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How Western Media Enable Islamic Terrorism

December 19, 2014

How Western Media Enable Islamic Terrorism, Front Page Magazine, , December 19, 2014

(Please see also Sharyl Attkisson’s Stonewalled for explanations of what happens in the legitimate “news” media and why. — DM)

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If the West is experiencing a rise in the sort of terror attacks that are endemic to the Islamic world—church attacks, sex-slavery and beheadings—it was only natural that the same mainstream media that habitually conceals such atrocities, especially against Christians and other minorities under Islam, would also conceal the reality of jihadi aspirations on Western soil.

As The Commentator reports:

[T]he level of the [media] grovelling after the tragic and deadly saga in Sydney Australia over the last 24 hours has been astounding.

At the time of writing, the lead story on the BBC website is of course about that very tragedy, in which an Islamist fanatic took a random group hostage in a cafe, ultimately killing two of them.

He did this in the name of Islam. But you wouldn’t get that impression if you started to read the BBC’s lead story, which astoundingly managed to avoid mentioning the words Islam, Islamic, Islamist, Muslim, or any derivations thereof for a full 16 paragraphs. The New York Times, which led by calling the terrorist, Man Haron Monis an “armed man”, waited until paragraph 11.

In the Guardian’s main story – whose lead paragraph simply referred to a “gunman” — you had to wait until paragraph 24.

If you’d have blinked, you’d have missed it.

….

In the wider media, reports about Muslim fears of a “backlash” have been all but ubiquitous.

If these are the lengths that Western mainstream media go to dissemble about the Islamic-inspired slaughter of Western peoples, it should now be clear why the ubiquitous Muslim persecution of those unfashionable Christian minorities is also practically unknown by those who follow Western mainstream media.

As with the Sydney attack, media headlines say it all. The 2011 New Year’s Eve Coptic church attack that left 28 dead appeared under vague headlines: “Clashes grow as Egyptians remain angry after attack,”was the New York Times’ headline; and “Christians clash with police in Egypt after attack on churchgoers kills 21” was the Washington Post’s—as if frustrated and harried Christians lashing out against their oppressors is the “big news,” not the unprovoked atrocity itself; as if their angry reaction “evens” everything up.

Similarly, the Los Angeles Times partially told the story of an Egyptian off-duty police officer who, after identifying Copts by their crosses on a train, opened fire on them, killing one, while screaming “Allahu Akbar”—but to exonerate the persecution, as caught by the report’s headline: “Eyewitness claims train attacker did not target Copts, state media say.”

A February 2012 NPR report titled “In Egypt, Christian-Muslim Tension is on the Rise,” while meant to familiarize readers with the situation of Egypt’s Christians, prompts more questions than answers them: “In Egypt, growing tensions between Muslims and Christians have led to sporadic violence [initiated by whom?]. Many Egyptians blame the interreligious strife on hooligans [who?] taking advantage of absent or weak security forces. Others believe it’s because of a deep-seated mistrust between Muslims and the minority Christian community [what are the sources of this “mistrust”?].”

The photo accompanying the story is of angry Christians holding a cross aloft—not Muslims destroying crosses, which is what prompted the former to this display of Christian solidarity.

Blurring the line between victim and oppressor—recall the fear of “anti-Muslim backlashes” whenever a Muslim terrorizes “infidels” in the West—also applies to the media’s reporting on Muslim persecution of Christians.

A February 2012 BBC report on a church attack in Nigeria that left three Christians dead, including a toddler, objectively states the bare bone facts in one sentence.  Then it jumps to apparently the really big news: that “the bombing sparked a riot by Christian youths, with reports that at least two Muslims were killed in the violence. The two men were dragged off their bikes after being stopped at a roadblock set up by the rioters, police said. A row of Muslim-owned shops was also burned…”

The report goes on and on, with an entire section about “very angry” Christians till one confuses victims with persecutors, forgetting what the Christians are “very angry” about in the first place: nonstop terror attacks on their churches and the slaughter of their women and children.

A New York Times report that appeared on December 25, 2011—the day after Boko Haram bombed several churches during Christmas Eve services, leaving some 40 dead—said that such church bombings threaten “to exploit the already frayed relations between Nigeria’s nearly evenly split populations of Christians and Muslims…”  Such an assertion suggests that both Christians and Muslims are equally motivated by religious hostility—even as one seeks in vain for Christian terror organizations that bomb mosques in Nigeria to screams of “Christ is Great!”

Indeed, Boko Haram has torched 185 churches—to say nothing of the countless Christians beheaded—in just the last few months alone.

Continuing to grasp for straws, the same NYT report suggests that the Nigerian government’s “heavy-handed” response to Boko Haram is responsible for its terror, and even manages to invoke another mainstream media favorite: the poverty-causes-terrorism myth.

Whether Muslim mayhem is taking place in the Islamic or Western worlds, the mainstream media shows remarkable consistency in employing an arsenal of semantic games, key phrases, convenient omissions, and moral relativism to portray such violence as a product of anything and everything—political and historical grievances, “Islamophobia,” individual insanity, poverty and ignorance, territorial disputes—not Islam.

As such, Western mainstream media keep Western majorities in the dark about the Islamic threat, here and abroad.  Thus the “MSM” protects and enables the Islamic agenda—irrespective of whether its distortions are a product of intent, political correctness, or sheer stupidity.

