Archive for December 2, 2014

Time to take a stand against Obama’s racism

December 2, 2014

Time to take a stand against Obama’s racism
By Larry Klayman December 2, 2014 Via Renew America


Larry Klayman


(There’s a growing concern here about Obama’s role in foreign affairs relating to Israel and the threat posed to her by Iran. I’m sure you’ve all noticed the rise in Obama related comments and posts on this great site, and rightfully so. That being said, my point is this: Forget Obama. Forget about his commitment to Israel and forget about his alleged suppression of the Iranian nuke program. The sooner everyone pushes Obama aside to fend for themselves, the better. Obama is not your friend, and sadly, he’s not a friend to most of us Americans. I say this because I care. I care for us all and don’t want to see anyone left with the false notion Obama really cares as well. The landscape here in the USA is changing and it’s not a pretty sight. That’s why I want to share this op-ed with you. It cuts to the heart of the matter and gives us a little insight in what makes this dangerous man tick.-LS)

When I was a young boy, I watched scenes on television of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking and fighting for equal rights for blacks. Even at age 10, I was moved not only by his inspiring oratory but also his steadfast determination to bring freedom to his people; indeed bringing freedom to all oppressed people. Be you black or white, the civil rights leader, a true giant among men, even with his leftist connections, set the tone for a nation in ascension.

Today, our country, now in steep decline, is not so fortunate as to have a civil rights leader like King. Rather, sitting atop our corrupt government is a bigoted anti-white socialist, who it has become clear not only despises Caucasians, but also Christians and Jews of all stripes. He is a black Muslim in the subtler mold of Louis Farrakhan and Malcolm X – only repackaged and warmed over to have duped enough Americans to have voted him into the presidency in 2008 and 2012. This destructive and evil man, Barack Hussein Obama, is more dangerous than Farrakhan or X; he is the nominal leader of the free world, an ironic position given that his view of governance is hardly one that fights for and preserves freedom, but instead through words and deed seeks to snuff out liberty for nearly everyone whose skin color and inherent Muslim faith does not match his own.

Instead, along with his black comrades, the likes of Attorney General Eric Holder and black activist colleagues and friends like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, he runs a divisive racist cabal that is designed to tear the nation apart at its seams. In so doing, they hope to create enough anarchy and chaos to wage a revolution against not just whites – who they feel must pay blacks back for the years of invidious discrimination – but also Jews and white Christians in particular. This, along with his Muslim roots, which he inherited from his anti-Semitic Kenyan father, helps explain Obama’s hostility toward Israel, the land of the Jewish people and the birthplace of Jesus, and the president’s favoritism toward everything black and Islamic.

My words today may at first seem extreme. They are not. They must finally be said, given the sad state of affairs we now find ourselves in – with time running out to confront and defeat Obama and his pliant leftist goons. More and more, Americans are starting to see these black racists for what they are. Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity are now calling it like it is, but even ordinary Americans, also liberal ones, are also beginning to talk more clearly and openly about this threat to our formerly civilized society.

The scary saga of black mob violence in Ferguson, Missouri, this week, where a cop was not indicted for the killing of Michael Brown – a young thug who robbed a convenience store and then attacked the arresting officer – unmasks in greater detail the frightening racial divide and criminal reverse racism among many black Americans incited by the Obamas, Holders, Sharptons and Jacksons of the world. This lot, and their minions, has triggered a racial war – only one that is one-sided. White Americans and others of non-color have been slow to react and fight back, for fear of being branded racists and ostracized from their social and political communities. Indeed, if white Americans and their ilk would again act in this fashion – as they did to an extent in the old South and elsewhere in the middle years of the 20th century, by burning and looting stores, setting afire buildings and mugging innocent people based on their race – then they would be branded as modern-day versions of the Ku Klux Klan and prosecuted by Obama’s Justice Department, among other law enforcement agencies under his direction and control.

The now well-known and publicized volatile words of Obama and his black comrades like Holder, Sharpton and Jackson have fanned the flames and stoked the frightening violence in Ferguson and other cities around the country this week. They can no longer be ignored and rationalized as justifiable given past discrimination against blacks. African-Americans, no more than white Americans, cannot be allowed to explain away present racist actions as a simple reaction to past events and conditions. And, while conservative and truly religious Christian blacks like my esteemed friends Alan Keyes, Niger Innis, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson and others have been brave to speak out, whites in particular have largely acted as cowards in confronting this growing lawless anarchy.

