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Archive for June 5, 2017

US To UN Human Rights Council: End Anti-Israeli Bias Or We’re Out

June 5, 2017

US To UN Human Rights Council: End Anti-Israeli Bias Or We’re Out, Daily Caller, Ted Goodman, June 5, 2017

(If we remain in the Council, at least we will continue to get a heads-up about what it is about to do and may be able to have at least a minimal impact. Withdrawing all US funding would be a good idea whether we remain in or leave.– DM)

The U.S. is expected to issue an ultimatum to the United Nations Human Rights Council Tuesday: either remove anti-Israeli bias or America may withdraw.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said Saturday that Washington would decide whether to withdraw after a three-week session in Geneva, Switzerland wraps up this month, according to Reuters.

“When the council passes more than 70 resolutions against Israel, a country with a strong human rights record, and just seven resolutions against Iran, a country with an abysmal human rights record, you know something is seriously wrong,” Haley said in a Washington Post op-ed.

U.S. Diplomat Michele Sison spoke out against what the U.S. considers “unfair singling out of Israel” during a closed session of the U.N. Security Council May 24. The U.S. has long been a critic of the council, leading to a three-year boycott from 2006 to 2009 under former President George W. Bush.

The Trump administration took issue with the most recent U.N. report that asserted Israel was endangering the territorial viability of a potential sovereign Palestine by vastly accelerating the pace of housing announcements for Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The U.S. historically vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions that condemned Israel for years. That pattern changed in December when former President Barack Obama’s administration allowed a critical resolution to take effect by abstaining rather than vetoing the resolution.

Western nations and allies are responding now that the Trump administration is putting the U.N. on notice. Eight groups, according to Reuters, wrote to Haley in May, saying that withdrawal would actually hurt Israel more than it would help, according to Reuters.

Haley made it clear that the U.S. is looking for the U.N. to make some changes within the Council in order for it to feel comfortable as a member.

Haley also asserted that membership on the Council must be determined through competitive voting, in order to keep human rights abusers from obtaining seats. “As it stands, regional blocs nominate candidates that are uncontested,” she explained in the op-ed. “Competition would force a candidate’s human rights record to be considered before votes were cast.”

Categories: Nikki Haley, Trump and Israel, UN and Israel, UN Human RIghts Council
Tags: Nikki Haley, Trump and Israel, UN and Israel, UN Human RIghts Council

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NY Times to critics – shut up

June 5, 2017

NY Times to critics – shut up, Israel National News, Jack Engelhard, June 5, 2017

She had two strikes against her. One – she criticized The New York Times first for publishing an op-ed written by imprisoned terrorist Marwan Barghouti, and then for neglecting to mention his crimes – at least 26 Israelis murdered from his work as an unrepentant jihadist.

Two – she complained that the paper’s constant pummeling of President Donald Trump was overly aggressive and had crossed “over the line.”

She wrote that there ought to be consequences for such un-journalistic behavior.

Instead – she became the consequence.

Her name is Liz Spayd and for 11 months she served as the paper’s “public editor,” which translates as house watchdog, or reader’s representative.

So what was her reward for being our representative, demanding, as we do, truthful journalism?

She got fired. This happened a few days ago to the girl who must have been snubbed in the hallways and left to sit alone in the cafeteria.

So they hired her to monitor the paper’s integrity…and they fired her for doing her job.

Let that be a lesson to anyone in the building who even THINKS about speaking his, or her, mind.

Speak up, and you’re done. That goes for every newsroom that uses the Times as its oracle. They follow the leader.

Objective reporting?

These days every headline must conform to OMG proportions for anything related to Trump…and Israel, always.

The paper has been shameless and quite ridiculous in its attempt to smear Trump as a fellow-traveler to the Russians. It’s done by rumor, gossip, whispers, innuendo, hearsay and unsubstantiated accusation. Those are Red Scare tactics that were used by HUAC and McCarthyism to ruin people. It’s how Inquisitions are done.

Spayd’s firing means that the Times won’t even pretend to be a fair-minded mirror of our times.

Even as it calls itself the paper of record and serves as the template for the rest of the news media, it’s a paper intended entirely for radical leftists.

They love it when the paper goes after Trump and the Jews, and it was probably the left that made Arthur Sulzberger Jr. get rid of her.

Sulzberger says there is no longer a need for an ombudsman. The paper can be trusted to serve as its own judge. Liberals cheered. They too know what’s best.

They complained that Spayd was “controversial” – and what is controversial to them?

Anyone who departs from the gospel according to Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman is a danger.

Liz Spayd’s firing is the latest evidence that Big Brother still wants us under heel.

