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Israelis Can’t Stand Obama even More than Iranians

December 23, 2015

Israelis Can’t Stand Obama even More than Iranians, The Jewish Press, Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu, December 23, 2015

anti_obama_billboard_3_adpAn anti-Obama billboard in the United States.

Israelis can’t stand President Barack Obama even more than Iranians can do without him, but they like German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the most popular world leader, a new survey reveals.

The poll in Israel was part of an international survey of 65 world leaders by WIN/Gallup International. Ma’agar Mochot, headed by Prof. Yitzchak Katz, carried out the survey in Israel.

One of the questions posed was:

What is your opinion regarding each of the following global leaders: very favorable position, sympathetic to some extent, not sympathetic to some extent, or very unfavorable?

Each leader was ranked twice, once with a favorable ranking and once with an unfavorable ranking, and the final score was determined by subtracting the negative votes from the positive votes.

Obama was popular worldwide with a 30 percent rating on the plus side, much better than can be said for what Americans think of him.

In Israel, he scored a minus 22 percent, even worse than the minus 21 percent ranking by Iranians.

On the positive side, the most popular world leader for Israelis is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who scored a net 38 percent on the plus side, far ahead of the distant second place leader, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron.

Israelis also placed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, French President Francois Hollande, Russian President Vladimir Putin and President of China Shi Tz’infing above Obama.

However, President Obama can console himself that Israelis don’t dislike him as much as they do Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdul Aziz, and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.

On the other hand, Russians gave President Obama a disastrous minus 83 percent rating, the lowest of any country. However, he is popular in Kosovo with a plus 73 percent rating. Close behind is Vietnam

Putin is much more unpopular with Americans than with Israelis. He scored minus 44 in the United States, and only minus 20 in Israel.

Categories: Israel, Obama
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America’s hidden jihad

December 23, 2015

America’s hidden jihad, Washington Times, Daniel Pipes, December 22, 2015

12222015_b3-pipe-yusuf-ibrah8201_c1-0-2933-1710_s885x516Yusuf Ibrahim Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

[In a different case in 2013,]  the police, politicians, the press and professors (i.e., the Establishment) have shown not the slightest interest in the Islamic angle, treating the double beheadings and amputations as a routine local murder. Symptomatic of this, the police report about Ibrahim’s arrest makes no mention of motivation; on the basis of this lack of mention, left-leaning Snopes.com (which describes itself as the “definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation”) goes so far as to dismiss as “false” the allegation that the mainstream media “deliberately ignored” this incident. The wagons have been circled.

If the body politic understood the full extent of jihad in America, the alarm would be much greater; the percentage of those calling terrorism a critical issue would rise much higher than the current 75 percent. That, in turn, might push the Establishment finally to get serious about confronting jihad.

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

 

The police and press did an impressive job of sleuthing into the lives and motives of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the married couple who massacred 14 people on Dec. 2, in San Bernardino, Calif.

We know about their families, their studies and employment histories, their travels, their marriage, their statements, and their preparations for the assault. Most importantly, the cascade of background work reveals that the pair had jihadi intentions, meaning they attacked in their role as pious Muslims spreading the message, law and sovereignty of Islam.

We are all better off for knowing these facts, which have had a powerful impact on the body politic, making Americans far more concerned with jihadi violence than at any time since just after Sept. 11, 2001, as they should be. For example, in 2011, 53 percent told a pollster that terrorism was a critical issue; that number has now reached 75 percent.

But what about the case of Yusuf Ibrahim? In early 2013, when he was 27, this Egyptian-born Muslim lived in Jersey City, when he allegedly shot, then cut off the heads and hands and knocked the teeth out of two Coptic Christians, Hanny F. Tawadros and Amgad A. Konds, then buried them in Buena Vista Township, N.J.

He is charged with two counts each of murder, felony murder, kidnapping, robbery, desecration of human remains, and other crimes. In addition, he has pleaded guilty to a Dec. 22, 2011, carjacking and a Sept. 20, 2012, armed robbery, both in Jersey City (in the latter, he shot his victim in the foot). Early in 2015, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison for these later crimes.

