’re told: “U.S. companies have learned the hard way that their insurance doesn’t cover business interruption related to the coronavirus, most policies emphatically do cover riot-related losses.”
In other words, that astronomical number isn’t estimating total damage, just the damage that’s insured. So while the number is not helpful in estimating the total damage, it is still a good apples-to-apples comparison with past riots, since all the calculations are based on insurance claims.
If Trump wins re-election in November, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The rioting and terrorism will be off the charts.
The national media are not even being subtle in threatening more riots if Joe Biden loses:
A loss by Joe Biden under these circumstances is the worst case not because Trump will destroy America (he can’t), but because it is the outcome most likely to undermine faith in democracy, resulting in more of the social unrest and street battles that cities including Portland, Oregon, and Seattle have seen in recent months. For this reason, strictly law-and-order Republicans who have responded in dismay to scenes of rioting and looting have an interest in Biden winning—even if they could never bring themselves to vote for him.
The far-left Atlantic published that last week (I don’t link anything that blackmails voters using threats of violence).
Here’s another:
A landslide for Joe Biden resulted in a relatively orderly transfer of power. Every other scenario we looked at involved street-level violence and political crisis.
That unveiled threat came from the far-left Washington Post at the beginning of the month.
If Trump wins, the marauders will maraud like nothing we have ever before seen, and they will do so with the full support of the establishment media and the Democrats. How do we know that? Because they are doing so now with the full support of the establishment media and Democrats.
If Biden wins, the Democrats, the media, and their Brownshirts in Antifa and Black Lives Matter will have had their terrorism validated.
So, either way…
Brace yourselves.
Prepare yourselves.
Prepare yourselves before it’s too late to prepare yourselves.
We have never lived in a country where political violence has been normalized and encouraged.
We do now.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
REALITY: BLACKS ARE THE MOST VIOLENT, RACIST, HOMOPHOBIC, ANTI-SEMITIC SUBCULTURE IN THE WORLD.
Quran (9:29) - "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book [Jews and Christians], until they pay the Jizya [the tax for being a Jew or Christian] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."
The BLM’s Marxist agenda is on full
display across America today. Exploitation
of the insurrectionist riots in which it plays
a leading role to demonize Jews and Israel
is, too.
The new Fox ‘Soul’ network has announced that it will air Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s “Message to America” on a special July 4th program, despite his history of racism, antisemitism, and homophobia.
Life Sentence for Kori Muhammad, Death Sentences for His Four Victims
“Delusional” Nation of Islam beliefs fueled racist murders in Fresno, California.
“Let black people go with our own land and reparations, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell.”
Thus spake convicted murderer Kori Muhammad, 42, at his June sentencing in Fresno, California. Muhammad drew a life sentence without possibility of parole for the 2017 murders of Carl Williams, Zackary Randalls, Mark Gassett and David Jackson, all targeted solely because they were white. The case passed with little attention from national media, despite relevance to ongoing racial violence.
Kori Muhammed was born Cory Allen Taylor and changed his name after converting to Islam as a teenager. In 1995, Muhammed participated in the Nation of Islam’s Million Man March in Washington. In his social media posts, Muhammad made references to “grafted white devils,” as the Nation of Islam explains, created 6,000 years ago by the mad scientist “Yacub.” According to police, Muhammed also supported a separate country for all “non-white” residents of the United States.
Muhammed believed he was part of an ongoing war between whites and blacks, and that a battle would soon take place. Derek Bavin, a classmate at Fresno City College, recalled that Muhammad would miss weeks of classes then accuse his instructors of being racist. He released hip-hop albums with repeated references to violence between blacks and whites.
Kori Ali Muhammad also boasts a long criminal history, with arrests for weapons, drugs, forgery and making terrorist threats. He was sentenced to seven years in 2008 and released early in 2016. In April of 2017, Muhammad felt “disrespected” by Carl Williams, 25, so Muhammad killed the man. When police sought him for the shooting, Muhammad planned to “kill as many white men” as he could before being caught. So on April 18, 2017, Muhammad drove through downtown Fresno targeting white victims.