Categories: Christians, Egypt, Europe, Foreign policy, Ideology, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Jews, Middle East
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Time to wake up

December 19, 2014

Time to wake up, Israel Hayom, Dror Eydar, December 19, 2014

(Is anybody there? Does anybody care?

— DM)

Who is responsible for most of the terrorist acts around the world today? Mother Theresa? What percentage of Muslims support militant Islamist organizations? These are not “lone-wolves” — this is a serious phenomenon with grave implications on the free world. It is something that needs to be confronted, rather than ganging up on anyone who points it out.

Isn’t it time to wake up?

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1. They haven’t woken up yet. Certainly not in Australia. Even after the deadly terrorist attack at a cafe in Sydney, parts of the institutionalized Australian media are still trying to delude their audience, maintaining that it was a “lone-wolf” who perpetrated the horrific assault. The Australian prime minister “took comfort” in the knowledge that the assailant had a history of mental illness.

A European court decided this week that Hamas is not a terrorist organization — it is a charity group with some “lone-wolf” members. The West’s basic instincts have become dull, after decades of suppressing its own survival mechanism by self-imposing a stern “politically correct” regime. Most of the leading figures in the West (and in Israel) are more concerned with how they are perceived by the community, and that they say the “correct” words that they are allowed to say, than they are with actually confronting the truth.

Who is responsible for most of the terrorist acts around the world today? Mother Theresa? What percentage of Muslims support militant Islamist organizations? These are not “lone-wolves” — this is a serious phenomenon with grave implications on the free world. It is something that needs to be confronted, rather than ganging up on anyone who points it out.

In February 2007, Professor Raphael Israeli — an international expert on Islam and professor at Hebrew University — was interviewed by an Australian newspaper. In the interview, Israeli warned that the Muslim minority living in the continent posed a real threat to the Australians. His studies suggest that life can become unbearable when the Muslim population of a Western country reaches critical mass (in one study he even attached a number to this idea of critical mass: 10 percent of the general population). It is a rule of thumb, he said, and if it applies everywhere, it certainly applies in Australia.

As an example, he cited the riots in Paris in 2006. Israeli suggested that the Australians ban the entry of Muslim radicals and adopt a preventative approach to avoid flooding the continent with immigrants from Indonesia. Muslim immigrants, he argued, have a reputation of taking advantage of Western tolerance and hospitality to advance their own ends. Trains in London and in Madrid were not blown up by Christians or Buddhists. They were blown up by Muslims. Precautions must be taken, he warned.

Not too far from Australia, in Bali, Islamist organizations perpetrated two horrifying terrorist attacks in 2002 and in 2005. Bali bomber Amrozi bin Nurhasin, who was charged with causing the deaths of more than 200 people, stood up in court in front of the global media and cried out “Jews! Remember Khaibar. The army of Muhammad is coming back to defeat you.” Not one of the 200 victims was Jewish. The Australians watched, read the warnings, and went back to what they were doing.

When Israeli was interviewed, the Bali attacks were still fresh, but the regime political correctness made sure to take the string out. Israeli became the target of a Bolshevik-style witch hunt. He was accused of racism, xenophobia, and was called a plethora of derogatory names. He received death threats. In response, the Middle East expert told the Australians to wait and see what happens. This week, one would hope that the Australians recalled Israeli’s cautionary words. Maybe some of them wondered why they didn’t heed his warning. Maybe.

2. On Monday, radio personality Tali Lipkin-Shahak interviewed Professor Israeli. It wasn’t the interview that was notable, but the style in which it was conducted — a style shared particularly by many Israeli journalists, and Western journalists in general. “You were ahead of your time,” she said to him. Israeli replied that he had been investigating the Muslim “diaspora” in Western countries for over a decade, and that in that time the Muslim population has grown to alarming proportions.

“But why do you attribute violent intentions to the immigration process?” the interviewer asked him. “Joseph also immigrated to Egypt,” she remarked, evoking the Book of Genesis.

True, the professor answered, remarking that he had written five books on the subject, “but Joseph’s family had not proclaimed that it planned to conquer Egypt or to convert Egypt to become Israelite.”

“The Muslims explicitly say that they did not come to Europe in order to become European, but to Islamize Europe.” They have vowed that a Muslim flag will wave over 10 Downing Street in England and over Versailles Palace in France within 25 years, he explained.

Lipkin-Shahak then said that “one can always [always!] talk about those people in terms of a negligible, extremist minority, including the terrorist attackers.” Even ISIS, she said, “has no more than several thousand members.”

Israeli insisted that these atrocities are nothing new. In the past, Muslims who immigrated to Australia, Scandinavia and Germany, as well as other places, have perpetrated very serious attacks.

The overly concerned interviewers rushed to protect the ears of her tender listeners, saying “I have to be the one to tone things down, or at least present the opposing view,” she said. “What you are saying, it is very serious. You are vilifying an entire population; you are contributing to the process of hatred and counter-hatred, which only causes harm and intensifies the violence.”

Israeli was not surprised. “That is exactly what they told me in Australia, until they became the victims of a catastrophe…This is my job. Anyone who wants to listen can listen. Anyone who doesn’t, they can wait for the next catastrophe.”

Lipkin-Shahak stuck to her guns: “We listened, but we voiced a skeptical opinion. We disagree.”

