Archive for the ‘Hamas’ category

Muslim Brotherhood Day on Capitol Hill

April 18, 2016

Muslim Brotherhood Day on Capitol Hill, The Hill, Frank J. Gaffney Jr., April 18, 2016

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On Monday, April 18, legislators’ offices will be visited by individuals associated with a group unknown to most lawmakers: The United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO). In the interest of helping members of the U.S. Congress understand precisely who their interlocutors are, permit a brief introduction: The USCMO is the latest in a long series of front organizations associated with, and working to advance, the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.

Members of Congress should be clear about the true nature of that agenda. It is laid out most authoritatively in a document introduced into evidence by federal prosecutors in the course of the largest terrorism financing trial in the nation’s history, U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation et al. Written in 1991 by a top Muslim Brotherhood operative, Mohamed Akram, and entitled “The Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal of the Group in North America,” this internal correspondence was meant for the eyes only of the organization’s leadership in Egypt. So, the document is direct and to the point: It explicitly states that the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America is “destroying Western civilization from within … by [the infidels’] hands and the hands of the believers so that Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

There are two other important facts legislators should know about Akram’s memo.

First, the document helpfully attaches a list of 29 groups under the heading “Our organizations and organizations of our friends: Imagine if they all march according to one plan!” A number of the identified Muslim Brotherhood fronts — and many others that have come into being since 1991 — are members of the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations. Representatives and associates of such fronts will be among the Islamists in congressional offices on Monday.

Second, the memo describes in detail the Muslim Brotherhood’s favored technique for accomplishing its stated goal of “destroying Western civilization” — at least until such time as they are strong enough to use violence decisively: “civilization jihad.” This sort of jihad involves employing stealthy, subversive means like influence operations to penetrate and subvert our government and civil society institutions. (The successful application of these means have been chronicled extensively in the Center for Security Policy’s “Civilization Jihad Reader Series.”)

With the launch of the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations in March 2014, the Muslim Brotherhood has secured a new instrument for its subversion: a self-described U.S. “political party” meant to dominate and mobilize Muslim voters across the country and get them marching according to one plan. The object is to elicit support for the Muslim Brotherhood’s demands from candidates and to help achieve what the Islamic supremacists would regard as favorable outcomes in the 2016 elections. (For more on the USCMO, its purpose and activities to date, see “Star Spangled Sharia: The Rise of America’s First Muslim Brotherhood Party.”)

Unfortunately, some members of Congress have already embraced the Council of Muslim Organizations. For example, two with longstanding ties to assorted Muslim Brotherhood fronts, Reps. André Carson (D-Ind.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), spoke at the USCMO’s inaugural banquet in June 2014. Neither has disavowed the USCMO’s subsequent participation in anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas and pro-Muslim Brotherhood demonstrations and its fundraising on behalf of Islamic Relief USA, a large, U.S.-based Islamic supremacist charity.

Another reason lawmakers and their staffs should be leery of this new Muslim Brotherhood front group is its avowed intention to make common cause with radical non-Muslim entities like the Black Lives Matter movement. At a conference in December 2015 convened by two of the Muslim Brotherhood’s most virulent fronts, the Muslim American Society and Islamic Circle of North America, leading USCMO figures publicly discussed how they could impart lessons to African-Americans by holding up the Brotherhood as the community that staged revolutions across the world.

Congress is on notice: As long as organizations associated with Islamic supremacism like the USCMO and its member organizations dominate “Muslim Advocacy Day” on Capitol Hill, it will actually be Muslim Brotherhood Advocacy Day. And legislators should have nothing to do with either its participants or its programs.

Senior Hamas tunnel network defector tried to flee to Israel by sea: sources

April 18, 2016

Senior Hamas tunnel network defector tried to flee to Israel by sea: sources, DEBKAfile, April 18, 2016

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Western intelligence sources monitoring events in Gaza confirmed Monday that a senior operative from the Hamas tunnel network defected to Israel last week. The sources identified the defector as Sami Atauna, a resident of the Jebalya refugee camp who came to the border fence by himself and surrendered to an IDF patrol. The sources added that the senior operative had also made an unsuccessful attempt to defect to Israel by sea during the past few weeks. It is not clear whether there is any connection between the defection and the discovery of a Hamas tunnel leading into Israel, which was announced by the IDF on Monday.

Israel, Turkey, Russia and Egypt

April 17, 2016

Israel, Turkey, Russia and Egypt, Gatestone InstituteShoshana Bryen, April 17, 2016

(A blast from the past:

— DM)

♦ In 2011, the UN Palmer Commission Report found the blockade of Gaza — jointly administered with Egypt — to be legal, and said Israel owed Turkey neither an apology nor compensation.

♦ Lifting the Israel/Egypt embargo on Gaza would empower Hamas, and thereby the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran and ISIS — which would seem an enormous risk for no gain.

Turkish sources assert that Turkish-Israeli governmental relations are about to come out of the deep freeze. But this is a reflection of Turkey’s regional unpopularity and glides over Turkish demands for Israel to end the blockade of Gaza. To meet Turkey’s condition, Israel would have to abandon the security arrangement it shares with Egypt — which has increased Israel’s security and has begun to pay regional dividends. To restore full relations between Israel and Turkey would irritate Russia, with which Israel has good trade and political relations, and a respectful series of understandings regarding Syria. Israel’s relations with the Kurds are also at issue here.