So if a single lonely voice is silenced because it demurs from what is official policy – how is the Times of today any different from the Pravda of yesterday?

No dissent then and there; no dissent permitted here and now.

Which means that so far as getting news that is trustworthy and reliable, we are not in America anymore. We are back in the USSR.

Categories: "Public editor", Media and Israel, Media and Trump, New York Times
Tags: "Public editor", Media and Israel, Media and Trump, New York Times

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Man Hiding From Muslim Terrorists During London Attack Warned Against Islamophobia

June 5, 2017

Man Hiding From Muslim Terrorists During London Attack Warned Against Islamophobia, The Point (Front Page Magazine), Daniel Greenfield, June 5, 2017

Even while they’re killing us, we can always be warned against any Islamophobic outbursts. It isn’t Muslims after all. Even when they’re Muslims shouting, “This is for Islam”. Just stick your head under the table and keep repeating, “Islam is a religion of peace, Islam is a religion of peace, Islam is a religion of peace,”

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The setting of the scene appears to be Katzenjammers, London’s coolest bierkeller, which, along with so many trendy nightspots, were transformed into panicked madhouses. Some bars and restaurants came directly under terrorist attack.

Others, like Katzenjammers, just had police burst in and order everyone down to the floor. But what happened during the video being shot is painfully revealing of the Stockholm Syndrome that has taken over.

At the very end of the video, in a burst of defiance, one of the men on the floor shouts, “F___ Muslim C____”.

“Don’t shout that you f____ idiot, it’s not Muslims,” he’s promptly told.

And this is in a terrorist attack in which the killers made a point of shouting “This is for Islam” and “This is for Allah”.

Even while they’re killing us, we can always be warned against any Islamophobic outbursts. It isn’t Muslims after all. Even when they’re Muslims shouting, “This is for Islam”. Just stick your head under the table and keep repeating, “Islam is a religion of peace, Islam is a religion of peace, Islam is a religion of peace,”

Categories: Britain and Islamic terrorism, Islamophobia, London
Tags: Britain and Islamic terrorism, Islamophobia, London

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Fred Fleitz: ‘We May Have Generations of Radical Islamists in the U.K. Unless the British Government Wakes Up’

June 5, 2017

Fred Fleitz: ‘We May Have Generations of Radical Islamists in the U.K. Unless the British Government Wakes Up’, Breitbart, John Hayward, June 5, 2017

ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty

“I think 9/11 was a wake-up call. You could just see how Republicans and Democrats in Washington were working together against the threat. Now we’re challenged by political correctness, and people who are in denial, and don’t want to the let the government take the steps it has to take to go after radical Islam,” Fleitz reflected.

“Whenever there’s a radical Islamic terrorist attack, we get these lectures about Islamophobia from our leaders, leaders in the U.K. I think that is really hobbling the ability of our government to go after this threat, and that’s unfortunate. I hope what happened in London will be a wake-up call, but I’m worried in a few weeks we’ll be lectured about Islamophobia again,” he said.

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Senior Vice President for Policy and Programs Fred Fleitz of the Center for Security Policy joined SiriusXM host Joel Pollak on Monday’s Breitbart News Daily to talk about the London Bridge terror attack.

Pollak began by asking if the London Bridge attack would finally provide the wake-up call needed for those who underestimate or downplay the dangers of radical Islamic terrorism.

“A lot of people who were in denial almost say the right thing after these events. They sort of can’t help themselves,” Fleitz replied.

“But what really concerns me is that yes, it’s right we have to improve security – we need better outreach, we need better intelligence – but there’s something they’re not talking about in the U.K. that really needs to be focused on: the role that the failure to assimilate British Muslims has created the situation,” he said. “There are communities where British Muslims are deliberately not assimilating, are being taught to hate British society, and this is incubating radicalism. There’s actually a parallel system of sharia law courts in the U.K. that operate.”

“We may have generations of radical Islamists in the U.K., until the British government wakes up and stops the situation,” he warned.

Pollak pointed out that the United States has unassimilated religious communities with their own internal systems of government that live peaceably alongside their neighbors, such as the Amish and Jewish communities in upstate New York.

“It’s certainly true there are some communities in the United States that have not assimilated,” Fleitz agreed. “I’m not concerned about Amish or Jewish communities, but I will tell you that there are enclaves of Muslim communities in Michigan and Minnesota that concern me. We know that in Minnesota there’s a rising rate of measles because the community has not assimilated into the rest of the community, and is not vaccinating their children. This is wrong. This is a big problem.”

