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Column One: Responding to the slaughter

November 21, 2014

Column One: Responding to the slaughter, Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick, November 20, 2014

Jerusalem terror attack

Terror attack scene in Jerusalem . (photo credit:KOBI GIDEON/GPO)

The horrible truth is that all of the anti-Jewish slaughters perpetrated by our Arab neighbors have been motivated to greater or lesser degrees by Islamic Jew-hatred.Today Israel is powerless to influence the hearts of our Arab neighbors. But we can influence their minds. We can deter them from attacking us.

The actions set forth above: asset seizure, revenue seizure and citizenship/residency abrogation for terrorists and their dependents are steps that Israel can take today, despite the hostile international climate.

If the government and Knesset adopt these measures, they will rectify some of the damage Israel has inflicted on itself by showing the Palestinians over two decades that they will be rewarded for their aggression.

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What we are seeing in Jerusalem today is not simply Palestinian terrorism. It is Islamic jihad. No one likes to admit it. The television reporters insist that this is the worst possible scenario because there is no way to placate it.

There is no way to reason with it.

So what else is new? The horrible truth is that all of the anti-Jewish slaughters perpetrated by our Arab neighbors have been motivated to greater or lesser degrees by Islamic Jew-hatred. The only difference between the past hundred years and now is that today our appeasement-oriented elite is finding it harder to pretend away the obvious fact that we cannot placate our enemies.

No “provocation” by Jews drove two Jerusalem Arabs to pick up meat cleavers and a rifle and slaughter rabbis in worship like sheep and then mutilate their bodies.

No “frustration” with a “lack of progress” in the “peace process,” can motivate people to run over Jewish babies or attempt to assassinate a Jewish civil rights activist.

The reason that these terrorists have decided to kill Jews is that they take offense at the fact that in Israel, Jews are free. They take offense because all their lives they have been taught that Jews should live at their mercy, or die by their sword.

They do so because they believe, as former Jordanian MP Ya’qub Qarash said on Palestinian television last week, that Christians and Muslims should work together to forbid the presence of Jews in “Palestine” and guarantee that “not a single Jew will remain in Jerusalem.”

Our neighbors are taught that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, signed the treaty of Hudaybiyah in 628 as a ploy to buy time during which he would change the balance of power between his army and the Jews of Kuraish. And 10 years later, once his army gained the upper hand, he annihilated the Jews.

Throughout the 130-year history of modern Zionism, Islamic Jew-hatred has been restrained by two forces: the desire of many Arabs to live at peace with their Jewish neighbors; and the ability of Israeli authorities and before them, British authorities, to deter the local Arab Muslims from attacking.

The monopoly on Arab Muslim leadership has always belonged to the intolerant bigots. Support for coexistence has always been the choice of individuals.

Haj Amin el-Husseini’s first act as the founder of the Palestinian Arab identity was to translate The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and serialize them in the local press.

During the Arab jihad of 1936-1939, Husseini’s gangs of murderers killed more Arabs than the British did. He targeted those who sought peaceful coexistence with the Jews.

His successor Yasser Arafat followed his example.

During the 1988-1991 Palestinian uprising, the PLO killed more Palestinians than the IDF did. Like Husseini, Arafat targeted Palestinians who worked with Israel.

Since Israel imprudently embraced Arafat and the PLO in 1993 and permitted them to govern the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and exert direct influence and coercive power over the Arabs of Jerusalem, the Palestinian Authority’s governing institutions have used all the tools at their disposal to silence those who support peaceful coexistence with Israel, and indoctrinate the general public in Islamic and racial Jew-hatred.

Much has been made of the recent spike in incitement of violence by Palestinian leaders led by Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas. But the flames Abbas and his comrades are throwing would not cause such conflagrations if they hadn’t already indoctrinated their audience to desire the destruction of the Jews.

You cannot solicit murder among those who haven’t been taught that committing murder is an act of heroism.

Today Israel must take swift, effective action to stop the slaughter. The damage that has been done to the psyches of the Arabs of Jerusalem and their brethren in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, cannot be repaired in a timeline relevant to the task of preventing the next massacre.

This means that for the time being, on the tactical level, Israel’s only play is strengthening its deterrence.

Israel faces two major constraints in meeting this challenge.

First, the European Union and the Obama administration, as well as the US foreign policy elite, are obsessively committed to a policy of empowering the Palestinians against Israel.

The Spanish parliament’s decision to go ahead with its planned vote to recognize the “State of Palestine,” just hours after the massacre at the Bnei Torah Kehillat Yaakov synagogue in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood shows that the EU’s dedication to strengthening the Palestinians against Israel is entirely unrelated to events on the ground.

They don’t care who the Palestinians are or what they do. For their own reasons they have made supporting the Palestinians at Israel’s expense their top foreign policy priority.

Similarly, US President Barack Obama couldn’t contain his compulsion to pressure Israel even in his statement condemning the massacre. Even there, Obama called on Israelis and Palestinians equally to restrain themselves.

Obama’s unabated hostility toward Israel was brought to bear on Tuesday afternoon when the State Department restated its rejection of Jewish property rights in Jerusalem and its desire to see the homes of terrorist murderers left intact for the welfare of their terror-supporting families.

On Tuesday, Israel’s social media outlets were filled with angry rebukes of Western media outlets from CNN to MSNBC to CBS, to the BBC. All these networks, and many others, did everything in their power to explain away the synagogue slaughter as just another instance of a cycle of violence. That is, they all sought to frame the discussion in a way that would lead their viewers to the conclusion that the slaughter of praying rabbis was justified.

While appalling, the coverage was not the least surprising. The Western elite media’s devotion to their false narrative of Israeli culpability for all the problems in the region is absolute. Networks would rather wreck their professional reputations than tell the truth.

Together with the EU, the American policy elite and the Obama administration, the media place Israel’s leaders in a bind. Every step they take to defend the country and protect the rights of Jews meets with automatic and libelous condemnation.

The other impediment Israel faces in deterring anti-Jewish violence against its citizenry is its own weakness. Since the inception of the phony peace process, Israel has continuously rewarded the Palestinians for their murderous violence against its citizenry.

From Israel’s transfer of control over all the Palestinian population centers in Judea and Samaria, to its forcible expulsion of its own people from Gaza, to its repeated releases of terrorists from prison, to its continued transfer of hundreds of millions of shekels in tax revenues to the PA, Israel has showed the Palestinians at every turn that far from being punished for murdering Jews, they will be rewarded for doing so.

Given the US and European support for the Palestinians, Israeli declarations that there will be no future releases of terrorists have no credibility. If terrorists aren’t killed on the spot, they can assume that they will eventually be released; if not in exchange for an Israeli hostage, Israel will release them in an attempt to placate the White House.

But even with these constraints on its actions, Israel can take steps to deter its hate-filled enemies from attacking.

Since the current campaign of murder is being carried out by terrorists largely acting on their own accord, the measures Israel adopts to stop the attacks should be directed primarily against individual terrorists. As for action against the PA, it needs to be credible, consistent and directed to where it will hurt Palestinian leaders the most: their wallets.

With regard to the individual terrorists, the government has made much of its intention to destroy the homes of terrorists. While it sounds good, there is limited evidence of the effectiveness of this punitive measure, which is a relic of the British Mandate.

Rather than destroy their homes, Israel should adopt the US anti-narcotics policy of asset seizure.

All assets directly or indirectly tied to terrorists, including their homes and any other structure where they planned their crimes, and all remittances to them, should be seized and transferred to their victims, to do with what they will.

If Israel hands over the homes of the synagogue butchers to the 24 orphans of Rabbi Moshe Twersky, Rabbi Kalman Levine, Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky and Rabbi Avraham Goldberg, not only will justice be served. The children’s inheritance of the homes of their fathers’ killers will send a clear and demoralizing message to other would-be killers.

Not only will their atrocities fail to remove the Jews from Israel. Every terrorist will contribute to the Zionist project by donating his home to the Jewish settlement enterprise.

Just as Israel has repeatedly buckled under US pressure to release terrorists from jail, so it has bowed to US pressure to continue to fund the PA by transferring the tax revenues it collects on goods imported to the PA.

Assuming that the government is too weak to stand up to the Americans, at a minimum it can see that the money is properly used.

To that end, the Knesset should pass a law permitting Israeli terror victims to sue the PA for actual and punitive damages in Israel courts. The sums awarded to the victims should be taken from the tax revenues Israel collects for the PA. The law should apply retroactively to all victims of Palestinian terror carried out since the establishment of the PA in May 1994.

Not only should the law permit Israeli terror victims to sue the PA. It should dictate actions the Justice Ministry must take to assist them in bringing suit.

Israel should also revoke citizenship and residency rights not only from terrorists themselves, but from those who enjoy citizenship and residency rights by dint of their relationship with the terrorists.

Wives who received Israeli residency or citizenship rights though marriage to terrorists should have their rights revoked, as should the children of the terrorists.

Since Tuesday’s massacre, aside from Abbas’s phony condemnation, the Palestinian leadership and public from Fatah to Hamas have been unanimous in their praise for the atrocity.

Today Israel is powerless to influence the hearts of our Arab neighbors. But we can influence their minds. We can deter them from attacking us.

The actions set forth above: asset seizure, revenue seizure and citizenship/residency abrogation for terrorists and their dependents are steps that Israel can take today, despite the hostile international climate.

If the government and Knesset adopt these measures, they will rectify some of the damage Israel has inflicted on itself by showing the Palestinians over two decades that they will be rewarded for their aggression.

If our leaders fail to take these or similar actions, and suffice with complaining about incitement, their condemnations of the murder of Jews will ring as hollow as those sounded by the BBC, Obama and Abbas.

Categories: Antisemitism, Demolitions, Islam, Israel, Jerusalem, Jews, Kerry, Obama, Palestinians, Peace process
Tags: Antisemitism, Demolitions, Islam, Israel, Jerusalem, Peace Process

Comments: 1 Comment

Hamas, Abbas, Obama and Islamic savagery

November 18, 2014

Hamas, Abbas, Obama and Islamic savagery, Dan Miller’s Blog, November 18, 2014

Today Palestinian ~~extremists~~ Islamists murdered four Israelis, three of whom were also U.S. citizens, at a Jerusalem synagogue. Several others are in critical condition. Palestinians celebrated their actions and their intended consequences.

This morning I posted an article by Robert Spencer of Front Page Magazine titled More Beheadings, More Denial at Warsclerotic, of which I am an editor. Mr. Spencer’s article deals with Obama’s response to the recent Islamic beheading of “Abdul-Rahman Kassig, previously known as Peter.” Obama proclaimed that Kassig’s beheading by personnel of the Islamic State “represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith.” As I noted in a parenthetical comment at the top of the article,

(Please see also this article, and others, on today’s Islamic slaughter at a Jerusalem synagogue. “Knives, axes and guns” were used.” Hamas responded with praise for the terrorists who did it. Will Obama, our Islamic “scholar” in chief, declare that such Palestinian “actions represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith?” He won’t. Nor, of course, will he admit that the Palestinian’s Islamic actions, like those of the Islamic State, do represent Islam.– DM)

Mr. Spencer observed that Islamic savagery comparable to that of the Islamic State could happen in the United States and that

It could happen anywhere that people read the phrase “when you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks” (Qur’an 47:4) as if it were a command of the Creator of the Universe. But to point out that simple and obvious fact nowadays only brings down upon one’s head charges of “hatred” and of “demonizing all Muslims,” when in a sane society it would bring honest explanations from Muslims of good will of what they were doing to ensure that no Muslim ever acted on that verse’s literal meaning. [Emphasis added.]

