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First Iranian fighter jets over Syria alongside Russian bombers

November 22, 2015

First Iranian fighter jets over Syria alongside Russian bombers, DEBKAfile, November 22, 2015

RussianIranianSirforce480

A series of videos apparently leaked by the Russian Defense Ministry reveal the presence of Iranian F-14 and MiG -29 fighters in Syrian skies for the first time. They were shown by “The Aviationist,” Italian magazine, escorting heavy Russian bombers, including the Tupolev TU-160, the heaviest, fastest and most destructive bomber ever built, on missions no more than 150 km from Israel’s northern border.

The ageing F-14s, built in the 1970s by American aviation giant Grumman, were originally sold to Iran when the Shah was in power and taken over by the reorganized Iranian air force after the 1979 Islamic revolution. Upgraded many times, the F-14s now feature state-of-the-art avionics, weapons and navigation systems, procured byTehran despite the strict UN embargo on their sale to the Islamic Republic.

Dozens of these upgraded warplanes, upgraded with intelligence-collection and tracking systems, have begun operating in Syrian air space near the Israeli border, under the pretense of escorting the Russian bombers. Iranian eyes in the sky are therefore studying the frontier area and gather valuable intelligence on Israel’s air defenses. Normally, if Iranian warplanes had turned up in Syrian air space, the Israeli Air Force would have fought them off and shot them down, but by flying alongside Russian bombers they are protecting themselves against Israeli action.

Tu95_F14

As DEBKAfile reported on Saturday, November 21, Russian air and missile attacks are systematically   destroying Raqqa, the ISIS capital in Syria, without consideration of civilian casualties. The Russian general staff is now gearing up to embark on an unprecedented assault on rebel and ISIS strongholds, a blitz involving hundreds of simultaneous sorties by warplanes and bombers, as well as cruise missile attacks from planes and warships in the Mediterranean and the Caspian Seas.

High-altitude surveillance planes as well as low-altitude drones, fitted with imaging and targeting systems that will send live video and images to the command center in Moscow, will provide an umbrella for the attack.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will personally manage the multilayered military coordination between Russia and Iran when he visits Tehran on Nov. 23, accompanied by top military officers.

Categories: IAF, Iran - Syria war, Israel, Putin, Russia - Syrian war
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More Palestinian and Western Mistakes

November 21, 2015

More Palestinian and Western Mistakes, The Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, November 21, 2015

(Did Mohamed forbid all murder? Or is it OK to murder Jews? — DM)

  • The Palestinian “victims” — victims of their own credulousness — are known asshuhadaa, martyrs for the sake of Allah, victims of the misconception that Allah wants us to die for him. But Allah forbids us to murder. Muhammad forbids us to murder. The Qur’an forbids us to murder.
  • Europeans, in general, obviously want the Jews dead — so long as the murder cannot be traced back to them. They seem to be hoping that their boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, combined with Arab and Iranian “hit men,” will do the job for them.
  • Also tragically, it has taken Mahmoud Abbas too long to realize that the ultimate objective of Hamas, the local representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, after killing Israelis, is to have this violence cost the Palestinian Authority its existence in the West Bank. There, they openly plan to set up another Islamic emirate, like the one in the Gaza Strip.
  • The knife-wielding Palestinian children — and the other young people who commit murder — are also not a spontaneous occurrence. They do not simply “spring” full-blown from “imperialism,” “Syrian bombings” or an “endangered Al-Aqsa.” They are the product of a careful, methodical, ongoing tactic of brainwashing about how glorious it is to become a shaheed [martyr] by murdering.
  • We do need to liberated, but not from the people you think. We do not need help being liberated from Israel, which, even if it is harsh, has always been fair to us, but from the self-satisfied diplomats even now — in our name — swanning down the glossy halls of Europe.

The Palestinians have taken it upon themselves to sacrifice our younger generation — on the altar of pointlessness — again.

The Palestinians have been sending their children — still in their teens, and intoxicated by hatred and lies as the assassins of old were intoxicated by hashish — to the streets of Israel and the roads of the West Bank to murder Israelis again. And for what? Is Al-Aqsa mosque in danger? It is not. But the cynical, calculating Fatah, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Hamas — and the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement which has just been banned — are desperate to bring the Palestinian issue back to the headlines. They hope it would displace the true catastrophe of the chaos in Syria and Iraq, which has led to the flood of refugees to Europe.

The Palestinian “victims” — victims of their own credulousness — are known as shuhadaa, martyrs for the sake of Allah, victims of the misconception that Allah wants us to die for him. But Allah forbids us to murder. Muhammad forbids us to murder. The Qur’an forbids us to murder.

The Palestinian terrorists that murder Israelis usually die in the process; the question is, does murder keep the Al-Aqsa mosque out of “danger” — which it is not even in?

Do the senseless deaths on both sides advance the cause of a political solution and the establishment of a Palestinian state? No, only, apparently, to many Europeans — anti-Semitic racists who love Muslims as much as they hate Jews. These Europeans probably love Muslimsbecause they hate Jews.

Europeans, in general, obviously want the Jews dead — so long as the murder cannot be traced back to them. They seem to be hoping that their boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, combined with Arab and Iranian “hit men,” will do the job for them. Sadly, the Palestinians, instead of looking like people who want peace, look like the Muslim extremists to whom the European racists offer ever more help. It seems inconceivable to these Europeans that we may not want to live with these savages any more than they do.

We do need to liberated, but not from the people you think. We do not need help being liberated from Israel, which, even if it is harsh, has always been fair to us, but from the self-satisfied diplomats even now — in our name — swanning down the glossy halls of Europe.

The Palestinians are, not surprisingly, trying to avoid negotiating for peace. As any Palestinian leader will be killed, and go down in Palestinian history as a traitor unless he is able to come back with 100% of Palestinian demands, Mahmoud Abbas would only end up having to turn down any realistic offer — in full view of the international community. The Palestinian leaders are clearly hoping, as anyone would, that these Jew-hating Europeans — and others who breezily turn Jewish heritage sites into Muslim heritage sites — will hand them the whole 100% on a plate, free of charge.

The knife-wielding Palestinian children — and the other young people who commit murder — are also not a spontaneous occurrence. They do not simply “spring” full-blown from “imperialism,” “Syrian bombings” or an “endangered Al-Aqsa.” They are the product of a careful, methodical, ongoing tactic of brainwashing about how glorious it is to become a shaheed [martyr] by murdering.

Do the dispatchers send their own children out to become suicide bombers? Do the dispatchers go themselves? No, the Palestinians and other terrorists prey on swayable, possibly depressed children — looking for love or a “cause” in their lives to counteract the internal emptiness — to commit murder.

These murders by our young — and of our young — are, tragically, the direct result of the inflammatory lies of Muslim extremists, both secular and religious. Here, these include the Palestinian Authority (PA), Fatah, Hamas, the Islamic Movement In Israel (banned last week), and ISIS.

Also tragically, it has taken Mahmoud Abbas too long to realize that the ultimate objective of Hamas, the local representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, after killing Israelis, is to have this violence cost the Palestinian Authority its existence in the West Bank. There, they openly plan to set up another Islamic emirate, like the one in the Gaza Strip.

Abbas seems to have woken up, but only after the genie was out of the bottle. He then had no choice but to appeal to his only lifeline, Israel, for support — while at the same time threatening to end security coordination with it. His hate-propaganda nevertheless machine continues to promote the murder Israelis while carefully ignoring Israeli deaths. Abbas instead still focuses on the “martyrdom” of the terrorists and their supposedly “cold-blood executions” at the hands of Israelis whose “crime” is stop them as they are in the act of trying to slit Jewish throats.

