[Islamic immigration and European responses] may not threaten Europe’s existence. But European civilization will never be the same. Should Americans also prepare to accommodate “new realities”? Or is it possible for us to adopt different policies, to choose not to follow Europe’s example? This is a discussion Americans need to have. But Obama will not be the one to lead it.
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President Barack Obama called the Islamic State the “J.V. team,” boasted that he’d set al-Qaida “on its heels,” and implemented successful counterterrorism policies in Yemen. He insists that both the nuclear deal and the hostages-for-felons swap he concluded with Iran’s rulers are triumphs of diplomacy. In his State of the Union address last week, he reassured Americans that our enemies do not “threaten our national existence.” Why am I not filled with optimism?
“Existential threat” is a term that has been most commonly used in recent years about Israel, a nation-state that Islamists aim to exterminate. As Iran’s rulers have noted, the detonation of just one nuclear weapon on Israeli soil could be the quickest means to achieve that goal.
The United States, being bigger and stronger, is obviously more resilient. But a nuclear attack, an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack, a biological attack or even a series of attacks of the sort that took place in San Bernardino would profoundly transform America — even if “our national existence” did not come to an end. My grandchildren would inherit a country very different from the one my parents’ generation — the “Greatest Generation,” whose members fought and defeated the tyrants of the 20th century — bequeathed to us.
In Europe, a profound transformation may already be under way. Most recently, on New Year’s Eve in Cologne and several other German cities, hundreds of acts of violence and sexual assault were perpetrated against non-Muslim women by men of Middle Eastern and North African origin. Local politicians at first tried to cover up what happened. Most media adopted a don’t-ask-don’t-tell attitude. Little by little, however, details have been emerging.
According to an internal police report obtained by The Wall Street Journal, there were scenes of “crying women fleeing sexual molestation from crowds of men, passersby trying to rescue young girls from being raped, and groups of intoxicated men throwing bottles and fireworks at a police force no longer in control of the situation.”
What lessons should be learned? According to The New York Times, the police are largely to blame because “officers failed to anticipate the new realities of a Germany that is now host to up to a million asylum seekers, most from war-torn Muslim countries unfamiliar with its culture.”
Let’s unpack that: There are “new realities.” Maybe German authorities can work harder to “familiarize” new arrivals with local culture — a culture that traditionally frowns on robbing, groping and raping women. If not, German culture must adjust. Cologne Mayor Henriette Reke has suggested that women should perhaps begin to dress more modestly in public spaces.
In an opinion piece in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, commentator Edward Siddons noted that the crimes under discussion were all committed by men. (How perceptive of him!) He then instructs: “We should look to the gender of the Cologne attackers — not their race.”
First: I’m not aware that anyone has been looking at race, a concept based on physical and genetic traits. What the sexual predators have in common is religion. They also all come from parts of the world where beliefs, values and attitudes — not least regarding the rights of women — are unlike those that have evolved in Europe. Second: Siddons’ emphasis on gender is curious. Does he really mean to suggest that Buddhist, Catholic, Baptist and Jewish men are just as likely to participate in orgies of sexual molestation?
Inadvertently, however, he raises this interesting question: If Europe is going to take in millions of new immigrants, shouldn’t at least 50 percent of them be women?
Until now, those streaming into Europe from the south have been disproportionately male. Is anyone asking why these mainly military-age men are abandoning their most vulnerable kith and kin? If they could defend the women and children of their homelands, would they? Might it not be better for European leaders to assist them, rather than teach them to conjugate German verbs and apply for jobs in Volkswagen factories?
Writing in the European edition of Politico, Valerie Hudson, professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, noted that the large disparity between male and female immigrants means there are likely to be unbalanced sex ratios within immigrant communities and within European societies as a whole for decades to come. “Numerous empirical studies,” she writes, correlate such imbalances “with violence and property crime — the higher the sex ratio, the worse the crime rate.”
She adds that “societies with extremely skewed sex ratios are more unstable even without jihadi ideologues in their midst.”
And, of course, such ideologues are already entrenched throughout Europe. They will be adept at identifying young men who are not succeeding. They will do their best to radicalize and recruit them. Even among those who are adjusting, some may be persuaded that working for a salary, raising a family and paying a mortgage hold less appeal than fighting for a caliphate with all the rewards that can bring in this life and the next.
Such changes may not threaten Europe’s existence. But European civilization will never be the same. Should Americans also prepare to accommodate “new realities”? Or is it possible for us to adopt different policies, to choose not to follow Europe’s example? This is a discussion Americans need to have. But Obama will not be the one to lead it.
Obama cannot take action against Russia without discrediting his entire Middle East policy, and so destroying his own legacy.
Israeli Air Force commanders are reportedly deeply worried about Russia’s military presence in Syria.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin deployed his forces to Syria last year, he claimed that the deployment would be brief. Russian forces were placed in Syria, Putin said, to protect Assad and would leave once he was able to defend himself.
Last week, when the terms of the deployment agreement concluded between Russia and Syria were made public, we discovered that those early claims were false. Under the terms of the deal, Russia can maintain permanent bases in Syria.
Israel’s Air Force is no match for Russia’s. The S-400 anti-aircraft system Russia is deploying to Syria covers half of Israeli territory. Russia’s deployment means that Israel has lost its regional air superiority.
To be sure, Putin’s decision to set up permanent bases in Syria is not directed against Israel. He is interested in defending Russian interests in areas like oil and Syria where Israel is not an actor. This is the reason that Russia and Israel have been able to reach tactical agreements over Syria.
Among other things, the sides agreed to deconflict their aircraft flying over Syria.
But Israel’s ability to reach tactical understandings with Russia doesn’t mean Israel can trust that Russia’s operations in the area will not harm its national security in significant ways.
For instance, the reports that Russia is transferring arms to Hezbollah are deeply worrying. For the past five years, according to reports in foreign media, the Air Force has repeatedly bombed shipments of Iranian weapons destined for Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.
