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John Kerry’s Dangerous Worldview

October 19, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doofus

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

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

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

 

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

October 16, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories: Caliphate, Gaza, Hamas, Islam, Islamic State, Israel, Palestinians, Jihad, Middle East, Qatar, Terrorism
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The demise of ‘responsibility to protect’ at the U.N.

October 15, 2014

The demise of ‘responsibility to protect’ at the U.N., Washington Times, Clifford D. May, October 14, 2014

(The UN’s “responsibility to protect” doctrine now applies principally to groups favored by the multicultural international community, such as the “Palestinians” from wicked Israel, disfavored by the international community. Those needing protection from Islamic terror must look elsewhere. But where? The U.S. of Obama?– DM)

UN logoIllustration on the illusion of “Responsibility to Protect” by Linas Garsys

[I]’s ludicrous to propose that the U.N. Security Council — whose permanent members include neo-Soviet Russia and anti-democratic China — should be vested with the authority to pass judgment on the legitimacy of such missions.

While the Islamic State is currently attracting the most attention, it is the Islamic Republic of Iran — which has been using proxies to kill Americans on and off for the past 35 years — that could soon have nuclear weapons as well as missiles to deliver them to targets anywhere in the world. Hezbollah and other terrorist groups offer an alternative means of delivery. Iran’s radical Shia rulers are more sophisticated than the Sunni jihadis displaying disembodied heads on pikes. However, their goals differ little from those of their rivals.

[T]he notion of an international community that can prevent or halt mass atrocities is a chimera.

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Remember R2P? Not to be confused with R2-D2 (a robotic character in the “Star Wars” movies), “Responsibility to Protect” was an international “norm” proposed by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan following the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and the mass murders in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica a year later. The idea was for the “international community” to assume an obligation to intervene, militarily if necessary, to prevent or halt mass atrocities.

Why has R2P not been invoked to stop the slaughters being carried out in Syria and Iraq? Why isn’t it mentioned in regard to the Syrian-Kurdish city of Kobani, which, as I write this, may soon be overrun by barbarians fighting for what they call the Islamic State?

Here’s the story: In 2009, Mr. Annan’s successor, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, issued a report on “implementing” R2P. The foreign-policy establishment cheered. For example, Louise Arbour, a former U.N. high commissioner for human tights, called R2P “the most important and imaginative doctrine to emerge on the international scene for decades.” Anne-Marie Slaughter, an academic who served under Hillary Clinton at the State Department, went further, hailing R2P as “the most important shift in our conception of sovereignty since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.”

In 2011, President Obama cited R2P as his primary justification for using military force to prevent Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi from attacking the opposition stronghold of Benghazi.

If that was the apogee of R2P, the nadir was not far off. The intervention in Libya has led to chaos and bloodshed with no end in sight. Meanwhile, in Syria, four years ago this spring, Bashar Assad brutally cracked down on peaceful protesters.

Mr. Obama made Mr. Assad’s removal American policy but overruled the recommendation of his national security advisers to assist Syrian nationalist opposition groups. Civil war erupted. Self-proclaimed jihadis from around the world flocked to Syria to fight on behalf of the Sunnis. The opposition was soon dominated by the al Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate, and the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL), whose leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, broke with al Qaeda and, audaciously, declared himself caliph, or supreme leader.

As for Mr. Assad, he is supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran, deploying both its elite Quds Force (designated in 2007 by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization) and Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based militia loyal to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Russia also backs Mr. Assad, even supplying on-the-ground military intelligence specialists.

With no U.N.-approved R2P effort to rescue the innocent civilians of the region from these brutal forces, the death toll in Syria and Iraq has topped 200,000, and the number of refugees is in the millions.

Failed experiments, like crises, should not go to waste. Among the lessons to be learned from the R2P debacle: First, the notion of an international community that can prevent or halt mass atrocities is a chimera. If such work is going to get done, the United States has to do it, perhaps supported by a coalition of the willing and, with few exceptions, not particularly able. Second, it’s ludicrous to propose that the U.N. Security Council — whose permanent members include neo-Soviet Russia and anti-democratic China — should be vested with the authority to pass judgment on the legitimacy of such missions. Third, American power should be used primarily in pursuit of American interests. Sometimes that will include humanitarian interventions, but that’s a decision for Americans to make.

