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Why now?

October 12, 2015

Why now? Israel Hayom, Judith Bergman, October 12, 2015

Among the several unanswered questions about the ongoing terror onslaught against Israelis, one of the most pertinent is why this is happening now, entirely unprovoked and spurred on by the incendiary incitement of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his ilk.

Relying on brainwashed youths to perpetrate the terrorist attacks, Abbas instigated the onslaught now simply because he had to do something to take back the world stage.

Abbas and his flock are used to the spotlight on the international stage, but in recent months, the influx of migrants and refugees from the Middle East and North Africa into Europe has completely swallowed the headlines there, and Abbas saw himself being marginalized to the point of being entirely forgotten. Abbas had to do something, so he unleashed terror on Israel, and he knew from years of experience with the so-called international community, as represented by the U.N., the Obama administration and the international media that he would be able to do so with impunity. In fact, the choreography of his little dance with the international media is so well-rehearsed and so perfectly tuned to his interests that Abbas knows he can rely on it to achieve his goals.

And that is exactly what is happening now. Abbas knew he could count on the major news outlets not to question why the terrorism is occurring now. Instead, the ragged old cliches of the mysteriously self-igniting “cycle of violence” are being re-hashed, while Israel’s legitimate self-defense against the stabbings, shootings and rock throwings is being increasingly reported in negative terms.

True to form, Israel has been unable thus far to counter the media dynamic that has worked so well for Abbas in the past. It appeared to be too little and too late when Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely several days ago announced a media campaign, as well as the formation of an inter-ministerial team to prepare a series of informational videos on the subject of Palestinian incitement. We have had 20 years to prepare those videos. Do not wait for the international media to hold its breath.

In his next move, truly Orwellian in a way that only the old Soviet cadres could have trumped, Abbas is now asking the U.N. Human Rights Council to quickly dispatch a commission of inquiry to the region “to investigate all crimes perpetrated by Israel against our people.” While this may sound outlandish to right-minded people, Abbas is not entirely wrong in his calculations that the U.N. will respond to his exhortations. Abbas knows that the dance he performs for the benefit of the U.N. is usually met with applause, and is just as predictably choreographed as his dance with the international media. All is possible when it comes to the U.N., particularly the U.N. Human Rights Council, where Saudi Arabia is currently chairing the U.N. Human Rights Council panel in charge of appointing independent experts.

While Abbas is craving the attention, other Middle East players are stoking the fire to deflect attention from them. Iran’s puppet, Hamas, has not only been sending rockets into Israel, aiming to add tension to the situation, but has also been sending Gazans to riot on the border with Israel, knowing fully well that confrontations and the likelihood of Palestinian casualties will further stoke the headlines against Israel and deflect attention from Iran’s own murky business in the region. The brutal murder of the Henkin couple in front of their four children was committed by a Hamas terror cell.

The Soviet-style inversion of truth and lies and the incredible willingness of the mainstream media not only to play along with it, but to exacerbate it with uncritical and bigoted reporting, is of course maddening. The answer, however, is not bitter resignation or long deliberations over future strategies, but to present the truth, as it happens and when it happens. The truth needs to be put out there, because the media create its own truth according to a pre-rehearsed template that we have seen ad nauseam, most damagingly during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014. The time to speak out is now.

Categories: Abbas, Defense of Israel, Israeli government, Jews, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians, Two state solution, UN Human RIghts Council, Western media
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Terror in Israel — why’s the world media yawning?

October 12, 2015

Terror in Israel — why’s the world media yawning? Front Page Magazine, P. David Hornik, October 12, 2015

knife-stabbing

 

That fear of making Israel look “good.”

There’s been a terror onslaught here in Israel for the last week and a half. Those of us who bother checking foreign media outlets have noticed that there’s relatively little coverage. This is mainly good, since, of course, coverage of Israel’s conflicts with Palestinians and neighbors tends to be quite hostile to Israel.

Still, it raises the question of why interest isn’t greater this time. Those hallowed principles of “If it bleeds, it leads” and “Jews are news” would seem to apply.

True, they don’t apply on the scale of last year’s Gaza war, which drew huge coverage. But that may give a clue as to the explanation.

In that war much larger numbers died than in the current terror onslaught—and given Israel’s superior military capabilities and Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields, they were predominantly on the Palestinian side. A lot of scenes were broadcast from Gaza hospitals. The “text” was: see what the Israelis have done now!

In this current campaign so far, four Israelis have been killed and many more wounded. The number of Palestinians killed is, again, larger—but they were primarily killed by security forces fending off attacks, with few cases of collateral killing of civilians.

