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Who is the Real Chickenshit?

November 4, 2014

Who is the Real Chickenshit? Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, November 4, 2014

(Are attempts to spawn a new Islamic Caliphate more grounded in fantasy than Obama-Kerry perceptions of the Islamic State, grounded in their ill-formed perceptions of fact and ideology? Or less? — DM)

Judging by their actions, most Arab leaders do not want to create yet another terrorist Islamist state, dedicated to the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology and to toppling their regimes. We do want a Palestinian state, but please, only one that will provide responsible governance.

According to the “Arab street,” it is the Americans and Europeans who are cowards, afraid to take significant steps against Iran, and terrified of the Islamic ghettoes in their cities, which have been exporting terrorists to fight for the Islamic State, and providing housing to the seasoned fighters who return.

To Arabs, the ultimate irony is that America is paying Qatar to have its airbase there, while Qatar is paying terrorists to kill Americans.

When John Kerry claimed it was the unresolved Palestinian issue that caused a ripple effect that crated ISIS, he simply inspired the Palestinians to use Al-Aqsa mosque as a religious trigger for future bloodshed.

There is a civil war currently under way between radical Islam — motivated by imperialist fantasies of restoring the Islamic Caliphate — and the more moderate secular Muslim regimes that are seeking the path to modernization and progress.

At the same time, Sunni Islam is in the midst of an increasingly violent crisis in its dealings with Shi’ite Iran, which looks as if it is about to be granted nuclear weapons capability, and which for decades quietly has been eyeing neighboring Arab oil fields.

Into the middle of this explosive disarray, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his supporters have thrown the accusation that it was actually Israel’s so-called refusal to reach a peace agreement that was responsible for the ripple effect that led to the creation of ISIS. This incorrect diagnosis of the situation merely postpones the West’s efforts to find a real, workable solution for the Palestinian issue.

774Does Kerry really blame Israel for ISIS? Above, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Israel, on July 23, 2014. (Image source: U.S. State Department)

It is easy for the leaders of the Arab world to latch onto Kerry’s accusation and use it justify their weakness and unwillingness to enter into a direct battle against terrorism; to let America do the dirty work, and conveniently to relieve the Arab world of having to recognize Israel and establish a Palestinian state.

They would also be able to avoid dealing with Israel’s demand for the Palestinian territories to be disarmed and the Palestinians’ demands for concessions from Israel.

Judging by their actions, most Arab leaders have no desire to see the Palestinian issue resolved. They seem to prefer preserving the status quo. They blame Israel for refusing to make concessions to the Palestinians and hope that this refusal will weaken Israel, even though Israel is their strategic defense against Iran.

Most Arab leaders do not want to create what is bound soon to become yet another terrorist Islamist state, dedicated to the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology and to toppling their regimes. The Arab leaders already have to contend with ISIS, Al-Qaeda and the Al-Nusra Front in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, which are enough for them, to say nothing of Africa from Nigeria to Somalia and everything in between.

But if Israel can be blamed for another of world’s ills, with Kerry’s blessing, why waste the opportunity?

When Jordan’s King Abdullah called the current Islamic civil war a cry of distress, he was not speaking randomly. There is a genuine problem.

No examples are better than Turkey, Qatar and Iran. Turkey, led by its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, hosts Hamas’s overseas command center; is supported by Qatar and would apparently like to take control of more Sunni territory by subverting the Sunni Arab monarchies. Such a move would enable Erdogan to realize his outspoken dream of recreating an Ottoman Empire and Caliphate.

Turkey and Qatar, its partner in plotting the return of the Caliphate, have left their fingerprints on most of the terrorist attacks and catastrophes currently visited upon the Middle East, especially in the fields of subversion, incitement to terrorism, and the arming and training of terrorists.

The Middle Eastern Sunni Islamist terrorist organizations, meanwhile, are being incited and indoctrinated by Al-Jazeera TV, a Muslim Brotherhood megaphone that belongs to Qatar’s ruling al-Thani family. It was Al Jazeera’s Arabic channel that created the “Arab Spring” by taking the story of a fruit-seller who merely wanted a permit, and whipping it up, non-stop, until it grew into a revolution that brought down Tunisia’s government.

The Middle East’s terrorist gangs are now armed and trained with funding from Qatar. Recently, in yet another savored irony, Turkey agreed to help train Syrian rebels and allow the U.S. to use its military bases — but for Turkey, the plan is probably to bring down Syria’s non-Sunni President, Bashar Al-Assad, and not, as the U.S. might imagine, to bring down ISIS.

In the past, Persian Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia joined in training Islamic terrorist cadres, but currently, as the Arab proverb goes, “The magic spell boomeranged,” and Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have to defend themselves from the very groups they helped create.

Terrorist organizations are now generously funded by Qatar and NATO-member Turkey, which inspire them to attack the regimes of Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan, and various regimes in the Persian Gulf and Africa. Of course, they are all also inspired to attack Israel, as Hamas has done.

Turkey and Qatar are also exploiting the naiveté of the Western world, encouraging ISIS operatives to make preparations to attack Europe and the United States. Preachers of “political Islam” incite susceptible Islamic youths in the West and prepare them for a terrorist campaign. They use the West’s political correctness, free speech and support for “pluralism,” all the while insisting they are not preaching terrorism.

Turkey and Qatar, along with Iran — which does its utmost to export the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution throughout both North and South America, as well as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen — are aided by a mechanism known as the da’wah, or “outreach,” Da’wah, technically the preaching of Islam, is used by political Islam for indoctrinating, enlisting and handling Islamist terrorists worldwide. Perfected for terrorist purposes by the Muslim Brotherhood, its mouthpiece is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who, like Hamas’s leader, Khaled Mashaal, is based in Qatar.

While Iran’s rivals, the Sunni states, conduct their civil wars, Iran only becomes stronger. Not only is it turning itself into a nuclear power, it is also strengthening all its outposts in the Middle East and around the world. It supports the Shi’ite regime in Iraq against ISIS; it arms and funds the Houthis in Yemen and the Hezbollah in Lebanon; and it supports the Syrian Alawite regime against its Sunni opponents.

When it comes to terrorism, Iran does not draw partisan lines. It also supports the Sunni groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both of which seek to destroy Israel and attack the Egyptians in the Sinai Peninsula.

In response to the colossal threat of radical Islam, the whimpering voice of the West can barely be heard. The U.S. administration targeted Israel for condemnation. A “senior official,” most likely the current White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, called Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “chickenshit,” for being afraid to make peace with the Palestinians.

According to the “Arab street,” including the Palestinian street, it is the Americans and Europeans who are cowards, afraid to take significant steps against Iran, and terrified of the Islamic ghettoes in their cities, which have been exporting terrorists to fight for the Islamic State, and providing housing to the seasoned fighters who return.

The Sunni states under Shi’ite threat cannot even reach an agreement among themselves about what is to be done; and the Palestinians, in their folly, have chosen the worst possible moment to ignite violence in Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa mosque. The Palestinians seem not to understand that the Arab regimes that might support them are currently busy fighting for their own survival, and have no desire to fall prey to Palestinian provocations about what they realize all too well are fictional threats to Jerusalem.

Given the current situation, Turkey’s regional political actions are dangerous, underhanded and hypocritical. To achieve their ends, Turkey’s leaders seem to have no qualms about sacrificing their minorities, such as Christians and the Kurds (most of whom are Sunni). Turkey’s leaders were the first to cry “humanitarian crisis” when Israel imposed a closure on the Gaza Strip to prevent Iran from sending Hamas arms. Turkey sent the Mavi Marmara flotilla to protect the Gazans, who were never in any danger in the first place. Turkey’s leaders then weakened Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who, at least at that time, showed himself willing to reach a peace agreement with the Israelis. But when Syria’s Kurds are being killed in Kobani on a daily basis, the Turks are silent, perhaps secretly comfortable seeing a group that wants a state of its own apart from Turkey, being attacked.