After the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla — in which Turkey supported the Hamas-related Turkish organization, the IHH, in its effort to break the blockade of Gaza — Turkey made three demands of Israel: an Israeli apology for the deaths of Turkish activists; a financial settlement; and lifting the Gaza blockade, which Turkey claimed was illegal. The last would provide IHH with the victory it was unable to achieve with the flotilla.

1080 (1)The Turkish-owned ship Mavi Marmara took part in a 2010 “Gaza flotilla” attempting to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, which is in place to prevent the terrorist group Hamas from bringing arms into Gaza. (Image source: “Free Gaza movement”/Flickr)

In 2011, however, the UN Palmer Commission Report found the blockade of Gaza — jointly administered with Egypt — to be legal, and said Israel owed Turkey neither an apology nor compensation. In 2013, at the urging of President Obama and to move the conversation off the impasse, Prime Minister Netanyahu did apologize for the loss of life and agree to discuss compensation. While President Obama was pleased, Prime Minister Erdogan repaid the gesture by denigrating Israel on Turkish television and announcing he would force the end of the blockade. Israel’s condition — that the office of Hamas in Ankara be closed — was ignored.

Nevertheless, in February 2014, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Turkish television that Israel and Turkey were “closer than ever” to normalizing relations.” In December 2015, it was more of the same. And in February 2016, there was yet another announcement of imminent restoration of government-to-government ties. In March, Kurdish sources said Turkey was demanding weapons from Israel, but that Israel wanted to ensure that Turkey would not use them against Kurdish forces.

Israel finds itself in an odd position — choosing among those who want its cooperation.

Israel and Egypt have come to a deep understanding of the sources of instability and insecurity in Sinai, and the relationship between Hamas in Gaza and its primary sponsor, Iran, as well as ISIS. Former IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz told inFOCUS magazine recently:

Coordination between us is very high and very important because we have identical interests. Period. The way to achieve them might look different, but Egypt is a very important country. It is crucial to the world to ensure its stability – progress in the fight against ISIS that is present in Sinai, and protecting the Suez Canal, and other things… They are all good reasons for Egypt to take these responsibilities seriously and do something about the threats. I’m very happy to see what they’re doing. It is a good track.

This month, Egypt and Saudi Arabia upgraded relations with Egypt, ceding back to the Saudis two islands that Saudi Arabia had given Egypt in 1950 to help Egypt fight Israel in the Red Sea. According to a report in the Egyptian daily al-Ahram, as reported by the Jerusalem Post, the Egyptian government informed Israel of the parameters of the deal, noting that Riyadh would be obligated to honor all of Egypt’s commitments in the peace treaty with Israel, including the presence of international peacekeepers on the islands and freedom of maritime movement in the Gulf of Aqaba. Israel approved the deal “on condition that the Saudis fill in the Egyptians’ shoes in the military appendix of the peace agreement,” according to Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon.

This makes Saudi Arabia an active partner in the Camp David Accords. And it follows on the heels of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) labeling Hezbollah “a terror organization” without the weasel words the Europeans used to condemn only the “military wing” of the organization.

In the face of these developments, it is hard to imagine a benefit that would accrue to Israel by negating the Israel-Egypt blockade of Gaza on behalf of Turkey.

Russia presents a similar series of circumstances. Relations between Russia and Turkey have taken a nosedive over the Syrian civil war, particularly after Turkey shot down a Russian plane. But even before that, Turkey’s support of Sunni jihadist organizations was a thorn in the side of Russia, which still fears Sunni jihad inside southern Russia.

Russia has goals in Syria and Israel also has requirements. In his inFOCUS interview, former Chief of Staff Gantz noted:

The [Israeli] Prime Minister and Chief of Staff [Gantz’s successor] flew to Russia and had some important of discussions of intentions, deconfliction, and we expressed our interests… stability, preventing terrorist activity… preventing armament that will go from Iran through Syria to Hezbollah, or from Russia to Syria and then to Hezbollah…. People can see what it is that Israel does once in a while when it has to protect itself.

Add to this Israel’s generally good economic and political relations with Russia and, again, it is hard to see the benefit that would accrue to Israel by forging closer relations with Turkey while Russia and Turkey are doing a slow burn.

Turkey is doing a faster burn on the Kurds. Having waged a fierce war against Kurdish separatists in southern Turkey, the Turkish government has taken military action against the Kurds of Iraq and Syria to prevent Kurdish forces from connecting two enclaves — one in Iraq and one in Syria — that could form the geographic beginning of an independent Kurdistan.

Even at the peak of Israeli-Turkish relations, Israel’s support of the Kurds has been a relatively open political secret. Although the Israeli government consistently denies providing weapons, reputable sources suggest, at a minimum, training for Kurdish forces. Most recently, Israel acknowledged buying oil from Kurdish sources in Northern Iraq, and IsraAid, an Israeli humanitarian organization, provided assistance to Kurdish refugees fleeing ISIS. Prime Minister Netanyahu has publicly supported the establishment of a Kurdish state.

For Israel to trade its increasingly important relations with Russia, with Egypt — and thereby with Saudi Arabia — and with the Kurds for Turkish political approval and a promise to buy Israeli natural gas would seem to be a bad deal. For Israel to accompany that with the lifting of the Israel/Egypt embargo on Gaza that would empower Hamas — and thereby the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran and ISIS — would seem an enormous risk for no gain.

