US ‘Outraged’ by UN Report That Accuses Israel of Establishing ‘Apartheid Regime’ That ‘Dominates the Palestinian People’

Posted March 16, 2017 by Peter Hofman
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The United States expressed outrage on Wednesday over a report published by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) that accused Israel of establishing an “apartheid regime” that “dominates the Palestinian people as a whole.”

By Pamela Geller – on March 16, 2017

Source: US ‘Outraged’ by UN Report That Accuses Israel of Establishing ‘Apartheid Regime’ That ‘Dominates the Palestinian People’ – Geller Report

This is just more of the same from the UN. It has demonized Israel relentlessly for years. At least now we have an administration that isn’t joining in, but instead is resolutely on the side of Israel.

“US ‘Outraged’ by UN Report That Accuses Israel of Establishing ‘Apartheid Regime’ That ‘Dominates the Palestinian People,’” Algemeiner, March 15, 2017:

The United States expressed outrage on Wednesday over a report published by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) that accused Israel of establishing an “apartheid regime” that “dominates the Palestinian people as a whole.”

“That such anti-Israel propaganda would come from a body whose membership nearly universally does not recognize Israel is unsurprising,” American UN Envoy Nikki Haley said in a statement. “That it was drafted by Richard Falk, a man who has repeatedly made biased and deeply offensive comments about Israel and espoused ridiculous conspiracy theories, including about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is equally unsurprising.”

“The United Nations Secretariat was right to distance itself from this report, but it must go further and withdraw the report altogether,” Haley went on to say. “The United States stands with our ally Israel and will continue to oppose biased and anti-Israel actions across the UN system and around the world.”

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon stated, “The attempt to smear and falsely label the only true democracy in the Middle East by creating a false analogy is despicable and constitutes a blatant lie.”

Emmanuel Nahshon — spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry — compared the ESCWA report to Nazi propaganda.

“Friendly advice — don’t read it without anti-nausea pills,” he tweeted.

Reuters quoted UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric as saying that the publication of the report was not coordinated with the UN Secretariat.

“The report as it stands does not reflect the views of the secretary-general (Antonio Guterres),” Dujarric clarified.

The ESCWA is headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon and is comprised of 18 member states from the Middle East and North Africa….

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EXPOSED! Took awhile, but the bad smell I noticed several years coming from FOX News “go-to moderate Muslim,” Zuhdi Jasser, has turned into a poisonous gas

Posted March 16, 2017 by Peter Hofman
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STEALTH JIHADIST Dr. Mohammed Zuhdi Jasser, who likes to call himself a Muslim reformer, is anything but as he proves when he says, “There’s no greater threat” than Pamela Geller and her counter-ji…

Source: EXPOSED! Took awhile, but the bad smell I noticed several years coming from FOX News “go-to moderate Muslim,” Zuhdi Jasser, has turned into a poisonous gas – BARE NAKED ISLAM

STEALTH JIHADIST Dr. Mohammed Zuhdi Jasser, who likes to call himself a Muslim reformer, is anything but as he proves when he says, “There’s no greater threat” than Pamela Geller and her counter-jihad colleagues.

Pamela Geller  In one fell swoop, “moderate Muslim” Zuhdi Jasser has dropped a MOAB on the most effective counter-jihadists in the West. The Grand Mufti of the Stealth Jihad has devoted an entire episode of his show (see below) on The Blaze Network, “Reform This!” to smearing me and many of my colleagues, including Robert Spencer, Andrew Bostom, Clare Lopez, John Guandolo, and others, as “alt-jihadists.”

He even says “there are no greater jihadists than the alt-jihadists when it comes to living in the land of freedom. Because they seem to be wanting to kill us and knock us off at the knees.” That’s right: “No greater jihadists” than me and my colleagues. “Alt” means Nazi. He knows exactly what he is doing.

Who even knew he had a show on The Blaze? No one. Why is Glenn Beck giving this vicious saboteur a platform? Jasser did this deliberately, knowing it would blow up — that speaks volumes about his character and his true motives.

But some people are endlessly eager to be fooled. Frank Gaffney immediately wrote to a group of us whom Jasser targeted, telling us to hold off in the interest of peacemaking! It was striking how quickly Gaffney jumped to Jasser’s defense. (I’ve never seen him jump to my defense like that.) What a step-and-fetch-it boy Gaffney is for Jasser.

