Archive for the ‘Islamic slaughter’ category

« WarSclerotic home page
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Columnist On Jordanian Daily: ISIS ‘Did Not Invent A New Islam’

February 11, 2015

Columnist On Jordanian Daily: ISIS ‘Did Not Invent A New Islam,’ MEMRI, February 11, 2015

(It would be encouraging if such statements were more often made in the “legitimate news” media of the U.S. and the “free” world. — DM)

In a February 10, 2015 article in the English-language Jordanian daily Jordan Times, titled “We Have a Problem”, attorney and columnist Zaid Nabulsi wrote that Muslims must not suffice with protesting that “Islam is innocent” of the terrorists’ actions. They must also acknowledge that the extremism of terrorist organizations like ISIS emanates directly from the teachings of Wahhabi Islam that now permeate the Sunni world, and from messages spread by the Muslim Brotherhood and by prominent clerics like Yousuf Al-Qaradawi. He added that Muslims must be brave enough not merely to condemn the ideology of the terrorists, but also to renounce Islamic texts that are incompatible with basic human values, including certain hadiths that are erroneously attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, as well as the writings of certain prominent medieval scholars, such as Ibn Taymiyyah.

The following are excerpts from his article:

“Some Wahabist Teachings, Which Have Permeated The Air We Breathe In The Muslim World, Are Simply Irreconcilable With Decent Human Values”

“Enough is enough. It is time to speak out. ‘Islam is innocent’ is an incomplete sentence. Introspection is needed, for, if we shy away from reality, the alternative will be more images like those we witnessed last Tuesday night, when brave Lt. Muath Al-Kasasbeh was burnt to death in a cage…

“Some Wahabist teachings, which have permeated the air we breathe in the Muslim world, are simply irreconcilable with decent human values, especially the ones that declare that every non-Wahabist is a disposable body whose bloodletting is unproblematic. So enough of this burial of our heads in the sand. It has become tiresome to keep hearing the unproductive cliché that Islam is innocent after each atrocity committed by devout fanatics who did nothing except execute the exact letter of their textbooks, which order them to slaughter the infidels.

“The escapism that mainstream Islam has nothing to do with those atrocities does not hold water anymore because Wahabism and Islam have become indistinguishable. To understand the crisis of Muslims today, one has to remember that Wahabism exists in several textbooks containing the alleged sayings of the Prophet Mohammad, or books of ‘Hadith,’ revered by so many. What we must confront is the undeniable fact that it is from many stories found in these books that the unprecedented cruelty of groups such as the so-called Islamic State and Jabhat Al-Nusra emanates.

“The problem today has nothing to do with the original spirit of Prophet Mohammad’s message. Nor has it anything to do with the tumultuous history of Muslims over 14 centuries, parts of which were no doubt glorious and enlightened. The catastrophe today is with the visible manifestation of Islam in the modern world, as demonstrated by the prevalent beliefs and practices of many people who call themselves Muslims.”

“[The] Negative Image Of Muslims Is Not All Just Smoke And No Fire”

“[But] this negative image of Muslims is not all just smoke and no fire. This is what those 120 Islamic scholars who sent a letter to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi last year could not fathom. [ISIS] did not invent a new Islam. On the contrary, its followers are strict adherents of the same textbooks quoted in that long letter (bizarrely addressed to ‘Dr Ibrahim Awwad Al-Badri,’ Baghdadi’s real name, bestowing intellectual respectability upon this mass murderer, as if one were writing a letter to the mayor of Copenhagen). In fact, the scholars’ letter was a misguided attempt to disinfect Wahabism, to cleanse it from itself, by claiming that IS simply misinterpreted texts that are otherwise compatible with human decency. In that sense, the letter squabbled over the semantics of the alleged instructions by the Prophet to spread Islam by the sword, but it did not dare renounce the authenticity of those same sayings…

“If we truly want to defend Islam, we need to perform a much more invasive surgery. Take the Muslim Brotherhood as an example of the prevalence of the Wahabist teachings among Muslims today. The Brotherhood is the virtual womb that incubated all the current jihadist groups, including Al-Qaeda itself (Al- Zawahiri hailed from the Egyptian MB offshoot that murdered president Anwar Sadat). Yet, when Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was killed in 2006, the three most senior leaders of the MB in Jordan brazenly visited the condolence house in Zarqa and announced to the media that Zarqawi was a martyr in the eyes of God, despite Zarqawi having blown up three hotels in Amman the previous year, killing scores of Jordanians going about their lives or celebrating a peaceful wedding…

“The orgy of decapitations in Syria over the last four years was promoted by very rich Sunni clerics such as Yusuf Al-Qaradawi and Mohammad Al-Uraifi, aided by the countless satellite stations openly calling for the murder of Alawites and Shiites, and financed by billions from extremely wealthy but hateful Muslims. So, enough with the denials. It is time to raise the alarm. We have a problem!”

“If We Really Want To Defend Islam As A Religion Of Mercy… We Have To Muster The Courage To Identify The Specific Texts That Actually Defame Islam, Denounce Them And Permanently Cleanse Islamic Tradition Of Them”

“There is obviously a propensity towards eliminating ‘the other’ imbedded deep within Wahabist ideology. It is not only foolish to deny this fact, it is also dangerous, for we would be covering the cancerous tumour with a bandage. What we cannot deny is that many of the Wahabist textbooks are the same operating manuals that Islamist butchers use to justify their savagery. For example, very few people know that while [the Jordanian pilot] Muath was being set on fire in that macabre video, the voiceover was a recitation of an Ibn Taymiyah fatwa deeming the incineration of unbelievers a legitimate act of jihad. Ibn Taymiyah is not some obscure scholar on the fringe of Sunni Islam. In the Sunni world, he is universally venerated with the title ‘Sheikh of Islam,’ elevating him to an almost infallible clerical status.

“If we really want to defend Islam as a religion of mercy, if we really want to be believed when we proclaim the innocence of this religion, we need to do more than just repeat this meaningless mantra about us having nothing to do with [ISIS]. We have to muster the courage to identify the specific texts that actually defame Islam, denounce them and permanently cleanse Islamic tradition of them.”

Categories: Caliphate, Foreign policy, Heresy, Human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Jordan, Koran, Media, Obama, Terrorists
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Iran’s Moves in the Middle East and Why You Should Care.

February 10, 2015

Iran’s Moves in the Middle East and Why You Should Care, The Watchman via You Tube, February 10, 2015

 

Categories: Caliphate, Egypt, Foreign policy, Human rights, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Israel, Kerry, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Netanyahu, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Sanctions, Terrorism, U.S. Congress
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Obama’s conciliatory approach

February 8, 2015

Obama’s conciliatory approach, Israel Hayom, Omer Dostri, February 8, 2015

Instead of taking a determined, aggressive stance against Islamic extremism and openly condemning the religion that gives it moral, spiritual, and material support, Obama is opting for more concessions and far-reaching conciliation. And absurd as it might seem, this is seen by Islam as weakness and provides an incentive for its operatives to attempt to undermine the principles of the West: liberalism and democracy.

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

On Thursday, in an almost unprecedented declaration, U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast, attacked claims that the vicious terrorist acts we are witnessing today are “unique to some other place” (meaning, to the Middle East and Islamic regimes), while comparing the acts of Christians during the Crusades to the acts of the Islamic State group today.

When you first hear these remarks, the sheer amazement makes it seem like you need to listen to them again. But the more one delves into Obama’s foreign policy and the more his conduct since being elected president is analyzed, the sense of shock subsides, and the picture becomes clearer and more comprehensible. From the start, Obama has stood for progressive policy, seen in some circles as “enlightened.” In practice, this means that Obama has steadfastly refused to discuss the problem of “extremist Islam” and “world terrorism.” Likewise, in September 2014, Obama declared that “the Islamic State does not reflect Islam.” These remarks join the famous Cairo speech in which Obama tried to make a new start with the Muslim world and brand the U.S., a superpower, as on the same level while presenting an accepting, conciliatory policy without any misgivings about or criticism of the sickness in the Islamic religion.

