The Desperation of the Manipulated

Palestinians carry the body of Hamdan Abu Amsha, said killed a day earlier by Israeli fire during a mass border protest along the security fence, in Beit Hanun in the northern of Gaza Strip on March 31, 2018. (AFP/ MAHMUD HAMS)

"[The army faced] a violent, terrorist demonstration at six points [along the fence. The IDF used] pinpoint fire [wherever there were attempts to breach or damage the security fence]."
"All the fatalities were aged 18-30, several of the fatalities were known to us, and at least two of them were members of Hamas commando forces."
"[If violence drags on along the Gaza border, Israel will expand its reaction to strike the terrorists behind it. If attacks continue, the IDF will go after terrorists] in other places, too. [Israel] will not allow a massive breach of the fence into Israeli territory."
“We will not be able to continue limiting our activity to the fence area and will act against these terror organizations in other places too." 
IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis

A Palestinian protester slings stones towards Israeli soldiers during clashes with Israeli troops along the Gaza Strip border with Israel, east of Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Friday, March 30, 2018. (AP/Adel Hana)

"The large crowds ... reflect the Palestinian people's determination to achieve the right of return and break the siege and no force can stop this right."
Fawzi Barhoum, Hamas Spokesman

"Hamas is using you and distracting your attention from its responsibility to take care of you and govern the Gaza Strip. Hamas is sacrificing you to move forward with useless agendas and wasting millions instead of investing in your well-being."
"Don’t let Hamas use you! Don’t put yourselves in danger for nothing. You deserve a better future than what Hamas has planned! You deserve more than a reality of violence, incitement and terrorism."
Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee, IDF Arabic spokesperson

"[The protests mark the beginning of the Palestinians’ return to] all of Palestine."
"We are here to declare today that our people will not agree to keep the ‘right of return’ only as a slogan."
Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar (C) shouts slogans and flashes the victory gesture as he takes part in a tent city protest near the Gaza border on March 30, 2018 to commemorate Land Day. (AFP PHOTO / Mohammed ABED)

The Israel Defence Forces, performing the function for which it was formed, is defending its borders along the Gaza coastal strip from penetration by Gazan Palestinians incited to 'protest' Palestinian-style by rioting and acting as human shields and coerced, manipulated civilians, giving cover to the 'militants' among them who throw Molotov cocktails and rocks at Israeli troops while rolling burning tires toward the barriers that restrain them from infiltrating the Israeli border.

There are casualties in numbers; an estimated 17 dead with hundreds wounded; numbers given by the Islamist jihadi group Hamas, which Israel is unable for obvious reasons to verify, but the IDF does know that among those dead are members of the Hamas fighting forces. This is Hamas doing what it does best; combatively and rhetorically challenging Israel, to provoke its forces to respond with the kind of force that results in casualties among civilians to bring censure to Israel by the watching international community.

The people of Gaza are fed an unvarying diet of propagandist hatred against Israel, to ensure they view the Jewish State as an impediment to their own strictured prosperity by denying them all that they have been taught since childhood to expect from life; above all, that the prosperity on which Israel is based is the Gazans' own heritage. And that only if they return to those places where those originally from areas in what is now Israel, a good life would be restored to them; the presence of the Jews preventing them from achieving their destiny.

That the terrorist group dedicated to vanquishing the IDF and destroying the State of Israel, which dominates their daily life with actions and activities focused on that goal, ignoring the purpose of a responsible government to provide the template of infrastructure for the delivery of social support to the governed, is what has impoverished the people of Gaza bypasses them. For the lifetime of the oldest among them the international community has been providing funding and material support which their leaders have waylaid to fulfill their own designs.

The desperation of indigent life in Gaza contrasts sharply with the wealth acquired by their leaders, by the sidelining of material support for the population toward Hamas projects, both costly in materials and upkeep and purposeless for the well-being of the subjugated held in thrall to the Hamas version of 'justice' seeking to destroy a nation, and enabling in the process tribal-religious conquest and a restoration of Arab 'honour'.

Hamas has enjoined Gazan Palestinians to march on Israel's border and to continue their barrage of protests and violence for six weeks until the day of Palestinian mourning and Israeli celebration is reached; for the former the Naqba, for the latter the establishment of the State of Israel. Persuading an estimated 20,000 Palestinians to march on the border throwing stones, firebombs and rolling burning tires toward troops on the opposite side. Sending children into the fray and toward danger; a tactic beloved by Hamas.

The "right of return" insisting that millions of the progeny of the original 70,000 Palestinians who fled, overwhelm Israel, as simply another vehicle of destruction.

Rising unemployment, miserable poverty, lack of power, and questions about the availability of potable water all make life intolerable in the Gaza Strip. Israel has done what it too does best; warning that it intended to make use of live ammunition, and scattering leaflets explaining that to come within 300 metres of the fence is to court direct danger. In response to which some of the Gazan civilians are indifferent, claiming their lives are so dire, death would be a relief.

Not far from the border where protesting Gazans in family groups assemble, there is a different atmosphere, one of gaiety and celebration with family picnics, with stalls erected to sell ice cream, smoothies, nuts and sandwiches. Those gathered there seemingly unperturbed as ambulances screech beyond them carrying injured, and even while drones drop tear gas canisters. 

"We are here to say we want to return to our land", 65-year-old Suheila Abu Rish said of her family displaced from Ashdod 50 kilometres up the coast, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

A war where Arab armies coalesced after persuading Palestinians they could soon return, once the Jews had been torn away from the land, vanquished and bleeding, to surrender their new state, returned to Arab rule. This was before Suheila Abu Rish's birth; it occurred 80 years ago, but the fallacy of return is kept alive and burning in the consciousness of a people whom other Arab states never had any intention of welcoming as citizens.