The twin beheadings were spectacular, gruesome and replete with jihadi (or in police parlance, “terrorist”) elements. Historian Timothy Furnish explains that “ritual beheading has a long precedent in Islamic theology and history,” making it a distinctly Muslim form of execution. A Muslim killing a non-Muslim fits the ageless pattern of Islamic supremacism. It also fits a tragic pattern of behavior in the United States in recent years.

Yet the police, politicians, the press and professors (i.e., the Establishment) have shown not the slightest interest in the Islamic angle, treating the double beheadings and amputations as a routine local murder. Symptomatic of this, the police report about Ibrahim’s arrest makes no mention of motivation; on the basis of this lack of mention, left-leaning Snopes.com (which describes itself as the “definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation”) goes so far as to dismiss as “false” the allegation that the mainstream media “deliberately ignored” this incident. The wagons have been circled.

Almost three years after the event, we know next-to-nothing about Ibrahim, his motives, his possible connections to others, or his institutional affiliations. We also do not know the relationship of the accused attacker to his victims: Was he a criminal who fell out with his accomplices, a friend who had drunk too much, a would-be lover knocking off his rivals for the affections of a woman, a family member eliminating aspirants for an inheritance, a crazy man randomly shooting passers-by? Or was he perhaps a jihadi seeking to spread the message, law, and sovereignty of Islam?

I cannot answer those questions because the case lingers in total obscurity, popping up from time to time only in connection with some technical procedural matter (such as the amount of Ibrahim’s bail or the admissibility of his confession) that sheds no light on the motives for his alleged crime.

Nor is the Ibrahim case unusual. There are long lists of other potential instances of jihadi violence in which the Establishment has colluded to sweep the Islamic dimension under the rug, treating the perpetrators as common criminals whose biographies, motives and connections are of no interest and, therefore, remain unknown.

This silence about possible jihad has the major consequence of lulling the American public (and its counterparts elsewhere in the West) into believing jihadi violence is far rarer than is the case. If the body politic understood the full extent of jihad in America, the alarm would be much greater; the percentage of those calling terrorism a critical issue would rise much higher than the current 75 percent. That, in turn, might push the Establishment finally to get serious about confronting jihad.

Categories: Crime, Islamic jihad, Islamic supremacy, Law enforcement, Muslim assimilation, Western media
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Prominent Saudi Journalist: Extremism, Takfir Are Everywhere In Saudi Arabia, And The Authorities Are Doing Little To Stop This

December 23, 2015

Prominent Saudi Journalist: Extremism, Takfir Are Everywhere In Saudi Arabia, And The Authorities Are Doing Little To Stop This, MEMRI, December 23, 2015

(Is it reasonable to expect Islamic reform in Salifast Saudi Arabia? — DM)

In a two-part article in the Saudi government daily Al-Watan, journalist Qenan Al-Ghamdi, the former editor ofAl-Watan and of the government daily Al-Sharq, harshly criticized the extremism in Saudi Arabia, which he said is present in every mosque and school and is constantly being spread by preachers, clerics, teachers and parents. The authorities, he added, do almost nothing to fight this extremism that is constantly seeping into Saudi society; on the contrary, they even give it a platform and help to promote it. This extremism is what makes Saudi youths especially susceptible to the extremist ideology of organizations, such as ISIS, he said. He wondered why, despite its awareness of the dangers of terrorist ideology, Saudi Arabia still has no law that criminalizes it.

The following are translated excerpts from both parts of the article:[1]

26140Qenan Al-Ghamdi (image: Saudi Gazette, Saudi Arabia)

“There is nothing new [under the sun]! Since the takfiri terror attacks began to occur in our streets, mosques and institutions, we have been condemning [its perpetrators] and calling them criminals, deviant, Khawarij,[2] etc. After every success of the security [forces] in exposing dormant or active terrorist cells – and these successes are too numerous to count – we praise the members of the security forces… and are proud of them and do everything we can to support them. Yet we do not do anything helpful and effective to assist the efforts of the Interior Ministry in the security and ideological [domains]…

“What the Senior Clerics Council [Saudi Arabia’s supreme religious body], and other relevant bodies, are expected to do is carry out a critical reading of the [takfiri] ideology, correct it and comment on it – yet nothing significant [has been done in this domain]. Most [imams], from their mosque pulpits every Friday, continue to hurl accusations of heresy at Muslim groups that live among us and also at the People of the Book [meaning Christians in this case], many of whom work in our country. The [imams] curse and hurl invective at them. Those we call ‘preachers and lovers of knowledge’ are still doing this in their lectures and sermons – and some of them are employees of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and work under its supervision. [Moreover], television channels continue to host them, giving them an opportunity to spread this poison, which reaches every home, every eye and every ear. Prohibitions and excessive strictness still dominate most areas of life, even when there is no clear evidence in the pure and genuine [texts of] the Koran or the Sunna that the prohibitions exist.

