The best part starts at about 2:07 into the video
H/t Follow the Money
H/t Town Hall
H/t Freedom is Just Another Word
Archive for March 2017
Cartoons and Video of the Day
March 2, 2017
UK woman opened home to Muslim “12-year-old refugee,” he was really adult jihadi, said “I’ll kill you all”
March 2, 2017“Julie said she later found that Abdul had been visiting extremist websites on his mobile phone and an interpreter relayed messages, sent to family and friends, where he had been joking about tricking the British government into thinking he was a child.”
The British government was doubtless too busy hounding foes of jihad terror and banning foreign ones from entering the country to pay much attention to a trivial matter such as trying to prevent Islamic jihadi “refugee children” from terrorizing Britons.
“She later found out he was not the person he said he was and had been arrested while posing as a child refugee in Belgium.”
But he still got into Britain by posing as a child again. It would have been “Islamophobic” to keep him out, right? In the same vein, Britain has a steadily lengthening record of admitting jihad preachers without a moment of hesitation. Syed Muzaffar Shah Qadri’s preaching of hatred and jihad violence was so hardline that he was banned from preaching in Pakistan, but the UK Home Office welcomed him into Britain.
The UK Home Office recently admitted Shaykh Hamza Sodagar into the country, despite the fact that he has said: “If there’s homosexual men, the punishment is one of five things. One – the easiest one maybe – chop their head off, that’s the easiest. Second – burn them to death. Third – throw ’em off a cliff. Fourth – tear down a wall on them so they die under that. Fifth – a combination of the above.”
May’s government also recently admitted two jihad preachers who had praised the murderer of a foe of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. One of them was welcomed by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Meanwhile, the UK banned three bishops from areas of Iraq and Syria where Christians are persecuted from entering the country. And of course, May banned me from entering the country for saying: “[Islam] is a religion and is a belief system that mandates warfare against unbelievers,” which is like banning me for saying humans need oxygen to breathe.
“Mother-of-two reveals she opened her home to Afghan ’12-year-old refugee’ but was shocked when he turned out to be a grown man who threatened to KILL her family,” by Alex Matthews, Mailonline, March 1, 2017:
A mother-of-two opened up her home to a grown man posing as an Afghan ’12-year-old refugee’ who later attacked her family.
The woman said she lives in fear after the man, who said his name was Abdul, threatened to kill her family after he was arrested for assaulting her relatives.
During an emotional interview on ITV’s Loose Women, the mother, who was renamed Julie for anonymity reasons, has now called on the Government to carry out proper age checks on refugees coming to the UK.
She told presenters Ruth Langsford and Saira Khan that she had taken in the asylum seeker after being asked to look after him for a ‘few nights’ by social services.
Julie recalled: ‘When I walked into the room, I didn’t think he was the person they were referring to. He looked about 19. He was very quiet and very timid.
‘I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but I don’t usually take teenagers. I take younger children. But I just thought he needed a home and didn’t think anymore of it.’
Despite her initial misgivings regarding the boy’s age, Julie generously opened up her home up to the youngster.
However, she became suspicious of his true identity after a dental examination.
She said: ‘We went to a dental appointment and the dentist age-assessed him between 18 and 21.
‘They had to give him the benefit of the doubt and because he claimed he was 12 and the dentist aged him as 21, they placed him at 16. They averaged him.’
Julie said that at first her new arrival was pleasant and well behaved, but soon he turned nasty.
She later found out he was not the person he said he was and had been arrested while posing as a child refugee in Belgium.
She said: ‘He was lovely in the beginning. Very humble, very polite, very thoughtful. But as the weeks went by I started to notice a change in him. I was comparing him to my boy and he was more mature than my boy was.
‘He had been arrested in Belgium. He had a bone density x-ray there and they said ‘‘you aren’t 12’’ and sent him on his way.
‘I found out that he claimed asylum there as 17-year-old. I couldn’t understand why that information wasn’t passed on to me.’
‘I became very frightened, he became quite menacing after I set up a Facebook account for him.
‘I was hoping to help him find his family and then shortly after he was receiving these phone calls where his manner would change dramatically and he became intimidating and quite threatening.
Julie said she felt scared to be alone with Abdul in her own home but didn’t want another family placed with such a temperamental and possibly dangerous man.
She said: ‘I was concerned because if they asked to re-home him, I didn’t want him to go to another family because he wasn’t who he claimed to be.