When he walked up to a utility truck, Muhammad said in his confession, “I saw a Mexican driver and a white guy. I didn’t want to target the driver because he was Mexican, so I shot the white dude.” The “white dude” was Zachary Randalls, 34, whom Muhammad did not know and, as with all four victims, targeted solely because of his skin shade.
Muhammad encountered Mark James Gassett emerging from a Catholic Charities USA building and gunned him down with a .357 magnum revolver, shooting the victim again after he fell to the ground. Muhammad also encountered David Jackson, 58 emerging from Catholic Charities and shot him dead with the powerful revolver. On arrest, Muhammad proclaimed “Allahu Akbar,” and when sworn in he raised his right fist.
“This is just a warning,” said Muhammad in an interview with the Fresno Bee. “If America does not treat black people right, it will be destroyed by God.” Muhammed showed no remorse for the killings and told reporters, “I say get over it. There will be no pity party.” Muhammad also discussed his mental illness and that would be an issue in the trial.
Based on examination by a physician, judge Jonathan Conklin found Kori Muhammed competent to stand trial. Prosecutor Brian Hutchins argued that Muhammad’s delusional views are part of his religious beliefs associated with the Nation of Islam. Muhammed’s attorneys withdrew his plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.
“You think COVID-19 is bad, wait till you see what’s coming next,” Muhammad said during the trial. On April 22, the Fresno jury found Kori Muhammad guilty of first degree murder in the death of Jackson, Gassett and Randalls, and second-degree murder in the death of Williams. The jury also found Muhammad guilty on four counts of attempted murder, discharging a gun into a home, and being a felon in possession of gun.
Judge Conklin delayed the sentencing so the murder victims’ families would have a chance to make statements in court. Harold Wagner, stepfather of Mark Gassett, said Muhammad was an “evil coward,” and others lamented the loss of their loved ones. In his own statement, Muhammad proclaimed, “Let black people go with our own land and reparations,” and mocked the victims’ relatives by blowing kisses.
The case drew no official statement from California Gov. Gavin Newsom or attorney General Xavier Becerra, not even as an example of “gun violence.” Like Micah Johnson, who gunned down five police officers in Dallas in 2016, Kori Muhammad targeted victims because of their race, yet media did not describe the quadruple murderer as the racist perpetrator of a hate crime.
Kori Muhammad was held on $2.6 million bail, but if cash bail had been eliminated, as Democrats seek, he would have been free to continue his killing spree. Had Muhammad drawn a death sentence it would never be carried out. In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom, reprieved 737 convicted murderers on California’s death row, including serial killers and cop killers.
In California, murderers lives matter more than those of their victims. Californians can expect more racist violence from those whose delusional beliefs are associated with the Nation of Islam.
“People don’t appreciate the black man,” Kori Muhammed told the Fresno Bee. “We built pyramids and trade routes and made great nations. We are the first to walk the Earth and we will be the last to walk it.”
Outcry over Louis Farrakhan Rant Calling Prominent Jews Including Alan Dershowitz ‘Satan’
9 Jul 2020627
4:04
Notorious antisemite and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan live-streamed a three-hour Independence Day rant on YouTube where he calls prominent Jewish Americans, including Jonathan Greenblatt and Alan Dershowitz, “Satan,” as well as repeating the lie Israel was behind George Floyd’s killing.
The Combat Anti-Semitism Movement (CAM) on Wednesday called on YouTube to remove the video, saying it was “in clear contravention of YouTube’s own policies on hate speech.”
Farrakhan’s Fourth of July address also aired Saturday on Revolt TV, a cable channel owned by Sean “Diddy” Combs. Combs encouraged his 15.6 million Twitter followers to watch the video, tweeting “Everyone can watch…Just not the scared ones.”