Islamophobia in one State (6)

April 17, 2016

Islamophobia in one State (6), Power LineScott Johnson, April 17, 2016

In addition to the Twin Cities, Somali Muslim immigrants to Minnesota have settled in rural areas such as St. Cloud, Mankato and Willmar. Concern about the continuing waves of immigration from Somalia in particular is not confined to the Twin Cities. Thus Matt McKinney’s Star Tribune contribution to stifling discussion of the related issues in  “Anti-Muslim speaking circuit runs through rural Minnesota.”

McKinney’s piece is pitiful. It presents all related concerns as manifestations of “Islamophobia.” It calls on Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of CAIR, to render his opinion as an impartial expert. McKinney quotes Hussein: “A lot of these fears are coming from that type of general fear of the ‘other,’ and not real knowledge of Islam.”

I would say “a lot of these fears are coming from” Somali Minnesotans’ support for foreign terrorist organizations waging jihad. The support is manifested in the charges brought against the “Minnesota men” seeking to join ISIS in 2014 and 2015. Somali community sentiment is itself apparently supportive of the “Minnesota men” if not the cause. Rather than investigate the possibly rational causes of the “fears,” McKinney simply presents the concerns as evidence of bigotry.

I offered the opposing case in the Star Tribune column “Islam and Minnesota: Can we hear some straight talk for a change.” With McKinney’s column today, think we have the definitive answer to that question.

McKinney revisits the Dorsey & Whitney conference on “Islamophobia” in Minnesota last week. He recites that those in attendance included former Vice President Walter Mondale and members of the legal community, including U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger. McKinney quotes Luger in classic form, saying that, left unchecked, “Islamaphobia is going to destroy the social fabric of the state.” Shut up, he explained.

McKinney does not know that CAIR itself is part of the problem. CAIR, however, is an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Hamas-support network, and it aims to silence critics of Islamic supremacism via useful idiots such as McKinney. Andrew McCarthy devoted a particularly useful chapter of The Grand Jihad to CAIR. NR has posted an adapted excerpt of it here.

The Muslim Brotherhood — they’re Islamic, right? Hamas — Islamic, right? It’s a shame McKinney didn’t even try to get a straight answer from the local CAIR leader. He might have learned somethings from the exercise.

Israeli hysteria magnifies Hamas rocket threat

April 15, 2016

Israeli hysteria magnifies Hamas rocket threat, DEBKAfile, April 15, 2016

epa01962019 A Palestinian Hamas masked militant stands near a Hamas flag as he takes part in protest and a military parade in central Gaza Strip, 11 December 2009. Israeli settlers vandalized a mosque in a northern West Bank village early 11 December, spray-painting hate slogans in Hebrew and setting ablaze bookshelves and a carpet, Palestinian police and the Israeli military said. Palestinian police spokesman Munir Jagoub told the German Press Agency dpa that the fire in the grand mosque in the village of Yasouf, south-west of the city of Nablus, in the northern West Bank, caused heavy damage to the library, where copies of the Holy Quran are kept, as well as to prayer rugs and the wall. EPA/MOHAMMED SABER I

A Palestinian Hamas masked militant stands near a Hamas flag as he takes part in protest and a military parade in central Gaza Strip, 11 December 2009.

Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Musa Abu Marzuk led an SOS delegation to Tehran last month in a desperate effort to persuade Iran to end its boycott and renew the flow of funds and weapons to the Gaza Strip. But on April 4, the delegation returned home empty-handed.

This was a last-ditch effort since the Palestinian fundamentalist Hamas which rules the Gaza Strip is flat broke.

Since March 1, it has been forced to slash by two-thirds the wages paid to members of its military wing, the Ezz-a-din Qassem Brigades: each fighter now takes home $200 instead of $600 per month, and officers used to earning $1,000 must be satisfied with $350.

Since March 1, it has been forced to slash by two-thirds the wages paid to members of its military wing, the Ezz-a-din Qassem Brigades: each fighter now takes home $200 instead of $600 per month, and officers used to earning $1,000 must be satisfied with $350.

DEBKA’s military and intelligence sources add: The terrorist group has moreover halted recruitment for lack of funds to pay, accommodate or train new fighters.

The cash crunch has also hit the Hamas government. Most of Gaza’s municipal services are suspended because city officials have not been paid.

Iran’s boycott on military and financial assistance to the Gaza Strip was clamped down in mid-2015 over Hamas’ refusal to line up behind Iran’s unqualified endorsement of its allies, Syrian President Bashar Assad and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

Since then, Hamas has spared no effort to end the shutdown. Its leaders even tried asking their friend and ally, Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah, to intercede on their behalf with his masters in Tehran. Nasrallah pulled some strings, suggesting that his group would be allowed to renew military and intelligence operations in Gaza to make it worthwhile for Iran to restore its support.

But that proposition like all previous applications was thrown out.

This time, the Hamas visitors were initially received by high Iranian officials, including Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, and Ali Larijiani, chairman of the Shura Council. Abu Marzuk asked them to put the case for ending the boycott before Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

After the Palestinian officials cooled their heels for two weeks, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Al Qods Brigades, finally gave them a hearing.