“The problem with these Muslim communities is that it is making them susceptible to this radical worldview that wants to destroy modern society, create a global caliphate, and impose sharia law on everyone on Earth,” Fleitz contended. “These other communities aren’t trying to do that. They’re peaceful religious communities.”

“Also, when we have immigrants coming to a country from another country, I think they need to learn the practices and laws of the country where they’re coming to, the country that is accepting them and serving as a refuge for them. I think when people come to their new home country, they should understand and learn about the laws of this new country. That’s not happening in the U.K.,” he said.

Pollak offered the converse observation that some of the worst terrorist murderers, such as the San Bernardino jihadis, appear to be fairly well-assimilated.

“We can have homegrown radical Islamist terrorists – and I don’t really think they’re homegrown, I think they’re inspired or directed by foreign Islamist terrorist organizations – but it’s this ideology of hate that either is being communicated to them over the Internet, or is being passed on to members of separated communities in the U.K. It’s the ideology we have to confront, and I think this problem is worse in these separate communities,” Fleitz said.

Fleitz argued that measures to hinder the ability of extremists to recruit and coordinate with the Internet should be explored, with due regard for civil liberties, but he is more concerned about “radical clerics and radical mosques who are promoting this type of hate and ideology firsthand.”

“I also want to stop these ISIS videos that we know homegrown radical Islamist terrorists are taking in, and it’s playing a role in radicalizing them,” he added.

“I think 9/11 was a wake-up call. You could just see how Republicans and Democrats in Washington were working together against the threat. Now we’re challenged by political correctness, and people who are in denial, and don’t want to the let the government take the steps it has to take to go after radical Islam,” Fleitz reflected.

“Whenever there’s a radical Islamic terrorist attack, we get these lectures about Islamophobia from our leaders, leaders in the U.K. I think that is really hobbling the ability of our government to go after this threat, and that’s unfortunate. I hope what happened in London will be a wake-up call, but I’m worried in a few weeks we’ll be lectured about Islamophobia again,” he said.

“Anyone who raises concerns about radical Islam seems to be tarred and feathered as an Islamophobe in this country. I’ll let the people who peddle this term give a better explanation, but that’s my experience,” he replied when Pollak asked for a precise definition of “Islamophobia.”

Categories: Formerly Great Britain, Islamic refugees, Islamic terrorism, Islamists in America, Islamists in Britain, Islamophobia, Political correctness
Tags: Formerly Great Britain, Islamic refugees, Islamic terrorism, Islamists in America, Islamists in Britain, Islamophobia, Political correctness

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Captain obvious on full throttle , the Trump Train on full speed .

June 5, 2017

Arab states’ rift with Qatar is ‘result’ of Trump’s Middle East trip – Iran officials

Published time: 5 Jun, 2017 14:35

Source : https://www.rt.com/news/390974-iran-blame-trump-qatar/

The rising tensions between Arab League states and Qatar has to do with President Trump’s Middle East tour, Iran’s top officials believe. Tehran has urged the countries to solve their dispute peacefully through regional dialogue and diplomacy.

“What is happening is the preliminary result of the sword dance,” Deputy Chief of Staff of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani Hamid Aboutalebi tweeted, referring to a greeting ceremony in Saudi Arabia, in which US President Donald Trump took part in a traditional sword dance.

Read more

The ongoing crisis indicates that the era of foreign superpower ‘Big Brothers’ shaping regional coalitions is over, as “political domination, security clannishness, occupation, and invasion is not going to bring about anything other than insecurity,” Aboutalebi claimed.

“The era of sanctions is over too, and cutting diplomatic ties, closing borders, laying sieges on countries, and ejecting countries out of the selfsame coalition, etc. is not the way out of the crisis,” PressTV quoted the official as saying.

Chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Alaeddin Boroujerdi also pinned the blame for the widening rift on Trump’s visit.

“The first impression of the US President Donald Trump’s visit to the region is the recent tension in the countries’ relations,” IRNA news agency quoted Boroujerdi as saying. Boroujerdi, along with other top officials, urged Arab nations to solve the dispute through dialogue and diplomacy themselves without the involvement of any outside powers.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has always believed, however, that regional issues should be settled by regional countries themselves,” Mehr news agency quoted the official as saying.

READ MORE: Qatar spat reveals double standards: Terrorism supporters accuse others of supporting terrorism

“To resolve regional disputes and the current dispute, they should adopt peaceful methods, transparent dialogue and diplomacy,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi stressed, according to Reuters. “No country in the region will benefit from the heightened tension.”