Here’s a pertinent video by Pat Condell:

Continuing with the quotation from Mr. Spencer,

In reality, they’re doing nothing. No Muslim organization, mosque or school in the United States has any program to teach young Muslims and converts to Islam why they should avoid and reject on Islamic grounds the vision of Islam – and of unbelievers – that the Islamic State and other jihad groups offer them. This is extremely strange, given the fact that all the Muslim organizations, mosques and schools in the United States ostensibly reject this understanding of Islam. And even stranger is that no American authorities seem to have noticed the absence of such initiatives, much less dared to call out Muslim groups about this. [Emphasis added.]

On the contrary, instead of calling on Muslim groups to take some action to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future, Obama’s latest denial was even more strenuous in its dissociation of the beheading from Islam: “ISIL’s actions represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith which Abdul-Rahman adopted as his own.” [Emphasis added.]

“Least of all”! As if it were possible that the Islamic State’s actions represented Buddhism, or Methodism, or Christian Science, or the Hardshell Baptists, or the Mandaeans, to greater or lesser degrees, but the most far-fetched association one could make, out of all the myriad faiths people hold throughout the world, would be to associate the Islamic State’s actions with…Islam. The Islamic State’s actions represent no faith, least of all Islam – as if it were more likely that the Islamic State were made up of Presbyterians or Lubavitcher Hasidim or Jains or Smartas than that it were made up of Muslims.

Here’s a video of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim, speaking at Yale University on September 15th. Although more than an hour long, it’s well worth watching and considering. Please see also this article, commenting on her background and views of Islam.

Is Jonathan Gruber still advising Obama? This video is from left-leaning(?) MSNBC.

Did Obama “steal” His notions about Islam from Gruber, or merely Gruber’s tactics for masking His true beliefs and intentions, this time about Islam rather than about ObamaCare? Did Obama arrive at His notions of Islam and how to present them Himself, based on His own Islamic studies — particularly the propriety of lying to non-Muslims on behalf of Islam? Or is He, again, just sucking up to Iran? In the latter connection, please see this semi-satirical post titled To get a nuke deal with Iran Obama and the Islamist world demonize Israel.

The Israeli-Palestinian “peace” process and the “two state solution.”

For years, the Obama Administration has been pushing Israel, hard, to agree to a two state solution with the “moderate” Palestinian Authority (Fatah). Hamas is the Palestinian entity which, in April of this year, formed a quasi-unified government with the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas. Fatah’s alleged moderation, and that of Abbas, is of this type:

Abbas is seventy-nine years old and probably will not last much longer. He has personally encouraged terrorism, most recently when commenting on the killing of a Palestinian, Mutaz Hijazi, who attempted to assassinate Yehuda Glick, an advocate of Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount.

Hijazi was quickly found and killed by Israeli security forces. Abbas responded by promptly writing to his widow:

With anger, we have received the news of the vicious assassination crime committed by the terrorists of the Israeli occupation army against [your] son Mu’taz Ibrahim Khalil Hijazi, who will go to heaven as a martyr defending the rights of our people and its holy places.

Hijazi, it should be stressed, shot Glick, a civilian, at pointblank range. Fortunately Glick now appears to be recovering in hospital.

The assassin’s admirer, Mahmoud Abbas, is the same Mahmoud Abbas about whom President Barack Obama said last March:

I think nobody would dispute that whatever disagreements you may have with him, he has proven himself to be somebody who has been committed to nonviolence and diplomatic efforts to resolve this issue. [Emphasis added.]

That was in an interview where Obama, of course, portrayed Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu as the recalcitrant party who needs to “seize the moment” and make peace.

Even if Abbas wanted to reject Islamic terrorism, doing so would be akin to signing his own death warrant.

In a speech in Ramallah on November 11, marking the tenth anniversary of the death of his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, Abbas declared: “He who surrenders one grain of the soil of Palestine and Jerusalem is not one of us.”

This statement alone should be enough for Kerry and Western leaders to realize that it would be impossible to ask Abbas to make any concessions. Like Arafat, Abbas has become hostage to his own rhetoric. How can Abbas be expected to accept any deal that does not include 100% of his demands — in this instance, all territory captured by Israel in 1967? [Emphasis added.]

Abbas himself knows that if he comes back with 97% or 98% of his demands, his people will either spit in is face or kill him, after accusing him of being a “defeatist” and “relinquishing Palestinian rights.”

Abbas was elected for a five year term as President of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on November 11, 2004, until January 9, 2009. However,

due to Palestinian Internal conflict he unilaterally extended his term for another year and continues in office even years after that second deadline expired. As a result of this, Fatah’s main rival, Hamas announced that it would not recognise the extension or view Abbas as rightful president.^[6]^[7]^[8] [Emphasis added.]

For these and many other reasons, a “two state solution” would ultimately pit Israel and Hamas against either other, more so even that presently. It would result in either the death of Israel — the only free and democratic state in the region — or the death of the Palestinian state notion. The United States should agree with Israel that the death of the Palestinian state notion is preferable to the death of Israel. There is no apparent reason to assume, or even to hope, that Obama does.

On a lighter note, this might be better than a two state solution but, due to regional demographics and Israel’s dedication to democracy, would not work either.

Categories: Abbas, Fatah, Gaza, Hamas, Iran, Islam, Islamic State, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, Kerry, Netanyahu, Nukes, Obama, Two state solution
Tags: Abbas, Hamas, Iran, Islam, Islamic State, Israel, Nukes, Two state solution

Comments: 1 Comment

To get a nuke deal with Iran Obama and the Islamist world demonize Israel

November 13, 2014

To get a nuke deal with Iran Obama and the Islamist world demonize Israel, Dan Miller’s Blog, Dan Miller, November 13, 2014

This is a guest post by Imam Mohamed allah-Dork, chairman of the Washington Islamist Coalition for Peace and Prosperity (WICPAP). Although it might appear to be satire it is not, because he articulates, far more candidly than most, the objectives of the “progressive” Obama Administration. I found him with the assistance of (another) imaginary “friend,” the Highly Honorable Ima Librul, Senator from the Great State of ~~Confusion~~ Utopia, where happy unicorns frolic endlessly in the service of Obama.

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Hatred of Israel is among our Dear Leader Obama’s most effective weapons against those who oppose Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He has made heroic efforts to encourage and use it, with help from the progressive media and His other friends.

Because of the wise efforts of Our Dear Leader and His brilliant Secretary of State, hatred of Israel has increased in recent years. This has been due, in large part, to Israel’s continuing and patently unreasonable refusals to commit national suicide by agreeing to all of the righteous demands of Palestinian Authority President Abbas, as Obama and Kerry have also demanded. Peaceful Palestinians have responded to Israel’s malicious refusals through non-violent protests resulting in the death or injury of Jewish terrorists, accidentally run over, stabbed or shot.

Israeli Terrorists

Jewish Terrorists

The beautiful song embedded above was recently augmented by a new Palestinian musical offering including wholesome family-oriented lyrics.

I am so proud of the composers, singers and musicians that I cry whenever I watch the video!

According to a specious article at a right-wing propaganda site called PJ Media,

What has evoked this enthusiasm is a spate of murderous Palestinian attacks on Israelis over the past few weeks. The fatalities have been a three-month-old Israeli girl and a 22-year-old Ecuadorian woman, both killed in a car-ramming attack in Jerusalem; a 38-year-old Israeli Druze border patrol captain killed in another car-ramming attack in Jerusalem; a 20-year-old off-duty Israeli soldier stabbed to death in Tel Aviv on Monday; and a 26-year-old Israeli woman stabbed to death beside a Judea community that same day.

That is absurd. They were no more “murdered,” than are filthy dogs which are righteously slaughtered because they are dangers to society at large.

Unless Israel’s refusal to commit national suicide is condemned world-wide, undue attention will focus on the peace loving Islamic Republic of Iran and its legitimate goal of having nuclear weapons to bring Islamic peace to all who desire it. Israel opposes Iran’s quest for Islamic peace through nukes and therefore selfishly rejects it.

Hatred is irrational and bad, except that directed at genocidal, apartheid Israel and others who fail to embrace Islam. Hatred of them is rational and good. Just as hatred of Israel must be encouraged to the extent possible, so must the ~~stupidity~~ great credulity of the American people be fed and used for Progressive purposes, as it was fed and used to give them the blessings of superior health care.

Lies, obfuscation and secrecy for good purposes as praised by our Dear Leader’s consultant Jonathan Gruber, such as the passage of ObamaCare, are good because they are necessary. Leading the way, our Dear Leader promised to have the most transparent administration in history.

It was all diversionary symbolism, of course, because truth, clarity, transparency and accountability in pursuit of bad objectives — such as defeat of our Dear Leader’s policies — are intolerable because it is racist to oppose Him. Also, they might succeed.

That brings us to our Dear Leader’s dominant role in the P5+1 negotiations with The Islamic Republic of Peace Everlasting, Iran.

Some warmongering, racist Neanderthals blither that On Iran, No One Can Afford to Be Wilfully Blind.

It is more than simply unfortunate that Western policymakers look at Iran and appear to see only what they want to see. They heap praise on progress in the nuclear negotiations without looking at the actual content. They tune into televised smiles and reasonable-sounding public statements from the Rouhani administration and tune out the bombastic threats, insults and anti-Western rhetoric that invariably accompanies them. They push for large-scale rapprochement with Iran on the apparent assumption that its crimes will disappear if we somehow pretend they don’t exist. [Emphasis added.]

But these wishful thinkers are in the corridors of power in Washington and Westminster. Although ISIS has grown stronger thanks to the sectarian conflict that Iran has helped create, these unrealistic optimists would imply that somehow Iran is our best hope for defeating this menace. So they give in to Iranian intransigence in the nuclear talks by senselessly giving away more and more leverage. [Emphasis added.]

Make no mistake, Tehran’s theocratic rulers are very well aware of this “pie-in-the-sky” illogicality. Indeed, they are counting on it. The regime’s officials are so confident in our diplomatic vulnerability that they have been trying to use the crisis in Iraq not only to obtain unearned concessions in the nuclear domain, but also to pressure the U.S., the U.K. and their allies to modify their stance against the dictatorship of Bashar Assad in Syria. [Emphasis added.]

Nonsense! Iran needs nuclear weapons to pursue its peaceful, humanitarian goals and, with our Dear Leader’s help, will get (or keep) them! Life will then be better for everyone who matters.

No deal with Iran will be finalized unless all of Iran’s righteous demands are met. Unless ample lies and obfuscations are spoon-fed to the American public to minimize the consequences of Iran’s victory, the deal may well be opposed. Lies and obfuscation were needed to pass ObamaCare, even with solid Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress. A deal with Iran is even more important. Our Dear Leader’s wise consultant, Jonathan Gruber, knows this very well and so does our Dear Leader.

Fortunately, a Washington think tank is taking the lead to counter the silly stuff spouted by racists.

A leading liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., has begun enlisting its associates in an “all-hands-on-deck effort to support” the Obama administration as it seeks to ink a nuclear deal with Iran by the end of the month, according to emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The Truman National Security Project, a nonprofit think tank with ties to the administration, is assembling a “crack team of writers” to flood national and local media outlets with articles supporting the White House’s efforts before the details of a final nuclear deal have even emerged, according to internal emails sent by the organization to its listserv. [Emphasis added.]

“Our community absolutely must step up and not cede the public narrative to neocon hawks that would send our country to war just to screw the president,” Graham F. West, Truman’s writing and communications associate, wrote in a recent email to the organization’s listserv. [Emphasis added.]

Pay no attention to insane mumblings by the editor of this subversive blog. He has long opposed what he refers to as the Iran Scam and recently wrote this racist diatribe against our own Dear Leader and His quest for peace everlasting. If this sick cartoon isn’t racist, then I don’t know what is.

Our Dear Leader has already accomplished countless wonderful things to establish His magnificent legacy. Here are just a few:

He is the first African American President of the United States.

The award of His Nobel Peace Prize on October 9, 2009, a mere nine months after He became the President of the United States. No other President has accomplished that.

He compelled passage of the Affordable Care Act during His first term in office.

He has already issued more crucial executive decrees than any former President.