This, too, should be clear: While the Islamic State is currently attracting the most attention, it is the Islamic Republic of Iran — which has been using proxies to kill Americans on and off for the past 35 years — that could soon have nuclear weapons as well as missiles to deliver them to targets anywhere in the world. Hezbollah and other terrorist groups offer an alternative means of delivery. Iran’s radical Shia rulers are more sophisticated than the Sunni jihadis displaying disembodied heads on pikes. However, their goals differ little from those of their rivals.

In response to this dire and deteriorating situation, Mr. Obama should be instructing his advisers to present him with a range of strategic options. I’d recommend conceptualizing the global conflict not as disconnected “overseas contingency operations,” and not as akin to World War II, but more like the Cold War. That is to say, the United States should plan for a long, low-intensity struggle. In particular, we should support those willing to fight the jihadis who threaten them.

Economic weapons can be powerful if used correctly, which has not been the case in the past. For example, though sanctions brought Iran’s rulers to the negotiating table, premature relief from sanctions pressure has encouraged Iranian intransigence as the talks proceeded.

Also long overdue is a serious war of ideas — it’s insufficient to leave that to Bill Maher and Ben Affleck on HBO. Bottom line: We are not really engaged in a conflict against “violent extremism” or even “terrorism.” What we’re confronting are ideologies derived from fundamentalist readings of Islamic scripture. Proponents of those ideologies stress the supremacy of one religion — much as communists stressed the supremacy of one class, and Nazis of one race. There is no reason to suppose that saying this clearly, rather than obfuscating, will radicalize Muslims not already favorably inclined toward killing infidels.

Our aim should be, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Obama, to “degrade and eventually defeat” jihadism. Nothing is more imperative than preventing Iran’s rulers from taking the next, short steps toward a nuclear-weapons capability that they clearly intend to use to threaten not just their neighbors, but also Americans for decades to come. For an American president, this is where the R2P needs to begin.

 

Categories: Hamas, International Community, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Islamic State, Israel, Palestinians, Middle East, Obama, Syria, Terrorism
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Islamic Jihad Chief, Iranian Officials to Discuss Regional Security Concerns

October 15, 2014

Islamic Jihad Chief, Iranian Officials to Discuss Regional Security Concerns, Fars News Agency (Iran), October 15, 2014

(According to Wikipedia,

The Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine (Arabic: حركة الجهاد الإسلامي في فلسطين‎,Harakat al-Jihād al-Islāmi fi Filastīn) known in the West as simply Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), is a Palestinian Islamist organization formed in 1981 whose objective is the destruction of the State of Israel and the establishment of a sovereign, Islamic Palestinian state.[2] PIJ has been labelled a terrorist organisation by the United States,[3] the European Union,[4] the United Kingdom,[5] Japan,[6] Canada,[7] Australia,[8] New Zealand[9][10] and Israel. Iranis a major financial supporter of the PIJ.[11][12][13][14] Following the Israeli and Egyptian squeeze on Hamas in early 2014, PIJ has seen its power steadily increase with the backing of funds from Iran.[15] Its financial backing is believed to also come from Syria.

Iran is a welcome addition to the International Community’s anti-Israel world of nukes for (Islamic) peace. Please see also The danger of Obama’s strategy of linking Iran and ISIS for Israel. — DM)

Islamic Jihad MovementSecretary-General of the Islamic Jihad Movement Ramazan Abdullah arrived in Iran on Tuesday to confer with senior officials of the country on the latest security developments in region.

Abdullah, who arrived in Tehran last night, is to hold separate meetings with Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani, and Member of Iran’s Expediency Council Saeed Jalili later today.

He will also hold meetings with some other Iranian officials during his stay in the country.

Late in August 2012, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei asked participants in the 16th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran to pay special attention to the Palestinian issue, and called on the American backers of the Israeli regime to accept Iran’s proposal for holding a referendum in Palestine.

The Leader reminded the Zionists’ bloody occupation of Palestine over 6 decades ago, and blamed the Zionist regime for waging various wars, massacre and state-sponsored terrorism in the last decades.

He blamed the western world for supporting and defending the Zionist regime of Israel against the oppressed Palestinian nation.

The leader further renewed Iran’s solution to the Palestinian issue, calling for a “comprehensive referendum to be attended by all the indigenous residents of Palestine, including those refugees who have been away from their motherland for decades to determine the country’s fate”.

