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Iran’s New Terror Base against Israel

January 22, 2015

Iran’s New Terror Base against Israel, The Gatestone Institute, Yaakov Lappin, January 22, 2015

The new base in Syria gives Hezbollah the option of attacking Israel and drawing Israel’s return fire away from Lebanon, where its most precious assets are hidden: well over 100,000 rockets and missiles that might be saved for a future battle over Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Hezbollah, exploiting its presence in Syria, has been attempting to open a new front against Israel.

Over the past 18 months, Hezbollah and its enablers from the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] have begun launching a series of attacks on Israel from their new center of operations in southern Syria.

After Sunday’s air strike (attributed by the media to the Israel Air Force) that killed 12 high-ranking Hezbollah and IRGC operatives near Quneitra, Syria, along the Israeli border, Israel is bracing for the possibility of an attack by Hezbollah and Iran.

Although Israel has not officially taken responsibility for the strike, it would make sense to view the action as a preemptive move designed to remove a clear and present danger arising on Israel’s border with Syria. The danger is the formation of a second Hezbollah terrorism base, in addition to Hezbollah’s home base already in Lebanon.

The IRGC and Hezbollah have begun playing a dual role in the geographical area once known as the Syrian Arab Republic, a country that no longer exists as it appears on world maps. Iran and Hezbollah are acting as the life support machine for the shrunken but still functional Assad regime, now in control of just Damascus, Aleppo, and the Syrian Mediterranean coastline.

Since moving into Syria to rescue the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, Hezbollah, acting on orders from Iran, has expanded its presence in several areas of Syria. Iran too has boosted its presence in Syria, primarily though the presence of members of its Revolutionary Guards.

At the same time, the IRGC and Hezbollah have begun building a terrorism base in Syria that is directed against Israel, in addition to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah semi-state entity in southern Lebanon.

The new base in Syria, at Israel’s northeast border, gives Hezbollah the option of attacking Israel and drawing Israel’s return fire away from Lebanon, where its most precious assets are hidden: well over 100,000 rockets and missiles that might be saved for a future battle over Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Hezbollah is also under domestic Lebanese pressure not to drag Lebanon into a new devastating conflict with Israel.

The Hezbollah and IRGC operatives that were targeted in Sunday’s airstrike were in the midst of significantly stepping up these attacks. Their plans included rockets and cross-border raids by terror cells. These attack plans were seriously larger in scale than past assaults.

It is in this context that Sunday’s air strike occurred.

Now, all eyes are on northern Israel to see whether Hezbollah and Iran retaliate there. The leader of the IRGC, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, on Tuesday threatened Israel with “devastating thunderbolts” — threats Israel cannot afford to take lightly.

896Israeli soldiers take part in a training exercise near the border with Syria, December 2013. (Image source: IDF)

It would be safe to assume, however, that Hezbollah wishes to avert the outbreak of an all-out conflict. Such a war would expose Lebanon to unprecedented Israeli firepower, and would also expose Israel to unprecedented Hezbollah rocket attacks and cross-border infiltrations by land, air and sea.

If such a conflict were to break out, many parts of southern Lebanon could lie in ruins, and Hezbollah’s many Sunni enemies in next-door Syria could seize on the weakness of their Shi’ite foes and pounce, dragging Lebanon into the Syrian war.

That kind of outcome would not benefit Hezbollah or Iran in any way. But in the Middle East, miscalculations have led to costly errors in the past, and events can take on a life of their own.

Categories: Assad, Hezbollah, IDF, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Syria
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The West Bank Army of the “State of Palestine,” Thanks to the United States

January 21, 2015

The West Bank Army of the “State of Palestine,” Thanks to the United States, The Gatestone Institute, Shoshana Bryen, January 21, 2015

(????????????? — DM)

The U.S. Consulate’s determination to provide the trappings of Palestinian statehood to the Palestinian Authority outside the negotiating process should come under scrutiny.

What plan do we have if the Palestinian army attacks the IDF in the future — instead of its presumed enemy, Hamas?

It is revealing that the U.S. appears determined to provide the Palestinian Authority with an army while it is still at war with our ally, Israel.

Last week, officials from the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem attended a Palestinian protest over Israel’s removal of olive trees illegally planted in the West Bank. Coordinated with the Palestinian Authority [PA] but not Israel, the Consulate personnel ended up clashing with Israelis living nearby. It was, perhaps, the quietest international almost-incident you never heard of.

This week, with the focus off Paris, the Middle East Quartet (the U.S., EU, Russia & the UN) plans to meet. The U.S. Consulate’s determination to provide the trappings of Palestinian statehood to the PA outside the negotiating process should come under scrutiny.

The olive tree incident prompted an article in the Israeli press about the Consulate, including the use of Palestinian security, rather than IDF combat veterans as required by a 2011 agreement. Some IDF guards were fired, according to the article. Others resigned, blaming the appointment of a new consulate security officer, who they said, established a Palestinian armed militia. “He is training them with weapons, combat and tactical exercises. There is a lack of responsibility here – who ensures that such weapons, once given over to Palestinian guards, won’t make their way to terror groups?”

The change in personnel from IDF veterans to a Palestinian Security Force [PSF] is part of a long series of steps to transform the Palestinian body politic into a state. If the U.S. Consulate becomes the U.S. Embassy to Palestine — a function it already observes — it is understandable that the PA would not want “occupying Israeli soldiers” to guard the symbol of America from Palestinian citizens in “its capital, Jerusalem.” The Consulate, with its mission to the PA, would agree.