‘I can remember one day he went up to the fridge and he was looking at a photo of me and my daughter, as if he was trying to intimidate me through my daughter.
‘My daughter was stood there and I can remember thinking, ‘‘don’t turn around’’. I knew and I could see what he was doing in the corner of my eye, but I kept on wiping up.
‘He walked right up behind me and I can still feel his breath on the back of my neck and I can remember feeling petrified.’
Julie said she later found that Abdul had been visiting extremist websites on his mobile phone and an interpreter relayed messages, sent to family and friends, where he had been joking about tricking the British government into thinking he was a child.
She said: ‘I was so shocked. I can remember thinking, ”Oh my god! Who is this person?’’
A permanent home was found for Abdul and it was then that he started to lash out at Julie and her family.
She said: ‘There were other homes that had been offered to him and it wasn’t where he wanted to go.
‘When another home came up he became very aggressive about it.
‘He started [attacking] verbally and then a member of my family got in between us, in fear of me getting hurt, and then he pushed them back and started punching.
‘I ran to get the police and I was just pleading with him to calm down and just said ”why are you doing this?”.
Abdul was arrested for the assault but now Julie lives in fear of him coming back and attacking her family
She said: ‘He did make threats to us before the police took him, to me and the children. He did say when he was removed: ‘I’ll kill you all. I know where you live’
‘I’m very frightened since he was removed. I know that he’s not being properly watched and he could at any time, turn up at my house. I panic if I’m not at school on time.
‘He knows the school runs, he’s knows everything. We changed the locks at the house and I’m constantly vigilant of everything.’…
Israeli jets, tanks strike Hamas targets in response to – Arab-Israeli Conflict
March 2, 2017Merkava 4 tank.. (photo credit:IDF SPOKESMAN’S UNIT)
The IDF carried out an airstrike and artillery shelling against two Hamas targets in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip following gunfire towards IDF troops, the army stated on Thursday.
IDF troops carrying out routine security activities near the security fence along the Gaza border had come under fire, and while no injuries were reported, a military tractor suffered light damage.
Moira Dror from the border community of Netiv Ha’asara told The Jerusalem Post that despite the shelling by the IDF “the outpost is still standing.” Dror, who can see the outpost from her kitchen window, said that even the antenna of the post was still there, adding “perhaps this is a warning to them.”
According to Dror, it’s been really quiet since the end of Operation Protective Edge, “we’ve been living a normal life not thinking about where and when the next rocket will come. But recently things have been heating up,” referring to a rocket that was launched from the Gaza Strip towards Israel on Wednesday night.
No incoming rocket siren sounded as the projectile was headed towards open territory, landing in an open area near the Ashkelon coastline. There were no reports or injuries or damage from the rocket which was reportedly fired from Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip.
The rocket was found on Thursday by security forces who had been sweeping the area.
The United Nations’ special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, condemned the attack, saying that “such provocation seek only to undermine peace.”
“This is the third such incident in the past 30 days after a period of almost four months of quiet,” he said, calling on both sides to restrain in order to avoid escalations “that jeopardize the lives of Palestinians and Israelis.”
While there were around 20 rockets launched in 2016 towards Israel from the Gaza Strip, Wednesday evening’s incident marks the fifth rocket to have been launched at Israel within the last month, including two incidents by the Islamic State Group in Sinai.
Most of them have been claimed by small jihadist groups, many times as a means for pressuring Hamas by raising tensions between the terror organization and Israel. Hamas has cracked down on these small groups, recently carrying out a wave of arrests among Salafi, jihadist, pro-Islamic State organizations.
There has been no official claim of responsibility for the launching of Wednesday’s projectile, but Israel holds Hamas responsible for all fire coming from the Strip.
On Monday IDF jets struck 5 Hamas terror targets in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for a rocket which had launched from the Gaza Strip.
Following last week’s strikes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “We are not ready to accept any drizzle of rockets. We will respond to every firing to our territory. That is what we did today and that is what we will also do in the future.”
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman stated that while Israel has no intention to initiate any military action in Gaza, “we have no intention to continue to absorb drippings (of rockets out of the strip). Hamas must take responsibility and relax.”
Hamas, on their official Twitter account denied responsibility for the rocket and stated that “we place full responsibility for the continuation of this dangerous escalation in Gaza on the Israeli entity, which is targeting the Palestinian resistance and the people of Gaza.”
US-Gulf Front Proposed to Eliminate ISIS, and End Iran’s Influence
March 2, 2017US-Gulf Front Proposed to Eliminate ISIS, and End Iran’s Influence, Iran News Update, March 2, 2016
An idea has about how to fight the war against ISIS that isn’t limited to additionally weaponry or forces in Raqqa and Mosul, but rather, forming a [group] that will ferociously fight ISIS, on the condition that areas liberated from ISIS will not [be] occupied by Iran or by militias affiliated with Iran.
In exchange for a contribution in the war against ISIS, whether in Iraq or Syria, Iran must not be inside these areas. This must be made clear to the Iraqi government. Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, stated that the US will continue to support Iraq even after it’s liberated from ISIS, but all agree, there must be an end to the Iranian expansion in Arab capitals. A united front not only insists on the exit of Iranian forces from Iraq and Syria, but that also desires the end of Iranian influence. The message was conveyed by Gulf countries and the US.
The next phase will be the establishment of a US-Gulf front.
According to an article by Sawsan al-Shaer for Al Arabiya, “If Iraq wants Gulf countries to support its security and stability by cooperating with the US, it must act to address the security chaos caused by Iranian militias on its land.”
A major goal is the exit of foreign forces and militias supported by Iran from Syria and Iraq. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, said in an interview with the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, “Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries announced they’re willing to participate with special troops alongside the US. Some countries from the Islamic Alliance to fight terrorism and extremism are also ready to send troops. We will coordinate with the US to know what the plan is and what is necessary to execute it.”
Additionally, US President Donald Trump ordered Mattis to draw up a plan within 30 days to combat ISIS. According to the German daily’s interview with Jubeir, he expects these plans to be proposed soon. “The major idea is to liberate areas from ISIS and to also guarantee that these areas do not fall in the hands of Hezbollah, Iran or the (Syrian) regime,” Jubeir said.
Mevlut Cavusoglu, the Turkish Foreign Minister, said on January 4, that the Syrian regime must go back to the negotiating table and deal directly with the opposition to achieve peaceful political transition in Syria. “We must send a strong message in which we demand that all foreign militias exit Syrian territories immediately,” he said, and emphasized the importance of the withdrawal of all militias from Syria in the end of 2016 after what was known as the Russian-Iranian-Turkish document was announced. This document led to calling for the Astana conference in Kazakhstan.
Meanwhile, talk is already begun about the post-ISIS phase in Iraq. In early January, former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki rushed to visit Iran, and met with Ali Akbar Velayati, Khamenei’s international affairs advisor. On January 4, Al-Arabiya.net reported that according to the Mehr news agency, Maliki said he went to Iran to meet with Khamenei to discuss what he called “possible threats post-ISIS.”
Al-Arabiya’s report added: “This is a new political term in international and regional politics especially that the war against ISIS has not ended yet in Iraq and Syria. The point of Maliki’s statements that he went to Iran to discuss possible threats post-ISIS with Iranian officials are unclear as the extremist organization is not present among the Iranians and ISIS does not have any announced military activity in Iran.”
McMaster and Gorka: Unfit For Duty
March 2, 2017Published on Feb 26, 2017
General H.R. McMaster and Deputy Asst. Sebastian Gorka are clueless when it comes to understanding the threat of Islam. They are either unwilling or ignorant about what is clearly laid out in Islamic law according to the texts from leading Islamic scholars regarding Sharia and Islamic Jurisprudence. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
What every American should know about the CIA analyst who quit and blamed Trump
March 2, 2017What every American should know about the CIA analyst who quit and blamed Trump, Center for Security Policy, Fred Fleitz, March 1, 2017
Last week, Edward Price, a former CIA analyst, became a media darling after the Washington Post published Price’s op-ed announcing his resignation from the CIA because he was unable to serve the Trump administration in good faith because of President Trump’s policies and disregard for the U.S. Intelligence Community.
While several media outlets rushed to interview Price and depict him as an ethical, non-political CIA officer who rejected what he claimed was the “deceitful” and “delusional” Trump administration, a brief look at the facts suggest not only is this a blatant instance of fake news, but that Price is a “fake” CIA analyst.
OK, Price really did work for the CIA. But for the past several years he was a member of the Obama National Security Council staff, apparently on a detail assignment from the CIA. His NSC job was serving as a spokesman and helping deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes run the Obama NSC “echo chamber” that misled the news media, Congress and the American people about the July 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Price even bragged to New York Times writer David Samuels about how he manipulated and lied to the press to promote the Iran deal.