The Iranian supreme leader cautioned the US against the continue support and defense for the Zionist regime of Israel, reminding that decade-long support for the Israeli regime has incurred many costs and losses on the American people.

The leader called on the White House leaders to revise their Middle-East policy and “show courage and opt for the referendum solution” presented by Iran to put an end to the astronomical spending that has been inflicted on the American nation for its support for the Zionist regime of Israel.

To conclude his remarks, he urged for collective management of global issues, asking the NAM member states “not to be afraid of the bullying powers and remain loyal to their own causes”.

He reminded failure of communism and capitalism, and said the world is pregnant to new events, saying the Islamic Awakening and the US and Israeli failures in North Africa and the Middle-East are indicative of the very same fact.

Categories: International Community, Iran, Iranian nukes, Islamic jihad, Islamism, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Jewish occupation of Israel, Middle East, Obama, Terrorism
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U.S. airstrike in Mosul underscores military questions ahead in dealing with Iraqi cities

October 9, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

imrs

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

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

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

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

 

Categories: Air strikes, Gaza, Hamas, Iraq, Islamic State, Israel, Palestinians, Syria, Urban areas
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Wiping out Israel would be easier from West Bank, Hamas official says

October 7, 2014

Wiping out Israel would be easier from West Bank, Hamas official says, Israel Hayom, Dr. Ronen Yitzhak, October 7, 2014

[Some] have said Hamas wants to create an Islamic emirate in Gaza,” says senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar tells Palestinian news outlet Al-Ayyam. “We won’t do that, but we will build an Islamic state in Palestine, all of Palestine.” Daniel Siryoti.

al-ZaharSenior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar | Photo credit: Reuters

If Hamas manages to establish a foothold in the West Bank, it would be able to wipe out Israel and establish an Islamic state in its stead, senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar told Palestinian news outlet Al-Ayyam on Wednesday.

The interview, translated and posted by Palestinian Media Watch on Sunday, revealed Hamas’ previously covert intention of taking over the West Bank.

“[Some] have said Hamas wants to create an Islamic emirate in Gaza. We won’t do that, but we will build an Islamic state in Palestine, all of Palestine,” he said.

According to al-Zahar, if Hamas could “transfer what it has or just a small part of it to the West Bank, we [Hamas] would be able to settle the battle of the final promise with a speed that no one can imagine.”

Al-Zahar alluded to Hamas’ goal with a passage from the Quran: “Then when the final promise came, [We sent your enemies] … to enter the Temple in Jerusalem, as they entered it the first time, and to destroy what they had taken over with [total] destruction,” implying a war in which Israel is wiped out.

In August, it was released for publication that the Shin Bet security agency uncovered a Hamas plot to topple the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Hamas then claimed it was an Israeli ploy to disrupt the recently struck Palestinian unity deal.

Categories: Hamas, Islamic State, Israel, Palestinians
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Not Satire: White House Endorses Housing Discrimination Against Jews

October 3, 2014

White House Endorses Housing Discrimination Against Jews, Israelly Cool, Mirabelle, October 3, 2014

(It should be satire, but unfortunately isn’t. Please read the linked article at Israel National News and wonder why the “peaceful” non-Jewish residents are violently upset. They are among Israel’s delightful “peace partners,” beloved of the Obama Administration. — DM)

Israel National News reported on Tuesday that Jews had legally purchased, and then moved into, eleven apartments in the historically mixed Jewish and Arab neighborhood of Silwan (Shiloach), Jerusalem. In the US, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest responded to the news by saying, “the US condemns the recent occupation of residential buildings in the neighborhood of Silwan.”

The assertion that there are certain areas — in any country — in which Jews, simply because they are Jews, should not be allowed to legally purchase homes, is nothing less than an endorsement of housing discrimination. Can anyone imagine President Obama ever suggesting that African Americans (or Latinos or Asians or Arabs) should not purchase homes in certain areas in the US? Under any set of circumstances? Obviously not. Earnest’s comments are reminiscent of an abhorrent chapter in US history, in which restrictive covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to Jews, blacks, and other minorities were common.