1329Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, speaking on PA television, September 16, 2015.

During the past six weeks, more than 70 Palestinians have been killed while trying to murder Israelis, and 12 Israelis have been murdered. Israel’s population, contrary to Palestinian expectations, has not collapsed and is, as usual, successfully moving to protect itself.

The real damage has been done to the Palestinian Authority’s credibility and to the belief, now held by fewer and fewer Israelis, that a political solution is possible.

The main questions still need to be directed to those who invented the slogan, “Al-Aqsa mosque is in danger”:

  • Is al-Aqsa mosque now less in danger? Given that, throughout the Middle East, mosques are being blown up one after another, Al-Aqsa mosque is not only in no danger, it is, on the contrary, eminently secure.
  • Has the recent Palestinian violence and terrorism moved the Israelis one inch toward surrendering?
  • Are the Islamists, including the Israeli-Arab members of Knesset, really working to benefit the lives and careers of the Palestinian people? Or, to benefit their own careers, are these politicians keeping their public whipped up like manipulated fighting dogs, and forever poor, to make sure that we will be forever dependent on them? This is a way you treat infants or animals, not people.

Fortunately, the attempt made by Hamas and its subcontractor for collective suicide, Ra’ed Salah’s Islamic Movement, to incite a religious war around the totally false slogan “Al-Aqsa mosque is in danger,” in order to oust Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies from the West Bank, the way they did in the Gaza Strip, has not succeeded. To begin with, their timing was off. The Arab and Muslim world is too busy engaging in mutual slaughter to bother itself with the lies of a gang of Palestinians. The Arab and Muslim world cannot be bothered with Israel, and it certainly cannot be bothered with preventing the overthrow of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority.

Even if the Israelis would like nothing better than to see Al-Aqsa mosque destroyed, a notion for which there is no evidence, they still protect it with the best of their police force, out of respect for others, as we all wish others would respect us. Protecting Al-Aqsa mosque guarantees Israel’s security by respectfully honoring the religion of people different from them. It is also a reminder that all of us might actually benefit from respectfully honoring the religions of others different from us.

It is absurd and offensive that after the Palestinians initiated — and then tried to justify the current wave of terrorism as “a legitimate non-violent peaceful protest against the occupation” — that they now cry crocodile tears about the supposed “Israeli executions” of Palestinian youths who take their knives and go Jew-hunting, but who then get killed in the process. Dimitri Diliani, of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, even had the effrontery to claim, falsely, to Russia Today TV, that Israelis, to justify their crimes, tried to plant knives near the bodies of the purportedly innocent Palestinians to frame them.

Mahmoud Abbas denied the Jews any access to the Temple Mount on the fabricated pretext that the Jews were defiling Al-Aqsa mosque. The Temple Mount, however is as sacred to Jews and Christians as to Muslims. To Jews, the Temple Mount is the location of their two Temples (the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E.); to Christians, it was at the Second Temple where Jesus expelled money-changers and those who sold doves (Matthew 21:12).

Ultimately, the American secretary of state, meeting with the King of Jordan and the Israeli prime minister, concluded that it was Israel that guarded Al-Aqsa and would continue to maintain the status quo. Thus the status quo was confirmed in Israeli’s favor.

The Palestinian Authority, Hamas and the Islamic Movement were left with nothing to say.

The upshot was that Mahmoud Abbas’s claim of defilement was rejected, and that Jews would still be allowed to visit. The Palestinians no longer serve as active participants; the Jordanians will continue to serve as religious administrators of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Israelis will continue as sovereign, and manage the security of the Temple Mount and Jerusalem.

Secretary Kerry’s repeated reference to the “Temple Mount, that is Al-Aqsa mosque” (Alharam Alshareef) to define the holy site struck a blow to both Mahmoud Abbas and the Islamists trying to deny the rights of the Jews. The Palestinian Authority has also — embarrassingly to many — been claiming that Jesus was a “Palestinian,” and trying to use the Temple Mount as an Islamic religious fulcrum for its baseless nationalist demands.

Secretary Kerry also put a stop to France’s pathetic attempts to curry favor with the Muslims living in its ghettoes when it proposed an international commission of inquiry to examine events in Al-Aqsa mosque. As Israel preserves full freedom of access throughout Jerusalem, the French can enter Al-Aqsa mosque and argue among themselves, but their attempts to enter Jerusalem through the back door was rejected by the Palestinians as an attempt to internationalize Jerusalem into a “Crusader city.”

When the Palestinians torched the Tomb of Joseph, it became clear that under Palestinian Authority control, Jewish and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem would be reduced to ashes, and that the Palestinians in the West Bank were no better than ISIS or the Taliban, which destroyed Palmyra and the ancient statues of the Buddha in Bamiyan.

The Jews, who dealt with two previous intifadas, are not particularly terrified by the thought of a third one. We have repeatedly seen that every violent Palestinian attempt has backfired and caused far more damage to us than to the Jews. The Palestinian Authority’s approval of Hamas’s incitement not only threatened its own downfall, but also looked as if it would precipitate the installation of an Islamic emirate in the West Bank — an event that would effectively have killed any dream of a Palestinian state.

Yes, the recent wave of stabbings and shootings has, to a small and transitory extent, diverted the world’s attention from the real tragedies of the Middle East. However, the millions of refugees in the Middle East (many knocking at the gates of Europe), will keep pushing to the sidelines the Palestinian cause; the slaughter; the mosques blown up; the churches burned down, and the genuine persecution of minorities, as opposed to the fairy tales invented by Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas and the seditious Israeli Arab members of Israel’s Knesset.

The other real loser is the trust between Arabs and Jews. Trust — with special thanks to Palestinian groups working fiercely against “normalization” rather than toward peace — has been totally eroded. Again, the only people we have hurt are ourselves: the demand of Israeli Arabs for equality is rapidly slipping down the list of public priorities. As the old Arab proverb says, “Ask someone with experience, not the doctor.”

At the end of the current violence that we began, will be left, as usual, with nothing to show for it, while the Israelis, who always rebound, will continue to thrive, prosper and move forward.

Clearly the time will soon come again for direct negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis — but the use of force, instead of than wresting concessions from the Israelis, will, as always, do just the opposite.

Categories: Abbas, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Fatah, Foreign policy, Israel, Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinian terrorists, Palestinians and Jews, Peace process
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Islam — Radical, Extremist and Mainstream

November 21, 2015

Islam — Radical, Extremist and Mainstream, Dan Miller’s Blog, November 21, 2015

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

In largely secular western societies, Islam and its history are viewed by many non-Muslims as substantially irrelevant to how devout Muslims behave. Perhaps the view that religion is of little importance to devout Muslims is based on the role, minor if any, that religion and religious history play in their own secular lives. However, both Islamic teachings and history give devout Muslims their grounding in Islam and teach them that Islam is the religion of war, not peace: Islam must become the world’s only religion by extirpating all others.

Islam was founded by Mohamed ( c. 570 CE – 8 June 632 CE) in the sixth century. Mohamed

is considered, almost universally,[n 2] by Muslims to have been the last prophet sent by God to mankind[3][n 3] to restore Islam, which they believe to be the unaltered original monotheistic faith of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets.[4][5][6][7] [Emphasis added.]