That there is a political and revolutionary method to Obama and his leftist enablers’ racist madness can be seen in the words of a “respected” black Clemson University assistant professor who just last Friday joined in a call for African-Americans to disrupt shopping on what ironically has come to be known as Black Friday, the commercial bonanza that historically occurs the day after Thanksgiving. Fox News reported on what occurred at a shopping center in Manchester, Missouri, as suburb of St. Louis, with regard to attempts to disrupt commerce at Walmart and other stores.

“At the Manchester Walmart, about two dozen people chanted ‘no justice, no peace, no racist police’ and ‘no more Black Friday’ after officers warned protesters risked arrest if they did not move at least 50 feet from the stores entrance …

“The mostly black group of protesters chanted in the faces of the officers – most of whom were white – as shoppers looked on.

“‘We really want the world to know that it is no longer business as usual,’ said Chenjerai Kumanyika an assistant professor at Clemson University. He added although part of the aim in disrupting Black Friday was to call attention to disagreement with the grand jury’s decision and the way the case was handled, Kumanyika said it was also to highlight other forms of injustice.

“‘Capitalism is one of many systems of oppression,’ he said as the group cleared out of the parking lot.”

This is just the latest indication of the war we are now in. If we do not fight back against this leftist-inspired black racism, with Obama at its helm, we risk losing the nation our Founding Fathers risked and gave their lives to win. And, that is why I have offered to represent the victims of mob violence in Ferguson and other cities around the country free of charge. It is time to no longer put our heads in the sand for fear of being branded racists against African-Americans and, instead, be fearless in waging the counter-revolution against racism of all types – racism that has larger designs and evil motives to transform the United States into Obama’s vision of a socialist utopia.

Humor: By Executive Action, Obama’s life and glory will be soon be presented in a ballet

December 2, 2014

By Executive Action, Obama’s life and glory will be soon be presented in a ballet, Dan Miller’s Blog, December 1, 2014

(Please see also Imagine a World Without America? Obama Can — DM)

A ballet depicting the life and glory of their hero, Hugo Chavez, is the current rage among all good Chavistas. Barack Humble Obama, who has brought us greater peace, prosperity, happiness and even laughter than Chavez ever did, deserves far better.

 

By Presidential Memorandum released on December 1st, Obama directed:

Presidential Memorandum re. public acknowledgment  of My unsurpassed greatness, December First, Year the sixth of the reign of Obama:

By virtue of the authority vested in Me as the Dear Leader of the True American Revolution, We I hereby direct all Federal entities, and request all significant stakeholders, to collaborate in the creation of a ballet to memorialize My uniquely outstanding magnificence, particularly as shown through My numerous  successes.

To that noble end, all Federal Agencies and Departments shall first consider among themselves and, with the voluntary cooperation of all significant stakeholders — including all State and local governmental entities, non-governmental organizations and other interested parties —  shall further consider the highly treasured successes I have bestowed upon them and upon My adoring people:

♥ Vastly improved health care;

♥ Unprecedented governmental transparency;

♥ A massively stimulated national economy;

♥ Uniquely clean Government with no hint of scandal or waste;

♥ Heroic advances in social justice;

♥ Tremendously improved race and multicultural relations;

♥ Greatly diminished White privilege;

♥ My historically unique approach to foreign policy, which has united many of our allies and former enemies; and

♥ Many others which We are I am far too humble to mention here.

As soon as the ballet has been written and I have approved it, it shall be featured by all mass media outlets during prime time and performed in all cities and towns throughout My domain that have suitable facilities. Places unfortunately lacking such facilities are authorized and requested to apply promptly for appropriate Federal grants. My Department of Homeland Security, as well as all other relevant Federal departments and agencies, are directed to approve them expeditiously.

The ballet shall be presented each year on the twentieth day of January, which I shall soon declare a national holiday by Executive Order.

Upon reviewing the Presidential Memorandum with their customary diligence, MSNBC, NBC, CNN, ABC and CBS offered high praise for Obama’s grand initiative. Using a ballet to remind everyone in the United States of Obama of what He has done to for them was seen not only as a true masterstroke but as His most masterful yet, sure to win the hearts and minds of even His most obstructionist opponents.

They suggested that the construction of much needed theatrical facilities throughout the entire country, in places now sadly deprived of the cultural enrichment they bring, will further stimulate our already vastly improved economy. They also suggested that necessary funding be stripped from all warmongering activities of the U.S. military, sparing only funds needed to improve gender equality and multicultural advances.