This epitomizes how much people who recognize the jihad threat have been fooled into thinking they have to have moderate Muslims on board or their efforts will be criticized by the left as “islamophobic.” The left is going to say that anyway, no matter what they do.

Jasser talks a good game as you can see by his website:

As for me, I didn’t start this war, and I’m not going to let Jasser’s lies just sit out there unchallenged. It is Jasser who has thrown down the gauntlet (again) — the idea that he is defending himself against attacks, as Patrick Poole claimed on Twitter, is nonsense.

I was right about Jasser all along. When I interviewed Jasser back in 2007, he could not answer my questions about how the “immutable” word of the Quran could be radically reinterpreted, or about the fact that such “reformation” or “reinterpretation” is punishable by death. In other words, you can’t have your private little Islam. Period.

And then when he referred to Israel as occupied territory in the last five minutes of the interview, he blew his cover. Further, Jasser claimed that Islamic antisemitism didn’t exist in the interview as well.

In 2011, I published an article in the American Thinker entitled “Where Are All the Jassers?,” in response to an attack on me by Jasser in which he claimed, as he does now on his Blaze show, that I was aiding the “Islamists.” Read that article. In it, I show how dishonest Jasser is about what the Qur’an says about Jews, and about beating disobedient women, and more.

In this new attack, Jasser’s whole premise is false. We are “alt-jihadists” for pointing out how jihadists use Islamic teachings as their motivation and impetus? So those who told the truth about the Nazis were just like the Nazis, because they were reinforcing the Nazis message? He admits that Islamic government and the most respected Islamic institutions do not reflect his interpretation of Islam, but then he hits us for noticing the same thing. He wants us not to believe reality, and instead to embrace a fantasy that has failed catastrophically post-9/11.

Here is another truth that Jasser doesn’t want aired about: his organization is minuscule. Where is the invisible giant movement of his? And why has he not prevailed and gained a huge Muslim following in the wake of the unfathomable bloodshed for which jihadis are responsible, if that bloodshed were so very un-Islamic? He has no significant following among Muslims, and is not going to get one. He is much more popular among non-Muslims who are just aching to be fooled.

Jasser is lying about 15 Muslim Reformer groups. I doubt that there are even 15 people. If there are, where are they? No one has ever seen them.

Jasser and his ilk are not moderates. They are liars. There’s a difference. Jasser proves that on his show when he cites Alija Izetbegovic as an example of a Muslim reformer. In his “Islamic Declaration,” Izetbegovic said: “Muslim nations will never accept anything that is explicitly against Islam…He who rises against Islam will reap nothing but hate & resistance…” “The first & foremost of such conclusions is surely the one on the incompatibility of Islam & non-Islamic systems. There can be no peace or co-existence between the ‘Islamic faith’ & non-Islamic societies & political institutions…”

In a piece from Right Side News, Jasser has proven himself to have a PhD in taqiyya. “Taqqiya, in Islam, is a doctrine of pious fraud or religious dissimulation… whereby Muslims may under certain circumstances openly deceive infidels by feigning friendship or goodwill provided their heart remains true to Islam.” Jasser says it clearly:  “I sit before you a proud, devout, American Muslim whose country is polarized on its perceptions of Muslims.”

Jasser seemed to be the harshest critic of Barack Obama, yet it was Obama who appointed Zuhdi Jasser Commissioner at the US Commission for International Religious Freedom.Jasser’s book “Battle for the Soul of Islam” is a palliative compilation of his groundless wishful thinking that he proposes to non-Muslim Americans, as his publisher writes: “He offers non-Muslims a definitive comprehension of the difference between Islam and the spiritual cancer known as Islamism, or political Islam, and how violence and extremism run counter to Islam’s true teachings.”

Zuhdi Jasser never accepts responsibility that the 9/11 attacks were a result of Islam and the Koran teachings. He says that 9/11 was the result of actions by “foreign agents.”He also never condemns severely the acts of 9/11 committed by barbaric Muslim terrorists in the name of Islam.

And when he does condemn, it is only to say it is not Islam, that they were not related to the religion of Islam, and that’s blatantly delusional, misleading and deceptive. Asked why was it so difficult for him to say that 9/11 perpetrators who caused the massacres were Muslim terrorists, he again said that it was not related to religion.

Jasser has taken to his show at The Blaze to record an hour-long rant entitled “Alt-Jihadists: Useful Idiots of the Global Islamist Establishment.”

