Archive for April 9, 2016

U.S. Delivers 3,000 Tons Of Weapons And Ammo To Al-Qaeda & Co in Syria

April 9, 2016

U.S. Delivers 3,000 Tons Of Weapons And Ammo To Al-Qaeda & Co in Syria

by b

April 08, 2016

Source: M of A – U.S. Delivers 3,000 Tons Of Weapons And Ammo To Al-Qaeda & Co in Syria

The United States via its Central Intelligence Agency is still delivering thousands of tons of additional weapons to al-Qaeda and others in Syria.

The British military information service Janes found the transport solicitation for the shipment on the U.S. government website FedBizOps.gov. Janes writes:

The FBO has released two solicitations in recent months looking for shipping companies to transport explosive material from Eastern Europe to the Jordanian port of Aqaba on behalf of the US Navy’s Military Sealift Command.Released on 3 November 2015, the first solicitation sought a contractor to ship 81 containers of cargo that included explosive material from Constanta in Bulgaria to Aqaba.

The cargo listed in the document included AK-47 rifles, PKM general-purpose machine guns, DShK heavy machine guns, RPG-7 rocket launchers, and 9K111M Faktoria anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) systems. The Faktoria is an improved version of the 9K111 Fagot ATGW, the primary difference being that its missile has a tandem warhead for defeating explosive reactive armour (ERA) fitted to some tanks.

The Janes author tweeted the full article (copy here).

One ship with nearly one thousand tons of weapons and ammo left Constanta in Romania on December 5. The weapons are from Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania. It sailed to Agalar in Turkey which is a military pier and then to Aqaba in Jordan. Another ship with more than two-thousand tons of weapons and ammo left in late March, followed the same route and was last recorded on its way to Aqaba on April 4.

We already knew that the “rebels” in Syria received plenty of weapons during the official ceasefire. We also know that these “rebels” regularly deliver half of their weapon hauls from Turkey and Jordan to al-Qaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al-Nusra):

Hard-core Islamists in the Nusra Front have long outgunned the more secular, nationalist, Western-supported rebels. According to FSA officers, Nusra routinely harvests up to half the weapons supplied by the Friends of Syria, a collection of countries opposed to Assad, ..

U.S. and Turkey supported “rebels” took part in the recent attack on Tal al-Eis against Syrian government forces which was launched with three suicide bombs by al-Qaeda in Syria. This was an indisputable breaking of the ceasefire agreement negotiated between Russia and the U.S. It is very likely that some of the weapons and ammunition the U.S. delivered in December were used in this attack.

Millions of rifle, machine-gun and mortar shots, thousands of new light and heavy weapons and hundreds of new anti-tank missiles were delivered by the U.S.. Neither Turkey nor Jordan use such weapons of Soviet provenience. These weapons are going to Syria where, as has been reported for years by multiple independent sources, half of them go directly to al-Qaeda.

From historic experience we can be sure that the consequence of this weaponizing of takfiris will be not only be the death of “brown people” in the Middle East, but also attacks on “western” people and interests.

Skyscrapers falling in New York and hundreds of random people getting killed in Paris, Brussels, London and (likely soon) Berlin seem not enough to deter the politicians and “experts” that actively support this criminal war on Syria and its people.

How Islamists Are Slowly Desensitizing Europe And America

April 9, 2016

How Islamists Are Slowly Desensitizing Europe And America, The Federalist, April 8, 2016

(Compare and contrast the views of this Saudi TV hostess on Islam and terror with what seems to be the emerging European view. — DM)

[T]he overarching message is that Europe has slowly let this happen year by year, decade by decade, like a frog in a pot slowly brought to a boil. Post-colonial guilt and shame have stopped Europeans from openly loving and defending their own culture. The state of things in Europe today is the natural conclusion of that neglect. We in America are on the same road.

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Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine whose offices Islamists attacked in 2015, published an editorial recently titled “How Did We Get Here?” that has raised some eyebrows. In it, they ask how Europe has become where European-born Muslims have attacked the hearts of Paris and Brussels. Their answer has proved distasteful to many on the Left.

The editorial has been harshly criticized and the magazine accused of racism and xenophobia. The Washington Post says Charlie Hebdo blames extremism on individual Muslims—the veiled woman on the street, the man selling kebabs. There’s some truth to this accusation, and to the extent that there is, Charlie Hebdo is wrong. But this, and other critiques, miss the larger point of the article, which is to demonstrate the gradual and quotidian way in which criticizing Islam has been silenced.