Restrictive covenantExample of a restrictive covenant in a deed

Ernest justified this statement by claiming that the individuals involved have an “agenda [that] only serves to escalate tensions.” That may (or may not) be the case. I have never heard, however, of a case in which a person’s “agenda” precluded him or her from purchasing property, or from exercising all legal rights over such property. By at least one account, JD and Ethel Shelley, the home-buyers involved in the Supreme Court case that barred restrictive covenants, knowingly purchased their property for the purpose of contesting the enforceability of such covenants. In the US, moreover, we now celebrate acts, such as school desegregation, that were once considered so provocative that school children required the protection of US marshals.

Civil rights movementRuby Bridges being escorted by US marshals into a previously all-white school.

As PM Netanyahu rightly responded to the White House’s comments, “[this policy] flies in the face of American values, and it flies in the face of common sense.”

The media, of course, has been no better than the White House, unquestioningly accepting the Palestinian assertion that there ought to be areas in which Jews are not allowed to live. The Associated Press has called it “the biggest settler takeover since Jews began buying up properties in the volatile area two decades ago.” Yahoo picked up a report from Indo Asian News Service and headlined it “Israeli Settlers Seize Houses in East Jerusalem.”

Zion Mike has asked, and helpfully answered, the question: “What if all home purchases by Jewish Israelis were reported the same way as this one?” (Click the image to enlarge & read.)

Realestate

Categories: Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, juden ist verboten, Netanyahu, Obama
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Telling the truth in the hall of lies

October 2, 2014

Telling the truth in the hall of lies, Israel Hayom, Dror Eydar, October 2, 2014

1. It was not unnecessary. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address at the United Nations General Assembly was only unnecessary in the eyes of the usual suspects. And in the eyes of Netanyahu’s enemies. But the speech was broadcast to millions of American viewers from coast to coast. This refutes the leftist commentators’ claim that the speech was directed only at an Israeli audience.

Israelis know the things he said in his speech, but we need a messenger to relay our truth to the world. It is important that once every year, the head of the Jewish state comes to New York to tell the truth at the United Nations hall of lies. It is among the duties of any statesman worthy of his title.

The leftist commentators also claimed that in his genocide speech, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas served the Israeli Right. Wrong. He doesn’t work for us. He revealed his true self, and that is a truth that the Left rejects.

2. Channel 2 commentator Amnon Abramovich slammed Netanyahu’s speech for lacking a solid peace plan. Labor and Meretz chairs Isaac Herzog and Zehava Gal-On echoed the assertion. And what about them? Do they have a plan? This is not the 1980s; we’ve already tried the Left’s snake oil solutions. Never mind the Israeli radicals and the Arab Knesset factions — they’d rather see us all go to hell and Israel cease to exist in its current form, or at all — but what does the rational, reasonable Left have to offer on the topic? What do they mean when they call for a “diplomatic solution” to the conflict?

Here is the Left’s ingenious plan, in a nutshell: A withdrawal to 1967 borders (with land swaps for settlement blocs), including a withdrawal from the Jordan Valley and the division of Jerusalem (including the Old City!) and an agreement resolving the refugee problem. The Left is divided on the question of how many refugees should be allowed to “return” to Israeli soil. This plan includes the evacuation/expulsion of (approximately) 100,000 Jews. They will be given the option of remaining where they are, under Palestinian sovereignty. Yeah, right.

The Palestinians have already twice rejected reckless deals involving this plan (offered by former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert). But let’s say that they were open to it: Excuse me, have we lost our minds? We withdrew from Lebanon — we got Hezbollah. We withdrew from Gaza — we got Hamas. The Israeli Left claims they won’t allow Hamas to take control over the Palestinian Authority — what are they planning to do, then? Dictate to our neighbors who they elect to power? And then, when the Arab winter begins to encroach on the Samarian hills, will they continue to conceal the truth behind catchphrases like “peace agreement” and “diplomatic horizon”?

3. I heard a radio program on which Israeli poet Nathan Zach complained about the establishment of Jewish towns and communities so close to the Gaza border. Why so close to Gaza? Is there not enough room throughout the Negev? With this complaint, Zach was trying to justify the fact that Hamas fires rockets at us. We pushed them, and they reacted… poor Hamas. The heroes living in the kibbutzim and communities along the Gaza border have now become illegitimate in the eyes of the crazy Left. They are now in the same category as the settlers.