Palestinian security forces have been in existence since 1994 and have steadily changed mandates. They have gone from a “police force” under the Oslo formulation of “dismantling the terrorist infrastructure” so Israel could have confidence in security after withdrawing from territory, to a protection force for Mahmoud Abbas so he would continue negotiations under U.S. auspices — but now to an army for the nascent state.

The Clinton Administration signed on to the police phase, but asked how Arafat could be expected to defeat “terrorists” without weapons. Unmentioned were a) Arafat was the prime funder and organizer of the terrorist organizations in question, and b) the PLO had already proven perfectly capable of killing its enemies.

The first funds for equipment and training came in 1994 from international donors including the U.S. Arafat, having a reasonable sized arsenal of his own, wanted arms, but settled for nonlethal items.

In 1996, Western trained Palestinian “police” attacked IDF personnel with weapons, killing 15 soldiers and border guards, after the opening of an exit from an ancient Hasmonean tunnel in Jerusalem, near the Western Wall in the Old City.

Despite these attacks, according to Jeffrey Boutwell, Director
 of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, the 1997 Hebron Protocol “provided for a Palestinian police force of some 30,000 personnel, equipped with 15,000 automatic rifles and pistols, 240 heavy machine guns, 45 armored vehicles, lightly armed shore patrol vessels, and associated communications and transportation equipment.” An Israeli-Palestinian Joint Security Coordination and Cooperation Committee [JSC] was formed to oversee “arrangements for entry of the Palestinian Police and the introduction of police arms, ammunition, and equipment.”

Between the onset of Western arms deliveries and a thriving black market, the PA “police” had all the lethal equipment they could handle.

Training stopped during the 2001-2004 so-called “second intifada” with the (unsurprising) revelation that the PA “police” found their Western assets invaluable in attacking Israelis. In 2005, however, history began again and the U.S. decided that the Palestinians should have a new security service. LTG William Ward USA (Deputy Commanding General, U.S. Army Europe, and Chief of Staff, U.S. Seventh Army) was the point man. In the words of then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, his mission was:

  • “To make sure the parties understand each other and we understand what the parties are doing, so we can raise it at the appropriate level” if action is required.
  • “To provide a focal point for training, equipping, helping the Palestinians to build their security forces and also for monitoring, and if necessary, to help the parties on security matters.”

The missions were incompatible and inappropriate. The first involved “translating for the parties” with an eye toward U.S. intervention, a political job that should not have been done by a military officer. Further, having part of the mission directed toward a Palestinian force gave the General a stake in the success of the Palestinians over the concerns of Israel.

And so it happened. The Ward mission, the sole conduit for U.S. aid to the new Palestinian Security Force, resulted only in better-trained terrorists.

LTG Keith Dayton (Director of Strategy, Plans and Policy, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3, U.S. Army), well respected and liked by Israel and the IDF, succeeded LTG Ward. His job, however, was complicated by the deterioration relations Hamas-Fatah in Gaza. According to acontemporaneous Ha’aretz story, Dayton was to arm and train “the Presidential Guard of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to prepare it for a potential violent confrontation with Hamas forces in Gaza. Palestinian sources say the training of 400 Force 17 troops… started [in November 2006] in Jericho under the guidance of an American military instructor.” Force 17 had been Arafat’s Praetorian Guard, attacking recalcitrant Palestinians as well as Israelis. Abbas had inherited it.

Throwing American support to one Palestinian faction over another was a political decision to side with what our government assumed was “better” or more “moderate” Palestinians, hoping it would use our help to put down Hamas rather than using it to kill ever more Israelis.

What it did was legitimize the creeping movement of the Palestinians toward a full-fledged army.

This new mission needed IDF participation — which Israel approved in part because of its relations with LTG Dayton, and because it allowed Israel to operate in West Bank territory with a relatively free hand to arrest both Hamas operatives and Fatah bad guys. It also made Abbas beholden to Israel for his personal security and that of his kleptocracy. That part worked, and even now, PA figures have admitted publicly that without IDF cooperation, the PA would fall.

Dayton’s successors, LTG Michael Moeller, USAF and ADM Paul Bushong, USN, have quietly continued and upgraded both training and weapons.

893Hundreds of troops from the Palestinian Security Force line a street in Ramallah, in order to block anti-American protestors, during President Obama’s 2013 visit to the city.

The question always was twofold: What constitutes “appropriate” weapons for the PSF, and how does the U.S. justify training security forces the ultimate loyalty of whom will be a government that we cannot foresee and may become something — or already is something — we don’t like? The corollary is: What plan do we have if the Palestinian Army attacks IDF forces in the future — instead of its presumed enemy, Hamas?

To raise the questions is to understand that there are no sound answers from either the Consulate or the State Department. In their absence, concern over the choice of security guards by the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem is appropriate, but insufficient. It is revealing that the U.S. appears determined to provide the PA with an army while it is still at war with our ally, Israel.

Categories: Abbas, Combat troops, Fatah, Foreign policy, Hamas, Islam, Israel, Kerry, Moral equivalence, Obama administration, Peace process, Two state solution, U.S. Consulate
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Op-Ed: The West Cannot Win this War

January 19, 2015

Op-Ed: The West Cannot Win this War, Israel National News, Giulio Meotti, January 19, 2015

(Can’t win, or refuses to win? — DM)

Take another look at the video filmed under the Charlie Hebdo’s building, the black car of the terrorists who had no fear of death and are advancing by shooting, while the white car of the policemen is forced to retreat.

We are capitulating.