Everyone can watch… Just not the scared ones.
— Diddy (@Diddy) July 4, 2020
In the address, the 87-year-old Nation of Islam leader called the head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Jonathan Greenblatt, “Satan.”
“Mr. Greenblatt, you are Satan. Those of you that say that you’re Jews, I will not even give you the honor of calling you a Jew. You are not a Jew… you are Satan and it is my job now to pull the cover off of Satan so that every Muslim when he sees Satan, pick up a stone, as we do in Mecca,” Farrakhan said.
“When you know who Satan is, you don’t have to kill him [but] the stone of truth, that’s what you throw. We cast truth at falsehood till we knock out its brains,” he continued.
He also called Jewish renowned defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz “a skillful deceiver” and “Satan masquerading as a lawyer.”
Farrakhan also implicated Israel in the death of George Floyd and in police violence in general.
“That’s why you gotta come at us like a coward,” he said. “Like snakes trying to wrap yourself around us so you could give us the treatment that you were taught in Israel. You may, as you gonna stop your police from going to Israel to learn how to kill better.”
“Your days of killing us without consequence are over,” he added.
Greenblatt took to Twitter to respond to Farrakhan’s “trademark antisemitism.”
“This is routine for Farrakhan- give him a platform, he never fails to espouse hatred,” Greenblatt said.
CAM Director Sacha Roytman-Dratwa wrote in a letter addressed to Matt Halprin, YouTube’s vice president of global trust and safety:
Louis Farrakhan has a long history of antisemitism, incorporating it into the very legitimate, important fight for civil rights and equality. His perversion of these values by promoting hatred and dehumanization of Jews is quite simply unacceptable.
According to CAM, by allowing the video, which has garnered nearly 900,000 views in three days, to remain on its site, “YouTube is allowing him to hijack the worthy cause of racial justice and use the video sharing site as a platform for anti-Semitism.”
“[Farrakhan] even suggested the Jewish community seeks to kill him, saying, ‘If you [Jews] make that move, I can guarantee your destruction,'” the letter reads.
In his address, Farrakhan bizarrely attempted to disavow accusations of antisemitism.
“They tell lies to make you think I am a bigot or antisemite, so that you won’t listen to what I’m saying. So far they’ve been pretty successful,” he said.
“If you really think I hate the Jewish people, you don’t know me at all. [I’ve never] uttered the words of death to the Jewish people,” he went on.
In the past his rancorous antisemitic rants have included calling Jews members of the “Synagogue of Satan” and claiming Jesus called the Jews “the children of the devil.”
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said he was not surprised by Farrakhan’s remarks.
“At this stage of history, no one can be surprised by the rants of America’s Godfather of antisemitism,” he told The Algemeiner.
Cooper also condemned Farrakhan’s “lurid antisemitic conspiracy linking the Jewish state to the death of George Floyd.”
The new Fox ‘Soul’ network has announced that it will air Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s “Message to America” on a special July 4th program, despite his history of racism, antisemitism, and homophobia.
Fox ‘Soul’ Network to Air Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan July 4
28 Jun 20205,435
2:02
The new Fox ‘Soul’ network has announced that it will air Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s “Message to America” on a special July 4th program, despite his history of racism, antisemitism, and homophobia.
LIVE ON FOX SOUL: THE CRITERION
THE HONORABLE MINISTER LOUIS FARRAKHAN will deliver his MESSAGE TO AMERICA on JULY 4th at 11am ET / 8am PT.
For More information visit https://t.co/cQCGt59mm7 and tune into FOX https://t.co/ZQ7BibvsBi or Download the FOX SOUL APP pic.twitter.com/CdJoQLcEnP
— foxsoultv (@foxsoultv) June 26, 2020
Farrakhan’s history of hateful rhetoric is well-documented. In 2018, he compared Jews to termites. That same year, he drew criticism for defending the use of the phrase “death to America” during a conversation with students in Iran.