“Our sons are still marching en masse to become cannon fodder in civil wars and [to serve as] criminal murderers in the ranks of ISIS in every war or terrorist crime around the world. [Saudi youths] form the majority in every arena of so-called jihad. The wellsprings of extremism and fanaticism still [exist] everywhere in our country, to the extent that some boys and girls in our schools accuse other boys and girls of heresy or of straying from the right path just for mentioning some pictures [they liked] or some movies they saw. This is because some of their teachers still instill in them the notion that every source of pleasure in life is forbidden, [even if it is actually] permitted, and because some of their illiterate or nearly-illiterate mothers and grandmothers attend lectures by so-called women preachers who entrench extremism and fanaticism [in their minds]. Moreover, many of the women who attend such women’s forums are excited by what they heard… and share it with groups of women on social media. These are the mothers of families and the educators of the [next] generation, at home and in school, and some of them even become muftis and preachers [themselves]!! Many men are also subject to the same influences – so much so that some of them avoid listening to the national anthem or the musical inserts on news programs, and they are willing to preach and spout prohibitions in every forum, market and street.

“Consequently, many men and women have become preoccupied with [scrutinizing] others – their neighbors, acquaintances and friends – [and asking]: Is he Sunni or Shi’ite? Does he observe the non-obligatory fasts? Does he pray the [supererogatory] Duha prayer? How does he or she dress? Does he watch movies and [television] series? Does he shave his beard? Does she style her eyebrows? Does he do this? Does he do that? As though Allah appointed them to supervise His creatures, interfere in their affairs and assess their intentions…

“So far, despite our awareness of all the dangers of takfir and despite the shameful crimes that the country has witnessed, we [Saudis] have not found in all this a logical and intellectual justification for approving a law that would criminalize sectarianism, racism, takfir and everything that weakens [our] national unity. Even the Shura Council [the Saudi Parliament] ducked [the issue] with ridiculous and ludicrous excuses.

“Islam does not allow to kill a person, and in fact forbids this, regardless of [the person’s] religion or beliefs, unless he committed a crime that mandates killing him. Islam does not allow, and even prohibits, accusing a person of heresy as long as he recites ‘there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Messenger,’ for his account [is to be settled] by Allah [alone]. Islam does not allow prohibiting what Allah completely permitted. Islam does not allow you to exhibit hostility towards anyone who did not originally display overt enmity towards you.

“The [Saudi] state maintains amicable ties with all the world’s countries, excluding the aggressive Zionist Israel, and this does not contradict Saudi Arabia’s status as a path-breaking Arab Islamic state that respects all the Islamic ethnicities and sects and all those residing within its [borders] who come from all parts of the world and belong to different ethnicities, sects and religions… and there’s nothing wrong with this. Islam, via its justice, mercy and tolerance, grants protection to all people, as long as they respect its ways, serve them, benefit them and derive benefit from them…

“All the above is absolutely true. Consider this, [reader,] and then you will be entitled to ask: How will we wipe out terror when its sources come in successive [waves], flooding the eyes the ears and the minds? Moreover, we condemn the Internet and repeatedly say that recruitment [for terror] is done via [this platform]. This is completely incorrect, because we are the ones who filled [people’s] minds with extremism and fanaticism, before and after the Internet, whereas the incitement of ISIS and its ilk only awakens the admiration [for extremist ideology] that is already deep-rooted in the minds and hearts of the youth and makes them easily susceptible to every call to jihad.

“Let us leave aside those already brainwashed by this ideology, for the Ministry of Interior is handling them, but let us act to stop the creation [of more minds of the same kind]. This is the challenge, and it is within our capacity, should we so desire. Anyone opposing this, whoever he may be, has, I believe, shameful intentions [to undermine] the state’s unity and existence and seeks to destroy it – and this is the grave danger.”