Islam considers the words of Mohamed, as transcribed in the “Holy” Quran and Hadith, to be the words of Allah. “Restoring” other monotheistic religions means changing them to comport with Islam as dictated to Mohamed by Allah; unaltered, those other religions cannot continue to exist; it is the duty of Muslims to force them to change or to exterminate them.

Islam provides the basis for Sunni and Shiite (principal branches of Islam) efforts to govern world civilization according to Islamic principles as voiced by Allah through his prophet, Mohamed. Since Islamic principles tolerate no religious or political freedoms (let alone contemporary gender equality or homosexuality notions), such western ideas must be extirpated — as they have been in Saudi Arabia (now the head of the UN Human Rights Council) and Iran. Islamic principles are also manifested by the hopes and efforts of the Islamic State (Sunni, like Saudi Arabia) and the Islamic Republic of Iran (Shiite) to achieve their own caliphates.

Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah Nasr is a scholar of Islamic law and a graduate of Egypt’s Al Azhar University — regularly touted as the world’s most prestigious Islamic university. Al Azhar University co-hosted Obama’s 2009 “New Beginnings” address in Cairo, to which Obama insisted that at least ten members of the Muslim Brotherhood be invited. According to an article at Jihad Watch,

After being asked why Al Azhar, which is in the habit of denouncing secular thinkers as un-Islamic, refuses to denounce the Islamic State as un-Islamic, Sheikh Nasr said:

It can’t [condemn the Islamic State as un-Islamic].  The Islamic State is a byproduct of Al Azhar’s programs.  So can Al Azhar denounce itself as un-Islamic?  Al Azhar says there must be a caliphate and that it is an obligation for the Muslim world [to establish it].  Al Azhar teaches the law of apostasy and killing the apostate.  Al Azhar is hostile towards religious minorities, and teaches things like not building churches, etc.  Al Azhar upholds the institution of jizya [extracting tribute from religious minorities].  Al Azhar teaches stoning people.  So can Al Azhar denounce itself as un-Islamic? [Emphasis added.]

Nasr joins a growing chorus of critics of Al Azhar.  Last September, while discussing how the Islamic State burns some of its victims alive—most notoriously, a Jordanian pilot—Egyptian journalist Yusuf al-Husayni remarked on his satellite program that “The Islamic State is only doing what Al Azhar teaches… and the simplest example is Ibn Kathir’s Beginning and End.”

Since the world’s preeminent Islamic university teaches Islam as proclaimed by the Islamic State, how can non-Muslims claim that the Islamic State is not Islamic? Why do many, even conservatives, refer to the Islamic State and its allied Islamic terror groups as “radical” or “extremist?”

Martin Luther was “radical” and “extreme” because he tried to reform aspects of Roman Catholicism which he deemed malign.

He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God’s punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar, with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517. His refusal to retract all of his writings at the demand of Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521 resulted in his excommunication by the Pope and condemnation as an outlaw by the Emperor.

Unlike Martin Luther’s eventually successful efforts to reform aspects of Roman Catholicism, the efforts of Egyptian President Sisi and other moderate Muslims to reform Islam have thus far gained little traction. Obama appears to support President Sisi’s principal opponent in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliate, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Sisi and other moderates — rather than the Islamic State and Islamic nations such as Iran and Saudi Arabia — should be characterized as “radical” or “extreme” because they dispute the teachings of Allah as relayed through his prophet, Mohamed. The proponents of Islam as it now exists are “mainstream,” and therefore neither “radical” nor “extreme.” We should support “radicals” like President Sisi.

As noted in an article titled Beware of Islamic Terrorism,

All Islamic terrorists — not only the Islamic State group and al-Qaida — systematically and deliberately target civilians, stabbing their Muslim and “infidel” host countries in the back, abusing their hospitality to advance 14 centuries of megalomaniac aspirations to rule the globe in general, and to reclaim the “waqf” (Allah-ordained) regions of Europe in particular.

Emboldened by Western indifference, these destabilizing and terror-intensifying aspirations have been bolstered by the Islamic educational systems in Europe, the U.S. and other Western countries. These proclaim a supposedly irrevocable Islamic title over the eighth-century Islamic conquests of Lyon, Nice and much of France, as well as all of Spain; the ninth-century subjugation of parts of Italy; and the ninth- and 10th-century occupations of western Switzerland, including Geneva. [Emphasis added.]

Europe has underestimated the critical significance of this long anti-Western history in shaping contemporary Islamic education, culture, politics, peace, war, and the overall Islamic attitude toward Europe, North America, Australia, and other “arrogant infidels.” “Infidel” France has been the prime European target for Islamic terrorists, with 11 reported attacks in 2015, despite France’s systematic criticism of Israel and support for the Palestinian Authority — dispelling conventional “wisdom” that Islamic terrorism is Israeli or Palestinian-driven.

Europe has ignored the significant impact the crucial milestones in the life of the Prophet Muhammad have had on contemporary Islamic geostrategy, such as his seventh-century Hijrah, when Muhammad, along with his loyalists, emigrated or fled from Mecca to Yathrib (Medina), not to be integrated and blend into Medina’s social, economic or political environment, but to advance and spread Islam through conversion, subversion and terrorism, if necessary. Asserting himself over his hosts and rivals in Medina, Muhammad gathered a critical mass of military might to conquer Mecca and launch Islam’s drive to dominate the world. [Emphasis added.]

According to a moderate Muslim, Maajid Nawaz, writing in an article at the Daily Beast titled ISIS Is Just One of a Full-Blown Global Jihadist Insurgency,

Our political leaders have been restricting the definition of this problem to whichever jihadist group is causing them the biggest headache at the present time, while ignoring the fact that they are all borne of the same Islamist ideology. Before ISIS emerged, the U.S. State Department strangely took to naming the problem “al Qaeda-inspired extremism,” even though it was not al Qaeda that inspired the radicalism. Rather, Islamist extremism inspired al Qaeda. And in turn, ISIS did not radicalize those 6,000 European Muslims who have traveled to join them, nor the thousands of supporters the French now say they are monitoring. [Emphasis added.]

This did not happened overnight and could not have emerged from a vacuum. ISIS propaganda is good, but not that good. No, decades of Islamist propaganda in communities had already primed these young Muslims to yearn for a theocratic caliphate. When surveyed, 33 percent of British Muslims expressed a desire to resurrect a caliphate. ISIS simply plucked the low-hanging fruit, which had been seeded long ago by various Islamist groups, and it will now require decades of community resilience to push back. But we cannot even begin to do so until we recognize the problem for what it is. Welcome to the full-blown global jihadist insurgency. [Emphasis added.]

The author of that article claims that Islamism (often referred to as “political Islam“) is not Islam:

I speak as a former Liberal Democrat candidate in the U.K.’s last general election and as someone who became a political prisoner in Egypt due to my former belief in Islamism. I speak, therefore, from a place of concern and familiarity, not enmity and hostility to Islam and Muslims. In a televised discussion with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on the issue, I have argued that of course ISIS is not Islam. Nor am I. Nor is anyone, really. Because Islam is what Muslims make it. But it is as disingenuous to argue that ISIS has “nothing to do with Islam” as it is to argue that “they are Islam.” ISIS has something to do with Islam. Not nothing, not everything, but something. . . . [Emphasis added.]

It is important to define here what I mean by Islamism: Islam is a religion, and like any other it is internally diverse. But Islamism is the desire to impose a very particular version of Islam on society. Hence, Islamism is Muslim theocracy. [Emphasis added.]