The main FOX network launched Fox Soul in January in an effort to reach African American audiences — and to reach beyond the conservative branding of Fox News. Fox Soul offers four hours of streaming programing daily.
Former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D), founder of Americans Against Antisemitism, made an impassioned plea on Twitter on Sunday for Fox Soul to cancel the program.
.@AmericansAA calls upon @FOXTV to immediately cancel the planned JULY 4 broadcast of Dishonorable Minister of Hate @LouisFarrakhan on @foxsoultv@splcenter considers the Nation of Islam to be an extremist hate group. So why amplify this hateful voice?!#CancelFarrakhanNow! pic.twitter.com/FJo632h4cR
— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) June 28, 2020
The advertisement (above) for Fox Soul’s special Farrakhan broadcast includes a link to the Nation of Islam’s website.
The website (link not provided) is billing Farrakhan’s appearance as The Criterion: Announcement to the World. The website also includes links to purchase the Nation of Islam’s antisemitic trilogy, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews.
The Nation of Islam has had controversial relationships with the anti-Trump “Women’s March,” and provided security for the recent funeral of George Floyd.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Black Lives Matter: Not Just Communist, But
Viciously Anti-Semitic Too
No matter the color of their skin, Jews are going to be labeled “white.”
June 29, 2020
Clare M. Lopez
By the time violent rioters tore through the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Fairfax, Los Angeles on the night of Saturday May 30, 2020, it was too late. The vicious antisemitic, anti-Israel language of the M4BL and Black Lives Matter’s demands that included accusations against Israel of “apartheid” and “genocide” had been brushed aside. Black Lives Matter (BLM) delegations had traveled to the Middle East to endorse Palestinian terrorists in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria and pose for photo ops with the Palestinian flag. Statements from delegation leaders spoke of “occupation, ethnic cleansing and brutality” that Israel supposedly has perpetrated against the region’s Arab-Muslim population.
Even when city after city across America went up in flames after the May 25, 2020 killing of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis by a white police officer, with BLM ‘protesters’ assaulting private businesses, their owners, and law enforcement officers alike, smashing store fronts, setting fires, and destroying property, some among America’s Jewish leadership could hardly get their statements of support out fast enough. Jewish American organizations, the Reform Movement, rabbinical leadership figures, progressive and Zionist activists, even the Hasidic Community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn in New York City all practically fell over one another in their haste to endorse the BLM movement.
The Jewish Federation of Santa Barbara was no different. On June 13, 2020, the group – including, among others, the Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara, ADL Santa Barbara Tri-Counties, Santa Barbara Congregation of B’nai B’rith and Santa Barbara Hillel – issued a statement to condemn “racism” and “institutional biases.” The Focus Project, whose online website is remarkably empty, disseminated a set of talking points on June 16, 2020 that appear to date from September 2019. An increasingly popular trope is included among them that distorts the ancient Jewish term ‘Tikkun Olam’ in a way to make it seem like some kind of modern-day social justice program. In fact, ‘Tikkun Olam’ is a Kabbalist term that made its way into Judaism by way of the Aleinu prayer that is specific to Rosh Hashanah. ‘Tikkun Olam’ is not from the Torah (md’oraita) in origin at all – and therefore not one of the 613 obligatory commandments (mitzvot) nor anywhere to be found in the normative rabbinical literature concerning the praxises of Jewish Law (Halacha). Rather, as a kind of companion bit of moral guidance, ‘Tikkun Olam’ urges Jews to repair one’s individual relationship to the Almighty by way of observance of the actual ‘mitzvot’, or obligatory commandments that lead to perfecting personal behavior.