This policy is indicative of Obama’s ideology, which includes universalism, postcolonialism, and hints of Marxism and highlights the supposedly weakened “victims of imperialism.” This ideology drops the U.S. from its position as the greatest superpower in the world to that of an equal to non-Western nations that are the result of “oppressive” cultures, all in the name of optimistic equality. This is also one of the main reasons for the absence of American leadership in the world and why anti-democracies like China and Russia and countries that provide a haven for terrorism — such as Iran and Qatar — are trying to take control of the void.

But it’s clear that Obama’s behavior reached an apex with his recent declaration, when U.S. citizens found themselves witnessing the leader of the free world, who stands at the head of a liberal-democratic superpower, standing there trying to find justifications for the barbaric, murderous terrorist acts from the House of Islam. The fact that Obama needed events that took place nearly 1,000 years ago to compare with things that are happening in our time, in the cultured, democratic world, didn’t faze him for an instant. Nor did the facts that the Crusades were launched in opposition to aggression by the same murderous Islam operating today; or that they focused on Jerusalem and not conquering the world, like Islam.

For centuries, some Christians toiled brutally and murdered a not inconsequential number of people — including many Jews, of course. But while Christianity progressed and expressed remorse and the Catholic Church (that same violent, corrupt entity that was responsible for so many wars) weakened as Protestantism grew stronger, Islam has remained in the same darkness, loyal to its utopian and intolerant approach that sees every non-Muslim as a heretic. It’s us or them — the original version.

The very fact that Obama is digging around in history and looking for moral justifications for the Islamic State’s deeds highlights the danger of his policy, which is reflected in his pursuit of a bad deal with Iran, in his ignoring that same Iran’s terrorist activity throughout the world, in his attempts to join forces with the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East and in his soft policy toward extremist Islam, which he sees as part of a general cultural problem and not as a specific one.

Instead of taking a determined, aggressive stance against Islamic extremism and openly condemning the religion that gives it moral, spiritual, and material support, Obama is opting for more concessions and far-reaching conciliation. And absurd as it might seem, this is seen by Islam as weakness and provides an incentive for its operatives to attempt to undermine the principles of the West: liberalism and democracy.

Categories: Caliphate, Christians, Foreign policy, Iran scam, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Nukes, Obama
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: 2 Comments

What Is the Islamic State Trying to Accomplish?

February 7, 2015

What Is the Islamic State Trying to Accomplish? National Review on line, Andrew C. McCarthy, February 7, 2015

(As soon as Obama defeats climate change, he may begin to focus on other less important problems.  — DM)

pic_giant_020715_SM_ISIS-Fighter(Image: ISIS video)

The Islamic State and al-Qaeda are our problem.

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

The Islamic State’s barbaric murder of Lieutenant Mouath al-Kasaebeh, the Jordanian air-force pilot the jihadists captured late last year, has naturally given rise to questions about the group’s objectives. Charles Krauthammer argues (here and here) that the Islamic State is trying to draw Jordan into a land war in Syria. It is no doubt correct that the terrorist group would like to destabilize Jordan — indeed, it is destabilizing Jordan. Its immediate aim, however, is more modest and attainable. The Islamic State wants to break up President Obama’s much trumpeted Islamic-American coalition.

As the administration proudly announced back in September, Jordan joined the U.S. coalition, along with the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar. The only potential value of the coalition is symbolic: It has enabled the president to claim that Muslim countries were lining up with us against the Islamic State. Militarily, the coalition is of little use. These countries cannot defeat the Islamic State.

Moreover, even the symbolism is insignificant. Symbolism, after all, cuts both ways. As I pointed out when the administration breathlessly announced the coalition, our five Islamic partners have only been willing to conduct (extremely limited) aerial operations against the Islamic State. They would not attack al-Qaeda targets — i.e., the strongholds of al-Nusra (the local al-Qaeda franchise) and “Khorasan” (an al-Qaeda advisory council that operates within al-Nusra in Syria).

Obviously, if the relevance of the five Islamic countries’ willingness to fight the Islamic State is the implication that the Islamic State is not really Islamic, then their unwillingness to fight al-Qaeda equally implies their assessment that al-Qaeda is representative of Islam. The latter implication no doubt explains why the Saudis, Qatar, and the UAE have given so much funding over the years to al-Qaeda . . . the terror network from which the Islamic State originates and with which the Islamic State shares its sharia-supremacist ideology.

I’ll give the Saudis this: They don’t burn their prisoners alive in a cage. As previously recounted here, though, they routinely behead their prisoners. In fact, here’s another report from the British press just three weeks ago:

Authorities in Saudi Arabia have publicly beheaded a woman in Islam’s holy city of Mecca. . . . Laila Bint Abdul Muttalib Basim, a Burmese woman who resided in Saudi Arabia, was executed by sword on Monday after being dragged through the street and held down by four police officers.

She was convicted of the sexual abuse and murder of her seven-year-old step-daughter.

A video showed how it took three blows to complete the execution, while the woman screamed “I did not kill. I did not kill.” It has now been removed by YouTube as part of its policy on “shocking and disgusting content”.

There are two ways to behead people according to Mohammed al-Saeedi, a human rights activist: “One way is to inject the prisoner with painkillers to numb the pain and the other is without the painkiller. . . . This woman was beheaded without painkillers — they wanted to make the pain more powerful for her.”

The Saudi Ministry of the Interior said in a statement that it believed the sentence was warranted due to the severity of the crime.

The beheading is part of an alarming trend, which has seen the kingdom execute seven people in the first two weeks of this year. In 2014 the number of executions rose to 87, from 78 in 2013.

Would that the president of the United States were more worried about the security of the United States than about how people in such repulsive countries perceive the United States.

In any event, the Islamic State is simply trying to blow up the coalition, which would be a useful propaganda victory. And the strategy is working. It appears at this point that only Jordan is participating in the airstrikes. While all eyes were on Jordan this week for a reaction to Lieutenant al-Kasaebeh’s immolation, the administration has quietly conceded that the UAEsuspended its participation in bombing missions when the pilot was captured in December.

The explanation for this is obvious: The Islamic countries in the coalition know they can’t stop the Islamic State unless the United States joins the fight in earnest, and they know this president is not serious. The White House says the coalition has carried out a total of about 1,000 airstrikes in the last five months. In Desert Storm, we did 1,100 a day.

Seven strikes a day is not going to accomplish anything, especially with no troops on the ground, and thus no search-and-rescue capability in the event planes go down, as Lieutenant al-Kasaebeh’s did. With no prospect of winning, and with a high potential of losing pilots and agitating the rambunctious Islamists in their own populations, why would these countries continue to participate?

The Islamic State knows there is intense opposition to King Abdullah’s decision to join in the coalition. While the Islamic State’s sadistic method of killing the pilot has the king and his supporters talking tough about retaliation, millions of Jordanians are Islamist in orientation and thousands have crossed into Syria and Iraq to fight for the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. There will continue to be pressure on Jordan to withdraw. Without a real American commitment to the fight, this pressure will get harder for Abdullah to resist.

Jordan has no intention of getting into a land war the king knows he cannot win without U.S. forces leading the way. But the Islamic State does not need to lure Jordan into a land war in order to destabilize the country — it is already doing plenty of that by intensifying the Syrian refugee crisis, sending Jordanians back home from Syria as trained jihadists, and trying to assassinate Abdullah.

I will close by repeating the larger point I’ve argued several times before. We know from experience that when jihadists have safe havens, they attack the United States. They now have more safe havens than they’ve ever had before — not just because of what the Islamic State has accomplished in what used to be Syria and Iraq (the map of the Middle East needs updating) but because of what al-Qaeda has done there and in North Africa, what the Taliban and al-Qaeda are doing in Afghanistan, and so on.