In another article, Mr. Nawaz acknowledges,

Islamism has been rising in the UK for decades. Over the years, in survey after survey, attitudes have reflected a worrying trend. A quarter of British Muslims sympathised with the Charlie Hebdo shootings. 0% have expressed tolerance for homosexuality. A third have claimed that killing for religion can be justified, while 36% have thought apostates should be killed. 40% have wanted the introduction of sharia as law in the UK and 33% have expressed a desire to see the return of a worldwide theocratic Caliphate. Is it any wonder then, that from this milieu up to 1,000 British Muslims have joined ISIS, which is more than joined the Army reserves.

I wish Mr. Nawaz well and hope that his efforts to change Islam succeed. However, in drawing distinctions between Islam and Islamism, he seems to have forgotten, or perhaps to have chosen to ignore, the teachings of Allah as relayed by his messenger and Islam’s founder, Mohamed, referenced at the beginning of this article. Mohamed (and presumably Allah himself) would be surprised by and even horrified at such notions as “Islam is what Muslims make it” and that Islam does not contemplate a Muslim theocracy. So, in all probability, would be many of the clerics at Egypt’s Al Azhar University.

Here are a few videos of Islamic clerics spreading their messages of Islamic peace, love and tolerance. The last of the bunch is about one of Obama’s favorite Muslims.

To close on a somewhat lighter note, here are a few observations by Jonah Goldberg taken from his Goldberg file (November 20, 2015 e-mail),

If you Google “Christian terrorism,” you’re probably a jackass to begin with. But if you do — bidden not by your own drive to jackassery but by the natural curiosity inspired by this “news” letter — you’ll find lots of left-wingtrollery about how the worst terrorist attacks on American soil have been committed by Christians. Much of it is tendentious, question-begging twaddle. But I really don’t want to waste a lot of time on whether Tim McVeigh was a Christian or not (he really wasn’t).

What I find interesting is that many of the same people who clutch their pearls at the mere suggestion that Islamic terrorism has anything to do with — oh, what’s the word again? — oh right: Islam, seem to have no problem making the case that “Christian terrorism” is like a real thing. Remember how so many liberals loved — loved — Obama’s sophomoric and insidious tirade about not getting on our “high horses” about ISIS’s atrocities in the here and now because medieval Christians did bad things a thousand years ago? They never seem to think that argument through. Leaving out the ass-aching stupidity of the comparison, it actually concedes the very point Obama never wants to concede. By laying the barbaric sins of Christians a thousand years ago at the feet of Christians today, he implicitly tags Muslims with the barbarism committed in their name today. [Emphasis added.]

Now, I see no need to wade too deeply into the theology here, but I think I am on very solid ground when I say that Islamic terrorism draws more easily and deeply from the Koran than Tim McVeigh drew from the Christian Bible. Of course, you’re free to disagree. In a free society, everybody has the right to be wrong in their opinions. (But don’t tell anyone at Yale that.)

. . . .

But it is simply a lie — an obvious, glaring, indisputable, trout-in-the-milk lie — that Muslims have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.

Simply put, this is nonsense. . . .  The jihadists say they are motivated by Islam. They shout “Allahu akbar!” whenever they kill people. “Moderate Muslims” in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere have been funding Islamic radicals around the world for nearly a century. This morning in Mali, terrorist gunmen reportedly released those hostages who could quote the Koran. The leader of ISIS has a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies and openly talks about restoring the Caliphate. [Emphasis added.]

Despite all of this, don’t be distracted from the greatest threat to our security; or perhaps we should be:

theo3

Categories: Al Azhar University, Caliphate, Christianity, Egypt, Foreign policy, Iran, Islam, Islam - the religion of war, Islam and Christianity, Islam and Jews, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic invasion, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Moderate Muslims, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic State, Palestinian heroes, Political Islam, Radical Islam, Saudi Arabia
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The City of Light Goes Dark

November 20, 2015

The City of Light Goes Dark, The Gatestone Institute, Denis MacEoin, November 20, 2015

(Please see also, Beware of Islamic terrorism. — DM)

  • The targets in all the Paris attacks were not chosen “randomly.” Charlie Hebdo stood for the Enlightenment value of free speech, for the right to challenge, even to make fun of figures who deem themselves above criticism: politicians, religious leaders, the rich and famous. It stood for the right to be secular: for refusing to fence off religion, or award believers greater respect than non-believers.
  • Like the attempts to shut down all criticism of Islam — whether in novels such as Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, cartoons such as those of Muhammad drawn and published in Denmark, or debates between academics — the Charlie Hebdo killings were intended to instil fear and silence all honest discussion of Islam and its values.
  • Through bold criticism in a secular manner, European states have been able to create a more pluralistic, tolerant, and humane culture. For devout Muslims (not just radicals), this is blasphemy of the worst sort: democracy, made by man and not by Allah, is evil, and tolerance for all beliefs is a path to hell.
  • This ongoing failure to admit that the law of jihad is explicitly cited by spokesmen for Islamic State is the root cause of our inability to fight this war. The ancestors of today’s Europeans knew how to fight against Islamic encroachment, but today, hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants, some of them devoted to waging jihad, are being given free access to enter Europe.

Who does not love Paris? Puritans do not love Paris. Puritans hate, music, song, dance, poetry, fun and love. Today, such people are represented above all by extremist Muslim doctrinaire fundamentalists. They seem to despise women without veils; call music Satanic; regard painted images as an insult to an angry God; consider football a sin, and a restaurant serving wine as the embodiment of evil. They do not respond to a life-affirming bustle and the ideals an open, tolerant, democratic, liberal, humanitarian, egalitarian West.

When Sir Karl Popper wrote, at the end of the Second World War in 1945, his two-volume classic, The Open Society and its Enemies, he laid bare the evils of totalitarian systems, both left and right — Communism and Fascism. He would never have guessed that soon a Third World War would be taking place between radical Islam and the West.

Last week, the City of Light went dark. In January of this year, some Islamist gunmen had attacked the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and another had gunned down shoppers in a kosher supermarket. U.S. President Barack Obama, in an interview with Matt Yglesias, commenting on the supermarket attack, glossed over the motives behind it: “It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you’ve got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.” [Emphasis added]

Two days after last week’s attacks, when reporters asked Obama if he would consider additional action against The Islamic State (IS), he declined to give a straight answer. The killings, he said, were “based on a twisted ideology.” As so many times before, Obama would not define what ideology — the belief system of radical Islam, based on violent passages from the Qur’an and Hadith, and modelled on the jihadist actions of generations of Muslims, beginning with Muhammad himself.

This ongoing failure to admit that the law of jihad is explicitly cited by spokesmen for Islamic State is the root cause of our inability to fight this war. The ancestors of today’s Europeans knew how to fight against Islamic encroachment, but today, hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants, some of them devoted to waging jihad, are being given free access to enter Europe. At least one of last Friday’s killers in Paris appears to have travelled from Syria and entered Europe through Greece.

The targets in all the Paris attacks were not chosen “randomly.” Charlie Hebdo stood for the Enlightenment value of free speech, for the right to challenge, even to make fun of figures who deem themselves above criticism: politicians, religious leaders, the rich and famous. It stood for the right to be secular: for refusing to fence off religion, or award believers greater respect than non-believers.

Through bold criticism in a secular manner, European states have been able to create a more pluralistic, tolerant, and humane culture. For devout Muslims (not just radicals), this is blasphemy of the worst sort: democracy, made by man and not by Allah, is evil, and tolerance for all beliefs is a path to hell.