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Clarion Project tries to show that Islamic reform is possible, instead only shows how easy it is to be fooled

Posted March 16, 2017 by Peter Hofman
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The Clarion Project has always dissembled about the ideological roots of the phenomena it covers.

By Pamela Geller – on March 16, 2017

Source: Clarion Project tries to show that Islamic reform is possible, instead only shows how easy it is to be fooled – Geller Report

The Clarion Project has always dissembled about the ideological roots of the phenomena it covers. Its “Honor Diaries” video falsely claimed that honor killing was un-Islamic. Its “Third Jihad” video went out its way to assure us that the vast majority of Muslims not only didn’t participate in jihad activity, but rejected and abhorred it (while numerous international surveys show otherwise). The Grand Mufti of the Stealth Jihad, Zuhdi Jasser, is on its advisory board, so it’s no surprise that Clarion would rush to his aid in our recent controversy. (See my response to Jasser’s libels here.) But Robert Spencer thoroughly eviscerates their claims and shows them to be the ignorant, easily-led naifs they are.

“Clarion Project tries to show that Islamic reform is possible, instead only shows how easy it is to be fooled,” by Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch, March 15, 2017:

The Clarion Project, of which moderate Muslim Zuhdi Jasser is an advisory board member, has rushed to his aid in our recent controversy, claiming to demonstrate in this piece that reform of Islam is not only possible, but happening now in all sorts of ways I am not acknowledging. Now, I have never said Islamic reform is not possible, but this Clarion article unfortunately only confirms several points I have made many times before: that much of what is touted as reform of Islam is really nothing of the kind, as the central doctrines of Islam are left untouched; and also that much of what is touted as reform of Islam is actually cynical deception designed to keep Infidels complacent. Both are on abundant display in this Clarion piece. More below.

“Is Muslim Reform Even Possible?,” by Elliot Friedland, Clarion Project, March 15, 2017:

Clarion advisory board member Dr. Zudhi Jasser has hit out of critics who claim that Muslim reform movements are bound to fail because they are not accepted within the Muslim community….

Spencer later adds, “I’d love to see Islamic reform succeed. I’m just not willing to kid myself or others about its prospects, or pretend that it has a greater standing in Islamic doctrine or tradition than it does.”These are important questions that must be addressed honestly.

But Spencer misses the point in three key ways:

Firstly, Spencer’s arguments belie the fact that Islam has already changed many times throughout the centuries. It has seen intellectual flourishing, such as in the Abbasid House of Wisdom, and iconoclastic destruction, such as that meted out against Hindu India by the Ghaznavid Empire, or, of course, the contemporary Islamic State (who cited the exploits of Mahmud of Ghazni in the latest issue of their propaganda magazine Rumiyah). Just like Christianity has gone from the charity of St Francis of Assisi to the torture chambers of the Inquisition to fighting for both the abolition of and the maintenance of slavery in the 19th century.

This bespeaks a confusion about what reform of Islam actually is, or would be. Of course Islam, like all other religions and belief systems, has been expressed in different ways by its various adherents. But that is not the same thing as it undergoing an actual change of doctrine, such as, say, a rejection of the violent jihad imperative or the necessity to subjugate the “People of the Book” (i.e., Jews, Christians, and a few other groups) under the hegemony of Islamic law as dhimmis. There has never been such a rejection. The Abbasid House of Wisdom, for example, was flourishing amidst Islamic oppression that will sound familiar to people who have been reading about the atrocities of the Islamic State. Raymond Ibrahim reports this about the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid: “In the West [he] is depicted as a colorful and fun-loving prankster in the Arabian Nights. Though renowned for his secular pursuits — including riotous living, strong drink and harems of concubines, to the point that a modern day female Kuwaiti activist referred to him as a model to justify the institution of sex-slavery — Harun al-Rashid was still pious enough ‘to force Christians to distinguish themselves by dress, to expel them from their positions, and to destroy their churches through the use of fatwas by the imams.’”

To take but two recent examples: In 2016, the Marrakesh Declaration saw more than 250 scholars from around the Muslim world convene at the request of the King of Morocco (a direct descendant of Muhammed himself and hardly a marginal figure) to “AFFIRM that it is unconscionable to employ religion for the purpose of aggressing upon the rights of religious minorities in Muslim countries.”