Thus, when John Kerry claimed that it was the unresolved Palestinian issue that caused a ripple effect that created ISIS, he simply inspired the Palestinians to use Al-Aqsa mosque as a religious trigger for future bloodshed. The idea is not new; it was used in 1929 by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and led to anti-Jewish riots and the massacre of the Jews in Hebron. It was used again by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in 2000, to incite the Palestinians to the second intifada, which killed untold numbers of Jews and Arabs. Today, Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas’s Khaled Mashaal are doing the same thing to incite a jihad that this time will truly be religious and not based on real estate.

The more Kerry accuses Israel of having had a hand in creating ISIS, the more the Palestinians will use Al-Aqsa mosque to stir the fire burning under the bubbling cauldron of the Middle East.

The Palestinians’ religious incitement campaign is currently being waged primarily by Mahmoud Abbas, the man who stood in front of the UN and accused Israel of fomenting a religious war. This is the same Mahmoud Abbas who calls on Palestinians to use every means available to fight Israel, while at the same time denying that he is doing so.

Meanwhile, Qatar lurks in the background, instructing Al-Jazeera TV to incite the Palestinians against Israel, Egypt and Jordan, and encouraging terrorist attacks that lead only to justified Israeli reprisals.

Qatar’s royal family hides behind the security of having a major U.S. airbase on its soil, while supporting Hamas, the Islamic Movement in Israel and the terrorist organizations in the Sinai Peninsula. To Arabs, the ultimate irony is that Americans are paying Qatar to have an airbase there, while Qatar is paying terrorists to kill Americans.

Qatar also still finds time nonsensically to accuse the wakf in Jordan, responsible for Al-Aqsa mosque, of collaborating with Israel to eradicate all signs of Muslim presence on the Temple Mount. Qatar’s only plan with that at the moment, however, is to cause riots in Jordan to oust Jordan’s king.

Inspired by Western accusations against Israel and the West’s enthusiastic recognition of a Palestinian state — without requiring the direct negotiations with Israel, as obligated by international treaties — the Palestinian leadership has become more radicalized.

Mahmoud Abbas has gone so far as to abandon his pretense of moderation: if the Israelis can be accused of creating the ISIS with no mention made of the culpability of Hamas, whose ideology is the same as ISIS’s, Mahmoud Abbas has been freed of any commitment to peace and can actively pursue the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state.

In addition, witnessing Russia’s abrogation of its 1994 Budapest Memorandum with the Ukraine, with virtually no adverse consequences, must have seemed a precedent too tempting to ignore. Thus, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas do truly speak with one voice, but it is the voice of Hamas.

Khaled Mashaal, head of Hamas’s political bureau, called on all the Palestinians to take up arms to defend Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The mosque, he said, justifies jihad and the sacrificing of shaheeds [martyrs] to liberate it, and, as in the Hamas charter, that “resistance” is the only solution for the problems of the Palestinian people.

Mashaal was echoed by Mahmoud Abbas at the 14th Fatah conference. Abbas said that under no condition were Jews to be allowed into Al-Aqsa mosque or the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, because any Jewish presence would defile them. On whose authority did he take possession of the Christian holy sites? A short time earlier, Abbas had even claimed that he had no intention of inciting a third intifada against Israel.

Somehow, John Kerry has managed to link to Israel the Shi’ite-Sunni civil wars, radical Islam’s Muslim Brotherhood-inspired global plot and the creation of ISIS. Then he linked the failure of the Palestinian issue to have been resolved to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The unpopular and inconvenient truth is: if there is to be peace, Hamas has to be disarmed, the Palestinian Authority and the Gaza Strip have to be demilitarized, Mahmoud Abbas has to recognize the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jews, and Netanyahu has to recognize the Palestinians state. Israel will then compensate the Palestinians with land in return for the land on which the three large blocks of settlements stand, as has already been agreed.

It is not Israel but the Palestinians who are trying to avoid negotiating a final agreement. They see themselves, with the backing of the UN and Secretary Kerry — and in a final breakdown of any trust in future international agreements — as able to achieve their desired result without having to make any concessions.

People who repeat infamies, as Kerry has done, not only encourage radicalism, they are just delaying the establishment of a Palestinian state. We do want a Palestinian state, but please only one that will provide responsible governance.

Categories: Antisemitism, Egypt, Gaza, Hamas, Iran, Iranian nukes, Iraq, Islam, Islamic State, Israel, Jerusalem, juden ist verboten, Kerry, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Palestinians, Qatar, Syria, Turkey, Two state solution
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Is There a Tacit Obama-Iran Alliance?

November 2, 2014

Is There a Tacit Obama-Iran Alliance? Commentary Magazine, , November 2, 2014

[T]his administration isn’t interested in an accommodation with Israel on key issues. Rather it seeks to crush Israel’s efforts to resist détente with Iran as well as to muscle it on the peace process with the Palestinians even though the latter have frustrated the administration by steadfastly refusing to make peace on even the most favorable of terms on a diplomatic playing field tilted in their direction by the White House.

Having thrown away its previous positions on stopping Iran’s nuclear enrichment or dismantling its nuclear program (as President Obama vowed in his foreign-policy debate with Mitt Romney in 2012), it will clear[ly] stop at nothing to get a deal if one is to be had.

*****************

One of the most important sidebars to the furor over the decision of two “senior administration officials” to tell columnist Jeffrey Goldberg that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a “chickenshit” coward was their boast that he had missed his chance to prevent them from making a weak deal allowing Iran to become a threshold nuclear state. Aside from the general discussion about an administration that is diffident about criticizing actual enemies of the United States choosing to lob outrageous insults at America’s sole democratic ally is the question whether this was a part of an effort to pre-empt Israeli criticism of a weak Iran nuclear deal or was merely just another instance of the Obama foreign policy team’s lack of discipline and incompetence. TheWashington Post editorial page has weighed in on behalf of the latter point of view. But unfortunately there is good reason to think this latest administration attack on Israel was part of a calculated strategy on Iran.

That President Obama has considered engagement with Iran as one of his foreign-policy priorities since coming to office is no secret. But that assumption was given further credence on Friday when the Washington Free Beacon reported on a tape of a talk given by Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes (one of those suspected of being one of the sources for Goldberg’s infamous column) in which he declared that an Iran deal would be the most important objective of the president’s second term and the moral equivalent of ObamaCare as an administration priority.

But we didn’t need Rhodes to tell us that. In signing an interim nuclear deal last year with Tehran that did nothing to force it to give up its nuclear infrastructure or long-term hopes of a weapon, he threw away the West’s considerable economic and military leverage and began a process of unraveling sanctions. But in order to seal a final deal with Iran—assuming, that is, that the Islamist regime deigns to sign one rather than merely keep running out the clock as Obama vainly pursues them—he must do two things: overcome considerable bipartisan opposition from Congress and make sure that Israel and/or moderate Arab regimes equally scared by the Iranians aren’t able to scuttle an agreement.

The president’s formula for achieving this dubious goal is clear.

On the one hand, he will try to forge an agreement that will not require congressional approval. That will be no easy task as the Constitution requires the Senate to approve any treaty with a foreign power and only Congress can repeal the economic sanctions it passed in recent years. But as we already know this isn’t a president that is troubled much by having to trod on the Constitution or violate the law. He will, as has already been reported, attempt to portray an Iran deal as something other than a new treaty. He will also use his executive power to suspend enforcement of sanctions, perhaps indefinitely, in order to render existing laws null and void.

As for Israel, as Goldberg’s column indicated, the administration thinks they’ve already won since Netanyahu failed to order an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities during the president’s first term.

So where does this leave us?

According to the Washington Post editorial, Goldberg’s column was merely an indication of the loose tongues that operate in the West Wing. Assuming that the assault on Netanyahu’s character and the gloating about Israel’s inability to stop U.S. efforts to appease Iran was, in its view, giving the “White House too much credit for calculation” since the insults would make it harder for the U.S. to “reach an accommodation with Israel on Iran and settlements.”