Faux News had little to say beyond suggesting that such a ballet should be produced after, rather than during, Obama’s term of office. Republican House Speaker Boehner contended that too many horror shows featuring Obama are already broadcast on national television and cable and that, for that reason, no Federal funds should be wasted on Obama’s grand initiative. However, he stated that no shutdown of the Federal Government is now contemplated in response. Some right wing activists terrorists suggested that, as an alternative to Obama’s grand initiative, the Little Abner musical, which they had enjoyed years ago when they were children, should be presented on national television, including all cable channels.

 

It would be gratifying for all to learn, through the medium of ballet, that the country is now in even better hands than ever before.

US-Backed Syrian Rebels Ally with Al-Qaeda in South, Surrender CIA-Supplied Weapons in the North

December 2, 2014

US-Backed Syrian Rebels Ally with Al-Qaeda in South, Surrender CIA-Supplied Weapons in the North

by Patrick Poole

December 2, 2014 – 7:59 am

via The PJ Tatler » US-Backed Syrian Rebels Ally with Al-Qaeda in South, Surrender CIA-Supplied Weapons in the North.

 

For months I’ve been reporting here at PJ Media about the ongoing cooperation between US-backed “vetted moderate” Syrian rebel units and designated terrorist groups ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria. This includes U.S.-backed rebel units who have defected wholesale to ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

Despite multiple reports of this cooperation, in September the congressional GOP leadership jumped on board with Obama’s proposal to spend an additional $500 million to arm and train the “vetted moderates” just weeks before the Obama administration abandoned the Free Syrian Army that had been the primary beneficiary of U.S. support for the past three years.

Now reports this weekend indicate growing cooperation between U.S.-backed rebels and Jabhat al-Nusra operating in southern Syria.

According to the LA Times:

Opposition activists reported intensified government bombardment in and around Sheik Maskin and the arrival of battle-tested loyalist reinforcements.

Fighting along with U.S.-backed rebels were elements of Al Nusra Front, the official Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

In a Facebook posting, Al Nusra supporters reported “vicious battles” in the Sheik Maskin area. Earlier posts also eulogized a prominent Al Nusra commander, Abu Humam Jazrawi, who was killed in the fighting.

Al Nusra’s participation illustrates how Western-supported rebel groups often cooperate with the Al Qaeda franchise, though both sides try to play down the extent of coordination. Recent clashes between Al Nusra Front and U.S.-backed rebels in northwestern Syria do not appear to have broken the de facto alliance between the Al Qaeda affiliate and West-backed fighters in the south. (emphasis added)

Meanwhile, in northern Syria as “vetted moderate” groups were forming an umbrella with hardcore jihadist groups, such as Ahrar al-Sham, other U.S.-backed units were surrendering to Jabhat al-Nusra (a trend I noted last month) and turning over their CIA-provided arms to Ahrar al-Sham, McClatchy reports:

On Friday, as the groups were meeting here, the Nusra Front stormed the bases of two moderate rebel groups in Syria’s north: the Ansar Brigades in Idlib and the Haqq Front in Hama. The two groups, both of which were receiving U.S. support through a covert CIA program, surrendered to Nusra, delivered their weapons to Ahrar al Sham and returned to their homes. (emphasis added)

And today Syria analyst Aron Lund noted that the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army signed an agreement last week with Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham for the Qalamoun area near the Lebanese border guaranteeing the imposition of sharia and creating a mutual defense pact.

The “vetted moderate” follies continue.

Imagine a World Without America? Obama Can

December 2, 2014

Imagine a World Without America?

Obama Can

Did the president watch Dinesh D’Souza’s recent documentary as a how-to guide to weaken the republic?

by David Solway

December 1, 2014 – 10:23 pm

via PJ Media » Imagine a World Without America? Obama Can.

 

In Marked for Death, Geert Wilders argues that Islam has marked not only him but ultimately every freedom-loving individual and so-called “Islamophobe” for death because of the supremacist nature of its doctrines. What outrages Wilders, in addition to the Islamic threat and the demographic inroads the religion of war is carving into the European urban landscape, is the scandalous complicity of Europe’s governing elites, leading to the eventual subversion of the continent. Although Wilders does not address American vulnerability in any detailed way, what must surely strike a disinterested observer is the equal complicity with which the commander in chief of the United States is pursuing a program of American decline. On the domestic, economic, military, and foreign policy fronts, Obama is energetically and probably irretrievably weakening the country he has sworn to defend, with surprisingly little concerted opposition, or even awareness, from many politicians or from the still-infatuated members of his constituency.