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain severed ties with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of supporting and financing terrorism, namely al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

Categories: Uncategorized

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FULL Measure: June 4, 2017 – No Immigrants

June 5, 2017

FULL Measure: June 4, 2017 – No Immigrants via YouTube, June 5, 2017

Categories: "No immigrants", France, French elections
Tags: "No immigrants", France, French elections

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The Niceties Lose to the Necessities

June 5, 2017

The Niceties Lose to the Necessities, PJ Media, Richard Fernandez, June 4, 2017

— DM)

Feckless politicians have let things get to the point where all the remaining options are bad. By allowing the margin of superiority to slip, they are making the descent from the Marquess of Queenbury Rules to street fighting inevitable. Perhaps the most revealing illustration of this sad transition occurred during the recent London Bridge attack, when a taxi driver and eyewitness to the London Bridge terror attack described “how he tried to ‘ram’ the men who were killing innocent civilians . . . .”

Yet we brought it on ourselves. An unsustainable program of political correctness killed the very thing it swore to protect.

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Civility, like anything else, requires resources. U.S. troops in WWII generally did not have to loot to avoid starvation, often had enough manpower to guard POWs, and could afford a training mechanism that instilled and maintained discipline in the ranks. This made it feasible for them to observe a higher standard of humane behavior than most armies, inasmuch as such things are possible in war.

But kindness is a luxury on the battlefield, where survival takes priority over everything else, and first to be jettisoned in resource starvation.

The UK is running low on counter-terror resources. The Times of London reports:

[I]ntelligence officers have identified 23,000 jihadist extremists living in Britain as potential terrorist attackers … about 3,000 people from the total group are judged to pose a threat.

The British police simply don’t have enough men to watch an insurgent army of this size, and have had to cancel famous public events like the Changing of the Guards to release police from duties like crowd security or road closures. “The sad truth about the Government’s decision to deploy up to 5,000 troops on British streets is that it is an admission of failure,” wrote Robert Verkaik. In particular, it is a failure to anticipate the threat and to provide enough resources to maintain the required superiority which makes the civilities possible.

Not surprisingly, tolerance has become the first casualty of the new correlation of forces. The smiling British bobby has had to become more peremptory in the face of a deadly foe. British PM Theresa May, in a speech responding to the London Bridge attack, announced not only more regulations (including proposed restrictions on the Internet), but warned that things were reaching a tipping point:

We believe we are experiencing a new trend in the threat we face. As terrorism breeds terrorism and perpetrators are inspired to attack, not only on the basis of carefully constructed plots after years of planning and training, and not even as lone attackers radicalized online, but by copying one another and often using the crudest of means of attack.

The Lone Wolves — emboldened by success — are forming a pack, and the lurkers are coming out of the woods to pull down their larger but helpless victim.

When that happens, it’s No More Mr. Nice Guy.

May’s plan to regulate the Internet has the advantage of being easier to implement than watching 23,000 jihadis. When you can’t do what you should then you do what you can. The West is in the “Three Stooges” phase of terrorism policy: if Larry can’t hit Moe, he hits Curley Joe. Later they may in despair all hit each other. To be fair, it’s forced upon them by a relative lack of resources. Europe is beginning to admit it has doesn’t have enough hard force to deal with the new threats. Hence the reliance on candles, tweets, dimmed lights. It’s not virtue, it’s necessity. But when the candles stop working they will be forced to Plan B.

Feckless politicians have let things get to the point where all the remaining options are bad. By allowing the margin of superiority to slip, they are making the descent from the Marquess of Queenbury Rules to street fighting inevitable. Perhaps the most revealing illustration of this sad transition occurred during the recent London Bridge attack, when a taxi driver and eyewitness to the London Bridge terror attack described “how he tried to ‘ram’ the men who were killing innocent civilians”:

The driver, only known as Chris, told LBC Radio that he desperately tried to stop the attack.

“I said to the guy in my cab I was going to try and hit him, I was going to ram him.

“I turned around and tried, but he side-stepped me.

“I spun the cab round, I was about to ram one of them, but he side-stepped and three police officers came running towards them with their batons drawn.”

The old and the new stand frozen in time, captured by that image. The cabbie, prepared to use his two-ton vehicle as a weapon, represents the sad new. The bobbies “running towards [terrorists] with their batons drawn” as the cab driver incredulously watches represent the gallant old. It has all the pathos of a First World War cavalry charge against a line of entrenchments on the Western front, of a kindly old order vainly struggling against extinction by a harsh, Terminator-type world of cold repression that governments by slow degrees will be forced to implement. How long before the taxi-ram, not the baton, becomes the new normal?