It’s worth quoting Charlie Hebdo at length:

In reality, the attacks are merely the visible part of a very large iceberg indeed. They are the last phase of a process of cowing and silencing long in motion and on the widest possible scale. Our noses are endlessly rubbed in the rubble of Brussels airport and in the flickering candles amongst the bouquets of flowers on the pavements. All the while, no one notices what’s going on in Saint-German-en-Laye. Last week, Sciences-Po* welcomed Tariq Ramadan. He’s a teacher, so it’s not inappropriate. He came to speak of his specialist subject, Islam, which is also his religion…

No matter, Tariq Ramadan has done nothing wrong. He will never do anything wrong. He lectures about Islam, he writes about Islam, he broadcasts about Islam. He puts himself forward as a man of dialogue, someone open to a debate. A debate about secularism which, according to him, needs to adapt itself to the new place taken by religion in Western democracy. A secularism and a democracy which must also accept those traditions imported by minority communities. Nothing bad in that. Tariq Ramadan is never going to grab a Kalashnikov with which to shoot journalists at an editorial meeting. Nor will he ever cook up a bomb to be used in an airport concourse. Others will be doing all that kind of stuff. It will not be his role. His task, under cover of debate, is to dissuade people from criticising his religion in any way. The political science students who listened to him last week will, once they have become journalists or local officials, not even dare to write nor say anything negative about Islam. The little dent in their secularism made that day will bear fruit in a fear of criticising lest they appear Islamophobic. That is Tariq Ramadan’s task.

The Charlie Hebdo editorial correctly points out that in Europe the dominant liberal culture has pounded into us that we must adapt to Muslims who come to our country, and never ask them to adapt to any of our ways. Doing so would be colonialist and wrong. It’s a double standard, of course. As the welcoming countries, Europeans must suppress their own culture and ideals for those of the Islamic immigrant population. But when they go abroad to non-Western countries, either to live or to visit, it’s considered offensive not to adapt to their ways of life.

Learning a Culture Should Work Both WaysNo one who found the Charlie Hebdo op-ed so offensive would ever suggest Morocco ought to welcome McDonalds or Wal-Mart with open arms. They would say the country is being ruined with Western culture. They want non-Western countries to remain exactly as they are—preserved and frozen in time-while the West must endlessly adapt to anyone who makes it their home.

The article highlights the important fact that Europe has failed to ask its Muslim immigrant population to assimilate. This fact was demonstrated recently when police discovered that the only surviving terrorist from the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was able to travel from Paris to Brussels and conceal himself there until a few days before the Brussels attacks. He was aided by a large community of French and Muslim Belgians whose loyalties clearly lie with their own community, not with Belgium, or Europe at large. What’s more, a 2013 study shows the shocking degree to which European Muslims hate the West.

Asking immigrants to assimilate doesn’t mean white-washing their culture and religion, asking them not to wear the hijab, or demanding that they eat pork. But it does mean asking them to accept, to some degree, the culture of the country to which they have willingly moved. These are things like women’s rights, tolerance, free speech, or criticism of religion. It also means not having to apologize for having a culture of one’s own. This is the point that Michel Houellebecq made in his recent novel, “Submission.”

Slow-Boiling Our BrainsEuropeans have been lulled into accepting that it’s wrong to criticize Islam or scrutinize it in any way. The Charlie Hebdo editorial points out that it’s a slow process, an insidious wearing away of what is and isn’t acceptable to say or think. The process must be slow, because few people would accept a proposal dictating what topics they’re not allowed to discuss. So, you gradually shame them into it.

This establishes a pre-conditioned mindset so the line of acceptability can be moved further and further until the problem of global jihad can no longer be effectively explored because we aren’t even allowed to ask fundamental questions. This is Charlie Hebdo’s point about Tariq Ramadan, whose grandfather founded the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and whose father was an active member of the group. Through the guise of intellectualism and purported adherence to moderate Islam, he instructs his audience ever so gently that the problem has nothing to do with Islam, and that suggesting so is ugly and base.

We acquiesce, because, as Charlie Hebdo points out, we fear being seen as Islamaphobic or racist. We are made to feel guilty if the thought flashes through our head that we wish that the new sandwich shop run by a Muslim sold bacon, or that a woman wearing a hijab makes us a little uncomfortable. That fear that we feel when we entertain those thoughts, the op-ed argues, saps our willingness to scrutinize, analyze, debate, or reject anything about Islam. And this is dangerous.

Fierce Reactions Aim to Condition Us Into Fear

Although Europe is further along in this process, there is a clear relevance to the United States. We are already being instructed on college campuses and by our own president that Muslims are a sort of protected class regarding criticism. President Obama even went so far as to censor French President François Hollande when he used the forbidden phrase “Islamist terrorism.”

The latest incident of shaming those who do push back is happening in Kansas, where the Islamic Society of Wichita invited Sheik Monzer Talib to speak at a fundraising event on Good Friday. Talib is a known fundraiser for Hamas, the militant Islamist Palestinian group that the United States classifies as a terrorist organization. He even has sung a song called “I am from Hamas.” U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo dared to put out a press release objecting to the speech out of concern that it would harm the Muslim community, particularly in the wake of the Brussels terrorist attack.