He has consistently condemned the apartheid, illegitimate state known as Israel.

Miller even contends, speciously, that Iran’s alleged human rights abuses and alleged support for world-wide terrorism should be considered by the esteemed P5+1 negotiators under our Dear Leader’s helpful guidance. That, like all of his other suggestions, would elevate facts, transparency and accountability for a bad purpose over lies, obfuscation and non-accountability for a good purpose. What great sage once wrote “the truth shall make you flee?” He was right. Truth would make many Americans flee from a deal with Iran, and we need their unthinking support to show that, despite recent election results, they reject racism and therefore still love, respect and have unbounded confidence in our Dear Leader.

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Editor’s comments

In an effort to help Imam Mohamed allah-Dork present his ideas most candidly and therefore effectively, I was pleased to provide the You Tube videos.

I agree with allah-Dork’s thesis that lies and obfuscation are as necessary to secure public approval of a nuke deal with Iran as they were to secure passage of ObamaCare. A nuke deal with Iran would be even worse than ObamaCare.

It will be very difficult, if not impossible, for Congress to repeal ObamaCare outright if for no reason other than that Obama would veto any bill repealing it. However, it is possible that the Supreme Court may deal ObamaCare a fatal blow if it finds that subsidies for customers of ObamaCare exchanges were clearly intended, and stated by the Congress, to be available only for customers of State, not Federal, exchanges.

Once Iran gets (or keeps) nukes, there will be no way for Congress to repeal the agreement, no way for the Supreme Court to overrule it and no way to force Iran to get rid of its nukes. That Iran may get rid of some of them voluntarily — by using them — offers no comfort at all.

Israel, the only free and democratic nation in the Middle East, has served as a useful distraction from the violation of even the most basic of human rights throughout the rest of the region. She continues to respect and implement those rights despite the Obama Administration’s increasing rejection of them and its refusal to take them into account when dealing with other nations. Iran is perhaps the worst human rights violator in the region as well as the most prolific sponsor of Islamic terrorism. As the Obama Administration ignores blatant human rights violations by other nations, it fantasizes that Israel is a gross violator and amplifies its fantasies at every opportunity.

Obama and His cohorts have learned the lessons taught by Mr. Gruber very well and have used them with success. Here is an excerpt from an article by Jonathan Turley, a liberal in the old fashioned sense of the word. He has often supported the ends which Obama has sought to achieve while opposing the methods He has used and continues to use.

In fairness to Gruber, he is again being honest about what happened in the passage of ACA and speaking as an academic. However, such machinations are rarely confirmed by high-level consultants or officials. The ACA was pushed through by a muscle vote on a handful of votes while the Administration made claims that he later had to admit were misleading at best, such as the President’s repeated assurance that citizens could keep your current insurance policy if you liked it. There was a great deal of cynicism and misleading representations made during the ACA debates — reflecting a deep-seated contempt for the intelligence of the American voter. Gruber however seems to celebrate the success in using what he viewed as the stupidity of citizens, to quote his earlier comments, to secure passage of the ACA. It is the triumph of the ends over the means — the mantra of Beltway denizens who view more principled actors as naive chumps. What is shocking for many outside of the Beltway is of course the moral relativism and cynicism reflected in such comments, but Gruber is the norm in Washington. He is the face of the consequentiality morality that has long governed this city. [Emphasis added.]

What is different is that he admits it.

Obama, et al, have consistently applied Gruber principles to the Iran Scam and will continue to do so in seeking public support for any nuke deal with Iran. They will also continue to obfuscate and lie about the Israeli situation to distract attention from what they are doing, relying on their perceptions of the “stupidity” of the American public.

Categories: Antisemitism, Gaza, Hamas, Iran, Iranian nukes, Islamism, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, Jewish occupation of Israel, Kerry, Middle East, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Palestinians, Rouhani
Tags: Iran, Islam, Israel, Nukes

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Why Abbas Will Not Condemn Terror Attacks

November 12, 2014

Why Abbas Will Not Condemn Terror Attacks, Gatestone Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh, November 12, 2014

(Please see also Palestinian song glorifies terror trend of driving into crowds. Thank you, Secretary Kerry, for helping Israel refrain from committing national suicide. — DM)

Secretary of State Kerry’s “peace process” actually put Israelis and Palestinians on a new collision course.

Not a single Palestinian Authority official has denounced the wave of terror attacks on Israel. They, too, are afraid of being condemned by their people for denouncing “heroic operations” such as ramming a car into a three-month old infant.

Kerry and other Western leaders do not want to understand that Abbas is not authorized to make any concessions for peace with Israel. For Abbas, it is more convenient to be criticized by the U.S. and Israel than to be denounced by his own people. Ignoring these facts, Kerry tried to pressure Abbas into making concessions that would have turned the Palestinian Authority president into a “traitor” in the eyes of his people. Abbas knows that the people he has radicalized would turn against him if he dared to speak out against the killing of Jews.

The recent spate of terror attacks in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the West Bank did not come as a surprise to those who have been following the ongoing incitement campaign waged by Palestinians against Israel.

This campaign escalated immediately after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s last failed “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians. Kerry’s “peace process” actually put Israelis and Palestinians on a new collision course, which reached its peak with the recent terror attacks on Israelis.

Kerry failed to acknowledge that Palestinian Authority [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas does not have a mandate from his people to negotiate, let alone sign, any agreement with Israel. Abbas is now in the tenth year of his four-year term in office.

Nor did Kerry listen to the advice of those who warned him and his aides that Abbas would not be able to implement any agreement with Israel on the ground. Abbas cannot even visit his private house in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, and he controls less than 40% of the West Bank. Where exactly did Kerry expect Abbas to implement any agreement with Israel? In the city-center of Ramallah or Nablus?

What Kerry and other Western leaders do not want to understand is that Abbas is not authorized to make any concessions for peace with Israel, and has even repeatedly promised his people that he would not make any concessions for the sake of peace with Israel.

In a speech in Ramallah on November 11, marking the tenth anniversary of the death of his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, Abbas declared: “He who surrenders one grain of the soil of Palestine and Jerusalem is not one of us.”

This statement alone should be enough for Kerry and Western leaders to realize that it would be impossible to ask Abbas to make any concessions. Like Arafat, Abbas has become hostage to his own rhetoric. How can Abbas be expected to accept any deal that does not include 100% of his demands — in this instance, all territory captured by Israel in 1967?

Abbas himself knows that if he comes back with 97% or 98% of his demands, his people will either spit in is face or kill him, after accusing him of being a “defeatist” and “relinquishing Palestinian rights.”

This is precisely why Abbas chose to walk out of Kerry’s nine-month “peace process.” Realizing that Israel was not going to offer him 100% of his demands, Abbas preferred to abandon the peace talks last summer.

For Abbas, it is more convenient to be criticized by the U.S. and Israel than to be denounced by his own people for achieving a bad deal with Israel.

Ignoring these facts, Kerry tried to pressure Abbas into making concessions that would have turned the Palestinian Authority president into a “traitor” in the eyes of his people.

Instead of being honest with his people and telling them that peace requires painful concessions also on the part of Palestinians, and not only Israel, Abbas has chosen — ever since the collapse of Kerry’s “peace process” — to incite Palestinians against Israel.

Abbas has since held Israel responsible for the collapse of Kerry’s effort. Abbas has used both the media and fiery rhetoric to tell his people that there is no peace partner in Israel. He has also been telling his people that Israel’s only goal is to seize lands and carry out “ethnic cleansing”and “genocide” against Palestinians.

Abbas’s recent charges that Jewish settlers and extremists are “contaminating” the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem need to be seen in the context of the massive incitement campaign that escalated in the aftermath of the failure of Kerry’s “peace process.”

During the past few months, Abbas, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have radicalized Palestinians to a point where it has become laughable even to talk about any peace process with Israel.

Abbas is well aware that his people will condemn him if he ever returns to the negotiating table with Israel. That is why he has now chosen a different strategy — to try to impose a solution with the help of the United Nations and the international community.

Abbas wants the international community and UN Security Council to give him what Israel cannot and will not offer him at the negotiating table.

The incitement campaign against Israel is reminiscent of the atmosphere that prevailed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip immediately after the botched Camp David summit in the summer of 2000. Then, Yasser Arafat also walked away from the table after realizing that Israel was not offering him all that he was asking for, namely a full withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.

Upon his return from Camp David, Arafat also unleashed a wave of incitement against Israel; eventually the incitement led to the eruption of the second intifada in September 2000.

Now Abbas is following in the footsteps of Arafat by stepping up his rhetorical attacks on Israel. This time, Hamas and other terror groups have joined Abbas’s incitement campaign by openly calling on Palestinians to use cars and knives to kill Jews in order to “defend” the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Abbas’s refusal to condemn the recent terror attacks on Israel may be attributed to two motives: fear of his people, and the belief that violence will force Israel to make far-reaching concessions. By refusing to denounce the attacks, and even praising the perpetrators as heroes and martyrs (as he did in the case of Mu’taz Hijazi, the east Jerusalem man who shot and wounded Jewish activist Rabbi Yehuda Glick), Abbas is indicating his tacit approval of the violence.

Not a single Palestinian Authority official, in fact, has denounced the wave of terror attacks on Israel. They, too, are afraid of being condemned by their people for denouncing “heroic operations” such as the stabbing murder of a 26-year-old woman or ramming a car into a three-month-old infant.

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Victims of what official Palestinian Authority media organs call “heroic operations”: Left, Dalia Lamkus, 26, run over and then stabbed to death by a terrorist on Nov. 10. Right: Three-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun, murdered on Oct. 23 when a terrorist rammed a car into her stroller. Several other victims were killed or injured in these attacks.

Abbas is hoping that the terror attacks will keep the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the top of the world’s agenda at a time when all eyes are turned toward the threat of the Islamic State terror group in Syria and Iraq. He also knows very well that the people he has radicalized would turn against him if he dared to speak out against the killing of Jews.

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Fatah, Gaza, Hamas, Islamism, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, Jews, juden ist verboten, Kerry, Netanyahu, Two state solution, West Bank
Tags: Abbas, Antisemitism, Fatah, Haas, Islamism, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, terror attacks, Two state solution

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Top aide to Iran Supreme Leader may join Oman talks with John Kerry

November 9, 2014

Top aide to Iran Supreme Leader may join Oman talks with John Kerry, Al-Monitor, Laura Rozen, November 8, 2014

Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign policy adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei, may join nuclear talks between the United States and Iran in Oman this week, in a sign a deal may be moving closer.

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A top adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may join talks in Oman between the United States and Iran in the coming days, in a sign that a breakthrough may be imminent in reaching a nuclear deal, Al-Monitor has learned.

Ali Akbar Velayati, longtime foreign policy adviser to Khamenei and a former Iranian foreign minister, may join the talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and European Union negotiator Catherine Ashton, in a signal that the Supreme Leader may be preparing to sign off on a deal, sources told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.

US and Iranian officials did not immediately respond to queries from Al-Monitor about the prospect that Velayati might join the Oman talks.

Velayati, speaking at a meeting with Norway’s foreign minister in Tehran last week, praised the role of Oman in hosting the upcoming trilateral talks, and said Iran seeks to reach a final nuclear deal quickly.

“We want for the talks to resolve as soon as possible, and arrive at an agreement like the one we did in Geneva last year,” Velayati said Nov. 2., Iran’s Mehr news agency reported. “But the agreement must meet Iran’s interests.”

Velayati also praised Oman as having always demonstrated “good intentions toward its relations with Iran.”

The meeting between Kerry, Zarif and Ashton is due to get underway Nov. 9 in Muscat, Oman, which hosted secret US-Iran talks that helped lead to reaching the interim Iran nuclear deal last year. Following the two-day US/Iran/EU trilateral meeting Nov. 9-10, negotiators from the rest of the P5+1 — the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany — are supposed to join the talks in Oman for a Nov. 11 meeting. Another, possibly final, round of P5+1 Iran talks is due to be held in Vienna from Nov. 18 to 24.