The West cannot win this war. Take the last French mass rally with dozens of heads of states from around the world: it was a silent march, a mute show where nobody took the podium. As if these people didn’t know what to say. As if these Western leaders didn’t really believe in what they were doing in Paris.

A few days ago, Martin Wolf in the British daily Financial Times gave voice to the deep estrangement of Europe’s élite. He suggested using massive doses of multicultural recognition of equality between different cultures in order to combat Islamism. Mr. Wolf is implicitly saying that we must surrender, that we cannot win, that we have to contain terror and finally find a way to coexist with it.

The French horror doesn’t lie in the killings per se. A few hours later, in Nigeria, Boko Haram destroyed many villages and burned hundreds of people to death. Europe’s horror lies in the fact that the terrorists came from the heart of the continent. The Chouaci’s brothers, the British bombers and Theo Van Gogh’s killer didn’t came from Raqqa, in Syria, or Al Qaeda in Yemen. No, they were born and raised in European democracies.

Europe gave everything to these terrorists: schools, education, entartainment, sexual pleasures, salaries and freedom. The French terrorists rejected the French values of liberté, egalité and fraternité; the British suicide bombers rejected British multiculturalism, while Dutch terrorist Mohammed Bouyeri, who slaughtered the film maker in Amsterdam, rejected the Dutch mute values of moral indifference.

A few days ago, I was talking with Flemming Rose, the Danish journalist who first published the cartoons in 2006 and now lives protected by the police. He told me the shocking truth nobody wants to hear:

“I am pretty pessimistic about the future of free speech, though I am delighted that so many people came out to support Charlie Hebdo”, Rose told me. “I knew several of the cartoonists who were killed, and I was a witness in a criminal case against CH in 2007. My fear is that this support will not translate into real decisions and changed behavior when we get back to our day-to-day life. We have seen that before. Madrid 2004, Theo van Gogh 2004, London 2005, Kurt Westergaard 2008 and 2010 (one planned attack and another real attack in which he was nearly killed). Every time lots of support and solidarity with the victims, but very little has changed in reality, quite to the contrary, apart from CH no European newspapers have dared to publish Mohammed cartoons since 2008”.

Charlie Hebdo’s journalists were brave people, defiant, but if they are the Western heroes, we have already lost. “Charb” and the other cartoonists didn’t believe in anything.

A few years ago, at my newspaper in Italy. I suggested we publish a letter that Mohammed Bouyeri released from his Dutch prison. Bouyeri says he does not feel remorse for what he did. The tone of the letter is marked by a kind of puerile candor. Bouyeri never mentions Van Gogh, but he makes it clear that he has fulfilled a religious duty by killing him.

The West cannot win this war. The price it would have to pay is the loss of European values: reducing the civil rights of many people, deporting them, declaring a war of values, sending boots on the ground in the Middle East, imposing Western civilization on them. Europe will never do that. Europe itself doesn’t believe in these values anymore. This is also one of the reason why Europe hates Israeli Jews who daily confront evil and fight it, so deeply.

The terrorists of Charlie Hebdo talk a religious language and use terms like honor, faith, prophet and loyalty, while the West replies to them with words such as freedom, democracy, rights, respect and tolerance. They speak theology, we reply with logic. They use bullets, we march in the streets.

It is a sad joke. The truth is that people in the West are relieved that they don’t have to fight, that we are surrendering, that life goes on as usual. Hurray, we are capitulating!

Categories: Diversity, Europe, Foreign policy, Freedom, Ideology, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Middle East, Multiculturalism, Political correctness, Sharia law
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Hamas says EU appeal to keep it on terror list ‘immoral’

January 19, 2015

Hamas says EU appeal to keep it on terror list ‘immoral’, Yahoo News, January 19, 2015

Foreign ministers from the 28 EU member states decided at a Monday meeting to appeal the decision taken by the General Court of the European Union on December 17, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said.

The EU ministers were meeting in Brussels to discuss how to boost cooperation in the face of a growing Islamist militant threat following deadly Paris attacks and anti-terror raids in Belgium.

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

Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas slammed as “immoral” Monday an EU appeal to keep it on the bloc’s terror blacklist, a month after a European court ordered its removal.

“The European Union’s insistence on keeping Hamas on the list of terrorist organisations is an immoral step, and reflects the EU’s total bias in favour of the Israeli occupation,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP.

“It provides it (Israel) with the cover for its crimes against the Palestinian people,” he added.

Foreign ministers from the 28 EU member states decided at a Monday meeting to appeal the decision taken by the General Court of the European Union on December 17, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said.

The ruling by the EU’s second highest court had said that the blacklisting of Hamas in 2001 was based not on sound legal judgements but on conclusions derived from the media and the Internet.

Hamas, which has dominated the Gaza Strip since 2007, had appealed against its inclusion on the blacklist on several grounds.

Israel’s closest ally the United States has urged the EU to keep up its sanctions on Hamas, saying the US position had “not changed” and Hamas is still a “designated foreign terrorist organisation.”

Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel during a 50-day war last summer in which the Jewish state pounded Gaza with thousands of its own strikes.

The war killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 73 on the Israel side, mostly soldiers.

The EU ministers were meeting in Brussels to discuss how to boost cooperation in the face of a growing Islamist militant threat following deadly Paris attacks and anti-terror raids in Belgium.

