WarSclerotic

State radio says one vessel left port Sunday, another will depart by Friday, loaded with food, construction material and toys
Reuters

Iran is sending aid ships to blockaded Gaza, state radio said Monday – a move likely to be considered provocative by Israel which accuses Tehran of arming the Palestinian enclave’s Islamist rulers, Hamas.

One ship left port Sunday and another will depart by Friday, loaded with food, construction material and toys, the report said. The boats would be part of international efforts to break Israel’s isolation of the Gaza Strip.

“Until the end of the Gaza blockade, Iran will continue to ship aid,” said an official at Iran’s Society for the Defense of the Palestinian Nation.

While Israel has long suspected Iran, which rejects the Jewish state’s right to exist, of supplying weapons to Hamas, Tehran says it only provides moral support to the group.

Israeli troops two weeks ago boarded a flotilla of Turkish aid ships heading to Gaza on May 31 and killed nine pro-Palestinian activists, most of them Turks.

Public opinion in Muslim countries was outraged by the killings. An official of the Iranian Red Crescent Society’s youth organization said some 100,000 Iranians had volunteered as potential crew for aid ships, Iran daily reported.

A senior Iranian official said earlier Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards were ready to provide a military escort to aid ships heading to Gaza if Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei so commands.

But the Guards’ deputy head, Hossein Salami, said there were no plans to do so. “Such a thing is not on our agenda,” he was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency Monday.

Any such military mobilization would risk a major confrontation with Israel, which fears Iran’s nuclear enrichment program is aimed at developing atomic bombs.

The Jewish state regards Iran’s nuclear ambitions as a mortal threat. Iran says its nuclear program is meant solely to yield electricity or isotopes for medicine and agriculture.

Leon de Winter: Anti-Semitism Is – WSJ.com.

The Gaza flotilla was a perfect piece of Islamist theater, revealing an old European hatred

By Leon de Winter

It’s a fascinating phenomenon: Why do people and organizations that present themselves as progressive team up with reactionary Muslims?

The Free Gaza group is just such a Leftist-Islamist alliance. Well, Gaza is already free. Israel withdrew from the narrow strip five years ago. And there is also no need for any humanitarian aid. Well over a million tons of humanitarian supplies entered Gaza from Israel over the last 18 months, equaling nearly a ton of aid for every man, woman and child in Gaza.

But Gaza’s population voted in democratic elections to be ruled by a party whose hatred of Jews is the cornerstone of its existence. Anyone who doubts this should read the Hamas manifesto on the Internet. The fact that Gaza is completely “judenrein” isn’t enough for Hamas. It wants Israel to be “judenrein” too. The Israeli blockade for “strategic goods” is therefore not designed to punish ordinary Palestinians but to prevent Hamas from obtaining heavy weapons and building bunkers. It’s as simple as that.

Contrary to Gaza, Chechnya, for example, isn’t free. The Russians have crushed the struggle for independence of the Chechens by carpet-bombing their capital. And what about a Kurdish state? The Turks and Iraqis have inflicted unspeakable horrors on the Kurds. And yet, there are no Free Kurdistan flotillas sailing toward Turkey, and Russian officials don’t have to fear to be arrested in European capitals for war crimes.

Here are some more facts—lousy, stubborn facts. Let’s look at the infant mortality rate in Gaza. It is a key number that says a lot about the state of hygiene, nutrition, and health care. In Israel the infant mortality rate is 4.17 per 1,000 births, which is about the same as in Western countries. In Sudan the rate is 78.1, that is, one in 13 infants die at birth. In Gaza, infant mortality per 1,000 births is 17.71. Yes, that’s higher than in Israel, but much lower than in Sudan. And Turkey’s infant mortality rate? Well, that’s 24.84. Yes, more infants die at birth in Turkey than in Gaza.

Here is another fact. Life expectancy at birth is 73.68 years in Gaza. And in Turkey, Gaza’s new protector, life expectancy is only 72.23 years. If the Israelis really wanted to make the lives of Palestinians short and nasty, then they are obviously doing something wrong.