Yet we brought it on ourselves. An unsustainable program of political correctness killed the very thing it swore to protect.

Categories: Britain and Islamic terrorism, Formerly Great Britain
Tags: Britain and Islamic terrorism, Formerly Great Britain

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DHS Officers Humiliate Judges by Enforcing Immigration Laws, Declares Judge

June 5, 2017

DHS Officers Humiliate Judges by Enforcing Immigration Laws, Declares Judge, Breitbart, Neil Munro, June 5, 2017

(Poor baby. Since he is humiliated by doing his job, perhaps he would prefer to be appointed Supreme Rules of the Universe. — DM)

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Reinhardt’s intemperate language, said Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge, suggests that the court’s decisions are political biased. “There is no ‘cold neutrality’ in the Ninth Circuit’s ruling,” Arthur wrote about the court’s preliminary ruling in the Hawaii case. “It is personal, visceral, and vindictive.”

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Judges are humiliated and dehumanized whenever they must enforce the nation’s immigration laws, according to a senior judge on the far-left Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The judge’s cry of outrage came when he could not block the orderly repatriation of an illegal immigrant who has two drunk driving convictions, plus a U.S. wife and three children.

“We are unable to prevent [Andres] Magana Ortiz’s removal, yet it is contrary to the values of this nation and its legal system,” complained Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who wishes to extend citizens’ rights to illegal foreign migrants. He said:

We are compelled to deny Mr. Magana Ortiz’s request for a stay of removal because we do not have the authority to grant it. We are not, however, compelled to find the government’s action in this case fair or just. …

The government’s decision to remove Magana Ortiz diminishes not only our country but our courts, which are supposedly dedicated to the pursuit of justice. Magana Ortiz and his family are in truth not the only victims. Among the others are judges who, forced to participate in such inhumane acts, suffer a loss of dignity and humanity as well. I concur as a judge, but as a citizen I do not.

The judge, who is married to a former top leader in the ACLU, also lamented the authority of ordinary DHS agents to enforce the law despite protests from well-paid, high-status “civil rights” lawyers:

On January 25, 2017, the President [Donald Trump] signed a series of executive orders dismantling the system of priorities that had previously guided Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol in determining whom to deport. The orders also gave far greater authority to individual agents and officers, who are now removing non-citizens simply because they are here illegally, regardless of whether they have committed any offense. In light of the breadth of these orders and the lack of any apparent limit on agents’ discretion, the undocumented must now choose between going to work, school, hospitals, and even court, and the risk of being seized.

In contrast, the new Supreme Court Justice appointed by Trump, Neil Gorsuch, has a more humble vision of his job as a judicial referee, saying in a 2013 award ceremony that:

As my daughters remind me, donning a [judicial] robe doesn’t make me any smarter … It serves as a reminder of what’s expected of us—what [Irish philosopher Edmund] Burke called the “cold neutrality of an impartial judge.” It serves, too, as a reminder of the relatively modest station we’re meant to occupy in a democratic society. In other places, judges wear scarlet and ermine. Here, we’re told to buy our own plain black robes — and I can attest the standard choir outfit at the local uniform supply store is a good deal. Ours is a judiciary of honest black polyester.

The judges on Reinhardt’s Ninth Circuit are expected to release soon a decision blocking Trump’s Executive Orders limiting the entry of people from six terror-prone Muslim countries. The decision is based on a Hawaiian case, in which an Egyptian-born Islamic cleric claimed his constitutional rights were infringed by Trump’s efforts to reduce Islamic jihad in the United States.

The court’s decision may have been delayed by the Islam-inspired bloody attacks in Manchester and London, at least one of which was conducted by the sons of Muslim refugees and migrants from Libya.

Reinhardt’s intemperate language, said Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge, suggests that the court’s decisions are political biased. “There is no ‘cold neutrality’ in the Ninth Circuit’s ruling,” Arthur wrote about the court’s preliminary ruling in the Hawaii case. “It is personal, visceral, and vindictive.”

Categories: Immigration law enforcement, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Trump and illegal immigration, U.S. courts, U.S. law
Tags: Immigration law enorcement, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Trump and illegal immigration, U.S. courts, U.S. law

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Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Iran’s ‘Preferred Proxy,’ Arming in Gaza

June 5, 2017

Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Iran’s ‘Preferred Proxy,’ Arming in Gaza, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Yaakov Lappin, June 5, 2017

Iran provides PIJ with both “military and financial support,” ITIC noted in its report.