 

Endnotes:

 

[1] Al-Watan (Saudi Arabia), November 2- 3, 2015.

[2] The Khawarij were a dissident group that split from Ali’s camp at the Battle of Siffin in 657; it is considered the first Muslim opposition group in Islamic history. Today its name is used as a derogatory name for dissident or deviant groups.

Categories: Fundamentalist Islam, Islamic terrorism, Reform Islam, Salafists, Saudi Arabia
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C-SPAN Accused of ‘Mainstreaming Islamist Organizations While Willfully Marginalizing’ Reformists

December 23, 2015

C-SPAN Accused of ‘Mainstreaming Islamist Organizations While Willfully Marginalizing’ Reformists, CNS News, Patrick Goodenough, December 23, 2015

jasser-mrmAmerican Islamic Forum for Democracy president M. Zuhdi Jasser speaks at the launch of the Muslim Reform Movement, at the National Press Club on Friday, December 4, 2015. (Screengrab: AIFD/YouTube)

The leader of an umbrella group of moderate Islamic organizations is troubled by C-SPAN’s decision not to cover its launch event at the National Press Club earlier this month, when on Monday the public affairs network provided live coverage to another Muslim event – highlighting “Islamophobia” – at the same venue.

Attempts to get C-SPAN to cover the launch of the Muslim Reform Movement on December 4 were unsuccessful, said M. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and a key figure in the establishment of the MRM.

On Monday, C-SPAN covered a press conference by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its allies in the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) at which 2016 political candidates were warned that anti-Muslim sentiment would carry a cost at the ballot box.

Jasser, a Phoenix-Ariz.-based Muslim physician and anti-Islamist activist, called the incident “beyond bizarre if not flagrantly biased.”

“They are mainstreaming Islamist organizations while willfully marginalizing us,” he said. “At least show both!”

Jasser noted that the launch of the Muslim Reform Movement took place just two days after the San Bernardino terrorist attack and weeks after the one in Paris.

Jasser’s communications director Tiffany Hopkins said Tuesday she sent four emails to C-SPAN several days before the launch, then discussed the summit and its relevance in a phone conversation with the assignment desk. She was given the direct email address of C-SPAN’s D.C. editor to contact for a booking and did so, but received no response.

In Jasser’s view, C-SPAN simply “ignored” the request for coverage of the event, which he pointed out had also been listed on the National Press Club website.

He said if C-SPAN chose not to cover either Islamic event then one could allow “that they have their own priorities and Muslim counter-radicalization may not be one of them.”

But after not covering the MRM launch, he was surprised to see C-SPAN give coverage Monday to what he described as the “Islamist ultimatums” of USCMO.

For the public service network to have covered USCMO “while they flatly ignored our reform summit of 14 leaders and our organizations, exemplifies the central obstacle with regards to the ‘perceived silence of reformers,’” he said.

“We are screaming from the rooftops and unfortunately ignored.”

Queries sent to C-SPAN on Monday and again on Tuesday brought no response by press time.

‘The Muslims the world has been waiting for’

The newly-formed Muslim Reform Movement brings together “Muslim reformers” from the U.S., Canada and Europe, who said in a statement, “We are in a battle for the soul of Islam, and an Islamic renewal must defeat the ideology of Islamism.”

The launch included a visit to the Islamic Center of Washington, “a mosque largely run by the government of Saudi Arabia,” where the activists posted a “declaration of reform” on the mosque doors. The document rejects the notion of an Islamic state, the caliphate, apostasy and “institutionalized shari’a.”

MRM founding signatories include representatives of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a Canadian group called Muslims Facing Tomorrow, the Coalition of Progressive Canadian Muslim Organizations, the Quilliam Foundation in Britain, a Danish lawmaker, and several authors, journalists and thinkers.

“I love my faith of Islam, and I wish to reclaim it from the extremists,” said Usama Hasan of the Quilliam Foundation.

“I’m a doting grandmother and I’m concerned about the future of my children and grandchildren as radical Islam is spreading across North America,” said Muslims Facing Tomorrow president Raheel Raza.