Like the attempts to shut down all criticism of Islam — whether in novels such as Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, cartoons such as those of Muhammad drawn and published in Denmark, or debates between academics — the Charlie Hebdo killings were intended to instil fear and silence all honest discussion of Islam and its values.

The kosher supermarket attack was clearly anti-Semitic. Like the multitude of such attacks on Jewish schools, museums, synagogues, and individuals, it celebrated the rise of a new anti-Semitism in Europe, an anti-Semitism (often expressed through anti-Zionism) that has been carried out by the political left, hand-in-hand with Muslim radical groups.

Jews on European streets are the one people most intensely hated by many Muslims (again, not just radicals). The freedom French Jews have for a long time enjoyed (despite high levels of indigenous anti-Semitism) is an affront to Islam, in which Jews especially must be converted, rendered submissive, or killed. Unfortunately, many Europeans have gone out of their way to be helpful. Just the day before the Paris attacks, the EU had singled out Israel, as usual, to label goods to help anti-Semitic, racist Europeans hurt Palestinians and Israelis with an unjust, sanctimonious boycott.

A leader of a British Islamic educational institute writes that, “One should abstain from evil audacities such as listening to music.” Another graduate speaks of the “evils of music;” calls London’s Royal College of Music “satanic,” and claims that music is the way in which Jews spread “the Satanic web” to corrupt young Muslims. Is it, then, surprising that a handful of fanatics gunned down more than 80 innocent young people who had gone to enjoy a rock concert in the Bataclan Theatre?

As sports (apart from archery and horseback riding) are also activities much disliked by fundamentalist imams, three jihadis, in an apparent rebuke to such games and frivolity, went to a football stadium in Paris last Friday night and, although they could not get in, they blew themselves up outside it.[1]

The Nazis hated jazz and modern art (even as they stole it), but not even they rejected all music and all art. Hitler luxuriated in the operas of Wagner and fancied himself no mean painter, even if the art world may not have agreed with him. But today’s fascists care for nothing but their own increasingly expansionist beliefs.

As Hamas members have said more than once to Israelis, with whom the Europeans have more in common now than they would like to admit, the extremist Muslims will conquer in the end because “we love death more than you love life.” Nothing could better sum up the bitter reality of the Paris attacks.

In a television interview on BBC News at Ten on Sunday night, a singer, Maude Hacheb, expressed her response to the killings: “If they want to break the country, they have to break young people. I think for them, music is no good, fun is no good, love is no good. So I guess it was really significant they go to the Bataclan.”

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[1] Cricket has been condemned by a Pakistani imam as a sacrilegious “waste of time,” playing chess has been compared to dipping one’s hands in the blood of pigs, and ultra-conservative Muslim clerics have condemned football as a Jewish and Christian tool to undermine Islamic culture. Saudi Sheikh Abdel Rahman al-Barrak has warned in a fatwa that football “played according to [accepted international rules] has caused Muslims to adopt some of the customs of the enemies of Islam, who are [preoccupied with] games and frivolity.”

Categories: Charlie Hedbo, Denial, Europe, France, Freedom, Hijrah, Hitler, Islam on music sport and fun, Islamic invasion, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Obama and Islam, Random Islam
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Beware of Islamic terrorism

November 20, 2015

Beware of Islamic terrorism, Israel Hayom, Yoram Ettinger, November 20, 2015

(Religion and its history are viewed by many in largely secular western societies as essentially irrelevant to how devout Muslims behave. Ignoring the religious foundations of their conduct is a very dangerous mistake. — DM)

All Islamic terrorists — not only the Islamic State group and al-Qaida — systematically and deliberately target civilians, stabbing their Muslim and “infidel” host countries in the back, abusing their hospitality to advance 14 centuries of megalomaniac aspirations to rule the globe in general, and to reclaim the “waqf” (Allah-ordained) regions of Europe in particular.

Emboldened by Western indifference, these destabilizing and terror-intensifying aspirations have been bolstered by the Islamic educational systems in Europe, the U.S. and other Western countries. These proclaim a supposedly irrevocable Islamic title over the eighth-century Islamic conquests of Lyon, Nice and much of France, as well as all of Spain; the ninth-century subjugation of parts of Italy; and the ninth- and 10th-century occupations of western Switzerland, including Geneva.

Europe has underestimated the critical significance of this long anti-Western history in shaping contemporary Islamic education, culture, politics, peace, war, and the overall Islamic attitude toward Europe, North America, Australia, and other “arrogant infidels.” “Infidel” France has been the prime European target for Islamic terrorists, with 11 reported attacks in 2015, despite France’s systematic criticism of Israel and support for the Palestinian Authority — dispelling conventional “wisdom” that Islamic terrorism is Israeli or Palestinian-driven.

Europe has ignored the significant impact the crucial milestones in the life of the Prophet Muhammad have had on contemporary Islamic geostrategy, such as his seventh-century Hijrah, when Muhammad, along with his loyalists, emigrated or fled from Mecca to Yathrib (Medina), not to be integrated and blend into Medina’s social, economic or political environment, but to advance and spread Islam through conversion, subversion and terrorism, if necessary. Asserting himself over his hosts and rivals in Medina, Muhammad gathered a critical mass of military might to conquer Mecca and launch Islam’s drive to dominate the world.

In 1966, this Hijrah precedent was applied by Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat and the entire Fatah leadership, which emigrated or fled from Syria to Jordan and incited the Palestinian population there, but failed in their attempt to topple the host Hashemite regime. They emigrated or fled from Jordan in 1970, and in 1976, failed in their attempt to topple the host regime in Beirut. In 1990, they collaborated with Saddam Hussein’s invasion and plunder of Kuwait, stabbing the back of the Sabah family, which had hosted them, their relatives and PLO associates after they emigrated or fled from Egypt in the mid-1950s.

On Friday morning, Nov. 13, 2015, a few hours before Islamic terrorists launched their offensive against France, French Muslim children were being taught, and French Muslim adults were hearing in French mosques, that according to the Quran, humanity must submit to Muhammad and the “infidel” must accept Shariah law; that “holy war” (jihad) must be waged on behalf of Islam; and that taking part in jihad brings the reward of the benefits of paradise. Muslims are taught that the Abode of Islam (“Dar al-Islam”) must be expanded by the sword into the Abode of War (“Dar al-Harab’) and the Abode of Infidel (“Dar al-Kufr”). They are taught that they, the believers, are prohibited from submitting to the rule of the infidel, except as a temporary tactic; and that agreements with infidels are provisional, a mere prelude to subordinating the infidel. They learn that emigration of the believers must serve the historical, supremacist goal of Islam; and that shielding the believers from infidels may require the Quran-sanctioned “taqiyya” — double-talk and deception-based statements and agreements to be ignored, contradicted and abrogated once conditions are ripe.

France and all other Western countries tolerate and fund anti-Western Islamic hate-education institutions — in Muslim states and in the West — despite the fact that they are the most effective production line of anti-Western Islamic terrorists.

Europe has failed to read the piercing, bloody writing on the wall, sacrificing long-term homeland security on the altar of short-term convenience and naive, self-destructive interpretation of human rights. Through its immoral tradition of moral equivalence, Europe has embraced Muslim immigrants who are largely ruthlessly controlled and manipulated by rogue terrorist, supremacist organizations and regimes — which use them as a Trojan horse.

In 1982, in the aftermath of Islamic/Palestinian terrorist attacks in Paris that claimed the lives of Israeli diplomat Yaacov Bar-Simantov (April 4) and six patrons of the Chez Jo Goldenberg restaurant (Aug. 9), Israeli Ambassador to France Meir Rosenne denounced the Palestine Liberation Organization but also blamed countries that legitimize and host PLO operatives and supporters for bringing the wrath of terrorism upon themselves. Rosenne was threatened with expulsion from France, but would not retract.