But, according to DEBKA’s Iranian sources report, he told them bluntly that no more largesse would be forthcoming from the Islamic Republic until Hamas publicly declared its support for Syrian President Assad and ordered its fighting assets in Lebanon to join Hizballah’s military campaign in support of the Syrian ruler.

This confrontation has broad ramifications over and above Iran’s relations with the Palestinian terrorists.

Hamas_480_Kotert

1. Tehran demonstrated that its support for Assad is absolute and brooks no opposition. This should dash any hopes underlying the US-Russian understanding for a political resolution of the Syrian conflict that Assad would at some point agree to hand over power to a broad coalition.

Iran is ruthless in bending all its allies and dependents into toeing its line in defense of the Syrian ruler

2. Gen. Soleimani has resurfaced after a five-month disappearance from public view. Rumors abounded that he had been seriously wounded in a Syrian battle, or else fallen into disfavor with Khamenei and cast aside. His reappearance in Tehran with the Hamas delegation means he has been reinstated to the command of Iran’s forces in Syria and the role of operations coordinator with the Russian military.

3. After Iran’s door was slammed in their faces, Hamas leaders reluctantly tried patching up their tattered ties with Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi.

But a delegation to Cairo found Egyptian military and intelligence officials as tough-minded as the Iranians. Hamas terrorists were put on notice that, to mend relations, they would have to prove their good faith by cooperating with Cairo in the war against the Islamic State in Sinai. Specifically, the Palestinian terrorists must hand over to the Egyptian army all the intelligence data they had accumulated on the ISIS networks in Sinai with whom they were playing ball.

Though insolvent, Hamas decided it could not afford to comply with Egypt’s terms for assistance. As DEBKA’s sources explain, breaking up with the Islamic State affiliates in Sinai, would also snap Hamas’ last remaining conduit for the receipt of smuggled funds and weapons from Islamist sources in Libya.

Having burned their boats to Tehran and Cairo, the Palestinian terrorists have run themselves into a dead end.

Hysteria regarding the threat posed by Hamas resurfaced in Israel this week, even though the terrorist organization’s military strength is gradually disintegrating mainly amid a cash crunch that nobody in the Hamas  political or military leadership has been able to resolve.

It all started from a briefing given by the head of the IDF Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir, to military correspondents following a defensive exercise in the Gaza border area.

Afterwards, the heads of the Israeli defense establishment commented on the threat posed by Hamas using clichés that have been familiar to the Israeli public for years. Perhaps the most common one is “Hamas is not interested in an escalation now… but.” Another one is “Israel and the IDF are not interested in an escalation now…but.”

One of the heads of the Israeli local councils in the Gaza border area added that he was not surprised by recent comments by senior IDF officers on the strengthening of the Hamas. “The statements that Hamas operatives are continuing terror operations can only surprise those who are detached from reality,” he said.

Amid the terrorist organization’s weakness, Israeli hysteria is helping Hamas conceal its true situation from the Palestinian public.

Let’s Create a Real Palestinian State

April 14, 2016

Let’s Create a Real Palestinian State, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, April 14, 2016

lets_create_a_real_palestine_state

A Palestinian state has never existed during any period in human history. Let’s change that.

The United States has spent billions of dollars trying to create a Palestinian state. It’s time that we finally got our money’s worth. We’ve been putting money in the broken Palestinian slot machine in the metaphorical Palestinian casino (the real one was shot up when terrorists turned it into a base) for decades. It’s time to finally get our Palestinian jackpot. But to make it happen, we need to be realistic.

Forget the peace process. Forget negotiations. They’ve never worked before. They’re not going to now.

And there’s nothing to negotiate anyway.

There are almost a million Jews living on territory claimed by the PLO. Removing them would be the single greatest act of ethnic cleansing against an indigenous population today. It would also be impossible. But the same people who insist that the United States, a country of 318 million, can’t deport 11 million illegal aliens, think that Israel will somehow deport 1/8th of its own population if they just chant loudly enough about “occupation” outside Jewish businesses in London or San Francisco.

Ethnically cleansing 8,000 Jews from Gaza/Gush Katif led to nationwide civil disobedience, riots and, eventually, the fall of a political party and three straight terms for Prime Minister Netanyahu. Now imagine trying to deport 800,000 people from their homes simply because they’re Jewish.

And it wouldn’t just be the Jews alone being rounded up into trucks, buses and maybe boxcars.

52 percent of Arabs in East Jerusalem would rather be Israeli citizens than live under the PLO. Are we supposed to deport 100,000 Arabs from Jerusalem to make way for this imaginary “Palestinian” state?

How much ethnic cleansing do we have to do to make the Islamic colonial fantasy of Palestine real?

It’s not going to happen.

Let’s create a real Palestinian state instead. And I don’t mean the PLO’s President for Life Mahmoud Abbas going down to the UN to give another speech. Abbas is on his 11th year of a 4-year term.  The US spent $4.5 billion promoting “Palestinian democracy” and the last PLO election was ten years ago.

Hamas won. It would win today all over again.

Current polling shows that 2/3 of “Palestinians” want Abbas to resign. Abbas has no political authority to form a Palestinian state, a Palestinian shawarma stand or a Palestinian anything.

If there’s going to be a Palestinian state, it has to be based on the will of the people. That means it will be a Hamas state. A Palestinian state that is not based on the will of its people has no legitimacy. The only legitimate Palestinian state is therefore a Hamas terror state.