Israel is not in a position to contemplate bombing Russian military shipments to Lebanon. It is also not in a position to challenge a Russian decision to allow Hezbollah to use advanced weapons like Yakhont anti-ship missiles against naval ships either from Lebanon or Syria.
And there is no reason to believe that Russia won’t do so.
Russia has been acting in alliance with Hezbollah, Assad and Iran since the 1980s. Putin’s reported willingness to cooperate with Israel in various areas does not mean that Russia is no longer Iran’s partner in supplying Hezbollah and facilitating its operations.
The government and military have no options for dealing with Russia’s sudden emergence as a major power in our backyard. And there is nothing new in Israel’s helplessness.
We’ve never had an option for reining in Moscow.
But until Barack Obama came into office, Israel never had to worry about Russia.
For 65 years, the US forced Russia to curb its activities in the Middle East.
Until Barack Obama entered the White House, every US president from Franklin Roosevelt on believed it was a US economic and strategic interest of the first order to curb Russian power in the Middle East. The chief reason the US began its strategic alliance with Israel after the 1967 Six Day War was because by defeating Russian clients Egypt and Syria, Israel proved its value to the US’s Cold War strategy.
In the succeeding decades, Israel and the US had a division of labor. It was Israel’s job to defeat or deter Russian – or Soviet – clients in the Arab world. It was the US’s job to deter Russia – or the Soviet Union.
Now, in the final year of the Obama presidency, all that is gone. Obama is content to see Russia exert power and influence that none of his predecessors would have countenanced. And so, for the first time, Israel finds itself standing alone against Russia, with no clear means of protecting its vital national security interests.
Obama’s refusal to take any steps to curb Russia’s deployment and ambitions in the region is not surprising.
It not that he doesn’t understand that Russia’s rise means America’s fall. He undoubtedly has been warned of the implications of Russia’s return to region by the relevant government agencies and the military.
But none of that matters to him. The only thing that Obama cares about is his legacy. Obama cannot take action against Russia without discrediting his entire Middle East policy, and so destroying his own legacy.
OBAMA’S POLICY in the region is based on the assumption that the US is responsible for instability and war in the Middle East. As a consequence, Obama’s regional policy is one that requires the US to abandon those who benefited from US protection and partnership – first and foremost Israel and Saudi Arabia, and appeasing those who most oppose the US and its allies – first and foremost Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.
With Iran’s capture of the US naval craft and its illegal detention of 10 US naval personnel last week, Iran demonstrated, once again, that it has not been appeased by Obama’s nuclear and financial concessions.
Iran continues to view the US as its primary enemy and it continues to view itself as at war against America.
It is beyond dispute that Iran committed a war crime in photographing the US military personnel in humiliating ways and forcing one sailor to film an apology to Iran. The language of the Geneva Conventions is cut and dry on the subject.
But rather than take action against Iran, by among other things, delaying the revocation of economic sanctions against Iran, the Obama administration defended Iran’s act of war against the US.
In a press briefing, State Department spokesman John Kirby argued that Iran did not commit a war crime when it detained and photographed the US sailors in humiliating ways because Iran is not at war with the US.
This is an idiotic statement meant to hide an indefensible position. Obviously, if Kirby is right and Iran is not at war with the US, then the act of detaining and photographing the sailors moves from a mere war crime, to an act of international piracy and hostage taking.
In other words, in detaining US sailors and photographing them, Iran either committed a war crime and an act of war, or it committed an even larger crime – and initiated a war with the US.
But Obama cannot acknowledge that this is the case, because if he does, he will be unable to defend his larger policy – which is equally indefensible.
Iran began broadcasting photographs of the sailors kneeing before their Iranian captors and a video apology in which a sailor issued a groveling apology and thanked Iran for its kindness and hospitality the day before Secretary of State John Kerry stood before the cameras in Vienna and announced that the US and its partners would remove economic sanctions against Iran as soon as the IAEA announced that Iran was abiding by the nuclear deal.
The IAEA then duly announced that Iran was in compliance and it could receive its $150 billion in frozen funds.
Iran crowed that the American sailors cried and otherwise acted like cowards when they were apprehended just hours before Obama went before the cameras and congratulated himself for his brilliantly smart diplomacy that has prevented war. Obama similarly chastised unnamed critics for criticizing his decision to bow and scrape before Iran as it committed acts of war against America.
Obama was undoubtedly relishing the moment as he declared diplomatic victory over his political opponents, but even if he was unhappy about Iran’s behavior he couldn’t have done anything about it.
Obama brags that he was able to reach a nuclear deal where all his predecessors failed. But this hides the main distinction between him and those who came before him.
None of Obama’s predecessors concluded a nuclear deal with Iran because unlike Obama, none of his predecessors were willing to abandon US interests – including the interest of preventing the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism from acquiring nuclear weapons – in order to get a deal. Obama cannot attack Iran’s aggression on the high seas without calling into question the wisdom of his nuclear diplomacy.
He cannot take action against Russia without calling into question his belief that US power in the Middle East is the chief cause of all the region’s problems.
Israel’s military and political leaders are right to be concerned about the implications of Russia’s return to Syria. And it is far from clear that there is a way to credibly minimize the dangers. But, since we’re not going anywhere, we will have to make the best of a bad situation.
Whatever we do, we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that unless the next US president rejects Obama’s entire Middle East policy and shepherds the military and financial resources to abandon it, on Russia, Iran and beyond, Israel will have to fend for itself for the foreseeable future.
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Obama keeps telling us what America isnot. What does He think she is? Does He think that Obama’s America is America, or that His supporters are what America is? Does He think they make America great? Will America become acceptable to Obama, and hence “who we are,” only after He or His successor finishes her fundamental transformation?
By virtue of the now-implemented Iran nuke “deal,” Iran’s possession of an atomic and/or hydrogen bomb will be delayed for a few years unless she cheats (as in the past), reneges on the “deal” or out-sources nuke development to her long term partner, North Korea.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is now reaping the benefits of more than $100 billion in immediate sanctions relief plus a settlement of Iranian claims amounting to $1.7 billion.
Secretary of State John Kerry said today that the settlement is $400 million debt and $1.3 billion in interest dating back to the Islamic revolution. That’s separate from the sanctions windfall Iran will receive.
Iran will also benefit on a long-term basis from trade with countries formerly prohibited by sanctions.
Back in June 2015, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei had outlined the general policies of the country’s 6th quinquennial development plan.
On defense and security, the proclamation necessitated an increase in Iran’s defense capabilities at the level of a regional power in order to fulfill the national interests by allocating at least 5 percent of the national budget to boosting the defense power. [Emphasis added.]
With increased funding, Iran will be able to increase its already substantial support for Shiite terrorism throughout the Middle East; it will likely do so.
Iranians continue to experience Islamic human rights. Here’s a link to an article titled The Real War on Women in a Nightmarish Islamic Stateby Dr. Majid Rafizadeh. An Iranian-American political scientist and scholar, he is the president of the International American Council and serves on the board of the Harvard International Review at Harvard University.
When it comes to executions, girls are systematically more vulnerable due to the Islamist penal code of Sharia law.
Let’s take a look at the Islamist state of Iran, which creates its laws from the legal codes of Sharia and Quran. The first type of discrimination is related to age: girls are held criminally accountable at the maturity age of 9 Lunar years. (This will automatically put girls at a higher risk of execution by the court.)
Iranian ruling politicians hold the highest record when it comes to the most executions per capita in the world. Intriguingly, in the last two years that the so-called moderate, Hassan Rouhani, has been in office, there have been more than 2000 executions conducted in Iran. That is nearly 3-4 executions a day.
More importantly, Iranian leaders are also the largest executioner of women and female juveniles. Some of these executions were carried out on the mullahs’ charge of ‘Moharebeh’ (enmity with Allah), or waging war against Allah, ifsad-i Fil Arz (Sowing Corruption on Earth), or Sab-i Nabi (Insulting the Prophet). [Emphasis added.]
There are three methods of execution for women and female juveniles: 1. Stoning 2. Public hanging 3. Shooting. Some women are also beaten so severely in the prison that they die before reaching the execution. Shooting, which is the fastest method of the three for execution, has not been used since 2008. Instead, the most common method to execute women is public hanging or stoning. Some of these women are flogged right before they are hanged. Public hanging not only imposes fears in the society but also aims at dehumanizing and controlling women as second-class citizens. According to the Islamist penal code of Iran, women offenses are classified as: Hadd, Diyyih, Ta`zir, and Qisas. [Emphasis added.]
Please read the entire article. Isn’t it heartwarming that “we” are giving even more than a mere $100 billion to Iran? Perhaps some of the new money can be used to buy sharper stones and new devices for hangings. How about some new torture devices?
Islam, The Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates
The Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas-affiliated Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) claims to represent Muslims in America. They do represent those who favor terrorism and despise human rights (in the name of which they ironically claim to act).
[T]he Council on American-Islamic Relations, is a prominent Islamic group, but which has a long history of involvement with extremist and terrorist causes. In 2009, during the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial, U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Solis concluded that, “The government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR… with the Islamic Association for Palestine, and with Hamas.” [Emphasis added.]
During the trial, CAIR was designated an “unindicted co-conspirator.” As a result of CAIR’s apparent links to a terrorist movement, the Justice Department in 2009 announced a ban on working with CAIR. The FBI also severed relations.
[F]or the past seven years, the Obama White House has opened its doors to the entire spectrum of radical Islamist groups, just like CAIR. These groups have rationalized the actions of Islamic terrorist groups that have killed Americans, warned American Muslims against cooperating with law enforcement, smeared genuine Muslim moderates like Zuhdi Jasser and Asra Nomani as traitors and accused anyone who dared to utter the term “radical Islam” as “Islamophobic.” These are the groups that the White House should have marginalized. The fact that Obama legitimized radical Islamist groups will be his real legacy. [Emphasis added.]
Very few American Muslims, however, seem to feel that CAIR is a legitimate ambassador for American Islam. According to a 2011 Gallup poll, about 88% of American Muslims said that CAIR does not represent them. Muslims all over the world, in fact, apparently do not think CAIR is a moderate or legitimate Muslim group: in 2014, the United Arab Emirates, a pious Muslim state, designated CAIR a terrorist organization, along with dozens of other Muslim Brotherhood organizations.
In reality, American Muslims are extremely diverse, and no single group can claim to speak on their collective behalf. American Islam comprises dozens of different religious sects and political movements, many of which advocate distinctly different ideas. But for Islamist bodies such as CAIR, it suits their agenda if American Muslims are portrayed as a monolithic community. If American Muslims can be seen as homogenous, then a group such as CAIR has a better claim to represent their interests.
Even CAIR’s own research, however, undermines their claim to speak on behalf of American Muslims. A 2011 report reveals that a majority of American mosques are not affiliated with any American Islamic body.
Addressing a conference in 2000, Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi, a Muslim cleric and secretary general of the Italian Muslim Assembly, explained that, “[CAIR] is a Muslim Brotherhood front organization. It works in the United States as a lobby against radio, television and print media journalists who dare to produce anything about Islam that is at variance with their fundamental agenda. CAIR opposes diversity in Islam.”
In truth, CAIR only speaks on behalf of a small extremist ideology that, as discovered by federal prosecutors, emerged across the United States during the 1990s out of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Although CAIR does not represent American Muslims, it managed, before the Holy Land Foundation terror trial in 2008, to persuade a great many people that it did. Enough time has passed that CAIR seems to believe it can try this move once again.
state that Congress believes the Muslim Brotherhood fits the State Department’s criteria of a Foreign Terrorist Organization. The Secretary of State would be required to designate the Brotherhood within 60 days or to provide a detailed report explaining why it does not. Three U.S.-based Brotherhood entities named in the bill are CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). [Emphasis added.]
The House version of the bill (HR3892) was introduced by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) with Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Randy K. Weber (R-TX), Diane Black (R-TN) and Mike Pompeo (R-KS) as original cosponsors. They are now joined by Reps. Steve King (R-IA); Steven Palazzo (R-MS); Kay Granger (R-TX); Jim Jordan (R-OH); Steve Stivers (R-OH); Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA); Ilena Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL); Charles W. Dent (R-PA); Bill Johnson (R-OH) and David A. Trott (R-MI).
HR3892 was referred to the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security on December 4, 2015. Two cosponsors, Rep. Gohmert and Rep. Trott, sit on that subcommittee.
The Senate version of the bill (S2230) was introduced by presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and later cosponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT). It was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on November 3. Two of Senator Cruz’s presidential rivals, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) sit on that committee and have not taken a position on the bill.
Although the bill has yet to earn bi-partisan support at this early stage, it is supported by members of Congress from different spectrums of the Republican Party. It includes endorsers of the presidential campaigns of Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and John Kasich and not only supporters of Ted Cruz.
If enacted by the Congress, Obama will almost certainly veto it. If He signs it, He will ignore or bypass it as He often does.
Britain recently declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Here are thirteen quotes from the British Government’s review and Prime Minister Cameron’s official statement:
1. “The Muslim Brotherhood’s foundational texts call for the progressive moral purification of individuals and Muslim societies and their eventual political unification in a Caliphate under Sharia law. To this day the Muslim Brotherhood characterizes Western societies and liberal Muslims as decadent and immoral. It can be seen primarily as a political project.”
2. “Aspects of Muslim Brotherhood ideology and tactics, in this country and overseas, are contrary to our values and have been contrary to our national interests and our national security.”
3. “From its foundation the Muslim Brotherhood organized itself into a secretive ‘cell’ structure, with an elaborate induction and education program for new members…This clandestine, centralized and hierarchical structure persists to this day.”
4. “The Hamas founding charter claims that they are the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim Brotherhood treat them as such. In the past ten years support for Hamas (including in particular funding) has been an important priority for the MB in Egypt and the MB international network.”
5. “From at least the 1950s the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood also developed an international network, within and beyond the Islamic world. Europe became an important base for the growing Muslim Brotherhood global network.”
6. “The wider international network of the Muslim Brotherhood now performs a range of functions. It promotes Muslim Brotherhood ideology (including through communications platforms), raises and invests funds, and provides a haven for members of the Brotherhood who have left their country of origin to continue promoting Brotherhood activity.”
7. “[F]or the most part, the Muslim Brotherhood have preferred non violent incremental change on the grounds of expediency, often on the basis that political opposition will disappear when the process of Islamization is complete. But they are prepared to countenance violence—including, from time to time, terrorism—where gradualism is ineffective.”
8. “Muslim Brotherhood organizations and associated in the UK have neither openly nor consistently refuted the literature of Brotherhood member Sayyid Qutb which is known to have inspired people (including in this country) to engage in terrorism.”
9. “[The review] concluded that it was not possible to reconcile these [MB] views with the claim made by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in their evidence to the review that ‘the Muslim Brotherhood has consistently adhered to peaceful means of opposition, renouncing all forms of violence throughout its existence.’”
10. “In the 1990s the Muslim Brotherhood and their associates established public facing and apparently national organizations in the UK to promote their views. None were openly identified with the Muslim Brotherhood and membership of the Muslim Brotherhood remained (and still remains) a secret.”
11. “[MB fronts] became politically active, notably in connection with Palestine and Iraq, and promoted candidates in national and local elections…sought and obtained a dialogue with Government….were active members in a security dialogue with the police.”
12. “The Muslim Brotherhood have been publicly committed to political engagement in this country. Engagement with Government has at times been facilitated by what appeared to be a common agenda against al Qaida and (at least in the UK) militant Salafism. But this engagement did not take into account of Muslim Brotherhood support for a proscribed terrorist group and its views about terrorism which, in reality, are quite different from our own.”
13. “Senior Muslim Brotherhood figures and associated have justified attacks against coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The linked article goes on to note that
The U.S. government, without even conducting any kind of review of its own, issued a statement to the Investigative Project on Terrorism rejecting any ban or even any “de-legitimizing” of the Brotherhood at all. [Emphasis added.]
Do the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates represent Obama? Are they or Obama “what we are?” I don’t think so and hope not.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali and reformation of Islam
In Heretic (which I reviewed here), Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote,
For years, we have spent trillions on waging wars against “terror” and “extremism” that would have been much better spent protecting Muslim dissidents and giving them the necessary platforms and resources to counter that vast network of Islamic centers, madrassas, and mosques which has been largely responsible for spreading the most noxious forms of Islamic fundamentalism. For years, we have treated the people financing that vast network — the Saudis, the Qataris, and the now repentant Emiratis — as our allies. In the midst of all our efforts at policing, surveillance, and even military action, we in the West have not bothered to develop an effective counternarrative because from the outset we have denied that Islamic extremism is in any way related to Islam. We persist in focusing on the violence and not on the ideas that give rise to it. [Emphasis added.]
Here is a video of which Hirsi Ali was the executive producer. It features Muslim and former-Muslim women discussing Islam and the Islam-mandated male domination of women.
Here’s Part II of Honor Diaries:
Here’s a video characterizing Hirsi Ali as an “Islamophobe.”
Along with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Azeezah Kanji — the featured speaker in the above video — has been very active in disparaging Hirsi Ali and Honor Diaries. Like CAIR, she has ties to the Obama White House and was named a “Champion of Change” by the White House in 2011. What changes in Islam does Ms. Kanji champion? None, apparently, of those intrinsic to it.
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the CAIR, condemned Hirsi Ali as “one of the worst of the worst of the Islam haters in America, not only in America but worldwide.”
On becoming a U.S. Citizen
Who better represents American values? Hirsi Ali, once a refugee from Somalia and a proud citizen of the United States since April 25, 2013, or President Obama? In the immediately linked Wall Street Journal article, she offers suggestions on American immigration with which I plan to deal in a subsequent post. In the meantime, here is her 2014 address at the William F. Buckley Program at Yale University on the clash of civilizations. If you have not yet watched it, please do so. If you have watched it, please do so again. I just did. Every time I watch it, there is something I had not previously considered.
Conclusions
To Obama and His acolytes, Islam is the religion of peace and tolerance; the Islamic State, its equally non-peaceful and intolerant franchisees and other comparable terrorist organizations are “not Islamic.” If “not Islamic,” what are they?
Despite Obama’s many statements and gestures, He has yet to convince any Islamic terrorist group that it is not Islamic. He has convinced them only that He is ignorant of Islam, a liar or both. Perhaps He needs a better joke writer.
was very striking for the one-sidedness and disproportion of the president’s concern for religious suffering.
President Obama worried that “politicians insult Muslims, whether abroad or fellow citizens.”
But he couldn’t bring himself to worry aloud about the Christians being driven from Middle Eastern countries, the churches being burned from Nigeria to Malaysia, or the 22 Coptic Christians who were beheaded on video on a beach in Libya by Islamic supremacists.
Will our next president at least make a concerted effort to un-transform Obama’s America? Will he name and fight our enemies, foreign and domestic? Or will he simply “go with the flow” and do none of the above. Much depends on who it is and on the composition of the Congress.
During the Democrat Party debate on January 17th, Hillary Clinton “linked herself to the president again and again. And again.” An Obama clone to continue Obama’s fundamental transformation of America is the opposite of what we need. Nor will merely “fixing” broken parts of the governmental apparatus with duct tape and bailing wire be satisfactory. As I wrote last September, To bring America back we need to break some stuff.
In later posts in this series, I hope to deal with immigration, race relations, the ways in which Obama is distorting the Constitution, the decline of education and Obama’s very foreign foreign policy.
IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot (Miriam Alster/Flash90, File)
IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot said Monday that Iran will likely honor the nuclear deal reached with world powers in the coming years, but intensify its proxy war with Israel through the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and other armed groups. He also anticipated that Iran would start allocating increased funds to terror groups, and called the deal a “turning point” as regards the challenges to Israel.
Still, Eisenkot said the landmark agreement could present Israel with opportunities in the future.
He also warned that terror in the West Bank was unlikely to abate anytime soon.
“The [nuclear] deal presents a number of challenges, But also opportunities” in the coming five years as Iran acts more behind the scene, Eisenkot said.
He did not elaborate on what the opportunities could be, but Israeli officials in the past have pointed to an opening for increased cooperation with Sunni Gulf states also opposed to Iranian hegemony in the wake of the agreement.
The IDF chief spoke at the annual Institute for National Security Studies conference in Tel Aviv just two days after the implementation of the nuclear accord struck last summer between Tehran and world powers, and the lifting of American and European nuclear sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
He said that despite short term adherence to the protocols of the nuclear deal, Iran will nonetheless work toward obtaining nuclear arms in the next 15 years — the amount of time Iran agreed not to enrich uranium beyond low levels.
“We still place Iran high up in our priorities,” Eisenkot said.
Eisenkot said Iran is giving Lebanese terror group Hezbollah approximately $1 billion a year, and that the Shiite organization remains “our central threat.”
“Hezbollah is funded, trained and even led by Iran,” he said.
He acknowledged that “there is no doubt that the accord between Iran and the West is a turning point.”
“The IDF needs to be prepared for the breakout of war in a very short period. It would be a mistake to put all our resources into the fight against terror,” he said.
Israeli estimates put Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal at 100,000 short-range rockets capable of striking northern Israel, plus several thousand missiles that can reach Tel Aviv and central Israel, and hundreds more that can reach across the entire country.
However the Iranian-backed group has been bogged down battling Sunni rebel groups in Syria in an effort to prop up Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, suffering heavy casualties along the way.
Despite occasional cross-border flare-ups with Israel, officials believe the group is not interested in another large scale conflict with the Jewish State akin to the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
Eisenkot warned that a more immediate threat was daily violence in the West Bank and Jerusalem, which he warned would continue “for years.”
Calling the spate of stabbing attacks the “most worrying,” he noted that Monday morning’s stabbing of a pregnant woman in a settlement was the 101st attack on a civilian or soldier since hostilities escalated in late September.
Palestinian children, he said, were being educated by the sword and the Koran.
He also warned about possible threats from the Islamic State terror group, which he claimed has greater support in the West Bank and Gaza Strip than in any Arab state, with 16% approval, and said its adherents could turn their sights against Israel and Jordan.
In Gaza, Eisenkot warned that with Iranian backing, Hamas could restart hostilities with Israel. He said the sporadic rocket fire at southern Israel in the past year was carried out by radical Salafist groups in the Gaza Strip who are opposed to Hamas, and that the area was quieter in 2015 than at any point since the 1970, but the quiet might not last.
“Hamas is busy rehabilitating its abilities with Iranian aid instead of focusing on rebuilding the [Gaza] Strip,” Eisenkot said.
Sketching out Israel’s strategic priorities, the chief of staff, who took command of the Israeli armed forces last year, said the two ascendant issues were the growing threat of terrorist groups and cyber warfare, while weapons of mass destruction and conventional wars between states were of diminishing concern — “though the IDF is still prepared for it.”
It used to be that armies were either preparing for war or waging it, Eisenkot said. Now you must to do both at the same time, constantly employing force.
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Arminas Pileckas, 15, who was killed by Ahmed Mustafa Al Haj Ali, 14, who recently arrived in Sweden.
The importation of the culture of honor violence has arrived in Europe with migrants from Islamist countries. Two profoundly disturbing stories in particular are worth noting.
In Sweden, a 15-year old boy was stabbed to death by a 14-year old migrant from Syria on his first day back at school this term. The boy, whose family themselves were immigrants from Lithuania, was reported to have been protecting a young girl from a sexual assault from the Syrian boy in December. It was allegedly not the first time.
In retaliation, the Syrian boy plunged a knife in his back and heart on the first day back at school in January.
The victim’s father angrily related that in Sweden the press was in collusion with the government, saying that, with regards to the migrant problem, “Everything is being kept hidden.”
While the grieving father was not interviewed by the press, Swedish news Aftonbladet interviewed the father of the migrant boy, who claimed that his son was being bullied by the murdered boy. In what was described as a sympathetic interview, the father insisted, “The school did nothing to help him and establish his honor. Instead, my son had to meet this 15-year old every day. It made him very upset.”
Even if this version was correct (it was denied by the boy’s classmates as well as other indicators), killing a classmate is a way to “establish” one’s “honor?” With no questions asked?
In Germany, immigrants from North Africa were arrested while stoning two transgender individuals near the city’s central train station. A police car fortuitously cruising the area broke up the attack perpetrated by three men, described as between the ages of 16 and 18.
Upon arrest, police reported that the men told them “such persons must be stoned.”
It is unacceptable that the culture of (so-called) “honor” be imported into host countries. The often manifest arguments of cultural relativism by Europeans (see Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker’s comments following mass sexual assaults in her city by migrants on New Year’s Eve) are paltry and lame excuses for the upholding of Western values. Even those who view themselves as the vanguards of human rights (feminists, anti-racism activists, social justice campaigners) shy away from criticism of the “Islamic other.”
While their criticism is eminently forthcoming for Western societies that fail to change fast enough and the way they deem acceptable, when it comes to criticism of human rights abuses inherent in sharia-based societies, they are markedly silent.
As the North Atlantic Alliance continues to expand its presence in the Baltic countries, Russian experts warn that the US-led alliance is attempting to turn the region into a staging area from which a possible invasion of Russia might take place.
In his swansong State of the Union address before Congress, President Barack Obama indicated that the US would “make sure [that] other countries pull their own weight” in helping Washington contain its geopolitical opponents.Commenting on the president’s remarks, journalist Vasily Vankov suggested that for their part, “Washington’s Baltic satellites can only welcome a situation in which they will be used as a stick with whose help the Americans can have a smack at the Russian bear.”
In his analysis for independent Russian newspaper Svobodnaya Pressa, Vankov recalled that, “impatient ahead of the ‘shift change’ set to take place in the White House, Baltic politicians have raised another tantrum, using the old tune about the ‘Russian threat’. Latvian politician and economist Uldis Osis recently suggested that if Republican frontrunner Donald Trump wins the election, Washington will ‘give away’ the Baltics, Syria and Ukraine to Russia.”
“Apparently,” Vankov writes, “this absurd scenario is taken seriously among the political establishment in the Baltics. At the very least, its officials are doing everything possible to transform the once peaceful, almost pastoral region into a citadel bristling with American bayonets along a potential new eastern front.”
“The militarization of the Baltic states is taking place at an accelerated pace,” the journalist notes, citing the arrival of more and more US heavy equipment, large-scale NATO drills, parades 300 meters from the Russian border, and the creation of new army and air force bases stretching across the region.
”In response to just indignation on the part of the Russian Foreign Ministry [over the creation of one such base in Lithuania], Lithuanian Defense Minister Juozas Olekas characteristically replied that his country’s moves were ‘forced measures’ taken in connection with Russia’s ‘takeover of Ukrainian territory’ and its ‘aggressive onslaught’ in Syria.”
“And it seems,” Vankov warns, “that the Pentagon has no plans to stop there. Officials have confirmed plans to build warehouses for the forward deployment of military equipment in the Baltic countries, despite the fact that such a move would violate a key provision of the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act. Furthermore, this summer’s NATO summit in Warsaw will discuss the placement of increased NATO forces in the region on a permanent (!) basis.”
Commenting on the developments, Ivan Konovalov, the director of the Center for the Study of Strategic Trends, a Moscow-based military think tank, told Svobodnaya Pressa that NATO’s moves to turn the Baltics into a potential staging area for an invasion of Russia is undoubtedly viewed as a threat in Moscow.”I would like to begin by drawing attention to the fact that Moscow has adequately assessed the situation,” Konovalov noted. “A few days ago, the Defense Ministry announced the formation of three new divisions in the western direction. Before the Ukrainian crisis, the area was almost entirely undefended.”
For their part, the analyst suggested, the Baltic countries’ political elites “are using the worsening confrontation between the West and Russia for their own purposes. To begin with, the presence of US and NATO troops on their territory benefits them economically.”
“The military lobby in the Baltic countries has achieved what they were after – the allocation of budgetary funds for armies which could previously be categorized only as ‘dwarf’ in scale. At the same time, the presence of foreign troops will more than reimburse any financial losses. One can only imagine how much the Americans will lay out for the new air bases, of which there are now three in the Baltics. The cost of a full-fledged base, when accounting for aircraft and the ground components, can run upwards of a billion dollars a year.”
“For this reason,” Konovalov explained, “our restless Baltic neighbors are trying to gain permanent bases on their territory – we are talking about big money, which will come in handy for the budgets of countries whose economies have shriveled as a result of the economic crisis and the sanctions war with Russia.”
Commenting on NATO officials’ recent “categorical denial” that NATO’s military buildup poses any threat to Moscow, Konovalov bluntly retorted that “surely you must agree that it is difficult to see how Abrams tanks and artillery can be considered equipment with a purely defensive purpose? Russia was forced to respond because it reminded it of the situation in 1941, when the Germans moved large formations up to our borders, while simultaneously talking about their defensive nature.”As for the current bases’ rotational nature, the analyst noted that it makes little difference. “Yes, NATO is increasing its presence near Russia’s northwest borders on a rotating basis, but by and large, this doesn’t change much. Obviously, they do not want to completely throw out the NATO-Russia Founding Act, because that would untie Moscow’s hands. However, without any fanfare, 300 pieces of NATO heavy equipment have appeared on Russia’s borders. It may not seem like much, but this is already a division-sized force. And to think – only a couple of years ago, Estonia had only one old T-55 tank, which it borrowed from neighboring Latvia to hold military exercises.”
Ultimately, Konovalov warns, “given the pace of the military buildup, it’s not hard to imagine how many pieces of equipment the Baltics might accumulate — say a year from now.”
As for the Russian response to the buildup, the expert notes that Russia “is changing its plans for defense – including the transfer of forces to the western direction. And this is absolutely justified. It is well known that in [Russian] military history, the enemy has most commonly attacked from the west. The main obstacle for invasion has always been the Belarusian marshland. Therefore, they usually bypass the marshes via the northwest and the southwest.”
“By and large, the most convenient bridgehead for an attack on Russia by conventional forces has been via the southern direction. The Germans broke through to Stalingrad via Ukraine. And in the north, they could not pass, stopping at Leningrad…Incidentally, the Wehrmacht’s northern breakthrough failed not least because the Baltic states at the time were part of the Soviet Union. Here, the Germans were forced to break the first line of defense. The defense of Liepaja, Latvia, for example, lasted for almost a week.”As for the worrying prospect of the US deploying tactical nuclear weapons in the Baltics, Konovalov explained that this too is now more likely, given that the latest modification of the B-61 variable yield nuclear bomb can be placed on any airborne platform, and is not limited to strategic bombers.
“The same NATO planes which are now permanently patrolling Baltic airspace, flying near our borders, could be loaded up [with such weapons]. Europe now has 200 such bombs. Accordingly, the 16 aircraft at the bases at Zokniai, Lithuania or Amari, Estonia, can carry them onboard. And the pilots of these countries have been trained on how to use such weapons.”
Speaking to Svobodnaya Pressa, veteran defense commentator Viktor Litovkin agreed with his counterpart that ultimately, “the rotational character of the existing bases, in fact, is of little importance. [All it means is that] one group leaves, and another comes to take their place.”
As to whether the buildup in the Baltics and elsewhere in Eastern Europe violates the spirit of the NATO-Russia Founding Act, Litovkin suggested that in his view, “it obviously does…The Pentagon uses uncertain wording, which forbids the placing of ‘significant numbers of troops’ [in the region]. What precisely is considered ‘significant’? A company-sized force? A battalion? A regiment? A brigade? It is unclear. Moreover, Washington does not want to negotiate with Moscow on the concretization of this fuzzy definition.”
Ultimately, the analyst notes, “NATO will not risk an invasion of Russia. But the deployment of military bases in the Baltics is akin to a situation where you get a stone caught in your shoe. If you cannot shake it out, it will be a constant irritant, and may eventually make it painful to walk.””This NATO ‘stone in our shoe’ will force Moscow to react. And the US is actively trying to provoke another arms race in order to weaken our country economically. The Baltic states’ leaders also benefit – receiving rent for the bases, and taxes for local budgets. Therefore, I would say that the anti-Russian hysteria among the Baltic countries’ political elites have a multi-valued character.”
Emphasizing that Russia full realizes the risks created by NATO’s provocations, Litovkin concludes that in any case, “the three new divisions, referred to by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, are only one small part of the measures Russia will take to ensure the security of its western borders.”
The New York Police Department has been directed by a U.S. court to remove from its online records an investigation pertaining to the rise of Islamic extremists in the West and the threats these individuals pose to American safety, according to legal documents.
As part of a settlement agreement reached earlier this month with Muslim community advocates in U.S. District Court, the NYPD will purge from its website an extensive report that experts say has been critical to the department’s understanding of radical Islam and its efforts to police the threat.
The court settlement also stipulates that the NYPD make a concerted effort to mitigate the impact of future terror investigations on certain religious and political groups, according to a copy of the court documents published by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has spearheaded the case since June 2013.
Legal experts and critics of the settlement maintain that it could hamper future terrorism investigations and view it as part of a larger campaign by Muslim advocacy organizations in the United States to dismantle surveillance programs encompassing that community.
Critics expressed particular concern about the case in light of a recent surge in attacks on U.S. citizens committed by individuals pledging allegiance to terror groups such as ISIS.
A key portion of the settlement focuses on the NYPD’s purported use of a document produced by the department’s intelligence division to examine how radicalized individuals make their way to the United States and carry out terror attacks.
The document, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat,” aimed to provide local law enforcement and policy makers with information about domestic terrorists and their operations.
As part of the settlement agreement, the NYPD will be forced to remove the publication from its database and vow not to rely on it in the future.
The NYPD and New York state government agencies included in the case “represent that they do not, have not, and will not rely upon the Radicalization in the West report to open or extend investigations,” according to the settlement. “Defendants will remove the Radicalization in the West report from the NYPD website.”
The settlement further affirms that the NYPD will be “committed to mitigating the potential impact” of future investigations on political and religious groups, such as those in the Muslim-American community.
While NYPD officials would not comment Thursday when contacted by the Washington Free Beacon, a spokesperson directed a reporter to a recent press release affirming the department’s commitment to upholding the court settlement.
The NYPD and relevant New York state agencies will “provide additional guidance to police officers as part of a settlement of lawsuits accusing the NYPD of improperly investigating Muslim groups,” according to the Jan. 7 press release. “While the City did not admit to engaging in any improper practices, the changes represent an effort to provide more detailed guidance to NYPD personnel within the existing Handschu Guidelines,” which govern how authorities investigate political activities.
The NYPD confirmed that it would remove from its website the 2007 radicalization report.
The department will additionally incorporate into the guidelines “police policies against religious profiling” and insert an additional “provision for considering the impact investigations have on people who are not targets of investigations,” according to the statement.
John Miller, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, maintained in a statement that the settlement would not “weaken the [department’s] ability to fulfill its steadfast commitment to investigate and prevent terrorist activity in New York City.”
However, some experts have cast doubt on this statement, claiming that the decision to delete the anti-terrorism handbook will impact officers’ ability to understand how terrorists organize and operate in the United States.
Benjamin Weingarten, a writer and national security analyst who has covered the court case, said that local police departments should be relying more heavily on the now-banned counterterror analysis.
Referring to the recent shooting of a Philadelphia police officer by a radicalized individual who allegedly pledged allegiance to ISIS, Weingarten noted that the assailant followed the “‘four stages of radicalization’ detailed in the NYPD report.”
The information about radical terrorists provided in “the NYPD’s analysis may have at the least led Philadelphia authorities to dig deeper and flag him,” he said.
The settlement further reflects a larger cultural shift in America that shuns terms such as “war on terror” and “Muslim terrorism,” Weingarten said.
“To pursue a see-no-Islam counter-jihadist strategy is not only absurd and contradictory on its face, but its a severe dereliction of duty—ignorance is not an excuse, and it represents a failure to do everything necessary to defend against an ideology that seeks to undermine the Constitution and subvert and destroy Western civilization again, according to Islamic supremacists themselves,” he said.
Stephen Coughlin, an attorney and intelligence officer, expressed concern about what he described as a widening attempt by local and federal authorities to redefine the nature of domestic counter-terror efforts.
“I am greatly concerned with the imposition of [the case] which, I believe, exists to replace counter-terror efforts,” Coughlin said. “This is a continuation of a purging of evidentiary based counter-terror analysis first initiated in 2011.”
The ACLU and Muslim community advocates initially filed the lawsuit following reports after the 9/11 terror attacks that the NYPD was running a domestic spy operation centered on the American-Muslim community.
The ACLU, which would not comment on record for this report, directed the Free Beacon to a recent editorial published in the Guardian celebrating the court decision.
“Bias-based policing legitimizes religious discrimination, It can pave the way to copy-cat approaches by other agencies and set the stage for hate crimes nationwide,” wrote Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s national security project, and Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York.
“We hope the settlement announced this week pulls our city and its police department out of a downward spiral by reaffirming core values and principles, ones just as necessary to a local police force as they are to a rational debate on civil rights and liberties nationally,” they wrote.
Palestinian Authority official Seab Erekat meets John Kerry Wednesday under photo of the golden-domed mosque on the Temple Mount. Photo Credit: Flash 90
Following reports that an employee of the PLO negotiation affairs department who worked for 20 year as an aide to Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat in Ramallah was arrested for “collaborating with Israel,” on Monday the London-based Arabic daily Rai Al-Youm revealed that the order to search for an Israeli spy on the negotiations team came two weeks ago from PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who realized private conversations of PA seniors regarding their political position were known to the US based on Israeli information.
According to Rai Al-Youm, the protocols from secret high level meetings in Ramallah had been leaked to Israel for many years, and the Israelis regularly passed them on to Washington. As State Department officials were turning on the pressure on Abbas to reach a political compromise in the peace negotiations, they revealed their knowledge of intricate details of the Palestinian position, which raised Abbas’s suspicions about a leak. The chairman began questioning European officials, who confirmed to him that the US was receiving a regular flow of information about PA internal meetings from Israel.
Apparently, part of the reason why the arrest of the PLO Israeli collaborator has only taken place this week had to do with the attempt to keep the internal investigation away from Saeb Erekat himself, who only learned about the arrest a week ago. Erekat has been the PLO chief negotiator for years and was renowned for his uncompromising position.
The final round in the negotiations opened in July 2013, with Tzipi Livni heading the Israeli team, vs. Erekatr at the head of the Palestinian team. The talks came to a halt April 2014, when Israel balked on releasing the fourth group of security prisoners, and in response the PA applied unilaterally to join 15 UN institutions, in violation of the peace accords. The anxious negotiator at that part of the encounter was Secretary of State John Kerry, who was desperately trying to push both sides to continue the negotiations.
At some point there, in April 2014, Kerry apparently cited raw information the US was not supposed to have, thus exposing a 20-year operation Israel maintained inside the PLO top command.
About the Author:David writes news at JewishPress.com.
Some interesting tidbits from Pope Francis’ statement on migrants and refugees. Via Andrew Stuttaford at the National Review.
“Migration movements are now a structural reality, and our primary issue must be to deal with the present emergency phase by providing programmes which address the causes of migration and the changes it entails, including its effect on the makeup of societies and peoples.”
“At this moment in human history, marked by great movements of migration, identity is not a secondary issue. Those who migrate are forced to change some of their most distinctive characteristics and, whether they like or not, even those who welcome them are also forced to change.”
“The presence of migrants and refugees seriously challenges the various societies which accept them. Those societies are faced with new situations which could create serious hardship unless they are suitably motivated, managed and regulated. How can we ensure that integration will become mutual enrichment, open up positive perspectives to communities, and prevent the danger of discrimination, racism, extreme nationalism or xenophobia?”
“Public opinion also needs to be correctly formed, not least to prevent unwarranted fears and speculations detrimental to migrants.”
That last one is obviously the most ominous statement, but there is plenty of language here emphasizing the transformation of host societies. There is a failure to address the threat of migrants. Instead the only recognized threats are those of the host societies who reject migrants. There is also far too much talk about forming opinion, managing and regulating host societies and the need to change.
There is little to no acknowledgement of the inherent religious consequences of huge numbers of Muslims invading and settling in Europe. The words “Islam” and “Muslim” are never even mentioned.
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