“I’m here to take back the narrative of my faith from the people who are destroying it,” said Sohail Raza of Muslims Facing Tomorrow.

AIFD community outreach director Courtney Lonergan said she was excited to “work with these amazing people, who are the Muslims the world has been waiting for.”

Despite the lack of C-SPAN coverage, Jasser said there was evidently “hunger for our message,” pointing to the fact that the launch video has been watched more than 15,000 times on YouTube.

Jasser is a sharp critic of CAIR, a controversial lobby group that describes itself as “America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization.”

He is reviled by CAIR and its allies.

Categories: C-SPAN, CAIR, Fundamentalist Islam, Reform Islam
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Turkey and Israel: A Rickety Handshake

December 23, 2015

Turkey and Israel: A Rickety Handshake, Gatestone Institute, Burak Bekdil, December 23, 2015

(What benefit beyond oil sales to Turkey — a minor one that Turkey could extinguish at its pleasure — would Israel receive? — DM)

♦ It would be truly embarrassing if a Turkey-Israel normalization results in new arms shipments into Gaza and rockets over Israeli skies — with the only achievement being a temporary peace with Turkey’s Islamists, who never hide their ideological kinship with Hamas.

♦ The future Turkish and Israeli ambassadors would always have to keep their bags packed, ready to return to their own capitals at the first dispute – which could be caused by Israeli retaliation against Arab terrorism or anything that may make Erdogan roar in front of cameras.

♦ How do you shake hands with a man whom you know ideologically hates you and wishes to mess up things at his earliest convenience?

None of this happened half a century ago; the timeline here covers only a span of a year and a half: A Turkish-Kurdish pop star wrote on her Twitter account, “May God bless Hitler. He did far less [than he should have done to Jews].” The mayor of Ankara replied: “I applaud you!” Hundreds of angry Turks, hurling rocks, tried to break into the Israeli diplomatic missions in Ankara and Istanbul. The mayor of Ankara said: “We will conquer the consulate of the despicable murderers.” He blamed the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris on Israel’s Mossad. Islamist columnists close to the government suggested imposing a “wealth tax” on Turkish Jews (who are full citizens). A governor threatened to suspend restoration work at a synagogue. And a credible research group at the Kadir Has University in Istanbul found in a poll that Turks view Israel as the top threat to Turkey.

Against such a background, Turkish and Israeli diplomats are negotiating a historical deal that will, in theory, end Turkey’s hostility toward the Jewish state and normalize diplomatic ties between Ankara and Jerusalem.

In 2010, a Turkish flotilla, led by the Mavi Marmara with hundreds of jihadists and anti-Israeli “intellectuals” aboard, sailed toward the coast of Gaza, aiming to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Hamas-run strip. Israel’s naval blockade aims to prevent weapons such as rockets being smuggled into Gaza. To stop the flotilla, naval commandos of the Israel Defense Forces boarded the vessel and, during clashes, killed nine aboard.

1080The Turkish-owned ship Mavi Marmara, which took part in the 2010 “Gaza flotilla” that attempted to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. (Image source: “Free Gaza movement”/Flickr)

Since the incident, Turkey’s Islamist leaders have pledged to isolate Israel internationally and have downgraded diplomatic ties with Jerusalem. They have put forward three conditions before any normalization could take place: an Israeli apology, compensation for the families of the victims and the removal of the naval blockade on Gaza.

After President Barack Obama’s intervention, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2013 apologized for “any error that may have led to the loss of life.” Turkey’s two other conditions remain unfulfilled. But diplomatic teams from Ankara and Jerusalem are apparently working on a deal. There are good reasons why an accord may or may not be possible.

Since the nearest Turkish election is four years from now, neither Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan nor his prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has any reason to cultivate further anti-Semitism at election rallies in order harvest votes from conservative masses who are deeply hostile to Israel and Jews. These are days when Turkey’s leaders need not practice their usual anti-Israeli rhetoric.

There is another reason related to “timing” that makes a deal attainable. After pledging to isolate Israel, Turkey has become the most isolated country in the region, especially after the recent crisis with Russia that emerged after two Turkish F-16 fighters shot down a Russian SU-24 aircraft along Turkey’s Syrian border on Nov. 24.