And that’s the only kind of state you can have when 2/3 of “Palestinians” support stabbing Israeli civilians, 89% want to live under an Islamic State run by Sharia law, 84% want to stone adulterers to death and 66% support killing any Muslim who leaves Islam.

Only an Islamic terror state can truly represent the homicidal aspirations of the Palestinian people.

Is this some sort of sick joke? Yes it is. But it’s not my sick joke. It’s the sick joke that is Palestine. Now let’s begin the process of turning this sick twisted joke into its own state.

The first thing to do is dismantle the UNRWA, a UN agency specifically dedicated to catering to “Palestinians”. The UNRWA is one of the key elements of the Palestinian welfare state. And the US kicks in around $300 million to the organization which fulfills many of the functions of a state. But a state doesn’t need its own refugee agency. And a Hamas terror state doesn’t need a further $350 million dollars in US foreign aid to promote “democracy” and improve its infrastructure and institutions.

This is going to be a problem because the imaginary Palestinian state also has a fantasy economy. The largest employer in the Palestinian Authority is the Palestinian Authority. Most of its money comes from America, Europe, Israel and, for some inconceivable reason, Japan.

The terror state gets its electricity from Israel. It gets its water and internet through Israel.

So let’s get a clear look at what a real Palestinian state would look like. It would be Gaza writ large. But without the UNRWA and the rest of the NGOs lining up to provide jobs and social services. It would be an “open air prison”, as anti-Israel activists screech of Gaza, but a prison created and maintained by the inmates. It would be constantly at war with Israel and the rest of the world. The way it is now.

The economy will be a thinly disguised feudal system of Islamists with engineering degrees in mansions paying starvation wages to laborers to harvest olives to be shipped to China. There will be shopping malls for some and little shacks on the edges full of smugglers, drug labs and brothels for everyone else.

That’s the Islamist dream.

Palestine’s political system will consist of Hamas and more Hamas. Or maybe once the Hamas alliance with ISIS in the Sinai lapses, there will finally be a democratic election between Hamas and ISIS to decide just how horrible of a place the misshapen slices of Gaza and the West Bank under terrorist occupation will become. Nothing will function except the religious police and the gallows in the dusty squares.

There will be wars every two years. That will be just long enough to rebuild the hospitals, mosques and schools that were being used as launch sites in the last wars. In between the big wars, the terrorist groups, Hamas factions, ISIS, Islamic Jihad and anybody else, will fight each other in the streets.

It will be glorious.

Imagine the last few decades of terror, bombings, missile strikes, firefights, corruption, thievery and utter dysfunction made into a permanent state of affairs. That’s Palestine. That’s the two-state solution. Just don’t ask what it solves except the Middle East’s severe shortage of terrorist states and terrorists.

If you will it, it is no dream. This nightmare already exists and it can be a real country. It already has an anthem, a flag, no elections and no reason to exist except killing everyone else. It’s a foreign aid funded ISIS with more olive harvests and a more robust campus presence.

Everyone talks about creating a Palestinian state, but no one actually wants to do it.

It’s time for Palestine to stop being a pipe dream full of pipe bombs that we spend billions of dollars on. Just pull out a seat at the UN, hold democratic elections and then step away from the explosions.

A real two-state solution is just that simple. And it can happen tomorrow.

Let’s stop fantasizing about peace. Peace and Palestine go together like oil and water. This is what a real Palestinian state would look like. And the moment it comes into being, any possibility of peace dies.

TERROR STATE: 60% of “Palestinians” Back Terrorism Against Civilians

April 12, 2016

TERROR STATE: 60% of “Palestinians” Back Terrorism Against Civilians, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, April 12, 2016

(But Shirley surely, Kerry’s charisma and Obama’s unbiased approach will prevail. — DM)

lecter_palestine2b_3

What conceivable argument is there for creating an artificial country where the majority of the population supports terrorism? What could such an entity be except a terrorist state?

The survey, carried out by the the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and published on April 4, found that 60 percent of Palestinians support “armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel,” while 65 percent think that escalating the current wave of violence into an armed intifada would help Palestinian national aspirations in a way that negotiations could not. A plurality also believes that armed action is the most effective way to establish a Palestinian state.

Efforts by Palestinian Authority security services to contain violence, which a PA official quoted by the survey said prevented 200 attacks against Israelis, were opposed by 65 percent of Palestinians and supported by 30 percent.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas remains deeply unpopular with his constituents, with about two-thirds of respondents demanding his resignation. If new elections took place in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Ismail Haniyeh – the leader of the terrorist group Hamas – would beat Abbas by 11 percentage points. However, if the competition was between Haniyeh and Mahmoud Barghouti – a convicted killer who is currently serving 67 life sentences in an Israeli prison for helping orchestrate some of the bloodiest suicide bombings of the second intifada – the latter would win by 18 percentage points.

Democracy in the Muslim world. This is what it looks like. It’s also why there can be no “peace”. You can’t make peace with terrorists.

How Islamists Are Slowly Desensitizing Europe And America

April 9, 2016

How Islamists Are Slowly Desensitizing Europe And America, The Federalist, April 8, 2016

(Compare and contrast the views of this Saudi TV hostess on Islam and terror with what seems to be the emerging European view. — DM)

[T]he overarching message is that Europe has slowly let this happen year by year, decade by decade, like a frog in a pot slowly brought to a boil. Post-colonial guilt and shame have stopped Europeans from openly loving and defending their own culture. The state of things in Europe today is the natural conclusion of that neglect. We in America are on the same road.

