Category Archives: Middle East

Lebanese have Had It With Syrian Refugees

IMMIGRATION, Lebanon, Media, Middle East, Nationhood, UN

When in doubt, malign them as “nativists”: The reference here is to those Lebanese who’re not keen on having a disruptive number of refugees flood their already fractious and divided communities.

Those doing the labeling and libeling are the virtuous media. In this case, The Economist, according to which there are an estimated 1m-1.5m Syrian refugees in Lebanon (so, it’s not like the Lebanese have not been welcoming).

Lebanon has more refugees relative to its population than any other country. (Half of Mexico could settle in the United States and Lebanon would still come first.)

In fact, by 2015, the number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon reached “about a quarter of the population,” whereupon “the government told the United Nations to stop registering new asylum cases.” Wise, for you don’t wish to encourage the parasitic, self-perpetuating refugee industry.

“Politicians are stoking anti-refugee sentiment in Lebanon”:

… Over the past few months the Lebanese government has deported hundreds of them and tightened restrictions on those who remain. Politicians have blamed them for a raft of economic problems. Spurred on by incendiary reports in the press, vigilantes have attacked camps and harassed Syrians in the streets. …

… the recent campaign [against refugees] is more intense. The charge has been led by the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), a Maronite Christian party that rules in alliance with Hizbullah, a Shia militia-cum-party. Gebran Bassil, the foreign minister and son-in-law of President Michel Aoun, alarmed many when he tweeted about the positive “genetic” qualities of Lebanese in June amid a crackdown on foreign labour. …

Bassil has been called the Trump of Lebanon.

… According to Lebanon’s main intelligence agency, more than 170,000 refugees have already returned since the end of 2017, either on their own or with the help of the agency’s “voluntary return” scheme, which buses ostensibly consenting refugees back to Syria. In April Lebanon’s top defence council issued orders to start deporting Syrians who cross into Lebanon illegally. Hundreds of Syrians, including army defectors, have since been deported without due process, according to aid groups. “This is a red line that has been crossed,” says Ghida Frangieh, a lawyer with Legal Agenda, a local advocacy group.

One thing is crystal clear: Syria is a war zone, so the plight of refugees from that country is not exaggerated. The plight of Syrian refugees highlights the flimsy case for asylum mounted by Central Americans swamping America’s south-west border. Yet their cases are hyped without investigation by moron media.

the influx into  Officials say refugees strain roads, hospitals, schools and electricity and water supplies, while crowding Lebanese out of jobs. They suspect that many Syrians cross the border just for the handouts, and that aid workers are exaggerating the crisis to justify their jobs. …

… Syrians do compete with Lebanese for low-skilled jobs.

… MORE: “Politicians are stoking anti-refugee sentiment in Lebanon”

* The image is of members of the Maronite Free Patriotic Movement Of Lebanon.

Is Delay In Rare Removal Of Illegal Aliens Due To Jarvanka’s Agenda?

Donald Trump, Family, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Middle East

The president has delayed the deportation of a small group of illegal immigrants.

These illegal aliens have had due process of law and are now, like millions more, in violation of U.S. law. President Trump is delaying enforcement of the law for the Democrats.

One tongue-in-cheek question is why deportation, suddenly, when the administration’s default position has been to give illegals safe passage and facilitate their stay in the U.S.A. Trump is deporting fewer immigrants than Obama.

The other is why the delay. The president says the reason for the delay in the rare removal of this targeted group of illegal migrants is

… to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border. If not, Deportations start!

Via The New York Times:

Immigration agents had been planning to sweep into several immigrant communities in 10 major cities — including Miami, Los Angeles, Baltimore and Chicago — beginning on Sunday. Officials said on Friday that they had targeted about 2,000 families in a show of force intended to demonstrate their strict enforcement of immigration laws. Children of immigrants — some of whom were born in the United States — had faced the prospect of being forcibly separated from their undocumented parents.

Mark Morgan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had announced this month that his agency would begin the raids at some point in the future. But on Monday, Mr. Trump revealed on Twitter that they would start the following week, claiming that officials would deport millions of people and sending panic through cities across the country.

My guess is that this is not the real reason.

The president delayed this rare deportation event likely because Ivanka kicked up a fuss. After all, the declaration of deportation coincided with toy-boy Jared Kushner’s introduction of his “Marshall Plan” for the Middle East—“the most ambitious and comprehensive international effort for the Palestinian people to date,” Jared calls his Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. That’s when Jared’s not claiming he has outlined “the “opportunity of the century” for the feuding sides. What a modest bloke is our Jared.