If we understand, as we by now should, what these safe havens portend, then we must grasp that the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and the global jihad constitute a threat to American national security. That they also (and more immediately) threaten Arab Islamic countries is true, but it is not close to being our top concern. Ensuring our security is a concern that could not be responsibly delegated to other countries even if they had formidable armed forces — which the “coalition” countries do not.

The Islamic State and al-Qaeda are our problem.

Categories: Air strikes, Al Qaeda, Caliphate, Coalition, Combat troops, Foreign policy, Hostages, Human rights, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Jordan, Middle East, Obama, Syria, Terrorists
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 3 Comments

The Plight of the Yazidis

February 7, 2015

The Plight of the Yazidis, Front Page Magazine, , February 6, 2015

(They are probably doomed unless the relevant U.N. high commissioner decrees that they are endangered by climate change rather than by the forces of “peaceful” Islam. Then Obama and Kerry, who claim that climate change is the greatest threat of all, might help. — DM)

Yazidis-450x331

Despite the current focus on ISIS, the ongoing barbarity inflicted against the Yazidis, a group of people who have inhabited Iraq’s mountainous northwestern region for centuries, remains largely below the radar. And while this estimated population of approximately 500,000 has been the target of hatred by Muslims who see them as heretical devil-worshipers, ISIS has upped the ante. While the world largely looks away, a genocidal level of extermination proceeds apace. “Our entire religion is being wiped off the face of the earth,” warned Yazidi leader Vian Dakhil—last August.

Early August was the time the carnage ramped up in earnest. Approximately 40,00 Yazidis, including many women and children, were trapped in nine locations around Mount Sinjar, identified in local legend as the final resting place of Noah’s ark. Sinjar was once home to as many as 300,000 Yazidis, but as ISIS advanced, 130,000 fled north to Dohuk, capital of the Dohuk governate of Iraqi Kurdistan, or to Irbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region and its largest city. Since last June authorities in Irbil have been forced to deal with one of the largest and most rapid refugee movements in decades. As of now approximately 350,000 Yazidis are encamped around Dohuk.

Those remaining behind faced a terrible choice of death by dehydration, or death at the hands of ISIS, who murdered 500 Yazidis, including 40 children, in an initial killing spree. By October the death total inflicted by ISIS had reached into the thousands. U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic aptly described what was occurring. “The evidence strongly indicates an attempt to commit genocide,” he said, adding that the only options being given to the Yazidis are “to convert or be killed.”

Not quite. As ISIS has boasted in its propaganda magazine Dabiq, around 300 Yazidi women and girls were abducted, subjected to sexual assault and subsequently sold as slaves to its fighters in Syria. The Islamist terror group considers the women and girls to be “al Sabaya,” defined by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) as “women captured in war.”

The main reason the Yazidis have slipped below the media radar is because they apparently believe President Obama sufficiently addressed the problem last August, when he announced airstrikes aimed at a twofold purpose: protecting U.S. personnel stationed in Erbil, and saving those Yazidis trapped in around Sinjar without food or water. “People are starving. And children are dying of thirst. Meanwhile, ISIL forces below have called for the systematic destruction of the entire Yazidi people, which would constitute genocide,” Obama said at the time. “And when we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre, then I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye. We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide. That’s what we’re doing on that mountain.”

The strikes and humanitarian aid were initially successful in alleviating some of the suffering, and also opened up an escape route allowing many of those trapped to flee. Yet by October, with U.S. attention diverted elsewhere and airstrikes dwindling, ISIS surrounded Mount Sinjar again. More than 10,000 Yazidis were once again trapped, and ISIS reprised its bloody rampage, capturing one mountain village after another, killing the men and selling the women and children into slavery.

Furthermore, the humanitarian airdrops were also halted. Iraqi helicopters were employed to pick up the slack, but they are old and fly only once or twice a week, according to Sameer Karto Babasheikh, the son of the Yazidi Supreme Religious Council leader, who met with a contingent of senior White House and State Department officials that same month to discuss the problem. “Our hostages, children, women, and girls, between 4,000 and 5,000 of them, have been captured by ISIS and sent to other areas. We need help to rescue these hostages,” he explained. “In Mosul, they opened a market to sell Yazidi girls. Some of them ended up in Fallujah, some of them were taken to Saudi Arabia and Raqqa in Syria.”

Kamal Elias, a Yazidi activist who was part of the delegation that came to Washington, put the crisis in far blunter terms. “President Obama promised that they are not going to let ISIS get any more land, that they are not going to let them get another genocide on the Yazidis,” he said. “But this is going to be worse than in August. If ISIS gets to the mountain, all of these people are going to be slaughtered, and then it’s going to take years for the U.S. or anyone else to get them out of the mountain.”

Elias also illuminated another facet of the problem. “Most of the ISIS members are from the towns around ISIS,” he said. “They were our neighbors. We lived with them for hundreds of years. Now all of a sudden they are ISIS. They joined ISIS.”

The animus directed towards the Yazidis spans centuries. “To this day, many Muslims consider them to be devil worshipers,” says Thomas Schmidinger, an expert on Kurdish politics the University of Vienna. “So in the face of religious persecution, Yazidis have concentrated in strongholds located in remote mountain regions,” he adds.

In fact Yazidis whose total population is around 700,000, the vast majority of whom have been concentrated in northern Iraq around Sinjar, are predominantly Kurdish. But they remain religiously distinct from Iraq’s Sunni Kurdish population. Some scholars contend the religion was founded during the 11th century by an Ummayyad sheikh. Others attribute its origins to Sufi leader Adi ibn Musafir, who settled in Kurdistan in the 12th century and founded a community mixing elements of Islam with local beliefs that predated it. The faith combines elements of Zoroastrianism, a 3500 year old monotheistic religion founded by the Prophet Zoroaster in ancient Iran, with elements of Christianity and Islam. Thus Yazidis embrace Christianity’s sacrament of Baptism, Islam’s tenets on circumcision, and Zoroastrianism’s belief that fire must be revered as a manifestation from God.

The devil-worshipping accusations derive from their worship of a fallen angel, Melek Tawwus, or Peacock Angel. Unlike the permanent fall from grace of Satan in the Judeo-Christian tradition, Melek Tawwus is forgiven by God and returned to heaven, becoming a force for good in Yazidism.

Nonetheless, beginning around the late 16th and early 17th centuries, accusations of devil-worship arose because Muslims believe the story of Tawwus Melek resembles the Qur’an’s Shaytan, a rebellious “djinn” (Muslim spirit) who leads men away from goodness.

Unfortunately, goodness is currently in short supply in among the members of the international community. There is no doubt they are aware of the Yazidi’s continuing plight, but they continue to fail those who are facing imminent extermination.

Murad Ismael, a Yazidi activist in the Sinjar Crisis Group, reported on his December journey during which he reached Sinjar accompanied by Peshmerga forces who have seen 999 fighters killed, and 4596 wounded since they began standing against ISIS last June. It was the first time Yazidis had reached Sinjar since the mass exodus last August.

“We did not see any civilians in Sinjar, except for a few Yazidis who had returned there to retrieve some of their personal belongings,” Ismael revealed to Aljazeera America. “For the 150 kilometers to the Mount Sinjar area, all has been abandoned. No sign of life, except for the forces defending the roads.” Ismael also downplayed reports stating Kurdish fighters had re-captured most of Mount Sinjar in December.  “The peshmerga and the Yazidi volunteers did get inside the city of Sinjar.,” he explained. “About three-quarters of the city has been recaptured. However, there are still ISIL (ISIS) snipers. ISIL have been cleared from the northern side of the mountain, but they left behind IEDs. The southern side of the mountain is not safe.”

Ismael also revealed what ISIS left behind. “At least three mass graves have been found,” he said. “Seventy-five bodies have been found. Another mass grave of about 25 or 26 people. I did not get to that location. We saw evidence of destruction. People’s clothes alongside the road. My town, Khanasour, to see how it is now — it’s emotionally overwhelming. Everything’s been burned. All Islamic State banners or writing on the walls. Lots of mass graves, lots of people dead inside the houses. We didn’t look inside.”