4. The man who embodies the idea of a double standard, Israeli Arab MK Ahmad Tibi, concluded recently that saying that the IDF is the most moral army in the world is actually an oxymoron because occupation contradicts morality. He was being gentle. Last year, Tibi called the IDF an army of murderers. But we are not occupiers, Mr. Tibi. Most of the Palestinian population is currently under self rule, in the Palestinian Authority, which functions as a state. As for the rest of Judea and Samaria — it is the land of our forefathers. In any case, we never conquered land belonging to a Palestinian entity (which never existed), so at worst the land is disputed, not occupied.

As far as we’re concerned, the Arabs are the ones who invaded our land in the seventh century. Ever since the 1880s, the Zionist waves of immigration (aliyah) brought with them hundreds of thousands of people from Arab states. They came here looking for work, while the Jews were coming back to their homeland – the only place for them on earth. That is why the IDF is not an army of occupation but rather a force tasked with protecting Jews from what the Arabs of the region planned to do to us in 1948 and failed. They call their failure to kill us “Nakba” – a catastrophe.

Toward the end of his remarks, Tibi mentioned that he didn’t like the photo that Netanyahu showed at the U.N. (of rocket launchers next to children in Gaza), but that this does not justify the murder of hundreds of children. This begs the question: Putting all other rocket launch squads aside, should the particular launcher in the photo have been bombed, according to Tibi? If not, should we have waited for the rockets to explode on our children?

5. At the Channel 2 News studio, Opposition Leader Isaac Herzog was joined by three journalists who share his views. Tibi was also made to feel at home there. How is it that the only representative of the Israeli majority on the Channel 2 program, Communications Minister Gilad Erdan, was not joined by a single journalist who thinks differently than his or her colleagues?

Categories: Hamas, Israel, Palestinians, Netanyahu, United Nations
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Poll finds Israelis don’t trust Obama, Abbas

October 2, 2014

Poll finds Israelis don’t trust Obama, Abbas, Jerusalem Post, October 2, 2014

(Obama ranks even lower than Abbas. — DM)

Abbas and Obama1Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and US President Barack Obama, March 2014.  (photo credit:REUTERS)

Following a week in which Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of genocide and US president Barack Obama’s administration condemned Israel for building in its capital, a poll broadcast Thursday found both unpopular among Israelis.

A Panels poll broadcast on the Knesset Channel found that only 27 percent of Israelis consider Abbas a worthy partner for peace talks. Sixty-three percent said he was not a worthy partner.

Asked whether they trusted Obama to manage US policy in the Middle East, 74% said not and 21% said yes.

Only 25% said they would characterize the president as a “true friend of Israel.” Sixty-two percent said they would not.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu fared considerably better in the poll. It found that if elections would be held today, his Likud party would rise from 19 seats to 27.

Bayit Yehudi would be the second-largest party with 18 seats, followed by Labor with 16, Yesh Atid with 10, Yisrael Beytenu and Meretz tied at nine, United Torah Judaism with eight, Shas with seven, Hatnua with four, Hadash five, United Arab List four, and Balad three.

The party being formed by former welfare minister Moshe Kahlon was not included in the poll.

The poll found that the right-wing bloc would rise from the current Knesset’s 61 seats to 69. The Left would fall from its current 59 to 51.

Categories: Israel, Palestinians, Netanyahu, Obama
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Obama’s Peace Process for Iraq, Syria and the Islamic State begins [Caution: includes satire]

October 2, 2014

Obama’s Peace Process for Iraq, Syria and the Islamic State begins [Caution: includes satire], Dan Miller’s Blog, October 2, 2015

Obama was heard to remark during a recent presidential golf game,

“Israel is a terrorist war criminal. It won’t even yield to my reasonable demands for a two state solution with my beloved Palestinians, whose children and other innocent civilians it relishes murdering. However, Iraq, Syria, ISIL, etc. are humanitarians and will recognize that I am like them, as I lead them to peace through the Light of My true wisdom and greatness.”

FINALLY, He has a plan!

His best plan yet!

Obama functions at His very best with no intelligence. Intelligence would imperil His domestic and foreign priorities and perhaps even His brilliant world view.

I don’t think the problem is Obama’s inattentiveness. It’s not the demands of his golf game. It’s not his incessant fundraising. It’s his worldview. [Not satire.]

