UKIP Nigel Farage MEP – Obama Is Just Parroting The Cameron Script via YouTube, April 24, 2016
Archive for April 2016
A fair shake
April 24, 2016A fair shake, Israel Hayom, Annika Hernroth-Rothstein, April 24, 2016
Khan and his party are bringing Islamism into every Swede’s living room and into the halls of parliament, but the Swedish media would rather demand he shake a woman’s hand than have him denounce mass murder and anti-Semitism.
**********************************
Last week, Swedish minister of housing and development Mehmet Kaplan was forced to leave his position after his ties to the Turkish nationalist Islamist organization the Gray Wolves as well as to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan emerged and it was revealed that he had compared Israeli policy toward Palestinians to the Nazi annihilation of Jews.
Needless to say, this resignation of a high-profile minister caused quite a stir and led to the national media focusing its gaze on Kaplan’s party — the national Green Party. After scratching the surface a bit, one disturbing detail after another began to emerge, appearing to adhere to one particular theme.
Just in the past week, Swedish journalists discovered that party member Asa Romson called the September 11, 2001 attacks “an accident” and a “tough time for Muslims.” Other key party members have been revealed as working closely with the Muslim Brotherhood and with Turkish Muslim extremists the Gray Wolves and their former party leader, Per Gahrton. They were also quoted as saying that Kaplan was forced out of office by an “Israeli conspiracy.”
All this comes in addition to the scandals that were already known, such as Kaplan comparing ISIS jihadists to Swedish soldiers volunteering for the Finnish Winter War and cozying up to known Iranian anti-Semites during his time heading up the Swedish Muslim Association.
The Green Party has slowly but surely shifted away from being the starry-eyed idealist party that focused on public transport, alternative fuel sources and a six-hour workday to becoming the party of Islamists, shunning Western ideas of democracy and inclusion. This is a frightening trend, and one that deserves to be investigated and denounced, but unfortunately the debate has shifted in an uncomfortable fashion, just a few days into what should have been weeks of investigative journalism.
Until several days ago, Yasri Khan was one of the top names in the Green Party, slated to become the next junior minister. Khan is one of the founders of Swedish Muslims for Peace and Justice, an entity well known for its anti-Semitic sentiments and having murky international affiliations, but that was not the focus when he was interviewed on national television the other day. Instead, the interview revolved around his choice not to shake the reporter’s hand. Khan is a religious Muslim, and as such, he does not shake the hands of women, and to a secular Swedish society this seemed more shocking than the fact the he represents a party closely affiliated to radical Islam and that more often than not compares Israeli policy to the Holocaust.
Arab Israeli MK Hanin Zoabi of the Joint Arab List recently declined an invitation to attend a ceremony marking Holocaust Memorial Day, noting the “alarming similarities” between Nazi Germany and Israel’s policies toward Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. Zoabi wrote a letter to the organizers of the ceremony, asking, “How can you teach the lessons of the Holocaust when you don’t see the alarming similarity between what is happening today and what happened in Germany in the 1930s?” This was not the first time Zoabi made such remarks, and each time her comments were met with outrage and public controversy.
This is a fascinating difference between Israeli and Swedish culture, and perhaps in a larger sense, Israeli and European culture. What ultimately cost Khan his job was not his anti-democratic affiliations or inclinations, but rather Swedish society’s anti-religious panic.
As a religious Jew, I have no issue with Khan not wanting to shake hands with women because I see it as a natural part of the religious freedom that I fight and work for every day. What I do take issue with is his attempt to take freedoms and rights away from others through radical Islamism. But in a society like mine, that point gets lost in the overall panic over someone in public office arranging their private life around their belief in something as outdated as God.
It’s ironic, really, that Sweden spends so much time criticizing Israel for its democratic deficit and mistreatment of minorities when it just got a man fired from public office over his religious convictions and not wanting to shake a woman’s hand. In Israel, the Knesset is a mix of religious and secular, Muslim, Druze and Jewish, and as a country, it caters to the different faiths and focuses on the issues rather than the handshakes, or the lack thereof.