Mass grave sightings were confirmed by the Peshmerga four days ago.

The plight of those in the aforementioned refugee camps has been largely ignored as well. Bill Devlin, a co-pastor of the Infinity Bible Church in the Bronx, New York who travelled with Ismael, was appalled. “We visited three camps today, with approximately 5,000 people each,” he said  “They’re living in unfinished buildings, living in the street, living with literally nothing. We’ve been going from house to house of unfinished buildings. No food, no kerosene heaters—it’s beyond belief. Some one million Yazidis are dispersed outside the official camps. The need is critical. The issue is dire.”

Co-traveler Lee Mason, a producer for Cumulus Media, illuminated the details, noting there are three types of camps. The first type consists of tent cities organized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Yet that organization is belied by dirt streets, no hot water and latrines as much as a half mile away. The second type consists of unofficial camps where people put up tarps or plastic sheeting to protect from the freezing rain. There are dangerous makeshift electricity systems and self-created toilet systems consists of sheds covered with blankets, but no running water. The last group of camps consists of unheated, abandoned buildings with similar makeshift electrical systems.

Last December, Yazidi women who escaped from ISIS detailed their abuse to the BBC. “They said: ‘Yazidis are infidels,” a woman using the pseudonym “Hannan” reported. “Now you will live as Muslims.’ They took many girls for sex. They told us: ‘Forget the life you knew.’” She further reveals that ISIS took the younger girls first and sent many of them to the Syrian city of Raqqa ISIS considers its capitol. Many of women grew so desperate from the abuse they considered suicide a viable alternative. One actually carried it out. “She slashed her wrists,” Hannan revealed “(ISIS) didn’t let us help her. They put us in a room and shut the door. She died. They said: ‘It doesn’t matter, we’ll just dump the body somewhere.’”

Upping the ante on depravity, ISIS has published guidelines on the “proper” use of women as slaves, including a Q&A pamphlet, a video of men awaiting their turn at the slave market, and a statement in Daqib describing the events:

“After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to Sharia [Islamic law] amongst the fighters of Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations…Before Satan sows doubt among the weak-minded and weak-hearted, remember that enslaving the kuffa [infidels] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly-established aspect of Sharia.”

The Yazidis blame several entities for their current predicamen,t including an Iraqi government that has never sufficiently protected them, Kurdish forces who abandoned the fight for Sinjar last August—and an Obama administration whose lack of continuity has given ISIS the impression they can exterminate Yazidis with impunity.

Last month Ismael traveled to Baghdad to plead for help. He met a list of VIPs that included U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart E. Jones, French Ambassador to Iraq François Bartley, Iraqi President Fuad Masum and Minister of Women’s Affairs Bayan Nouri. Al Jazeera America columnist John Batchelor confirms from a separate source that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power is also aware of the Yazidis’ precarious circumstances. Yet he further notes that she and her staff have “several explanations for why so little has been done for the Yazidis, including the lack of security without U.S. forces in the region.”

No doubt. In the meantime, hundreds of Yazidi women abducted by ISIS remain unaccounted for, children in refugee camps freeze to death, and the Peshmerga remain without the necessary firepower to limit ISIS’s gain, much less defeat them.

Yesterday at the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama once again reminded the world how far he was willing to push the boundaries of moral equivalency in order to spare bloodthirsty Islamists from being singled out. “Unless we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” Obama said. “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Those would be the very same Christians, much like the Yazidis, currently being eliminated in the Middle East—even as the same can be said for leadership and morality in the White House.

Categories: Caliphate, Foreign policy, Freedom, Heresy, Human rights, Iraq, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Koran, Obama, Sharia law, Terrorism, Terrorists, Torture, Yazidis
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Obama: Christianity No Different From the Islamic State

February 7, 2015

Obama: Christianity No Different From the Islamic State, Front Page Magazine, , February 6, 2015

(Some Christians did awful things during the crusades and inquisition, particularly during the Spanish inquisition. Assume arguendo that they did evil things comparable to those of the Islamic State, its cohorts and other Islamists, as commanded by the Koran. In recent centuries, Christians in general managed to get over it. Islam, however, remains stuck in a former millennium of barbarism and seems to be regressing. So what’s Obama’s point, assuming that he has one? — DM)

Obama-at-2015-National-Prayer-Breakfast-450x315

As the world reacts with shock and horror at the increasingly savage deeds of the Islamic State (IS)—in this case, the recent immolation of a captive—U.S. President Obama’s response has been one of nonjudgmental relativism.

Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5, Obama counseled Americans to get off their “high horse” and remember that Christians have been equally guilty of such atrocities:

Unless we get on our high horse and think this [beheadings, sex-slavery, crucifixion, roasting humans] is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.

There is so much to be said here.  First, the obvious: the wide gulf between violence and hate “justified in the name of Christ” and violence and hate “justified in the name of Muhammad” is that Christ never justified it, while Muhammad continuously did.

This is not just a theoretic point; it is the very reason that Muslims are still committing savage atrocities.  Every evil act IS commits—whether beheading, crucifying, raping, enslaving, or immolating humans—has precedents in the deeds of Muhammad, that most “perfect” and “moral” man, per Koran 33:21 and 68:4 (see “The Islamic State and Islam” for parallels).

Does Obama know something about Christ—who eschewed violence and told people to love and forgive their enemies—that we don’t?  Perhaps he’s clinging to that solitary verse that academics like Philip Jenkins habitually highlight, that Christ—who “spoke to the multitudes in parables and without a parable spoke not” once said, “I come not to bring peace but a sword.” (Matt. 10:34, 13:34).

Jesus was not commanding violence against non-Christians but rather predicting that Christians will be persecuted, including by family members (as, for example, when a Muslim family slaughters their child for “apostatizing” to Christianity as happens frequently).

Conversely, in its fatwa justifying the burning of the Jordanian captive, the Islamic State cites Muhammad putting out the eyes of some with “heated irons” (he also cut their hands and feet off).  The fatwa also cites Khalid bin al-Walid—the heroic “Sword of Allah”—who burned apostates to death, including one man whose head he set on fire to cook his dinner on.

Nor is the Islamic State alone in burning people.  Recently a “mob accused of burning alive a Christian couple in an industrial kiln in Pakistan allegedly wrapped a pregnant mother in cotton so she would catch fire more easily.”

As for the Islamic “authorities,” Al Azhar—the Islamic world’s oldest and most prestigious university which cohosted Obama’s 2009 “New Beginning” speech—still assigns books that justify every barbarity IS commits, includingburning people alive.  Moreover, Al Azhar—a religious institution concerned with what is and is not Islamic—has called for the cutting off of the hands and feet of IS members, thereby legitimizing such acts according to Islamic law.

On the other hand, does Obama know of some secret document in the halls of the Vatican that calls for amputating, beheading or immolating enemies of Christ to support his religious relativism?

As for the much maligned Crusades, Obama naturally follows the mainstream academic narrative that anachronistically portrays the crusaders as greedy, white, Christian imperialists who decided to conquer peace-loving Muslims in the Middle East.

Again, familiarity with the true sources and causes behind the Crusades shows that they were a response to the very same atrocities being committed by the Islamic State today.  Consider the words of Pope Urban II, spoken almost a millennium ago, and note how well they perfectly mirror IS behavior:

From the confines of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth and very frequently has been brought to our ears, namely, that a race from the kingdom of the Persians [i.e., Muslim Turks] … has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own country [as slaves], and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion ….  What shall I say of the abominable rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent….  On whom therefore is the labor of avenging these wrongs and of recovering this territory incumbent, if not upon you? You, upon whom above other nations God has conferred remarkable glory in arms, great courage, bodily activity, and strength…

If the crusaders left their own lands and families to come to the aid of persecuted Christians and to liberate Jerusalem, here is Obama portraying them as no better than the Islamic State—which isn’t surprising considering that, far from helping persecuted Christians, Obama’s policies have significantly worsened their plight.