US, Iranian and Russian negotiators say there is still more work to be done, but are expressing increasing, albeit cautious, optimism that a deal is within reach.

“We are hopeful that over the course of the next weeks, it will be possible to close real gaps that still exist in order to be able to reach an agreement,” Kerry said following a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in China on Nov. 7. “But I’m not going to stand here and predict at this point in time what the odds of that are.”

The next few days of meetings in Oman will be critical to see if the sides will be able to overcome remaining, if narrowed, gaps on the issues of enrichment capacity and sanctions relief to finalize the deal, US and Iranian officials said.

“No one wants to return to the way things were before the Geneva Agreement. That would be too risky a scenario,” Iran Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Iran’s IRNA news agency Nov. 8, before he and the Iran nuclear negotiating team traveled to Oman, Reuters reported.

“Both sides are aware of this, which is why I think a deal is within reach,” Araghchi said. “We are serious and I can see the same resolve on the other side.”

Russia’s top negotiator, speaking to Russian media following a coordination meeting of P5+1 political directors in Vienna Nov. 7, also voiced determination to finish the deal.

“All participants voiced additional proposals” at the Nov. 7 Vienna meeting, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told Russia’s Ria Novosti news agency. “We are determined to put it all together in such a way that key compromises could be reached before the [Nov. 24] deadline.”

Iranian journalists, responding to Al-Monitor’s report, suggested Velayati might be coming to Oman to bring a message from Khamenei to Kerry. President Obama reportedly wrote Khamenei a letter in October, the Wall Street Journal reported Nov. 3. The letter was described as saying that the nuclear deal being offered adhered to Khamenei’s expressed desire to prove to the world Iran is not seeking a nuclear weapon, while allowing Iran to have a robust civil nuclear energy program, and that such a deal could benefit the United States’ and Iran’s common regional interest in fighting the Islamic State, reports said.

Kerry, when asked about the US message to Iran Nov. 8, stressed that there is no linkage between the Iran nuclear talks and regional issues.

“There is no linkage whatsoever of the nuclear discussions with any other issue, and I want to make that absolutely clear,” Kerry told reporters in China, Reuters reported. “The nuclear negotiations are on their own.”

Categories: Iran, Iranian nukes, Kerry, Obama, P5+1
Tags: Iran, Nukes

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Iran Nuclear Talks and North Korean Flashbacks

November 7, 2014

Iran Nuclear Talks and North Korean Flashbacks, Forbes, Claudia Rosett, November 7, 2014

(During Clinton’s efforts to achieve detente with North Korea, Wendy Sherman found hope for change — for the better — in every hostile utterance from NK leaders. Now she is Obama’s boot on the ground in the P5+1 negotiations with Iran. What can possibly go ~~right~~ wrong? — DM)

Now, in the Obama administration’s increasingly desperate quest for an Iran deal, comes news that President Obama is proposing to Iran’s Khamenei, ruler of the world’s leading terror-sponsoring state, that Iran and the U.S. cooperate to fight the terrorists of ISIS. This has a familiar ring. Back in 2000, the visit of North Korea’s Vice Marshal Jo to the White House was preceded, shortly beforehand, by a “Joint U.S.-D.P.R.K. Statement on International Terrorism,” in which both the U.S. and North Korea agreed that “international terrorism poses an unacceptable threat to global peace and security.” Apparently this was all part of the negotiating process of finding common ground. What could go wrong? Not that anyone should pin all this on Wendy Sherman, who is just one particularly active cog in the Washington negotiating machine. But there’s a familiar script playing out here. It does not end well.

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With the Iran nuclear talks nearing a Nov. 24 deadline for a deal, U.S. chief negotiator Wendy Sherman is under pressure to bring almost a year of bargaining to fruition. While U.S. policy rests ultimately with President Obama, and the most prominent American face in these talks is now that of Secretary of State John Kerry, the hands-on haggling has been the domain of Sherman. On the ground, she has been chief choreographer of the U.S. negotiating team. The President has been pleased enough with her performance to promote her last week from Under Secretary to Acting Deputy Secretary of State.

The talks themselves have been doing far less well, marked by Iranian demands and U.S. concessions. This summer the U.S. and its negotiating partners agreed to extend the original July deadline until November. Tehran’s regime, while enjoying substantial relief from sanctions, is refusing to give up its ballistic missile program and insisting on what Tehran’s officials have called their country’s “inalienable right” to enrich uranium.

The Obama administration badly wants a deal. This week The Wall Street Journal reported that last month Obama wrote a secret letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, which “appeared aimed both at buttressing the campaign against Islamic State and nudging Iran’s religious leader closer to a nuclear deal.” Speaking to reporters in Paris this week about the Iran nuclear negotiations, Kerry said “We believe it is imperative for a lot of different reasons to get this done.”

So, now that crunch time has arrived, what might we expect? If precedent is any guide, it’s worth revisiting Sherman’s record from her previous bout as a lead negotiator, toward the end of the second term of the Clinton administration. Back then, Sherman was trying to clinch an anti-proliferation missile deal with another rogue despotism, North Korea.

That attempt failed, but only after then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, together with Sherman, had dignified North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Il with a visit to Pyongyang in late October, 2000. These American top diplomats brought Kim the gift of a basketball signed by one of his favorite players, Michael Jordan. Kim entertained them with a stadium display in which tens of thousands of North Koreans used flip cards to depict the launch of a long-range missile.

Less well remembered was the encounter shortly before Albright’s trip to Pyongyang, in which the State Department hosted a visit to Washington, Oct. 9-12 of 2000, by one of the highest ranking military officials in North Korea, Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok. The centerpiece of Jo’s trip was a 45-minute face-to-face meeting at the White House, in the Oval Office, with President Clinton. It was historic, it was the first time an American president had met with an official of North Korea’s totalitarian state.

And it was a deft piece of extortion by North Korea, which had parlayed its missile program — including its missile trafficking to the Middle East, and its 1998 test-launch of a missile over Japan — into this lofty encounter in which the U.S. superpower was pulling out all the stops in hope of cutting a deal before Clinton’s second term expired in Jan., 2001. By 2000 (or, by some accounts, earlier) the Clinton administration was also seeing signs that North Korea was cheating on a 1994 denuclearization arrangement known as the Agreed Framework. Eight months before Jo arrived in Washington, Clinton had been unable to confirm to Congress that North Korea had abandoned its pursuit of a nuclear weapons program. Nonetheless, Jo’s visit rolled ahead, with Sherman enthusing in advance to the press that “Chairman Kim Jong Il has clearly made a decision — personally — to send a special Envoy to the United States to improve relations with us.”

Officially, Jo was hosted in Washington by Albright. But it was Sherman, then the Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State for North Korea Policy, who orchestrated the events, squired Jo around Washington and briefed the press. It was Sherman who had helped prepare the way while accompanying her predecessor, the previous North Korea policy coordinator and former defense secretary, William Perry, on a trip to North Korea in 1999.

Jo arrived in Washington on Oct. 9, staying at the venerable Mayflower Hotel, where Sherman went to greet him. The next morning Jo and his delegation began their rounds with a courtesy call on Albright at the State Department. Then, before heading to the White House, Jo engaged in a symbolically freighted act. According to an account published some years later in the Washington Post by the senior State Department Korean language interpreter, Tong Kim, who was present for the occasion: “The marshal arrived in Washington in a well-tailored suit, but before going to the White House, he asked for a room at the State Department, where he changed into his mustard-colored military uniform, with lines of heavy medals hanging on the jacket, and donned an impressive military hat with a thick gold band.” Perhaps it did not occur to anyone at the State Department that North Korea was still a hostile power, a brutal rogue state fielding one of the world’s largest standing armies, and that this donning of the uniform on State premises was not just a convenience, but an implied threat. Or perhaps the zealous hospitality of the occasion just over-rode any thought at all. In any event, it was in his uniform that Jo went from the State Department to the White House.

Following those meetings, Sherman briefed the press. She made a point of mentioning that Jo had worn a business suit to the State Department. but changed into full military uniform for his meeting with the President of the United States. Sherman chose to interpret Jo’s wardrobe change as happy evidence of North Korean diversity under Dear Leader Kim: “We think this is very important for American citizens to know that all segments of North Korea society, obviously led by Chairman Kim Chong-Il in sending this Special Envoy, are working to improve the relationship between the United States and North Korea and this is obviously an important message to the citizens of North Korea as well.”

Actually, there were substantial segments of North Korean society whose chief preoccupation was finding enough food to stay alive, toward the end of a 1990s famine in which an estimated one million or so had died — forbidden by Kim’s totalitarian state to enjoy even a hint of the freedom that had by then allowed their brethren in South Korea to join the developed world. This was known at the time, but did not figure in Sherman’s public remarks.

On the second evening of Jo’s Washington visit, Albright hosted a banquet for him and his delegation at the State Department. She welcomed the “distinguished group” to the “historic meeting,” and invited everyone to relax and get better acquainted. There was laughter and applause. Jo made a toast — a disturbing toast — in which he said there could be “friendship and cooperation and goodwill, if and when the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and our leadership is assured, is given the strong and concrete security assurances from the United States for the state sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

If the State Department’s chief North Korea policy coordinator, Wendy Sherman, noticed a problem with that toast, and its mention of territorial integrity, it seems she did nothing to alert the assembled American dignitaries. The crowd clapped and raised a toast to North Korea’s envoy. It was left to outside observers, such as American Enterprise Institute scholar and North Korea expert Nicholas Eberstadt, to point out, as Eberstadt stressed at an AEI forum in 2008, that North Korea lays claim to the entire Korean peninsula, including South Korea. “Take a look at the maps; take a look at the preamble to the Workers’ Party charter,” said Eberstadt; the real message is, “We can be friends with North Korea if we are willing to subsidize North Korean government behavior and throw South Korea into the bargain too, but that is a pretty high opening bid.”

Jo’s visit ended with a U.S.-D.P.R.K Joint Communique, full of talk about peace, security, transparency and access. There was no missile deal. Kim Jong Il wanted Clinton, leader of the free world, to come parley over missiles in totalitarian, nuclear-cheating Pyongyang. Clinton demurred. In late October, Albright and Sherman went instead. As the clock ticked down on the final weeks of the Clinton administration, Sherman reportedly traveled to Africa with a bag of cold-weather clothes, to be ready in the event of a last-minute summons to North Korea.

In 2001, President Bush was inaugurated. Sherman left the State Department, and soon afterward she wrote an Op-ed for The New York Times, headlined “Talking to the North Koreans.” Sherman noted that “Some are understandably concerned that a summit with President Bush would only legitimize the North Korean leader” — nonetheless, she urged Bush to try it. Bush tried confrontation in 2002 over North Korea’s nuclear cheating, followed by years of Sherman-style Six-Party Talks, including two agreements, in 2005 and 2007, which North Korea punctuated in 2006 with its first nuclear test, and has followed during Obama’s presidency with two more nuclear tests, in 2009 and 2013.

Vice-Marshal Jo died in 2010. Kim Jong Il died in 2011, and was succeeded by his son, current North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un, whose regime carried out the 2013 nuclear test, and threatened earlier this year to conduct another. Wendy Sherman rejoined the State Department under Obama, and has moved on from wooing North Korea to the bigger and potentially far deadlier project of negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran. Considerable secrecy has surrounded many specifics of these talks, while Americans have been asked to trust that this is all for their own good. In a talk last month at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, Sherman said: “As Madeleine Albright once observed — a wonderful Secretary of State, a dear friend, and a business partner to boot at one point in my life — negotiations are like mushrooms, and often they do best in the dark.”