“What are you basing your opinion on?” Israeli wondered in desperation. “I am basing my opinion on thirty years of research, studying Islam, and you are basing yours on a trend, on the fact that it is not nice to say these things. We are talking on two completely different planes.”

Indeed, two completely different worlds. Facts vs. beliefs. Reality vs. fantasy. Make love not war; imagine there’s no countries, and no religion too. A very special kind of liberal fundamentalism. The moment the truth comes knocking, they retreat into their politically correct shells and refuse to recognize the facts. There is no such thing as Muslim terrorism. The terrorists come from outer space. Islam is a religion of peace and we mustn’t link it to all these terrible acts perpetrated in its name. Sadly, the people who think this way — the politically correct — have the microphone. The researcher with the facts is only a momentary guest.

3. The politically correct mechanism that launders the language that we use makes it very hard to express doubt in these John Lennon-esque fantasies, like the Oslo Accords for example. It may be hard to believe, but the principles of the Oslo Accords are still being marketed, under new names, to this day. Case in point: The recent empty declarations made by newfound partners Tzipi Livni and Isaac Herzog regarding their ability to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For our own good, we need to examine the remarks made by the late Arab-Palestinian minister Ziad Abu Ein, who, in 1979, murdered Boaz Lahav of Tiberias and David Lankri of Beit Shean and seriously wounded five others when he detonated an explosive device inside a trash can on a busy Tiberias street.

In July, 2006, Abu Ein told Al-Alam Iranian television that “the Oslo Accords are not the dream of the Palestinian people. However, there would never have been resistance in Palestine without Oslo. Oslo is the effective and potent greenhouse whish embraced the Palestinian resistance.”

“Without Oslo, there would never have been resistance. In all the occupied territories, we could not move a single pistol from place to place. Without Oslo, and being armed through Oslo, and without the Palestinian Authority’s A areas, without the training, the camps, the protection afforded by Oslo, and without the freeing of thousands of Palestinian prisoners through Oslo — this Palestinian resistance and we would not have been able to create this great Palestinian Intifada.”

Isn’t it time to wake up?

Categories: Europe, Fatah, Foreign policy, Hamas, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Jihad, Political correctness, Terrorism
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Jihadists Using Liberalism Against Itself

December 19, 2014

Jihadists Using Liberalism Against Itself, Commentary Magazine, , December 19, 2014

This of course is the war that Israel has been fighting for years, ever since its creation in fact. Most recently there have been feverish blood libels about the IDF harvesting Palestinian organs, of summary executions during the 2010 flotilla incident, and of a supposed massacre and mass graves in Jenin during the Second Intifada. With all of these accusations Israel is obliged to investigate the conduct of its military, and so it does. That was what was so outrageous about the UN’s Goldstone investigation and indeed the subsequent attempt to have a Goldstone II following the war in Gaza this summer. Such international inquiries are only supposed to be mandated where a state has failed to adequately investigate itself first–but in Israel’s case the international community simply steps in and puts on its own investigation regardless, usually with the conclusion having been written at the outset.

The problem is that while many of them may now realize that the Islamists their armies encounter are unreasonable fanatics, they are equally convinced that the Islamists Israel faces have a legitimate grievance and a just cause.

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While the West’s enemies become ever more unrestrained in the barbaric nature of their attacks, Islamist militants are increasingly pursuing tactics aimed at limiting what the West can do in its own defense. As a recent case in Britain has demonstrated, jihadists and their supporters are more than happy to fabricate the most outlandish allegations in an often successful attempt to hinder the fight against them. This is the kind of thing that Israel has been having to deal with for decades, and at some point other Western states need to comprehend that they are all up against the same enemy, one which is willing to employ the same underhanded tactics against all of us.

In May 2004, British troops became embroiled in a three-hour gun battle with insurgents of the Mahdi Army at Al Amara, Iraq. Following the battle it was alleged that British soldiers tortured, executed, and then mutilated the bodies of twenty Iraqi detainees. These accusations have dragged on for a decade now and in response the UK government commissioned the al-Sweady Inquiry, an investigation which has cost the British taxpayer almost $49 million, with the accusers having been able to claim financial assistance from the British state to fund their case against it.

And what did the tribunal discover? The al-Sweady Inquiry has stated unequivocally that the allegations made against the British soldiers are “without foundation,” and that those making these accusations had given evidence that was “unprincipled in the extreme” and “wholly without regard for the truth.”

So after years of investigation, and tens of millions in public money spent (much of it having been used to assist those bringing claims against the British army), the soldiers have at long last had their names cleared while the jihadi militants have been exposed as liars. Hardly surprising; it’s simply delusional to imagine that those who are so unprincipled as to use terrorism to achieve their aims would suddenly become upstanding and honest witnesses once stood before a war-crimes investigation. What these people are, however, is mendacious and calculating in the extreme, and regardless of what al-Sweady may have concluded, by using public money to advance these outrageous allegations the jihadists have won by hijacking the West’s liberalism and respect for the rule of law for their own advantage.

