Palestinians: Taking Journalists Hostage

In this mailing: - Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Taking Journalists Hostage - A. Z. Mohamed: Two New Totalitarian Movements: Radical Islam and Political Correctness - Alan M. Dershowitz: The President Has a Special Obligation to Condemn Nazis and KKK [] [Palestinians: Taking Journalists Hostage]( by Khaled Abu Toameh • August 23, 2017 at 5:00 am - Hamas and Abbas have turned Palestinian journalists into weapons in their internecine war. Palestinian journalists are now being targeted not only for expressing their views and reporting in a way that angers their leaders; they are also arrested and tortured in the process of the settling of scores between Abbas and Hamas. - The Palestinians indeed live under two dictatorial regimes, where freedom of expression and freedom of the media are violated on a daily basis. - By taking journalists hostage, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas have demonstrated that they are operating more as militias than as governments. We have before us a preview of the deadly drama of any future Palestinian state. Several journalists, allegedly affiliated with Hamas, speak at an August 16 press conference about the physical and verbal abuse they suffered while held in detention by the Palestinian Authority. (Image source: Roya News video screenshot) Palestinian journalists have once again fallen victim to the continuing power struggle between the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has jurisdiction over parts of the West Bank, and Hamas, the Islamist movement that is in control of the entire Gaza Strip. Neither the PA nor Hamas is any champion of human rights, especially freedom of the media. The two parties regularly crack down on their critics, including journalists who do not toe the line or dare to report on issues that are deemed as reflecting negatively on the PA or Hamas. [Continue Reading Article]( [] [Two New Totalitarian Movements: Radical Islam and Political Correctness]( by A. Z. Mohamed • August 23, 2017 at 4:30 am - The attempt in the West to impose a strict set of rules about what one is allowed to think and express in academia and in the media -- to the point that anyone who disobeys is discredited, demonized, intimidated and in danger of losing his or her livelihood -- is just as toxic and just as reminiscent of Orwell's diseased society. - The main facet of this PC tyranny, so perfectly predicted by George Orwell, is the inversion of good and evil -- of victim and victimizer. In such a universe, radical Muslims are victimized by the West, and not the other way around. This has led to a slanted teaching of the history of Islam and its conquests, both as a justification of the distortion and as a reflection of it. - Thought-control is necessary for the repression of populations ruled by despotic regimes. That it is proudly and openly being used by self-described liberals and human-rights advocates in free societies is not only hypocritical and shocking; it is a form of aiding and abetting regimes whose ultimate goal is to eradicate Western ideals. Political correctness (PC) has been bolstering radical Islamism. This influence was most recently shown again in an extensive exposé by the Clarion Project in July 2017, which demonstrates the practice of telling "deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them in order to forget any fact that has become inconvenient" -- or, as George Orwell called it in his novel, 1984, "Doublespeak." This courtship and marriage between the Western chattering classes and radical Muslim fanatics was elaborated by Andrew C. McCarthy in his crucial 2010 book, The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America. Since then, this union has strengthened. Both the United States and the rest of the West are engaged in a romance with forces that are, bluntly, antagonistic to the values of liberty and human rights. [Continue Reading Article]( [] [The President Has a Special Obligation to Condemn Nazis and KKK]( by Alan M. Dershowitz • August 23, 2017 at 4:00 am - President Donald Trump has a special obligation to single out for condemnation, and distance himself from, individuals and groups that claim -- even if falsely -- to speak in his name, as the racist provocateurs in Charlottesville did. - I also believe that it is the special responsibility of decent liberals to do the same with regard to hard left bigoted extremists. As a liberal, I will not give these hard-left violent bigots a pass. - So, President Trump must stop being even handed in his condemnations. He should focus his condemnation on extreme right-wing bigots who speak and act in his name, and leave it to those of us on the left to focus our condemnation on left-wing extremists and bigots. (Photo by Mark Dixon/Flickr) All decent Americans have an obligation to condemn the violent bigotry of the Nazi and KKK demonstrators in Charlottesville or wherever else they spew their poisonous and threatening rhetoric. But President Donald Trump has a special obligation to single out for condemnation, and distance himself from, individuals and groups that claim -- even if falsely -- to speak in his name, as the racist provocateurs in Charlottesville did. [Continue Reading Article]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [RSS]( [Donate]( Copyright © Gatestone Institute, All rights reserved. You are subscribed to this list as {EMAIL} You can change how you receive these emails: [Update your subscription preferences]( or [Unsubscribe from this list]( [Gatestone Institute]() 14 East 60 St., Suite 705, New York, NY 10022