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

Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine whose offices Islamists attacked in 2015, published an editorial recently titled “How Did We Get Here?” that has raised some eyebrows. In it, they ask how Europe has become where European-born Muslims have attacked the hearts of Paris and Brussels. Their answer has proved distasteful to many on the Left.

The editorial has been harshly criticized and the magazine accused of racism and xenophobia. The Washington Post says Charlie Hebdo blames extremism on individual Muslims—the veiled woman on the street, the man selling kebabs. There’s some truth to this accusation, and to the extent that there is, Charlie Hebdo is wrong. But this, and other critiques, miss the larger point of the article, which is to demonstrate the gradual and quotidian way in which criticizing Islam has been silenced.

It’s worth quoting Charlie Hebdo at length:

In reality, the attacks are merely the visible part of a very large iceberg indeed. They are the last phase of a process of cowing and silencing long in motion and on the widest possible scale. Our noses are endlessly rubbed in the rubble of Brussels airport and in the flickering candles amongst the bouquets of flowers on the pavements. All the while, no one notices what’s going on in Saint-German-en-Laye. Last week, Sciences-Po* welcomed Tariq Ramadan. He’s a teacher, so it’s not inappropriate. He came to speak of his specialist subject, Islam, which is also his religion…

No matter, Tariq Ramadan has done nothing wrong. He will never do anything wrong. He lectures about Islam, he writes about Islam, he broadcasts about Islam. He puts himself forward as a man of dialogue, someone open to a debate. A debate about secularism which, according to him, needs to adapt itself to the new place taken by religion in Western democracy. A secularism and a democracy which must also accept those traditions imported by minority communities. Nothing bad in that. Tariq Ramadan is never going to grab a Kalashnikov with which to shoot journalists at an editorial meeting. Nor will he ever cook up a bomb to be used in an airport concourse. Others will be doing all that kind of stuff. It will not be his role. His task, under cover of debate, is to dissuade people from criticising his religion in any way. The political science students who listened to him last week will, once they have become journalists or local officials, not even dare to write nor say anything negative about Islam. The little dent in their secularism made that day will bear fruit in a fear of criticising lest they appear Islamophobic. That is Tariq Ramadan’s task.

The Charlie Hebdo editorial correctly points out that in Europe the dominant liberal culture has pounded into us that we must adapt to Muslims who come to our country, and never ask them to adapt to any of our ways. Doing so would be colonialist and wrong. It’s a double standard, of course. As the welcoming countries, Europeans must suppress their own culture and ideals for those of the Islamic immigrant population. But when they go abroad to non-Western countries, either to live or to visit, it’s considered offensive not to adapt to their ways of life.

Learning a Culture Should Work Both WaysNo one who found the Charlie Hebdo op-ed so offensive would ever suggest Morocco ought to welcome McDonalds or Wal-Mart with open arms. They would say the country is being ruined with Western culture. They want non-Western countries to remain exactly as they are—preserved and frozen in time-while the West must endlessly adapt to anyone who makes it their home.

The article highlights the important fact that Europe has failed to ask its Muslim immigrant population to assimilate. This fact was demonstrated recently when police discovered that the only surviving terrorist from the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was able to travel from Paris to Brussels and conceal himself there until a few days before the Brussels attacks. He was aided by a large community of French and Muslim Belgians whose loyalties clearly lie with their own community, not with Belgium, or Europe at large. What’s more, a 2013 study shows the shocking degree to which European Muslims hate the West.

Asking immigrants to assimilate doesn’t mean white-washing their culture and religion, asking them not to wear the hijab, or demanding that they eat pork. But it does mean asking them to accept, to some degree, the culture of the country to which they have willingly moved. These are things like women’s rights, tolerance, free speech, or criticism of religion. It also means not having to apologize for having a culture of one’s own. This is the point that Michel Houellebecq made in his recent novel, “Submission.”

Slow-Boiling Our BrainsEuropeans have been lulled into accepting that it’s wrong to criticize Islam or scrutinize it in any way. The Charlie Hebdo editorial points out that it’s a slow process, an insidious wearing away of what is and isn’t acceptable to say or think. The process must be slow, because few people would accept a proposal dictating what topics they’re not allowed to discuss. So, you gradually shame them into it.

This establishes a pre-conditioned mindset so the line of acceptability can be moved further and further until the problem of global jihad can no longer be effectively explored because we aren’t even allowed to ask fundamental questions. This is Charlie Hebdo’s point about Tariq Ramadan, whose grandfather founded the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and whose father was an active member of the group. Through the guise of intellectualism and purported adherence to moderate Islam, he instructs his audience ever so gently that the problem has nothing to do with Islam, and that suggesting so is ugly and base.

We acquiesce, because, as Charlie Hebdo points out, we fear being seen as Islamaphobic or racist. We are made to feel guilty if the thought flashes through our head that we wish that the new sandwich shop run by a Muslim sold bacon, or that a woman wearing a hijab makes us a little uncomfortable. That fear that we feel when we entertain those thoughts, the op-ed argues, saps our willingness to scrutinize, analyze, debate, or reject anything about Islam. And this is dangerous.