The progressives don’t care for any other group of poor or suppressed Muslims. They only cry for the “victims” of the Jews. Why is that so?

One reason is Yasser Arafat, whose genius was to redefine the Palestinian cause in neo-Marxist and anti-imperialist rhetorics. He created a new context for his people: The struggle against colonialism and racism. He was a classic corrupt warlord with an amazing talent to play the Western media and politicians. The progressives adopted the Palestinians as their favorite, quintessential victims of imperialism and colonialism as epitomized by the Zionist state.

But there is another reason why Western progressives hate Israel but are indifferent toward human rights abuses in Turkey, Iran, or Russia. It’s because of the Holocaust.

Europeans, who represent much of what goes for world opinion, have grown tired of carrying the guilt for the destruction of the Continent’s Jews. They have started to long for some form of historical release. That comes in the form of Israel’s military response to Islamist attacks and terror. The Europeans couldn’t suppress the chance to defame the Jews and redefine Israel’s defense measures as either “disproportionate” or outright aggression—war crimes in other words.

In progressive European eyes, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict became a conflict without comparison, a unique phenomenon of European victims creating Palestinian victims, which seemed to diminish the weight of the ordinary European mass-slaughter of the Jews.

Watching Israel’s demonization, the attack on its right to defend itself as Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu said, it becomes clear that there is a deep need among Europeans to call the Jews murderers. This is why the Palestinians, as “victims” of the Jews, are more important than the numerous Muslim victims of Muslim extremists; this is why millions of other Muslims living under worse conditions than the Palestinians hardly get any mention in the media; this is why Gaza is compared to the Warsaw Ghetto or Auschwitz. By calling the Israeli Nazis, the original Nazis have been legitimized. It feels as if the Europeans, led by the progressives, want the Arabs to finish the job. Enough with the Jews. It is what it is—we see Europe’s liberation from the legacy of the Holocaust.

For decades, our progressive, peace-loving Western activists have been fooled and manipulated by Arab tyrants and now by Turkish and Iranian Islamists. They have allowed themselves to assist in efforts to destroy one of the greatest adventures in modern times: the creation of the State of Israel.

What we have witnessed with the Gaza flotilla is the perfect execution of a masterful piece of Islamist theater. The media’s wild indignation, an orgasm of hypocrisy, marks the next chapter in the long story of European hatred toward the Jews. It is salonfähig again to be an anti-Semite.

Mr. de Winter is a Dutch novelist. His latest book is “The Right of Return” (De Bezige Bij ,2008)

Of The 22 World Conflicts Around The World, 21 are Muslim..

This may sound like propaganda because it sounds so far fetched.  It isn’t.  Check your own world almanac….

Radical Islam has spread a scourge of violence around the globe that otherwise simply wouldn’t exist.  It is time for the West to put an end to this horror.  The first step is to destroy Iran as the world leader of Islamic violence.

As long as Iran threatens the world with nuclear Islamic fundamentalism there is simply no way to quash the continuing outbreak of Islamic violence worldwide.  The Western democracies should crush the atavistic and xenophobic leader of this retreat from civilization.

If Iran is convincingly neutralized, it’s possible that the rest of the radical Islamic movements will realize that the way to accomplish their aspirations is through peaceful coexistence.  Otherwise the monomaniacal dream of global Islamic domination will continue to destabilize the world until an apocalyptic result ensues.

The latest catastrophic, meaningless Islamic bloodletting is occurring in Kyrgyzstan.  The Russians want no part of it and won’t intervene.

Who can blame them?  I’m reminded of the old Texas aphorism, “You can’t mess with shit without gettin’ it on you.”  The Russians have learned that the hard way from both Afghanistan and Bosnia.

How long will we continue to allow these murderous bullies to set back the momentumof world progress.

ENOUGH!!!