Price’s selective outrage over Trump administration’s polices – which are still being finalized – while he was part of the Obama Iran deal echo chamber is pretty galling. It’s also hard to square Price’s NSC position with his statements to the Post that his resignation had “nothing to do with politics” and said “as intelligence professionals, we’re taught to tune out politics.” Price also apparently had no problem with the CIA crafting politicized talking points on the Benghazi terrorist attacks in 2014 or the Obama administration pressuring CENTCOM intelligence analyststo slant their analysis of ISIS to favor Obama administration policy.
I also wonder why, if Price is really such a paragon of virtue and a champion of keeping politics out of intelligence, that he didn’t resign last summer after Senator Harry Reid called on intelligence analysts to give Candidate Trump fake intelligence briefings.
But the bigger question is why the CIA was paying Price to be an Obama administration political hack. Once Price assumed such an extremely partisan NSC job, he stopped being a bona fide intelligence officer. A CIA officer should never have been allowed to serve in a job like this or to participate in a scheme to mislead the American people and the U.S. Congress.
This also is fake news because the mainstream media left out crucial facts. For example, Price contributed a total of $5,000 to the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party in 2016. This was a huge contribution for a government employee and suggests Price was angling for a senior job in a Clinton administration. None of the mainstream media press accounts I reviewed mentions this contribution, although the Washington Post added the following clarification to the Price story after it was criticized for omitting this information:
“Clarification: This column should have included a disclosure of donations made by author Edward Price in support of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. In August, Price gave a total of $5,000 to the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party.”
All of the mainstream media accounts also omitted that Price is a fellow with the Truman Project, a leftwing think tank that served as a mouthpiece for the Obama administration, and that he worked for several Democratic political campaigns.
Price’s resignation had everything to do with politics. This is the story of a liberal political hack quitting a Republican administration. Price engineered a splashy resignation advertised on the opinion pages of the Washington Post as part of the Democratic Party’s effort to undermine President Trump and to secure himself a well-paid perch in a liberal think tank to bash the Trump administration. The media’s coverage of Price’s resignation is typical of its extremely biased coverage of President Trump.
The bottom line: this is fake news about a fake CIA officer.
Tehran’s Trump trepidation
March 2, 2017Tehran’s Trump trepidation, Israel Hayom, Ruthie Blum, March 2, 2017
It is sufficient for Trump at this point to be perceived as someone capable of bombing Iran on a whim to make the ayatollahs wary. Ironically, it is his enemies at home who have been persuading the powers-that-be in Iran that they have something concrete to worry about. No wonder they have been alternately saber-rattling and toning down their rhetoric, depending on the day and New York Times headline. Indeed, they seem unable to make up their minds which tactic will serve them in safer stead.
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Speaking to governors at the White House on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a sharp increase in the military budget. According to some assessments, the allocation in question could reach wartime levels.
If so, rightly so.
Americans may not feel it on a day-to-day basis, but their country is the target of global jihadists, some of whom have been committing small-scale killing sprees on U.S. soil, while others are training in the Middle East and honing their skills to execute operations on a grander, more 9/11-type scale.
Still, although Trump, like many other leaders and lay people, seems to consider the group Islamic State to be the world’s bogey man, as al-Qaida used to be viewed, the greater danger is posed by the regime in Tehran and its proxies.
For one thing, unlike the Sunni rogues who like to decapitate people on YouTube, Shiite Iran is an actual country with all that this entails, including a place at the proverbial and literal table. What should have been its lowly station in the overall hierarchy of things was lifted to great prominence when the Obama administration and five other governments — those of Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — groveled before its leaders, begging them to agree to a deal to retard their race to a nuclear weapon.
The disastrous end result of this mass genuflection was the acceleration of Iran’s nuclear program through the infusion of billions of dollars into its coffers. Even more unfathomable was what the ultimate agreement — called, oddly, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — included: a clause handing over the responsibility for monitoring activity at Iran’s nuclear facilities to members of its parliament. It would be funny if it weren’t so horrifying. Indeed, the Iranian regime was chuckling, while Israel and others in the West who opposed the JCPOA winced and braced for fallout.