(The video is not satire)

The first Peace Process phase

In Iraq and now in Syria, Obama is trying to appear less humanitarian. It’s the initial focus of His Peace Process (PP), through which He plans to arrange a three state solution among the Non-Islamic Islamic State, its cohorts, friends and associates, Iraq and Syria. During His initial PP phase, He intends to gain credibility with and empathy from the Islamic State, et al. Accordingly, He has lifted His rules of engagement, previously intended to minimize civilian casualties, when striking forces of the Islamic State, et al.

The White House revealed on Tuesday that its usually strict rules of engagement, intended to prevent civilian casualties of US airstrikes, have been relaxed in the current offensive against the Islamic State and other radical Islamist groups. [Emphasis added.]

National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told Yahoo News in an email that a much-publicized statement last year by President Barack Obama that US drone strikes would only be carried out if there is a “near certainty” of no civilian injuries would not apply to the US campaign against jihadi forces in Syria and Iraq.

Hayden wrote that the “near certainty” rule was intended “only when we take direct action ‘outside areas of active hostilities,’ as we noted at the time.

“That description — outside areas of active hostilities — simply does not fit what we are seeing on the ground in Iraq and Syria right now,” she continued, but added that the strikes, “like all US military operations, are being conducted consistently with the laws of armed conflict, proportionality and distinction.”

The statement came after reports that a dozen civilians, including women and children, were killed on September 23 after an errant Tomahawk cruise missile hit a house in the village of Kafr Daryan, in Syria’s Idlib province, believed to be a stronghold of al-Qaeda-linked militants. [Emphasis added.]

In a briefing to the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week, Syrian rebel commanders described scenes of devastation as the bodies of women and children were pulled from the beneath the rubble of the destroyed building, which was apparently being used as a shelter for displaced civilians. [Emphasis added.] [Not satire.]

It’s His most clever strategy yet, and only Obama could devise it: by showing the Islamic State, et al, that He agrees with their strategy of maximizing casualties, both combatant and civilian, Obama will easily convince them of the benefits of the true peace and security His PP will provide.

When asked whether, during the next Gazan conflagration, Israel should adopt His modified rules of engagement, Obama was heard to mumble at the 15th hole, “That’s entirely different. Hamas does not threaten My popularity in My country.” State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki hinted at much the same in August:

US State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki delivered an unusually strong condemnation of an Israeli strike near a Gaza school being used as a shelter in Rafah, saying that the US was “appalled” by the “disgraceful shelling outside an UNRWA school. [Emphasis added.]

The shelling, which left 10 people dead according to Palestinian reports, drew harsh condemnations worldwide, including from the United Nations, London and elsewhere, amid growing international criticism of the 27-day-long operation. [Emphasis added.]

The IDF issued a statement saying that forces had targeted three Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists on board a motorcycle in vicinity of an UNRWA school in Rafah, and added that “the IDF is reviewing the consequences of this strike.”

However, the US said that the presence of combatants did not justify targeting areas near the school. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

Before the reports of the latest strike came in, senior White House adviser and Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett addressed the ongoing violence on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday morning.

Describing the conflict as “a devastating situation,” Jarrett asserted that “Israel absolutely has the right to defend itself, and we are Israel’s staunchest ally.”

At the same time, she added that “you also can’t condone the killing of all of these innocent children,” referring to the hundreds of civilian casualties reported in Gaza over the course of the past three weeks. [Emphasis added.] [Not satire.]

Neither Psaki nor Jarrett mentioned Obama’s popularity at home expressly. However, increasing civilian (mainly Muslim) casualties in Iraq and Syria, and demanding that Israel do even more to engage in strictly proportionate kinetic actions against Hamas Islamists, are both calculated to increase Obama’s popularity at home. This twofer is consistent with an address prepared for Him by my confidential White House informant, The Really Honorable I.M. Totus:

Israel’s actions have been disgracefully disproportionate and must stop. If they do not cease before I leave for my much needed family vacation at Martha’s Vineyard on August 9th, my red line will have been crossed and upon my return I may issue an Angry Executive Decree chastising Israel. Here is what Israel has done and what it must stop doing:

Israel has used WMDs (Weapons Minimizing Death and Destruction) including “Iron Dome,” warning sirens and shelters to thwart missile attacks. The Palestinians in Gaza have no even remotely comparable WMDs: They have no Iron Domes, their tunnels — clearly dug as air-raid shelters — have been destroyed maliciously and their air-raid sirens often can not be used due to Israel’s inhumane refusal to furnish electricity. They are therefore forced to use civilians, including small children, to guard their missile sites. They do so in the forlorn hope that Israel will take pity on them and refrain from attacking. Merciless Israel continues to attack, wantonly and intentionally wasting the precious lives of many innocent Palestinians. [Emphasis added.] [Satire.]