Quite apart from the tremendous financial cost that this investigation and many more like it have carried, the decade that these allegations circulated for have been an outstanding public-relations victory for the insurgents. The media–large parts of which were eager to see Western forces fail in Iraq and Afghanistan–were all too ready to believe the stories spun by the militants and to think the worst of our soldiers. By parroting these lies ad nauseam, the Western media assisted the militants in undermining public morale at home, eroding belief in the rightness of the cause we were fighting for and convincing many that intervention overseas is rarely a defensible or admirable undertaking. In Europe particularly, these tales provide the recruiting fodder that radicalizes young Muslims into believing that their host societies are evil and that they too must join the war against the West. If nothing else, the constant fear of these damaging war crimes allegations persuade Western governments and militaries to be still more restrained in the tactics that they feel able to use in the increasingly muted attempt to counter our enemies.

This of course is the war that Israel has been fighting for years, ever since its creation in fact. Most recently there have been feverish blood libels about the IDF harvesting Palestinian organs, of summary executions during the 2010 flotilla incident, and of a supposed massacre and mass graves in Jenin during the Second Intifada. With all of these accusations Israel is obliged to investigate the conduct of its military, and so it does. That was what was so outrageous about the UN’s Goldstone investigation and indeed the subsequent attempt to have a Goldstone II following the war in Gaza this summer. Such international inquiries are only supposed to be mandated where a state has failed to adequately investigate itself first–but in Israel’s case the international community simply steps in and puts on its own investigation regardless, usually with the conclusion having been written at the outset.

Israel, like Britain and America, does undertake costly and time-consuming investigations where there are allegations of war crimes. But as we have seen so many times before, within hours the international media will have beamed the most tarnishing accusations against Israel around the world several times over. Months later when investigators have established the allegations as baseless, no one is listening anymore and the damage is done.

The debacle of the al-Sweady Inquiry has naturally caused some outrage in Britain, and so one hopes that some lessons will have been learned. But if observers have been reminded that jihadists are readily prepared to use war crimes accusations as a second front in the war against the West, they should also recognize the same tactic when they see it being deployed against Israel. The problem is that while many of them may now realize that the Islamists their armies encounter are unreasonable fanatics, they are equally convinced that the Islamists Israel faces have a legitimate grievance and a just cause.

Categories: Europe, Fairy tales, Foreign policy, Freedom, Ideology, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Palestinians
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Chutzpah redefined

December 18, 2014

Chutzpah redefined, Israel Hayom, Sarah N. Stern, December 18, 2014

(When reality is unpleasant, as it often is, those not personally experiencing reality make decisions based on pleasant fantasies. — DM)

[T]his is supposed to be a “peace process.” The operative word here is “peace.” How dare we dictate anything to the Israelis, who are forced to live with the deadly consequences of this obviously flawed foreign policy paradigm? How can we presume to know better than they what it is that the Israelis can actually live with?

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In September 1993, when Yasser Arafat was recast from the role of “granddaddy of terrorism” to that of “peacemaker,” the Oslo Accords were marketed to the Israeli public and to world Jewry wrapped in the package of “reversibility.” I remember clearly when a friend of mine, a leftist television personality, assured me: “Don’t worry, Sarah. We will be watching Arafat very closely. It all depends on his compliance with our strict guidelines. He has to stop all the incitement and all the terror. It’s only Gaza and Jericho first. If it doesn’t work, we can always go back and retrieve it.”

That was 21 years ago. Since then, not a day goes by without another fiery Palestinian Authority incident of incitement (painstakingly documented and broadcast to the world by the good work of Palestinian Media Watch). This hatred has metastasized like a cancer and an entire generation has grown up steeped in it. The horrific result is the vast number of Israelis murdered at the hands of Palestinian terrorists.

This past week Khalil Shikaki from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research conducted a poll which indicated that a full 80 percent of Palestinians support stepping up violent attacks against Israelis, including random stabbings and traffic attacks. Over 86 percent believe that Haram al-Sharif (or the Temple Mount, where Al-Aqsa mosque is located) is in danger.

That comes as no surprise because 93 percent of Palestinians consider themselves to be religious Muslims, and the leadership of the Palestinian Authority has been constantly stirring up hysteria that “the Jews are desecrating Haram al-Sharif.”

Although the Oslo Accords were presented as conditional, successive Israeli governments have upheld them, despite the steady stream of constant, daily incitement and increasing number of what the Left used to euphemistically call “korbanot shel shalom” (“victims of peace”).

We Jews seem to have gotten ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole. And many of our leaders do not seem to understand the basic philosophy that “when you are in a hole, you should stop digging.”

American presidents, politicians and diplomats have consistently argued that “Israeli-Palestinian negotiations should be left up to parties themselves.”

Which brings us to Habayit Hayehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett’s spirited debate with Martin Indyk at the Brookings Institute’s Saban Forum last week. Bennett courageously uttered the words: “We’re stuck in the conventional directions that we’ve been working on over the past three decades. There’s only one game [foreign policy paradigm] in town and that is a Palestinian state in the heart of Israel. Now, regardless of whether you support it or not, the reality is, it’s not working. It’s not working.”

The outcry from American journalists and officials, who have based their careers on the success of the peace process and the two-state paradigm, was so intense one would have thought Bennett had said something highly irresponsible, such as that Arabs are the descendants of apes and pigs (a remark that official Palestinian Authority media frequently uses to describe Jews).

After all, this is supposed to be a “peace process.” The operative word here is “peace.” How dare we dictate anything to the Israelis, who are forced to live with the deadly consequences of this obviously flawed foreign policy paradigm? How can we presume to know better than they what it is that the Israelis can actually live with?