Have France and other Western governments come to grips with reality? Are they ready to heed Rosenne’s warning and dramatically overhaul their ideological and operational approach to counterterrorism, and realize that draining the hate-education swamps is a prerequisite for eliminating the individual mosquitoes?

Or, are they determined to learn from history by repeating — rather than avoiding — past devastating mistakes, which would condemn them, and the rest of the world, to exponentially more ravaging terrorism?

Categories: Asylum seekers, Europe, Hijrah, Islam, Islam - the religion of war, Islamic invasion, Islamic jihad, Islamic terrorism, Israel, Middle East, Supporting Islamic terrorism
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Palestinian terror claims 5 murders in a day as Hebron swings out of Shin Bet control

November 20, 2015

Palestinian terror claims 5 murders in a day as Hebron swings out of Shin Bet control, DEBKAfile, November 19, 2015

Blood inside a minibus at the scene of a drive-by shooting near the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut, in the Etzion Bloc, on November 19, 2015. Three people were killed in the terrorist attack, and several more wounded. Photo by Gershon Elinson/FLASH90 *** Local Caption *** ????? ???? ??? ??? ????? ???? ?????? Blood inside a minibus at the scene of a drive-by shooting near the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut, in the Etzion Bloc, on November 19, 2015. Three people were killed in the terrorist attack, and several more wounded. Photo by Gershon Elinson/FLASH90

All five murders perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists Thursday, Nov. 19, led back to the Hebron district of the southern West Bank. The writing on the wall was there in June 2014, when three Israeli teenage boys, Gil-Ad Sheer, Yakov Frankel and Eyal Yifrah were kidnapped at the Gush Etzion intersection near Hebron, and eventually found murdered.

Since the current wave of Palestinian terror erupted on Oct. 1, it has been obvious that the breeding ground was the town of Hebron and the district of Mount Hebron. This wave hit a deadly peak on Thursday. A Palestinian father of five from the village of Duma in the Hebron district, who a few days earlier received a permit to work in Tel Aviv, slashed to death two Israelis at a makeshift synagogue in southern Tel Aviv. Another terrorist from the village of Deir Samath near Hebron, slammed his car into Israeli vehicles and sprayed a traffic jam with gunfire on the highway to Hebron, killing an Israeli man, a tourist teenager and a Palestinian motorist. Seven others were injured.

The mother of one of the terrorists praised her son for bringing “pride and honor to the Palestinians and to Hebron.”

The controversy in Israeli military circles about whether the Palestinian terrorists have escalated the violence from rocks and knives to guns is hardly relevant, when the first attack of the current wave on Oct. 1 was a well-planned deadly shooting attack on an Israeli couple in a car. The 2015 violence would be more aptly dubbed “the Hebron Intifada.”

Hebron, 30 km south of Jerusalem, is the second largest West Bank city after Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority administration. Around 400,000 Palestinians, roughly a quarter of the West Bank Palestinian population, lives there and in the Mount Hebron towns of Dahariya, Halhoul, Yata, Dura. Samoa, Beit Umar, Bani Naim and Hirbat al-Aroub, as well as a far smaller Jewish population mainly in Hebron, Kiryat Arba and Gush Etzion. Just south of Mt.Hebron are the lands of small Bedouin tribes.

Periodic outbreaks of Arab pogroms against Jewish dwellers have been endemic to this region since 1929, but it was internal strife that ignited the current wave of violence which derives from four causes:

1.  The Palestinian Authority and the ruling Fatah party in Ramallah are at daggers drawn with the Hamas leadership in Gaza. The Palestinian centers of government have been too preoccupied with their quarrel to keep touch with what was going on in Hebron.

2. This void of authority opened the door for the local families and clans, which ruled the district before central authority was established in Ramallah 21 years ago, to reinstate themselves in power, with the result that Israeli and Palestinian intelligence agencies alike have found the restored authority shut tight against their penetration.

Not only are external intrusions excluded, but the clans themselves are careful to keep their business private from rival clans and families.

3. To avoid admitting to its incapacity in this new situation, Israel’s security agency, the Shin Bet, continues to harp on the “lone wolf” theory to explain why the latest round of terror is unpredictable.

But the attacks in Sharm el-Sheikh on a Russian airliner and the multiple terrorist attacks in Paris show Islamist terror to have assumed a new, impenetrable guise, to fight which anti-terror agencies will have to adapt and come up with new methods.

The Shin Beit is finding it harder than before to procure intelligence not just in Hebron but also from the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad. This difficulty is shared by Jordanian intelligence, which until not long ago maintained a broad net of highly professional agents and informers in the Palestinian community.

4.  In the current situation, Hebron is swinging out of control as athe spearhead of the current wave of Palestinian terror, and appears poised to evolve into a new Palestinian bloc to contest Ramallah for the national leadership.

5.  Israel’s failure to stem their campaign of terror has given Hebron’s clan chiefs enhanced standing in the Palestinian community at large and even in broader circles of the Arab world.

Categories: Hamas, Hebron, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinian terrorists, Palestinians and Jews, Shin Beit, West Bank
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Kerry said to plan Israel visit in bid to ease tensions

November 19, 2015

Kerry said to plan Israel visit in bid to ease tensions, Times of Israel, Tamar Pileggi, November 19, 2015

(!@#$!@#$$&(&&!!! How about a modicum of “solidarity” with Israel? — DM)

Kerry again on peaceBenjamin Netanyahu, left, meeting with John Kerry in Jerusalem on Monday, March 31, 2014. (photo credit: Amos Ben Gershom/ GPO/Flash90)

In a bid to calm mounting Israeli-Palestinian tensions, US Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Israel and the West Bank next week to discuss the implementation of confidence building measures, Hebrew-language media reported Wednesday.

The secretary of state will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday, Channel 2 reported.

US special envoy on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations Frank Lowenstein will arrive in Israel on Thursday ahead of the talks, according to the report.

There was no official confirmation.

Kerry’s visit to Israel would come on the heels of Netanyahu’s trip to Washington last week, where the prime minister discussed with US leaders a series of goodwill gestures Jerusalem intends to take to stabilize relations with the Palestinians.

Kerry at the time stressed that the Obama administration would keep pushing for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement in its remaining 16 months in office. US-backed talks collapsed in April 2014 after a nine-month effort and negotiations have been in a deep freeze ever since.

Addressing an audience at Harvard University last week, Kerry said the expansion of Israeli settlements has increased Palestinian frustration, leading to the recent upswing in violence that saw almost daily attacks against Israeli civilians and security forces.

“Unless we get going, the two-state solution will be conceivably stolen from everybody,” Kerry warned.

Kerry, who is currently in Paris to show solidarity with France in the wake of last week’s attacks, has not visited Israel or the Palestinian territories in over a year.

He was in Amman last month to discuss installing surveillance cameras at the Temple Mount. Israel has welcomed the camera plan, saying the surveillance would prove it is doing nothing wrong and expose violent activities by Palestinian protesters. The Palestinians, however, have given the plan a cool reception, saying Israel would use the cameras to identify and arrest demonstrators.

Israel has seen a recent uptick in violence that began two months ago amid tensions surrounding the Temple Mount. In mid-September, Palestinian protesters clashed frequently with Israeli forces at the site. By October, Palestinian terrorists were perpetrating near-daily stabbings and shootings, mainly in Jerusalem and the West Bank, but central Israel had also seen some assaults.