Zoabi is being grilled about her outrageous statements, and I bet she wishes the media would focus on some miniscule detail to throw everyone off the scent. It’s easy to point to Khan’s choice not to shake women’s hands and call it an outrage, because then you can avoid talking about what is really going on. Khan and his party are bringing Islamism into every Swede’s living room and into the halls of parliament, but the Swedish media would rather demand he shake a woman’s hand than have him denounce mass murder and anti-Semitism.
Zoabi will have to answer for her statements and beliefs, but Khan was given a golden opportunity to blame Sweden for being anti-religion rather than face the people because of what he and his party really represent. And as the media calls for inclusion in the form of handshakes, they are excluding the truths and the freedoms they were sent to cover, uncover and represent.
Lebanon, Christians, Under Islamist Threat
April 24, 2016Lebanon, Christians, Under Islamist Threat, Gatestone Institute, Shadi Khalloul, April 24, 2016
♦ Islamic jihadist groups are threatening Lebanese Christians and demanding that they submit to Islam. Lebanon’s Christians, descendants of Aramaic Syriacs, were the majority in the country a mere 100 years ago.
♦ aad Hariri, a Sunni Muslim politician supported by Saudi Arabia, has invited every Lebanese party to his office to sign a document confirming that Lebanon is an Arab state. This is clearly intended to turn Lebanon into yet another officially Arab Muslim state.
♦ The next step will be to ask that the constitution of Lebanon be changed so that the country be ruled by Sharia law, as with many other Arab and Islamic states, including the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA constitution declares: “The principles of Islamic Sharia shall be the main source of legislation.”
Recent upheavals in Lebanon are making local Christians communities worry about their existence as heirs and descendants of the first Christians. Christians in the Middle East now are facing a huge genocide — similar to the Christian genocide the followed the Islamic conquest of the Middle East in the 7th century A.D.
Islamic jihadist groups are threatening Lebanese Christians and demanding that they submit to Islam. Lebanon’s Christians, descendants of Aramaic Syriacs, were the majority in the country a mere 100 years ago.
The demand for Christians to convert to Islam was one of the declarations issued by ISIS and other Islamic groups hiding in the mountainous border between Syria and Lebanon.
Saad Hariri, a Saudi-backed Sunni Muslim politician and the son of assassinated Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, recently invited every Lebanese party to his office to sign a document confirming that Lebanon is an Arab state. Arab state equals Islamic laws, as with all members of the Arab League. Why is it so important to Hariri or to the Sunni and Islamic world to include Lebanon as an Arab state and cancel its current name as a Lebanese state only?
And why do the Arab states, including the Palestinian Authority (PA), refuse to recognize Israel, with its 80% Jewish majority, as Jewish state, while at the same time trying to impose the definition of an Arab state on Lebanon, whose population is 35% non-Arab Christians?
There are approximately one million Syriac Maronites left in Lebanon, as well as another 700,000 Christians belonging to other churches. In addition, more than eight million Syriac Maronites live in the diaspora. These eight million Christians fled over the centuries because of persecution by Muslims, often conquerors of the Christian homeland. Lebanon was never a strictly Arab or Muslim. But that is the step that Saad Hariri, as a milder face of the expansionist ISIS ideology, would have us take — under the guise of a modern, moderate, Sunni secular front.
Saad Hariri, a Saudi-backed Sunni Muslim politician in Lebanon, recently invited every Lebanese party to his office to sign a document confirming that Lebanon is an Arab state. Pictured above: Saad Hariri (right) with the late Saudi King Abdullah (left) in 2014.
Hariri’s request reveals what the Islamic world is planning for Lebanon, Israel and eventually Europe and the United States. World powers need to protect Christian, Jewish and other minorities in Middle East. Both Lebanon and Israel must remain homelands for persecuted minorities in Middle East — a Christian homeland in Lebanon and a Jewish homeland in Israel — connected to each other geographically, assisting each other economically, and perhaps soon with a peace agreement that could form a peaceful bridge in culture and human rights between the West and the East.
Bashir Gemayel, the great Christian Maronite Lebanese leader who was assassinated after being elected president in 1982, warned the West during Lebanese Civil War that if the Islamic forces fighting against Christians win, they would continue to the Western World, as they are, in fact, doing at present.