This was Trump’s time to keep campaign promises to Ivanka and Jared, not to the Deplorables.

 

UPDATED (6/5): NEW: Jared Packs Unicorns and Rainbows For Mideast Trip

America, Donald Trump, Gender, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East, Populism

NEW COLUMN IS “Jared Packs Unicorns and Rainbows For Mideast Trip.” It’s now on WND.COM and the Unz Review.

An abridged version, “Bibi’s Cautious Conservatism May Clash With Jared’s New Peace Plan,” is on Townhall.com.

An excerpt:

JARED KUSHNER couldn’t stare down an uncompromising foe if his wife, Ivanka Trump, held his soft, lily-white hand throughout the ordeal.

Yet ridiculously, a May 22, McClatchy article claimed Mr. Kushner was fixing to “stare down uncompromising foes in fights over immigration and Middle East peace.”

Let us begin with our debutant’s Middle East peace plan, the thing his father-in-law calls “the deal of the century.”

The notion of Jared solving the Israeli-Palestinian vexation is laughable, perhaps the dumbest thing ever. You just know this is a vain Ivanka move to brand the region and add it to her CV. (Ivanka, to those who don’t know, is intent on riding to the presidency herself on her father’s coattails.)

The Arabs slated to partake in the Kushner summit, Bahraini, Saudi and Emirati participants, are likely laughing the hardest.

For one, the Arabs know that Ivanka is calling the shots—and that the president’s fashion-focused daughter is behind the branding of the sexually androgynous, intellectually inchoate production that is Jared Kushner. If you think that’s something Arabs respect, you don’t know Shiite from Shinola.

Wily Arabs are hip to White House dynamics. They know who’s running the West Wing and who to flatter. Some in the region have even given Donald Trump a dubious honorific, Abu Ivanka al-Amriki. Being known as “father of Ivanka the American” is, of course, no honor in the muscular, manly Middle East.

The timing of the Kushner peace plan is especially asinine. For all the upheaval in the region, the Palestinian Problem has nevertheless dropped off the geopolitical radar as an urgent matter to resolve. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN, “Jared Packs Unicorns and Rainbows For Mideast Trip,” is now on WND.COM and the Unz Review.

READ an abridged version, “Bibi’s Cautious Conservatism May Clash With Jared’s New Peace Plan,” on Townhall.com.

UPDATE (6/5): Jared definitely has those girl-like broad hips. His is not a man’s shape. The contrast is stark when he’s seen striding alongside these two military figures who have narrow hips and broad shoulders.

American Foreign Policy Does Nothing To Help Christians. To The Contrary.

Christianity, Foreign Policy, Middle East, Terrorism

Today, April 22, 1.41 minutes into this broadcast, Tucker Carlson became perhaps the first anchor on Fox News to admit that American foreign policy imperils the already imperiled Christian communities across the Muslim world (and that the ancient Iraqi Christian community is a shadow of what it was under Saddam Hussein).

Yes, Syrian Christians love Assad for a reason, as detailed in “Lies About Putin, Syria & The Alawite Alliance” (2018):

“A new Syria is emerging from the rubble of war,” reports The Economist, a magazine which is every bit as liberal and Russophobic as Graham and his political soul mate, John McCain, but whose correspondents on the ground—in Aleppo, Damascus and Homs—have a far greater fidelity to the truth than the terrible two.

“In Homs, … the Christian quarter is reviving. Churches have been lavishly restored; a large crucifix hangs over the main street.” ‘Groom of Heaven,’ proclaims a billboard featuring a photo of a Christian soldier killed in the seven-year conflict. And, in their sermons, Orthodox patriarchs praise Mr. Assad for saving … the Christian communities.”

“Homs, like all of the cities recaptured by the government, now belongs mostly to Syria’s victorious minorities: Christians, Shias and Alawites (an esoteric offshoot of Shia Islam from which Mr. Assad hails). These groups banded together against the rebels, who are nearly all Sunni, and chased them out of the cities.” (“How a victorious Bashar al-Assad is changing Syria,” The Economist, June 28, 2018.)

MORE about Christian appreciation for Assad in “Lies About Putin, Syria & The Alawite Alliance.”