In response, the mosque claimed Pompeo stoked prejudice and Islamaphobia and that they had to cancel the event because of protest announcements and because some individuals on Facebook made some offhand comments about guns. Cue a local media frenzy, letters to the editor accusing Pompeo of government overreach, and the predictable arrival of two CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) representatives to skewer Pompeo.

This is just one example of how criticizing or questioning the actions of a Muslim community—even one that is supporting a Hamas fundraiser—has become anathema. The line of acceptability has been moved so now it’s Islamaphobic to object to someone with links to Islamist groups being invited to a U.S. mosque while we’re in the midst of a global battle against Islamist terrorism. People don’t even want to discuss it. The conversation is over. Just as Charlie Hebdo asks, so should we ask ourselves, “How did we get here?”

Although the particulars of the Charlie Hebdo editorial may go too far, and I do not endorse everything the article says, the overarching message is that Europe has slowly let this happen year by year, decade by decade, like a frog in a pot slowly brought to a boil. Post-colonial guilt and shame have stopped Europeans from openly loving and defending their own culture. The state of things in Europe today is the natural conclusion of that neglect. We in America are on the same road.

Hamas’s New Way of Poisoning the Minds of Palestinian Children

April 9, 2016

Hamas’s New Way of Poisoning the Minds of Palestinian Children

by Khaled Abu Toameh

April 8, 2016 at 5:30 am

Source: Hamas’s New Way of Poisoning the Minds of Palestinian Children

  • The preachers, who belong to the Hamas-controlled Wakf (Islamic trust) Ministry in the Gaza Strip, enter schools and ensure, through the exorcism rite, that the children are repentant and faithful to Islam.
  • These are the children who are later recruited as “warriors” in the jihad against Israel and the “infidels.”
  • The Gaza City school video captures on camera the Palestinian leaders’ brainwashing and abuse of their own children.
  • Now the peace process in the Middle East awaits an exorcism of its own.

Hamas has spent years poisoning the hearts and minds of Palestinian children. The Islamist movement is now trying a new brainwashing tactic: exorcism.

The practice, which aims to cast out “demons” that might have wormed their way into the children’s souls, has shocked many Palestinians.

This newest Hamas-perpetrated child abuse was exposed in a video that was leaked to Palestinian social media. The cruelty of the behavior has caused an uproar among Palestinians.

The video shows hysterical children in the company of exorcising preachers belonging to the Hamas-controlled Wakf (Islamic trust) Ministry in the Gaza Strip. This humiliating and invasive rite is being practiced at the Al-Nil School in Gaza City.

Three boys cry as they undergo an exorcism ritual at the Al-Nil School in Gaza City, performed by preachers belonging to the Hamas-controlled Wakf (Islamic trust) Ministry.

The preachers belong to a group called The Ship of Missionary Salvation. They enter schools in the Gaza Strip and ensure, through the exorcism rite, that the children are repentant and faithful to Islam.

The group is managed by the Wakf Ministry’s General Administration for Preaching and Guidance.

Thriller movies come to mind as the video unfolds, shedding light on the nature of religious indoctrination performed by Hamas on schoolchildren in the Gaza Strip.

One of the Hamas preachers is heard in the video declaring that, “We did not come to enact a theater scene, but to expel the devil from the hearts and minds and enter the satisfaction of Allah into hearts.”

The video features terrified teenagers kneeling in the school yard, while others are crying out loudly. At the same time, the Hamas preachers hold microphones and shout the Islamic battle cry, “Allahu Akbar!” [“Allah is Great!”].”

The Hamas abuse of schoolchildren is far from new, and far from a surprise to those who have long been following the Islamist movement in Gaza. These are the children who are later recruited as “warriors” in the jihad (holy war) against Israel and the “infidels.”

Since its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas has been using children as human shields and “soldiers” in the fight against Israel. Children dressed in military uniforms and brandishing automatic rifles and knives have become an integral part of Hamas’s military parades and rallies.

Caught on camera, Palestinian children are taught to hate those who are perceived as enemies of Islam. This is how new generations of Palestinians are raised on the glorification of suicide bombers and jihadists.

PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi expressed revulsion over the video, noting that the preachers’ sermons were full of intimidation and horror. This behavior, Ashrawi, stated, demonstrates the “reactionary nature” of the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip, which would have a negative impact on the development of society and the values of Palestinians. Ashrawi also denounced the practice as a blatant violation of conventions protecting children rights.

Even the Marxist terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), has come out against the video. The group voiced outrage at the “inhumane practices” against the children and called for an immediate inquiry into this form of mental torture and degradation. The group also warned against brainwashing the children and indoctrinating them through religious bigotry.

The Gaza City school video captures on camera the Palestinian leaders’ brainwashing and abuse of their own children.

It also captures the march of Palestinian society towards endorsing the tactics and ideology of radical Islam and groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Now the peace process in the Middle East awaits an exorcism of its own.

Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based in Jerusalem.