To start with Islam, it is mind-boggling to observe an American president vigorously facilitating the Islamic imperial agenda in a number of different but equally effective ways. He could not do better — or worse — if he were a transplanted Qatari sheikh. One notes the infamous Cairo address with its bloat of lies and factoids. The UN speeches, such as “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” The elevation of Muslim Brotherhood operatives into sensitive posts in his administration. Islamic outreach through official institutions such as NASA, once designed for space exploration, now, apparently, for Muslim apologetics. Iftar dinners at the White House. Congratulatory letters to mosques and his designation of terror attacks as “workplace violence,” “man-caused disasters” and “traffic incidents.” His concessionary engaging in a secret correspondence with Iran’s anti-American and anti-Semitic Ayatollah Khamenei. The withdrawing of troops from Iraq, thus opening the way for the establishment of the Islamic State. The purging of FBI training manuals of all reference to jihad. And the interviews in which Obama claims that the U.S. is “one of the biggest Muslim nations.” (In actuality, professing Muslims count for 1.5% of the American people, in comparison, for example, to Muslims amounting to 13% of India’s census.)

But it doesn’t stop there. Obama is not only manifestly pro-Islam; he is demonstrably anti-American. His policies across the board are all of a piece. Domestically, his economic projects have been calamitous. Obama has pied-pipered the nation to the brink of fiscal ruin, “increasing the national debt,” as Conrad Black writes, “from the $10-trillion accumulated in 233 years of American independence prior to 2009 to $18-trillion in six years.” His racial interventions have set race relations back a generation or more — most recently his urging the Ferguson rioters to “stay on course.” His attack on the Constitution is systematically undermining the republican nature of the U.S. Former New York lieutenant governor Betsy McCaughey cites the president for violating the Constitution 24 times with regard to Obamacare alone.

Writing in the Washington Times on Constitution Day of this year, Robert Knight has listed 14 major such violations among an ever-growing number. Obama’s refusal to secure the permeable southwestern border is an open invitation to a veritable invasion of illegals and jihadists. His executive order to issue a temporary reprieve on the grounds of prosecutorial discretion, to delay deportation, and to provide work permits for millions of illegals is certain to create dismay, resentment and confrontation on a national scale: “No president has ever exercised his discretion as broadly as Obama,” said the Washington Post. His mishandling of the Ebola crisis is only another example of anti-colonial politicking, placing American citizens at risk by allowing flights from infected West African countries into the U.S. The list goes on.

In terms of foreign policy, all of Obama’s actions seem dedicated to weakening American strength and resolve in a hostile world. His innumerable blunders — if that is what they are — whether the result of incompetence or, more likely, intention, have been scrupulously and abundantly documented in scores of books and hundreds of articles. (As an audience member at a recent Freedom Center symposium joked, Obama is “the most competent president we’ve ever had” — most competent, that is, as a malevolent and destructive force whose blunders are not accidents.) It might almost seem as if Obama’s “crimes and misdemeanors” are acquiring encyclopedic dimensions. Here we need only mention his clear bias against international allies, in particular Israel, his funding of the terrorist organization Hamas, his inability or unwillingness to deal effectively with ISIS, which he notoriously regarded as a jayvee outfit, and, most worrisomely, his pampering of the Iranian mullocracy in its determined march toward nuclear status.

His campaign against the American military is perhaps the most telling if under-the-radar sign of his animus toward his own country. His aim to reduce the military to pre-WWII levels and his sacking of ranking military personnel are especially troubling instances of a malign agenda. As retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, an original member of Delta Force and currently executive vice president of the Family Research Council, has argued, “our military is being devastated at the same time that all of our enemies, all of our potential adversaries are ramping up.” It is time, he insists on Twitter, that “top military MUST stand up to President + reckless policies.” It is hard to understand how a powerful military establishment could allow itself to be serially gutted, unless it is helmed by hand-picked Obama supporters.

For there is no evident, top-brass pushback against a president who has signaled to the enemy a timetable for withdrawal; who has shackled his forces in Afghanistan with so-called “rules of engagement,” putting their lives in jeopardy; whose concept of military propriety is a latte salute and whose concept of diplomatic propriety is chewing gum in the face of a prestigious welcoming delegation of a formidable power. This is a president under whose watch veterans were neglected and abused; who has exchanged an alleged deserter for five mid-to-high tier Taliban terrorists; and who has blithely abandoned servicemen under fire or held in captivity. The American armed forces find themselves in a position analogous to the Turkish military, once the guarantor of the country’s Kemalist experiment, now decimated under the authoritarian stewardship of Obama’s good friend, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose example Obama appears to be emulating.