As Jews embark on their annual celebration of Passover, their release from tyranny and renewed pledge as a people exiled from their traditional heritage landscape, the symbolism and rage of Arab displacement exemplifies the entitlement of a religion which had not existed until a thousand years later and a people for whom the land was foreign, to now claim it as their birthright. Even so, there is no coordination or singleness of purpose to benefit Palestinians between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

No reconciliation possible between the West Bank and Gazan Palestinians with their leaders planning to demolish one another's leadership rights and lives. The latest efforts at peace between them destroyed when Hamas launched a bomb to kill the PA prime minister and intelligence chief in a convoy on a road in Gaza. Typically, the Palestinians choosing lethal violence to settle matters of disagreement and restore tribal 'honour'.

Palestinian demonstrators face IDF soldiers near the fence in the northern Gaza Strip, March 30, 2018. JACK GUEZ/ AFP

Hamas announced on Saturday that five members of its military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, were among 16 Gazans they said  were killed on Friday along the security fence with Israel, claiming those killed were taking part "in popular events side-by-side with their people". Maj.Gen.Eyal Zamir of IDF's Southern Command spoke of Hamas planning attacks under the shield of demonstrations: "We recommend to civilians not to come near [the fence], and warn Hamas that it is responsible for everything that happens in the Gaza Strip with all its consequences." 

For their part, and unsurprisingly, Egypt, Jordan and the Arab League have condemned what they term 'excessive use of force' against demonstrators on Israel's part, while the organizers of the march have appealed to the United Nations and Arab League to establish an international commission of inquiry to investigate their charges of Israel's excessive force against Palestinian demonstrators. A well-orchestrated and familiar choreograph that will ensure further censure of Israel by the general assembly of the UN.

The Timeless Inuit Historian

"They were finding stuff that she [his great-grandmother] later realized were muskets, or a rifle; spoons and forks, ropes and chains."
"Then they noticed there was a mound the length of a human being, and there stood a stone with strange markings on it."
"She realized that was a grave. Going back to her time, the Inuit had never buried their dead under the ground; they just wrapped them in skins, and the animals would come and take the bodies away. That was the belief, that  you died, and you go back into the world."
Louie Kamookak, Inuit historian, Nunavut, Canada

Louie Kamookak was a champion of a long overlooked Inuit oral tradition that, in time, became a key component in the most significant archaeological find in contemporary Canadian history: the discovery of the lost Franklin ships. Courtesy Louie Kamookak

"Louie played a critical role in the successes we have seen in the last five years with the discovery of both of [Sir John] Franklin's lost vessels."
"I refer to Louie as the last great Franklin searcher -- he was devoted to this search for decades."
"There was a very long period where the Inuit accounts related to the expedition were ignored entirely. Louie was working methodically, and very much alone, for 30 years -- trying to compare the historical search accounts with contemporary stories from elders, to create a picture of what really happened [to the ill-fated Franklin expedition search for the Arctic North -West Passage]."
"But it wasn't until the latter part of his life that the Inuit tradition had begun to be taken as seriously as it always should have been."
"I find it unbelievable that Louie is gone. ...as recently as last November he was planning to go back into the field and pursue some leads in the search for Franklin's remains."
"He never lost  his interest. He never lost his great love -- as a teacher -- and as someone who had all the attributes of an elder."
John Geiger, chief executive officer, Royal Canadian Geographical Society

If it were not for this man's respect for his heritage, for his elders, for his insatiable curiosity and his urge to unveil mysteries based on his instinct for discovery, the two ships that Sir John Franklin sailed from Britain to the Arctic -- to finally find the elusive North-West Passage that had puzzled and evaded others before  him and to which enterprise he had committed himself to end his long career with distinction with the British Admiralty -- would never have been found.

The Franklin Expedition, like others that had preceded him on a similar mission -- and those that followed his absence in search of his whereabouts and that of his doomed crew, had some interaction on occasion with the people of that frozen land whose survival skills they did little to emulate. The presence of white Europeans in the Arctic and their strange occupations, ill-suited clothing and gear, caught the attention of the Inuit as curiosities; the oral history of their observations lived on long after the explorers and the Inuit of the time did.

Louie Kamookak was fascinated, listening to his great-grandparents near his own home of Fjoa Haven a community on King William Island, when he would visit with them. He was born in 1960 and his grandmother recounted her memory of herself as a child borne on her father's shoulders when they came across a remote ridge strewn with artefacts reflecting the presence in the late 1840s of foreigners on a mission.

He was so intrigued that as he become an adult he kept pursuing the history of that strange encounter, in the process  himself becoming an amateur historian, a teacher, and an obsessed collector of Inuit stories. He renewed the heritage tradition of Inuit oral history and in so doing preserved a history of immense interest to Canadians as an important part of the country's northern discoveries. And with the knowledge that he had amassed, he proved to be the missing link that guided researchers to the very area where Franklin's expedition unravelled.

Canadian history was changed forever, thanks to this man whose vital information made possible the archaeological discovery of the whereabouts of Franklin's two lost ships, the Terror and the Erebus, all that was left of his 1945 expedition. Expeditions were launched one after the other, in a determined search for Franklin and his crew, hoping they could be rescued; at the very least, the mystery of their disappearance solved, but it was not to be. His wife used her contacts in high places to launch one search after another, to no avail.

A 19th century painting by Francois Etienne shows the HMS Erebus in the ice. National Maritime Museum

But Louie Kamookak  undertook to accomplish what British determination could not. He gathered the stories of Inuit elders, cross-referencing them with contemporary accounts of British searchers and in so doing came to understand how and where the Franklin ships might conceivably be located, a discovery that only someone who understood the landscape as well as he did, in possession of vital clues, could arrive at. This priceless information he shared with archaeologists, making possible the discovery of the ships' location.

He spread  his knowledge far and wide, speaking to academics, school groups, journalists and bureaucrats, helping them to understand that sometimes answers to questions that elude the learned and the intelligent could be in the possession of those whose learning and intelligence they had historically spurned, feeling nothing of any value could arise from those sources; the typical reaction of people who feel themselves unaccountably superior to others.