The premise of “land for peace,” which has dominated American foreign policy and the its attitude toward Israel over the last two decades, might well work in the West when dealing with a land dispute between the United States and Mexicans or Canadians. But it is patently obvious, when listening to the inflammatory rhetoric that comes directly out of the mouths of Palestinian Authority officials, that they have never laid down the societal groundwork for peace, but rather for its very opposite.

This has been going on for over a generation. Words and ideas matter. These hateful words have seeped deep into the consciousness of an entire generation of Palestinians. They lead to tragedies like the recent attack at the Har Nof synagogue in which four Israelis were killed while reciting morning prayers (and a Druze policeman was killed coming to their aid); or earlier this week, when an Israeli family of five stopped to pick up a hitchhiker in Judea and Samaria and was subjected to an acid attack; or in October when a three-month-old, the first child for a couple who had endured years of infertility, was murdered when a Palestinian terrorist rammed his car into a group of Israelis waiting at a light rail station in Jerusalem.

For some, in America, this is merely a statistic. But for Israelis and Jews, this was somebody’s father, somebody’s mother, somebody’s brother, sister or child. Israel is a tiny country. By now there is hardly anyone in the country who does not personally know someone wounded or murdered at the hands of Palestinian terrorists.

If this were a scientific experiment, we would have reached the null hypothesis a long time ago, and realized it was time to go back to the drawing board.

Whether or not one agrees with Bennett, it is impossible not to admire his moral courage and intellectual honesty for publicly declaring something every Israeli and every Palestinian already knows. He is like the little boy in the story who, in front of everyone, points to the naked monarch and declares: The emperor wears no clothes!

As Bennett said, “Let’s stop looking at perfection, the ideal dream of two states living side by side in peace and democracy. Let’s stop talking perfection that has led us to disaster.”

Yet Indyk, who has made a career out of the peace process industry, had the audacity to tell him, “You are talking pure mythology. … You live in another reality. … You live in what Steve Jobs called ‘a distorted reality.'”

Bennett responded with, “This is quite a sentence. I have been through the First Intifada, the Second Intifada. You attend conferences. I have been on the ground there. How many missiles have to fall on Ashkelon until you wake up? How many people need to die before you wake up from this illusion? When will you say you were wrong?”

Bennett deserves high praise for injecting a bit of reality into the fantasy world that exists inside the beltway, where everyone continues to cling to the illusions of 1993. So many of our think tanks, diplomats and scholars look at the Taliban attack in a school in Pakistan or the hostage crisis in a cafe in Australia as a deplorable acts of terrorism, but when it comes to Palestinian terrorists taking the lives of Israeli citizens, our State Department officials say, “Both sides have to try harder,” as Secretary of State John Kerry said at a press conference in London this week.

This is a hypocritical double standard that no one but Israel would be expected to endure. When people impose a standard on Israel, the Jewish state, that they would never impose on themselves, we have one word for it and that word is anti-Semitism.

Sometimes this anti-Semitism comes directly out of the mouths of Jews. Two thousand years of living in the Diaspora has had an indelible effect on our collective psyche. Many Jews are self-conscious of their Judaism, and want the love of the world so desperately that they have to prove to the world how liberal and broad minded they are … at the expense of their own Israeli brothers and sisters.

I could never understand how anyone sitting in a comfortable living room on this side of the Atlantic, never knowing what it is like to constantly fear for their lives and never worrying about having 60 seconds or less to gather the entire family and hide from incoming missiles, can claim to know better than the Israelis about what is good for them.

This gives new meaning to the definition of the term “chutzpah.”

Categories: Abbas, Europe, Foreign policy, Gaza, Hamas, Ideology, Islam, Israel, Leftists, Moral equivalence, Obama administration, Palestinians, Peace process, Terrorism, Two state solution
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The Middle East realists: Old and new

December 14, 2014

The Middle East realists: Old and new, Israel Hayom, Richard Baehr, December 14, 2014

America, according to Friedman and the Israel Lobby professors ‎should also ignore Israeli concerns and push forward with a nuclear ‎deal with Iran. A successful negotiation, even one which leaves Iran ‎with nuclear breakout capability in a few months, is certain to ‎change Iran’s pattern of international behavior, as it becomes a ‎regular member of the “community of nations” and gets back to ‎enjoying more robust economic relations with many other nations. ‎Iranian aid to Hezbollah, Hamas, Assad in Syria, Yemeni Shiite ‎rebel groups, Iraqi Shiites, all of these aggressive efforts will soften ‎or go away once Iran becomes America’s latest and greatest strategic ‎partner.‎

Friedman has been one of the great lap dogs for the Obama ‎administration, and his loyalty cost the president very little.