As a result of Erdogan’s actions, a secular Muslim state has been transformed into an Islamic theopolitical nightmare. What the future augurs for America under Obama’s cataclysmic leadership is equally distressing. In the conclusion of his seminal book, Geert Wilders warned that the Islamic incursion into the body politic and social matrix of the U.S. is well underway; in the course of time, the nation will have lost itself in the Wilderness. But the gradual emirization of the U.S. is merely one among a host of premonitory indices. The nation’s spirit appears increasingly stagnant. It is drowning in a Noah’s flood of debt, it is coming apart at the racial seams, it is riven by a red/blue ideological conflict that appears unbridgeable, it is no longer the world’s only superpower — indeed, it is moot whether it is still a superpower, and it is considered either a hindrance or an irrelevance on the global proscenium. It is debatable whether the rot has gone too deep to be scoured, or if the recent change in party representation in Congress or a future Republican presidency would amount to anything more than a temporary hiatus. As Conrad Black continues, “there is no reason to believe that cleaning house in Congress and some of the statehouses is going to do wonders for the condition of the country.” For the rot is not only political but has eaten deep into the culture as well, with growing levels of violence, welfare dependence, historical ignorance and general cynicism. In any event, once a nation has forfeited its pre-eminence, history shows it unlikely to reclaim its former position of authority and grandeur.

Many have pointed out, as has Dinesh D’Souza to persuasive effect in America: Imagine a World without Her, that Obama’s main endeavor is to promote national enfeeblement, an enterprise which the American left, via its political, media, intellectual and academic elites, has been advancing for the last fifty years. When the fundraiser-in-chief is pastured out to the golf course or the United Nations and should the Democrats be returned to power, someone else will replace him to carry on his work. Certainly, should Alinsky-friendly Hillary Clinton or populist fraud and gentrified socialist Elizabeth Warren succeed to the presidency, one could write an early finis to the great American adventure in republican governance. The question remains partially open. Can the country slip out from under the withering curse laid upon it by a runaway president, his subversive administration and the radically corrupt Democratic Party? Can the Augean Stables of a decaying political, intellectual and media culture be cleansed and fumigated? Can the Republicans connect with their staunchly conservative base to eventually form a credible, unified and revitalized governing party?

In the meantime, with the help of his compliant accomplices, Obama has, both as effect and cause, probably done more damage to American interests, security and patriotic fervor than any single president before him. Indeed, he has done more than any of his predecessors to ensure that America as we once knew her is marked for death. One can only hope against hope that the American spirit is still at least subliminally resilient.

The Lethality of De-Judaizing Jerusalem

December 2, 2014

The Lethality of De-Judaizing Jerusalem, Front Page Magazine, December 2, 2014

jr-409x350

Only in an alternate, Orwellian universe could only one group of people on earth—Jews—be enjoined from praying on the single site most holy to their faith, and, moreover, be told that their presence there is not only provocative but is repugnant and befouls the very ground on which those of another faith—Muslims—have staked a triumphalist religious claim and now wish gather and pray.

***************

As an example of what the insightful commentator Melanie Phillips referred to as a “dialogue of the demented” in her book The World Turned Upside Down, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is continuing a long tradition of attempting to de-Judaize Jerusalem by expressing his mendacious notion that, as he put it, “Jerusalem has a special flavor and taste not only in our hearts, but also in the hearts of all Arabs and Muslims and Christians,” and “Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Palestinian state and without it there will be no state.” The same scholar of history who wrote a doctoral dissertation that questioned the extent and truthfulness of the Holocaust was now making his own historical claim that there had never been a Jewish presence and history in the world’s holiest city.

In recent weeks, Abbas has been at it again, adding new layers of rhetoric to his tactical campaign to de-Judaize Jerusalem, in general, and to the Temple Mount, specifically. In an October PA TV broadcast, Abbas made the breathtakingly absurd claim that Jews not only had no historic claim to the Temple Mount, but they also should never even be allowed to have their presence known at that location. “The settlers have arrived . . . ,” he said. “This is our Sanctuary, our Al-Aqsa and our Church [of the Holy Sepulchre]. They have no right to enter it . . . [or] right to defile it. We must prevent them . . . .”

Only in an alternate, Orwellian universe could only one group of people on earth—Jews—be enjoined from praying on the single site most holy to their faith, and, moreover, be told that their presence there is not only provocative but is repugnant and befouls the very ground on which those of another faith—Muslims—have staked a triumphalist religious claim and now wish gather and pray.