According to primary historical texts—not the modern day fantasies peddled by the likes of Karen Armstrong, an ex-nun with an axe to grind—Muslim persecution of Christians was indeed a primary impetus for the Crusades.

As for the Inquisition, this too took place in the context of Christendom’s struggle with Islam. (Isn’t it curious that the European nation most associated with the Inquisition, Spain, was also the only nation to be conquered and occupied by Islam for centuries?)  After the Christian reconquest of Spain, Muslims, seen as untrustworthy, were ordered either to convert to Christianity or go back to Africa whence they came.  Countless Muslims feigned conversion by practicing taqiyya and living as moles, always trying to subvert Spain back to Islam.  Hence the extreme measures of the Inquisition—which, either way, find no support in the teachings of Christ.

Conversely, after one of his jihads, Muhammad had a man tortured to death in order to reveal his tribe’s hidden treasure and “married” the same man’s wife hours later.  Unsurprisingly, the woman, Safiya, later confessed that “Of all men, I hated the prophet the most—for he killed my husband, my brother, and my father,” before “marrying” her.

In short, Obama’s claim that there will always be people willing to “hijack religion for their own murderous ends” is patently false when applied to the Islamic State and like organizations and individuals.

Muhammad himself called for the murder of his enemies; he permitted Muslims to feign friendship to his enemies in order to assassinate them; he incited his followers to conquer and plunder non-believers, promising them a sexual paradise if they were martyred; he kept sex slaves and practiced pedophilia with his “child-bride,” Aisha.

He, the prophet of Islam, did everything the Islamic State is doing.

If Muslims are supposed to follow the sunna, or example, of Muhammad, and if Muhammad engaged in and justified every barbarity being committed by the Islamic State and other Muslims—how, exactly, are they “hijacking” Islam?

Such is the simple logic Obama fails to grasp.  Or else he does grasp it—but hopes most Americans don’t.

Categories: Caliphate, Christians, Foreign policy, Freedom, History, Hostages, Human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Koran, Moral equivalence, Obama, Terrorism, Torture
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

Humor: Brian Williams should replace Secretary Kerry

February 7, 2015

Brian Williams should replace Secretary Kerry, Dan Miller’s Blog, February 6, 2015

(The views expressed in this article are not necessarily mine or those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

Although it would be hypocritical for NBC to fire Mr. Williams for mis- speaking  lying, it would enhance his chances of becoming our next Secretary of State. Like Hillary Clinton, Williams sorta told some truth when he admitted to lying for a dozen years. Hillary became Obama’s Secretary of State in 2009. Williams, also a very good liar, deserves no less this year. After that? Perhaps “our” next President.

brian_williams_airwolf_2-5-15-1

Here is a timeline of the progression of Williams’ tall tales, based on a Stars and Stripes article:

In late March 2003, the New York Daily News reported that “the one (helicopter) carrying Williams and (Retired General and current NBC consultant Wayne) Downing landed” after another chopper ahead of them had been hit by “a rocket-fired grenade.” Even this early report appears to have been exaggerated. Larry O’Connor at Truth Revolt, reacting to Williams’ on-air statement Wednesday night, noted that Williams was really “in an aircraft that followed the one hit by RPG fire by an entire hour.”

Several days later, USA Today reported that Williams “was stranded in the Iraqi desert for three days.” That hardly appears to be the case. In a comment at an NBC Facebook page, a clearly frustrated Lance Reynolds, the flight engineer on the helicopter that was hit, wrote: “I remember you guys taking back off in a different flight of Chinooks from another unit and heading to Kuwait to report your ‘war story’ to the Nightly News.”

By 2007, the helicopter that was hit was, according to a Williams blog entry, “the chopper flying in front of ours.” A University of Notre Dame press release in 2010, the year he gave the commencement address there, referred to how “the lead helicopter was shot down.”

In March 2013, Williams told Alec Baldwin of “being in a helicopter I had no business being in in Iraq with rounds coming into the airframe,” and, after prompting, said that he “briefly” thought he would die.

Later that month, Williams crossed the fairy-tale Rubicon, telling David Letterman that “two of the four helicopters were hit by ground fire, including the one I was in,” and that after that, the problem was how “we figure out how to land.” We?

Finally, on January 30, Williams, applying even more mustard, told the nation on Nightly News that “the helicopter we were travelling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG.”

The indispensable Kristinn Taylor at Gateway Pundit has found that “speech promotional bios touted Williams’ bravery in returning to Iraq after he claimed being under fire.”

Here’s a video of Williams’ 2013 love feast with David Letterman. His Iraq narrative begins at 2:50.

According to Sharyl Attkisson, Presidential Candidate Clinton [like Brian Williams],

never fully explained how she could have made such a mistake as saying she had ducked sniper fire when there hadn’t been a sniper in sight. Initially, she stated “I was sleep deprived and I misspoke.”

But as my report below (“Clinton Doubles Down”) shows, Clinton told varieties of the embellishment over a long period of time, not just when she was sleep deprived.

Had Clinton somehow convinced herself that it had all really happened? Or did she knowingly advance a false story?

“So I made a mistake,” Clinton also stated at one point. “It proves I’m human, which you know, for some people, is a revelation.”

Whoops.

Clinton1web_2831249b

In the next video, Mr. Williams and a guest from NBC discuss Clinton’s Bosnia adventures, Senator Obama’s candidacy and their anticipated consequences for her 2008 Democrat presidential nomination. Note the apparent puzzlement about why Clinton confessed to having “misspoken.”

Clinton didn’t get the Democrat presidential nomination in 2008 but was confirmed as Obama’s Secretary of State in 2009. Doesn’t Williams deserve a promotion comparable to what Clinton got (from failed Presidential Candidate to SecState)? Shouldn’t he be held to the same standard?

Williams had seen what happened to Clinton just weeks earlier, yet kept telling his own fish tale. To paraphrase one of his own NBC colleagues, this isn’t Little League, it’s a nightly news anchor with an audience of millions. Will he be held to the same standards to which NBC and the rest of the media held Clinton?

What standards were those then and, of more importance, what have they been since? She still “deserves” to become “our” next President.

Tom Brokaw, also of NBC, contends that Williams should go. Perhaps, however, NBC will forgive and forget.

The Los Angeles Times, quoting anonymous NBC News execs, reported that Williams’s on-air apology has been accepted internally and that he’s expected to face no disciplinary action for his serious journalistic lapse, which included showing video of a combat-damaged helicopter and representing it wrongly as the Chinook on which Williams had been a passenger.

As noted by Howard Kurtz at Fox News,

When it comes to the NBC franchise, Brian Williams is too big to fail. He’s the face of the network, he hosts the top-rated network newscast, he guest-hosts “Saturday Night Live.” He’s a bankable asset. And in fairness, Williams has a pretty unblemished track record.

Oh well.

Reality is often unpleasant and hard to deal with, so we need a creative Secretary of State who will continue to reject reality, base policy on fantasy and do so with impunity for a decade or more.

Clinton, a likely Presidential Candidate for 2016, did her “best.”

Obama does what Obama does and gets away with it. According to an article at Breitbart, the seven Muslims at a recent White House meeting on domestic and foreign policy issues have been named.

According to a White House statement on the President’s meeting, the domestic issues discussed were the “Affordable Care Act, anti-Muslim violence and discrimination, the 21st Century Policing Task Force, and the upcoming White House Summit on Countering Violence Extremism.” On the foreign policy front, “the President discussed the need to continue countering ISIL and other groups that commit horrific acts of violence, purportedly in the name of Islam,” while also congratulating Muslims on their “remarkable contributions” to America. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

Comedian and left-wing pundit Dean Obeidallah revealed that he was one of the fifteen Muslim-American “leaders” brought to the White House on Wednesday afternoon.