Categories: European Union, Hamas, Islam, Israel, Jihad
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800,000-strong Shiite militia calls for formal recognition by Baghdad

January 18, 2015

800,000-strong Shiite militia calls for formal recognition by Baghdad, RUDAW, January 18, 2015

(RUDAW is a Kurdish media network. Hezbollah was conceived by Muslim clerics and funded by Iran following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. From the inception of Hezbollah to the present, the elimination of the State of Israel has been one of Hezbollah’s primary goals. [Footnotes omitted.] — DM)

97644Image1Thousands of Shiite men responded to a call for jihad after ISIS stormed across Iraq in June and captured a third of the country. AFP photo.

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The leader of Iraq’s Hezbollah met with Shiite clerical authorities in Najaf Sunday to discuss formal recognition of hundreds of thousands of militiamen by the government and putting them on official payroll, a Hezbollah statement said.

Sheikh Abbas al-Mahmadawi, leader of the Shiite militia group Hezbollah, said that he met with Shiite clerics in Najaf, including Ayatollah Muhammad Saeed al-Hakim, to seek recognition “for the success of the militia groups in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS).”

Al-Mahmadawi added that the Shiite volunteer militia should be recognized by the authorities and compensated financially “because many of them do not have any salaries and many have been wounded and handicapped.”

According to al-Mahmadawi, there are 800,000 volunteer Shiite fighters in Iraq who joined the fight against ISIS last June.

But he added that “the numbers have been inflated by some political parties” by more than double.

“We do not have any such numbers on the ground which is put down as 2 million volunteers,” he said in a statement following his visit to Najaf.

Al-Mahmadawi hoped that Baghdad would put the Shiite militia on its payroll now that the country is about to pass this year’s budget.

Thousands of Shiite men responded to a call for jihad against ISIS by Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani last year, when the extremist Sunni group captured Mosul and made a lightening advance towards Baghdad and important Shiite shrines.

A great number of Shiite militiamen are based in the towns of Jalawla and Saadiya, north of Diyala, which they jointly liberated from ISIS in November.

Local residents, mainly the Kurdish population, have remained apprehensive about returning to their homes for fear of the armed militia groups, which operate outside government control and have been accused by Sunnis of acting as vigilantes.

On Saturday, Iraq’s parliament speaker Salim al-Jibouri met with Kurdish leaders in Sulaimani on forming a joint committee to facilitate the return of displaced peoples to Jalawla and Saadiya.

Meanwhile, around 200 tribal and political figures in Diyala met on Saturday to discuss normalizing the situation in the province after some of the fiercest battles between ISIS and a joint force of Peshmerga and Shiite militia groups.

Categories: Baghdad, Coalition, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, Islamic State, Israel, Kurds
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No Room for Parody

January 18, 2015

No Room for Parody, American Thinker, Clarice Feldman, January 18, 2015

I was sound asleep when the phone rang and so I cannot be absolutely sure the conversation was not a dream, but it seemed real enough.

“Hello,” the caller began. “My name is Mr. Mensch, I am president of the Parodists of the World, professional comedy writers, and we want to engage you in a suit against the administration for tortious interference with our livelihood.”

“What exactly are you alleging, I mean specifics?” I responded.

He then launched into a litany of grievances against the administration which the Parodists claimed had made it impossible for them to continue making a living.

“First, our country sent no one to the important anti-terrorism demonstration in Paris, and then there’s Valerie Jarrett calling the march against the slaughter of innocents in Paris a ‘Parade’, as if this were some sort of celebration.‘ Certainly We Would Have Loved To Participate In The Parade,” But We “Got The Substance Right”’.” She said and then proceeded to claim that Holder couldn’t attend because he was in a very important terrorism conference at the time, forgetting that we knew everyone else at the conference made it to the march except Holder. So at the time of the march he was meeting with himself, it seems.”

“Well, that was silly, “I agreed.  “And?” I waited for the next item.

“Then our secretary of state, John Kerry, whose entire life has been fashioned around his self-imagined superior diplomatic skills and international affairs expertise, shows up speaking execrable high school level French, accompanied by  an aging ex-druggie who sings to the grieving French ‘You’ve Got a Friend’”

“I have to agree that was preposterous and really embarrassing. One wag suggested the French ought to respond by having Carly Simon sing, ‘You’re so Vain’ to the President and his Secretary of State. ‘Send in the Clowns’ comes to mind.”

“It’s all of a piece you know. It’s cutting substantially into our employment prospects. Let me read this to you,” Mensch said:

“ ‘A scandal has erupted in the American Consulate in Jerusalem, as three Israeli security guards have quit following a plan to hire 35 armed Palestinian guards from East Jerusalem. The Palestinians have been undergoing weapons training in Jericho in recent days. The decision to hire and arm the Palestinian security personnel was made by the consulate’s chief security officer, Dan Cronin. The plan is to employ them mostly as escorts to American diplomats’ convoys in the West Bank. Their operating base will be at the consulate in the city’s west, as well as six other facilities around the city belonging to the consulate, of which five are in western Jerusalem.

The plan is a breach of a 2011 agreement between the consulate and the Israeli government, which determined that only former IDF combat soldiers hired by the consulate would be allowed to carry weapons. That year, Israel gave the consulate approval to keep about 100 guns for its security guards, but only if they’re American diplomats or Israelis who served in the army. While the consulate employs scores of guards from East Jerusalem, they have not been armed up until now.’”

“Sounds like a bad joke to me,” I replied. “With the world’s attention focused on Moslem extremists. New jihadi groups showing up all through Europe, and Palestinians continuing to attack our ally Israel  and we train and arm Palestinian guards to protect us in Jerusalem in violation of  our agreement with Israel?”

“Even the liberal foreign policy pundit Leslie Gelb is concerned that the administration is absolutely clueless,” sputtered Mensch.