This agreement for an Arab Lebanese state being requested by the Sunni leadership is clearly intended to turn Lebanon into yet another officially Arab Muslim state. It aims to negate the rights of the original people in the land, just as the original Christian Copts of Egypt have been overrun, and the Aramaic Syriac Christians of Iraq have been overrun. In Lebanon, the original people of the land are the Aramaic-Phoenician Christians — especially the Maronites — who still preserve Syriac (the language Jesus spoke) as their sacred language. A full 95% of Lebanese villages are still called by Syriac Aramaic names. Islam and the Arabic language came to Lebanon late from Arabian Peninsula, after the seventh century.
Hariri’s wished-for step might also be supported by the Shiite Muslim party of Hizballah: both the Sunnis and the Shiites are Islamic. The next step will be to ask that the constitution of Lebanon be changed so that the land of the cedars is ruled by Sharia law, as with many other Islamic states, including the Palestinian Authority. Article 4 in the constitution of the future Palestinian state clearly notes: “The principles of Islamic Sharia shall be the main source of legislation.”
Implementing Islamic Sharia law means having Muslim sovereignty and control over the Aramaic Christian community.
If this Islamic ideology, implemented by so many countries, is not racism, then what is racism?
Why does the free world, including the churches and secular Western leaders, keep silent and demonize only Jewish Israel for protecting itself from the same threat and ideology?
“Speak the truth and the truth will set you free.” The Christians of Lebanon and entire Middle East can save their existence only by adopting this sacred sentence.
Turkey Blackmails Europe on Visa-Free Travel
April 24, 2016Turkey Blackmails Europe on Visa-Free Travel, Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern, April 24, 2016
♦ The European Union now finds itself in a classic catch-22 situation. Large numbers of Muslim migrants will flow to Europe regardless of whether or not the EU approves the visa waiver for Turkey.
♦ “If visa requirements are lifted completely, each of these persons could buy a cheap plane ticket to any German airport, utter the word ‘asylum,’ and trigger a years-long judicial process with a good chance of ending in a residency permit.” — German analyst Andrew Hammel.
♦ In their haste to stanch the rush of migrants, European officials effectively allowed Turkey to conflate the two very separate issues of a) uncontrolled migration into Europe and b) an end to visa restrictions for Turkish nationals.
♦ “Why should a peaceful, stable, prosperous country like Germany import from some remote corner of some faraway land a violent ethnic conflict which has nothing whatsoever to do with Germany and which 98% Germans do not understand or care about?” — German analyst Andrew Hammel.
♦ “Democracy, freedom and the rule of law…. For us, these words have absolutely no value any longer.” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkey has threatened to renege on a landmark deal to curb illegal migration to the European Union if the bloc fails to grant visa-free travel to Europe for Turkey’s 78 million citizens by the end of June.
If Ankara follows through on its threat, it would reopen the floodgates and allow potentially millions of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East to flow from Turkey into the European Union.
Under the terms of the EU-Turkey deal, which entered into effect on March 20, Turkey agreed to take back migrants and refugees who illegally cross the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece. In exchange, the European Union agreed to resettle up to 72,000 Syrian refugees living in Turkey, and pledged up to 6 billion euros ($6.8 billion) in aid to Turkey during the next four years.
European officials also promised to restart Turkey’s stalled EU membership talks by the end of July 2016, and to fast-track visa-free access for Turkish nationals to the Schengen (open-bordered) passport-free zone by June 30.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left) has boasted that he is proud of blackmailing EU leaders, including European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (right), into granting Turkish citizens visa-free access to the EU and paying Turkey billions of euros.
To qualify for the visa waiver, Turkey has until April 30 to meet 72 conditions. These include: bringing the security features of Turkish passports up to EU standards; sharing information on forged and fraudulent documents used to travel to the EU and granting work permits to non-Syrian migrants in Turkey.
The European Commission, the administrative arm of the European Union, said it would issue a report on May 4 on whether Turkey adequately has met all of the conditions to qualify for visa liberalization.
During a hearing at the European Parliament on April 21, Marta Cygan, a director in the Commission’s migration and home affairs unit, revealed that to date Ankara has satisfied only 35 of the 72 conditions. This implies that Turkey is unlikely to meet the other 37 conditions by the April 30 deadline, a window of fewer than ten days.