“PIJ is the preferred organization for Iran, due to the problematic nature of the relationship between Iran and Hamas,” ITIC Director Col. (ret.) Reuven Erlich, told the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Although Iran continues to fund Hamas’s military wing, relations between Shi’ite Tehran and the Sunni Islamist rulers of Gaza have been unstable since 2012, when the two found themselves on opposite sides of the sectarian war raging in Syria.

PIJ has around 5,000 members in its armed wing, the Quds Brigades. The organization has its own Gazan rocket production industry, and PIJ possesses the second largest arsenal of projectiles in Gaza, thanks to Iranian manufacturing knowledge. The organization has been working on improvements to its rocket launch systems. It also digs combat tunnels.

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Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the second largest terrorist army in Gaza, recently issued a video threat about its willingness to end the three-year truce in place with Israel.

“If the Israeli enemy continues its normal game and plays with the lives of the Palestinian people, we will break the cease-fire,” PIJ leader Ramadan Shallah says in the video, according to an Algemeiner report.

The footage is laced with images of gunmen in camouflage, rising out of the ground, moving through tunnels, and watching areas of southern Israel near the Gaza border. It is interspersed with scenes from a rocket factory, and a close up shot appears of a senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officer, who is placed in crosshairs, before a bullet is loaded into a rifle.

“Don’t try to test the resistance,” says the video’s last message.

PIJ remains Iran’s favored proxy in the Strip as relations between Tehran and Hamas continue to fluctuate.

The Gaza-based Al-Ansar charity, a Palestinian branch of the Iranian Martyrs Foundation, announced May 21 that it would provide financial grants to “families of martyrs” whose relatives were killed between 2002 and 2014.

A parallel Iranian funding channel is in place for families of “martyrs” killed in the 2014 conflict with Israel.

The Al-Ansar charity is “affiliated with PIJ,” according to a report released by the Tel Aviv-based Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC).

Iran provides PIJ with both “military and financial support,” ITIC noted in its report.

“PIJ is the preferred organization for Iran, due to the problematic nature of the relationship between Iran and Hamas,” ITIC Director Col. (ret.) Reuven Erlich, told the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Although Iran continues to fund Hamas’s military wing, relations between Shi’ite Tehran and the Sunni Islamist rulers of Gaza have been unstable since 2012, when the two found themselves on opposite sides of the sectarian war raging in Syria.

Thus, Iran does not currently fund Hamas’s non-violent operations, including the salaries for tens of thousands of Hamas government employees.

In recent days, a Hamas senior official even took the trouble to flatly deny Arabic media reports that Iran had resumed full-scale funding for his regime, describing the claims as “fake news.”

PIJ, which plays no governmental role, has no such issues with Iran, and it continues to enjoy a high level of Iranian financial support.

A snapshot of that support can be seen in the estimated $8.7 million that was transferred from the Iranian Martyrs Foundation to Gaza over the last three years. Not all the money went to families of those killed in conflict with Israel. “We can assume that some of that money also went towards financing groups like PIJ,” Erlich said.

The Al-Ansar charity is used by the Iranian Martyrs Foundation “as a pipeline to funnel funds into the Gaza Strip, in indirect support of terrorism. The money also serves to increase Iran’s influence among the Palestinian people, and sends a message to the Sunni Arab world, that it is Iran which is supporting the Palestinians in their struggle against Israel,” the ITIC report said.

The Al-Ansar charity is fed with cash by a branch of the Iranian Martyrs Foundation in Lebanon. A second branch of the foundation in Lebanon supports Hizballah.

In 2007, the U.S. Department of Treasury designated the Iranian Martyrs Foundation and its branches in Lebanon as sponsors of terrorism. Israel banned the Al-Ansar charity in 2003, but it reestablished itself in Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal in 2005.

The reelection of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to a second term is unlikely to dent Iranian funding for terror groups like PIJ, as Supreme Leader Khamanei, who is committed to arming and financing jihadists intent on fighting Israel, continues to exercise control over foreign affairs and military policies.

PIJ has around 5,000 members in its armed wing, the Quds Brigades. The organization has its own Gazan rocket production industry, and PIJ possesses the second largest arsenal of projectiles in Gaza, thanks to Iranian manufacturing knowledge. The organization has been working on improvements to its rocket launch systems. It also digs combat tunnels.

PIJ is a quarter of the size of Hamas’s 20,000 armed operatives, but that did not stop it from having numerous past run-ins and power struggles with Hamas.

Since the end of the 2014 conflict with Israel, however, Hamas has improved its ability to coordinate and control the other armed factions operating in its territory.

It remains unclear whether the latest PIJ threat to violate the ceasefire represents a warning of a possible split with Hamas’s leadership.