Fierce Reactions Aim to Condition Us Into Fear

Although Europe is further along in this process, there is a clear relevance to the United States. We are already being instructed on college campuses and by our own president that Muslims are a sort of protected class regarding criticism. President Obama even went so far as to censor French President François Hollande when he used the forbidden phrase “Islamist terrorism.”

The latest incident of shaming those who do push back is happening in Kansas, where the Islamic Society of Wichita invited Sheik Monzer Talib to speak at a fundraising event on Good Friday. Talib is a known fundraiser for Hamas, the militant Islamist Palestinian group that the United States classifies as a terrorist organization. He even has sung a song called “I am from Hamas.” U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo dared to put out a press release objecting to the speech out of concern that it would harm the Muslim community, particularly in the wake of the Brussels terrorist attack.

In response, the mosque claimed Pompeo stoked prejudice and Islamaphobia and that they had to cancel the event because of protest announcements and because some individuals on Facebook made some offhand comments about guns. Cue a local media frenzy, letters to the editor accusing Pompeo of government overreach, and the predictable arrival of two CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) representatives to skewer Pompeo.

This is just one example of how criticizing or questioning the actions of a Muslim community—even one that is supporting a Hamas fundraiser—has become anathema. The line of acceptability has been moved so now it’s Islamaphobic to object to someone with links to Islamist groups being invited to a U.S. mosque while we’re in the midst of a global battle against Islamist terrorism. People don’t even want to discuss it. The conversation is over. Just as Charlie Hebdo asks, so should we ask ourselves, “How did we get here?”

Although the particulars of the Charlie Hebdo editorial may go too far, and I do not endorse everything the article says, the overarching message is that Europe has slowly let this happen year by year, decade by decade, like a frog in a pot slowly brought to a boil. Post-colonial guilt and shame have stopped Europeans from openly loving and defending their own culture. The state of things in Europe today is the natural conclusion of that neglect. We in America are on the same road.

Islamic University of Minnesota a Hotbed of Extremism

April 8, 2016

Islamic University of Minnesota a Hotbed of Extremism, Investigative Project on Terrorism, John Rossomando, April 8, 2016

(But, but only an Islamophobe would object to this. –DM)

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The Minneapolis-based Islamic University of Minnesota (IUM) has an extremism problem.

It is run by a man who used a recent sermon to invoke a Hadith commonly espoused by Muslim terrorists to kill Jews for causing “corruption in the land.” Waleed Idris al-Meneesey also has written that Muslims should place sharia law above “man-made” law.

During a November sermon, al-Meneesy referred to the Hadith, a saying from Islam’s prophet Muhammad, describing how Jews had been punished by God repeatedly for “corruption.”

“When the Children of Israel returned to cause corruption in the time of our Prophet Muhammad,” al-Meneesy said in a translation by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, “and they disbelieved him, God destroyed him at his hand. In any case, God Almighty has promised them destruction whenever they cause corruption.”

History will repeat itself, he said.

“The Prophet related that in the Last Days his Umma [people] would fight the Jews, the Muslims East of the Jordan River, and they [the Jews] west of [the Jordan River] … Even trees and stones will say: O Muslim, this is a Jew behind me, kill him, except for Gharqad trees, the trees of the Jews. Because of this they plant many of them…”

Jerusalem “remained in the hands of the Muslims until it fell into the hands of the Jews in 1387 AH [1967 AD], and has been a prisoner in their hands for 34 years [sic], but the victory of God is coming inevitably.”

Al-Meneesy, the IUM’s president and chancellor, also serves as an imam at a Bloomington, Minn. mosque where at least five young men left the United States to fight with terrorist groups al-Shabaab and ISIS.

IUM opened in 2007, claiming 160 students registered for classes, which cost $150 each. Current enrollment figures could not be found. IUM’s website describes programs ranging from two year associates degrees to full doctorates. A bachelor’s program helps students “acquire all essential Islamic knowledge.” The Ph.D. program costs $3,000, including thesis review, and is structured “along the lines of Universities in the Middle East and Africa.”

The university’s website cites recognition by Holy Quran University in the Sudan,founded in 1990 by the regime of Sudanese war criminal and President Omar al-Bashir. Holy Quran University’s leaders signed a 2002 declaration saying it was forbidden for Muslims to buy American and Israeli goods.

IUM also professes to serve as the official representative of Sunni Islam’s most important institution – Al-Azhar University, which has grown increasingly radical – in the U.S. and Canada. Al-Azhar officials have refused to condemn the Islamic State (ISIS) as apostates and heretics. According to Egypt’s Youm 7, IUM’s curriculum, offered to American students, endorses many practices used by ISIS. These include: “[K]illing a Muslim who does not pray, one who leaves Islam, prisoners and infidels within Islam [those who do not have a clearly specified creed or sect]. [It also allows] gouging their eyes and chopping off their hands and feet, as well as banning the construction of churches and discriminating between Muslims and Ahl al-Kitab [Christians and Jews], and insulting them at times.”

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Al-Meneesy’s extremism goes further back than his anti-Semitic sermon. In 2007, he authored a paper for the Assembly of Muslim Jurists Association of America (AMJA), where he sits on the fatwa committee. Muslims should refrain from participating in non-Islamic courts that do not follow Islamic shariah law, particularly those in the West guided by “man-made” law, al-Meneesey wrote.