According to Turkish officials, however, Turkey is fulfilling all of its obligations under the EU deal and the onus rests on the European Union to approve visa liberalization — or else.
Addressing the Council of Europe in Strasbourg on April 19, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that Turkey has now reduced the flow of migrants to Greece to an average of 60 a day, compared to several thousand a day at the height of the migrant crisis in late 2015. Davutoglu went on to say that this proves that Turkey has fulfilled its end of the deal and that Ankara will no longer honor the EU-Turkey deal if the bloc fails to deliver visa-free travel by June 30.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has insisted that Turkey must meet all 72 conditions for visa-free travel and that the EU will not water down its criteria. But European officials — under intense pressure to keep the migrant deal with Turkey alive — will be tempted to cede to Turkish demands.
EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos on April 20 conceded that for the EU it is not a question of the number of conditions, but rather “how quickly the process is going on.” He added: “I believe that at the end, if we continue working like this, most of the benchmarks will be met.”
European officials alone are to blame for allowing themselves to be blackmailed in this way. In their haste to stanch the rush of migrants to Europe, they effectively allowed Turkey to conflate the two very separate issues of a) uncontrolled migration into Europe and b) an end to visa restrictions for Turkish nationals.
The original criteria for the visa waiver were established in December 2013 — more than two years before the EU-Turkey deal — by means of the so-called Visa Liberalization Dialogue and the accompanying Readmission Agreement. In it, Turkey agrees to take back third-country nationals who, after having transiting through Turkey, have entered the EU illegally.
By declaring that the visa waiver conditions are no longer binding because the flow of migrants to Greece has been reduced, Turkish officials, negotiating like merchants in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, are running circles around the hapless European officials.
Or, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently proclaimed: “The European Union needs Turkey more than Turkey needs the European Union.”
The European Union now finds itself in a classic Catch-22 situation. Large numbers of Muslim migrants will flow to Europe regardless of whether or not the EU approves the visa waiver.
Critics of visa liberalization fear that millions of Turkish nationals may end up migrating to Europe. Indeed, many analysts believe that President Erdogan views the visa waiver as an opportunity to “export” Turkey’s “Kurdish Problem” to Germany.
Bavarian Finance Minister Markus Söder, for example, worries that due to Erdogan’s persecution of Kurds in Turkey, millions may take advantage of the visa waver to flee to Germany. “We are importing an internal Turkish conflict,” he warned, adding: “In the end, fewer migrants may arrive by boat, but more will arrive by airplane.”
In an insightful essay, German analyst Andrew Hammel writes:
“Let’s do the math. There are currently 16 million Turkish citizens of Kurdish descent in Turkey. There is a long history of discrimination by Turkish governments against this ethnic minority, including torture, forced displacement, and other repressive measures. The current conservative-nationalist Turkish government is fighting an open war against various Kurdish rebel groups, both inside and outside Turkey.
“This means that under German law as it is currently being applied by the ruling coalition in the real world (not German law on the books), there are probably something like 5-8 million Turkish Kurds who might have a plausible claim for asylum or subsidiary protection. That’s just a guess, the real number could be higher, but probably not much lower.
“If visa requirements are lifted completely, each of these persons could buy a cheap plane ticket to any German airport, utter the word ‘asylum,’ and trigger a years-long judicial process with a good chance of ending in a residency permit.”
Hammel continues:
“There are already 800,000 Kurds living in Germany. As migration researchers know, existing kin networks in a destination country massively increase the likelihood and scope of migration…. As Turkish Kurds are likely to arrive speaking no German and with limited job skills, just like current migrants, where is the extra 60-70 billion euros/year [10 billion euros/year for every one million migrants] going to come from to provide them all with housing, food, welfare, medical care, education and German courses?
And finally, “the most important, most fundamental, most urgent question of all”:
“Why should a peaceful, stable, prosperous country like Germany import from some remote corner of some faraway land a violent ethnic conflict which has nothing whatsoever to do with Germany and which 98% Germans do not understand or care about?”
Turkish-Kurdish violence is now commonplace in Germany, which is home to around three million people of Turkish origin — roughly one in four of whom are Kurds. German intelligence officials estimate that about 14,000 of these Kurds are active supporters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a militant group that has been fighting for Kurdish independence since 1974.