A touch of realism would be welcome in the White House at this ‎point. But it won’t happen because the self-styled realists are ‎wearing the blinkers, and think they know all there is to know.‎

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Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of ‎Government and Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago like to ‎call themselves foreign policy realists. Realists are, in their minds, people who can ‎assess international situations without any ideological blinders or bias. Walt and ‎Mearsheimer co-authored “The Israel Lobby,” originally as a lengthy article in the ‎London Review of Books in 2006, and then as a much longer book version in 2007. In both ‎the article and book, the professors argued that America’s very tight relationship ‎with Israel was strategically unsound for the United States. The authors claimed ‎that the closeness between the two countries was a product of the behavior of the ‎Congress of the United States, which they believe had been unduly influenced by ‎the political power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and ‎other supporters of the Jewish state, such as evangelical Christians. ‎

In less academic, and blunter terms, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman ‎welcomed Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to his address to a joint session ‎of Congress in 2011, writing that the applause for Netanyahu reflected the fact that the ‎Congress was “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”‎

Of course, Friedman had been out ahead of Walt and Mearsheimer, with a similar ‎themed comment in a column in The New York Times in February 5, 2004:‎

‎”Israel’s prime minister has had George Bush under ‎house arrest in the Oval Office. Mr. Sharon has Mr. ‎Arafat surrounded by tanks, and Mr. Bush surrounded ‎by Jewish and Christian pro-Israel lobbyists, by a vice ‎president, Dick Cheney, who’s ready to do whatever Mr. ‎Sharon dictates, and by political handlers telling the ‎president not to put any pressure on Israel in an election ‎year all conspiring to make sure the president does ‎nothing.”

Friedman styles himself as an “eminence grise,” sitting high up in ‎New York Times land, a platform from where he can speak as an ‎equal with the likes of academic intellectuals such as Mearsheimer ‎and Walt, but also foreign leaders too numerous to name, and ‎American presidents, all of whom understand the significance of ‎receiving a favorable column from Tom Friedman. As a presumably ‎great strategic thinker and realist like Walt and Mearsheimer, ‎Friedman has come to the same conclusions as the professors on ‎where America’s strategic interests lie in the Middle East. America ‎must challenge Israel and force a two-state solution with the ‎Palestinians. This is in Israel’s interests as well, of course, since the ‎absence of peace creates so much ill will for both Israel and its ally ‎America among other nations in the region and around the world. ‎Friedman always claims he has Israel’s real interests at heart, while ‎their elected government digs deeper holes. Clearly, if Israel were ‎only to be more forthcoming, the deal with the Palestinians could ‎finally get done this time (next time, some time, whenever…). ‎

America, according to Friedman and the Israel Lobby professors ‎should also ignore Israeli concerns and push forward with a nuclear ‎deal with Iran. A successful negotiation, even one which leaves Iran ‎with nuclear breakout capability in a few months, is certain to ‎change Iran’s pattern of international behavior, as it becomes a ‎regular member of the “community of nations” and gets back to ‎enjoying more robust economic relations with many other nations. ‎Iranian aid to Hezbollah, Hamas, Assad in Syria, Yemeni Shiite ‎rebel groups, Iraqi Shiites, all of these aggressive efforts will soften ‎or go away once Iran becomes America’s latest and greatest strategic ‎partner.‎

Friedman has been one of the great lap dogs for the Obama ‎administration, and his loyalty cost the president very little. In his ‎case, the president revealed that he reads Friedman’s columns, and ‎then followed it up by inviting Friedman into the Oval Office to ‎offer up his invaluable insights. With all that respect and notoriety, ‎nothing could possibly stop the love coming from the Times ‎columnist for everything Obama. Friedman’s latest service to President Barack ‎Obama was to trash the critics of the president’s Iran policy:‎

‎ ‎‎”Never have I seen Israel and America’s core Arab allies ‎working more in concert to stymie a major foreign policy ‎initiative of a sitting U.S. president, and never have I seen ‎more lawmakers — Democrats and Republicans — more ‎willing to take Israel’s side against their own president’s. ‎I’m certain this comes less from any careful consideration ‎of the facts and more from a growing tendency by many ‎American lawmakers to do whatever the Israel lobby asks ‎them to do in order to garner Jewish votes and campaign ‎donations. “‎

Friedman and Walt and Mearsheimer are locked into an old and ‎predictable thesis that America’s real strategic interest in the region ‎is securing its oil supplies, and cozying up with the oil-rich nations ‎of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. Improving relations with Iran fosters ‎a new climate where American is not so isolated as a result of its ‎support for Israel. And if Israel and the Palestinians make peace, ‎there will be a warm glow everywhere, improving the atmospherics ‎to address other regional issues.‎

There is however a new realism which has overtaken some of those ‎countries who have been patronized by the American realists for ‎decades. For years, many oil rich nations subsidized the efforts of ‎Islamists in schools, universities, mosques, and in politics. They ‎believed they had bought them off to a large extent in their own ‎countries, but could tip the scales against Israel by aiding Hamas ‎and could satisfy the aggressive demands for Islamist expansion in ‎other places. ‎

The new realism, demonstrated most prominently by Egypt, but ‎also by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, all Sunni Arab states, is that ‎Iran, in particular a nuclear Iran, will become more assertive, not ‎less, and represents the biggest threat to their own regimes. Sunni ‎Islamists are also a threat to stability — witness Iraq, Libya, Syria, the ‎Sinai in Egypt. Increasingly, Turkey and Qatar are now grouped ‎with Iran as advancing an agenda that is unhelpful to the Saudis, ‎Egypt, and the UAE. Saudi Arabia and Egypt will not vote with ‎Israel at the United Nations, and they will continue to sign onto the ‎usual collection of resolutions condemning Israeli human rights ‎violations against the Palestinians. But it is Egypt that has gone to ‎war with jihadists in Sinai, and effectively shut its border with ‎Gaza. Egyptian soldiers and civilians are being murdered by Hamas ‎and other allies of the Muslim Brotherhood. Defeating this threat is ‎as important to Egypt, as defeating Hamas is for Israel.‎

Caroline Glick makes the argument this way:‎

‎”But the alliance that emerged this summer between Israel and ‎Egypt, with the participation of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, is ‎also a highly significant strategic development. For the first time, ‎a major regional power is basing its strategic posture on its ‎understanding that the threats against itself and against Israel ‎stem from the same sources and as a consequence, that the ‎war against Israel is a war against it.‎

“Israelis have argued this case for years to their Arab neighbors ‎as well as to the Americans and other Western states. But for ‎multiple reasons, no one has ever been willing to accept this ‎basic, obvious reality.‎

“As a consequence, everyone from the Americans to the ‎Europeans to the Saudis long supported policies that empower ‎jihadist forces against Israel.‎

‎‎ ‎“[Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah] Sissi is the first major leader to break with this consensus, as a ‎result of actions Hamas took before and since his rise to power. ‎He has brought Saudi Arabia and the UAE along on his ‎intellectual journey.‎

‎ ‎“Sissi’s reassessment of the relationship between the war against ‎Israel and the war against Egypt has had a profound impact on ‎regional realities generally and on Israel’s strategic posture ‎specifically.‎

‎”From Israel’s perspective, this is a watershed event.‎

‎ ‎“The government must take every possible action, in economic ‎and military spheres, to ensure that Sissi benefits from his ‎actions.”‎

Of course, the Obama administration seemed enthralled with the ‎Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, and both threatened ‎and for a time carried out an aid suspension when Sissi and his supporters engineered the ‎overthrow. There have been rumors, denied of course, that the White House has entertained similar notions for Israel due to its ‎‎”unconstructive” policy on settlement construction. More likely, ‎the administration may be trying to intervene in a none too ‎subtle fashion with the upcoming Israeli elections, to signal how ‎much better relations would be between Israel and America if ‎only Netanyahu were gone. If that is the White House strategy, it is not, ‎to use a word, realistic. Most Israelis expect nothing but the ‎back of the hand from Obama at this point, and Obama’s ‎blessing will not enhance the candidates of the Left in the ‎election.

A touch of realism would be welcome in the White House at this ‎point. But it won’t happen because the self-styled realists are ‎wearing the blinkers, and think they know all there is to know.‎

Categories: Egypt, Europe, Foreign policy, Gaza, Hamas, Iran, Iran scam, Israel, Multiculturalism, Netanyahu, Obama, Palestinians, Peace process
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Op-Ed: Going from Bad to Worse

December 14, 2014

Op-Ed: Going from Bad to Worse, Israel National News, Ted Belman, December 14, 2014

(Please see also Caroline Glick tells off Danish ambassador and Preacher at Al-Aqsa Mosque to the Jews: “We Shall Slaughter You Without Mercy” — DM)

From the point of view of Obama, the more pressure on Israel, the better. Europe agrees. The European parliaments, one after another, have favoured the recognition of Palestine in non-binding resolutions.

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The world is totally committed to the two-statesolution. European country after country is passing non-binding resolutions to recognize Palestine in principle. The parameters of the deal which have been set in stone, notwithstanding that all issues are to be decided by negotiations, are the ’67 lines plus swaps and the division of Jerusalem.

Never mind that such a deal is not good enough for the Arabs.  Hamas rejects it outright. Mahmoud Abbas, as President of the PA, is still clamoring for the so called right of return and is unwilling to recognize Israel as the home of the Jews while at the same time insisting that “Palestine” be yudenrein.

The EU has already put a boycott on goods from Judea and Samaria and is drafting legislation imposing sanctions on Israel. It is even rumored that the US is contemplating doing the same. That’s ironic considering that both want to ease sanctions on Iran.

Israel, for its part is going along to get along, at least that is, to a degree. Netanyahu has agreed to negotiate the two-state solution subject to three pillars, “One, genuine mutual recognition; two, an end to all claims, including the right of return; and three, a long-term Israeli security presence.” This is according to his remarks to the Saban Conference.  He did not mention borders. Would he accept ’67 lines plus swaps?  He didn’t say but I think it is implied. Even so, there are no takers.

The Palestine Authority (PA) has turned its back on negotiations which would require it to accept these pillars and instead is getting ready to ask the UN Security Council to recognize the state of Palestine and to call for Israel to evacuate the territories calling for a full Israeli withdraw to the pre-1967 lines by November 2016.

The Obama administrations is working to prevent this but at the same time is considering the implications of not vetoing it. From the point of view of Obama, the more pressure on Israel, the better. Europe agrees. The European parliaments, one after another, have favoured the recognition of Palestine in non-binding resolutions.

Congress, on the other hand, in their spending bill, provides as follows, according to the Washington  Post, “The bill stops assistance to the Palestinian Authority if it becomes a member of the United Nations or UN agencies without an agreement  with Israel. It also prohibits funds for Hamas.” and provides “$3.1 billion in total aid for the country (Israel) plus $619.8 million in defense aid”. It has yet to pass.