When Trump won the U.S. presidential election in November, however, the ayatollahs suddenly stopped laughing. Touted by all Democrats and many Republicans as crazy, unpredictable and a loose cannon, the real estate mogul and reality TV star who took to Twitter and other platforms to bash his detractors made Tehran extremely nervous. The shift from a White House and State Department characterized by appeasement to America’s enemies — refusing even to name them as Islamists — to an administration headed by someone who declared that it would be necessary to perform extreme vetting of Muslims entering the United States could not have been sharper.
In the lead-up to and since Trump’s inauguration on January 20, Iranian officialdom has been scrambling to figure out the best strategy for dealing with the new leader of the free world — one about whom many Americans continue to say he cannot be trusted with his finger on the nuclear button, due to his volatility and personal petulance.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, for example, was used to belittling then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with utter impunity during nuclear negotiations. Today, he and his fellow honchos have good reason to fear that under Trump and top diplomat Rex Tillerson, such behavior will not fly. What they must now be fretting over is the possibility that it is they who will be kneeling down before an American official and not the other way around.
According to the concept of “marit ayin” in Jewish law, certain permissible actions are prohibited when engaging in them might cause observers to mistake them for violations. The same principle — in reverse — is now going on between Tehran and Washington.
It is sufficient for Trump at this point to be perceived as someone capable of bombing Iran on a whim to make the ayatollahs wary. Ironically, it is his enemies at home who have been persuading the powers-that-be in Iran that they have something concrete to worry about. No wonder they have been alternately saber-rattling and toning down their rhetoric, depending on the day and New York Times headline. Indeed, they seem unable to make up their minds which tactic will serve them in safer stead.
Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went so far as to pen a letter to Trump on Sunday, urging him to make good on his promise to overhaul America’s “corrupt” political system. In flowery language, Ahmadinejad — who spent his terms in office threatening to wipe Israel off the map and calling the U.S. the “Great Satan” — tried to appeal to Trump on their ostensible shared interests and values. Now there’s a hoot.
What both men surely know is that among the countless differences between them, one that stands out is that the previous Iranian puppet manipulated by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is a has-been who’s lucky he wasn’t sentenced to death, while Trump is just getting started — by increasing the defense budget.
For this alone, his election will have been worth it.
The Islamic Society of North America’s Destructive Agenda
March 2, 2017The Islamic Society of North America’s Destructive Agenda, Front Page Magazine, John Perazzo, March 2, 2017
Below is the fourth installment in a series of articles highlighting the network of major hate groups in America that are supported and funded by the Left. Click the following for the previous profiles on the Souther Poverty Law Center, Students for Justice in Palestine and the New Black Panther Party.
The truly incredible fact that ISNA’s president occupied a seat on Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security speaks volumes of the utter contempt in which Obama holds the United States and Israel alike.
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A number of major Democrats have cultivated highly significant ties to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). For example: Congressman Keith Ellison (Minnesota), who narrowly lost in his bid to become DNC chairman a few days ago, has spoken at ISNA’s massive national conferences on a number of occasions. Congressman Andre Carson (Indiana) has received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from ISNA-affiliated donors, as have Keith Ellison, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. And ISNA president Mohamed Magid was a key figure in Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security, where he was authorized to train and advise personnel affiliated with the FBI and other federal agencies.
Yet most Americans are entirely unaware of just how subversive and anti-American the Islamic Society of North America is.
ISNA was established in July 1981 by U.S-based members of the Muslim Brotherhood who also had been leaders of the Muslim Students Association (MSA). Muslim Brothers would dominate ISNA’s leadership throughout the Society’s early years, when it was highly dependent upon Saudi funding. ISNA’s founding mission was “to advance the cause of Islam and serve Muslims in North America so as to enable them to adopt Islam as a complete way of life.” Today ISNA is the largest Muslim organization on the continent. Its annual conferences routinely draw 30,000 to 40,000 attendees.
When ISNA was incorporated on July 14, 1981, its headquarters were located at the same address as those of the MSA. Eventually, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF)—the U.S.-based financing wing of Hamas—would share the address as well.
One of ISNA’s key founders in 1981 was Sami Al-Arian, who subsequently became the North American leader of the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He was indicted by the Justice Department in 2003, was held under house arrest for several years, and finally was deported in 2015.
Another ISNA co-founder was Muzammil Siddiqi, who went on to serve two terms (1997-2001) as ISNA president and continues to sit on the organization’s governing board. Siddiqi has praised Islamic suicide bombers as “those who die on the part of justice” and consequently reside “with the Lord” in a place of “the highest honor.” Moreover, he has defined jihad as “the path” and “the way [for Muslims] to receive the honor.”