“The No.1 issue raised: The alarming rise in anti-Muslim bigotry in America,” Obeidallah said of the meeting with the President. Their chief collective concern was not the rise of the Sunni Islamic State, nor the expansion of the Caliphatist Shiite Iranian regime and its messianic drive towards nuclear weapons, but instead, “anti-Muslim bigotry in America.” [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

The Detroit Free Press also revealed that senior Obama advisers Valerie Jarrett and Ben Rhodes were present in the Muslim leaders’ meeting. [Emphasis added.]

Dean Obeidallah also revealed that Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, was behind the effort to get Muslim leaders to the White House.

Muslim Advocates reveals on its website that its three main objectives are to “end profiling,” “strengthen [Muslim] charities,” and “counter hate.” Its Press Center section is filled with posts demanding intelligence organizations, such as the New York Police Department and federal agencies, end their “Muslim Suspicionless Spying Program,” while also dictating to the media that it should “Report Accurately on Muslims.” Another post reads, “What You Need to Know About the New Federal Racial Profiling Policy.” Review of Muslim Advocates’ press releases reveals that the only foreign policy issue with which the group has concerned itself over the past year was urging Sec. of State John Kerry to ensureMuslim “Americans are able to safely perform the annual religious Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.” [Emphasis added.]

Keep up the good work, Big Guy, Insha’Allah.

Fantasy Island Obama

Kerry has bravely continued the march.

Williams, who should be rehabilitated as quickly as was Senator Clinton, could not be worse and might even be better than Kerry. Then, his path to the presidency should be clear even if he (unlike Obama) is candid in public on rare occasions.

Hey, Grandpa! I need some of that stuff.

Categories: Appeasement, Benghazi, Foreign policy, Humor, Iran, Iran scam, Iraq, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Kerry, Media, Nukes, Obama
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Scandal Rocks the U.N.

February 6, 2015

Scandal Rocks the U.N., National Review Online, Anne Bayefsky, February 6, 2015

UN Flag

Setting aside all the legal verbiage, the politics are painfully clear. Criminalizing Israel’s efforts to exercise its right of self-defense against a foe openly committed to genocide strikes at the heart of the sovereignty, well-being, and legitimacy of the Jewish state. Demonizing a democratic society that is ready, willing, and able to ensure the accountability of its armed forces is not about protecting Palestinians. It is about endangering Israelis.

Human-rights law is being perverted for anti-human-rights ends, and it is about time human-rights lawyers — and all those who care about defeating the enemies of rights and freedoms — stood up and objected.

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

A report on human-rights violations has been compromised not once but twice.

Four days ago, on February 2, the head of a U.N. commission of inquiry created to investigate war crimes in Gaza was forced to resign after it was revealed that he had taken money from the PLO for providing legal advice. William Schabas’s U.N. job was to expose war criminals and recommend how to hold them “accountable.” William Schabas’s PLO job was to show them how to use the International Criminal Court (ICC) to hold Israeli war criminals accountable. He didn’t think there was a problem.

His conflict of interest did not surface, however, until after the inquiry he was heading had “largely completed” its evidence-gathering, and the writing of the requisite report had begun, according to Schabas himself. But instead of taking the only legitimate route and setting aside the whole tainted exercise, the president of the U.N. Human Rights Council, Joachim Rücker of Germany, claimed he was “preserving the integrity” of the inquiry simply by accepting Schabas’s resignation.

The council — the U.N.’s top human-rights body — had voted to create the Schabas inquiry in the middle of the Gaza War last July. Palestinians garnered support from council members and human-rights authorities like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The United States and the members of the European Union either voted against or abstained. A majority of the states that have seats on the council are not “fully free” (on the Freedom House scale).

The idea of the inquiry was to open a second front in the war, conducted by international lawyers, to tie the hands of Israeli decision-makers — political and military — behind their backs.

Hence, the Schabas inquiry’s mandate was to examine human-rights violations “in the occupied Palestinian territory,” not “in Israel.” The date cited for the beginning of the inquiry was June 13, 2014, because Palestinian terrorists had kidnapped (and later murdered) three Israeli teenagers the day before — and Israeli aggression was a given of the investigation. The mandate never mentioned “Hamas” or its terror tunnels, almost half of which opened into Israel.

With the terms of the “inquiry” set to ensure the desired outcome, Schabas and two others became the council’s tools. They were selected by President Rücker “in consultation” with the Palestinians in the belief that they could be counted upon to deliver a guilty verdict.

Little wonder, then, that Schabas was miffed about the council’s newfound concern over his past activities. He had earlier had plenty to say in public about the subject matter covered by his new position. In 2012, on camera, he lectured about “crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression, all of which I think it can be shown have been perpetrated at various times during the history of the State of Israel. . . . The International Criminal Court is in a position to exercise jurisdiction over crimes committed on the territory of Palestine . . . So much of my effort these times is addressed to try to get . . . the Court . . . to take up this burning, important issue. . . . With a bit of luck and by twisting things and maneuvering, we can get them before the courts.”

This was just the kind of lawyer who the U.N. Human Rights Council would think satisfied its rule requiring the “independence, impartiality, personal integrity, and objectivity” of all its “mandate-holders.”

The council could even be sure Schabas would go after Israel’s prime minister personally. Said Schabas on camera before he was hired: “My favorite would be Netanyahu in the dock at the International Criminal Court.”

His manifest bias, thought Schabas, should have saved him from his not-so-manifest conflict of interest. So he decided not to go quietly, even if it meant taking the council down with him. In his letter of resignation he divulged: “[W]hen I was asked if I would accept nomination to the Commission of Inquiry, I was not requested to provide any details of my past statements and other activities concerning Palestine and Israel.” He assumed that because his “views on Israel and Palestine . . . were well known,” the council was getting exactly what it wanted. And so was he.

What finally clued Schabas in to the fact that the jig was up? Shortly before he resigned, the council tried to save face all around by pretending “this matter” was so very complicated that it required an opinion from the U.N.’s legal office.

With Schabas gone, the legal opinion on the meaning of impartiality has been shelved — though it is a lesson the council evidently still needs. President Rücker moved the deck chairs around, appointing one of the two remaining members of the inquiry, the American Mary McGowan Davis, as chair, and fancies it is now business as usual.

The February 3 letter from Rücker to Schabas accepting his resignation thanks him for his “work over the past six months,” says that the “appearance” of a problem has now been solved, and says that Rücker is “looking forward” to the report, due out in March. Six months preparing the report, a month to go before publication, and the U.N. imagines all appearances of impropriety and contamination have vanished into thin air.

Rücker told McGowan Davis: “I am convinced that you will . . . uphold the highest standards of integrity, particularly the principles of independence, impartiality and objectivity.”

Seriously? Unlike Schabas, McGowan Davis previously worked for the same U.N. employer on the same subject! In 2010 and 2011 she was a member of a Human Rights Council committee responsible for promoting the implementation of the council’s infamous Goldstone Report on the 2008–09 Gaza War. She chaired this follow-up committee in the last months of its work. The Goldstone Report’s central lie was its claim that Israel set out to kill Palestinian civilians deliberately. After Goldstone himself retracted the slander, McGowan Davis told the Jerusalem Post his statement “does not have any impact” and she would continue “to take his report as a given.”

At that time, McGowan Davis had the specific task of assessing whether Israel had adequately responded to the Goldstone Report’s defamatory accusations — and lo and behold, in her own report she found Israel’s response wanting. Apparently her assessment of Israeli “proceedings” in one Gaza war between Israel and rocket-launching Palestinian terrorists leaves her “impartial” and “objective” about Israel’s “accountability measures” in the subsequent Gaza war between Israel and rocket-launching Palestinian terrorists. Her 2011 finding that Israel did not conform to the “international standards” required to avoid the dominion of the International Criminal Court mirrors precisely the end game of her current job.