Still, a lot of what is happening would seem to be “newsworthy.” Even in Israel, with its long history of aggressions by surrounding populations, terror organizations, and countries, what’s happening has been almost unique.

Along with the usual rock-throwing and gun ambushes, they’ve been lunging at us—on streets and sidewalks, in malls and bus stations—with knives and screwdrivers. These “lone-wolf” attackers aren’t terrorists per se. Many have been teenage boys—or teenage girls, or young women.

They mostly come from the territories—but some also from within Israel—looking for Jews, any Jews, to kill. They’re crazed with hate and not seeking a “two-state” solution and definitely not “peace.” The hate largely takes the form of a religious frenzy—after months of the Islamist organizations and the Palestinian Authority drumming the libelous message into their heads that Israel is scheming to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Even for the media with its anti-Israeli bias, it may hard to finagle these hate-crazed, religiously motivated attacks into its “Israel victimizes Palestinians” frame. It gets even harder when one looks at individual cases.

On October 3, for instance, Aharon Banita, his wife Adele, and their two young children were attacked by a Palestinian stabber in the Old City of Jerusalem. Seeing her husband fatally wounded and having been stabbed herself, The Times of Israel reported that Adele

“…yelled ‘please help me!’ and [the surrounding Palestinian shopkeepers] just spat at me.…”

Banita said Palestinian youths who saw the attack laughed and cursed at her as she yelled for help.

She said that one of them slapped her and another laughed in her face and told her to “drop dead” when she told him she’d give him a million shekels if he helped her get away with her two babies.

“They saw that we were with two baby carriages,” she said.

Are there some Palestinians whom even the “elite” media can’t love?

And on October 7, in the town of Kiryat Gat in southern Israel, there was this incident:

A Palestinian man stabbed an IDF soldier and grabbed his gun…. He then fled to a fourth floor apartment….

The soldier was lightly injured in the attack, with wounds to his head, apparently inflicted with a pair of scissors….

Liat Ohana said she encountered the terrorist in the kitchen of her apartment, and that “he had murder in his eyes.” She said she pushed him into her kitchen, where she heard him rooting around in the cutlery, apparently looking for a knife. The gun he had seized had no magazine.

She and her mother fled, screaming, she said, and later heard gunfire. “I didn’t think I’d get out alive, but I was determined to fight,” Ohana said later. The security forces “shot him in my kitchen,” she told Army Radio.

Liat Ohana, in other words, is a heroine. And there have been other cases of heroism by Israeli civilians, like the ones whopinned down a stabber in a shopping mall on October 7, and the female soldier in Tel Aviv on October 8 who, though stabbed with a screwdriver, fell on her gun and stopped the attacker from getting it.

Heroic Israelis fending off Palestinian killers? Seems “dramatic” and—with Israelis not the only ones under Islamic attack—even inspirational. But it’s not the stuff mainstream-media stories are made of, and only those following Israeli outlets are likely to know about these cases at all.

Of course, to the extent that the media has covered the events, it’s been up to its usual antics. The BBC’s headline for the abovementioned attack involving the Banitas, in which Aharon Banita and another man were killed before security forces killed the attacker, was: “Palestinian shot dead after Jerusalem attack kills two.” HonestReporting gives a spate of similar examples gleaned from a single day.

At this point it’s not yet clear if this terror wave will die down or intensify. If the latter, it can be safely assumed that the Western media will increase its coverage on the side of the assault.

We know that the Palestinian attackers are driven by a systematically inculcated religious and nationalistic rage. What drives the Western media’s dehumanization of Israelis and identification with their killers?

Categories: Al-Aqsa Mosque, Defense of Israel, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Jews, Obama and Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians, Two state solution, Western media
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Does the PA have a strategy?‎

October 11, 2015

Does the PA have a strategy?‎ Israel Hayom, Richard Baehr, October 11, 2015

Abbas may sense that a reconciliation between Israel and the ‎Obama administration is not at hand this time around. The obvious and petty ‎boycott of Netanyahu’s speech at the U.N. certainly supports that thesis. This president ‎carries grudges. In Israel’s case, he seems to have come into office carrying one. ‎With the president in full-time legacy-building mode in his last 16 months in office ‎‎(the climate treaty and executive action on gun control are next up), it is hard to ‎believe that he will simply accept defeat and an inability to influence the Israeli-‎Palestinian conflict in the time he has left. ‎

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A third intifada has not yet been officially designated by Haaretz or The New York ‎Times or National Public Radio, though it may feel as if one is underway, when ‎over 60% of Israelis in the latest public opinion survey say they now fear for their ‎personal safety. So too, there is no evidence yet that the wave of Palestinian ‎attacks or — new to this current campaign — the attempted mass crossings from Gaza, ‎have peaked. ‎

Certainly, the reporting on the current events in Israel reflects old habits about ‎how most journalists cover stories of Palestinian violence and Israeli responses. ‎Two standbys always work. One if that there is “a cycle of violence” ( a pox on both ‎your houses), always leaving unclear who the original perpetrators were in an ‎individual attack or group of attacks. A second is to keep a daily scorecard of the ‎comparative body counts, especially when there are more Palestinian casualties ‎and fatalities than Israeli, courtesy of Israeli police or soldiers responding to ‎stabbing attacks, not all of which prove lethal before the attacker is neutralized. ‎This narrative leads to the inevitable charge of disproportionality, one that has ‎become the principal media assault on Israeli responses to terror emanating from ‎Gaza in recent years. As in every other instance in recent years, Haaretz is playing ‎its appointed role of feeding the many international journalists in the country with ‎the “truth in English” as it sees it, and as the international media want to receive ‎and see it, confirming all their established biases about Israel behavior.

For Israeli ‎responses to the current violence to be “fair” and proportional, the comparative ‎Jewish and Arab body counts would need to be more in balance than in prior ‎years. When the current campaign of attacks on Israelis began, The New York Times ‎relegated the story to it its interior pages. Once a few Palestinians were killed by ‎Israeli police, the story became front page news.‎

Any attack on Arabs by an Israeli is always highlighted since it removes any ‎attempt by Israel to argue it is the victim of attacks. It also buttresses the PA’s ‎charges that Israelis, whether in security roles or settlers, are willing executioners, ‎committing crimes against Palestinians. Regardless of how infrequent these individual attacks by Israelis ‎are, they serve to solidify the cycle of violence theme. The Israeli government can ‎condemn these attacks and capture the perpetrators, but it makes no difference. ‎The PA, meanwhile, will applaud the heroism of their new martyrs protecting the ‎holy places on the Temple Mount from an invasion of stinking Jewish filth.‎

The current wave of Arab attacks followed a Palestinian Authority incitement ‎campaign with language such as that above, in which President Mahmoud Abbas, ‎seemingly the president for life, though only elected to a four year term, ‎condemned Israel’s campaign to change the status of the Temple Mount, for which ‎there is no evidence whatsoever. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, probably in ‎seclusion and being treated with antidepressants since being denied the Nobel ‎Peace Prize for his abject surrender to the Iranians in Geneva, has acknowledged ‎to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the Americans understand there is no ‎Israeli effort underway to reshape any policy regarding behavior on the Temple ‎Mount. Kerry can probably blame Yasser Arafat’s Nobel Peace Prize for the peace ‎prize medal he did not receive (and likely would not have tossed away). The ‎selection committee was probably not anxious to have the Iranians make them look ‎like fools in years to come once they violated the nuclear deal as Arafat tossed Oslo ‎aside when it was inconvenient. ‎

The naked demagoguery of Abbas’ continually repeated lies about Israeli plans for ‎the Temple Mount will always have the desired affect on the many young men on ‎whom the PA can depend to take to the streets and do their part to protect the ‎‎”holy places” for a fee. While there is no consensus on the degree of PA control ‎over the attacks, the Palestinians certainly know where their rhetoric leads.‎

The question, though, is why the Palestinians have chosen this point in time to ‎overheat the situation, resulting in the loss of both Israeli and Palestinian lives.‎

The answer offered by most analysts so far is that the PA wanted to draw ‎international attention back to its grievances with Israel, which most basically ‎begins with the continued existence of the State of Israel. For many months, ‎relations between Israel and the United States, never very good at any time during ‎the Obama years, have become much more fractious as a result of the ‎disagreement between the two countries over the wisdom of America’s ‎spearheading the effort to make all the concessions required as achieve the ‎nuclear deal with Iran by the ‎P5+1 group of nations. ‎

In prior administrations, when relations between the two countries hit a rough ‎patch over some policy disagreement, typically there was an effort made by both ‎parties to try to restore the historic relationship. In the Obama years, the White ‎House has had problems with Israel on pretty much everything — whether to ‎impose new sanctions on Iran, inhibiting Israeli steps targeting Iran’s nuclear ‎program, the nuclear deal itself, and of course the peace process with the ‎Palestinians, the breakdown of which was blamed on Israel by the administration. ‎In no prior administration has the public rhetoric and off-the-record commentary ‎about Israel and its elected leader been so consistently hostile. A boycott of Netanyahu’s speech to a joint meeting of Congress was supported by the ‎administration, which pulled Vice President Joe Biden from attendance. Near a quarter ‎of all Democrats in Congress chose to observe the boycott. The administration ‎doubled down on its boycott campaign when Kerry and ‎Ambassador Samantha Power were instructed not to attend ‎Netanyahu’s recent speech to the U.N. General Assembly. It makes sense that the president has never condemned the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns targeting Israel on American ‎college campuses. He would probably be leading them if he were now a student. ‎