Yet another prominent founding member of ISNA was Mahboob Khan, who in 1983 helped establish the California-based Muslim Community Association, which at least twice hosted and raised money for Ayman al-Zawahiri, who would later go on to become al Qaeda‘s second-in-command.
In November 1987, ISNA established its own Political Awareness Committee headed by Abdurahman Alamoudi, a Muslim Brotherhood operative who in 2004 would be convicted on terrorism-related charges and sentenced to 23 years in prison.
Declassified FBI memos indicate that ISNA was identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front as early as 1987, and a 1988 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood document bluntly identified ISNA as part of the “apparatus of the Brotherhood.” Further, ISNA was explicitly named in a May 1991 memorandum as an ally that shared the Brotherhood’s goal of destroying America and turning it into a Muslim nation by means of a “grand Jihad.”
ISNA leadership rejects all practices and social mores that fail to comport with the Wahhabist vision of Islam propagated by Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood. For instance, Muzzamil Siddiqi calls homosexuality “a moral disorder,” “a moral disease,” “a sin,” and a “corruption” that merits the death penalty.
ISNA plays a major role in providing Wahhabi theological indoctrination materials to a large percentage of the mosques in North America. As such, it is able to influence the nature of the sermons given in those mosques, the selection of reading materials that are available in mosque libraries and bookstores, and the policies governing the exclusion of dissenters from any given congregation. Kaukab Siddique, a Lincoln University professor who has called for the destruction of Israel, avers that “ISNA controls most mosques in America and thus also controls who will speak at every Friday prayer, and which literature will be distributed there.”
ISNA’s central tenet is Jew hatred. On May 24, 1998, ISNA was one of 11 organizations that sponsored a Brooklyn College event where the Egyptian cleric Wagdy Ghoniem spoke about the “infidelity,” “stealth,” and “deceit” of the Jews, and referred to Jews as “descendants of the apes.” Three years later, when the U.S. government designated the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) as a terrorist organization, ISNA, which had raised money for the group, complained that HLF was being unfairly “targeted” by “pro-Israel organizations and individuals.” In December 2003, U.S. Senators Charles Grassley and Max Baucus of the Senate Committee on Finance listed ISNA as one of 25 American Muslim organizations that “finance terrorism and perpetuate violence.”
During its 2006 national convention, guest speaker Kamran Memon rationalized al Qaeda’s terrorist activities as understandable reactions to provocative American policies overseas: “Some Muslims in the Muslim world decided that they were just not going to take it anymore. They were angry at our ongoing support from their enemies, so they began to attack American targets to pressure our government to change its foreign policy.”
At ISNA’s convention a year later in Illinois, Parvez Ahmed of the Council on American-Islamic Relations defended the jihadist activities and agendas of Hamas and Hezbollah as “legitimate.” And at ISNA’s 2008 convention, a guest speaker lauded the “amazing work” that Hamas was doing to promote education and health care in the West Bank.
Steven Emerson, director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, assesses ISNA as follows: “ISNA … officials refuse to condemn both [Hamas and Hezbollah], will not label either as terrorist organizations, but instead refer to Hamas favorably as the ‘democratically-elected Palestinian government.’ ISNA studiously ignores the Hamas Charter—a virulently anti-Semitic tract which states that ‘Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it’—and the fact that violent jihad is a core principal of Hamas and Hezbollah.”
The truly incredible fact that ISNA’s president occupied a seat on Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security speaks volumes of the utter contempt in which Obama holds the United States and Israel alike.
New Republican Jewish head: Trump an easy sell on Israel
March 2, 2017Source: New Republican Jewish head: Trump an easy sell on Israel – Diaspora – Jerusalem Post
March 2, 2017 09:05
Donald Trump speaks during a joint press conference with Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the East Room of the White House in Washington , DC on Feb. 15, 2017 with an Israeli flag in the background. (photo credit:SAUL LOEB / AFP)
Republicans have a fresh opportunity to obtain the support of American Jews, new Republican Jewish Coalition chairman Norm Coleman told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday at the Jewish People Policy Institute Conference on the Future of the Jewish People, held this week in Jerusalem.
Coleman, a former US senator from Minnesota, said it was easy to sell President Donald Trump on the Jewish state, due to his pro-Israel views. He said Trump’s statements condemning antisemitism in his address to Congress on Tuesday would help with US Jews.