Delivering His Own Destiny

"[My grandfather’s] total destruction was complete. He lost his name, his home, his wealth, his status, everything he had and he barely, barely, by unique feat of almost unbelievable fortune, planning and ability, managed to save probably amongst a handful of patriarchs, 14 members of his direct family – children, grandchildren, including me – away from the Holocaust and brought us as nameless refugees living off charity in Switzerland."
"We were taken to a gym [at the Engineering Department, University of Toronto]. And in the gym were trestles, wooden tables set with all kinds of milk, chocolate milk, regular milk, ice cream, hot dogs, hamburgers, doughnuts. … [Back home] hunger was tangible. … The whole thing became a totally unreal, surreal experience."
"I arrived in this place [Canada] not speaking the language, not knowing a dog. This is a country that does not ask about your origins; it only concerns itself with your destiny."
Peter Munk, Canadian extraordinaire, 1927 - 2018

Peter Munk speaks in Toronto in this 1994 file photo.

Roger Hallett/The Globe and Mail

Born in 1927 in Budapest, Peter Munk was destined to make his debut on the world stage many years later. He was privileged at birth, born into a wealthy Jewish family. Like all European Jews, including those in Hungary, their lives and their fortunes became forfeit when Nazi Germany invaded and occupied one country after another, setting up the institutional machinery whereby Jews would be rounded up and transported (with the assistance of local police) en masse to slave camps, concentration camps, death camps.

When the German military occupied Hungary in June of 1944 the Munk family was, along with all other Jews shoved into the confines of boxcars, trains heading for Germany, accompanied by Nazi SS guards to ensure none of the 1,500 Jews in that transport including the Munks managed an escape. The Munk family train was marooned eventually in Bergen-Belsen for weeks. But where most trains that entered the camp carried Jews who would be summarily exterminated in its gas chambers, this train sat there, waiting.

Awaiting the results of negotiations to determine whether and who among them might be allowed to escape death. Finally, families on board that transport were spared death, for vast ransoms had been paid to Nazi Germany through the auspices of the U.S. Jewish community. The Munk family itself surrendered gold, bank notes and jewellery to convince the German authorities to allow them to save themselves. And in August, 1944 the entire family arrived safely Switzerland.

And there, sixteen-year-old Peter Munk went on a tangent of boyish recreation; "I went on long skiing holidays with friends up in the mountains", he told a biographer. "I made enough money of my own to pay for tea dances and entertain all the dates I wanted". Until his father told him "This can't go on. You're going to dances instead of promoting your career". His mother who had been divorced from his father before the Hungarian occupation and was not with the family had been sent to Auschwitz. She survived her ordeal.

And convinced her son from Budapest, where she had returned after the war, to go to Canada where an uncle lived. And so in 1948 he sailed from Liverpool to Halifax and went on to Toronto where he attended high school, learned to become proficient in English and finally won acceptance to engineering at the University of Toronto. His uncle gave him tuition money and the young man wasted it. But then took a job picking tobacco to earn back his tuition.

He ended up being a spectacularly natural businessman. He built and controlled Barrick Gold Corp. which became the world's largest gold producer. And he also built a real estate empire, TrizecHahn Corp. Prior to that, in 1958 he and a partner in Toronto established Clairtone to build high-fidelity equipment distinguished by their sleek, Scandinavian-style wood cabinets, endorsed by none less than Frank Sinatra, Hugh Hefner and Sean Connery.

While this man acquired his business acumen, his reputation and great wealth, hob-nobbing with royalty, celebrities and entrepreneurs of great renown, he was also busy disposing of some of his riches. He is known to have been responsible for charitable donations to a total of over $200-million. He did observe, however, that this amount would be dwarfed in the future through his will when the time came for it to be probated.

His generosity funded the Peter and Melanie [his second wife] Munk Cardiac Centre at Toronto General Hospital, the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, and the semi-annual production of the Munk debates, featuring high-profile, distinguished guest speakers.

One of his biographers, Peter C. Newman, another alumnus of the University of Toronto, and himself a man of Jewish European parentage, born in Vienna, Austria, had emigrated to Canada in 1940 as a Jewish refugee from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.

Summing up what motivated Peter Munk, Newman wrote: "His motives aren't as innocent or uncomplicated as making money. It's restitution, redemption, revenge -- the three great Rs in Peter Munk's life."

Barrick Gold Corporation Chairman Peter Munk leaves the annual general meeting of shareholders in Toronto May 2, 2012.  REUTERS/Mike Cassese

Taking Citizenship Lightly

"[Vujicic] failed to disclose his conviction for manslaughter in his application for permanent residence, knowing that he had been found guilty and sentenced for that offence in 1998."
"His conduct is consistent with an intention to deceive Canadian immigration officials."
Federal Court Justice James O'Reilly

Bozidar Vujicic arrived in 2002 and was granted permanent residence status and then Canadian citizenship. He swore his citizenship oath in 2006.  John Moore / The Canadian Press

Failure to disclose a criminal record when applying for a visa to enter Canada leading to residency and Canadian citizenship is grounds for revocation of that citizenship and removal from the country. The Federal Court of Canada ruled that Bozidar Vujicic, a resident of British Columbia, fraudulently obtained residency through the concealing of his conviction of manslaughter. He had shot another man in the heart during a drunken brawl that turned deadly, in Bosnia.

Bosnian Vujicic took steps to apply for permanent residency to Canada in 1999 while in his country of origin. When his application was reviewed by immigration officials who interviewed the man, no mention was made that he had been found guilty of murder and was awaiting the next move of the justice system on his sentence. Immigration officials granted him permission to move to Canada where he arrived in 2002 and was granted permanent residence status followed by Canadian citizenship in 2006.

After the passage of three years, officials came into possession of information about Mr. Vujicic's background in Bosnia, information that caused them to begin the process of citizenship revocation. Translated court records derived from Serbia describing a drunken brawl that took place in southern Serbia in 1995, in Leskovac were examined by the Federal Court, where Vujicic was named as being one of several men involved in a violently lethal episode.

Named as an instigator of a nighttime fight with a number of other men, some later charged along with him, Vujicic had been drinking heavily on that occasion. Evidence from Serbia did not excuse charges of manslaughter levelled against Vujicic on the basis of his inebriated state, holding rather that his level of intoxication was not seen as preventing him from fully understanding the significance of his actions.