“What matters most is the ideological distinction between the PIJ and Hamas,” said Ely Karmon, a senior research scholar at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya.

“While Hamas, [which is] the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, has a strategic cooperation with Iran, PIJ has a religious affinity with the Khomeinist doctrine and regime, since their [former] leaders Fathi Shaqaqi and ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ‘Odah, from the inception of their group, acknowledged the importance of the Iranian revolution and its influence,” Karmon told the IPT.

“Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas leader, wrote nothing on religious matters (and did not write about any other issues either),” Karmon noted. “Shaqaqi wrote 5 books in which he praised the Iranian revolution.”

“In this sense, the PIJ is the real proxy of Iran, and not Hamas,” he added.

PIJ leaders integrated themselves into the Iranian-Hizballah camp when Israel expelled them to Lebanon in 1988, Karmon noted. Then, PIJ leader Fathi Shaqaqi was assassinated in Malta in 1995, representing a dramatic blow to the organization.

It took his successor, Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, who is still the current leader, five years following Shaqaqi’s assassination to build up the group’s infrastructure, with the aid of “major Iranian financial and military support,” Karmon said.

“Ironically, Shallah, who spent five years at Durham University [in Britain] writing a thesis on Islamic banking in Jordan, was called to lead the PIJ from the U.S., where he taught at the University of South Florida,” Karmon added.

When Hamas released a document that represented an update to its policies last month, feigning a softer stance and a willingness to accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, PIJ’s response was unequivocal.

“As partners with our Hamas brothers in the struggle for liberation, we feel concerned over the document,” said Islamic Jihad’s deputy leader, Ziad Al-Nakhala.

“We are opposed to Hamas’s acceptance of a state within the 1967 borders and we think this is a concession which damages our aims,” Al-Nakhala said, in comments posted on PIJ’s website.

Accepting a state on the 1967 borders would “lead to deadlock and can only produce half-solutions,” Al-Nakhala added.

Ultimately, the dispute between PIJ and Hamas is one over tactics, not strategy. In light of its acute isolation, Hamas is seeking to rebrand itself somewhat, without any intention of giving up its long-term goal of destroying Israel.

PIJ, enjoying firm Iranian backing, and lacking all of Hamas’s dilemmas of sovereignty, rejects the very idea of a rebranding. It insists on openly advertising its jihadist, Iranian-influenced ideology. Hoisted on Iran’s shoulders, PIJ prepares for the next round of fighting with Israel.

Yaakov Lappin is a military and strategic affairs correspondent. He also conducts research and analysis for defense think tanks, and is the Israel correspondent for IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly. His book, The Virtual Caliphate, explores the online jihadist presence.

Categories: Gaza, Hamas, Iran and Israel, Iranian proxies, Israeli security, Palestinian Islamic Jihad
Tags: Gaza, Hamas, Iran and Israel, Iranian proxies, Israeli security, Palestinian Islamic Jihad

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Trump quietly slashes number of refugees from Obama’s target despite court order

June 5, 2017

Trump quietly slashes number of refugees from Obama’s target despite court order, Washington Times, Stephen Dinan, June 4, 2017

Despite a court order halting most of his extreme vetting policy, President Trump’s administration has quietly been working toward his goal of a drastic cut in the number of refugees the U.S. will accept this fiscal year.

President Obama had set a target of up to 110,000 on his way out the door, but Mr. Trump tried to reset that number to 50,000. If the pace continues, the final tally is likely to be about 60,000 when the fiscal year ends in September — well below the level Mr. Obama wanted to lock in.

Most striking is the drop in the number of refugees from the seven terrorist-connected special interest countries that Mr. Trump singled out for extra scrutiny in his executive orders: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Those countries accounted for about half of all refugees admitted over the final months of Mr. Obama’s tenure. But during the past six weeks, they have represented only about a quarter of the refugees — despite a judge’s order instructing Mr. Trump to keep Mr. Obama’s policies in place.

Security analysts cheered the move, saying the new president has already changed the culture from the previous administration.

“Even if ‘extreme vetting’ is on hold, good vetting takes time, and the Trump administration’s plans to follow the law are eliminating the irresponsible rush to judgment that took place under the Obama administration,” said Matthew J. O’Brien, research director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform and a former senior anti-fraud executive at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, one of the agencies that handles refugees.

Across two executive orders — one in January and, after courts blocked it, a revised one in March — Mr. Trump has tried to impose a 90-day halt on all admissions from a half-dozen suspect countries. He has also attempted to enforce a 120-day pause in refugee admissions and a broader halt to any Syrian refugees. He also cut Mr. Obama’s refugee ceiling by more than half, to just 50,000.