Now, just as ‘perfecting of one’s personal behavior before the Almighty’ has nothing to do with the social justice narrative per se, neither does it have anything to do with supporting a communist/Marxist, pro-Maoist organization, one of whose BLM co-founders’ declaration of the group’s Marxist ideology was featured on Twitter just days ago. Yes, the BLM movement was founded by three African-American women with longtime Marxist backgrounds: Alicia Garza, Opal I. Tometi, and Patrisse M. Cullors. Its original Platform (issued in August 2016, but scrubbed up a bit in its more recent iteration) called for collective ownership of all resources, the breaking up of banks, redistribution of wealth by way of confiscatory taxes on ‘high earners,’ free health care, and free education. Truly, Karl Marx would have blushed.
But back to the question of how BLM rioters came to be rampaging through Jewish neighborhoods of Los Angeles, CA, reportedly shouting “F___Jews”, and spray painting “F___Israel” and “Free Palestine” on the walls of the Congregation Beth Israel and at least four other synagogues. How did Jews come to be collectivized into the enemy “white privilege proletariat” class by these BLM Marxists?
That original BLM Platform also explicitly supports the BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanction) movement. Another indicator comes from Cullors (who organized the 30 May pogrom in LA): she reportedly told a New York Times reporter, “Let’s go into the heart of what is symbolically white in Los Angeles, which is Beverly Hills…These people need to hear our pain and our grief. We wanted to bring this to communities who often aren’t dealing with police violence.” No matter the color of their skin, therefore, Jews are going to be labeled “white”—as a pejorative from which it is always going to be impossible to escape. It goes back farther than that, however. By 2015, BLM representatives traveled to the Middle East to make common cause with Palestinians in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. Fast forward to late May 2020, shortly after the death of George Floyd, and the Democratic Socialists of America’s BDS national working group blatantly tried to link that killing to Israel, by claiming that U.S. police forces learned riot control techniques from Israeli police. Then, on June 1, Al-Awda, the Palestinian Right of Return Coalition, published a hideous cartoon at its website showing an Israeli soldier with his knee on the neck of a keffiyeh’ed Palestinian, arm-in-arm with an American police officer with his knee on the neck of a black man. The article it accompanied was entitled “Al-Awda PRRC statement of solidarity for Black lives and Black struggle.”
The BLM’s Marxist agenda is on full
display across America today. Exploitation
of the insurrectionist riots in which it plays
a leading role to demonize Jews and Israel
is, too.
Raymond Ibrahim Interview: Truth About Islam Must Be Acknowledged
How an ideology's teachings are antithetical to Western values.
Note: Journalist Niram Ferretti interviews Raymond Ibrahim, a Shillman Fellow at the Freedom Center, for the Italian publication, L’Informale (original here). Pasted below are excerpts from the English version.
Question: How much is the concept of jihad intended as holy war, central to the way Islam has interpreted itself during the centuries?
The concept of jihad was central from the start—at least according to the earliest Muslim historians who often portray the first warriors of Allah as being zealously motivated by the notion of jihad.
Question: The last time that Islam tried to penetrate Europe through war was on the 12th of September 1683 at Kalhenberg, near Vienna, where 65.000 thousand Christians fought against 200,000 Ottoman Turks. For how long after that date did jihad against the West stopped and when and why was it resumed?
Raids continued for some time, particularly by sea, and well into the late 1700s, meaning for about a century after the successful defense of Vienna. Even as the Ottoman Empire was beginning its slow retreat from eastern Europe, the Muslim slavers of the so-called Barbary States of North Africa wreaked havoc all along the coasts of Europe—even as far as Iceland. The United States of America’s first war—which it fought before it could even elect its first president—was against these Islamic slavers. When Thomas Jefferson and John Adams asked Barbary’s ambassador why his countrymen were enslaving American sailors, the “ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that … it was their right and duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims] wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners….”
Question: In his seminal book of 1996, Samuel P. Huntington wrote about Islam and the West the following sentence, “Kto? Kovo? Who is to rule? Who is to be ruled? The central issue of politics defined by Lenin is the root of the contest between Islam and the West”. Do you agree?