As the brawl was proceeding, Vujicic fired a gun in the direction of Dragan Stojanovic. When a bullet hit Stojanovic in the heart, he bled to death, according to court records. The Serbian court rejected Vujicic's claim of self-defence. Forensic evidence relating to the gunshot wound failed to support his explanation of innocence and he was convicted of manslaughter in1994. There was a second conviction after a 1998 retrial, but he was not taken into custody immediately.

When he left court he soon afterward made application to emigrate to Canada. Vujicic claimed the fact he hadn't been taken immediately to prison left him confused, uncertain what had occurred in court, he testified at the recent hearing into his case in Canada. He hadn't 'realized' the court had convicted him of manslaughter, nor was he conscious of any sentencing that would impact on his Canadian citizenship status.

He failed to consider it useful to discuss his uncertainty with his trial lawyer, choosing instead to come to Canada. Presenting two official certificates both of which indicated he had no criminal convictions against him; one from Bosnia, the second from Montenegro -- neither from Serbia where his conviction took place -- he had been accepted into Canada.

He thought, he claimed, that the certificates were ample confirmation that he had not been convicted. Nor that he had to serve the 8-year prison sentence brought down by the Bosnian court.

Bozidar Vujicic, School of Engineering Science
Simon Fraser University

Freedom for World Jewry

"Today, leaders of British Jewry tell Jeremy Corbyn that enough is enough."
"We have had enough of hearing that Jeremy Corbyn opposes antisemitism, whilst the mainstream majority of British Jews, and their concerns, are ignored by him and those he leads."
"Jeremy Corbyn did not invent this form of politics, but he has had a lifetime within it, and now personifies its problems and dangers."
"He issues empty statements about opposing antisemitism, but does nothing to understand or address it. We conclude that he cannot seriously contemplate antisemitism, because he is so ideologically fixed within a far-left worldview that is instinctively hostile to mainstream Jewish communities."
"Again and again, Jeremy Corbyn has sided with antisemites rather than Jews. At best, this derives from the far Left’s obsessive hatred of Zionism, Zionists and Israel. At worst, it suggests a conspiratorial worldview in which mainstream Jewish communities are believed to be a hostile entity, a class enemy."
Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council.

"I recognize that antisemitism has surfaced within the Labour Party, and has too often been dismissed as simply a matter of a few bad apples. This has caused pain and hurt to Jewish members of our party and to the wider Jewish community in Britain. I am sincerely sorry for the pain which has been caused, and pledge to redouble my efforts to bring this anxiety to an end."
"Newer forms of antisemitism have been woven into criticism of Israeli governments."
"[While criticism of Israel], particularly in relation to the continuing dispossession of the Palestinian people [cannot be avoided, comparing Israel to the Nazis, attributing criticisms of Israel to Jewish characteristics or using abusive language such as 'Zio' to describe supporters of Israel all constitute aspects of antisemitism."
"Jewish people must not be held responsible or accountable for the actions of the Israeli government."
"I will never be anything other than a militant opponent of antisemitism. In this fight, I am your ally and always will be."
Jeremy Corbyn, leader, opposition Labour Party, United Kingdom

Luciana Berger MP joined a demonstration in London against anti-Semitism in Labour   BBC

Jews worldwide and historically have known very close up and personally what it is like to endure charges of libelous anti-Semitic tropes and caricatures of Jews as the living embodiments of enemies of humankind, plotting endlessly to conquer world capitals, economies, news. As a persecuted minority group Jews have often feebly defended themselves, and often simply acceded to the reality that they will always be regarded as outsiders in a world that seems at times, overwhelmingly hostile to a Jewish presence.

With the end of the World War Two ad the recognition that a significant proportion of world Jewry, a majority of Jews distributed throughout Europe, were systematically murdered in a genocidal atrocity engineered and carried out as a Final Solution to the 'problem' of pollution that a Jewish presence represented to the German Social-Democratic Party and its fascist leader, the creation of the State of Israel on the ashes of ancient Judea in the Middle East allowed world Jews a breath of relief, that a nation of Jews now existed once again reversing the Exodus and inviting a return of the diaspora.

Where Israel exists, there is a haven for Jews, where they can be free from oppression, from racist-  and religion-inspired threats and violence. Free to be themselves, to be responsible for themselves, to govern themselves, to be an honoured member of the world community. On the way to achieving this Utopian dream Israel has had to defend itself from the military attacks of combined Arab armies. And though Middle East nations no longer send their armies to destroy the country, some among them have proxy militias to attempt to do so through a death-of-a-thousand-cuts.

Time and again Europe has regrown its subconscious anti-Semitism, more latterly camouflaged by criticism of Israel, for ostensible oppression of the Palestinians, despite that Palestinian Arabs have never stopped attempting to "resist" the "occupation" of land they claim is theirs, upon which Israel legally settled. Their leaders have always and continue to persuade those they rule and misrule to dedicate themselves to the martyrdom of jihad, to murder Jews and force the government of Israel to defend itself. When all attempts at  pacification have failed, what is left is defence, characterized as "occupation".

Since 2015, a defender of the Palestinians and a harsh critic of Israel has been leader of Great Britain's major opposition political party in Parliament. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has never made any secret about his defence of the Palestinians and harsh criticism of Israel. He has masked his anti-Semitism with the claim that it is Zionism that he abhors, not Jews; an attestation of innocence repeated frequently not only by this man but by many who have no wish to be identified as anti-Semites, even as they display all the symptoms of such.

Time and again Corbyn has made statements that identify him for what he is, from his acknowledged 'friendship' with the Hamas leadership, to his condemnation of Israel at every turn, and his links with racists. As former British Prime Minister Tony Blair put it when asked if he was conflating legitimate criticism of Israeli policy with anti-Semitism, he stated that activists could oppose the actions of individual governments but "that's different from being anti the state of Israel and its existence - and when people are in that position it very quickly trends across into anti-Semitism".

The graffiti artist Kalen Ockerman, painted a mural on the side of a house near Brick Lane showing bankers sitting round a monopoly board resting on the backs of suffering humanity. This obviously anti-Semitic and very visible, very meaningful cartoon that could happily have decorated Hitler's "Mein Kampf" had the enthusiastic approval of Jeremy Corbyn. His past association with various anti-Semitic groups have been noted, but this connection with the politician and the message imparted by the mural simply wore down the patience of British Jews.