The goal, Mr. Trump said, was to give his administration a chance to improve screening procedures so no potential terrorists could slip through.

However a federal judge in Hawaii said Mr. Trump’s entire approach has been tainted by the “animus” he showed Muslims during the presidential campaign and has put all of the key parts on hold.

That means the Trump administration is still admitting refugees from the seven targeted countries of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — but at much lower levels than during Mr. Obama’s tenure.

Syrians made up about 15 percent of all refugees admitted during Mr. Obama’s time this fiscal year. Over the past six weeks, though, they total about 4 percent. The number of Iraqis has dropped from 15 percent under Mr. Obama to about 8 percent of the total in the Trump administration.

Overall, the number of refugees accepted worldwide has dropped from more than 10,000 in October to 2,070 in March, and only slightly more than 3,000 in each of the past two months.

The Justice Department late last week asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the court battle and allow Mr. Trump’s full travel ban and refugee halt to be reinstated — including a full stop to Syrian refugees and reimposing the 50,000 cap for fiscal year 2017.

If they succeed, it would slow refugees even more. The government has admitted more than 46,000 in the first eight months of the fiscal year, so that would leave an average of just 1,000 for each of the final four months — 10 percent the rate Mr. Obama had hoped.

Refugee advocates say thousands of refugees could be stranded without options.

“For people who may have family here who don’t know what the future means for them, that’s just a tragedy. For people who were in the process and now are wondering what’s next for them, and people who are in precarious and tenuous and vulnerable conditions, what does this mean for them? I don’t have an answer for every refugee, but in general it’s not a good situation for refugees,” said Kay Bellor, vice president for programs at the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services.

She said American communities have shown “an amazing outpouring of support” for the refugees and that the government needs to match that commitment. Ms. Bellor said a 50,000 cap is well below what the U.S. can — and should — accept.

“Disappointment is kind of not even a strong enough word,” she said. “The U.S. should do more. The problem is great, our resources are great.”

The U.S. looks to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to conduct initial screenings to decide who would be good candidates for resettlement. American officials at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services then do their own screening, which includes an interview and the most extensive background check possible, and the State Department makes final approvals.

Refugees are resettled in the U.S. by nonprofit groups such as the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services.

Mr. Trump argues that the U.S. needs better refugee screening, and security analysts point to a number of people admitted as refugees who have been charged with terrorist-related offenses over the past decade. Refugee advocates counter that the rate of crime and other dangers from refugees is low.

For now, battles in Congress over budgets and in the courts over the legality of the president’s plans have left the agencies that administer the refugee program struggling.

USCIS began a slowdown in January to conform to Mr. Trump’s 50,000 ceiling. When a judge in Hawaii issued an injunction in March halting the 50,000 number, USCIS had to alter its plans but had already canceled interviews with thousands of potential refugees.

Now, the agency is scrambling to adjust the pace of interviews.

The State Department blamed an uncertain budget situation for the overall slowdown and suggested that activity would pick up after Congress approved funding for fiscal year 2017 in early May.

The department said in a statement that it is acting under the 110,000 ceiling set by Mr. Obama but stressed that is an outer limit, not a target.

“We are not in a position to speculate as to the final number of refugees that will be admitted by the end of this fiscal year,” the department said.

The department declined to answer why the percentage of refugees from special-interest countries has dropped, saying only that “we continue to interview and process refugees of all nationalities.”

Mr. O’Brien said part of the slowdown from special-interest countries could be a result of deteriorating conditions in the Middle East in recent months.

But overall, he said, the numbers are a signal that Mr. Trump is in charge and employees are getting the message.

“Many of the people from the Iraq/Syria region under the Obama administration should never have been admitted to the United States. It appears that the Trump administration is making attempts to engage in serious (as opposed to superficial) vetting efforts and is approving refugee applications only for individuals who appear to be genuine refugees,” Mr. O’Brien said in an email.

He also said he suspects that where the Obama administration treated the refugee cap as a target to be met, the Trump administration sees it as an outer limit.

“Part of Obama’s immigration agenda was to significantly increase the number of both asylees and refugees admitted to the U.S. — presumably because President Obama saw the U.S. as being responsible for the degradation of the security situation in the Middle East. By way of contrast, President Trump has clearly indicated that he sees refugee admissions as a priority national security issue and radical Islam as the source of the problem,” Mr. O’Brien said.

Categories: Refugees, Trump and refugees, U.S. courts, Vetting refugees
Tags: Refugees, Trump and refugees, U.S. courts, Vetting refugees

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