On April 10, hundreds of Kurds and Turks clashed in Munich and dozens fought in Cologne. Also on April 10, four people were injured when Kurds and Turks fought in Frankfurt. On March 27, nearly 40 people were arrested after Kurds attacked a demonstration of around 600 Turkish protesters in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg.
On September 11, 2015, dozens of Kurds and Turks clashed in Bielefeld. On September 10, more than a thousand Kurds and Turks fought in Berlin. Also on September 10, several hundred Kurds and Turks fought in Frankfurt.
On September 3, more than 100 Kurds and Turks clashed in Remscheid. On August 17, Kurds attacked a Turkish mosque in Berlin-Kreuzberg. In October 2014, hundreds of Kurds and Turks clashed at the main train station in Munich.
In an essay for the Financial Times titled “The EU Sells Its Soul to Strike a Deal with Turkey,” columnist Wolfgang Münchau wrote:
“The deal with Turkey is as sordid as anything I have ever seen in modern European politics. On the day that EU leaders signed the deal, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, gave the game away: ‘Democracy, freedom and the rule of law…. For us, these words have absolutely no value any longer.’ At that point the European Council should have ended the conversation with Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish prime minister, and sent him home. But instead, they made a deal with him — money and a lot more in return for help with the refugee crisis.”
Op-Ed: Italy’s universities bow to Islam and boycott Israel
April 24, 2016Op-Ed: Italy’s universities bow to Islam and boycott Israel, Israel National News, Giulio Meotti, April 24, 2016
An Italian academic appeal to boycott Israeli universities succeeded in obtaining 336 signatures. Of these teachers and researchers, a tenth come from the University of Bologna. But in this oldest university in Europe, no one has shown enough concern to raise a moral issue about the big deal that the Alma Mater Studiorum of Bologna has just signed with Saudi Arabia.
Not only that, but some of the protagonists of this academic pact appear in the appeal against the Israeli teachers. It should have been enough to read the report of Freedom House on Saudi universities to figure that maybe needed a little extra caution was in order because at stake is not oil, but our culture: “Academic freedom is limited, informers monitor classrooms for compliance with regulations, such as the prohibition of teaching secular philosophy and religions other than Islam.”
The pact with the Saudis, which will last five years, was launched by the former rector Ivano Dionigi and enshrined under the new one, Francesco Ubertini, both silent on their colleagues who ostracized the Jewish State. In the pact with Riad, we read about “promoting dialogue,” publishing Islamic texts, investing in literature, philology and music, through conferences and seminars, as well as the exchange of professors and students.
Perhaps the Bolognese teachers would have the opportunity to browse through the books used in Saudi schools, where the Jews are called “monkeys” and Christians “pigs”. In the agreement there is also archeology under the care of Nicolo Marchetti, a leading expert on the subject at the University of Bologna: bizarre, since from the time of Muhammad in Mecca only a few buildings remain standing. The others have all been razed to the ground in the name of the war against “idolatry” – to be taken over by luxury hotels or gas pumps. As with the grave of Aminah, the mother of Mohammed, or the house of Abu Bakr, the friend of the Prophet. These Islamists would do the same with the tomb of Dante Alighieri in Ravenna, guilty of having put Muhammad in Hell.
It is not the first exchange agreement with the Saudis. In 2014, the rector of Bologna flew to Riyadh to attend an educational seminar in the presence of Khalid bin al Angari, Minister for Saudi Education. On October 10, 2015, the then rector, along with the Saudi ambassador to Italy, participated in a conference entitled “Tolerance in Islam and coexistence between religions”. Did he know that in Saudi Arabia you can not wear a robe showing the cross, nor open a church and that Christians are persecuted?
Among the supporters of the agreement with the Saudis there is Giulio Soravia, director of the Center of Islamic Sciences at Bologna’s University. The name of Soravia, who in 2011 was sent by the rector to attend a conference in Saudi Arabia, also appears in the academic document against Israel.
While the university was signing this shameful pact with Riyadh, the Saudi Grand Mufti stated that “women who drive are prey of the devil”. What do the feminists from University of Bologna think of that? In addition to submitting to one of the most obscurantist regimes in the world, these professors could prove a bit of solidarity with the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel.