“US Jews are more liberal, but if he produces better security, we will do well,” he said. “Trump has challenges with millennials and liberals. We hope they will judge him on his actions, not his rhetoric. We’re rooting for the success of our president.”
“US Jews are more liberal, but if he produces better security, we will do well,” he said. “Trump has challenges with millennials and liberals. We hope they will judge him on his actions, not his rhetoric. We’re rooting for the success of our president.”
Coleman said the Democratic Party lost support among American Jews by nearly electing controversial Congressman Keith Ellison as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and due to former US president Barack Obama’s policies, especially in the final days of his term.
“We can take advantage of Obama kicking Israel at the United Nations on his way out,” Coleman said, referring to UN Resolution 2334.
When asked if he was concerned that animosity for Trump among young Jews could turn them more against Israel, he said the US Left was already much less pro-Israel than the American Right. He cited a January Pew Research Center poll that found that 74% of Republicans sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians, as opposed to 33% among Democrats.
In his speech to the JPPI, Coleman lamented that in the US there are “constituencies that Israel needs as friends going forward that are not closely aligned with the Trump phenomenon.”
He said those constituencies have a somewhat negative opinion of Israel and admitted it is possible that Trump’s embracing of Israel, or Israel’s embracing of Trump, may exacerbate that negativity.
“Part of making America great again is standing foursquare with Israel,” Coleman said. “What we got with President Trump was a very pro-Israel nationalism, for which we should be very thankful.”
Gaza rocket strikes field south of Ashkelon; none injured
March 2, 2017Source: Gaza rocket strikes field south of Ashkelon; none injured | The Times of Israel
Second attack in three days comes after Hamas threatens to hit back over Israeli retaliatory bombardment of Strip
March 1, 2017, 11:47 pm
Illustrative: Palestinian missiles are fired from Gaza City toward Israel following Israeli airstrikes on July 17, 2014. (AFP/Thomas Coex)
A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip struck an open field south of the coastal city of Ashkelon on Wednesday night, causing neither injury nor damage, the army said, the second attack in a week.
The alert siren did not go off, as the rocket was headed toward an unpopulated area.
The projectile struck the Hof Ashkelon region shortly after 11:00 p.m. on Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces said.
Israeli troops began searching the area to locate the rocket, the army said.
No terrorist groups immediately took credit for the attack.
There were also no immediate reports of IDF retaliation.
On Monday, a rocket was launched from Gaza towards the Sha’ar Hanegev region, striking an open field.
Hours later, Israeli Air Force jets bombed multiple targets in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli tanks along the border also fired at several targets, according to AFP. Gaza’s health ministry said four Gazans were moderately injured by airstrikes east of Rafah, according to Palestinian reports.
On February 6, a rocket fired from northern Gaza also hit an open field in the Hof Ashkelon region, in the first salvo of a day-long exchange between the IDF and terrorist groups in the Strip.
Palestinians run for cover as sand and smoke rise following an Israeli airstrike on a Hamas post in the northern Gaza Strip on February 6, 2017. (Mohammed Abed/AFP)
At the time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would not tolerate a “drizzle” of rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip “without a response.”
“My policy is to respond strongly to any rocket fire,” Netanyahu said. “We are firm in this response.”
Most rocket attacks since the 2014 war have been carried out by radical Salafist groups, not by Hamas. However, Israel holds Hamas, the Sunni terror group that has ruled the coastal enclave for the past 10 years, as ultimately responsible for any rocket fire emanating from the Gaza Strip.
Hamas’s military wing threatened Tuesday to retaliate against Israel should the Jewish state strike Gaza.
“The enemy only understands the language of force, and sometimes silence is interpreted as weakness by the enemy. Therefore, any aggression along the lines of what happened yesterday, the resistance, headed by the Qassam Brigades, will have their say,” Abu Obeida, the official spokesperson of Hamas’s military wing the Izz a-Din al-Qassam Brigades told the terror group’s Al Aqsa TV station.
Tuesday also saw an incident in which the incoming missile siren blared in the Sha’ar Hanegev region, northeast of the Gaza Strip, but no missile actually struck.
It was not clear what caused Tuesday’s false alarm. However, a military spokesperson said it did not appear to have been triggered by a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip that failed to cross the border into Israel.
Dov Lieber contributed to this report.
WarSclerotic 
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