In any case, Abbas may sense that a reconciliation between Israel and the ‎Obama administration is not at hand this time around. The obvious and petty ‎boycott of Netanyahu’s speech at the U.N. certainly supports that thesis. This president ‎carries grudges. In Israel’s case, he seems to have come into office carrying one. ‎With the president in full-time legacy-building mode in his last 16 months in office ‎‎(the climate treaty and executive action on gun control are next up), it is hard to ‎believe that he will simply accept defeat and an inability to influence the Israeli-‎Palestinian conflict in the time he has left. ‎

Abbas has resorted to the strategy that always works to get his cause back in the ‎news — get some of his people killed by Israel, and blame it on Israeli over-reaction ‎and trigger-happy behavior. Maybe Obama will then show his disgust with Israel ‎and commit to not vetoing new measures targeting Israel at the U.N. Security ‎Council, including establishing a plan for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank ‎and Jerusalem. ‎

It is also possible that Obama planned to lower the temperature of the American-‎Israeli relationship now that the Iran deal had not been blocked by Congress. The prime minister had been invited to the White House next month, and reportedly ‎the president planned to show up. If Abbas thought this was the new glide path, ‎then throwing a monkey wrench into the mix with new violence would certainly ‎complicate things. Obama’s press secretary, Josh Earnest, gave a particularly awful ‎response when questioned about the new wave of Palestinian violence this week, ‎suggesting he had not been advised to turn any page:‎

“The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms ‎violence against Israeli and Palestinian civilians. We call upon ‎all parties to take affirmative steps to restore calm and refrain ‎from actions and rhetoric that would further enflame tensions ‎in that region of the world. We continue to urge all sides to find ‎a way back to the full restoration of the status quo at the ‎Temple Mount in Haram al-Sharif, the location that has ‎precipitated so much of the violence that we’ve seen there.”

In other words, both sides are guilty for attacking the other’s ‎civilians, and somehow a change in the status of the Temple ‎Mount (Israel’s doing) was the root cause of the new problems. ‎

When the administration’s top spokesperson makes this kind ‎of comment, do you think Abbas will decide to ease ‎up on the violence accelerator?

Categories: Appeasement, Death to Israel, Defense of Israel, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Filthy Jews, Foreign policy, Hamas, Islamic culture, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Israeli media, Kerry, Netanyahu, Obama - Middle East, Obama - rogue president, Obama and Israel, Obama's America, Obama's anti-semitism, Obama's foreign failures, Obama's legacy, Obama's weakness, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians, Settlements, Two state solution, Western media
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Concerning Israel, Don’t Trust Proportional Journalism

October 11, 2015

Concerning Israel, Don’t Trust Proportional Journalism, Israel Today, Tsvi Sadan, October 11, 2015

The foreign media dealing with Israel has transformed from news reporting to malice.

Known for his crisp Facebook posts, Israeli Lev Solodkin is wondering how British people would have reacted if during WWII, newspapers had reported that “a 21-year-old German peace-loving pilot was killed by British security forces over British skies”?

This, however, is exactly the type of reports about Israel emerging from many respected media outlets.

UK newspaper The Independent is involved in such distorted journalism when it portrays the present stoning and knifing of Jews as legitimate “riots” and “clashes” carried out by peace-loving Palestinians. A Saturday issue of this newspaper reported that five Palestinians were killed and five Jews were stabbed. The headline and content of the report was every bit like that of an innocent Luftwaffe pilot flying aimlessly over Britain.

Though disguised as news, the Independent piece is a political manifest carefully crafted to create the impression of defenseless Palestinians killed during legitimate “protests” against murderous Israel. The paper’s reporter spared no effort to make sure this point was not missed. The fact that armies around the world recruit 18-year-old men for active military service doesn’t matter much to theIndependent, which described the Palestinians involved as “boys.”

“A 19-year-old Palestinian boy stabbed three police officers” creates the desired impression of criminal Israel killing defenseless, under-aged youths. In the same manner, to legitimatize the Palestinian violence allegedly sparked by the Jewish presence on the Temple Mount, the Independent chose to replace the Jewish Temple Mount with the Muslim “Noble Sanctuary” (Haram al-Sharif) to create the desired impression of who the real perpetrator is.