Now, in the Obama administration’s increasingly desperate quest for an Iran deal, comes news that President Obama is proposing to Iran’s Khamenei, ruler of the world’s leading terror-sponsoring state, that Iran and the U.S. cooperate to fight the terrorists of ISIS. This has a familiar ring. Back in 2000, the visit of North Korea’s Vice Marshal Jo to the White House was preceded, shortly beforehand, by a “Joint U.S.-D.P.R.K. Statement on International Terrorism,” in which both the U.S. and North Korea agreed that “international terrorism poses an unacceptable threat to global peace and security.” Apparently this was all part of the negotiating process of finding common ground. What could go wrong? Not that anyone should pin all this on Wendy Sherman, who is just one particularly active cog in the Washington negotiating machine. But there’s a familiar script playing out here. It does not end well.

Categories: Iran, Iranian nukes, Islamic State, Kerry, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Rouhani, Supreme Leader, Terrorism, Wendy Sherman
Tags: Iran, Kim Jong Il, North Korea, North Korean nukes, Nukes, State Department, Wendy Sherman

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Iran’s Ideological Camp Fears The Possibility Of A Nuclear Agreement Between Iran And The P5+1, Warns Rohani Government

November 7, 2014

Iran’s Ideological Camp Fears The Possibility Of A Nuclear Agreement Between Iran And The P5+1, Warns Rohani Government, MEMRI, A. Savyon, Y. Mansharof, and E. Kharrazi, November 6, 2014

(What might Obama and Kerry give the “ideologues” to encourage them to board their ship of State, the BHO Titanic? — DM)

Kayhan: “In Negotiations That Could Take Place In 2024, Iran Will Undoubtedly Come To The Negotiating Table With Tens Of Thousands Of Centrifuges That Are More Advanced Than Those It Has Today”; The Nuclear Mushroom Yields Results Once In A Decade

“Under Section 125 of our constitution, international commitments must be approved by the Majlis. But unfortunately, the Majlis members are not being updated at all in the nuclear negotiations issue… Government actions that disregard Majlis opinion will cause future problems, and will cause [the Majlis] to reject agreements that are against the interest of the people – which will have direct repercussions for the negotiating team.”

Democrats in the White House will try to turn their defeat in the elections to their diplomatic advantage. Obama is like a gambler who has lost everything, and he is sending his representatives to the [negotiating] table with empty pockets…

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Introduction

Both the U.S. administration and Iran’s pragmatic camp were last week preparing public opinion in their respective countries for the possibility that a nuclear agreement will be reached between Iran and the P5+1 by the November 24, 2014 deadline.[1] According to the emerging contours of the agreement, Tehran will apparently be allowed to operate 4,000 to 6,000 first-generation centrifuges,[2] and in return, in a move that will not require Congressional approval, the U.S. administration will suspend American sanctions.

The pragmatic camp in Iran, headed by Hashemi Rafsanjani and his proxy President Hassan Rohani, is pressuring the White House to reach an agreement with Iran right now, and identifying President Obama as “the weakest American president.”[3] At the same time, this camp’s leaders are laying the groundwork for obtaining Iranian approval for an agreement.

On October 22, 2014, President Rohani emphasized the need for engaging and negotiating with the enemy, framing doing so as the lesson that should be taken from the Shi’ite legend of Karbala – in contrast to the interpretation of these events commonly accepted in Iran.[4] On October 27, the pragmatic camp’s main organ, the Jomhouri-ye Eslami daily, called on the ideological camp not to sabotage the emerging agreement, stressed that the agreement was within the red lines set out by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and warned the Khamenei camp that it must not cause Iran to miss this golden opportunity.

Furthermore, on November 2, 2014, two days before the nation marked the anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy and capture of its staff in Tehran, which this year coincides with Iran’s Ashura rituals, Ali Khorram, senior advisor to Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, told the reformist pro-Rohani newspaper Shargh that U.S.-Iran relations are now no longer hostile, and are even “friendly.” He claimed there had been a change for the better in U.S. policy, that the two countries need not wait for Judgment Day to trust each other, and that the time had come for them to end the hostility between them. He also said that they had common interests in Iraq and Syria, and that the Americans considered the U.S. Embassy takeover an “old wound.”[5]

In contrast, the ideological camp is alarmed at the prospect of an imminent nuclear deal, voicing its apprehensions that the national interests of the regime would be damaged and that there would be a U.S.-Iran rapprochement. On October 28, 2014, the day after Jomhouri-ye Eslami called on the ideological camp to refrain from sabotaging the agreement, Majlis member Ali Reza Zakani urged the Iranian security apparatuses to intervene, and warned the negotiating team that it would bear responsibility for a “bad agreement” that both crossed the regime’s red lines and failed to completely lift the sanctions.

At the same time, the daily Kayhan, which is close to Khamenei, attacked the emerging agreement from two angles: First, the agreement crosses Khamenei’s red lines and fails to immediately lift all anti-Iran sanctions, and second, following the defeat for U.S. President Barack Obama in the November 4 midterm elections, Iran could, in another decade, according to the newspaper, come to a possible negotiating table as a nuclear power with tens of thousands of advanced-generation centrifuges. It urged the negotiating team not only to not be deterred by White House threats that once the newly elected Republicans take office the sanctions will be increased and thus Iran should sign an agreement now, but also that Iran must give the U.S. an ultimatum. The newspaper also warned of plots and of an organized scheme led by “the men of fitna” past and present – hinting at collaboration among pragmatic camp leaders Rafsanjani and Rohani and Green Movement leaders and former presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, both of whom have been under house arrest for several years for what the regime alleges was their role in the unrest of the 2009 presidential election. He was also hinting at coordination between them and the West, in order to anesthetize the public and Iran’s elites into inaction so that a nuclear agreement could be attained “no matter what the cost.” The paper also warned President Rohani to follow the orders issued by Khamenei on the nuclear negotiations, and even to refrain from talking with the U.S.

The website Afsaran, which is close to security circles, also expressed fears that Iranian negotiating team chief and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif – and by allusion his entire camp – is seeking to depose Khamenei by securing a nuclear deal with the U.S.

This paper will review the reaction of Iran’s ideological camp to the possibility of an Iran-P5+1 nuclear agreement:

The Pragmatic Camp: Laying The Groundwork For An Agreement, Urging Ideologues To Accept It

Rohani: From Imam Hussein And The Legend Of Karbala, We Learn We Must Engage And Negotiate

In his October 22, 2014 speech in Zanjan, in northwest Iran, Rohani called on the ideological camp to accept his camp’s policy of engaging the U.S., depicting the legend of Imam Hussein’s martyrdom at Karbala as a paradigm justifying negotiating with the enemy, rather than its customary interpretation of promoting martydom. He said: “The lesson and message of Imam Hussein is brotherhood, unity, forgiveness, [and] accepting the other’s side’s repentance. The lesson of Karbala is one of constructive engagement and negotiation, as part of the logic and the instructions [of the religion or the leader].”[6]

This statement provoked considerable criticism from the ideological camp, especially from Khamenei’s close associate and the editor of Kayhan, Hossein Shariatmadari. Shariatmadari accused Rohani of distorting the Karbala legend, stressing that that the only way to follow its example was to hold fast and to resist the oppressive enemies, even at the price of martyrdom in following God’s path.[7]

Jomhouri-ye Eslami: The Agreement’s Opponents Must Not Make Iran Miss This Chance To Resolve The Nuclear Issue

On October 27, 2014, Jomhouri-ye Eslami wrote: “For over a week, there have been positive reports from both within and without [Iran] about the progress in the Iran-P5+1 nuclear negotiations – within Iran, from statements [by officials from] President Rohani himself to the foreign minister and members of the negotiating team, and outside Iran from senior Russian, Chinese, German, French and American officials. All have emphasized the imminence of a comprehensive nuclear agreement signed by November 25…

“While it is true that there may be some changes in the decision before all members of the P5+1 sign the agreement, it is clear – and this must be noted – that there is practically zero disagreement [among the parties]. Thus, in contrast to what is depicted in the Iranian media, all the parties are more optimistic than ever that the agreement will be signed by November 25. Under the agreement, Iran is satisfied with regard to [what is agreed about] the sanctions, the centrifuges, the [uranium] enrichment, and the nuclear facilities; according to some conservative leaders, the agreement is a victory for Iran…

“Those within [Iran] who oppose the nuclear agreement must be aware of reality – this opportunity to resolve the issue must not be missed. This is because the agreement was drafted within the framework of [Iran’s] national interests and is within the red lines that were set out; also, as senior members of the negotiating team and President Rohani himself have emphasized several times, Iran will not back down one single inch from its [nuclear] right. Additionally, the entire Iranian nation desires to reach an agreement that [both] includes the nation’s right and conclusively resolves the nuclear issue. Therefore, everyone must work for the success of the negotiating team and must refrain from taking measures and from [disseminating] propaganda that will cause problems on this path.[8]

In Ideological Camp, Great Fear Of The Emerging Agreement

Majlis Member Zakani: The Agreement Crosses The Regime’s Red Lines; I Am Asking The Security Apparatuses To Act; The Negotiating Team Will Be Held Responsible

In an October 28, 2014 Majlis speech, Majlis member Ali Reza Zakani warned: “News is coming in that an agreement has been reached between Iran and America. According to this information, red lines set out by the Islamic regime are crossed in it. I hereby warn the foreign minister on the issue of the nuclear boundaries [i.e. red lines]…

“The silence of the country’s diplomatic apparatus in the face of the babbling of the American negotiation representative [Wendy Sherman] – [babbling that] constitutes a reiteration of their exaggerated declarations – is leading to impudence, greed, and nonsensical statements on the part of ‘the Great Satan,’ America.

“I see the campaign promoted by those connected to the nuclear dossier [i.e. Foreign Minister Zarif] that is called ‘any bad agreement is preferable to none at all’ as a humiliation, and I vigorously condemn it. I am asking the security apparatuses to clarify to the Iranian nation what is behind this.

“The news coming in attests that the red lines set out by the Islamic regime have been crossed in the agreement; this will undoubtedly lead to the loss of the Iranian nation’s rights and to the trampling of its nuclear achievements. Accepting the oppressive demands of the American side regarding cutbacks in our [uranium] enrichment, transforming the very essence of parts of our nuclear industry, in return for the lifting of a small part of the sanctions, is unacceptable to the Iranian nation, and will harm the national interests and the interests of the Islamic Revolution.

“Under Section 125 of our constitution, international commitments must be approved by the Majlis. But unfortunately, the Majlis members are not being updated at all in the nuclear negotiations issue… Government actions that disregard Majlis opinion will cause future problems, and will cause [the Majlis] to reject agreements that are against the interest of the people – which will have direct repercussions for the negotiating team.”[9]

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November 2, 2014 on Tasnimnews.com, which is close to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC): “Kerry’s Greedy Declarations.” U.S. Secretary of State Kerry the eagle, who is sharpening his talons against the backdrop of an Israeli flag, says: “I am optimistic with regard to the nuclear agreement with Iran.”

Kayhan: “In Negotiations That Could Take Place In 2024, Iran Will Undoubtedly Come To The Negotiating Table With Tens Of Thousands Of Centrifuges That Are More Advanced Than Those It Has Today”; The Nuclear Mushroom Yields Results Once In A Decade

On November 6, 2014, two days after the Republicans swept the U.S. midterm elections, Kayhan wrote: “Obama is now at his lowest point of popularity since he was elected… At the last nuclear negotiating venue [in Oman, at the level of Foreign Minister Zarif, U.S. Secretary of State Kerry, and EU High Representative on Foreign Policy Catherine Ashton, November 9-10, 2014], the Democrats in the White House will try to turn their defeat in the elections to their diplomatic advantage. Obama is like a gambler who has lost everything, and he is sending his representatives to the [negotiating] table with empty pockets… Apparently, the White House emissaries will recommend to the Iranian team to sign the nuclear agreement as soon as possible, since if they do not, Congress will enter the arena with a stick, threats, and sanctions…

“The [negotiating] venue in Oman must be the place where the [Iranian team] gives the Americans a final ultimatum, instead of listening to their boasts… Recently, American negotiating team leader Wendy Sherman quoted former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright as saying that negotiations are ‘like a mushroom that grows best in the dark.’ Soon the result of the[se] negotiations, which have been conducted in the dark for over a year, will become clear.