“The authority to legislate rests with Allah alone,” al-Meneesey wrote.

Anyone who uses law other than shariah, such as civil law, is a “corrupt tyrant,” the paper said. Judging by something other than shariah equals disbelief in Allah, injustice and sinfulness, he wrote.

Muslims should be forbidden from serving as judges in non-Muslim countries, except if they are able to rule “according to the judgments of Allah,” al-Meneesey wrote. Muslims who adhere to secular law and refuse to follow the shariah are infidels. Classical interpretations of the shariah say that apostates should be killed.

In 2008, the AMJA issued a declaration telling Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement “in countries which do not rule by Allah’s dictates.” That includes the FBI. The declaration invoked many of the same arguments as al-Meneesey’s 2007 paper.

Meanwhile, al-Meneesey’s own Dar al-Farooq Islamic Center and Al-Farooq Youth & Family Center have produced at least five young members who left to fight for ISIS or al-Shabaab in Somalia. They include:

It does not appear that al-Meneesy has addressed these cases publicly.

His radical views are not aberrations at IUM.

Instructor Sheikh Jamel Ben Ameur refused to denounce ISIS in the fall of 2014 amid stories about its brutality because news reports were “confusing” and “complicated,” the website MinnPost reported.

“We don’t need to accuse people of something we don’t know about. We don’t have to jump into judgment,” Ben Ameur told about 100 congregants at his Masjid al-Tawba in Eden Prairie, Minn.

Ben Ameur disputed the authenticity of the ISIS propaganda videos showing the beheadings of American journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, suggesting he didn’t know whether ISIS was responsible or not.

Another IUM instructor, Hasan Ali Mohamud, offered condolences after Israel killed Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 2004.

Writing under the name Sheikh Xasan Jaamici on the Minneapolis Somali community news website SomaliTalk, Mohamud said that Yassin had achieved martyrdom and that the “Hamas mujahideen” were fighting for the liberation of the Al-Aqsa mosque from Israeli control. His Facebook page suggests that Jaamici is his middle name.

Jews will face Muhammad’s wrath. Muslims who adhere to civil law over Islamic sharia are infidels. These are ideas supported by Waleed Idris al-Meneesey, who is responsible for a “university” teaching Muslims about their faith. Where will Islamic University of Minnesota students get a more modern and accepting education?

Report: Hamas taps over 1,000 terror operatives to dig Gaza tunnels

April 8, 2016

Report: Hamas taps over 1,000 terror operatives to dig Gaza tunnels, Jerusalem Post, Staff, April 7, 2016

A Palestinian fighter from the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, gestures inside an underground tunnel in Gaza August 18, 2014. A rare tour that Hamas granted to a Reuters reporter, photographer and cameraman appeared to be an attempt to dispute Israel's claim that it had demolished all of the Islamist group's border infiltration tunnels in the Gaza war. Picture taken August 18, 2014. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA - Tags: POLITICS CONFLICT TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY) - RTR42YJW

A Palestinian fighter from the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, gestures inside an underground tunnel in Gaza August 18, 2014. A rare tour that Hamas granted to a Reuters reporter, photographer and cameraman appeared to be an attempt to dispute Israel’s claim that it had demolished all of the Islamist group’s border infiltration tunnels in the Gaza war. Picture taken August 18, 2014. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

Hamas employs more than 1,000 operatives to excavate underground tunnels in the Gaza Strip, Israel Radio reported Thursday.

According to the report, the terrorist organization invests hundreds of thousands of dollars each month in the digging activities, paying each operative engaged in the process some 300 to 400 dollars a month.

Hamas also heavily invests in smuggling building materials, including raw materials and excavation machinery from Egypt and Israel.

To prepare for a possible future incursion with Israel, the Palestinian terrorist organization’s elite ‘Nukhbah’ unit carries out drills practicing different scenarios simulating offenses in the tunnels near the border fence with Israel. Several of the members of the unit have been killed in recent months in tunnel collapses in the coastal Palestinian enclave, according to the Israel Radio report.

The report cited Israeli officials as saying that the funds Hamas uses to invest in rebuilding its network of underground passageways could instead be used to construct full neighborhoods in the Strip.

Earlier this week, Israel temporarily suspended the delivery of cement to Gaza’s private sector after it discovered that Hamas was siphoning the material, which is intended to rebuild destroyed houses.

The Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) monitors the flow of cement into Gaza to ensure that Hamas has not used it to construct tunnels to attack Israel.

On Friday, COGAT posted on its Arabic Facebook page that it suspended the transfer of cement to Gaza because some deliveries had been diverted by Imad Elbaz, the deputy director-general for Hamas’s economics office.

The Hamas deputy political bureau chief, Ismail Haniyeh, vowed in February  that his group will never stop digging tunnels and upgrading rockets in preparation for any possible confrontation with Israel.

During the Operation Protective Edge in 2014, the IDF said it had destroyed all the known terror and infiltration tunnels in Hamas’s vast subterranean network .

In March, The Jerusalem Post learned from Palestinian sources that some of the terror operatives digging the tunnels believed Israel was involved in at least some of the various recent tunnel collapses that claimed the lives of several Hamas men.

Official reports from Gaza described the various collapses in recent months as “work accidents” or being caused by flooding from heavy rains; however there are many who believe Israel is responsible.