Yes, inasmuch as that Muslims must always work to make Islam rule over non-Muslims, based on their sharia, which while allowing for truces and times of peace—particularly when Islam is weak vis-Ã -vis infidels—also sees the spread of Muslim rule as the culmination of the Islamic mission that began in the early 630s.
Question: Let us now talk about your new book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. What has brought you to write a book focused specifically on the battles which have occurred along the centuries between Islam and the West?
Yes, as indicated by the title, the book is a military history between Islam and the West, narrated around their eight most decisive clashes, the first and last of which occurred more than a millennium apart. But while the eight battles/sieges form the centerpieces of the book’s eight chapters, the bulk of the narrative chronologically traces and tells the general, but much forgotten story of Islam and the West, most of which of course revolved around warfare—with all the attendant death, destruction, slavery, and geopolitical demarcations and map rearrangements. We can say I began working on portions of this book some twenty years ago—since around 1998-99, when I first started doing academic research for what became my MA thesis in History: a close examination, including through the original Arabic and Greek sources, of the battle of Yarmuk—the first major military encounter between Islam and the Eastern Roman Empire in 636, highlighted in Chapter 1 of the Sword and Scimitar.
Question: To what extent is the Islamic terrorism that we are facing today a continuation of the battles between Islam and the West that you describe in Sword and Scimitar?
To a very great extent. Both the motivation and the pattern of terrorist acts are very much mirror reflections of past Islamic motivations and patterns. In other words, from the start to finish, the book pages are full of all the ugly words and deeds committed by modern groups such as the Islamic State—ordering Europeans to convert to Islam or face the sword; the willful destruction of churches; the mass slaughter—including by beheading, crucifixion, or burning—of Christian defenders, and the mass enslavement and rape of Christian women and children—all of these permeate the pages of my book.
Question: Islam is a way of life. It is a complete set of ideas and rules which differs deeply from our Western values. Is there any chance of an accommodation between Islam and Western societies or this is just wishful thinking?
Can water and oil mix? In the same manner, pure Islamic teachings and pure Western values are often antithetical to one another. For example, the West believes in freedom of religion, whereas in Islam those who seek to apostatize are penalized, including by death; the West believes in freedom of speech, whereas in Islam any critical talk concerning Muhammad can get one killed. One can go on and on but the point should be clear. Of course, a nominal/secular Muslim may be able to assimilate in a Western society, but that is not a reflection of Islam, which is hardly nominal but rather a full way of life based on sharia.
Question: According to you what are the ways in which Europe on one side and the United States on the other should face the reality of Islam in such a manner that could be helpful both for Westerners and Muslims? What are the false assumptions that must be rejected?
First, the truth must be acknowledged—including for example the truth that, for well over a millennium, Muslims invaded European/Christian territory on the same logic that Islamic terror groups cite—that it is their right to invade, conquer, butcher, and enslave infidels for no less a reason that because they are non-Muslims. If this is how Muslims have been behaving for centuries, is there really any need to find “reasons” why some of them are behaving so now? Are grievances, territorial disputes, etc., necessary to explain this unwavering hostility? Once these facts are embraced, the rest, including policy—for instance, the question of Muslim immigration—should become self-evident.
Question: How inbred is religious violence in Islam and how it differs from the way in which it is presented in the Bible and has accompanied Christianity in the course of its history?
Many apologist for Islam like to claim that the Bible, especially the Jewish scriptures (or the Old Testament), is just as if not more bloody and violent than the Koran—so why do we insist that Muslim violence is rooted to Muslim scriptures? The problem with comparing violence in the Bible — both Old and New Testaments — with violence in the Koran is that it conflates history with doctrine. The majority of violence in the Bible is recorded as history; a description of events. Conversely, the overwhelming majority of violence in the Koran is doctrinally significant. The Koran uses open-ended language to call on believers to commit acts of violence against non-Muslims. See “Are Judaism and Christianity as Violent as Islam?” for my most comprehensive and documented treatment of this tired apologia.
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