Freedom for Humanity by Kalen Ockerman

After countless complaints of the venom of anti-Semitism infecting the Labour Party under the leadership influence of Jeremy Corbyn and equally numerous response attestations of agreement that anti-Semitism is despicable and Corbyn would not stand for it having a representative place in the party he leads, the leaders of Britain's Jewish community decided that a strenuous demand-and-confrontation through a demonstration before Parliament was long overdue.

The Facebook post with the Labour leader supporting the artist's rendition of a Goebbels-like cartoon of blood-sucking Jews and suffering humanity held in thrall to their greed has finally earned Corbyn a global denunciation he has worked so long and diligently to eventuate. But all is well. "Jews should not be held responsible for the actions of the Israeli government", says a great deal about this man's mind-set. And his mind is set on portraying the government of Israel as the dreadful apartheid, human-rights-denying, atrocities-committing threat to Palestinians that the PA claims it to be.

Balancing the  Scales

"We have worked and paid taxes in this country, our parents built it up."
"How can it be that we are turned away [at area food banks] and those who just arrived get what they need?"
Marianne Rymann, 62, client, Essener Tafel, Essen Germany

"If you fight back, you're a Nazi."
"[The charity] was not founded to deal with the chaos of [Chancellor Angela] Merkel's refugee policy but to meet the demand that was already there."
AfD party Facebook campaign in defence of food bank decision 

"[We] felt compelled to ensure reasonable integration [after having seen an] increase in the number of migrants in recent years [with the proportion of foreign citizens rising dramatically]."
"We want German grandmothers to continue coming to us."
"[For the time being new customers will be restricted to Germans] until the scales are balanced again [between locals and foreigners]."
Jorg Sartor, manager, Essener Tafel 

Graffiti sprayed on the door to the entrance of the food charity in Essen. Photo: DPA

German authorities, when the government decided to open its doors in an unrestrained fashion to all the migrants that managed to make their way through Europe to their preferred destination in Germany known for its social networks, planned to distribute the 1.2 million arriving between 2015 and early 2016 evenly across the country so the cost and optimization of integration opportunities would be shared by all communities.

Many of the migrants had ideas of their own, where many among them decided to leave those designated homes and to move on instead to other areas, some of which had already received and were coping with a fairly dense concentration of migrants. The city of 600,000 people that is Essen has experienced a growth in its Syrian community from 1,300 in 2015, as an example, to close to 11,000 currently.

"It is a challenge", explained Peter Renzel, an official with the city of Essen. Most migrants live within the working-class districts of the north. "Some districts carry a disproportionate burden", he elaborated. To the extent that several food banks have taken steps to limit tensions that arise when needy Germans seeking assistance come hard up against Syrian migrants seeking the same, amidst rising tensions.

A Tafel Deutschland location in Berlin. Photo: Tafel Deutschland/Dagmar Schwelle

New rules have arisen segregating immigrants and Germans approaching the food banks for assistance, by time or by day. One of these food banks have gone further, banning young men from signing up entirely. The majority of the migrants that have streamed into Germany have been single, unattached young men looking for economic opportunities; in the process overwhelming Germany's social assistance programs.

Jorg Sartor is an ex-coal worker in retirement, since his mine closed. He has operated the Essener Tafel food bank as a volunteer for the last dozen years. Germany has about 930 food banks in operation, all dependent on the work of volunteers. And his is the only food bank exercising this new policy. The door of Mr. Sartor's food bank and its eight delivery vans have been defaced with Nazi graffiti in reaction to his decision to put a stop to allowing foreigners to sign up for assistance.

"It's absurd", he says.

One in three food bank users were foreigners until three years ago, he explained. But by last November that number changed to three in four. Leading him to decide to block any greater numbers of non-Germans from signing up so the food bank could continue to serve those foreigners already on its lists, only.

The problem is that Chancellor Merkel's government which generously opened its doors to over a million migrants and immigrants, decided that the burden of integrating them would fall where it might, and typically that burden has fallen on Germany's poorest regions. Where everyone competes for subsidized apartments, school placements, and free food from food banks.

Recently, many of those Germans who had lined up outside the food bank called Mr. Sartor a "people's hero". "He stands up for us", Peggy Lohse, 36, a single mother of three, stated. She might have been referring to the groups of young migrant men who sometimes simply elbowed their way to the front of the line. Leaving her to return home empty-handed on more than one occasion.

And according to Ms. Lohse, that kind of entitled assertiveness so intimidated some of the older German women that they simply stopped coming to the food bank for help altogether.

The word 'Nazis' sprayed on one of the charity's trucks. Photo: DPA

Islamist Avoidance Illusions

"Anyone who achieves something in sports feels confident."
"He doesn't need to prove anything to anybody, and he won't try to achieve fame in a negative way."
"At this time in their lives [young men] are trying to prove something. They can find themselves in sports instead, and won't get involved in this stupidity."
Arsen Saitiev, school principal, Makhachkala, capital, Dagestan

"The coaches try to educate the athletes in all ways, not only in wrestling."
"They teach them how to behave in life [as well as on the wrestling mat]."
Abdul Kazanbiev, wrestler-in-training

"We always wrestled."
"The followers of the Prophet also wrestled, and as we are Muslims, wrestling came to us with Islam."
Adam Batirov, Bahrain team competitor, Makhachkala

Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for TIME    The wrestlers of Chechnya and Dagestan compete as Russians

In the south of Russia lies Dagestan, a Muslim region on the coast of the Caspian Sea. It has a magnificent geology of mountainous landscapes where disparate regional ethnic groups live with a long heritage of wrestling as the national 'sport'. When those wrestlers from Dagestan (and Chechnya) appear as contestants at international elite sport events where they invariably dominate with their superior wrestling skills and training, they are celebrated as "Russian" athletes.