Joseph Wouk

June 12, 2010

tMUSLIM CONFLICTS AROUND THE WORLD

Current conflicts and wars: Source: http:/www.religioustolerance.org/curr_war.htm Some of the world’s current “hot spots” which have as their base a significant component of religious intolerance are listed below:

Country and Main religious groups involved

1. Afghanistan Extreme radical Fundamentalist Muslim terrorist groups & non-Muslim Osama bin Laden heads a terrorist group called Al Quada (The Source) whose headquarters were in Afghanistan.

2. Bosnia Serbian Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholic, Muslims

3. Cote d’Ivoire Muslims, Indigenous, Christians

4. Cyprus Christians & Muslims

5. East Timor Christians & Muslims

6. Indonesia, province of Ambon Christians & Muslims

7. Kashmir Hindus and Muslims

8. Kosovo Serbian Orthodox Christians, Muslims

9. Kurdistan Christians, Muslims Assaults on Christians (Protestant, Chaldean Catholic & Assyrian Orthodox). Bombing campaign underway.

10. Macedonia Macedonian Orthodox Christians & Muslims

11. Middle East Jews, Muslims, &Christians

12. Nigeria Christians, Animists, & Muslims

13. Pakistan Suni & Shi’ite Muslims

14. Philippines Christians & Muslims

15. Russia, Chechnya Russian Orthodox Christians, Muslims. The Russian army attacked the breakaway region. Muslims had allegedly blown up buildings in Moscow. Many atrocities have been alleged.

16. Serbia, province of Vojvodina Serbian Orthodox & Roman Catholics

17. Sri Lanka Buddhists & Hindus Tamils

Additional conflicts

19. Thailand: Pattani province: Buddists and Muslims 20. Bangladesh: Muslim-Hindu (Bengalis) and Buddists (Chakmas) 21. Tajikistan: intra-Islamic conflict

The dark truth about those Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla ‘humanitarians’.

By Michael Weiss

Friday, June 11th 2010, 3:12 PM

The wisdom of Israel‘s raid of the Turkish ship in the “Free Gaza” convoy last week is still being vigorously debated, nowhere more than in Israel itself. However, there’s a certain lexicon failure in the way in which the international media have elected to characterize the passengers onboard the Mavi Marmara as “humanitarians” and “pro-Palestinian activists.”

Humanitarians don’t stick knives into other people – and to be in favor of Palestinian statehood is axiomatically to be opposed to Hamas. The grim retinue of this vessel failed both tests.

The Mavi Marmara was purchased from the Istanbul city government by the Turkish group Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH), which claims to be a human rights outfit but has stood accused of being a recruitment center and financial clearinghouse for global jihadism.

The IHH was formed in 1992 and formally registered as a charity in Istanbul in 1995. Its ostensible purpose was to provide food and aid to orphans, build mosques and monitor human rights abuses in Muslim communities. IHH is the Anatolian affiliate of the larger, Saudi-based umbrella organization known as the Union of Good. The Union of Good, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, is a siphon for Hamas money that distributes it via a “web of charitable organizations.” The IHH, according to former Treasury Department official Jonathan Schanzer, is one of these.

In 1996, it was identified by the CIA in a later declassified report titled, “International Islamic NGOs and Links to Terrorism,” as maintaining connections to Islamist groups in both Iran and Algeria and of being one of fifteen NGOs sponsoring terrorist activities in Bosnia. A year later, Turkish police raided IHH’s headquarters in Istanbul and arrested a number of its top men on suspicion of terrorist activity and uncovered guns, explosives, bomb-making instructions and a “jihadist flag.” The judgment of the Turkish authorities following an investigation was that the “detained members of IHH were going to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya.”

Jean-Louis Bruguiere, a renowned French counterterrorism magistrate, came to similar conclusions about the organization. I quote from a report he co-authored with Jean-Francois Ricard:

“The essential goal of this Association was to illegally arm its membership for overthrowing democratic, secular, and constitutional order present in Turkey and replacing it with an Islamic state founded on the Shariah. Under the cover of this organization known under the name of IHH, \[IHH leaders\] acted to recruit veteran soldiers in anticipation of the coming holy war.”