But as the record of the last six years and Rhodes’s indiscreet talk verifies, this administration isn’t interested in an accommodation with Israel on key issues. Rather it seeks to crush Israel’s efforts to resist détente with Iran as well as to muscle it on the peace process with the Palestinians even though the latter have frustrated the administration by steadfastly refusing to make peace on even the most favorable of terms on a diplomatic playing field tilted in their direction by the White House.

Goals often dictate not only tactics employed but also the character of the conflict. Having set reconciliation with Iran as one of his chief objectives—something that was made clear in the president’s first inaugural address and reaffirmed by his subsequent decisions on the long running diplomatic engagement he has pursued—Obama has determined that achieving it is worth sacrificing the United States’ close relations with Israel as well as enraging Arab states that have, to their surprise, found themselves aligned with Israel on this issue rather than the Americans.

Though the administration has been rightly criticized for its habit of equivocation on foreign-policy crises, its single-minded determination to outmaneuver the Israelis on Iran while never giving up on efforts to appease the Islamist regime has been impressive. Having thrown away its previous positions on stopping Iran’s nuclear enrichment or dismantling its nuclear program (as President Obama vowed in his foreign-policy debate with Mitt Romney in 2012), it will clear stop at nothing to get a deal if one is to be had.

Rather than a reset with Israel as the Post advises, Obama has something else in mind. While it may be going too far to say that the administration thinks of itself as entering into an alliance with the Iranians, the bottom line here is that the new Middle East that it envisions after an Iran deal is one in which traditional U.S. allies will be marginalized and endangered while Tehran and its terrorist allies will be immeasurably strengthened. The administration can only achieve that dubious goal by working assiduously against Israel and the bipartisan coalition that backs the alliance with the Jewish state in Congress.

It remains to be seen whether the next Congress will sit back and allow the administration to achieve a détente with the Islamic Republic that will amount to a new tacit U.S.-Iran alliance at the expense of the Jewish state. But whether Congress acts or not (and if the Senate is controlled by the Republicans it is far more likely to be able to thwart the president’s objectives), let no one say that we haven’t been warned about what was about to unfold.

Categories: Gaza, Iran, Iranian nukes, Israel, Netanyahu, Obama, Palestinians, U.S. Congress
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Behind the lines: The Jihadi connection between Sinai, Gaza and Islamic State

November 2, 2014

Behind the lines: The Jihadi connection between Sinai, Gaza and Islamic State, Jerusalem Post, Jonathan Spyer, November 1, 2014

Islamist fighterA militant Islamist fighter films his fellow fighters taking part in a military parade to celebrate their declaration of an Islamic caliphate. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Islamists in the Sinai Peninsula have formed ties with ISIS and, closer to home, with Hamas and salfist groups in the Gaza Strip.

********************

What kind of relations do the jihadists of northern Sinai and Gaza have with Islamic State, and with Hamas? Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared a three-month national emergency this week, following the killing of over 31 Egyptian soldiers in a suicide car bombing carried out by jihadists in northern Sinai.

No organization has issued an authoritative claim of responsibility for the bombing, but it comes amid a state of open insurgency in northern Sinai, as Egyptian security forces battle a number of jihadist organizations. Most prominent among these groups are Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis and Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen; the attack on the Sinai military base came a few days after an Egyptian court sentenced seven members of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis to death for carrying out previous attacks on the army.

In subsequent days, Egyptian officials pointed an accusing finger at the Hamas rulers of Gaza, asserting there is “no doubt that elements belonging to Palestinian factions were directly involved in the attack.” Cairo is now set to build a new barrier separating the Strip from northern Sinai.

In a number of Arabic media outlets, unnamed Egyptian government sources openly accused Hamas members of aiding the assault, assisting with planning, funding and weapons supply.

Are the Egyptian claims credible? Are there links between Hamas or smaller jihadist movements in the Gaza Strip and the insurgents in northern Sinai? And no less importantly, is the armed campaign in northern Sinai linked to Islamic State? First, it is important to understand that jihadist activity in northern Sinai is not a new development. Long before the military coup of July 3, 2013, and indeed before the downfall of president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, this area had become a lawless zone in which jihadists and Beduin smugglers of people and goods carried out their activities.

Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis emerged from this already existing jihadist milieu in the period following Mubarak’s ouster.

At this time, Egyptian security measures in the area sharply declined.

Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis has not confined its activities to the Sinai area; rather, it has directly engaged in attacks on Israeli targets. Recently, the group beheaded four Sinai locals who it accused of being “spies for the Mossad,” also carrying out two rocket attacks on Eilat this past January.

The claim of links between Hamas and Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis has been raised in the past. In September, Egyptian security forces claimed to have found uniforms and weaponry identifiable as belonging to Hamas’s Izzadin Kassam brigades.

It is worth remembering that the current Egyptian government has, since its inception, sought to link salafi jihadist terrorism with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, as part of its strategy of marginalizing and criminalizing the Brotherhood.

The current statements seeking to link Hamas directly to Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis may form part of this larger strategy.

For its part, Hamas indignantly denies any link to this week’s bombing.

But what can be said with greater confidence is there is, without doubt, a burgeoning and violent salafi jihadist subculture which encompasses northern Sinai and southern Gaza – with various organizations possessing members and infrastructure on both sides of the border.

Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis itself and Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen both have members in Sinai and Gaza. Working tunnels smuggling goods and weapons exist between Gaza and northern Sinai, despite Egyptian attempts to destroy them.

It is also a fact that Hamas is aware of these tunnels and makes no attempt to act against them, benefiting economically from their presence.

From this standpoint, Hamas authorities in Gaza are guilty by omission of failing to act against the infrastructure supplying and supporting salafi guerrillas in northern Sinai, whether or not the less verifiable claims of direct Hamas links with them have a basis.

Given this reality, it is also not hard to understand the Egyptian determination to build an effective physical barrier between the Strip and Egyptian territory.

What of the issue of support for Islamic State? Should these jihadist groups be seen as a southern manifestation of the Sunni jihadist wave now sweeping across Iraq, Syria and increasingly, Lebanon? From an ideological point of view, certainly yes.

From an organizational point of view, the situation is more complex.

According to Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, an expert on jihadist groups currently based at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya and the Middle East Forum, neither Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis nor Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen have formally pledged their allegiance to the caliphate established by Islamic State in parts of Iraq and Syria.

Nevertheless, Tamimi confirmed, both organizations have expressed “support” for Islamic State and its objectives, while not subordinating themselves to it through a pledge of allegiance.

Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis is known to maintain contacts with Islamic State, which has advised it on the mechanics of carrying out operations. Islamic State, meanwhile, has publicly declared its support for the jihadists in northern Sinai, without singling out any specific group for public support.

Tamimi further notes the existence of two smaller and more obscure groups in Gaza with more direct links to Islamic State.

These are Jamaat Ansar al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi Bayt al-Maqdis (The Group of Helpers/ Supporters of the Islamic State in Bayt al-Maqdis), which carries out propaganda activities from Gaza and helps funnel volunteers to Syria and Iraq, and the Sheikh Abu al-Nur al-Maqdisi Battalion, a Gazan contingent fighting with Islamic State in these countries.

So, a number of conclusions can be drawn: Firstly, Hamas, in its tolerance of and engagement with smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Sinai, at least indirectly permits the jihadists networks operating these tunnels to wage their insurgency against Egypt – even if the claims of a direct Hamas link to violent activities in Sinai have not yet been conclusively proven.

Secondly, the most important organizations engaged in this insurgency support Islamic State, and are supported by them, though the former have not yet pledged allegiance and become directly subordinate to the latter.

Islamic State is not yet in northern Sinai, but its close allies are. Their activities are tolerated by the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip – as long as they are directed outward, against Egypt and Israel.

Categories: Egypt, Gaza, Hamas, Iran, Islamic State, Israel, Siani
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A virus worse than Ebola is spreading across the world

October 26, 2014

A virus worse than Ebola is spreading across the world, Dan Miller’s Blog, October 26, 2014

It’s called “insanity” and becomes more virulent and more contagious daily.

Lunatic assylum

Lunatic asylum

Here’s a definition of insanity:

Insanity, craziness or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns.

Although the definition references “abnormal mental or behavioral patterns” [emphasis added], the behaviors here involved have become increasingly “normal.” Multicultural linguistics are part, but only part, of the problem.

Insane responses to Iran nukes, terrorism support and human rights

As the P5+1 negotiations continue under Obama’s guidance, Iran appears increasingly likely to get or keep nukes. Iran knows Obama.

The Iranian president’s senior advisor has called President Barack Obama “the weakest of U.S. presidents” and described the U.S. leader’s tenure in office as “humiliating,” according to a translation of the highly candid comments provided to the Free Beacon. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

And with the deadline quickly approaching on talks between the U.S. and Iran over its contested nuclear program, Younesi’s denigrating views of Obama could be a sign that the regime in Tehran has no intent of conceding to America’s demands.

. . . .

“Americans witnessed their greatest defeats in Obama’s era: Terrorism expanded, [the] U.S. had huge defeats under Obama [and] that is why they want to compromise with Iran,” Younesi said.

. . . .

“We [the Islamic Republic] have to use this opportunity [of Democrats being in power in the U.S.], because if this opportunity is lost, in future we may not have such an opportunity again,” Younesi said. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

The criticism of Obama echoes comments made recently by other world leaders and even former members of the president’s own staff, such as Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Do enough of us, and of perhaps greater importance enough of our “leaders,” know Him as well as Iran does?

The P5+1 negotiations were a scam from the beginning and the scam continues, enhanced by perceived needs to work with the (Shiite) Islamic Republic of Iran to degrade the Sunni (but “non-Islamic”) Islamic State and otherwise to “degrade” terrorism.

The Iranian government is well known for its funding of terrorism. The U. S. Government has long been well aware of it.

The United States State Department describes Iran as an “active state sponsor of terrorism.”[2] US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice elaborated stating, “Iran has been the country that has been in many ways a kind of central banker for terrorism in important regions like Lebanon through Hezbollah in the Middle East, in the Palestinian Territories, and we have deep concerns about what Iran is doing in the south of Iraq.”[1]

So is the Obama Administration.

In July 2012, the United States State Department released a report on terrorism around the world in 2011. The report states that “Iran remained an active state sponsor of terrorism in 2011 and increased its terrorist-related activity” and that “Iran also continued to provide financial, material, and logistical support for terrorist and militant groups throughout the Middle East and Central Asia.” The report states that Iran has continued to provide “lethal support, including weapons, training, funding, and guidance, to Iraqi Shia militant groups targeting U.S. and Iraqi forces, as well as civilians,” despite pledging to support the stabilization of Iraq, and that the Qods Force provided training to the Taliban in Afghanistan on “small unit tactics, small arms, explosives, and indirect fire weapons, such as mortars, artillery, and rockets.” The report further states that Iran has provided weapons and training to the Assad regime in Syria which has launched a brutal crackdown on Syrian rebels, as well as providing weapons, training, and funding to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, among others, and has assisted in rearming Hizballah. [Emphasis added.]

Iran hangings by crane

Iran is also remarkable for its failure to provide even minimal human rights. For example, it has been reported that Iran executed more than four hundred people during the first half of 2014. That’s more than two per day.

Despite Iran’s state anti-Semitism, the recent arrest of U.S. journalists, and the continued oppression of women, the Obama administration has been attempting a rapprochement with the Iranian regime. Fending off Iran hawks in Congress and the D.C. punditocracy, the administration has argued for a policy of constructive engagement, pursuing diplomacy over military action to halt Iran’s nuclear program. The execution of two gay men, while it may not be surprising, certainly doesn’t make that “engagement” any easier.

Iran’s cooperation also is seen as essential to managing the chaos in Iraq and the Islamic State. With U.S. airstrikes against the Sunni militants, on-off (now definitely off) support of Iraq’s Shiite (ex-) Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and the possible disintegration of Iraq, this cooperation—or at least not overt opposition—is surely of more strategic importance than the latest human rights abuse. [Emphasis added.]

The execution of Rayhaneh Jabbari is the most recent of such atrocities announced by Iran. Please see also Iran’s “Hanging Machine” to Execute Reyhaneh Jabbari and “Goodbye, Dear Mum”: Iran Executes Rayhaneh Jabbari — UPDATED.

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Iran’s support for terrorism, abysmal violation of even the most basic human rights — and what these Iranian characteristics suggest that Iran is likely to do with its nukes — appear to be deemed of no importance by the P5+1 negotiators.

Domestic terrorism

Terrorism is often labeled “workplace violence,” a “traffic accident“ or just about anything but Islamic. This is from Jihad Watch:

A traffic incident in Jerusalem. Another traffic incident in Canada just a few days ago. Odd coincidence: both drivers were devout Muslims who killed Infidels “in the name of Allah” (as the Canadian bad driver put it). Meanwhile, also in Canada, a mentally ill man shoots up the Parliament building and murders a soldier. And in New York City, a man wielding a hatchet injures several police officers. Another odd coincidence: both the Canadian mentally ill man and the New York hatchet-wielder were also devout Muslims. The father of the former waged jihad in Libya, and the latter called for armed revolt in the U.S. But you must put all of these odd coincidences out of your mind right now. We know that none of this can have anything to do with Islam, and that greasy Islamophobes are the only ones who think otherwise.

“Memo from US Consulate refers to Jerusalem terror attack as ‘traffic incident,’” by Itamar Eichner, Ynet News, October 24, 2014 (thanks to Hamish):

Hours after a Palestinian terrorist drove his car into a crowd waiting at a light rail station in Jerusalem, the US consulate in the city issued a memo referring to the attack as a “traffic incident”.

A three-month-old baby was killed and seven other people were wounded when Abdel Rahman a-Shaludi drove his car across incoming traffic to strike the people waiting at the station. The baby girl, Chaya Zissel Braun, had American citizenship.

The memo was sent to employees of the American consulate, which is based in East Jerusalem. It asks staff to report “any emergency.”

AnneinPT (Israel) provides an actual Associated Press news headline about the “traffic accident.” “Israeli police shoot man in east Jerusalem.”

Here’s how the AP, consistently with its customary reporting on things Israeli, might treat Palestinian rockets thwarted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system: “Palestinian rockets damaged beyond repair by Israeli counter-measures.”

“Lone wolf” Islamic terrorists are exceedingly rare.

[N]umerous examples show that terrorist actors are almost always part of a network who were involved in recruiting and tasking terrorist activity. As Max Abrahms at Northeastern University has observed:

Since the advent of international terrorism in 1970, none of the 40 most lethal terrorist attacks has been committed by a person unaffiliated with some terrorist group, according to publicly available data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, which is funded by the Department of Homeland Security and stored at the University of Maryland. In fact, lone wolves have carried out just two of the 1,900 most deadly terrorist incidents over the last four decades.

So why “lone wolf”? Simply, it was a mechanism promulgated by the CVE [countering violent extremism] industry, with willing cooperation from law enforcement and intelligence officials, to exonerate themselves when a terrorist attack happened. At its core is terror agnosticism: “There is possibly no way to predict who will turn to terrorism, so therefore we can’t be held responsible when it happens. Oh, and give us more money so we can better improve how we won’t be able to predict terror attacks.” [Insert added.]

It’s Islamic terrorism all the way down:

Yet there has been great reluctance to associate terrorist attacks with the “religion of peace.” Here are examples of media and official reactions to the recent terrorist attacks in Canada: “CBC’s Derek Stoffel tweeted: ‘Amid the speculation in the #OttawaShooting in #Canada, it’s important to remember #ISIS hasn’t shown interest in attacks abroad.’” However,

Stoffel should have known that in late September, the Islamic State’s spokesman, Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani, urged Muslims to murder non-Muslims in the West. “Rely upon Allah,” he thundered, “and kill him in any manner or way however it may be. Do not ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s verdict.

“The hard-Left Vox reacted to the revelation that Zehaf-Bibeau was a Muslim by dismissing the fact as irrelevant.”

Not to be outdone in multicultural empathy,

In the wake of the shootings in Ottawa, the police chiefs of Toronto and Ottawa wrote to local Muslim leaders, assuring them of their good will and urging Muslims to contact them in case of a “backlash.” These politically correct cops appear to have learned their lesson well: after every jihad attack, Muslims are the victims, and need special reassurances.

Eventually, the Canadian terrorist attacks were labeled “terrorism.” Even the White House called them “despicable terrorist attacks,” without mentioning the words “Islam” or “Islamist.”

Reid-knows-Terrorist

Finally, NY hatchet attack was terror according to police commissioner. But again, not Islamist terrorism.

Voting fraud

In 2008 we the people elected Obama as “our” President. We did it again in 2012. He was viewed by many as the one for whom they had been waiting.

Obama Banard College REV

He was seen as the “God of all things.”

ObamaGod

Fortunately, some seem to be recovering from their dementia.

tatoo removal

However, all too many are still infected with insanity and continue to be contagious. Here’s a video of James O’Keefe talking with college students about vote fraud:

Vote fraud is apparently good when done for a “good” purpose.

When Obama spoke about Democrats running for reelection appearing to desert but really supporting him, he said

“So this isn’t about my feelings being hurt. These are folks who are strong allies and supporters of me. And I tell them, I said, ‘You know what, you do what you need to win. I will be responsible for making sure that our voters turn out.'” [Emphasis added.]

He may not have intended to encourage voter fraud, but “you do what you need to win” may well have been taken seriously by Obamabots. It has, as a minimum, an unpleasant odor.

According to a Washington Post study, non-citizens could decide the vote in November 2014.

How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections. Non-citizen votes could have given Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health-care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) won election in 2008 with a victory margin of 312 votes. Votes cast by just 0.65 percent of Minnesota non-citizens could account for this margin. It is also possible that non-citizen votes were responsible for Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina. Obama won the state by 14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 percent of North Carolina’s adult non-citizens would have provided this victory margin.

. . . .

We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted. [Emphasis added.]

voting

According to Watchdog Org,

With early voting starting Thursday, North Carolina’s election board found 154 ineligible voters on its poll lists — and officials are examining thousands more questionable registrations.

The illegal immigrants landed on the state’s voter rolls, courtesy of the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The State Board of Elections said late Tuesday that more than 9,000 additional voters’ names are being checked for legal status. They do not expect to finish checking before early voting starts Thursday.

It’s necessary for Republicans to win outside the “margin of fraud,” and there have already been signs of voter fraud. In Arizona,

A Republican party official in the largest county in Arizona says surveillance tape shows a progressive Hispanic activist blatantly and openly engaging in vote fraud.

. . . .

Between 12:54 and 1:04, LaFaro said, he observed a man wearing a “Citizens for a Better Arizona” T-shirt loudly drop a box containing hundreds of early-voting ballots on a table.

Citizens for a Better Arizona is a progressive group.

The man then began “stuffing the ballot box,” LaFaro said. “I watched in amazement.”

In Chicago, Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan’s votes for Republican candidates, including for himself, were registered as having been cast for Democrats. He noticed the problem before pulling the ultimate lever and it was determined that the machine had been “improperly calibrated.” There is no indication in the linked article whether other machines were also “improperly calibrated” or whether any of them were examined to find out. Obviously, voters need to check for whom the machines say they have voted before pulling the lever. How many will bother to do so?

Since voter fraud may be insufficient, President Obama has diligently prevented voters from understanding what He intends to do about immigration soon after the election. Jonathan Turley, Esq., a “liberal” in the old fashioned sense rather than a leftist, wrote this about Obama’s refusal to disclose or even discuss His post-election plans for immigration “reform.”

[Y]esterday [October 23d] White House CBS reporter Major Garrett broke from the mainstream pack and pressed White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on a report that the Administration has order material for a “surge” of immigration IDs of up to 9 million in one year. Ernest called the questions “crazy” and encouraged everyone not to speculate . . . before the election obviously. [Emphasis added.]

[T]his Administration is openly withholding any information in its plans for unilateral presidential action despite the President’s pledge to take action after the election and before the New Year — only a matter of weeks. It is a cynical decision to prevent voters from being fully informed of the plans in a major policy area. Regardless of how one feels about immigration policies, it should be condemned by people across the political spectrum. [Emphasis added.]

More importantly, the media has to show some independence from the White House in this and other stories. Garrett is one of the few such reporters to press the point. His extraordinary exchange however was not covered by the mainstream press and, once again, the stonewalling on the issue was again dropped. I expect given the record of the White House corp, such questioning from Garrett does seem “crazy.” After all, disclosure of such plans might harm the White House in the upcoming election and only a “crazy” reporter would pursue such a story. [Emphasis added.]

Get your excuses for not voting prepared if you like the status quo:

If you don’t like the status quo, vote and remind your friends to do so as well.

Conclusions

From the P5+1 negotiations with Iran and the failure of our “leaders” even to pause on their path to Iranian nukes due to Iran’s abysmal human rights record, its support for terrorism and the dangers Iran already poses for what’s left of the free and democratic world — and will pose in even greater measure with nukes — to rampant antisemitism to Islamic attacks on and persecution of Christians qua Christians, to domestic Islamic terrorism to voting fraud, far too many are either insane or extraordinarily devious. Those who appear to be insane either do not recognize the nature of our enemies or do not care. Some are perhaps complicit.

As this insidious form of insanity spreads we seem to have no antidote more powerful than reason and common sense, both increasingly rare. Will our enemies have to provide a more effective antidote in the form of an attack on the United States so severe, clear and obvious that insanity can no longer be ignored even by our lunatics?

Categories: Antisemitism, Executions, Gaza, Iran, Iranian nukes, Iraq, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Middle East, Multiculturalism, Obama, Syria war, Terrorism
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Israel and the West’s Submission to Islam

October 25, 2014

Israel and the West’s Submission to Islam, American Thinker, Mordechai Nisan, October 25, 2014

(The Islamic problem cannot easily be resolved and to disparage the “religion of peace” would be wickedly un-multicultural. Yet there is a need to attack someone and/or something. Israel and the demon “climate change” are the easiest available targets. — DM)

Are we not passing through a very momentous period of history: with signs of the political decline and social decadence of Europe and the West, the clash between Israel and Islam, between Islam and Christianity, and with attendant results that could change the political — and religious — map of the world? The cutting edge of history is the crossroads we now face.

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There is a striking contrast today in world politics between the West’s submission to Islam and its assault upon Israel; this, ironically enough, occurs while we witness an Islamic assault upon Europe.

Unable to contend with Islam’s massive penetration of the continent, or to deal effectively and morally with its barbaric warfare against peoples in the Middle East, Europe has chosen to stalk Israel, embattled and attacked on many fronts.

The abandonment of the Jews in 1939-1945 in Europe and the murder of six million of them by the Germans represent a historical theme and modern chapter of the old hatred. Europe is not cleansed of this madness and fury; and it is incapable of seeing the justice and reasonableness in Israel’s existence and policies, bashing her over Jerusalem, settlements, human rights, and military operations. Nietzsche said that Europe would be a boring place without the intellectual ferment and cultural contributions of the Jews, but it would apparently be a happy place for some Europeans.

Now, with the blatant eruption of a reinvigorated anti-Semitism in Europe, the political campaign against Israel acquires its explicit racial underpinnings. The more vitriolic the attacks on Israel, running the spectrum from censure, defamation, to delegitimization, the more transparent the European culprit aflame with concentrated racist hatred of the Jews and their Jewish state.

The political backlash against Israel from the summer war in Gaza testifies to the moral bankruptcy of Europe and the loss of any equitable sense of justice. Now the Palestinian aggressor, undefeated and unrepentant, is to be rewarded with Gaza’s reconstruction. Mahmoud Abbas, unwilling to recognize the Jewish state of Israel, is to be rewarded with his own Palestinian state, according to sentiments in Sweden, Britain, and no doubt elsewhere.

The discourse of peace surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum remains as divorced from morality and reality as could ever be imagined in this lopsided political universe. The laws of sociology and the lessons of history make the two-state solution a non-starter. After 47 years, the settlement map of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, their size and spread, preempt an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 armistice lines. The idea of a Palestinian state over all of the territory is not in the demographic and geographic cards. Moreover, the embedded friction between the Jews and the Arabs, after so much bloodshed, enmity, and mistrust, is a visible obstacle to a mutually satisfactory agreement between them on all outstanding issues – borders and refugees, water and security, and Jerusalem. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is intractable and unsolvable according to the current modalities of proposed peace-making.

A frenzied Muslim fanaticism has galvanized the dormant emotional energies of an Islam bedeviled by old memories (like the Caliphate) and sectarian (Sunni-Shiite) divisions, always with a profound disdain for non-Muslims unworthy of life and dignity. The swirl of Islamic warfare began in Afghanistan and Pakistan, passed through Khomeini’s Iranian Islamic theocracy, penetrated northern Iraq and threatens Baghdad, took hold in eastern Syria, already with appeal and a foothold in Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel.

Meanwhile Europe lives in denial, paralyzed by multiculturalism and national self-immolation, hypnotized by the dogma of human rights, guilt-ridden by its colonial past, and hoping to mollify Muslims on their streets and neighborhoods by offering up the sacrifice of Christians and Jews in the Middle East to the Islamic god of wrath. But Islam seeks world conquest that includes the West as well.

What the Europeans ignore about the Arab-Israeli conflict and the long war is the precedent of 1948. When the Arabs attacked, and the West militarily embargoed Israel, the Zionists yet won a compelling victory in their ancient homeland; and a half a million Arabs became refugees, never to return. In 1967, the Arabs again declared their goal to be the annihilation of Israel; but Israel won, and another quarter of a million Arabs fled the country.

In 2014 the same scenario is unfolding. Pushed to the wall by Europeans who overlook and justify escalating domestic Arab violence and provocations, Israel will sooner or later need to unleash a severe response against the Muslims in the country who deny the right of Israel to exist, at all, and certainly as a Jewish and Zionist state. Newton’s political physics teach us that an action produces a reaction, and Hegel’s dialectics charted how a thesis leads to an antithesis, culminating in a new, rarely anticipated, synthesis. All this fondling of the Palestinians and coddling of Islam is putting in place a horrific threat to Israel, which may however evoke a welcome opportunity for deliverance and triumph.

Are we not passing through a very momentous period of history: with signs of the political decline and social decadence of Europe and the West, the clash between Israel and Islam, between Islam and Christianity, and with attendant results that could change the political — and religious — map of the world? The cutting edge of history is the crossroads we now face.

Categories: Antisemitism, Gaza, Hamas, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, Jews, juden ist verboten, Middle East, Multiculturalism, Terrorism
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John Kerry’s Dangerous Worldview

October 19, 2014

John Kerry’s Dangerous Worldview, Israellycool, Mirabelle, October 19, 2014

(Please watch the Kerry video at the bottom, or at least the part about Israel, “Palestine” and world peace beginning at 11:20. The world is probably not completely insane — yet: Kerry did not blame Israel or the Jews for the Holocaust and World War II. — DM)

Kerry’s scapegoating of Israel has become a dangerous pattern, one that is indicative of a worldview that underlies his behavior and his decisions with respect to the Jewish State.

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The operative question for the US State Department now appears to be, is there anything left that John Kerry won’t blame on the Jews?

Earlier this year, the Secretary of State famously sat before Congress and blamed Israel for the failure of the peace talks that he pushed so hard for, even though, as was subsequently revealed, it was Kerry’s own miscommunications that doomed the talks from the start. Prior to that, he had implied that if a third intifada started, it would be Israel’s doing. Now it seems that, at a State Department event for the festival of Eid al-Adha onThursday, Kerry has blamed Israel for the rise of ISIS.

Kerry’s pronouncement calls to mind this satire piece from PreOccupied Territory, titled “Free Will Is Only For White People,” and “attributed” to Kerry’s former right-hand man and Qatar-stooge Martin Indyk:

Since Arabs, as nonwhites, lack free will, the only ethical method of achieving change is to demand concessions from Israel. A society or individual with genuine volition and sense of right and wrong could be held accountable for translating political grievances into the bombings of cafes and buses, but that is not how we, or our European allies, view the Palestinians. They have no choice but to resort to brutality, since that is their nature.

Satire. Except, it’s not. Kerry’s various statements about the peace talks, Palestinian terrorism, or ISIS all remove the agency of the actors involved. The individuals who join ISIS — at least those who are adults and not teenagers — do so of their own accord. They have agency, and they alone are responsible for their own actions. Kerry would never excuse the actions of a rapist on the ground that he had been provoked or led on by his victim. He should never justify the actions of the most depraved terrorists on the ground that they have a political gripe.

Taking this mentality a step further and making the claim that Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians have anything to do with the rise of ISIS requires a logical leap into the absurd. Kerry claimed that “there wasn’t a leader I met with in the region who didn’t raise with me spontaneously the need to try to get peace between Israel and the Palestinians, because it was a cause of recruitment and of street anger and agitation.” Even setting aside the issue of holding individuals to account for their own actions, one still must wonder, why Kerry would take such assertions at face value. ISIS directs its jihad against Christians, Yazidis, Kurds, and other Muslims but, somewhat surprisingly, it has not attacked Israel. If Israel were the source of ISIS rage, wouldn’t ISIS have attacked Israel? ISIS’s gripe, however, is with all of western society, not with Israel. And it recruits from Europe and the US, as well as from the Mideast. The suggestion that Israel has caused ISIS makes about as much sense as the suggestion that Israel has caused global warming. There simply is no cause-and-effect relationship.

The State Department’s division of black-is-white-and-day-is-night, in the person of Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf, has of course attempted to walk back Kerry’s comments, saying, Kerry “didn’t make a link between growth of ISIL and Israel, period.” But this is not a case of he said, she said, and it is not a case of misplaced context. Kerry’s entire speech is on theState Department website for anyone to see:

As I went around and met with people in the course of our discussions about the ISIL coalition, the truth is we – there wasn’t a leader I met with in the region who didn’t raise with me spontaneously the need to try to get peace between Israel and the Palestinians, because it was a cause of recruitment and of street anger and agitation that they felt – and I see a lot of heads nodding – they had to respond to. And people need to understand theconnection of that.

Doofus

That is to say, that in the context of discussions regarding ISIL/ISIS, other Arab leaders raised the issue of the Palestinians, and Kerry feels that people need to understand the connection. To say that this is not an attempt to link ISIS to the Palestinian issue is the most obfuscatory double-speak. For those who have the stomach for it, you can watch the video yourself, embedded below. The relevant comments start at about 11:20. Note the way that Kerry uses hand gestures for extra emphasis when he says “understand the connection.”

Kerry’s scapegoating of Israel has become a dangerous pattern, one that is indicative of a worldview that underlies his behavior and his decisions with respect to the Jewish State. Although Jeff Goldberg wrote persuasively in 2013 that “the past two years have proved the theory of linkage [i.e., the theory that the Mideast would be stable if the Israeli-Palestiniandispute were solved] to be comprehensively false,” Kerry appears unwilling to move on from it and to accept a more reality-based perspective. It is no wonder, then, that his actions in the Mideast have been, to put it kindly, ineffective.

In the same speech, Kerry also spoke about introspection on the Muslim and Jewish holidays. It seems that Kerry would benefit from some introspection of his own. In doing so, he might consider that, had he not been so obsessively focused on Israel and its real or perceived failings, he might have woken up to the ISIS threat sooner. He might also consider his own department’s definition of anti-semitism: “Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, the state of Israel, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.” Kerry’s scapegoating of Israel for his own failures and for those of others is one of the most traditional forms of anti-Semitism around.

 

Categories: Gaza, Hamas, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Palestinians, Jewish occupation of Israel, Kerry, Middle East, Obama, Syria, Terrorism
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Guest Column: The Road from Qatar to the Gaza Strip

October 16, 2014

Guest Column: The Road from Qatar to the Gaza Strip, The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Reuven Berko, October 15, 2014

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Throughout its history, Hamas, like ISIS, has been committed to the concept of the global caliphate, which it plans to help construct by creating its own Islamic emirate on the ruins of the State of Israel.

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In a recent speech, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor mentioned the central role of Qatar in supporting international terrorist organizations. Money flowing from Qatar to Hamas, for example, paid for the terrorist attack tunnels dug from the Gaza Strip under the security fence into Israeli territory, and for the thousands of rockets fired at Israeli civilian targets in both the distant and recent past. In response, State Department spokesperson Marie Harf rushed to Qatar’s defense, claiming it had an important, positive role in finding a solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Qatar’s funding for Islamist terrorist organizations all over the world is an open secret known to every global intelligence agency, including the CIA. It was exposed by Wikileaks, which clearly showed that funds from Qatar were transferred to al-Qaida. Qatar also funds the terrorist movements opposing the Assad regime in Syria, such as the Al-Nusra Front, encourages anti-Egyptian terrorism in the Sinai Peninsula and within Egypt itself, and is involved in Islamic terrorism in Africa and other locations. It accompanies its involvement in terrorism targeting Israel and Egypt (through the Muslim Brotherhood) with vicious and inflammatory propaganda on its Al-Jazeera TV channel.

Qatar also spends millions of dollars supporting the Islamic Movement in Israel, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood headed by Sheikh Ra’ed Salah. The Islamic Movement is responsible for ongoing acts of provocation on the Temple Mount and in Judea and Samaria, and incites the entire Islamic world against Israel, claiming that the Jews are trying to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque and replace it with the Jewish Temple. The incitement continued even as the Islamic Movement’s sister movement, Hamas, fired rockets at Jerusalem and endangered both the mosques on the Temple Mount and Jerusalem’s sites sacred to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

As Qatar’s representative, the Islamic Movement, which has not yet been outlawed in Israel, contributed to Hamas what it could during Operation Protective Edge by instigating riots, blocking roads and seeking to foment a third intifada which, according to the plan, would be joined by Israeli Arabs to augment the deaths of thousands of Israelis killed by rockets and the mass murders through the attack tunnels planned for the eve of the Jewish New Year.

In his recent UN speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebutted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ accusations of Israeli “genocide” of the Palestinian people. He reminded his audience of Hamas’ use of Gazan civilians as human shields and of the rockets fired to attack specifically civilian Israeli targets. Unfortunately, he did not mention the Hamas charter, which calls for the murder of all the Jews. The fact that Abbas now heads a national consensus government in which Hamas is a full partner commits him to the slaughter of the Jewish people – a true genocide – and it is to the disgrace of the international community that such an individual was permitted to address the UN instead of being tried for war crimes.

In fact, the similarities between Hamas and ISIS are clearly stated in the Hamas charter, which defines Hamas as part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s global Islamic movement. One of its objectives is to fight “infidel Christian imperialism” and its Zionist emissaries in Israel in order to impose the Sharia, Islamic religious law, on the world. According to the charter’s paragraph 7, Hamas’ intention is to slaughter every Jew, as ordered by Muhammad and those who accept his legacy. That is the basis for the threat issued by ISIS “Caliph,” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, that under his leadership, Islam will “drown America in blood.”

Throughout its history, Hamas, like ISIS, has been committed to the concept of the global caliphate, which it plans to help construct by creating its own Islamic emirate on the ruins of the State of Israel. Since its founding, Hamas has attacked Israel and murdered thousands of its citizens exactly as ISIS has attacked and murdered “infidels.” They share the same slogans, with “There is no god but Allah” and “Allah, Prophet Muhammad” inscribed on their flags and headbands. Hamas terrorists have blown themselves up in Israel’s coffee shops, hotels, restaurants, buses, malls and markets, wherever there are large concentrations of civilians. The way Hamas executed suspected collaborators during the final days of Operation Protective Edge bore the hallmarks of the al-Qaida execution of Daniel Pearl and the ISIS beheading of James Foley and others.

In the decades during which Hamas has carried out a continual series of deadly terrorist attacks against Israel, wearing the same “Allah, Prophet, Muhammad” headbands as ISIS terrorists, the international community rarely voices its support for Israel, or takes into account that by defending itself Israel also defends the West, which has failed to understand that “political Islam” inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood was setting up shop in the free world’s backyard and that the ticking bomb was set to go off sooner than expected. The West has not clearly condemned Qatar for openly supporting Hamas and its terrorist activities against Israel or demanded that it stop.

While Israel responded to Hamas’ rocket attacks on civilian targets to keep thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Israeli civilians from being killed, the international community demanded “proportionality.” That requirement kept Israel from responding as it should have and encouraged Hamas to fire ever more rockets at “military targets” such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. When Israel built its security fence to keep Hamas suicide bombers from infiltrating into Israeli territory to blow themselves up in crowds of civilians, the international community opposed it, rushed to embrace the Palestinians’ vocabulary of “racism” and “apartheid,” and willingly played into the hands of Hamas and Abbas. This reaction occurred although Israel is the only truly democratic country in the Middle East, where Jews and Arabs can live in peace without “apartheid.”

Today President Obama says he “underestimated” the threat posed by ISIS, while Israel has been warning the world of extremist military Islam for at least a decade, as Netanyahu warned the world of a nuclear Iran in his UN speech.

The international community has been curiously silent about the genuine apartheid in the Arab states neighboring Israel. There, descendants of the original 1948 Palestinian refugees, by now in their fourth generation, still live in refugee camps, do not have citizenship, and are excluded from jobs and social benefits. Israel, however, absorbed hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees, many of them destitute, who fled Europe and were expelled from the Arab countries when the state was founded, and were given citizenship and enjoy full rights, as do the Arabs who remained in Israel after the War of Independence.

Israel, which has nothing against the Palestinian people, would like to see the Gaza Strip rebuilt for both humanitarian reasons and to give Hamas something to lose. Radical Islamic elements around the globe, however, including Hamas, ISIS, al-Qaida, the Al-Nusra Front and Hizballah, all financed by Qatar, do not want to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolved. They all have the same global agenda, based on fueling the conflict to unite Islam around it, under their leadership.

Therefore, Qatar continues to support global Islamic terrorism. On Sept. 13, Qatar paid the Al-Nusra Front a ransom of $20 million to free abducted UN soldiers from Fiji. The world praised Qatar for its philanthropy, but in effect, it was a brilliant act of manipulation and fraud, both filling the Al-Nusra Front’s coffers and representing itself as the Fijians’ savior. Qatar is using the same underhanded trick in the Gaza Strip. After sending Hamas millions of dollars to fund its anti-Israeli terrorist industry, itpledged $1 billion to help rebuild the Gaza Strip during last weekend’s conference in Cairo.

While the world hopes Operation Protective Edge was the last round of Palestinian-Israeli violence, senior Hamas figures reiterate their position of gearing up to fight Israel again. Not one Hamas leader is willing to agree to a full merger with the Palestinian Authority to establish a genuine unified Palestinian leadership. Hamas rejects even the idea of disarming or demilitarization as part of an agreement to rebuild the Gaza Strip and promote the peace process. Unfortunately, no one has suggested it as a pre- condition for any U.S. dollars that will be contributed to the reconstruction of Gaza.