RT America (Russian Television) has done much the same in the way it chose to report on the “day of rage” that took place last Wednesday in New York City. The anchor gave American Palestinian activist Lamis Deek an undisturbed time to spew her venom. Deek did a fine job lying through her teeth about the reasons leading to the present Palestinian stabbing frenzy. Among her lies was blaming the Israeli government for allowing para-military settlers to rain terror on innocent Palestinians. Deek’s rant went unchallenged.

The New York Times didn’t fare much better. A headline from Tuesday inserts doubts about news coming from Israeli officials, thus conditioning readers to trust reports coming from the NYT’s “proportional journalism.”

For example, a headline concerning the killing of Eitam and Naama Henkin announces that “Israel says 5 from Hamas confess in Israeli couple’s killing.” What “Israel says” is contrasted with what the NYT says, which is, “Israeli forces fatally shooting two Palestinian teenagers — one 13” who was “innocent and was shot in cold blood.” The report goes on to give the names of innocent dead Palestinian “kids,” while omitting names of Israelis killed by such innocent “kids.”

The “peace-loving German pilot” type of journalism, euphemized as “proportional,” has become so prevalent that it is no longer possible to escape, let alone justify it. Considering the means of news proliferation 70 years ago, Germans could barely hide behind the excuse of “I didn’t know.” Today, however, none but a villain could say the aforementioned reports are even worth the ink used for their printing.

Categories: Al-Aqsa Mosque, Fatah, Gaza, Hamas, Islamism, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians, Progressives, Temple Mount, Western media
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The Elephant In The Room

October 2, 2015

The Elephant In The Room, Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Yigal Carmon*, October 2, 2015

(Please see also, Iran wants to renegotiate parts of the nuke “deal.” That may be good. Have opponents of the “deal” given up? If so, why? — DM)

It may be that these opponents believe that the agreement is a done deal that cannot be stopped and that the current U.S. administration will follow through with it no matter what. This approach reflects not realism but ignorance. Obviously the administration wants to follow through with the deal. But the deal is no longer in it hands. It is Khamenei who is throwing a spanner in the works, declaring that he will not implement the agreement that the West believed it concluded on July 14.

In order to get Iran to implement the agreement, the language of the JCPOA will have to be changed and a new Security Council resolution will have to be passed. While in theory this would not be impossible, it would require a new process, entailing, at the very least, a public political debate in the West – one that would reveal Iran’s unreliability as a partner and would cost valuable time. And time is not on the side of the U.S. administration.

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On September 3, 2015, not two months after the July 14 announcement of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action at Vienna and its celebration at the White House and in Europe, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei dropped a bombshell.

In a speech to the Iranian Assembly of Experts, he backtracked from the agreement, demanding a new concession: that the sanctions be “lifted,” not merely “suspended.”[1] If that term is not changed, said Khamenei, there is no agreement. If the West only “suspends” the sanctions, he added, Iran will merely “suspend” its obligations. Giving further credence to his threat, he announced that it is the Iranian Majlis that must discuss and approve the agreement (or not), because it represents the people – when it is well known that the majority of its members oppose it, and Iranian President Hassan Rohani made every effort to prevent such a discussion in the Majlis from taking place.

Adding insult to injury, Ali Akbar Velayati, senior advisor to Khamenei and head of Iran’s Center for Strategic Research, said on September 19 that the negotiations, concluded and celebrated less than two months previously on July 14, are actually “not over yet.”[2]

Khamenei’s demand to replace “suspension” with “lifting” is not just semantic. It is a fundamental change, because the snapback of sanctions – the major security mechanism for the entire agreement – cannot take place with “lifting,” but only with “suspension.”

Ever since Khamenei dropped this bombshell, the Western media has maintained total silence, as if this were a trivial matter not worthy of mention, let alone analysis.

One might understand this reaction on the part of those who support the deal. Perhaps they are shocked, at a loss, and therefore hope that if they pretend they don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Indeed, this is the futile policy regularly adopted by ostriches.

However, one cannot but be astounded by the silence on the part of the opponents of the deal, including – oddly enough – Israel and the U.S. Republicans. One would expect these opponents to pounce on Khamenei’s statement and raise hell over Iran’s infanticide of the two-month-old agreement. One would expect them to bring it to the forefront of a new debate over the deal in any possible forum – in the U.S., the U.N., and the E.U.

But – nothing.