“The last time that Western [officials] tried to feed Iran this poison mushroom and to force it to submit to the American greed was a decade ago. Undoubtedly, the 2014 mushroom will contain poison that was concocted in 2003. This is because at that point in the negotiations [i.e. in 2003], Iran was operating very few centrifuges, while today it has some 20,000 centrifuges. The Americans need to know that in the most optimal situation [for them], the nuclear mushroom yields results once in a decade… In negotiations that could take place in 2024, Iran will undoubtedly come to the negotiating table with tens of thousands of centrifuges that are more advanced than those it has today.”[10]

Kayhan: Rafsanjani And Rohani Are Bringing Up Various Issues To Distract The Elites From The Upcoming Agreement

On October 28, 2014, Kayhan wrote: “In the Geneva agreements, we put on the table [i.e. we were forced to give up] the product of three years of [uranium] enrichment to 20%, and [agreed to accept] a freeze on activity at the Fordow [enrichment facility] and a halt to the operations to complete the Arak [heavy water] facility, in return for the release of some $7 billion in Iranian funds…

“During the four-month extension [of the Geneva document] we expanded this give-and-take – and now America covets another part of Iran’s assets, saying ‘close Fordow or turn it into a research center; cut back your reserves of enriched [material] to 3.5%, to a quantity that we will tell [you], and remove [it] from Iran; [and] shut down 5,400 of your9,400 operating centrifuges, etc., etc. In return, we will examine your intentions for a period of seven to 20 years, [so that we can ascertain] whether or not we can trust you, or for example, [in return for] our promise not to impose new sanctions.’ This is truly a win-win game and constructive engagement [a jibe at President Rohani].

“The question is, to what point and from what assets does the government intend to pay for this extension of the negotiations and the incremental freeze [on Iran’s nuclear activity]?… When [Iran’s] nuclear technology peaked, Rafsanjani, Rohani, and even [Mir Hossein] Mousavi, and others, saw themselves as major shareholders in this progress. However when the [P5+1] began to impose its impediments, a green light was given for [Iranian] concessions based on a freeze on a small or large part of the [nuclear] program. Rafsanjani even announced his satisfaction with the Geneva negotiations, [saying], ‘Thanks to the negotiations, the taboo [on engagement] with America has been broken.’

“The negotiations apparently had two objectives: The first was to preserve the nuclear program, from the standpoint of [Iran’s right to] enrich [uranium]; the second was to get the sanctions lifted. If some political figures do not attach the requisite importance to the first, they undoubtedly need to explain the second. Therefore, [they must be asked] why not a single sanction was lifted after [Iran] made all these concessions [in the negotiations] – but the sanctions were only made harsher?…

“The acceptance of the West’s demands is the same mistake in judgment that has repeatedly led to an impasse, to the squandering [of Iran’s] strategic assets, [and] to defaming and labelling the critics [of the government] who support [the regime] in an effort to render them passive. The storm surrounding the law to preserve the hijab and modesty, the support for the modesty police, the accusations that the Majlis removed the science minister due to the scholarships scandal[11]… the exploitation of the crime of the acid attacks [against women in Isfahan by claiming that the ideological camp was behind them] – all these are taken from the script and from the organized attempt by the men of fitna and their supporters outside [Iran], with the aim of stirring up marginal scandals within Iran so that [the main issues] are ignored.

“The West sees that Iran’s irreplaceable role has redrawn the map of western Asia and the Middle East, [adding] the qualities of resistance and Islamic awakening in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen,l and Bahrain, [and says] ‘Iran must be stopped from playing this role.’

“The men of fitna and the bankrupt extremists… believe that the only way to rebuild their organizations is by dealing with marginal issues and [news-grabbing] explosions that make a huge splash. A group of them… is operating based on a plan given to them, and their media and statesmen are moving ahead in coordination with the Western scheme.

“This hypocritical combination stands out clearly in the government [of Rohani] – revolutionary national enthusiasm [combined with] whispers aimed at trapping critics of the government into dealing with marginal issues to render them passive… to the point where neither the elites nor the people will ask why the negotiations are at an impasse, so that in the atmosphere of passivity and obliviousness it will be possible to reach an agreement, no matter what the cost. [Therefore], by the time the elites and the people wake up and ask what happened, what we gave, and what we got, it will be all over [that is, the deal will be signed]. Most statesmen oppose this harmful approach.

“The government and the president have already learned from the experience acquired in their 14 months in office. They are now at a point of evaluation and course correction. It is always beneficial to prevent damage and dangerous conduct. The leader [Khamenei]… said that the American regime, which stands with Israel, is the exception to Iran’s foreign policy of engagement. The accuracy of his declaration [that we cannot talk to either the U.S. or Israel] was revealed to all over time. Obeying this instruction is the path that will benefit the government and bring it honor. Otherwise, [the Rohani government] will owe a debt to the arrogant ones outside [Iran] and to the seekers of fitna within [Iran], who are skilled in this matter; in this way [i.e. if it talks to the U.S., Iran] will gain no victory and no prestige…”[12]

Website Affiliated With Ideological Camp: The Pragmatists Are Trying To Remove Khamenei

On October 29, 2014, Afsaran.ir, which is close to Iranian security circles, published an article titled “What Is The Real Objective Of The Line Of Obliviousness [i.e. the pragmatic camp] – Taking The Majlis Or Replacing The Supreme Leader?” The article hinted that Foreign Minister Zarif is party to a Western plot to depose Khamenei, using the pragmatic camp’s strategy for dealing with the Americans, saying that if no agreement is reached, then the ideological stream that opposes rapprochement with the West will seize key political positions in Iran.[13]

The article stated: “Although America’s hostility towards the leader of the revolution [Khamenei] is nothing new, and they have acknowledged this a number of times… the [Americans’] attacks [against Iran] since the New York negotiations… [including] Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman’s interview on the Voice of America in Persian and [Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s] entreaties before America’s Council of Foreign Relations have colored it a different hue. Besides the abovementioned incidents, [the Iranian-American academic] Vali Nasr and other American senior officials and influential figures have mentioned Iranian leader Khamenei as the main reason why no agreement has been reached, going so far as to consider replacing him.

“Nasr said: In December 2015, elections will be held in Iran for the Iranian Assembly of Experts, which will appoint Iran’s next leader. He also said: The next [Assembly of Experts] election can change the political direction in Iran.’

“Therefore, it must be asked: Who are the people [in Iran] who directed the policymakers of the enemy [i.e. the U.S.] towards supporting this strategy of deposing the leader Khamenei during direct negotiations with America?

“After consulting with which Iranians does America now consider the nuclear negotiations as an obstacle to its realization of its objectives, and as fertile ground for changing the course of the [Islamic] Revolution [i.e. the regime]?

“In all honesty, is the foreign minister really aiming, in his request to the American Congress to cooperate with the line of obliviousness [i.e. the pragmatic camp], to [obtain American] help so that they [i.e. the pragmatic camp] can win the Majlis elections? Or is he, like Nasr, really referring to a change in the makeup of the Iranian Assembly of Experts [so that it will remove or replace Khamenei]?

“Maybe some within Iran are not yet speaking as frankly as Nasr.”[14]

Basij Posts Signs In Iranian Cities Saying ‘Know The Shimr Of Our Time’

Also, the Basij has recently posted signs in Tehran and Shiraz stating, “Know The Shimr [who in Shi’ite legend murdered Imam Hussein] Of Our Time”; the signs clearly depict President Obama and the dome of the U.S. Capitol.[15]

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Endnotes:

[1] See October 23, 2014 statement by U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, State.gov/p/us/rm/2014/233306.htm.

[2] Most reports refer to 4,000; however, two Iranian sources have referred to at least 6,000. Majlis Nuclear Committee head Ebrahim Karkhanehi reported that P5+1 had agreed to approve the operation of 6,000 to 9,000 centrifuges. Tasnim, Iran, November 2, 2014.

[3] See MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis No. 1127, Iran’s Pragmatic Camp Calls For Exploiting Obama’s Weakness To Attain Comprehensive Nuclear Agreement On Tehran’s Terms, October 26, 2014.

[4] The Shi’ite legend of Karbala underpins Iranian culture, particularly political culture, in post-Islamic Revolution Iran; it tells of the first Shi’ite martyr, Imam Hussein Ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet, at Karbala in 680 CE, after he demanded power and refused to accept the authority of Umayyad caliph Yazid ibn Mu’awiyah.

[5] Shargh (Iran), November 2, 2014. An anonymous party familiar with dealings in the Foreign Ministry told Tabnak in an interview that Khorram is not an advisor to Foreign Minister Zarif, and that his views do not represent the negotiating team or the foreign ministry. Tabnak, Iran, November 4, 2014.

[6] President.ir, October 22, 2014.

[7] Kayhan (Iran), October 23, 2014.

[8] Jomhouri-ye Eslami, (Iran), October 27, 2014.

[9] Tasnim (Iran), October 28, 2014.

[10] Kayhan (Iran), November 6, 2014.

[11] Recently, the ideological camp succeeded in removing Rohani’s science minister for having a record as a reformist.

[12] Kayhan (Iran), October 28, 2014.

[13] See MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis No. 1127, Iran’s Pragmatic Camp Calls For Exploiting Obama’s Weakness To Attain Comprehensive Nuclear Agreement On Tehran’s Terms, October 26, 2014.

[14] Afsaran.ir, October 29, 2014.

[15] IRNA (Iran) November 2, 2014; Tasnim, October 30, 2014.

Categories: Ideology, Iran, Iranian nukes, Israel, Kerry, Middle East, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Supreme Leader, U.S. Congress
Tags: Iran, Nukes, Rouhani, Supreme leader

Comments: 1 Comment

Is Ahmadinejad making a comeback?

November 7, 2014

Is Ahmadinejad making a comeback? Al-Monitor, Arash Azizi, November 5, 2014

(Since it now appears that a nuke deal may well be signed by the November 24th deadline — well before the new U.S. Republican Congress takes over in January — what difference does it make now? In any event, with the Supreme Leader in charge regardless of whether Iran’s President is a “moderate” or an “extremist,” what difference does it make, ever? Even a “good” deal can and will be violated with impunity. — DM)

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad meets with Iraq's Vice President Khudair al-Khuzaie during his visit in Baghdad

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (C) meets with Iraqi Vice President Khudair al-Khuzaie (not seen) during a visit in Baghdad when Ahmadinejad was still president of Iran, July 18, 2013. (photo by REUTERS/Hadi Mizban)

The media activities and meetings of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signal that he is keeping his name before the public and trying to forge new alliances for his political comeback.

A three-story building in a quiet one-way alley in northern Tehran is the headquarters of an unlikely campaign that opposes both the administration of President Hassan Rouhani and many of the Islamic Republic’s establishment figures.

The Velenjak building is the base of activities for former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has his offices on its third floor.

Ahmadinejad has been relatively quiet since the ascendance of the moderate Rouhani, but the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) is only one of many outlets that have reported on his desire to make a comeback.

According to Amir Mohebbian, a leading political analyst, Ahmadinejad’s attempt to return to power is obvious as he “quietly awaits favorable conditions and occasionally tests the waters.”

The provincial trips that the former hard-line president makes are one indication.

In addition to making many trips to southern and northern Iran, Ahmadinejad celebrated the end of Ramadan by visiting Taleqan with the family members of four celebrated Iran-Iraq war “martyrs” in a trip that, according to ILNA, was coordinated by the Quds Force, the formidable international arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

In April, Ahmadinejad ruled out a return to politics but many of his supporters beg to differ.