Second PP phase

Unlike the Obama Nation and its splendid coalition of the unwilling, the Islamic State, et al, have no aircraft. Nor have they any WMDs comparable to the Iron Dome used by wickedly ferocious Israel. Despite that, airstrikes have done little to diminish their effectiveness.

As of Tuesday, the U.S. and its coalition partners had conducted nearly 310 air attacks on Islamic terrorist targets, more than 230 in Iraq and 76 in Syria, a Pentagon spokesman said.

And while the air campaign has forced the terrorists to change their tactics, “We still believe ISIL remains a very potent force,” Admiral John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday. [Emphasis added.]

“Yes, they’ve changed some of their tactics, there’s absolutely no question about that, in response to the pressure that we put them under, but that doesn’t make them less dangerous or less potent over time,” Kirby said. [Emphasis added.] [Not satire.]

Accordingly, during the second phase of His PP strategy, Obama will cease all air strikes. He will also require Iraqi, coalition and any U.S. boots on the ground to use only stolen or abandoned weapons, ammunition and vehicles. As the photo provided below clearly shows, Islamic State, et al, forces have little more than rocks for weapons and that is not fair. Neither is forcing them to steal the few they do have, vigorously punished under Sharia law.

islamic-state-stoning-from-dabiq-magazine-ip_0 (1)

Additionally, all lethal weapons heretofore provided to those fighting disproportionately will now be provided only to the Islamic State, et al. Obama will make it perfectly clear that, in return, non-Islamic freedom fighters must read their rights under Sharia law (to be drafted by Attorney General Holder) to all whom they intend to execute. If convenient, the notification must be read in languages they are believed able to understand.

These steps will level the playing field and help the non-Islamic Islamic State, et al, to understand that Obama is the Messiah of true Peace, Virtue and Understanding based on true Islamic values under Sharia law, as recently articulated in a letter signed by one hundred and twenty-six moderate Islamists (not satire). They may even accept Him as the Mahdi, an honor greater even than His highly regarded and equally well deserved Nobel Peace Prize.

Third PP phase

With the realistic understanding of His life, His universe and everything which Obama will thus give to them, they will follow Him anywhere He may lead, particularly from well behind. They will jump, shout with joy and fire our their rifles into the air when He receives His second Nobel PP prize.

Conclusions

According to Reuters, Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House on October 1st — the same day that His new rules of engagement increasing civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria were announced.

Even as Netanyahu pressed Obama over Iran in White House talks, the president urged the Israeli leader to help find ways to prevent Palestinian civilian casualties like those inflicted in the recent Gaza war between Israel and Hamas militants.

. . . .

While Netanyahu put the emphasis on Iran, Obama was quick to focus on the bloody 55-day Gaza conflict, which ended in August with no clear victor. This followed the collapse of U.S.-sponsored peace talks between Israel and Palestinians in April. [Not satire]

“Iran? Nukes? What’s wrong with that,” Obama didn’t ask. He probably knows that a nuke deal allowing the Islamic Republic of Iran to get (or to keep) nukes will enhance His popularity ratings if Iran doesn’t actually use them until He leaves office in January of 2017, in accordance with His informal understanding with the Islamic Republic. And to Him, that’s what matters. When He leaves office, anything bad that happens will be somebody else’s fault, as He will be quick to point out.

Anne in PT, my favorite Israeli blogger, wrote a serious article about Obama’s hypocrisy titled Hypocrisy as demonstrated by the White House. She began,

In this post I want to highlight the brazen double standards and utter screaming hypocrisy demonstrated by that ill-mannered hostile man who stands at the head of Israel’s ostensible best friend, America. [Not satire.]

She then does so, clearly and well. I had considered writing a similar article but didn’t have the stomach for it. Therefore, I tried to write this bit of satire instead.

Categories: Hamas, Iran, Iranian nukes, Iraq, Islam, Islamic State, Israel, Palestinians, Netanyahu, Obama, Syria
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