Meanwhile, in Riyadh, an intellectual named Raif Badawi is waiting in prison for the next cycle of lashes, guilty of “insults to Islam” and of being a “liberal”. Much more a liberal than these Italian professors with their double standards and morality.
Obama’s theater of the absurd
April 24, 2016Obama’s theater of the absurd, Israel Hayom, Boaz Bismuth, April 24, 2016
U.S. President Barack Obama | Photo credit: AP
Imagine that the U.S. buys a nuclear weapon from Iran. Sounds crazy? Maybe not. When it comes to the Obama administration and Iran, it is like Pablo Picasso once said: “Everything you can imagine is real.”
The relationship between the Obama administration and the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to live in the theater of the absurd. If William Shakespeare had not died 400 years ago, he could have penned new successful plays with titles such as “Obama and Khamenei” (a modern version of “Romeo and Juliet”) and “The Merchant of Tehran” (a remake of “The Merchant of Venice,” with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani playing the role of Shylock).
Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. would buy 32 tons of heavy water from Iran for $8.6 million. The main problem here is not the amount of money. Rather, it is the fact that the U.S. is rewarding Iran for the sale of a key component in the production of nuclear weapons.
The U.S. is not boycotting Iran, it is not destroying Iran’s nuclear program and it is not worried about third-party deals with Iran that will have negative consequences for the Middle East. The U.S. is showing that it has turned a new page in its relationship with Iran. And the turning of that page began in November 2008, when Barack Obama was elected president.
A play about this absurdly comical saga could begin with the mishandling of the talks in Turkey, Switzerland, Iraq and Kazakhstan. Or perhaps it could start with the final nuclear deal itself, which in effect legitimized Iran as a future nuclear power. We could also focus on the fact that international trade with Iran is returning to normal, as if we have gone back in time to the era when the shah was in power. Money is flowing into Iran, despite the fact that the Iranian regime is a certified pimp of terrorism. And we could further enrich the absurdness of the play by mentioning that the nuclear deal includes a clause that world powers, including the U.S., must defend Iran’s nuclear sites from attack (maybe even from Israeli planes).
In other words, there is no lack of comedic material here. But why hurry to write the play now? It is very likely that the peak of the absurdity is still ahead of us. Imagine that in a few years the U.S. buys a nuclear weapon from Iran. Sounds crazy? Maybe not.
A decade ago, we would have read this script and thought it was written by a science fiction author like Bruce Sterling or Stephen Baxter. But when it comes to the Obama administration and Iran, it is like Pablo Picasso once said: “Everything you can imagine is real.”
GCC leaders reject Obama’s Middle East policy
April 23, 2016GCC leaders reject Obama’s Middle East policy, DEBKAfile, April 23, 2016
DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources and its sources in the Gulf report exclusively that US President Barack Obama failed to convince the leaders of the six Gulf Cooperation Council member states, during their April 22 summit in Riyadh, to support his Middle East policy and cooperate with Washington.
Our sources also report that Saudi Arabia, with Turkey’s help, and the US carried out separate military operations several hours before the start of the summit that showed the extent of their differences.
The US on Thursday started to use its giant B-52 bombers against ISIS in an attempt to show Gulf leaders that it is determined to quash the terrorist organization’s threat to Gulf states. The bombers deployed at Qatar’s Al Udeid airbase attacked targets around Mosul in northern Iraq, but the targets were not identified.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which recently established a bloc along with Egypt and Jordan to oppose Obama’s Middle East policy, started to infiltrate a force of 3,500 rebels back into Syria.
The force has been trained and financed by the Saudis at special camps in Turkey and Jordan. Members of the force are now fighting alongside other rebels north of Aleppo, but they are being bombed heavily by the Russian and Syrian air forces.
Riyadh sent the rebels into Syria to demonstrate to Obama that the Saudi royal family opposes the policy of diplomatic and military cooperation between the US and Russia regarding Syria that enables President Bashar Assad to remain in power in Damascus.
Since the war in Syria began in 2011, Obama has promised countless times that Washington would train and arm Syrian rebel forces outside the country, and then deploy them in Syria in order to strengthen rebel forces.