They are tirelessly organizing and insist on his return. These are an unlikely bunch. Their young cadre runs many blogs and social media accounts. They draw controversy by their occasionally unconventional mixing of Islamism with an anti-wealthy and anti-establishment discourse, and many have spent time in jail for their activities. Their targets are not only the Reformists but many of the traditional conservatives.

Take Ahmad Shariat, who heads the Internet committee of an Ahmadinejad organization. In his blog, he attacked the policy of backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, called for a boycott of the last Majles elections in 2012 (because many Ahmadinejad forces were barred), attacked establishment religious figures such as Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi and, finally, dared to criticize Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself (the latter, in early 2013, led to the closing of Shariat’s blog and his arrest).

These supporters leave no doubt as to their allegiance to the ex-president. One name they go by is “Homa,” a Persian acronym for “Supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.” An online newspaper with the same name (Homa Daily) opened last week on the occasion of Ahmadinejad’s 58th birthday. (“Square 72” is another outlet, named after Ahmadinejad’s neighborhood in northeastern Tehran).

Abdolreza Davari — who was a vice-president of IRNA, the national news agency for the administration under Ahmadinejad — is a leading organizer of Homa. A controversial figure who was fired from a teaching post for “political activities,” Davari was reported by ILNA as one of the top three media campaigners attempting an Ahmadinejad comeback.

“As an Iranian, I hope for the return of Mr. Ahmadinejad to politics,” Davari told Al-Monitor, before adding that he thinks the ex-president is currently focused on “scientific” activities.

To my question about the regular meetings of Homa in the Velenjak building, Davari says that such meetings are not organized but that “all kinds of people, commentators, students or ordinary people come to meet and talk to Dr. Ahmadinejad.”

Davari also denies that Homa is attempting to organize for next year’s Majles elections. Ahmadinejad’s return to power needs no less than “changes in the current relation of forces,” Davari says, seeming to imply that many of the establishment figures wouldn’t want the ex-president back. Many such figures are especially opposed to Ahmadinejad’s entourage.

Enter Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff, who was openly rebuked by Khamenei for his maverick mixing of Shiite millennialism, Persian nationalism and leftist language. Despite Khamenei’s personal rejection and the sustained attacks of many who accused Mashaei of leading a “deviationist current,” the ex-president has continued backing his close friend (whose daughter married Ahmadinejad’s eldest son) even after the Guardian Council rejected Mashaei’s candidacy in last year’s presidential elections.

Mashaei’s offices are on the second level of the Velenjak building, and he is known to take part in Homa meetings.

Homa Daily ran Mashaei’s picture in the first page of its first issue, while reprinting his most controversial interview, where he had defended the necessity of “friendship with the Israeli people” — an interview personally criticized and attacked by Khamenei.

Davari says Mashaei doesn’t want to return to politics due to his “cultural and spiritual sentiment.” Taking a note from Mashaei’s book, he says Ahmadinejad’s concept of the Islamic Revolution and his belief in the coming of the hidden Imam is not “meant for a specific geography or religion as the hidden Imam’s global message is aimed at all nations and groups.”

“Freedom-loving and justice-seeking fighters” like Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Djamila Boupacha, Bobby Sands, Hassan Nasrallah and Hugo Chavez belong to the same global front as Ahmadinejad, Davari insists.

Acolytes of Mashaei seem to have especially targeted Iran’s nuclear negotiations. A group called the “the National Movement for Iran’s Independence” (NAMA, for its Persian acronym) was formed with the declared goal of fighting any compromise with the West. Its unusual name (not mentioning Islam) has the Mashaie imprint.

Mashaei’s presence has always driven away many of Ahmadinejad’s backers. One of them is Mohammadreza Etemadian, a trade adviser to the ex-president. Etemadian told Al-Monitor that he would like to see Ahmadinejad back, but he has always told him to keep Mashaei away since “he is not on good terms with the supreme leader and is a deviant.”

Etemadian is a leading member of the Islamic Coalition Party, the traditional organization of Bazari Islamists and an important part of the establishment. Its leaders seem to detest the populist excesses of Ahmadinejad.

Sensing this, the ever-adventurous Ahmadinejad has been trying to find new allies, even if among the Reformists. He met with Hassan Khomeini, the 40-year-old grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic, known for his proximity to the Reformists. The ex-president boldly asked Khomeini to lead a group of young clerics to contest the next year’s election of the Assembly of Experts, the body that chooses the supreme leader.

He has also reportedly tried to meet the Reformist ex-President Mohammad Khatami and Ambassador Sadeq Kharazi, an influential diplomat from a key political family.

Meanwhile, it was reported that Gholam-Hossein Elham, the spokesman of Ahmadinejad’s government, has started campaigning for the ex-president and last week met with the governors-generals of the previous government to organize. Elham, however, spoke with the pro-Ahmadinejad “Square 72” website to deny this news.

Unceremoniously bowing out after the disqualification of the candidate he supported in the 2013 presidential elections, Ahmadinejad seems to be busy plotting a comeback.

Categories: Ahmadinejad, Iran, Iranian nukes, Kerry, Obama, P5+1, Rouhani, Supreme Leader
Tags: Ahmadinejad, Iran, Nukes, Rouhani, Supreme leader

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Our enemies are on the ballot today as well and remember, they have a vote.

November 4, 2014

Our enemies are on the ballot today as well and remember, they have a vote. LTC Allen B. West (U.S. Army, ret.), November 4, 2014

(Not even the force of Obama’s character, honed during his time as a community organizer, is degrading or destroying the Islamic State. Is he is the one for whom IS had been waiting?– DM)

isis_flag-300x180

[T[his is what happens when you have a cast of amateurs masquerading as national security experts or advisors — such as Susan Rice, Dan Pfeiffer or Ben Rhoades. This is what happens when you have a truly inept Secretary of Defense in Chuck Hagel, and a lack of trust and belief in the combined experience of the senior U.S. military generals. And all comes back to the desk of Valerie Jarrett.

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

Today is the critical 2014 midterm Election Day and I won’t beleaguer you with many posts today, but here’s something about which we need be aware.

As President Obama touted, his policies are on the ballot today – but I haven’t heard any candidates or incumbents discussing his foreign policies at length.

Obama’s solution to the ISIS crisis was to arm the Free Syrian Army — we have written often about how that is a flawed strategy. As former Commandant of the Marine Corps General James T. Conway stated, it didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding — and it only took three months, from August 8th, for that prediction to come to fruition.

As reported by the UK Guardian, “The U.S. plan to rally proxy ground forces to complement its air strikes against ISIS militants in Syria is in tatters after jihadis ousted Washington’s main ally from its stronghold in the north over the weekend. The attack on the Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF) by the al-Qaida-aligned Jabhat al-Nusra came after weeks of clashes between the two groups around the city of Idlib, which has remained one of the last bastions of regime control in northern Syria throughout the civil war. Militants overran the command center of the SRF’s leader, Jamal Maarouf, in Deir Sonbol in a humiliating rout that came as U.S. and Arab air forces continued to attack ISIS in the Kurdish town of Kobani, 300 miles east, in an effort to prevent the town from falling.”

This represents the utter failure of strategy based on rhetoric, rather than the implementation of a sound strategy. Barack Hussein Obama truly believed that talk is the best means to evade a crisis — not realizing that the enemy has a vote.

We have never launched a full-scale air campaign against ISIS aimed to degrade and destroy the Islamic terrorist enemy. We continue to witness ISIS operating on multiple fronts conducting offensive operations — something we discussed here – and their main effort versus supporting efforts.

The Guardian says, “the defeat of Maarouf is a serious blow to the U.S. strategy of building a proxy coalition against Isis. It comes amid a groundswell of anger at the U.S. strikes across the opposition-held north, which have done nothing to slow the intensity of attacks from Bashar al-Assad’s air force, especially in Aleppo. “We thought the Americans were going to help us,” said an SRF spokesman. “But not only have they abandoned us, they have been helping the tyrant Bashar instead. We will move past this betrayal and get back to Jebel al-Zawiya [the group’s heartland], but it is going to take some time.”

So much for that faux alliance and promise from Obama.

According to the Guardian, “a survivor from one of the Syrian bombed refugee camps, Haithem Ahmed, who fled with his family to Turkey, said the Syrian regime had been emboldened by the U.S. attacks on a common enemy and was acting with increasing impunity. “It is obvious that the U.S. is supporting Assad,” he said. “Don’t bother trying to argue with me or anyone else about it. They are aiding the war against us. Their leaders are weak and they are liars.”

In addition, we failed to realize that the forces of Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS have bonded in an alliance — something we also reported on here. The al-Nusra front, which was supposed to be fighting against the Assad regime, decided to turn against the Free Syria Army forces, the SRF, to take away any ground options of Obama.

So Obama’s intent of outsourcing to the FSA is truly a non-viable option – as a matter of fact, it’s the option that has been degraded and destroyed. Obama’s decision not to attack ISIS but rather just support the free Syrian elements to defend their territories has been a disaster.

Confusion abounds in the Obama administration, as the Guardian reports “the U.S. defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, is reported to have warned national security adviser Susan Rice of a blowback among opposition communities in northern Syria because U.S. strategy against Assad has not been clearly defined.”

Ladies and gents, this is what happens when you have a cast of amateurs masquerading as national security experts or advisors — such as Susan Rice, Dan Pfeiffer or Ben Rhoades. This is what happens when you have a truly inept Secretary of Defense in Chuck Hagel, and a lack of trust and belief in the combined experience of the senior U.S. military generals. And all comes back to the desk of Valerie Jarrett.

But if the events in Syria are disturbing, “In Iraq, Isis has reportedly killed over 230 members of a tribe in western Anbar province in the last ten days, including dozens of women and children. The killings were some of the worst bloodshed in the country since the militants swept through northern Iraq in June.”

In this midterm election we need to realize we have no national security strategy whatsoever — not in the Middle East, not towards Iran, not towards Russia, and certainly not towards China. ISIS and Islamo-fascists are just handing the Obama administration its collective arse and embarrassing it at every turn.

The sad result is that more men, women and children are being slaughtered and sold off into slavery — yes, in the 21st century. Perhaps someone out in Colorado could tell Senator Mark Udall there’s a real “War on Women” going on — not that made up political stuff. But hopefully after tonight, it will be a moot point as far as he’s concerned.

There is much at stake in the Middle East and a lack of a determined strategic vision and resolute commitment is evident to both “allies” and foes. ISIS and the Islamists have a vision, a strategy, and developing alliances and growing recruiting numbers. This is a war of ideologies, but we have a president who refuses to acknowledge that premise — perhaps because he supports the Islamist ideology.

The Guardian says, “Kobani has become a defining struggle between ISIS and the U.S., as much as it is between the jihadis and the Kurds who, with U.S. help, beat back an advance on Irbil in August. If ISIS was able to take Kobani it could boast a significant victory. A victory over the secular Kurds would help advance its hardline interpretation of Islam, which has seen it rule areas it controls along strict medieval precepts that are rooted in an uncompromising understanding of Islamic teachings.”

The ideology must be defeated foremost. The enemy must then be destroyed in detail. The failed policy of doing neither is on the ballot today.

It is a time for choosing.

Categories: Air strikes, Allen West, Ideology, International Community, Iran, Iraq, Islamic State, Islamism, Kerry, Middle East, Obama, Syria
Tags: Allen West, Allies, Chuck Hagel, Free Syrian Army, Iraq, Islamic State, Middle East, Syria

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Who is the Real Chickenshit?

November 4, 2014

Who is the Real Chickenshit? Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, November 4, 2014

(Are attempts to spawn a new Islamic Caliphate more grounded in fantasy than Obama-Kerry perceptions of the Islamic State, grounded in their ill-formed perceptions of fact and ideology? Or less? — DM)

Judging by their actions, most Arab leaders do not want to create yet another terrorist Islamist state, dedicated to the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology and to toppling their regimes. We do want a Palestinian state, but please, only one that will provide responsible governance.