All that is left now is to hope that the billions of dollars poured into the Gaza Strip for its rebuilding will be accompanied by the disarmament of Hamas and the establishment of an honest mechanism for overseeing the money and materials Egypt and Israel allow into the Gaza Strip. It is imperative that they not be diverted to rebuild Hamas’ terrorist infrastructure and tunnels, or to bribe UNRWA officials to look the other way, as has happened so often in the past. There is every indication that only Hamas and Qatar know whether there is anything to justify that hope.

Dr. Reuven Berko has a Ph.D. in Middle East studies, is a commentator on Israeli Arabic TV programs, writes for the Israeli daily newspaper Israel Hayom and is considered one of Israel’s top experts on Arab affairs.

Categories: Caliphate, Gaza, Hamas, Islam, Islamic State, Israel, Palestinians, Jihad, Middle East, Qatar, Terrorism
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Anti-Semitic Text on UNRWA Website Claims ‘Jews Promoted Social Corruption’‏ (VIDEO)

October 14, 2014

Anti-Semitic Text on UNRWA Website Claims ‘Jews Promoted Social Corruption’‏ (VIDEO), Algemeiner, Dave Bender, October 14, 2014

(There’s little new here, mainly more of the same from Ban Ki-Moon and the U.N. Rocket Warehouse Agency. To expect, even to hope, for objectivity is to be deluded.– DM)

ban-ki-moon-netanyahu-300x194Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon meet on Tuesday in New York. Photo: UN Photo/Evan Schneider.

Ban, speaking at a Gaza reconstruction conference in Cairo on Sunday, and in Ramallah a day later, said Israel was at fault for “a restrictive occupation that has lasted almost half a century, the continued denial of Palestinian rights and the lack of tangible progress in peace negotiations.”‎

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Investigative pro-Israel blogger, Elder of Ziyon, on Monday uncovered a report, in Arabic, posted on the the United Nations Refugee Works Agency (UNRWA) website, that accuses Jews of supporting “social corruption.”

Entitled, “The Historical Development of Human Rights Throughout History,” the document purports to be a summary of human rights policies held by a number of civilizations over the ages, including Jewish thought on various aspects of Mosaic prohibitions against “murder, adultery and theft.”

While the article begins by praising Judaism as “a heavenly religion revealed to the Prophet of Allah Musa [Moses], peace be upon him included human rights through its focus on the goal of liberating the individual and the community. The right to freedom from oppression is a supreme value highlighted in Jewish holy books (Rashidi: 2005: 60). The commandments of Moses, peace be upon him, include prohibiting murder, adultery and theft.”

But soon enough, the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel stereotypes kick in.

“But if we look around us at communities supposedly protecting human rights and at well-known oases of democracy we do not see [human rights] but instead charges that the victim was a terrorist or supporter of terrorism, and also pornography justified freely as rights. We see monopoly and fraud justified by the right of ownership and earnings in any form (Mokbel: 2005: 5) All of this happened as a result of distortion and misinformation by the Jewish clergy. The Jews in the sixth and seventh centuries promoted social corruption (1981: 39), and the claim that they are God’s chosen people demonstrates that the Jews did not know anything about human rights,” the author claimed.

In a related development, both the Bnai-Brith and the Anti Defamation League on Tuesday criticized recent remarks by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon holding Israel almost exclusively responsible for the summer’s clashes with Hamas in Gaza.

Ban, speaking at a Gaza reconstruction conference in Cairo on Sunday, and in Ramallah a day later, said Israel was at fault for “a restrictive occupation that has lasted almost half a century, the continued denial of Palestinian rights and the lack of tangible progress in peace negotiations.”‎

In response, Bnai-Brith demanded that Ban “refrain from making biased, inflammatory remarks perpetuating a false image of Israel as an occupying aggressor. Ban, in his comments, did make mention of Hamas rocket attacks that were ‘fired indiscriminately causing fear, panic and suffering.’ However, he does not account for anti-Israel terrorists’ role in igniting and sustaining conflict—a stunning and inexplicable omission.”

The group said that “the open fanaticism, terrorism and armament of Arab extremists is the patent ‘root cause’ of recurring conflict with Israel.”

Donor nations pledged some 5.4 billion dollars – 1.4 billion more than the Palestinians themselves had requested – at the session.

The ADL, for its part, expressed “deep dismay” at what they termed Ban’s “stunning lack of objectivity” in remarks made alongside Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in Ramallah, and in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Mr. Ban’s failure to publicly call on Palestinians to reject violence, recognize Israel’s right to exist and avoid actions which might undermine the hope for reconciliation sends precisely the wrong message,” ADL National Director Abraham Foxman charged.

“It encourages Palestinian unilateral steps and conveys to Hamas there are no consequences for its murderous terrorism,” he said.

Ban “consistently places the onus on Israel,” according to Foxman, who contended in a statement that “such a one-sided characterization of the ‘root causes’ undermines the Secretary General’s credibility as an unbiased observer.”

Watch a video of Ban’s meeting with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin at the Presidential Residence:

Categories: Ban Ki-Moon, Gaza, Hamas, Ideology, Israel, Jewish occupation of Israel, United Nations
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U.S. airstrike in Mosul underscores military questions ahead in dealing with Iraqi cities

October 9, 2014

U.S. airstrike in Mosul underscores military questions ahead in dealing with Iraqi cities, Washington Post, Dan Lamothem October 9, 2014

(Will the IDF be asked for advice on limiting civilian casualties as it did, successfully, in Gaza? Probably not. Soliciting and following it would be politically inconvenient. — DM)

IS in MosulMilitants from the Islamic State parade down a main street in Mosul, Iraq, in June in a Humvee they commandeered from Iraqi troops. (AP Photo, File)

[T]he planning, along with the U.S. launching its first airstrike inside Mosul on Wednesday, raises questions about how the United States and its partners will be able to assist in an urban military campaign if their mission is restricted to an air campaign and advising Iraqi forces.

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Shortly after retired U.S. Gen. John Allen arrived in Baghdad as the new U.S. envoy to the coalition against the Islamic State, he made it perfectly clear what part of the plan against the Islamic State militant group included: taking back Mosul.

The city, Iraq’s second most populous, fell to Islamist fighters in June, as they captured broad sections of the country’s north. Mosul has remained under their control since, with religious shrines destroyed, women forced into marriage and human rights activists and others murdered after publicly disagreeing with the Islamic State.

Plans to retake Mosul already are underway. Kurdish militia troops are preparing for a complex battle to retake the city, according to a Los Angeles Times report. And Allen said Iraqi forces will launch operations to retake Mosul within the next year. [Emphasis added. — DM]

“It’s not a single battle,” he said, according to the New York Times. “It’s a campaign.”]

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But the planning, along with the U.S. launching its first airstrike inside Mosul on Wednesday, raises questions about how the United States and its partners will be able to assist in an urban military campaign if their mission is restricted to an air campaign and advising Iraqi forces.

The U.S. has launched hundreds of airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in the last two months against the Islamic State, but until Wednesday they all had been carried out outside population centers. The primary targets have been militant training camps and groups of fighters who have massed in vehicles or on foot, making them obvious marks for U.S. aircraft.

As the U.S. and its partners intensified their airstrikes against the militant group in recent days, they hit a variety of targets around many of Iraq’s other major cities, including Baghdad, Irbil, Fallujah and Ramadi. Some of the strikes have been designed to keep militants out of areas they do not control, but Fallujah fell to the Islamic State months ago, and Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, remains heavily contested.

Officials in Anbar told the Wall Street Journal this week that they are concerned the entire province could fall in coming days. They also raised concerns that too much attention has been devoted to Kobane, a Syrian town on the Turkish border that is under assault by the Islamic State and also is in danger of falling.

 

Categories: Air strikes, Gaza, Hamas, Iraq, Islamic State, Israel, Palestinians, Syria, Urban areas
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