These are also areas in the Russian Federation where a long-established, violent Islamist insurgency continues to rage. Young boys are inducted early into the skills-training and competitive atmosphere, of wrestling, eager to distinguish themselves, emulating the successes of those they wholly admire who have proven themselves on the world stage as champions of the art of wrestling, winning medals at the Olympics.

They too dream of dominating the sport like Buvaisar Saitiev who won no fewer than three gold medals, or Maviet Batirov who won two, to further burnish the distinguishing wrestling prowess of Dagestan's muscled and lithe wrestling champions. Towns and villages view the sport and their youth involvement as central to their pride and honour, pouring resources into furthering the sport with gyms and top-flight coaches.

Martial arts Booming in Dagestan  RT

In wrestling bouts between mountain villages, challenges between wrestlers have been traditional. Now, the entire region has fully involved itself in persuading as many of its youth to engage in wrestling as can be convinced, in a culture where wrestling already holds a pedestal position of singular achievement. There is an added incentive, however, one with a degree of urgency surrounding it; that steering boys and young men to the mat will steer them away from jihad.

It has become commonplace to see boys and young men run each morning along the Caspian Sea beaches, a traditional method of weight control and cardiovascular fitness intended to allow a wrestler to fall within the required weight category. On weekends, it's mountain trails the wrestlers take to, occasionally stopping to briefly spar. Wrestling equipment is not costly, a leg up in poor communities; one-piece suit or singlet and shoes.

Coaches and athletes pray together in the wrestling gyms, attributing a religious significance to the sport. Certainly aiding in visualizing wrestling positively through the lens of Islam. Hundreds of men have left the region to join Islamic State in Syria. And attacks against Christian churches in the region by ISIL recruits occur on occasion. Russia is forever on the alert to pick up intelligence about the potential presence of Islamist insurgency.

So the broader Dagestan community's focus on turning their men from radical Islam to wrestling is understandable. And does it work? There is this example reported from Chechnya by Time magazine several years back:

In a nasty signal of how intransigent this conflict has become, wrestling has started to produce rebel fighters in Khasavyurt, and the idea that this sport could serve as an antidote to Islamism has foundered. On the night of April 18, near a bridge overlooking a Soviet-era cinder-block factory, three men were killed in a firefight with Khasavyurt police. Two of them were later identified as professional wrestlers, including Ramazan Saritov, 28, who almost made the  cut for Russia’s Olympic team in 2004 and 2008. According to Russian security forces, he was the leader of a group of insurgents who were wanted for car bombings, ambushes against police and attacks on stores that sell alcohol. Five days after the shoot-out, local Islamists posted a “martyr video” online to mourn Saritov’s death. In one of the frames, he wears a T-shirt with the words russia wrestling team as he points a semi-automatic pistol in the air.
Ibragim Irbaykhanov, director of the wrestling school where Saritov and the Saytiev brothers began their careers, remembers Saritov as a clever fighter on a generous athletic stipend who had just built a house in Khasavyurt for his young family. “He could have gone to the Olympics [in London] in the 60-kg division,” Irbaykhanov says. “I have no idea what he was thinking.” But this was not an isolated incident. In 2008 the 15-year-old wrestling champion Movsar Shaipov was killed in a shoot-out with police just outside Khasavyurt. Two years later, the same thing happened to another local fighter, 19-year-old Nariman Satiev, a three-time world champion in Thai boxing. “There are so many that it’s complicated,” Adam says. “Some are forced into it. Others get fed up with the security forces. They get arrested once, twice, and soon it’s easier for them to go somewhere and start shooting back.”

Demented? Or Just Islamic? !God Is Great!

"We heard an explosion -- well, several explosions. So I went to see what was happening and I saw a man lying on the floor and another person, very agitated, who had a gun in one hand and a knife in the other."
"[The] very agitated man shouting several times 'Allahu Akbar'."
"At that moment he [the shooter] ran after me. Of course I left, I lost him and when I turned around he wasn't there anymore. I took an emergency door and saw the police arrive."
Christian Guibbert, supermarket shopper, Trebes, France

"[I] heard people shouting and a big boom. It was a gunshot. Then a second gunshot. After that, my colleagues came towards me saying: 'Come on Jacky, we need to leave, there's someone who's firing shots, he's shouting 'Allahu Akbar', and he's shot people and he's shooting at everything'."
"We have an emergency exit behind the butcher's stall and we ran away across the courtyard. We also helped people get out."
Jacky, supermarket employee

Still from video: CNN    Police respond to the hostage situation Friday in the southern French town of Trèbes.

France, with the largest contingent of Muslims in all of Europe -- an estimated six to eight million Muslims -- has experienced its share of Islamist terrorist attacks. Those viciously deadly attacks are the most volatile of the explosive events the international community becomes aware of through the prevalence of social media and newswires now swift to pick up and exploit shocking news coverage of Islamist religious dysfunction roiling Western societies.

From the establishment of those infamous ghettoes known as banlieues, "no-go" zones where non-Muslims are unwelcome and where disturbingly criminal behaviour and violence prevails to the extent that firemen, police and ambulances are attacked should they attempt to enter -- to the occasional very public 'protests' that take place from time to time with demands and assertions completely contrary to French values and virtues -- this is another European nation that is slowly being absorbed by Islam.

"Radical" Islam as some would prefer in an effort not to offend. Choosing to bypass what has become obvious to some, that what the infiltrated Muslim presence in every facet of life in Europe represents is a gradual jihad; the state of Islamic conquest that every faithful Muslim is required as a basic precept of their faith to engage in. Among those infiltrators is a significant percentage that views violent jihad as legitimate, and it is among the principal tenets of Islam. Another significant demographic within the Muslim community is willing and eager to conduct active, violent jihad.

In this latest drama that focused France on the looming malaise in their midst, a petty criminal known to police activated within himself the martyrdom-for-Islam complex in the service of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, to mount hours of carnage, killing three people and seriously wounding another 16. Among the wounded was a veteran police officer of immense courage who volunteered himself as a hostage in exchange for a woman being held by the terrorist.