Bruguiere and Ricard also maintained that members of IHH were making routine phone calls to a known Al Qaeda safe house in Milan as well as to European cells of Algerian jihadists, including Abu Ma’ali, a former member of Al Qaeda’s shura, or command council, who is sometimes referred to as a “junior Osama bin Laden.” In the aftermath of the flotilla fiasco Bruguiere told the Associated Press that IHH was “basically helping Al Qaeda when (Osama) bin Laden started to want to target U.S. soil,” a claim the NGO denies. But perhaps most damning of all was Brugiere’s testimony in the trial of Ahmed Ressam – the convicted Al Qaeda operative in Canada who tried to import well over 1,000 pounds of explosives into the United States in 1999 in order to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on the eve of the millennium – that IHH played an “important role” in this planned attack.

Indeed, IHH was at one point in the late 1990’s under such intense scrutiny by the Turkish government, which considered it a “fundamentalist organization,” that it was banned from contributing to the relief effort of a devastating earthquake that struck the Turkish city of Izmit in August 1999. The governor of Istanbul froze the organization’s bank accounts and explained to the Washington Post: “All legal institutions may have some illegal connections. This might be the case here. If they don’t like it, they can appeal in court.”

This rather amplifies the hypocrisy with which Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erodgan, now a born-again friend to Iran and all regional theocrats, last week announced solidarity with the convoy.

IHH was determined to make the most of its presence last week by accomplishing two things at once: presenting itself to the Western media as a peace-loving and well-intentioned Red Cross of the Mediterranean while also evincing to Arab media its long-standing commitment to enabling and underwriting jihadism.

The IHH President Bülent Yildirim has met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on several occasions, and Haniyeh has openly thanked him for his fund-raising efforts: “This is an example of Islamic fraternity,” he told Yildirim last January, “an indication that we are all parts of the same umma. Muslims are like walls reinforcing each other. Welcome.”

Days before the Mavi Marmara set sail, a Yemeni professor appeared on Hamas-run television and quoted Yildirum as saying: “We will not allow the Zionists to get near us and we will use resistance against them. How will they wage resistance? They will resist with their fingernails. They are people who seek Martyrdom for Allah, as much as they want to reach Gaza but first the martyrdom is more desirable.”

So it proved on May 31.

Weiss is executive director of Just Journalism.

Iran’s Arc Of Injustice – Forbes.com.

It’s the dissidents, not the rulers, who are increasingly isolated.

American Thinker: Obama’s Israel Doctrine.By E.W. Jackson Sr.

“Obama apparently sees the world and Israel from a Muslim perspective. Those who think clearly about these issues must conclude that President Obama is influenced by a quiet strain of anti-Semitism picked up from elements of the black community, leftist colleagues, Muslim associations and Jeremiah Wright. For the first time in her history, Israel may find the President of the United States openly siding with her enemies. Those who believe that Israel must be protected had better be ready for the fight.”

Since I sounded the first warning a year ago, Iran is on the brink of having nuclear weapons, and enemies of the Jews have gotten the message that if they attack Israel, this President will do nothing about it. Relations between Israel and the U.S. are the most strained they’ve ever been, and they will remain tense until Obama is voted out of office. His foreign policy doctrine toward Israel boils down to four words: he doesn’t like them. Therefore, things are going to get worse before they get better. Nonetheless, Israel is not alone and never will be. Her defenders will stay in the fight until every Jew sits under his own vine and his own fig tree and no one shall make them afraid.

Report: Saudi Arabia gives Israel air corridor to bomb Iran – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Saudis practiced standing down anti-aircraft systems to allow Israeli warplanes passage for attack on Iranian nuclear sites, the London Times reports.

Saudi Arabia has practiced standing down its anti-aircraft systems to allow Israeli warplanes passage on their way to attack Iran’s nuclear installations, a British newspaper reported on Saturday.

The Saudis have allocated a narrow corridor of airspace in the north of the country that would cut flying time from Israel to Iran, the London Times reported.

	Photo by: Getty

Israel and the West accuse of designs on a nuclear bomb, a charge it denies.