Palestinians claim Israel is planning to change the status quo on the Mount, where Jews can visit but not pray. Israel has vehemently denied the claim.

The uptick in violence also saw clashes between Palestinian protesters and IDF and Border Police forces in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Categories: Abbas, Israel, Kerry, Obama and Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians and Jews
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European Jewry’s bleak future

November 19, 2015

European Jewry’s bleak future, Israel Hayom, Isi Leibler, November 19, 2015

(Please see also, Who needs facts? We have Israel as a scapegoat. — DM)

In the midst of this turbulent, massive migration and ongoing fears of new terror attacks, the future for European Jews appears bleaker than ever.

The majority of Europeans believe Israel represents a greater threat to global security than do Iran and North Korea. Most are convinced that Israelis have genocidal intentions in relation to the Arabs, make no distinction between Palestinian terrorists and Jewish victims of terrorism, and frequently condemn Israelis for defending themselves against knife-wielding religious fanatics who are convinced that they will achieve paradise if they die in the course of murdering Jews.

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That a massacre of at least 129 civilians in Paris, in the heart of Europe, could be engineered by half a dozen militarily trained killers is an indicator of what we can expect in the future unless ruthless measures are taken to confront the terrorists in their home base and reverse the tide. This will require more than bombing sorties, including the deployment of ground forces that U.S. President Barack Obama still bitterly resists.

Let us not understate the challenge. We face a brutal no-holds-barred conflict of civilizations in which evil forces motivated by a death cult would take us back to the Dark Ages. The barbarians have already penetrated our gates and we have witnessed another preview of the frightening horrors that human beings have the capacity of inflicting upon themselves.

What is amazing is that, even after this last manifestation, many European leaders remain in denial and fail to recognize that we are not confronted by mindless nihilistic terrorists but by fanatically inspired Islamic extremists committed to the destruction of Western civilization and democracy. The threat emanates from the broad stream of Islamic fundamentalism and cannot be restricted to Sunnis or Shiites despite the fact that they kill one another.

The reality is that Shiites no less than Sunnis are totally opposed to democracy and freedom of expression and seek to impose Shariah law.

Whether this flows from al-Qaida, Islamic State, the Iranian regime, Hezbollah, Hamas, or even the Palestinian Authority, which condemns murders in Paris but blesses the shedding of Jewish blood, they all share an underlying hatred of Western civilization, Christianity, and Judaism.

Our first major confrontation with Islamic terrorism beyond the Middle East was the 9/11 World Trade Center atrocity. But since the targeted assassination of Osama bin Laden, there has been a determined effort to convince us that the threat of Islamic extremism has essentially been vanquished. The United States made concerted efforts to woo and at times even counterproductively groveled to appease Islamic fundamentalists such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian regime.

It was Obama who insisted on erasing any reference to “Islamic terror” or any possible nexus between fundamentalist Islam and terrorism. This, despite the fact that aside from a few individual white supremacist outbursts, every case of organized terrorism was inspired by Islamic religious frenzy. The organization currently occupying the spotlight is Islamic State, made up of Sunnis, but the Shiite Hezbollah, like the Sunni Hamas, are birds of the same feather.

Despite the murderous cries of “Allahu akbar” by the killers, the French government and the media are even now still burying their heads in the sand when it comes to identifying the enemy. The term “Islamic terrorism” has simply been deleted from the political lexicon.

Until political correctness is set aside and there is a recognition that we face a worldwide threat to our existence and quality of life emanating from organized Islamic extremists, we will not be able to rally and unite to crush these elements.

The Islamic extremists understand that with minimal effort, they can orchestrate attacks in leading Western cities at marginal cost. As was evidenced now in Paris and earlier in Mumbai, half a dozen suicidal armed fanatics planted or resident in communities are able to inflict immense damage.

The situation in Europe is catastrophic. Most countries, in particular France, now host large Muslim communities, a substantial proportion of which are radicalized, antidemocratic and sympathetic to terrorist acts. Independent opinion polls show that the law-abiding moderate Muslims are in a minority and intimidated. What is frightening is the emergence of highly educated, homegrown second-generation European-born Muslims brainwashed in their local communities into becoming fanatical Islamists. A significant number volunteered for military service in Syria and returned to their homelands committed to becoming martyrs at a later stage.

The last straw is the massive flow of “refugees” which threatens to completely change the demography of Europe. Unable to integrate its existing Muslim minorities, there is little doubt that the new flow, which inevitably includes large numbers of xenophobic antidemocratic and pathologically anti-Semitic radicals, will only strengthen the existing extremist Islamic elements. These “refugees” undoubtedly also incorporate considerable numbers of jihadists, who will act immediately or remain sleepers until such time as a new terrorist operation is initiated.

In the midst of this turbulent, massive migration and ongoing fears of new terror attacks, the future for European Jews appears bleaker than ever.

Jews in most of Europe were already considered pariahs for many years. Today, the level of anti-Israelism has reached record levels. The majority of Europeans believe Israel represents a greater threat to global security than do Iran and North Korea. Most are convinced that Israelis have genocidal intentions in relation to the Arabs, make no distinction between Palestinian terrorists and Jewish victims of terrorism, and frequently condemn Israelis for defending themselves against knife-wielding religious fanatics who are convinced that they will achieve paradise if they die in the course of murdering Jews.

While millions of Syrians have been displaced and butchered, European leaders seem more concerned about labeling products produced by Israelis over the Green Line than identifying terrorists. Ironically, the EU does not consider the “political wing” of Hezbollah to be a terrorist body. There remains a refusal to recognize that the frenzied killers of Israeli Jews and the Islamic State terrorists who murdered civilians in Paris are all components of the same global Islamic terrorist enterprise.

Despite the greater concern about Islamic terrorism in the wake of the shocking attacks in Paris, even now it is highly unlikely that the negative French attitudes toward Israel, designed to appease the Arabs, will be diminished.

Although many Western parliamentarians and heads of state pay lip service to the contrary, popular anti-Semitism appears to be washing over the continent like a tsunami, with increasing incitement and violence in most European cities.

On top of this, long-standing quiescent Muslim minorities are being radicalized by terrorists incubated in their midst. This will be intensified by support from European Muslims returning home from Syria and Iraq promoting their jihadi world outlook.

These negative trends are being dramatically reinforced by what may represent the greatest migratory movement of the century. After Islam failed for centuries to conquer Europe militarily, if the flood of “refugees” is not stemmed, it may yet triumph by demographic means.

In a democracy, politicians ultimately tend to respond to public opinion. In this climate of snowballing anti-Semitic Muslim voters, combined with increasing popular and leftist anti-Semitism, the political future for Jews is bleak.

What makes it worse is that in virtually all European countries the major beneficiaries of these upheavals will be radical right-wing political parties, some of which are still in the process of purging themselves from anti-Semitic relics of the past, while others, particularly in Greece and Hungary, are outright neo-Nazi parties.

Under these circumstances, from every conceivable vantage point, European Jews can expect more difficult times. Their pariah-like existence will sink to lower depths and their security will inevitably be further undermined.

For those who seek to maintain Jewish continuity, Europe is beginning to look like a cemetery. Jewish communities will undoubtedly linger on the continent. But what sort of life will these Jewish enclaves endure with such anti-Semitism, violence, and feral hostility to Israel? Can Jewish values and pride be instilled among young Jewish people in such a climate?