Of Moroccan extraction, French citizen Redouane Lakdim set out to destroy the peacefulness of a southern France area yesterday. Hijacking a car, he killed one occupant, wounded the second and made his way from Carcassonne to nearby Trebers, to a supermarket, there shooting and killing a store employee and a customer. On his way to that destination he shot at four police officers who had been out jogging, hitting one in the shoulder. At the supermarket, this fervent follower of Islamic State took hostages when police arrived.

This was when Arnaud Beltrame, 46, a decorated military police officer who had previously served France in war zones with great distinction, offered to exchange himself for the sole woman the murderer was holding hostage. The standoff with police took place over a number of hours. At a juncture when police waiting for a break and listening to Lieutenant Colonel Beltrame's open cellphone for clues heard shots, they stormed the scene and a shoot-out occurred. Officer Beltrame was shot in the neck, the terrorist was shot to death.

Police later discovered two unexploded homemade bombs, a 7.65 mm pistol and a hunting knife possessed by the Islamist terrorist, while searching through the market after the attack. 

 

Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame, here in 2013, was hailed as a hero by authorities.

 

Authorities knew of Radouane Lakdim's links to radical Salafist networks. They considered him, doubtless, only a petty crook and drug pusher. Without an iota of doubt there are many such like him, in the banlieues; thugs, criminals, gang members, drug traffickers. These are all lifestyle  highlights that appear to disproportionately attract young Muslims wherever they settle. It should be considered by intelligence agents an easy transition from petty gangster to Islamist terrorist among Muslim youth on the basis of reality and experience.

But that kind of thought sequence, logical as it might seem has the odour of "profiling", once a respected and useful tool for those in the business of security of populations. No longer; aggressive, righteous Muslim groups employing the very sensibilities of trust, accountability and acceptance that allowed them to infiltrate the West and which they have exploited to its full potential while resisting the normalcy of integration and acceptance of Western values, have instilled a sense of guilt through charges of "Islamophobia", a most effective tool in the Muslim arsenal of disarming the non-Muslim community.

The values that have traditionally reflected the quality of French life, its history, society, politics, culture and justice system, is spurned by Islam which agitates forcefully for Islamic Shariah. And this is the kind of challenges that a man of the calibre of Lt.-Col.Arnaud Beltrame must interface with. He served in Iraq in 2005, and earned an award for bravery in 2007. He spent four years as a commander in the Republican Guard, providing security at the Élysée Palace for France's president. 

 

He was knighted in 2012, inducted into France's prestigious Legion of Honor. In 2017 he was appointed deputy commander of the anti-terror police in the Aude region.And he assiduously prepared for the role that would conclude in his surrendering his life in the defence of France's democratic values when he led a simulated terror attack in December on a supermarket -- presaging the one in which he Friday gave his life.

Trying to be Prime Ministerially Relevant

"Whether it's pulling back of his engagement in the Donbass or leaving Crimea, whether it's taking responsibility for ... the important questions that the U.K. has asked after the terrible poisoning incident a few weeks ago in Salisbury, whether it's questions around NATO, questions around Syria, questions around the Arctic [Russia and Vladimir Putin in specific is due to show some positive behaviour on the world stage]."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addresses the media at Sussex Regional High School in Sussex, N.B. on Thursday, March 22, 2018. The Russian Embassy is firing back at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for criticizing President Vladimir Putin at a press conference this week. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

"We regret PM Trudeau's confrontational rhetoric at yesterday's Toronto press conference prompted by U.K. slanderous Russophobic hysteria."
"This language of ultimatums is totally unacceptable & counterproductive, especially for bilateral dialogue on important issues, like the Arctic."
Russian attache, Russian Embassy, Ottawa, Canada

Russia in Canada ✔ @RussianEmbassyC

We regret PM Trudeau’s confrontational rhetoric at yesterday’s Toronto press-conference prompted by UK slanderous Russophobic hysteria. This language of ultimatums is totally unacceptable & counterproductive, especially for bilateral dialogue on important issues, like the Arctic.

12:59 PM - Mar 22, 2018

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"The prime minister made a tiny mistake and a junior diplomat picked up on it. End of story."
"The Arctic is one of just a couple of places where Russian-Western co-operation remains good."
"[The Twitter account rebutting the prime minister's statement is run by a press secretary] who is a very active tweeter -- you might even call him a troll."
"Yes, he is an employee of the Russian Foreign Ministry, but he is a long way from the centre."
Michael Byers, Arctic expert, Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law, University of British Columbia

There's Justin Trudeau, exchanging his clown's cap and internationally exchangeable costume wardrobes in cultural appropriation passing as 'respect', for the veneer of an intellectual and sturdy upholder of international stabilization between the governments of world powers, yearning to reverse the damage he willfully brought in government-to-government relations between Canada and India. Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper had the courage of his convictions preferring to deliver a more apt and particular message personally, face to face.

It was beneath Stephen Harper's dignity as the prime minister of Canada to masquerade himself as a Bollywood actor on his visit to India, which was a state and stately affair not a sham trade event of great moment staged by Trudeau that made a mockery of Canada as a nation whose governance was one to be reckoned with. Trudeau chose not only to embarrass Canada by his mawkish stage-managing to appeal to a voting bloc in Canada, but when his stupidity in parading his good relations with a convicted attempted assassin of an Indian Minister made inconvenient headlines, blaming India for engineering it.

Now, while the Parliamentarian opposition is heating up his seat to burn his backside over that crassly notorious bungle, Trudeau has hoisted his trousers to confront -- at a safe distance -- another government. Not that that other government's actions on a multitude of fronts doesn't call out for confrontation, simply that Trudeau isn't the one to do it. He has little credibility either at home or at large in the international community which hasn't yet stopped laughing uproariously at the colourfully silk-clad Trudeau family disporting themselves at the Taj Mahal and the Golden Temple at Amritsar.

Slapping together a sanctimonious accusation bundling Ukraine, election interference in the United States, and the use of a chemical poisoning agent in Salisbury against a former Russian intelligence agent who acted for MI6, and sticking Arctic sovereignty into the grievance-and-accusation list simply represents yet another demonstration of his lack of knowledge, of intelligence, and of maturity. That Parliament adopted a motion holding Russia to account for the nerve gas attack against Sergei Skripal and daughter Yulia should have sufficed.

Trudeau himself feeling that he can add weight to the solemn rejection of thuggery on the part of Russian President Vladimir Putin simply portrays himself as an adolescent me-too aspirant to influence on the world stage. He should stick to what he knows and does best; thrilling young girls with his august presence as the world's premier "feminist" with his endless agenda of advancing women's rights and social engineering in every single aspect of governmental and business processes throughout the world community.

Yawn.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau watches children working on small robotics in Toronto on Wednesday, March 21, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

Canadian Focus on the Arctic

"I've been asked if I'm worried about one of those Russian Arctic battalions marching in here. I am worried -- but its because if they did that we would have to launch the biggest search-and-rescue mission we've ever done."
"If that was my sovereign territory [where about 12 million Russian citizens live near or in its Arctic region] I'd do the same."
"It's not about 'fixed bayonets' in the North."
"Operation NUNALIVUT 2018 is more than winter warfare training. It is a unique opportunity for deployed members to conduct sovereignty patrols, ice diving activities and support the scientific community. Regular and Reserve members of the Canadian Armed Forces will come together with other government departments and agencies to cooperatively work on multiple objectives during the coldest period of the year in the Arctic."
Brig.-Gen. Mike Nixon, commander, Joint Task Force North, Operation Nunalivut

"We're learning a lot from the Rangers."
"It's wild here. It's a big eye-opener to see the High Arctic."
Major Jason Hudson, Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry

Canadian Forces Capt. Phillip Jones surveys the military camp established at Intrepid Bay during Operation Nunalivut. The camp was home for members of the 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, the Arctic Response Company Group from 38 Canadian Brigade Group and the 1st Canadian Ranger Patrol Group. David Pugliese/Postmedia

"The Arctic is unforgiving" says Captain Shawn Claire of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, a unit among others taking part in this year's Operation Nunalivut, a month-long annual exercise in Canada's Arctic. "She will claim lives and she will claim limbs", he stated. The Arctic Response Company Group from 38 Canadian Brigade Group and the 1st Canadian Ranger Patrol Group along with the PPCLI, some 350 members of the Canadian military in all, are at Resolute Bay conducting Arctic survival training, sovereignty patrols and scientific research.

All are also testing their ability to survive in the Arctic.

Temperatures at Resolute Bay during the months of January and February drop to around -65C to -70C at night, a temperature where it takes all of two minutes for exposed skin to succumb to frostbite. Wearing goggles and face masks the troops are equipped to withstand the extreme temperatures. At the time of their deployment from the end of February to March 22, the temperature hovered around -40C. Trucks must be kept running full time to ensure they can be operative; it is too problematic to start them in the frigid extremes.

Master Corp. Matthew Manik teaches soldiers how to build a snow wall to block the wind from their tent. David Pugliese/Postmedia

The month was spent conducting Arctic survival techniques among other concerns, and gave navy personnel the opportunity to test their ability to dive under ice. International interest in the far North has accelerated in the last few years. China released an official Arctic strategy, with plans to spend up to $1-trillion, in the development of polar regions in their eagerness to develop new trade routes as well as ports in the Arctic. It has no territorial claims, however, on the oil, gas or mineral resources known to be present in the area.

Russia does have such claims. And it is busy expanding military bases in their own northern territory to the extent of creating new battalions to operate in the Arctic. Brig.Gen. Nixon is convinced the Russian investments geared toward renewed infrastructure and bases as broad as it seems, is in reality a fraction of what it spent during the Cold War. An unsettled dispute around Russian claims to the Continental shelf just happens to coincide with Canada's claims to much of that same area.

Researchers surveyed and mapped Canada's northern continental shelf aboard CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent. (Natural Resources Canada)

Logistics represent another giant challenge to operating in the Arctic, beyond survival, but inextricably linked to survival. Giant C-17 and Boeing 737s along with C-130 Hercules aircraft are utilized in the transport of equipment and food. The Arctic Training Centre in Resolute Bay would be incapable of operating without its needs being filled where each summer ships carry in 60,000 litres of fuel to operate military snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles.

Opened in 2013, the training centre represents a major hub for northern military operations. Hugely and solely dependent on large diesel-powered generators to provide electricity needed not only for the military bases but for the 24 residential communities in Nunavut. And those generators, needless to say, require hundreds of thousands of litres of fuel. The deployment of the annual military mission takes eight months in the planning stages.

Canada's northern population is a little over 200,000, most located in a few population centres like Yellowknife and Whitehorse, the remainder in small communities. Cambridge Bay has a population base of around 1,700 while Resolute Bay's population is roughly 200 people. North of Resolute at Intrepid Bay, soldiers have established a small camp where they conduct patrols out of and test the resupply system. Patrols are carried out on snowmobiles to prevent an energetic buildup of perspiration that can result in frostbite.

Military mechanics must deal with constant mechanical breakdowns of machinery in this extreme climate. Reliance by regular troops on the Canadian Rangers cannot be overstated. The Rangers are comprised largely of Indigenous people, along with 4,000 reservists operating across the Canadian North. The Rangers teach soldiers, among other skills of northern survival techniques, how to build  wind blocks from snow, and best practices in maintaining snowmobiles running in extreme cold.

Also deployed are scientists from Defence Research and Development Canada and from Natural Resources Canada, who are examining whether batteries that can be recharged from a snowmobile could help make life less complicated for troops for the provision of light, heat and cooking. In a ten-person military tent at present, a Coleman gas stove and lantern are kept on all night so that while it is -55C outside the tent, heat from stove and lantern raise interior temperature in the tent to around freezing.

The Canadian Rangers -- like Master Corporal Matthew Manik, 36, an Inuit whose long traditions and lifestyle skills are so valuable to understanding how to survive in the North -- are regarded as the critical eyes and ears for the Canadian Forces.

Canadian troops operating in the far North rely on Canadian Rangers, such as Master Corp. Matthew Manik, who taught soldiers how to survive in the Arctic. David Pugliese/Postmedia