However, it has not done so except for one instance in 2015. The US infiltrated a small force consisting of no more than several dozen fighters, but it was destroyed by the Nusra Front, an affiliate of Al Qaeda, shortly after it crossed the border. The terrorist group had apparently been tipped off about the arrival of the pro-American force.
All of Washington’s efforts to recruit and train Syrian fighters, which have cost close to $1 billion, have failed.
DEBKAfile’s sources report exclusively that the leaders of the six GCC member states put their previous differences aside and presented Obama with four requests aimed at building a new joint policy regarding the region. According to our sources, these requests were:
1. Action by Washington to strengthen the Sunni majority in Iraq and facilitate representation of the Sunnis in the central government in Baghdad. The Gulf rulers told Obama that his policy of trying to win the support of Iraqi Prime MinisterHaider al-Abadi is mistaken.
They also pointed out reports by their intelligence services that al-Abadi is likely to be deposed and be replaced by a pro-Iranian prIme minister in the near future.
Obama rejected the request and said he refuses to change his Iraq policy.
2. Imposition of new US sanctions on Iran over its continuing ballistic missile tests.
On April 19, several hours before Obama’s departure for Riyadh, Iran carried out its latest act of defiance by attempting to launch a satellite into orbit using one of its “Simorgh” intercontinental ballistic missiles. The missile failed to leave the Earth’s atmosphere, fell to earth and crashed along with the satellite.
Obama turned down the Gulf leaders on new sanctions as well.
3. Provision of US-made F-35 fighter-bombers to Saudi Arabia and the UAE so they can take action against the Iranian missile threat. The US president declined the request.
4. Abandonment of Washington’s cooperation with Russia and the UN for political solution in Syria, and instead cooperate with Gulf states and Turkey to end the war and depose President Bashar Assad. Obama refused.
In other words, the summit in Riyadh, Obama’s final meeting with GCC leaders before he leaves the White House next January, ended without a single agreement.
Rick Perry: There are no Muslim Neighborhoods in America
April 23, 2016Rick Perry: There are no Muslim Neighborhoods in America, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, April 23, 2016
After Ted Cruz’s call to patrol Muslim neighborhoods, the media began circulating this bizarre and unreal claim. Now in an interview about how much he loves Muslims, ex-Texas governor Rick Perry echoes it.
In the interview, Perry sought to draw a distinction between how Muslims are welcomed in America as opposed to Europe, where many Muslims are not as integrated.
Smart policy dictates engaging Muslims in the fight against Islamist terrorism, he said, not surveilling them:
“The idea that there are definable Muslim communities in this country is false. We don’t have Muslim neighborhoods. They don’t exist—because they are our neighbors.”
Whatever anyone’s feelings are on Islam, there clearly are definable Muslim neighborhoods in the United States. I’ve only been to Texas once so I won’t speak of it with any confidence, but these places certainly exist in New York and New Jersey. Not to mention Chicago and plenty of other cities. They exist beyond that as well. The name Little Mogadishu is in circulation for a reason.
“I think we have to be careful of falling into a trap,” Perry told The Daily Signal, explaining:
“There have always been people that used differences—in skin color, religion, and culture—to divide us. America has always been able to overcome that. So it’s up to people like me to share the reality that I have had with the Muslim community.”
I can remember a time when Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller and myself were attacked by Rick Perry supporters for discussing his views on Islam. But that’s the danger of cults of personality. They tend to overwhelm issues and facts.
The Sweet Face of Islam
April 23, 2016The Sweet Face of Islam, American Thinker, Richard Butrick, April 23, 2016
(The reference to Trump’s “misguided remarks that due to terrorist attacks (San Bernardino) Muslims in America needed to wear identification. . . .” provides no citation as to where he said it. Even Snopes, a generally left wing site, states that he did not say it.– DM)
After a nasty terrorist attack one can expect to read about how unrepresentative of the true doctrines of Islam such acts are. Not infrequently we are treated to the remarks of an attractive young Muslim woman explaining that Islam is the religion of peace, inclusion and justice for all. Usually we are reassured that Muslims love America and are patriotic, Constitution-supporting citizens. Recently, Republican Muslim Coalition President Saba Ahmed draped in an American flag, proclaimed that she was a proud, patriotic American. After Trump’s misguided remarks that due to terrorist attacks (San Bernardino) Muslims in America needed to wear identification, the Facebook post of Marwa Balkar went viral:
I chose the peace sign because it represents my #Islam. The one that taught me to oppose #injustice and yearn for #unity. The one that taught me that killing one innocent life is equivalent to killing humanity.