“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” the Times quoted an unnamed U.S. defense source in the area as saying. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [U.S.] State Department.”

Once the Israelis had passed, the kingdom’s air defenses would return to full alert, the Times said.

Despite tensions between them, Israel and Saudi Arabia share a mutual hostility to Iran.

“We all know this. We will let them [the Israelis] through and see nothing,” the Times quoted a Saudi government source as saying.

According to the report, the four main targets for an Israeli raid on Iran would be uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Qom, a gas storage development at Isfahan and a heavy-water reactor at Arak.

Secondary targets may include a Russian-built light water reactor at Bushehr, which could produce weapons-grade plutonium when complete.

Even with midair refueling, the targets would be as the far edge of Israeli bombers’ range at a distance of some 2,250km. An attack would likely involve several waves of aircraft, possibly crossing Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Aircraft attacking Bushehr, on the Gulf coast, could swing beneath Kuwait to strike from the southwest, the Times said.

Passing over Iraq would require at least tacit consent to the raid from the United States, whose troops are occupying the country. So far, the Obama Administration has refused this.

On Wednesday the United Nations passed a fourth round of sanctions against Iran in an attempt to force it to stop enriching uranium. But immediately after the UN vote, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed the nuclear program would continue.

Israel hailed the vote – but said sanctions were not enough and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to rule out a raid.

Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert, is believed to have held secret meetings with high-ranking Saudi officials over Iran.

YOUR VIEW: U.S. must support Israel unequivocally | SouthCoastToday.com.

It is time to get real. We need to work with and protect our friends and recognize our enemies for what they are and deal with them realistically. Israel is the lone democracy in the Middle East. Israel has been our only steadfast ally in the region since its birth 62 years ago. Compare Israel’s government with all the others in the region and you readily understand that it is the only one that shares and acts on our values.

David Ehrens’ recent essay in this newspaper (“Tough love for Israel,” June 3) recommends that the United States end financial aid to Israel to control it. Would the author have us give the money to Iran to pay for its nuclear weapons? Or perhaps to Hizbollah in southern Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, so they can build greater arsenals? Or perhaps to Syria, so that it can rebuild the nuclear reactor that North Korea was building for it?

We need to accept the fact that Islamist states will never be friends to Western countries. They are at war with our culture and religion. Osama bin Laden cared not one little bit about the Palestinians when he planned his attack on the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and the White House or the Capitol. The Islamists and especially Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, like Hitler, use anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment to cynically increase their power. Israel is trying to defend itself in an increasingly perilous environment.

Although the blockade is an effective way to prevent smuggling of arms to Hamas, which is sworn to destroy Israel, this is not about the blockade. It is about a much larger war. Our enemies regard Israel as our proxy, so a blow against Israel is a blow against us. For the United States to do anything but express unequivocal support for Israel’s security invites aggression which would be bad for the United States as well as Israel.

North Korea has two nuclear weapons now. Recently, it sank a South Korean navy vessel, the Cheonan, killing 46 sailors. No response. South Korea was paralyzed by the nukes. The International Atomic Energy Agency announced last week that Iran now has enough fuel for two nuclear bombs which can be built in several months. If Iran gets nuclear weapons, the world will change overnight.

We saw last week that Turkey, for years an ally of both the United States and Israel, has already been turned. It is in fear of Iran. Syria and Lebanon are already under Iranian control, and it is having a major influence in Iraq. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are rightly terrified.

This week the president signed a United Nations agreement ultimately requiring Israel to give up its nuclear defense under the guise of a “nuclear-free Middle East.” Last Friday’s White House statement against the Israeli blockade will increase, not reduce, the risk of violence. These steps and others signal American ambivalence and tend to create the impression that this president might not aid Israel if it is attacked.

What would North Korea do if we withdrew our 20,000 troops from South Korea? Iraq invaded Kuwait when our ambassador to Iraq on the instructions of the president equivocated when Saddam Hussein asked her whether we would respond if he invaded. An unequivocal statement guaranteeing Kuwait’s territorial integrity probably would have averted that war and spared thousands of lives. The president needs to do the equivalent, right now.