It may be that these opponents believe that the agreement is a done deal that cannot be stopped and that the current U.S. administration will follow through with it no matter what. This approach reflects not realism but ignorance. Obviously the administration wants to follow through with the deal. But the deal is no longer in it hands. It is Khamenei who is throwing a spanner in the works, declaring that he will not implement the agreement that the West believed it concluded on July 14.

In order to get Iran to implement the agreement, the language of the JCPOA will have to be changed and a new Security Council resolution will have to be passed. While in theory this would not be impossible, it would require a new process, entailing, at the very least, a public political debate in the West – one that would reveal Iran’s unreliability as a partner and would cost valuable time. And time is not on the side of the U.S. administration.

Right now, Iran is exposed almost daily as the ally of Russia against the U.S. Three months after the “historic” agreement declared by the White House, Iran continues to seek “Death to America,” and the Iranian foreign minister, the “hero” of the agreement, needs to apologize in Iran for “accidentally” shaking hands with the U.S. president. The truth of the agreement is emerging, and it is not certain that what Iran is now demanding will pass.

Interestingly enough, the White House’s first reaction was to brush off Khamenei’s demand. Iran, said Josh Earnest, should just do what it what it had undertaken to do in the agreement, and stop roiling the waters.[3]

A more sober response followed. There was hope that the meeting set for September 28 between the P5+1 and Iranian foreign ministers, on the margins of the 70th session of the U.N. General Assembly, would produce a solution, but this hope was in vain. Iranian President Rohani fled back to Iran, on the pretext of the hajj tragedy in Mecca, and no one in the West knows how to proceed.

The Western media, for its part, is perpetuating its total blackout on the issue, hoping perhaps for a miracle in the secret U.S.-Iran talks, which this administration has been conducting for years. But even a secret U.S. concession will be no solution. Even if it were to offer a secret commitment to remove the sanctions altogether, Khamenei will not be satisfied. He openly challenged the U.S., and he needs its public capitulation. He will celebrate publicly any secret concession. Moreover, any new U.S. concession will prompt Khamenei to make ever more demands.

The most recent developments, and the emergence of Russia as a new-old contender for power vis-à-vis the U.S. in the world, particularly in the Middle East, will only encourage Khamenei to cling to his tried and true ally, Russia. Indeed, this administration has no objection to Russia’s resurgence in the Middle East, but Russia’s blatant anti-U.S. stance in every venue except in the private, honeyed Putin-Obama talks will ultimately lead even the blindest of Democrats to realize that Iran is indeed an enemy of the U.S. – as Iran plainly declares – and that any further concessions to it make no sense.

It seems that the worst nightmare of the supporters of the deal – that Iran will do away with the July 14 agreement – is about to come to pass.

*Y. Carmon is president and founder of MEMRI.

Endnotes:

[3] Earnest said: “What we have indicated all along is that once an agreement was reached, as it was back in mid-July, that we would be focused on Iran’s actions and not their words, and that we will be able to tell if Iran follows through on the commitments that they made in the context of these negotiations. And that is what will determine our path forward here. We’ve been crystal clear about the fact that Iran will have to take a variety of serious steps to significantly roll back their nuclear program before any sanctions relief is offered – and this is everything from reducing their nuclear uranium stockpile by 98 percent, disconnecting thousands of centrifuges, essentially gutting the core of their heavy-water reactor at Arak, giving the IAEA the information and access they need in order to complete their report about the potential military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program. And then we need to see Iran begin to comply with the inspections regime that the IAEA will put in place to verify their compliance with the agreement. And only after those steps and several others have been effectively completed, will Iran begin to receive sanctions relief.  The good news is all of this is codified in the agreement that was reached between Iran and the rest of the international community. And that’s what we will be focused on, is their compliance with the agreement.” Whitehouse.gov, September 4, 2015.

Categories: Democrats, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Iran - sanctions relief, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, JCPOA, Khamenei, Obama - rogue president, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's affinity for Obama, Obama's America, Obama's foreign failures, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Republicans, Rouhani, U.S. Congress, U.S. Constitution, U.S. politics, Western media
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Ben Carson in CAIR’s crosshairs

September 21, 2015

Ben Carson in CAIR’s crosshairs, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, September 21, 2015

(Isn’t it shameful that Dr. Carson is a politically incorrect “Islamophobe?” What is that, anyway?

Don’t we want another a Muslim in the White House? Then Obama could be truly proud of America. What could possibly go wrong? — DM)

ben-carson

Carson was right. But now the media sharks, ever eager to do the bidding of Hamas-linked CAIR and other Islamic supremacists, will be circling – and hungry. If he is forced to drop out for saying things CAIR doesn’t like, it will be just one more nail in the coffin of the free society that CAIR disingenuously professes to love and support, but which it is actually doing all it can to subvert.