Furthermore, throughout her work for the U.N. Human Rights Council, McGowan Davis has been a member of the board of directors of the American Association of the International Commission of Jurists, which according to its website is “an affiliated organization of the ICJ in Geneva.” The ICJ participated in the July council session that adopted the resolution creating the 2014 Gaza inquiry. Prior to the vote and only two weeks into the war, this group of lawyers made a statement to the council, judging Israel guilty of war crimes and making a specific suggestion: “[T]he ICJ calls on this Council to establish a commission of inquiry to investigate all breaches of international humanitarian law and gross violations of human rights committed during the Israeli military operations in Gaza.”

Not only did the council adopt the ICJ’s recommendation, it appointed a member of the board of directors of the ICJ’s American affiliate to do the job — Mary McGowan Davis.

Three days ago, she accepted Schabas’s chair with alacrity and promised “a report that meets the highest standards of independence and impartiality.”

In what universe?

There is a reason why the council — along with its Palestinian partners, who are working furiously behind the scenes to salvage the fiasco — is so desperate to plow ahead. We now know that Schabas provided the Palestinians with legal advice about how to move forward with the prosecution of Israelis before the ICC, a step that they subsequently took. There is no doubt that the Schabas/McGowan Davis report will immediately be sent to the ICC prosecutor to assist in deciding whether a “preliminary examination” already underway should become a full-fledged “investigation.” The report’s lack of credibility has put the credibility of the ICC in question.

Setting aside all the legal verbiage, the politics are painfully clear. Criminalizing Israel’s efforts to exercise its right of self-defense against a foe openly committed to genocide strikes at the heart of the sovereignty, well-being, and legitimacy of the Jewish state. Demonizing a democratic society that is ready, willing, and able to ensure the accountability of its armed forces is not about protecting Palestinians. It is about endangering Israelis.

Human-rights law is being perverted for anti-human-rights ends, and it is about time human-rights lawyers — and all those who care about defeating the enemies of rights and freedoms — stood up and objected.

Categories: Gaza, Hamas, Human rights, International Community, international law, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Palestinians, Terrorism, United Nations
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

The Glamor of Evil

February 6, 2015

The Glamor of Evil, Mark Stein on line, February 5, 2015

1157

President Obama’s response was to go to the National Prayer Breakfast and condescendingly advise us – as if it’s some dazzlingly original observation rather than the lamest faculty-lounge relativist bromide – to “remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ“.

[C]ivilization is a fragile and unnatural state of affairs. Droning on about the Crusades and Jim Crow, Obama offers the foreign policy of Oscar Wilde’s cynic: He knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And so, as the world burns, he, uh, redoubles his, uh, vigilance, uh uh uh… Whatever. That and $16.4 million will buy you coffee and some trauma counseling in Kiev.

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

On Tuesday the Islamic State released a 22-minute video showing Flight Lieutenant Muath al-Kasasbeh of the Royal Jordanian Air Force being doused in petrol and burned to death. It is an horrific way to die, and Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh showed uncommon bravery, standing stiff and dignified as the flames consumed him. And then he toppled, and the ISIS cameras rolled on, until what was left was charred and shapeless and unrecognizable as human.

King Abdullah’s response to this barbaric act was to execute two ISIS prisoners the following morning, including the evil woman who was part of the cell that blew up the lobby of my favorite hotel in Amman, the Grand Hyatt.

President Obama’s response was to go to the National Prayer Breakfast and condescendingly advise us – as if it’s some dazzlingly original observation rather than the lamest faculty-lounge relativist bromide – to “remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ“.

Gee, thanks. If you’re watching on ISIS premium cable, I’m sure that’s a great consolation when they’re reaching for the scimitar and readying you for your close-up. Oh, and, even by the standards of his usual rote cookie-cutter shoulder-to-shoulder shtick that follows every ISIS beheading of western captives, the President could barely conceal his boredom at having to discuss the immolation of Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh:

Aaand it, I think, will redouble [pause] the vigilance aaand determination on the part of our global coalition to, uh, make sure that they are degraded and ultimately defeated. Ummmm. [Adopting a whimsical look] It also just indicates the degree to which whatever ideology they’re operating off of, it’s bankrupt. [Suppressing a smirk, pivoting to a much more important subject.] We’re here to talk about how to make people healthier and make their lives better.

The lack of passion – the bloodlessness – of Obama’s reaction to atrocity is always striking. He can’t even be bothered pretending that he means it.

I am not a great fan of the Hashemites, and there is great peril for Jordan in getting sucked deeper into a spiral that could quickly consume one of the weakest polities in the region and turn the least-worst Sunni monarchy into merely the latest Obama-era failed-state – after Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc. The UAE took advantage of Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh’s capture to cease participation in sorties entirely, and, given the general halfheartedness of Obama’s “coalition”, King Abdullah could have been forgiven for also deciding to head for the exit.

Yet he understood the necessity of action. Obama, by contrast, declares action, and then does nothing. His war against ISIS was supposed to be one in which the US would not put “boots on the ground”, but instead leave that to our allies. The allies have the boots, but they could use some weapons, too. Obama has failed to supply the Kurds or anybody else with what they need to defeat our enemies. It’s becoming what they call a pattern of behavior. Elliott Abrams draws attention to this passage in a New York Times story about Ukraine:

The Russians have sent modern T-80 tanks, whose armor cannot be penetrated by Ukraine’s aging and largely inoperative antitank weapons, along with Grad rockets and other heavy weapons. Russian forces have also used electronic jamming equipment to interfere with the Ukrainians’ communications….

Ukraine has requested arms and equipment, including ammunition, sniper rifles, mortars, grenade launchers, antitank missiles, armored personnel carriers, mobile field hospitals, counterbattery radars and reconnaissance drones.

Hmm. So how much of that shopping list have we responded to? Obama won’t write Ukraine a blank check, but he will write them a blanket check:

The $16.4 million in aid that Mr. Kerry will announce in Kiev is intended to help people trapped by the fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk. The aid will be used to buy basic items like blankets and clothing, along with counseling for traumatized civilians.

Could be worse. He might have thrown in another James Taylor singalong. Then they really would need trauma counselors.

With at least another two years of civilizational retreat to go, we’re gonna need a lot more security blankets, which is good news for whichever Chinese factory makes them.

~As Kyle Smith points out, the video of Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh’s death is an extremely sophisticated and professional production. US news media have declined to run it, because it’s too disturbing, as opposed to, say, Brian Williams’ ripping yarns of derring-do about being shot out of the sky by an RPG. There are really two parallel media structures now: Consumers of Brian Williams-delivered “news” aren’t even aware of the metastasizing of evil. Meanwhile, out there on Twitter and Facebook it’s the hottest recruiting tool on the planet. You’ll recall Hannah Arendt’s tired and misleading coinage “the banality of evil”, derived from her observation of Adolf Eichmann at his trial in Jerusalem. As I wrote last August:

Hitler felt obliged to be somewhat coy about just how final the final solution was. As Eichmann testified at his trial, when typing up the minutes of the Wannsee conference, “How shall I put it? Certain over-plain talk and jargon expressions had to be rendered into office language by me.” Even the Nazis were reluctant to spell it out.

The Germans didn’t have social media, but they had newsreels, and Hitler knew enough not to make genocide available to Pathé or “The March of Time”. He had considerations both domestic and foreign. Pre-Wannsee, in Poland and elsewhere, German troops had been ordered to shoot Jewish prisoners in cold blood, and their commanders reported back to Berlin that too many soldiers had found it sickening and demoralizing. So the purpose of “the final solution” was to make mass murder painless, at least for the perpetrators – more bureaucratic, removed, bloodless.

As for foreign considerations, Germany expected to be treated as a civilized power by its enemies, and that would not have been possible had they been boasting about genocide.

Seventy years on, the Islamic State has slipped free of even these minimal constraints. They advertize their barbarism to the world, because what’s the downside? Let’s say the guys who burned Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh are one day captured by Americans. They can look forward to a decade or two of a soft, pampering sojourn in the US justice system, represented by an A-list dream-team that’ll string things along until the administration figures it’ll cut its losses and ship them to Qatar in exchange for some worthless deserter.