“And he keeps releasing men from Gitmo who then return to fight against us. He released Mullah Abdul Rauf and immediately on his return he’s recruiting for the Taliban in Afghanistan.”

By this time Mensch was on a roll.

“The White House spokesman, Josh Earnest is tripping over his own tongue trying not to say the magic words ’Moslem extremist’. Listen to this circumlocution of his: ‘We want to describe exactly what happened. These are individuals who carried out an act of terrorism. And they later tried to justify that act of terrorism by invoking the religion of Islam and their own deviant view of it.’”

“Then there’s the nonsensical negotiations with Iran,” I interjected.

Mensch sputtered, “Thursday Obama announced he would not tighten sanctions on Iran which is violating the sanctions already in place because if we tighten the reins it will only drive them to war. Think about that! If we impose stricter sanctions on them, they’ll go to war, and if we don’t, they’ll go to war with nuclear weapons.”

“That’s nothing to joke about,” I said.

“Precisely! Obama‘s leaving us nothing to parody. We can’t make a living in comedy. He and his administration are themselves the joke. We might as well just send in news clippings to our editors as try to dream up anything wackier than what they’re doing. And, look, it’s not just foreign affairs. Take the Keystone Pipeline — I mean it should be clear to everyone that we are hurting Iran and Russia financially each time we and others increase the supply of gas and oil on the world market and we need jobs badly, so why is he still sitting on this? George Will captured this bit of nuttiness,” he added and I heard the rustle of newspaper as he read this to me.

Actually, there no longer is any reason to think he has ever reasoned about this. He said he would not make up his mind until the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled. It ruled to permit construction, so he promptly vowed to veto authorization of construction.

The more Obama has talked about Keystone, the less economic understanding he has demonstrated. On Nov. 14, he said Keystone is merely about “providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else. That doesn’t have an impact on U.S. gas prices.” By Dec. 19, someone with remarkable patience had explained to him that there is a world market price for oil, so he said, correctly, that Keystone would have a “nominal” impact on oil prices but then went on to disparage job creation by Keystone. He said it would create “a couple thousand” jobs (the State Department study says approximately 42,100 “direct, indirect, and induced”) and said, unintelligibly, “Those are temporary jobs until the construction actually happens.” Well.

“I understand your distress,” I sympathized, “but to make your case you have to prove that Obama intended to harm your business, and as Will notes it’s just that he isn’t that smart.”

“C’mon,” the parodist, countered, “Almost every professor in America supported and voted for him. Are you calling them all stupid?”

 

Categories: Caliphate, Foreign policy, Humor, Insanity, Iran scam, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Israel, Jihad, Kerry, Leftists, Multiculturalism, Obama, Obama administration, Sharia law, Terrorism
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Obama’s grim warning to Congress: New Iran sanctions will lead to war

January 16, 2015

Obama’s grim warning to Congress: New Iran sanctions will lead to war, Washington Times, Ben Wolfgang, January 16, 2015

(The article does not indicate who Obama thinks might start such a war — Iran, Israel or the United States, for example. — DM)

President Obama warned Congress Friday that new economic sanctions against Iran could lead directly to war, and British Prime Minister David Cameron said he’s personally appealing to top lawmakers to hold off and allow diplomatic negotiations with Iran to play out.

At a news conference in the White House, both leaders pleaded with congressional leaders to wait just a few more months before pursuing new sanctions against Iran. Mr. Cameron said such action would splinter the international community, which right now is unified against Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

But Mr. Obama was even more direct, warning the American people that their representatives on Capitol Hill could plunge the U.S. into another war in the Middle East by pushing another round of sanctions.

“I’ve consistently said we leave all options on the table. But Congress should be aware that if this diplomatic solution fails, than the risks and likelihood this ends up at some point a military confrontation is heightened. And Congress will have to own that as well,” the president said. “And we may not be able to rebuild the kind of coalition we need in that context if the world believes we were not serious about negotiations.”

The U.S., Britain and its allies in the so-called P5 plus 1 — Russia, China, France and Germany — in 2013 secured a deal that halted some parts of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of some economic sanctions against the country. The two sides still have not reached a final agreement.

The deadline for a final deal has been extended twice, with the next deadline looming in June.

But some lawmakers believe now is the time to double down on economic sanctions against Iran, even as diplomatic talks continue. There is support in both parties for more sanctions.

While in Washington this week, Mr. Cameron said that he’s personally appealed to members of the Senate to take additional sanctions off the table right now.

“I have contacted a couple of senators this morning and I may speak to one or two more this afternoon — not in any way as the British prime minister to tell the American Senate what it should or shouldn’t do. That wouldn’t be right,” he said. “But simply to make the point that as a country that stands alongside America in these vital negotiations that it is the opinion of the United Kingdom that further sanctions of the further threat of sanctions at this point won’t actually help bring the talks to a successful conclusion and they could fracture the international unity there has been.”

 

 

Categories: Cameron, Foreign policy, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Islam, Israel, Middle East, Obama
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Don’t ignore the writing on the wall

January 16, 2015

Don’t ignore the writing on the wall, Israel Hayom, Yoram Ettinger, January 16, 2015

(It’s much easier and much less stressful to look forward to hope and change. Briefly. –DM)

Since the 1993 Oslo Accord, Western democracies have refrained from reading the writing on the Palestinian (Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas) wall: hate education in grades K-12; unprecedented terrorism; systematic noncompliance with agreements; naming squares, streets and tournaments after terrorists; monthly allowances for families of terrorists; responding to Israeli withdrawals with intensified terror.

Hitler’s master plan was outlined in 1925-26 in the two volumes of the supremacist, anti-Jewish “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle”), which is currently a best-seller in the Muslim world, particularly in Iran and the Palestinian Authority.

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In 539 B.C.E., Babylonian King Belshazzar ignored the writing on the wall — as interpreted by the Prophet Daniel — and was, therefore, annihilated by the Persians (Daniel 5).

In 2015, Western civilizations must read the writing on the wall, desist from ambiguity, denial and political correctness and embrace clarity, realism and political incorrectness, in order to survive and overcome the clear and present lethal threat of Islamic takeover, which is gathering momentum via demographic, political and terroristic means.

History proves that Western ambiguity and the refusal to identify enemies — due to ignorance, gullibility, oversimplification, appeasement, delusion and wishful thinking — have taken root, yielding major strategic setbacks and painful economic and human losses. When it comes to reading the writing on the wall, Western eyesight has been far from 20:20, dominated by modern day Belshazzars, ignoring modern day Daniels.

For example, during the 1930s, the writing was on the wall in glaring letters: Germany abrogated the Treaty of Versailles, which called for German disarmament, reparations and territorial concessions; German military spending skyrocketed, military conscription was reintroduced and the Rhineland was remilitarized; Germany withdrew from the League of Nations and annexed Austria. Still, on September 30, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact, declaring “peace for our time.” He refused to recognize Hitler’s strategic, global, supremacist goal, assuming that Hitler’s appetite could be satisfied with a tactical, limited gain in Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, signing a “peace accord” that triggered the “war of all wars.”

Hitler’s master plan was outlined in 1925-26 in the two volumes of the supremacist, anti-Jewish “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle”), which is currently a best-seller in the Muslim world, particularly in Iran and the Palestinian Authority.

During 1977-79, U.S. President Jimmy Carter did not read the writing on the wall, supporting the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s battle against the Shah of Iran, who was, in fact, the U.S.’s policeman in the Persian Gulf. Overwhelmed by denial and wishful thinking, and heavily influenced by the U.S. foreign policy establishment, Carter ignored the litany of sermons delivered by Khomeini, which exposed the Iranian cleric as an enemy of Western civilization and civil liberties. He despised the U.S. and aligned himself with the enemies of the U.S., while protected by a Palestinian PLO praetorian guard. Thus, the U.S. betrayal of the Shah eliminated a most effective and loyal strategic partner of the U.S., gave rise to the most lethal, conventional and nonconventional threat to vital U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and beyond and generated a robust tailwind to Islamic terrorism.

In 1990, on the eve of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. stated that an Iraq-Kuwait military clash would be an intra-Arab, rather than a U.S., concern. The Bush/Baker administration assumed that “the enemy of my enemy [Iran] is my friend [Iraq],” supplying Saddam with dual-use sensitive systems, providing him with $5 billion loan guarantees and concluding a U.S.-Iraq intelligence sharing agreement. The 1990 policy of denial triggered a conventional conflict, a $1.25 trillion cost to the U.S. taxpayer, 4,500 U.S. military fatalities, a surge of anti-U.S. Islamic terrorism and a dramatic destabilization of the Persian Gulf.

Since the 1993 Oslo Accord, Western democracies have refrained from reading the writing on the Palestinian (Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas) wall: hate education in grades K-12; unprecedented terrorism; systematic noncompliance with agreements; naming squares, streets and tournaments after terrorists; monthly allowances for families of terrorists; responding to Israeli withdrawals with intensified terror.

In 2011, Western democracies denied the eruption of an Arab tsunami, welcoming the violence on the Arab Street as an Arab Spring that would transition the Arabs toward democracy. The Obama administration embraced the Muslim Brotherhood (while giving a cold shoulder to Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi), refusing to recognize its well-documented intra-Arab terrorism, the offshoot of its motto: “Allah is our objective; the Quran is the constitution; the prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; death for the sake of Allah is our wish.”

The 2015 failure to carefully read the Iranian writing on the wall could produce a nuclear conflict that would cost the U.S. taxpayer trillions of dollars, incur an unprecedented level of fatalities, spark a tidal wave of Islamic terrorism throughout the globe, including in the U.S., decimate the pro-U.S. Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf and Jordan, create an unprecedented disruption of the supply of Persian Gulf oil, further radicalization of the anti-U.S. regime in Venezuela with ripple effects in Latin America, including Mexico, and additional tectonic eruptions of insanity throughout the globe.

At stake is not only freedom of expression and the safety of European Jewry, but the survival of Western democracies.

Solidarity demonstrations and eloquent speeches will not spare Western democracies the wrath of Islamic terrorism and domination, unless accompanied by clarity, realism and the willingness to take military, legislative and political action to thwart the writing on the walls of the mosques: submission of humanity to the Prophet Muhammad; submission of the Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jewish kuffar (“infidel”) to Muslims and to Shariah laws; jihad — holy war on behalf of Islam — is the duty of Muslims; waqf — Muslim land — is ordained by Allah; Dar al-Islam (the residence of Islam) must take over Dar al-Harb (the residence of war); and Islam-sanctioned taqiyya (dissimulation, deception and concealment of inconvenient data) aimed at shielding Islam and “believers” from “disbelievers.”

Categories: Antisemitism, Europe, Fatah, Foreign policy, Freedom, Hamas, Human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinian Authority, Peace process, Terrorism
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Allies Know They Haven’t “Got a Friend” in Obama’s America

January 16, 2015

Allies Know They Haven’t “Got a Friend” in Obama’s America, Commentary Magazine, , January 16, 2015

[T]he French and the rest of Europe know very well that the last thing they can count on in a crisis is the willingness of the Obama administration to “be there” for their oldest ally or anyone else for that matter.

In a week when French officials were rightly calling on the world to join them in the fight against Islamist terror, Washington was dithering and couldn’t even force itself to say the word “Islamist.”

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

One of the basic rules of satire is that it is virtually impossible to satirize something that is already inherently ridiculous. That axiom is brought to mind as America belatedly sought to reaffirm its friendship with France in the wake of the administration’s decision to snub the Paris unity rally that commemorated the terror attack on the Charlie Hebdo office and a kosher market. Neither the president nor the vice president or even Secretary of State John Kerry bothered to come to a gathering attended by over 40 world leaders. But to make up for this, Kerry brought folk rock singer James Taylor to Paris to serenade French officials with a version of Carol King’s classic ballad, “You’ve Got a Friend.” This is something so absurd that it isn’t clear even the cleverest minds at Saturday Night Live or even Charlie Hebdo could adequately convey the sophomoric nature of a lame attempt to make up for a gaffe. While the real problem is the administration’s lack of comfort in standing up for the rights of cartoonists to offend Islamists as evidenced by the decision to stay away from the rally, it also tells us something significant about the inadequate man who is serving as the nation’s chief diplomat.

That Kerry would think schlepping an aging rock icon from his youth to Paris to tell the French that “all you’ve got to do is just ca-aall” if they need us is the sort of thing that makes one longs for the diplomacy of an earlier era when envoys wore uniforms, swords, and feathered hats and stuck to rigid formality.

That’s not just because such a gesture is jejune as well as puerile, though it is both of those things as well as a clear reflection of Kerry’s lack of seriousness as a public official. It’s that the French and the rest of Europe know very well that the last thing they can count on in a crisis is the willingness of the Obama administration to “be there” for their oldest ally or anyone else for that matter.

This is an administration that has spent six years offending and snubbing allies all the while seeking in vain to appease old foes and rivals such as Russia and Iran. Though U.S. and French policies often intersect, Paris and the rest of Europe have come to understand that Obama is as uninterested in their point of view or their needs as he is of those of congressional Republicans. In a week when French officials were rightly calling on the world to join them in the fight against Islamist terror, Washington was dithering and couldn’t even force itself to say the word “Islamist.”

As is well known, French opinion about the United States is decidedly mixed with resentment of American wealth and culture often overwhelming the basic commonality of interests shared by two great democracies. A James Taylor concert won’t make things much worse but neither will it improve the situation. What it will do is to remind Europe and those enemies once again that this is an administration that neither understands symbolism or how to reaffirm an alliance.

It is no small irony that an administration that came into office determined to work with the international community, and our allies rather than to be Bush-like unilateral cowboys, is now reduced to this sort of nonsense. What the French or any ally wants is not a touchy-feely Oldies song but a sense that the U.S. believes it is still part of the war against international terror. To the contrary, Obama’s instincts are such that allies have come to expect his contempt or disinterest in their problems.

Kerry’s cringe-inducing turn hosting his friend Taylor isn’t the dumbest thing he has done at the State Department by a long shot. Having faith in Mahmoud Abbas as a champion of peace and signing a weak nuclear deal with Iran are hard to top. But is an iconic moment that will symbolize Obama and Kerry’s ham-handed approach to allies. A song, even a folk rock classic that allows Kerry to reminisce about his youth spent falsely testifying against his fellow Vietnam vets, can’t substitute for a strong stand against Islamists or even the ability to say the word. Prior to this, it was possible to argue that U.S. foreign policy had become a joke. But after Taylor had finished warbling, even the president and his inner White House circle must be wondering what sort of a fool they’ve unleashed on the world.

Categories: Charlie Hedbo, Europe, France, Freedom, Human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Kerry, Obama, Terrorism
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Islamic “peace,” Imam Obama and multiculturalism

January 13, 2015

Islamic “peace,” Imam Obama and multiculturalism, Dan Miller’s Blog, January 13, 2015

(The views expressed here are mine, and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or of its other editors. — DM)

Multiculturalism fosters and perpetuates myths that Islam is the religion of peace, not death; that it is benign like other world religions and improves Western civilization. In Obama’s world, such fantasies are reality. They are principal bases of His foreign policies.

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Islam

I argued here and here that adherents to Islam, not to “radical” or “extremist” Islam, but to Islam, are the perpetrators and supporters of the Islamic slaughter of those with whose ideologies and actions they disagree. They demand submission and will tolerate nothing less.

In His January 4, 2009 address in Cairo, Obama proclaimed:

America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

[P]artnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear. [Emphasis added.[

He continues to “fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear,” but who elected Him to do that? Despite massive evidence contrary to Obama’s perceptions of Islam as benign and slandered, He continues to base His perceptions and policies on what Islam is not, not on what it is. Bridget Gabriel, who also lived in Islamic countries, would disagree with many of Obama’s theses:

Here is Ms. Gabriel’s response to a Muslim-American citizen:

As goes Europe so goes the Obama Nation?

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation is the largest Islamic body in the world.

The OIC is comprised of the 57 Muslim-majority nations and the Palestinian Authority. They are the largest bloc at the UN, and when they meet on the head-of-state level, they literally speak for the Muslim world. [Emphasis added.]

Contemporaneously with the attack on Charlie Hedbo and a kosher supermarket in France, it sought

more implementation of the OIC-sponsored UN Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18 and the follow-up Rabat Plan of Action that would criminalize the very type of speech that Charlie Hebdo engaged in.

Such laws — similar to Sharia’s prohibition of “insulting” Islam — would criminalize our once free speech. Western nations, presumably, would jail rather than execute those who “insult” Islam. Although brute governmental force might largely displace Islamic slaughter of those who “insult” Islam, it would be more pervasive and hence probably more effective. It would also contravene what’s left of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Muslim leaders from around the Obama Nation recently assembled in Texas to stand with the murdering, antisemitic pedophile worshiped by billions of Muslims “Prophet”

in Honor and Respect conference, a weekend forum that is being billed as a “movement to defend Prophet Muhammad, his person, and his message,” according to event information.

. . . .

Organizers of the event place the blame for Islam’s bad reputation on the media and so-called American Islamophobes who have “invested at least $160 million dollars to attack our Prophet and Islam,” according to the conference web page.

. . . .

“This is not an event. It is the beginning of a movement,” organizers write on their website, which blames Americans for giving Islam a bad name. “A movement to defend Prophet Muhammad, his person, and his message.”

“All these accusations were invented by Islamophobes in America,” the group claims. “As we celebrate the Prophet in our now annual, nationwide event: Stand with the Prophet, we recommit ourselves to rectify his image, peace be upon him.” [Emphasis added.]

Hirsi Ali, an apostate from Islam and an indomitable (other than by her own eventual murder) voice for freedom, was recently interviewed by several media. Here are videos of three of her interviews:

 

 

 

The thrust of her remarks is that Islamic ideology, including reverence for all of the vile things that Mohamed did and encouraged, is the root of the problem. However, the Western tendency to absolve all other Mohamed worshipers of blame for the acts of their coreligionists — which they often support — is prevalent in multicultural societies. Similarly, it is the position of our “leaders” and “betters” that attacks such as those on Charlie Hedbo have nothing to do with Islam, or even “radical” Islam.

 

“We” are, therefore, not at war with Islam or “radical” Islam but with those who would “corrupt” it by committing acts of “senseless” terror. That’s comparable to saying that, in the 1940s, we were not at war with Nazism, but with those who corrupted the beautiful Nazi ideology.

Multiculturalism

While denigrating the Western culture of life, multiculturalism and its advocates promote ignorance and fallacies about the Islamic culture of death. Those who accept the fallacy that Islam is a benign religion thereby join a “cult” of cultural suicide which takes advantage of the ignorance, or worse, of many within Western cultures.

obama_chamberlain_charlie_hebdo_1-11-15-1

According to Victor Davis Hanson, in an article titled Multicultural Suicide,

For the multiculturalist, the sins of the non-West are mostly ignored or attributed to Western influence, while those of the West are peculiar to Western civilization. In terms of the challenge of radical Islam, multiculturalism manifests itself in the abstract with the notion that Islamists are simply the fundamentalist counterparts to any other religion. Islamic extremists are no different from Christian extremists, as the isolated examples of David Koresh or the Rev. Jim Jones are cited ad nauseam as the morally and numerically equivalent bookends to thousands of radical Islamic terrorist acts that plague the world each month. We are not to assess other religions by any absolute standard, given that such judgmentalism would inevitably be prejudiced by endemic Western privilege. There is nothing in the Sermon on the Mount that differs much from what is found in the Koran. And on and on and on. [Emphasis added.]

In the concrete, multiculturalism seeks to use language and politics to mask reality. The slaughter at Ford Hood becomes “workplace violence,” not a case of a radical Islamist, Major Nidal Hasan, screaming “Allahu Akbar” as he butchered the innocent. After the Paris violence, the administration envisions a “Summit on Countering Violent Extremism,” apparently in reaction to Buddhists who are filming beheadings, skinheads storming Paris media offices, and lone-wolf anti-abortionists who slaughtered the innocent in Australia, Canada, and France. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

If the Western establishment were truly moral, it would reject multiculturalism as a deductive, anti-empirical, and illiberal creed. It would demand that critics abroad first put their own house in order before blaming others for their own failures, and remind Western elites that their multicultural fantasies are cheap nostrums designed to deal with their own neuroses. [Emphasis added.]

Finally, it would also not welcome in newcomers who seek to destroy the very institutions that make the West so unlike the homelands they have voted with their feet to utterly abandon. [Emphasis added.]

Unfortunately, Islamists now resident in the United States or in other Western nations did not vote “with their feet to utterly abandon” the hellholes they left; they brought them with them and seek to impose their ideology wherever they go.

No Islamic nation is multicultural. None (with the possible exception of Egypt under President Sisi) welcome those who oppose their Islamic values or otherwise seek to change their ways. Were a Saudi citizen or visiting foreigner to blame the Islamic principles in which Saudi Arabia is grounded for the ills of the Middle East or the evils of Islam, his stay there, if not his life, would be abbreviated, promptly.

Islam is the principal enemy, but the multiculturalists who inflict it upon Western civilization aid and abet it. They attempt to dull our senses of right and wrong by sanitizing and promoting Islam as good.

Perhaps, and I hope that, the very substantial attention paid by the media to the recent Islamic slaughters in France will do as few other such incidents have done: bring about the rejection of Islam, multiculturalism and their advocates.

Kerry I am Charlie

Categories: Antisemitism, Egypt, Europe, Foreign policy, Freedom, Human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Kerry, Multiculturalism, Obama, Saudi Arabia, Sharia law, Sisi, Terrorism
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