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If Ibrahim Hooper of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has any say in the matter, whoever the next President is, it won’t be Ben Carson. “He is not qualified to be president of the United States,” fumed CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper, no doubt an unimpeachable authority on who is and is not qualified to be President, on Sunday. “You cannot hold these kinds of views and at the same time say you will represent all Americans, of all faiths and backgrounds.” What views? Carson said: “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that.” He said that this was because Islam contradicted important Constitutional principles.

CAIR, designated a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates, sent out an email Sunday saying it would hold a news conference demanding that Carson withdraw from the presidential race for daring to say these things. “Mr. Carson clearly does not understand or care about the Constitution, which states that ‘no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office,’” said CAIR top dog Nihad Awad. “We call on our nation’s political leaders – across the political spectrum – to repudiate these unconstitutional and un-American statements and for Mr. Carson to withdraw from the presidential race.”

But the problems with a Muslim being President aren’t religious, they’re political. Islamic law infringes upon the freedom of speech, forbidding criticism of Islam. Islamic law denies equality of rights to women. Islamic law denies equality of rights to non-Muslims. If a Muslim renounced all this, he or she could be an effective Constitutional ruler, but in today’s politically correct climate, no one is even likely to ask for such a renunciation. Instead, no one even acknowledges that these really are elements of Islamic law.

No one, that is, except the Muslim clerics who agree with Carson. Syrian Islamic scholar Abd Al-Karim Bakkar said in March 2009: “Democracy runs counter to Islam on several issues….In democracy, legislation is the prerogative of the people. It is the people who draw up the constitution, and they have the authority to amend it as well. On this issue we differ” — because in Islamic thought, only Allah legislates.

Abd Al-Karim Bakkar was reflecting a common view. Pakistan Muslim leader Sufi Muhammad said in May 2009: “I would not offer prayer behind anyone who would seek to justify democracy.” Mesbah Yazdi, leader of the Shia Taliban in Iran, said in September 2010 that “democracy, freedom, and human rights have no place” — in Islam, that is. Australian Muslim cleric Ibrahim Saddiq Conlan said in June 2011: “Democracy is evil, the parliament is evil and legislation is evil.”

In January 2013, the Saudi Islamic scholar Sheikh Abdul Rahman bin Nassir Al Barrak declared: “Electing a president or another form of leadership or council members is prohibited in Islam as it has been introduced by the enemies of Moslems.” The idea of popular elections, he said, “has been brought by the anti-Islam parties who have occupied Moslem land.”

Some Muslims in the West hold these views as well. In April 2015, Muslims in Wales plastered Cardiff with posters reading: “Democracy is a system whereby man violates the right of Allah and decides what is permissible or impermissible for mankind, based solely on their whims and desires. This leads to a decayed and degraded society where crime and immorality becomes widespread and injustice becomes the norm. Islam is the only real, working solution for the UK. It is a comprehensive system of governance where the laws of Allah are implemented and justice is observed.”

And two Muslim groups in Denmark last June called on Muslims to boycott the elections that were held that month. One explained: “We are committed to being active participants in our society, but it has to be on Islam’s terms, without compromising our own principles and values. Democracy is fundamentally incompatible with Islam, and it is a sinking ship.” The Grimshøj mosque in Aarhus agreed, issuing a statement saying that “people should stay clear of the voting booths. We have concluded that only Allah can pass laws, as he says himself in the Koran that this is so.”

Tunisian author Salem Ben Ammar wrote last month: “‘To hell with democracy! Long live Islam!’ One hundred percent of Muslims agree with that. To say anything else is apostasy from Islam. These two competing political systems are antithetical to each other. You can’t be democratic and be a Muslim or a Muslim and be a democrat. A Jew can’t be a Nazi and a Nazi can’t be a Judeophile.”

Question for Hamas-linked CAIR’s Hooper and Awad: are all these Muslims “Islamophobes” for saying that Islam and democracy are incompatible, or is that honor reserved only for Carson (and other infidels)? And are either or both of you cognizant of the irony of pretending to uphold Constitutional values while demanding that a man drop out of the Presidential race for the crime of exercising his freedom of speech? Are either or both of you aware that you have thereby just become poster children for how correct Ben Carson really was?