This attempt to airbrush out a Jewish presence from Jerusalem—in fact, all of historic Palestine—is not a new message for Abbas, of course. In 2000 he expressed similar contempt for the idea that a Jewish temple had ever existed on the Temple Mount and that, even if it had existed, the offenses committed by Israel against the Palestinians negated any claim Jews might have enjoyed, absent their perfidy. “Anyone who wants to forget the past [i.e., the Israelis] cannot come and claim that the [Jewish] temple is situated beneath the Haram,” Abbas absurdly asserted in an article in Kul Al-Arab, an Israeli Arabic-language weekly newspaper. “ . . . But even if it is so, we do not accept it, because it is not logical for someone who wants a practical peace.”

Judging by the October 30th statement by U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki, forgetting the past is something in which the John Kerry’s office is also complicit. “We’re extremely concerned by escalating tensions across Jerusalem and particularly surrounding the Haram al-Sharif, Temple Mount,” Psaki said, pointedly, and dangerously, referring to the Temple Mount by its Arab name first and thereby fortifying, and seeming to lend equal weight to, the Palestinian’s spurious claim to spiritual and territorial rights to the site, and to the wider area described now as East Jerusalem.

“It is actually critical that all sides exercise restraint, refrain from provocative actions and rhetoric and preserve the status quo,” she added, suggesting that Jews not be allowed to pray on the Mount and that the status quo prohibiting Jews from praying on the site be ordered to continue so as to not incite Muslim sensibilities.

But in characterizing East Jerusalem —or any part of Jerusalem, for that matter —as territory that Israel “occupies” but over which it enjoys no sovereignty, Abbas (and U.S. State Department, too) is misreading, once again, the content and purpose of 1967′s U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 that suggested an Israeli withdrawal “from territories [not all territories]” it acquired in the Six-Day War. Critics of Israeli policy who either willfully misread or deliberately obscure the resolution’s purpose say that the Jewish State is in violation of 242 by continuing to occupy the West Bank and Jerusalem, including what is spuriously now referred to as “Arab” East Jerusalem.  But the drafters of Resolution 242 were very precise in creating the statute’s language, and they never considered Jerusalem to have been occupied by Israel after the Six-Day War.  Former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Arthur Goldberg, one of the resolution’s authors, made this very clear when he wrote some years later that “Resolution 242 in no way refers to Jerusalem, and this omission was deliberate[.] . . . At no time in [my] many speeches [before the U.N.] did I refer to East Jerusalem as occupied territory.”

But the true danger of the Palestinian thinking about Jerusalem—and, indeed, about all of the Palestine that they covet, including Israel itself—was revealed in Yasser Arafat’s own view that he expressed in a July 2000 edition of al-Hayat al-Jadida when he threatened that “They can occupy us by force, because we are weaker now, but in two years, ten years, or one hundred years, there will be someone who will liberate Jerusalem [from them].”

“Liberating” Jerusalem, of course, does not mean transforming it into a pluralistic, open city where members of three major faiths can live freely and practice their religions openly. Liberating Jerusalem for the Palestinians would be more in keeping with the type of liberation that Transjordan’s Arab League effected when they burned and looted the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem in 1948; expelled and killed its hapless Jewish population; destroyed some 58 synagogues, many hundreds of years old; unearthed gravestones from the history-laden Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives and used them for latrine pavers; and barred any Jew from praying at the Western Wall or entering the Temple Mount.

But false irredentist claims, Islamic supremacism which compels Jews and Christians to live in dhimmitude under Muslim control, and an evident cultural and theological disregard for other faiths— while troubling in the battle over sovereignty in Jerusalem—are not, according to Dore Gold, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, the most dangerous aspects of a diplomatic capitulation which would allow the Palestinians to claim a shared Jerusalem. In his engaging book, The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City, Gold pointed to a far more troubling aspect: in their desire to accede to Arab requests for a presence and religious sovereignty in Jerusalem, the State Department, EU, UN member states, and Islamic apologists in the Middle East and worldwide may actually ignite jihadist impulses they seek to dampen with their well-intentioned, but defective, diplomacy.

Why? Because, as Gold explained, “In the world of apocalyptic speculation, Jerusalem has many other associations—it is the place where the messianic Mahdi [the redeemer of Islam] is to establish his capital. For that reason, some argue that it also should become the seat of the new caliphate that most Islamic groups—from the Muslim Brotherhood to al-Qaeda—seek to establish.”