One is naturally inclined to believe that someone who is a Muslim and is brought up in a Muslin community knows whereof he/she speaks. And that may be quite correct as regards their assessment of the attitudes of their own community. But it does not follow that that they speak with great knowledge of the Koran or Sunnah or of Sharia law. Even less does it follow that they understand the ultimate agenda of the various Islamic front groups in the U.S. that are affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood or the Wahhabi supported fronts of Saudi Arabia. They may be recruited by such organizations to put a nice face on Islam but that hardly means that that is what the ultimate agenda is of such organizations.
As a case in point, here is an interesting account of the rude awakening of a Muslim American who grew up in a patriotic Muslim community in Hamtramck, Michigan.
As a Muslim growing up in the United States, I was taught by my imams and the community around me that Islam is a religion of peace. My family modeled love for others and love for country, and not just by their words. My father served in the U.S. Navy throughout my childhood, starting as a seaman and retiring as a lieutenant commander. I believed wholeheartedly a slogan often repeated at my mosque after 9/11: “The terrorists who hijacked the planes also hijacked Islam.”
Yet as I began to investigate the Quran and the traditions of Muhammad’s life for myself in college, I found to my genuine surprise that the pages of Islamic history are filled with violence. How could I reconcile this with what I had always been taught about Islam?
The point being that in the last analysis the rank and file and acolytes of Islam can be led to believe whatever their handlers at the time find it tactically expedient for them to believe as they are led down road to Islam Uber Alles. In particular, what matters is the real agenda and beliefs of Islam’s front organizations and their leaders. And what is maddeningly incompressible about that is the extent to which the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudis have been able to dupe U.S. leadership. Hiding behind the Islamophobia ruse, front groups in the U.S. have suckered the Obama administration into believing in the patriotic, constitution supporting sweet face of Islam, here are the real agendas.
The Saudi agenda. For decades, the Saudis sent ambassadors who were “just like us,” drinking expensive scotch, partying hard, playing tennis with our own political royalty, and making sure that American corporations and key individuals made money. A lot of money. In return the Saudi’s got to fund their Wahhabi supremacist, Jew hating, female subjugating message in their mosques and madrassahs. This despite the fact that the Saudis would never let us fund a church or synagogue in Saudi Arabia.
And the 28 pages excised from the 9/11 Commission’s report? Those pages allegedly document Saudi complicity. Our own government kept those revelations from the American people. Because, even after 9/11, the Saudis were “our friends.”
The Muslim Brotherhood agenda. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Islamic cleric (and Hitler admirer) Hassan al-Banna after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
The group seeks as its end-game to install a Sunni Islamic caliphate throughout the world. The explicit goal of the Muslim Brotherhood. as stated by al-Banna, is that given that is the nature “of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.” Both former Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi were members of the Brotherhood. Its current spiritual leader, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, has a knack for bashing Jews and praising Nazis. The Muslim Brotherhood’s motto remains: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
Yet the president continues to regard the various front groups of MB as legitimate organization combating Islamophobia and acting as “rational agents” in the political arena. In fact, he has just had the leaders of the following Islamic front organization over to the White House on Muslim Brotherhood Day: CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations); MPAC (Muslim Public Affairs Counci); ISNA (Islamic Society of North America).
All these groups have funneled money to terrorist groups, regard Israel as a terrorist nation and reject the designation of Hamas and Hizb’allah as terrorist groups. And, most importantly, support the imposition of Sharia.
Hijacked Islam? When Muslims (Sunni, Shia) have the upper hand is there any other kind? Meanwhile Islam’s useful idiots dance the taqiyya on the yellow brick road to dhimmitude.
anneinpt
artaxes
danmillerinpanama
davidking1530
Peter Hofman
Joseph Wouk
Peter
Louisiana Steve
WarSclerotic 
Recent Comments