According to the “Arab street,” it is the Americans and Europeans who are cowards, afraid to take significant steps against Iran, and terrified of the Islamic ghettoes in their cities, which have been exporting terrorists to fight for the Islamic State, and providing housing to the seasoned fighters who return.

To Arabs, the ultimate irony is that America is paying Qatar to have its airbase there, while Qatar is paying terrorists to kill Americans.

When John Kerry claimed it was the unresolved Palestinian issue that caused a ripple effect that crated ISIS, he simply inspired the Palestinians to use Al-Aqsa mosque as a religious trigger for future bloodshed.

There is a civil war currently under way between radical Islam — motivated by imperialist fantasies of restoring the Islamic Caliphate — and the more moderate secular Muslim regimes that are seeking the path to modernization and progress.

At the same time, Sunni Islam is in the midst of an increasingly violent crisis in its dealings with Shi’ite Iran, which looks as if it is about to be granted nuclear weapons capability, and which for decades quietly has been eyeing neighboring Arab oil fields.

Into the middle of this explosive disarray, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his supporters have thrown the accusation that it was actually Israel’s so-called refusal to reach a peace agreement that was responsible for the ripple effect that led to the creation of ISIS. This incorrect diagnosis of the situation merely postpones the West’s efforts to find a real, workable solution for the Palestinian issue.

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Does Kerry really blame Israel for ISIS? Above, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Israel, on July 23, 2014. (Image source: U.S. State Department)

It is easy for the leaders of the Arab world to latch onto Kerry’s accusation and use it justify their weakness and unwillingness to enter into a direct battle against terrorism; to let America do the dirty work, and conveniently to relieve the Arab world of having to recognize Israel and establish a Palestinian state.

They would also be able to avoid dealing with Israel’s demand for the Palestinian territories to be disarmed and the Palestinians’ demands for concessions from Israel.

Judging by their actions, most Arab leaders have no desire to see the Palestinian issue resolved. They seem to prefer preserving the status quo. They blame Israel for refusing to make concessions to the Palestinians and hope that this refusal will weaken Israel, even though Israel is their strategic defense against Iran.

Most Arab leaders do not want to create what is bound soon to become yet another terrorist Islamist state, dedicated to the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology and to toppling their regimes. The Arab leaders already have to contend with ISIS, Al-Qaeda and the Al-Nusra Front in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, which are enough for them, to say nothing of Africa from Nigeria to Somalia and everything in between.

But if Israel can be blamed for another of world’s ills, with Kerry’s blessing, why waste the opportunity?

When Jordan’s King Abdullah called the current Islamic civil war a cry of distress, he was not speaking randomly. There is a genuine problem.

No examples are better than Turkey, Qatar and Iran. Turkey, led by its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, hosts Hamas’s overseas command center; is supported by Qatar and would apparently like to take control of more Sunni territory by subverting the Sunni Arab monarchies. Such a move would enable Erdogan to realize his outspoken dream of recreating an Ottoman Empire and Caliphate.

Turkey and Qatar, its partner in plotting the return of the Caliphate, have left their fingerprints on most of the terrorist attacks and catastrophes currently visited upon the Middle East, especially in the fields of subversion, incitement to terrorism, and the arming and training of terrorists.

The Middle Eastern Sunni Islamist terrorist organizations, meanwhile, are being incited and indoctrinated by Al-Jazeera TV, a Muslim Brotherhood megaphone that belongs to Qatar’s ruling al-Thani family. It was Al Jazeera’s Arabic channel that created the “Arab Spring” by taking the story of a fruit-seller who merely wanted a permit, and whipping it up, non-stop, until it grew into a revolution that brought down Tunisia’s government.

The Middle East’s terrorist gangs are now armed and trained with funding from Qatar. Recently, in yet another savored irony, Turkey agreed to help train Syrian rebels and allow the U.S. to use its military bases — but for Turkey, the plan is probably to bring down Syria’s non-Sunni President, Bashar Al-Assad, and not, as the U.S. might imagine, to bring down ISIS.

In the past, Persian Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia joined in training Islamic terrorist cadres, but currently, as the Arab proverb goes, “The magic spell boomeranged,” and Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have to defend themselves from the very groups they helped create.

Terrorist organizations are now generously funded by Qatar and NATO-member Turkey, which inspire them to attack the regimes of Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan, and various regimes in the Persian Gulf and Africa. Of course, they are all also inspired to attack Israel, as Hamas has done.

Turkey and Qatar are also exploiting the naiveté of the Western world, encouraging ISIS operatives to make preparations to attack Europe and the United States. Preachers of “political Islam” incite susceptible Islamic youths in the West and prepare them for a terrorist campaign. They use the West’s political correctness, free speech and support for “pluralism,” all the while insisting they are not preaching terrorism.

Turkey and Qatar, along with Iran — which does its utmost to export the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution throughout both North and South America, as well as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen — are aided by a mechanism known as the da’wah, or “outreach,” Da’wah, technically the preaching of Islam, is used by political Islam for indoctrinating, enlisting and handling Islamist terrorists worldwide. Perfected for terrorist purposes by the Muslim Brotherhood, its mouthpiece is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who, like Hamas’s leader, Khaled Mashaal, is based in Qatar.

While Iran’s rivals, the Sunni states, conduct their civil wars, Iran only becomes stronger. Not only is it turning itself into a nuclear power, it is also strengthening all its outposts in the Middle East and around the world. It supports the Shi’ite regime in Iraq against ISIS; it arms and funds the Houthis in Yemen and the Hezbollah in Lebanon; and it supports the Syrian Alawite regime against its Sunni opponents.

When it comes to terrorism, Iran does not draw partisan lines. It also supports the Sunni groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both of which seek to destroy Israel and attack the Egyptians in the Sinai Peninsula.

In response to the colossal threat of radical Islam, the whimpering voice of the West can barely be heard. The U.S. administration targeted Israel for condemnation. A “senior official,” most likely the current White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, called Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “chickenshit,” for being afraid to make peace with the Palestinians.

According to the “Arab street,” including the Palestinian street, it is the Americans and Europeans who are cowards, afraid to take significant steps against Iran, and terrified of the Islamic ghettoes in their cities, which have been exporting terrorists to fight for the Islamic State, and providing housing to the seasoned fighters who return.

The Sunni states under Shi’ite threat cannot even reach an agreement among themselves about what is to be done; and the Palestinians, in their folly, have chosen the worst possible moment to ignite violence in Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa mosque. The Palestinians seem not to understand that the Arab regimes that might support them are currently busy fighting for their own survival, and have no desire to fall prey to Palestinian provocations about what they realize all too well are fictional threats to Jerusalem.

Given the current situation, Turkey’s regional political actions are dangerous, underhanded and hypocritical. To achieve their ends, Turkey’s leaders seem to have no qualms about sacrificing their minorities, such as Christians and the Kurds (most of whom are Sunni). Turkey’s leaders were the first to cry “humanitarian crisis” when Israel imposed a closure on the Gaza Strip to prevent Iran from sending Hamas arms. Turkey sent the Mavi Marmara flotilla to protect the Gazans, who were never in any danger in the first place. Turkey’s leaders then weakened Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who, at least at that time, showed himself willing to reach a peace agreement with the Israelis. But when Syria’s Kurds are being killed in Kobani on a daily basis, the Turks are silent, perhaps secretly comfortable seeing a group that wants a state of its own apart from Turkey, being attacked.

Thus, when John Kerry claimed that it was the unresolved Palestinian issue that caused a ripple effect that created ISIS, he simply inspired the Palestinians to use Al-Aqsa mosque as a religious trigger for future bloodshed. The idea is not new; it was used in 1929 by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and led to anti-Jewish riots and the massacre of the Jews in Hebron. It was used again by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in 2000, to incite the Palestinians to the second intifada, which killed untold numbers of Jews and Arabs. Today, Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas’s Khaled Mashaal are doing the same thing to incite a jihad that this time will truly be religious and not based on real estate.

The more Kerry accuses Israel of having had a hand in creating ISIS, the more the Palestinians will use Al-Aqsa mosque to stir the fire burning under the bubbling cauldron of the Middle East.

The Palestinians’ religious incitement campaign is currently being waged primarily by Mahmoud Abbas, the man who stood in front of the UN and accused Israel of fomenting a religious war. This is the same Mahmoud Abbas who calls on Palestinians to use every means available to fight Israel, while at the same time denying that he is doing so.

Meanwhile, Qatar lurks in the background, instructing Al-Jazeera TV to incite the Palestinians against Israel, Egypt and Jordan, and encouraging terrorist attacks that lead only to justified Israeli reprisals.

Qatar’s royal family hides behind the security of having a major U.S. airbase on its soil, while supporting Hamas, the Islamic Movement in Israel and the terrorist organizations in the Sinai Peninsula. To Arabs, the ultimate irony is that Americans are paying Qatar to have an airbase there, while Qatar is paying terrorists to kill Americans.

Qatar also still finds time nonsensically to accuse the wakf in Jordan, responsible for Al-Aqsa mosque, of collaborating with Israel to eradicate all signs of Muslim presence on the Temple Mount. Qatar’s only plan with that at the moment, however, is to cause riots in Jordan to oust Jordan’s king.

Inspired by Western accusations against Israel and the West’s enthusiastic recognition of a Palestinian state — without requiring the direct negotiations with Israel, as obligated by international treaties — the Palestinian leadership has become more radicalized.

Mahmoud Abbas has gone so far as to abandon his pretense of moderation: if the Israelis can be accused of creating the ISIS with no mention made of the culpability of Hamas, whose ideology is the same as ISIS’s, Mahmoud Abbas has been freed of any commitment to peace and can actively pursue the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state.

In addition, witnessing Russia’s abrogation of its 1994 Budapest Memorandum with the Ukraine, with virtually no adverse consequences, must have seemed a precedent too tempting to ignore. Thus, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas do truly speak with one voice, but it is the voice of Hamas.

Khaled Mashaal, head of Hamas’s political bureau, called on all the Palestinians to take up arms to defend Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The mosque, he said, justifies jihad and the sacrificing of shaheeds [martyrs] to liberate it, and, as in the Hamas charter, that “resistance” is the only solution for the problems of the Palestinian people.

Mashaal was echoed by Mahmoud Abbas at the 14th Fatah conference. Abbas said that under no condition were Jews to be allowed into Al-Aqsa mosque or the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, because any Jewish presence would defile them. On whose authority did he take possession of the Christian holy sites? A short time earlier, Abbas had even claimed that he had no intention of inciting a third intifada against Israel.

Somehow, John Kerry has managed to link to Israel the Shi’ite-Sunni civil wars, radical Islam’s Muslim Brotherhood-inspired global plot and the creation of ISIS. Then he linked the failure of the Palestinian issue to have been resolved to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The unpopular and inconvenient truth is: if there is to be peace, Hamas has to be disarmed, the Palestinian Authority and the Gaza Strip have to be demilitarized, Mahmoud Abbas has to recognize the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jews, and Netanyahu has to recognize the Palestinians state. Israel will then compensate the Palestinians with land in return for the land on which the three large blocks of settlements stand, as has already been agreed.

It is not Israel but the Palestinians who are trying to avoid negotiating a final agreement. They see themselves, with the backing of the UN and Secretary Kerry — and in a final breakdown of any trust in future international agreements — as able to achieve their desired result without having to make any concessions.

People who repeat infamies, as Kerry has done, not only encourage radicalism, they are just delaying the establishment of a Palestinian state. We do want a Palestinian state, but please only one that will provide responsible governance.

Categories: Antisemitism, Egypt, Gaza, Hamas, Iran, Iranian nukes, Iraq, Islam, Islamic State, Israel, Jerusalem, juden ist verboten, Kerry, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Palestinians, Qatar, Syria, Turkey, Two state solution
Tags: Egypt, Iran, Iranian nukes, Islamic caliphate, Islamic State, Israel, Qatar, Settlements, Turkey

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