Yet this administration has been going in the opposite direction in this treacherous terrain. No good will come of it. It is a recipe for another very dangerous war in the Middle East. As soon as Israel concludes that the United States can or will not prevent Iran from building nuclear bombs, Israel will make an existential decision whether to attack Iran. It may opt for a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear program, as it has in Iraq and Syria for emotional as well as strategic reasons.

Israel has a deep and enduring collective memory of the Holocaust. It will not go quietly to the nuclear ovens repeatedly promised (even this week) by Ahmadinejad. We need to get realistic and learn from the past. The mistakes of Neville Chamberlain and their devastating consequences need to inform this debate.

The decision of the United States and South Korea to do nothing in response to the sinking of the Cheonan was an invitation to aggression by Iran. North Korea acted with impunity because of its new nuclear umbrella. Iran is close to opening its own umbrella.

We must act very soon or suffer dire consequences flowing from the reality of a nuclear checkmate in the Middle East as well as the Korean Peninsula. The mixed messages of the Obama administration are very dangerous indeed.

Major new development in Flotilla story? :: Weekly Blitz.

I’ve written about how the Gaza flotilla issue and stirring up a hysterical hatred of Israel is playing a role in internal Turkish politics as the government tries to use this demagoguery to continue eroding Turkish democracy and to win the next election. And a little later I’m going to talk about a major new development in the flotilla story.

In addition, while Turks are united in anger and sorrow about the deaths of nine of their citizens, they do not necessarily agree with the current government’s extremist response which threatens to lead to involving Turkey in violence and damaging its reputation abroad.

The leader of the main opposition, Ataturkist and social democratic party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu stated that Prime Minister Erdogan, “Almost declared war against Israel in his party’s meeting….Our party displays a more moderate and careful approach. Foreign policy can’t be carried out with heroism but with reason. The Turkish Foreign Ministry should publicly disclose correspondence made with Israel so that we may all learn whether Israel warned Turkey or not.”

Now you might ask yourself what is Kilicdaroglu hinting at here? And the answer is important and potentially explosive. There is a widespread story, which cannot yet be verified but seems to be more than a rumor, for why this tragedy might have happened. People ask: Why did the Israeli soldiers land on a ship where they should have expected to be received with a violent attack?

According to some people who are in a position to know, here’s the reason: Erdogan assured Israel that the ship’s passengers were peaceful and there would be no violence. That’s why Israel approached taking and diverting the ship in the manner it did. Is this true? I don’t know but it is definitely a story to watch. And here–the important development I referred to above–is the most detailed account yet of the connection between the Turkish government and the IHH, a group with terrorist connections which organized the flotilla and initiated the violence. Don’t fail to check out this source, which I’ve found to be very reliable over the years.

It is understandable, especially given what they’ve been told by their government and media, that Turks are very upset about the deaths. Yet it is important to understand that there are different views in Turkey over how to handle this problem. The government wants a confrontation and has been moving into an alliance with Iran and Syria long before the latest events. The opposition wants to uphold Turkish honor but not to break with the West or turn this into a near-war situation with Israel.

Here’s an interesting example.

Erdogan said that Israel’s peaceful seizure of five boats and its self-defense on the sixth (you can imagine, these aren’t his words) was against Judaism, a subject on which he purports to be an expert.

Kilicdaroglu, responded:

Erdoganknows the Torah; we thank him. What does its sixth commandment say? Do not kill! But the holy book also has an eighth commandment, which says ‘Do not steal.’ And the ninth commandment says ‘Do not lie.'”

Kilicdaroglu has built his career on fighting the current government’s corruption and presumably will make a major election theme.

Erdogan responded by accusing the leader of the opposition of being an apologist for Israel, saying among other things,: “He is acting like Tel Aviv’s lawyer.” The attempt is to paint the opposition leader as a flunky of the hated state, another step in the regime’s effort to transform Turkish politics into something more closely resembling those of Egypt, Syria, or Iran.