When Yasser Arafat in July 2000 gave expression to the eventual “liberation” of Jerusalem as a sacred and unending ambition for the Palestinian cause, he defined it as a recapture of what had been, and should be, in his view, Muslim land, just as the eventual extirpation of Israel and the reclamation of all of historic Palestine would accomplish. The establishment of the Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem is the first important step in the long-term strategy to rid the Levant of Jews and reestablish the House of Islam in Palestine. “Jerusalem’s recapture is seen by some as one of the signs that ‘the Hour’ and the end of times are about to occur,” Gold suggested. “And most importantly, because of these associations, it is the launching pad for a new global jihad powered by the conviction that this time the war will unfold according to a pre-planned religious script, and hence must succeed.”

So far from creating a political situation in which both parties—Israelis and the Palestinians—feel they have sought and received equal benefits, such negotiations and final agreements would have precisely the opposite effect: destabilizing the region and creating, not the oft-hoped for Israel and Palestine “living side by side in peace,” but an incendiary cauldron about to explode into an annihilatory, jihadist rage. Those in the West who are urging Israel “to redivide Jerusalem by relinquishing its holy sites,” Dore cautioned, “may well believe that they are lowering the flames of radical Islamic rage, but in fact they will only be turning up those flames to heights that have not been seen before.” If the State Department and other Western diplomats are intent on mollifying the Arab street by pressuring Israel to divide Jerusalem as a peace offering to the Palestinians, it may well be setting into motion the exact opposite result—a jihadist, apocalyptic movement invigorated by the misguided diplomacy of the West that, once more, asks Israel to sacrifice its security and nationhood so that Islamists can realize their own imperial and theological ambitions at the Jewish state’s expense.

US-led warplanes cut through to ISIS targets in Syria & Iraq over Israel

December 2, 2014

US-led warplanes cut through to ISIS targets in Syria & Iraq over Israel, DEBKAfile, December 2, 2014

Flights over Israel

All US and European coalition strike and surveillance flights against ISIS forces in Syria and Iraq under Operation Inherent Resolve have been reaching their targets through the skies of Israel and Jordan, US, European and civilian monitors of global air force movements report. The bodies engaged in minute-by-minute observations of the movements of military strike and refueling craft across the world have released detailed images mapping those routes. They reveal that US and European warplanes are refueling at two points over the Mediterranean Sea before entering Israeli airspace.

They are using two corridors (see attached map) which run over central and northern Israel.

In the first, US planes reach high altitudes over an area just north of Tel Aviv and head east to pass over Jordan to reach Iraq. They are focusing of late on striking ISIS-Al Qaeda-occupied sites in the Anbar Province of western Iraq and the Euphrates basin.

The Islamists have taken to hiding newly established bases in the dense river bank vegetation, from where they are almost impossible to detect by military and spy satellites.

The second US air corridor runs over Haifa Bay, then east over the Jezreel Valley and thence to Hama at the southern tip of the Golan, where the Israeli, Jordanian and Syrian borders converge. The next lap takes the assault fleet into eastern Syria to strike ISIS forces at Abu Kemal and Deir A-Zor and other locations on Syria’s eastern border with Iraq.

The US air force turned to the Israeli route to Syria after Jordan’s King Abdullah declined to provide access over his realm to coalition warplanes bent on striking jihadist targets in Syria. He only permitted them to fly over his kingdom to Iraq, with permission from Baghdad.

Neither Washington, Jerusalem nor Amman are willing to confirm or deny that these trajectories are being used for reaching ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq – although several military websites have made such data public with detailed maps.

The US and Israel have opted for reticence out of three considerations:

1. Reluctance to reveal that Israel and Jordan are partners in Operation Inherent Resolve;

2. Equally embarrassing would be the disclosure that the use of their air space was subject to the permission of the Israeli and Jordanian governments;

3. The scale of the operation also needs to be kept under wraps: US air strikes are managed from three commands: US Central Command in Tampa, Florida; its forward command at the US Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar; and NATO Headquarters in Brussels, which coordinates US and European air operations with the Middle East air forces taking part in the mission against ISIS.

DEBKAfile’s military sources note that, notwithstanding the broad scale of the coalition air offensive against ISIS, to which 20 countries are contributing more than 200 aircraft, its achievements are unimpressive to say the least.

Although official communiqués refer to scores of air strikes (55 at the end of last week), less than 10 strikes per day are actually taking place. This is far below the intensity required for re-tilting the military balance against the Islamists.

The only noteworthy gain to come out of this grand offensive is the decision taken by ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdad to draw a line against expanding his territorial conquests in Syria and Iraq in order to save his organization from further losses from US and allied air strikes. He has determined to focus now on stabilizing and shoring up his gains. ISIS has thus shifted from a strategy of expansion to one of defense.

Obama Admin Wants Hamas Ally Qatar to Remain Chief Broker in Peace Process

December 2, 2014

Obama Admin Wants Hamas Ally Qatar to Remain Chief Broker in Peace Process, Washington Free Beacon, December 1, 2014

(Please see also Hamas Declares Palestinian Unity Government Dead. According to the article republished below, “The State Department maintains that Qatar shares President Obama’s views about the Middle East peace process.” Their views have long been anti-Israel, pro-Islam. But what difference does it make nowThe “peace process” is already moribund and Qatar will administer the last rites.  — DM)

Khaled MashaalHamas chief Khaled Mashaal and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh / AP

Qatar promised the State Department it would not give more money to Hamas.

The State Department maintains that Qatar shares President Obama’s views about the Middle East peace process.

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The Obama administration is pressing for the Qatari government to remain a chief broker in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process despite the country’s longstanding financial support for the terror group Hamas, according to recent correspondence from the State Department to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Qatar—which has come under harsh criticism by lawmakers in recent months due to its longtime financial support for Hamas—has promised the Obama administration that it will not allow the terror group to benefit from a new $150 million cash infusion that is meant to go toward reconstruction efforts in the Gaza Strip, according to the letter.

The Obama administration will maintain its close ties with Qatar and push for it to have a key role in the tenuous peace process, despite protestations from lawmakers on Capitol Hill who say that the country cannot be trusted due to its close ties to Hamas, according to the letter sent by State Department officials late last month to Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill.).

Although Qatar has pledged in past years to give Hamas at least $400 million in aid, it has assured the United States that the next $150 million sent to the Palestinians will not make its way to the terror group.

“Qatar has pledged financial support that would be directed to the Palestinian people in Gaza,” Julia Frifield, an assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the State Department, informed Roskam in a Nov. 21 letter. “Qatar assured us that its assistance would not go to Hamas. We continue to interact closely with the government of Qatar and will reinforce that such assistance should not go to Hamas.”

The Obama administration in turn will continue to rely on Qatar to serve a role in the peace process and to engage with Hamas, according to the letter.

“Qatar has said it wants to help bring about a cease fire to the ongoing hostilities in Israel and Gaza,” the letter states. “The Qatari government has engaged with Hamas to this end.”

While the United States still regards Hamas as a terrorist organization, “We need countries that have leverage over the leaders of Hamas to help put a ceasefire in place,” Frifield wrote. “Qatar may be able to play that role as it has done in the past.”

Lawmakers and experts remain dubious that Qatar can be taken at its word given its robust support for Hamas in the past.

“It’s an indisputable fact that Qatar has become the chief sponsor of Hamas—an internationally recognized terrorist organization committed to the destruction of Israel,” Roskam said earlier this year after he petitioned the administration to reassess its close ties to Qatar.

“With Qatar’s financial backing, Hamas continues to indiscriminately launch thousands of rockets at our ally Israel,” Roskam said. “The Obama administration must explain its working partnership with a country that so brazenly funds terrorism right before our eyes, even going so far as turning to Qatar to help broker a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.”

The administration cannot blindly trust Qatar to cut its close ties with Hamas, said one senior congressional aide who works on the issue.

“It appears the administration is willing to take Qatar for its word on funding some of the world’s most dangerous terrorist organizations, and the notion that Qatar can simultaneously fund Hamas and help broker and Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty is laughable,” the source said. “Congress is intent on holding the Qataris responsible for their illegal behavior and send a message that under no circumstances should the United States tolerate such brazen support for terrorism.”

The State Department maintains that Qatar shares President Obama’s views about the Middle East peace process.

“Qatar has welcomed President Obama’s commitment to a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and shares the view that such a solution would advance security, prosperity, and stability in the Middle East,” the letter states.

In addition to its role in the peace process, the administration believes that Qatar can help in the international fight against terrorism and groups such as the Islamic State (IS).

“We remain strongly committed to working with Qatar to confront ongoing terrorist financing and advance our shared regional goals,” the State Department told Roskam, noting that more than 8,500 U.S. troops are housed at the country’s Al Udeid Air Base.

“We also have a productive relationship with Qatar on key regional issues ranging from Syria to Iran,” the State Department wrote.