As for the upside, “the banality of evil” may have its appeal for lower-middle-class Teuton bureaucrats, but the glamor of evil is a far more potent and universal brand. The Islamic State has come up with the ultimate social-media campaign: evil goes viral! At some level German conscripts needed to believe they were honorable soldiers in an honorable cause, no different from the British or Americans. But ISIS volunteers are signing up explicitly for the war crimes. The Islamic State burned Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh alive not only to kill him but to inspire the thousands of ISIS fanbois around the globe, like Moussa Coulibaly, the guy who stabbed three French policemen outside a Jewish school in Nice this week.

For many of its beneficiaries, modern western life is bland, undemanding and vaguely unsatisfying. Some seek a greater cause, and turn to climate change or LGBTQWERTY rights. But others want something with a little more red meat to it. Jihad is primal in a way that the stodgy multiculti relativist mush peddled by Obama isn’t. And what the Islamic State is offering is Jihad 2.0, cranking up the blood-lust and rape and sex slavery and head-chopping and depravity in ways that make Osama-era al-Qaeda look like a bunch of pantywaists.

Success breeds success. The success of evil breeds darker evil. And the glamorization of evil breeds ever more of those “recent Muslim converts” and “lone wolves” and “self-radicalized extremists” in the news. That’s a Big Idea – a bigger idea, indeed, than Communism or Nazism. Islam, as we know, means “submission”. But Xtreme-Sports Hyper-Islam, blood-soaked and baying, is also wonderfully liberating, offering the chance for dull-witted, repressed young men to slip free of even the most basic societal restraints. And, when the charms of the open road in Headchoppistan wear thin, your British and Canadian and Australian and European welfare checks will still be waiting for you on the doormat back home.

By contrast, civilization is a fragile and unnatural state of affairs. Droning on about the Crusades and Jim Crow, Obama offers the foreign policy of Oscar Wilde’s cynic: He knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And so, as the world burns, he, uh, redoubles his, uh, vigilance, uh uh uh… Whatever. That and $16.4 million will buy you coffee and some trauma counseling in Kiev.

Categories: Caliphate, Christians, Executions, Foreign policy, Holocaust, Hostages, Iraq, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamism, Jihad, Jordan, Jordanian pilot, Mark Steyn, Obama, Terrorists, Torture
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

U.S. Seen in Middle East as Ally of Terrorists

February 4, 2015

U.S. Seen in Middle East as Ally of Terrorists, The Gatestone Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh, February 5, 2015

Many Egyptians and moderate Arabs and Muslims were shocked to hear that the U.S. State Department recently hosted a Muslim Brotherhood delegation. They were equally shocked when an EU court decided to remove Hamas from the bloc’s list of terror groups.

“Just two days after the controversial visit, the Brotherhood called for a war against their fellow Egyptians.” — Linda S. Heard, Middle East Expert, Gulf News.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is seeking to return to the political arena through the American door and terrorist attacks. The U.S. policy appears to be devious and unreliable.” — Ezzat Ibrahim, columnist, Al Ahram.

“[Ousted Egyptian President] Mohamed Morsi, before his election, described these Jews as descendants of apes and pigs. In English, the Muslim Brotherhood says one thing and in Arabic something completely different.” — Mohamed Salmawi, Egyptian columnist

While the Egyptian government has been waging war on the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic radical groups, the U.S. Administration and some Europeans are continuing to hamper efforts to combat terrorism.

Many Egyptians and moderate Arabs and Muslims were shocked to hear that the U.S. State Department recently hosted a Muslim Brotherhood delegation. They were equally shocked when an EU court decided to remove Hamas from the bloc’s list of terror groups.

The State Department’s hosting of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders has outraged Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Sisi, who has been waging a relentless war against the organization over the past year.

One member of the delegation, Muslim Brotherhood judge Waleed Sharaby, posed for a picture while at Foggy Bottom, as he held up the organization’s four-finger “Rabia” sign. (The gesture is named for Cairo’s Rabia Square, where counter-demonstrations backing ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi — who is from the Muslim Brotherhood — took place in August 2013.)

919While being hosted by the State Department on a visit to Washington, Muslim Brotherhood judge Waleed Sharaby (left) flashed the organization’s four-finger “Rabia” sign. At right, ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi (from the Muslim Brotherhood) displays the Rabia sign.

“If the White House is out to offend some of its closest Arab allies and is intent on heightening their suspicions, it’s succeeded,” wrote Middle East expert Linda S. Heard. “If there’s a plot, then it’s unfolding,” she added. “Just two days after the controversial visit, the Brotherhood called for a war against their fellow Egyptians.”

A statement issued by the Muslim Brotherhood said, “It is incumbent upon everyone to be aware that we are in a process of a new phase, where we summon what is latent our strength, where we recall the meanings of jihad and prepare ourselves, our wives, our sons, our daughters, and whoever marched on our path to a long, uncompromising fight, and during this stage we ask for martyrdom.”

The Egyptian government condemned the hosting of the Muslim Brotherhood officials by the State Department. Egyptian Foreign Minister Same Shoukry denounced the State Department’s move, saying, “The Muslim Brotherhood is not a political party, but according to the Egyptian law, which must be respected, it is designated as a terrorist organization.”

The timing of the meeting between State Department officials and Muslim Brotherhood leaders could not have been worse for many Egyptians — it took place shortly after Islamist terrorists killed 31 soldiers and wounded 45 others in a series of attacks on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Although the Islamic State terror group took credit for the attacks, Sisi held the Muslim Brotherhood responsible. “Egypt is waging a war against the strongest clandestine group over the past two decades,” he said. “This organization has secretive arms, secretive thoughts and secretive forums.”

Egyptian columnists and newspaper editors have also attacked the U.S. Administration for its ties with the Muslim Brotherhood.

“The U.S. Administration is continuing to jeopardize its relations with Egypt by appeasing Muslim Brotherhood,” remarked columnist Ezzat Ibrahim. “The Muslim Brotherhood is seeking to return to the political arena through the American door and terrorist attacks. The U.S. policy appears to be devious and unreliable.”

Another Egyptian columnist, Mohamed Salmawi, launched a scathing attack on the U.S. Administration; he accused it of deception and double standards. He said that the meeting between U.S. officials and Muslim Brotherhood leaders exposes the U.S. Administration’s deceptive policy toward Islamic terror groups.

“The U.S. Administration says it is combating these groups at home while it is supporting them abroad,” Salmawi wrote. “This meeting has grave indications because it shows that Washington has not abandoned its policy of double standards toward Islamic terrorism.

Salmawi also took issue with the U.S. Administration for turning a blind eye to the hypocrisy and double talk of the Muslim Brotherhood. “One of the leaders of Muslim Brotherhood, for example, told the world that he welcomes the Jews of Israel,” he added. “But this same leader announced in front of the Egyptian people that they should march in the millions to liberate Jerusalem from the occupation of the Jews. [Ousted President] Mohamed Morsi, before his election, described these Jews as descendants of apes and pigs. In English, the Muslim Brotherhood says one thing and in Arabic something completely different.”

Said Lindawi, a prominent Egyptian international affairs expert, said that the meeting of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders with State Department officials means that the Obama Administration has given the organization a green light to carry out terrorist attacks against Egypt.

“The U.S. Administration has refused to recognize the Muslim Brotherhood as a terror group,” hesaid. “The Americans continue to insist that the Muslim Brotherhood is not responsible for the terrorist attacks in Egypt.”

By embracing the Muslim Brotherhood, the U.S. Administration has sent the wrong message to moderate Arabs and Muslims. This is a message that says that Washington believes that there are good terrorists and bad terrorists.

Judging from the angry reactions of Egyptians, it has become obvious that most moderate Arabs and Muslims no longer see the U.S. as an ally in the war against Islamic terror groups. What is even more disturbing is that they view the U.S. as an ally and friend of the terrorists.

Categories: Egypt, Foreign policy, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamism, Jews, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, Terrorists
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »