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Resources updated between Monday, December 21, 2015 and Sunday, December 27, 2015
December 24, 2015
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December 22, 2015
Over at the United Nations, they are laying the groundwork for the 2016 American presidential election -- on behalf of the Democratic party. The perceived golden ticket? Playing the victim card. Wild and repeated accusations are being hurled against the GOP of systematic racism, xenophobia, and, in particular, "Islamophobia."
On December 18, 2015, the U.N. hosted two panels under the title: "The Changing Dynamics of Islamophobia and Its Implications on Peaceful and Inclusive Societies."
The predominant theme was victimhood. There were frequent mentions of 9/11, but not of the 2,977 who died, or their families. The alleged victims of 9/11 of interest to the U.N. gathering were the entirety of American Muslims. MuslimGirl.net editor Amani Al-Khatahtbeh told the U.N. audience: "I was in fourth grade when 9/11 happened. So I had to endure the height of Islamophobia during my formative years." Al Jazeera America's Wajahat Ali, said 9/11 was "a baptism by fire. As a result of that pain and trauma of 9/11, for my generation there is always a pre- and post-9/11."
Each instance of radical Islamist terror was flipped the same way. Co-host Ufuk Gokcen, the U.N. representative of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, had a long list of incidents bracketed by events in America: "9/11 terrorist attacks and San Bernardino terrorist attacks. The level that Islamophobia has reached, and its mainstreaming into media and political discourse, is terrifying us."
Terrifying who?
The idea was repeated in another form by his co-host, Sally Kader, head of the US Federation for Middle East Peace, an NGO. She told the receptive crowd: "The FBI census on all the hate crime has always been against Jews, and, of course, blacks, and now we top everything. It's about Muslims."
Actually, the FBI census for 2014, released November 16, 2015, still found that 57 percent of anti-religious hate crimes were motivated by "anti-Jewish bias" and 16 percent were victims of "anti-Islamic (Muslim) bias."
Then came the excuses. According to Joyce Dubensky, head of the Tanenbaum Center: "People talk about violent extremists and extremists as crazy. I think that that's an error. I think that's a stereotype as well. They are also complex human beings, which is why we want to try to talk with them as well."
One shudders to think of a meeting between Ms. Dubensky and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Scratch the surface of this latest batch of U.N. talking heads and the promotion of terrorism and anti-Semitism isn't hard to find. Palestinian Al-Katahtbeh's Muslimgirl.net site includes justifications of the "martyrdom" of Palestinian mothers and a drawing of the fashionable woman with a purse filled with knives, rocks, and a petrol bomb. Another speaker, journalist Haroon Moghul, wrote in the Huffington Post in January 2015 that he advocates terminating a Jewish state altogether: "a one-state solution is the only option."
Throughout the proceedings, one could have mistaken "impartial" U.N. New York headquarters for a Democratic political rally. Moghul was applauded for his political take on the December 15, 2015 GOP debate: "The Republican debate was kind of terrifying and traumatizing," and the GOP was "a political party that is increasingly indulging in open racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia."
Another crowd pleaser from the Al Jazeera America journalist was this: "If certain people with wavy hair became president we might end up in concentration camps. We can brand it and call it Trump centers."
So how did all this go down for the diplomat who represented the United States?
Here is Laurie Shestack Phipps when she took the microphone from the floor:
Playing the victim card: Islamophobia and the United Nations versus the GOP Article
December 21, 2015