Meanwhile the PA continues its incitement and lies. A recent poll of Palestinians showed that 80 percent supported individual attacks by Palestinians who have stabbed Israelis or rammed cars into crowded train stations and 59.6 percent supporting rocket fire at Israel. Is this a partner for peace? This poll may have been intended to promote the resistance.

At long last Israel is mounting certain responses. 1) Greater police presence in Jerusalem with fewer restrictions on them, 2) Greater penalties, like longer sentences, for any violent rioters and 3) Enacting zero tolerance laws prohibiting incitement.  The Bill, not yet passed into law, states, “A call to an act of violence or terror deserves condemnation in the criminal realm as well, even if it is insufficient to lead to violence or terror. It does not deserve to be protected by the principle of freedom of expression.”

Wednesday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon attributed  the building freeze in Judea and Samaria to pressure from the Obama administration and suggested Israel has to wait him out.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that objection to “settlements” was longstanding and would not change after President Barack Obama leaves office in 2017 and said “Our policy has been consistent for quite some time,”

I am not so sure. Besides, she misses the point. While all administrations, from President Reagan on have considered settlements, while not illegal, to be an “obstacle to peace”, none of them forced Israel to freeze construction and even planning for construction and certainly not in Jerusalem.

The US and the EU continually allege that ‘settlements’ are an obstacle to peace. Have you ever heard them claim the same about PA incitement, or its support of terror or its refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state or its unwillingness to forego the “right of return”? Maybe, a little bit in passing, but they have done nothing to change their position and hardly condemned them.

Furthermore, Obama’s decision to back negotiations based on borders along the ’67 lines plus swaps was a big mistake. Doing so was contrary to his often stated position that any settlement must come through direct negotiations. He has forever repeated the mantra that neither side should take any unilateral moves which pre-determine the outcome.  He himself, by predetermining the borders, is pre-determining the outcome.

Had he not pre-determined the borders of the final settlement, then Israel would have been entitled to build everywhere at its peril, meaning that when borders are agreed upon, if ever, the housing on Israel’s side would remain and the housing on the Palestinian side would have to be vacated if the PA insists on the Nazi doctrine of making the land yuden frie (Jew free) and the West supports such a doctrine.

The only unilateral moves proscribed by the Oslo Accords and all subsequent agreements, are those which change the status of the land. By this is meant, claiming sovereignty. So Israel can’t annex the land andthe PA can’t go to the UN and ask them for sovereignty, not so long as the Oslo Accords have not been formally abrogated. The construction of housing by Israel in no way changes the status of the land. And neither does land use planning.

And if you think that Israel will agree to divide Jerusalem, their eternal capital, think again. Nir Barkat, the Mayor of Jerusalem, when addressing the JPOST Diplomatic Conference attended by over three hundred of diplomats, gave a very upbeat assessment of the transformation of Jerusalem that is taking place and will continue to take place.  He stressed the commitment by him and the government to maintain the status quo between all religions. He ended by disabusing the audience of any thoughts they might have about dividing Jerusalem. It will never happen, he said, and I believe him.

Israel is consumed with the issue of whether to pass the nation-state bill which essentially declares that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. To do so, claims the left in Israel, is to diminish it as a democratic state. But there is no evidence to support this.

Eugene Kontorovich wrote a two part article in the Washington Post onThe legitimacy of Israel’s nation-state bill in which he said the bill was unremarkable when compared to many European constitutions with similar, and stronger, national homeland provisions.

He also argued that:

“The proposed measure must also be understood in the context of Israel’s diplomatic situation. Israel’s biggest diplomatic issue is the status of Jerusalem and the West Bank, and international pressure to create a new Arab state there and in Gaza. The major argument by proponents of territorial withdrawal (including President Obama and Sec. Kerry) is that despite the serious security risks, Israel must retreat in order to maintain a “Jewish state.” Indeed, even foreign leaders, like President Obama and Secretary Kerry have both justified their pressure on Israel by invoking the preservation of the Israel’s Jewish identity.”

And went further:

“Thus supporters of Israel leaving the West Bank believe having a Jewish state is worth security risks, surrendering historical homeland and religious sites, and expelling over 100,000 Jews. That suggests a Jewish state is not merely a legitimate thing, but one that is worth a great deal. Yet the same voices calling for Israel to undertake dangerous diplomatic concessions in the name of preserving the state’s Jewish identity balk at legislation declaring that the state in fact is what they claim they want it to remain.”

According to a Israel Democracy Institute recent Poll, 75% of Israeli Jews see no contradiction between Israel being Jewish and being dermcratic.

MEMRI, the NGO that for years has translated the Arab media to document what the Arabs including the PA say among themselves as opposed to what they say in English to the West, prefaced their latest report with this:

“Preacher At Al-Aqsa Mosque In Jerusalem Tells Jews: ‘We Shall Slaughter You Without Mercy’ and ‘I Say To [You] Loud And Clear: The Time For Your Slaughter Has Come’; Says Koran Depicted Jews ‘In The Most Abominable Images,’ Allah Turned The Jews ‘Into Apes And Pigs’; Calls To ‘Hasten The Establishment Of The State Of The Islamic Caliphate’”

Is there any making peace with these people?

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Europe, Fatah, Foreign policy, Gaza, Hamas, International Community, Israel, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Netanyahu, Obama, Palestinians, Peace process, Temple Mount, Two state solution, United Nations
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