In its region, Turkey does not have diplomatic relations with Cyprus and Armenia. It has downgraded diplomatic relations with Israel and Egypt. It is confronted by Shiite and Shiite-dominated regimes in Iran and Iraq, respectively. On top of all that, an angry Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, curses and threatens every day to punish Turkey. Turkey buys over half of its natural gas and 10% of its oil from Russia.

Therefore, a third incentive could be a mutually beneficial future deal for Turkey to buy natural gas from Israel. If the two countries build an underwater pipeline, Turkey can compensate for the potential loss of Russian gas supplies, starting in 2019. For Israel, a pipeline to Turkey would be the most commercially feasible route to export its gas to Turkey and other potential buyers beyond.

A Turkish-Israeli handshake would also be music to ears in Washington. Deep hostility and occasional tensions between its two allies in the Middle East have always been unnerving for the U.S. administration.

The road ahead has its problems. Turkey’s second condition for normalization, compensation, is not too difficult to overcome. But the third condition, that Israel should remove the naval blockade of Gaza — and risk weapons being smuggled into the hands of Hamas (or other terrorist groups) — could be an unsafe move for Israel.

It would be truly embarrassing if a Turkey-Israel normalization results in new arms shipments into Gaza and rockets over Israeli skies — with the only achievement being a temporary peace with Turkey’s Islamists, who never hide their ideological kinship with Hamas.

If Netanyahu decides to take risks and go for a deal, he must make sure that however the naval blockade of Gaza would be eased, it does not expose Israel to the risk of new acts of terror.

Another risk is the potential psychological domino effect any deal could cause. It is certain that Turkish Islamists will portray any deal as a success story — that they were able to “bring Israel to its knees.” This message, relayed through a systematic propaganda machine, could set a dangerous precedent and potentially encourage Arab Islamists to consider more assertive policies toward Israel in the future.

The future Turkish and Israeli ambassadors would always have to keep their bags packed, ready to return to their own capitals at the first dispute – which could be caused by Israeli retaliation against Arab terrorism or anything that may make Erdogan roar in front of cameras, “Our Palestinian brothers … Those murderer Jews again … Go back to your pre-1967 borders or you’ll suffer the consequences!”

Netanyahu’s problem is that he does not trust Erdogan in the least. He is right not to trust Erdogan. But then how do you shake hands with a man whom you know ideologically hates you and wishes to mess up things at his earliest convenience?

Categories: Erdogan, Israel, Israel economy, Israel, Palestinians, Netanyahu, Obama and Turkey, Russia, Turkey
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It’s Not Just About Israel. BDS Threatens Us All

December 23, 2015

It’s Not Just About Israel. BDS Threatens Us All, Huffington Post, , December 22, 2015

(Yes, it’s from the Huffington Post. Reader comments indicate that it was not well received. — DM)

A campaign of hate is sweeping across our country. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement – advancing an agenda to demonize the Jewish people and destroy the State of Israel – is moving from the fringes of our society and into the mainstream. Churches, labor unions, and associations have voted to divest from Israeli companies. In the past year alone, more than 30 student governments at American universities have considered resolutions calling for divestment from the State of Israel. More than a dozen academic trade associations have followed suit, voting to prevent their members from making any contact with Israeli institutions of higher education, preventing the free exchange of information and infringing on academic freedom.

Those that believe this is just an issue for Israel or the Jewish community are sorely mistaken. These developments endanger the future of America. Like a wildfire spreading out of control, BDS is a menace that must be contained today, before it alters our society’s moral compass and threatens the values and freedoms at the heart of our very way of life.

What’s the big deal about BDS? In short, what it teaches and what it seeks.

What does it teach? Growing legions of Americans are now being brainwashed by BDS to join an attack on the Middle East’s only oasis of democracy and human rights, while turning a blind eye to the brutal dictators and terrorists that dominate the rest of the region. Iran hangs gays and tortures political dissidents. ISIS enslaves young girls and murders minorities. The Assad regime is responsible for the slaughter of 500,000 civilians. Lebanon brutally oppresses Palestinians, denying them the right to own land or become lawyers and doctors. Yet, in the warped moral universe of BDS, none of these of abuses merit mention, while Israel’s vibrant democracy – which shares our values, advances our interests, and safeguards the rights of women, gays, minorities – is public enemy number one.

What does BDS seek? This Movement wants to do much more than boycott Israel. It seeks to destroy it. BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti, has said publicly that he’s working for Israel’s “euthanasia”. The maps that BDS groups publish of the region make this clear, depicting a single Palestinian state that extends from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea, with no trace of Israel.

Yet, many fail to recognize that those driving the BDS agenda have ambitions that extend well beyond Israel. For them, Israel is the small Satan. America is the big Satan. They hate America’s belief in individual liberties and democracy, our capitalist system, and our influence around the world.

In the wake of BDS, we have seen other resolutions to remove the American Flag at UC Irvine and to cancel the 9/11 commemoration at the University of Minnesota.

Hatem Bazian, the founder of the largest on-campus BDS organization – Students for Justice in Palestine – has called for a violent uprising – in his words “an Intifada”, here in America against the United States. Like many other BDS leaders, Bazian has been connected to a range of groups shut down by the Justice Department for raising money on behalf of the Hamas terrorist organization and other radical Islamist groups.

It should be no surprise that the leading BDS activists are fundraisers and cheerleaders for terrorists. The top-listed signatory on the foundational document for today’s BDS Movement – a declaration issued in 2005 – is the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine, which includes representatives of terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The acceptance of these groups as legitimate voices in public discourse is dangerous. Those who justify suicide bombings in Tel Aviv or stabbings in Jerusalem, also find reasons to endorse the brutal murder of American civilians in the World Trade Center, the stabbing of students at UC Merced and innocents in London, and bombing of commuters on trains in Spain and tourists on a Russian airliner in Egypt. Indeed, the same radical Islamist groups that staged violent anti-Israel protests on the streets of Europe in the summer of 2014 have provided fertile ground for ISIS and others to recruit the terrorists that have committed recent wave of attacks in Brussels, Paris, London, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and San Bernardino, California, which have claimed hundreds of lives.

The Jewish people have come to learn that when we are targeted with economic sanctions, much more dangerous things are often on the horizon – and the consequences often extend well beyond our community.

Germany staged economic boycotts of all Jewish businesses before Hitler and the Nazis sent the Jews of Europe to death camps. More than 60 million people died in the war that followed.

The Tsarist Government in Russia issued the “May Laws” – which imposed severe economic sanctions on the Russian Jewish population – in the years before Jews were mass murdered in pogroms across the country. Nine million died in the Russian civil war that followed.

The Arab League had an official boycott on Jewish-owned businesses many years before the vast majority of Jews in Arab Lands were systematically expelled or murdered in the wake of Israel’s independence. Since the mass exodus of Jews across the Middle East, the region has erupted in flames, with Christians, B’hai’s, Yazidis and other minorities next in line for persecution.

History’s lessons hang over our moment. What begins with the Jews never ends with the Jews. Now is the time for Americans to take action. For the sake Israel and America, for the sake of our shared values and our common future, we must stop BDS dead in its tracks. Nothing less than our very way of life is at stake.

Categories: BDS, Israel
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Islamic activists say 9/11 and San Bernardino were terrible — because of their effects on Muslims.

December 23, 2015

Islamic activists say 9/11 and San Bernardino were terrible — because of their effects on Muslims. National Review, Anne Bayefsky, 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.” Wajahat Ali of Al Jazeera America said that 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 U.S. 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 that 16 percent of victims were the object 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. The Muslimgirl.net site of Palestinian Al-Katahtbeh 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 GOP debate of December 15: “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:

I’m from the U.S. Mission to the U.N., and I wanted to assure the audience and all the speakers that the U.S. government shares many of the concerns that you’ve expressed about the growing anti-Muslim discrimination in this country and around the world. . . . I did want to emphasize the position of the U.S. government very much in line with the focus of these two panels.

Remarkably, when this American diplomat could not manage to defend her country following hours of America-bashing — because her bosses don’t know the difference between humility and submission, or decorum and capitulation — she was put to shame by an Irish diplomat who could.

Speaking also from the floor, Michael Sanfey said:

Concerns were expressed for the state of American religious pluralism, but isn’t it still incredibly more pluralistic? Where is the religious pluralism in some of the Muslim-majority lands? It just seems to me there is no pluralism whatever. Couldn’t it help to combat Islamophobia if greater diversity was promoted in those lands where the churches [a]re absolutely forbidden?

The profoundly embarrassing spectacle makes the punch line perhaps less surprising.

Moderator Kader revealed to American taxpayers what happened to some of their half billion dollars that were used to renovate the U.N. in Turtle Bay. The event wrapped up on early Friday afternoon by announcing Friday prayers. It turns out that a part of the U.N. building has been taken over, in Kader’s words, for “Muslims to pray.”

No women allowed. Hillary and the U.N. A hell of a plan for 2016.

Hillary and the U.N. A hell of a plan for 2016.

Categories: Democrats, Islam, Islam and women, Islamophobia, Obama and Islam, Obama's America, Republicans, United Nations
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Do Muslims Help Call the Shots on U.S. Anti-terrorism Policy?

December 23, 2015

Do Muslims Help Call the Shots on U.S. Anti-terrorism Policy? Power Line, Paul Mirengoff, December 22, 2015

Islamic-based influence groups are pushing a narrative and the DHS seems to be buying it.

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On Sunday, I posted a letter from former DHS employee Phillip Haney to members of Congress. Haney’s letter alleged that, under pressure from the Department of State, his superiors closed down his work on terrorist outfits with which the San Bernardino murderers were affiliated.

In addition, DHS deleted the records of Haney’s work on these groups from the shared DHS database. This, Haney says, precluded the government from realizing the urgent need for comprehensive screening of members of these groups which, in turn, enabled the female terrorist to avoid serious vetting upon entering the United States on a fiancé visa.

Why did the government shut down Haney’s investigation in 2012? In an interview with Ginni Thomas, Haney says that officials from the Department of State (then run by Hillary Clinton) and the Department of Homeland Security’s Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Division (CRCL) found Haney’s work objectionable.

Haney attributed their concern at least in part to complaints lodged by “Islamic-based influence group.” These groups “definitely play a role in controlling the narrative” to which the Obama administration “submit[s],” Haney said. He concluded that this dynamic “create[s] a potent force that has shattered our ability to do our job.”

Haney’s claim that Islamic-based influence groups help shape U.S. anti-terrorism policy is alarming. And it is confirmed by statements from the DHS itself.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has issued a lengthy document called Federal Civil Rights Engagement with Arab and Muslim American Communities. I am indebted to Jim Scanlan for calling it to my attention.

The entire document is of interest (see, for example, the discussion at page 135 of the video that Hillary Clinton blamed for the Benghazi attacks). However, I want to focus on the statement of David Gersten, Director of CRCL, the same office within DHS that Haney says shut down his investigation (along with the State Department).

Gersten states (at page 199) that a purpose of his office is to incorporate “community ideas and issues relating to civil rights and civil liberties into the [DHS] policymaking process.” The primary communities with which DHS engages are “Arab, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian communities.”

At page 200, Gersten suggests that Muslims are shaping how the government characterizes terror. He states:

[I]n January 2008, CRCL [Gersten’s office with DHS)] outlined recommendations made by a broad range of American Muslim leaders, regarding appropriate terminology to be used when describing the terrorist threat. More recently, we issued guidance on best practices for providing cultural competency and Countering Violent Extremism (commonly called “CVE”) training that noted the efforts of Muslim Public Affairs Council, a community group you heard from earlier today.

(Emphasis added)

Haney appears to be right. Islamic-based influence groups are pushing a narrative and the DHS seems to be buying it.

That’s bad enough when the issue is terminology. It’s even worse when the issue is whom should DHS probe. Just ask the survivors of the San Bernardino attack by terrorists whose groups Haney wasn’t allowed to investigate.

Categories: Islamic immigration, Islamic terrorism, Obama and Islam, U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security
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Critics Blasting Kerry For Suggesting Iran Could Bypass Visa Restrictions – Cavuto

December 23, 2015

Critics Blasting Kerry For Suggesting Iran Could Bypass Visa Restrictions – Cavuto, Fox News via You Tube, December 22, 2015

 

Categories: Iran scam, Obama and Iran, Visa law waivers
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