Carson was right. But now the media sharks, ever eager to do the bidding of Hamas-linked CAIR and other Islamic supremacists, will be circling – and hungry. If he is forced to drop out for saying things CAIR doesn’t like, it will be just one more nail in the coffin of the free society that CAIR disingenuously professes to love and support, but which it is actually doing all it can to subvert.

Categories: CAIR, Doctor Ben Carson, Freedom, Hamas, Human rights, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Islamophobia, Obama's affinity for Islam, Political correctness, Sharia law, Theocracy, U.S. 2016 elections, U.S. politics, U.S. President, Western media
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When Palestinians Die in Jail

July 6, 2015

When Palestinians Die in Jail, The Gatestone Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh, July 6, 2015

  • Like the mainstream media in the West, the UN chooses to look the other way when Palestinians torture or kill fellow Palestinians.
  • The Palestinian Authority and Hamas claim that the three men committed suicide.
  • When three detainees die in less than a week, this should sound an alarm. But pro-Palestinian groups and human rights activists do not care about the human rights of Palestinians if Israel cannot be held responsible. Their obsession with Israel has made them blind to the plight of Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority.

Three Palestinian men were found dead in their jail cells in the West Bank and Gaza Strip this past week.

But their stories did not attract the attention of the international media or human rights organizations in the U.S. and Europe. Nor was their case brought to the attention of the United Nations or the International Criminal Court (ICC).

By contrast, the case of 17-year-old Mohamed Kasba, who was shot dead north of Jerusalem by an Israeli army officer as he attacked the officer’s car with stones, received widespread coverage in the Western media.

The UN even rushed to condemn the killing of Kasba, and called for an “immediate end” to violence and for everyone to keep calm. “This reaffirms the need for a political process aiming to establish two states living beside each other safely and peacefully,” said UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Maldenov.

The UN official, needless to say, made no reference to the deaths that occurred in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas jails. He did not even see a need to express concern over the deaths or call for an investigation. Like the mainstream media in the West, the UN chooses to look the other way when Palestinians torture or kill fellow Palestinians.

The reason the case of the three detainees will not interest anyone in the international community is because the men did not die in an Israeli jail. Instead, the three men died while being held in Palestinian-controlled jails.

Had the three men died in Israeli detention, their names would have most likely appeared on the front pages of most leading Western newspapers. The families of the three men would have also been busy talking to Western journalists about Israeli “atrocities” and “human rights violations.”

But no respected Western journalist is going to visit any of the families of the three detainees: they did not die in an Israeli jail.

The same week that the three Palestinian men were found dead in jail, the UN Human Rights Council decided to adopt a resolution condemning Israel over the UN report into last year’s Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip. Again, the UN Human Rights Council chose to ignore human rights violations by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, who deny detainees basic rights and proper medical treatment.

Two of them died in PA security installations in Bethlehem, while the third was found dead in a Hamas-controlled jail in the Gaza Strip.

The two detainees who were found dead in their jail cells in Bethlehem are Shadi Mohamed Obeidallah and Hazem Yassin Udwan. The man who died in the Gaza Strip jail was identified as Khaled Hammad al-Balbisi.

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas claim that the three men committed suicide.

In the case of Obeidallah, the Palestinian Authority police said he hanged himself with a piece of cloth inside the jail restrooms. He was taken into custody on suspicion of committing a murder three years ago.

The second man, Udwan, died a few days later in another Bethlehem police facility. According to police officials, he too committed suicide.

The detainee in the Gaza Strip, al-Balbisi, was being held by Hamas authorities for allegedly assaulting his wife.

But al-Balbisi, 43, apparently did not commit suicide. He was very ill when he was arrested by the Hamas security forces, and did not receive proper medical care while in detention.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), a Gaza-based non-profit group dedicated to protecting human rights, promoting the rule of law and upholding democratic principles in the Palestinian territories, called for an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the detainees.

“PCHR stresses that the Palestinian Authority is responsible for the lives of prisoners and detainees under its control and is thus responsible for treating them with dignity, including offering them medical care,” the group said in a statement.

1143The Palestinian Authority police on parade, January 2015.

When three detainees die in less than a week in Palestinian detention, this should sound an alarm bell, especially among so-called pro-Palestinian groups and human rights activists in different parts of the world.

But these folks, like the UN and mainstream media, do not care about the human rights of the Palestinians if Israel cannot be held responsible. Their obsession with Israel has made them blind to the plight of Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, as well as to the horrific crimes committed every day by Muslim terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The story of the three men who died in Palestinian jails is yet another example of the double standards that the international community and media employ when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Categories: Cognitive dissonance, Foreign policy, Gaza, Hamas, Ideology, IDF, Israel, Jerusalem, West Bank, Western media
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