Many Jews have been contemplating leaving for many years. Events in Paris over the last year and the massive wave of Muslim migration, including jihadist and anti-Semitic elements, only reinforce these legitimate fears. Every committed Jew should now be contemplating aliyah. Those unable to uproot themselves for economic or social reasons should at least encourage their children to move to Israel.

Yes, there is terrorism in Israel. But Jews can feel infinitely safer here than in European countries. In Israel, they will unite with their kinsmen and participate in their own Jewish homeland in which their own army, rather than foreign forces, will defend them against anti-Semites and jihadists.

This is surely a final wake-up call for European Jewry to consider making aliyah and participating in this great Jewish enterprise.

Categories: Antisemitism, Europe, Islamic invasion, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Israel, Jews, Multiculturalism
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Satire | US Not Sure Who It’s Fighting In Middle East, Bombs Israel ‘Just To Be Sure’

November 19, 2015

US Not Sure Who It’s Fighting In Middle East, Bombs Israel ‘Just To Be Sure’ Duffel Blog, November 19, 2015

US bombs IsraelUS officials are confident they understand the situation on the ground in Syria. (Duffel Blog photo.)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Pentagon spokesperson Col. Steve Warren announced US aircraft participating in Operation Inherent Resolve, the code name for the campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), struck targets in Tel Aviv today.

When asked why US warplanes would attack a long-standing ally, Warren explained, “Look, guys, this all makes perfect sense,” pointing to a nebulous PowerPoint slide.

“This was all supposed to be a campaign to topple Bashar al-Asad in Syria, starting with the Arab Spring in 2011. Which, in turn, allowed us to get back at Iran and Russia, both of whom support Syria,” said Warren. “So the CIA considered arming the rebels in Syria, which kind of backfired, and now we have ISIS, a group we thought we had already defeated back when they were al-Qaeda in Iraq.”

Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter further explained, “Sure, we were a little worried when ISIS started running around the Middle East, chopping everyone’s heads off. But fortunately, Iran came to our rescue. Well, in Iraq, that is. We’re still fighting Iran in Yemen.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joe Dunford stressed the contributions of America’s coalition partners.

Dunford explained how the US tried to empower allies among the Gulf States to take on ISIS, “which in turn sort of helps us get back at Iran.”

“Unfortunately, most of those states also covertly support ISIS, even though they’re nominally our long-standing allies. Whoops,” said Dunford.

“That’s not to say we don’t have some powerful allies in the region, though,” Dunford explained. “The Kurds have proven to be our greatest allies there, and the Turks are one of our longest-standing NATO allies. Unfortunately, they spend more time fighting each other than ISIS. That old saying, ‘nothing brings people together like a common enemy’ is completely useless here.”

Dunford concluded, “So, you see, ISIS is supported by Arabs, who are opposed by Iranians, who are both opposed and allied with the US, who is sort of allied with Turkey and the Kurds, who are opposed to each other. Since the enemy of my friend is now my enemy, it made sense for the US to bomb Israel, Iran’s bitter adversary.”

Events grew even more complicated in the wake of the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday. The attacks were reportedly the work of ISIS, who also claimed credit for the bombing of a Russian airliner earlier this month.

“France and Russia have formed an alliance, though in doing so, they automatically caused Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire to declare war in return,” said Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook. “And, let’s face it, this whole thing really is the fault of the Ottomans when you think about it.”

The briefing then shifted to issues surrounding Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“There, the situation is much more simple,” Cook continued.  “The US is fighting the Taliban by providing billions of dollars in military aid to Pakistan, which is supporting the Taliban. Basically, it’s like that scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Luke Skywalker thinks he’s fighting Darth Vader, only to find his own face in Darth Vader’s helmet. That’s pretty much what we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

 

Categories: Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Iran, Islamic nations, Islamic State, Israel, Obama - Middle East, Russia, Satire, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Taliban, Tel Aviv
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The Obamization of the Military, Pt. 243

November 19, 2015

The Obamization of the Military, Pt. 243, American Thinker, J.R. Dunn, November 19, 2015

It appears that the New Military is using the campaign against ISIS as an opportunity to rewrite the rules of war – and not in favor of the West.

According to Bridget Johnson of PJ Media, actions taken by U.S. forces in the wake of the Paris massacre include an effort to interdict ISIS oil tanker traffic. U.S. aerial assets carried this out by bombarding the trucks with leaflets warning drivers that an air strike would follow within forty-five minutes. What followed was, evidently, not air strikes at all but low-level buzzing by U.S. Navy fighter-bombers. (Consider for a minute what the pilots must have thought.)

It’s difficult to know what’s more astonishing about this – the fact that it’s taken over a year for the Central Command to move against ISIS’s major source of revenue, or the delight that military spokesmen have taken in this ineffectual, empty operation.

You see, the important thing isn’t hurting ISIS. No — the important thing is not hurting civilians. This is how it was put by Col. Steve Warren, in a passage of pure Obamese that would be hard to beat by the master himself:

“So we had to go through that whole process of one, determining whether or not we felt it was in our best interest to strike these trucks. And then once we determined that, yes, it is in our interest to strike these trucks, how do we go about ensuring that we’re able to mitigate the potential of civilian casualties? And these things take time,”

Uh-huh. Memo to Col. Warren, Central Command, and the Pentagon: they’re all civilians. Every member of ISIS, every supporter, every collaborator, is a civilian. That’s one of the defining points of what a terrorist is. ISIS is not a nation; it does not possess a military. They’re all civilians, from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on down, and they’re all legitimate targets. Because anybody supporting ISIS, whether a direct member or not, is a functioning terrorist, and deserves whatever he gets.

But the liberal-left, as we all know, like to slice things fine, so now we’ve got the distinction between “terrorist”, and “civilian”, with a civilian being somebody who evidently does everything but actually shoot or blow up innocents. (Note that this is simply an expansion of the international media’s treatment of Palestinian killers.)

Well, it happens that history covers that aspect as well, and ironically, involving France. As was at one time widely known, France was occupied by the Nazis from 1940 to 1944. During that time thousands of Frenchmen aligned themselves with their conquerors, sharpening the concept of the “collaborator”. In 1944, these traitors were subject to the epuration sauvage (savage purge). In villages and towns throughout France, tribunals were seated and the collaborators brought before them to be tried and in many cases executed immediately. At least 10,000 traitors were killed. Some estimates range as high as 100,000. The doctrine was established that anyone who collaborates with a conqueror is subject to death.  That extends to anybody working to fund ISIS.

(Note that we’re not appealing to traditional “Just War” theory, which covers this situation as well, through the doctrine of “double effect”. A military operation against a legitimate target is allowed to cause limited civilian casualties so long as the intent is to destroy the target rather than kill civilians. This is how strategic bombing that killed thousands of civilians during WW II was justified. It can certainly be extended to a few corrupt Iraqi truck drivers.)

What this represents is the extension of unicorn and butterfly morality to the military.  As Col. Warren puts it: “We’re not in this business to kill civilians, we’re in this business to stop ISIL — to defeat ISIL.”

Actually, they’re not in the business of doing either. It’s unclear whether any driver in fact abandoned his rig. It’s unclear whether air strikes were actually carried out. It’s unclear whether a single shipment was stopped. It’s unclear whether ISIS was deprived of one thin dime of oil revenue.

What is clear is that nothing effective is going to be done to destroy ISIS and curtail Jihadi terror until this administration and its sycophants in the military and elsewhere are ejected.

 

Categories: Islamic State, Israel, Obama and Islamic State, Obama and US military, Obama's America
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