The Marrakesh Declaration does indeed say that. This does not, however, constitute any reform of Islam in the slightest degree. A hadith has Muhammad saying, “He who hurts a dhimmi hurts me, and he who hurts me annoys Allah” (At-Tabarani). Muhammad didn’t by saying this cancel the Qur’anic imperative to make sure that the dhimmis “pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (9:29). He didn’t want the dhimmis hurt because their jizya tax money was an important source of revenue for the Muslim community: the caliph Umar is quoted in a hadith saying that the jizya is the “source of the livelihood of your dependents” (Bukhari 4.53.388). One shouldn’t harm the goose that is laying the golden eggs. But this doesn’t mean that the dhimmis were any less subjugated. When the Marrakesh Declaration says that “it is unconscionable to employ religion for the purpose of aggressing upon the rights of religious minorities in Muslim countries,” it is not reforming or rejecting the Qur’anic imperative to subjugate those minorities as dhimmis. In Islamic law, the dhimmis have rights; they just don’t have all the rights that Muslims have.

Closer to America, since 2013 the Muslim Leadership Initiative has seen Muslim leaders from America come to Israel to learn about Jews and Zionism, abandoning the decades long opposition to any interaction at all with the Jewish state within the establishment leadership in the Muslim community. Although this provoked a massive backlash, the fact that it happened at all is monumental in showing that it is possible to have a dialogue and move towards solutions to some of the seemingly intractable inter-communal problems that we face.

This one is really embarrassing for Clarion. Listed as an “MLI Facilitator” is none other than Haroon Moghul, a name that will be familiar to longtime Jihad Watch readers. Moghul is one of the most ridiculous exponents of the “Islamophobia” victimhood propaganda industry, and he has shown himself to be many times. Obsessed with furthering claims of Muslim victimhood, Moghul traffics in malicious defamation (likening Pamela Geller and me to jihad mass murder mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki) and dishonesty (discounting the reality of jihad terror while magnifying the fiction of “Islamophobia”) and taking advantage of his audience’s ignorance about Islam to invert reality, portraying Muslims as victims of a cruel “Islamophobic” machine, instead of non-Muslims threatened by the global jihad. He is the very model of a cynical pseudo-moderate taking advantage of the ignorance of his non-Muslim interlocutors in order to lull them into complacency regarding the jihad threat.

Secondly, Spencer does not acknowledge the damage done by rejecting Muslims like Jasser. When Muslims like Jasser are not seen as authentic by non-Muslims, it makes it that much harder for him to pitch to Muslims that his path will lead to acceptance. Fear is an incredibly powerful factor in politics. If Muslim communities fear they will be excluded no matter what, that non-Muslims have no interest in protecting them or their rights and are only interested in them as opponents of jihad, they have little incentive to speak out.

As I explained yesterday, Muslims actually don’t care what non-Muslims think about Islam, any more than Christians care about whether the Ayatollah Khamenei or caliph al-Baghdadi think they’re Christian or not. As influential as it is, this argument doesn’t get any less absurd by constant repetition. Until some Muslim appears who can honestly say, “I was going to join ISIS until I heard Pope Francis say that the Qur’an rejects violence,” I will continue to think it absurd.

Thirdly, Spencer does not recognize that these things take a long time. Even within living memory, the West has seen monumental cultural shifts, on women’s rights, on gay rights, on race relations. These changes have pushed the contemporary West further in the direction of upholding human freedoms than any other civilization in the history of the world….

Muslim Reform is happening. Just slower and more quietly than Robert Spencer would like.

Great. How slow is too slow? Is there a timetable? How long do we have to wait? How many people have to get killed by jihadists before we realize that waiting for this reform to happen is pointless?

The Clarion Project tried in this article to show that Islamic reform is possible and happening now. Instead, it only showed the perils of ignorance and how easy it is to be fooled by cynical sharpies such as Haroon Moghul.

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‘Wars of religion will start in Europe’ – Turkish FM

Posted March 16, 2017 by Peter Hofman
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Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has warned that Europe is headed for “wars of religion,” claiming Dutch politicians are taking the continent “to a cliff.” The statement comes amid a bitter dispute between the two countries.

Published time: 16 Mar, 2017 11:07 Edited time: 16 Mar, 2017 14:29

Source: ‘Wars of religion will start in Europe’ – Turkish FM — RT News

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has warned that Europe is headed for “wars of religion,” claiming Dutch politicians are taking the continent “to a cliff.” The statement comes amid a bitter dispute between the two countries.

READ MORE: Activists in German town protest mosque construction with crosses (VIDEO, PHOTOS)

Cavusoglu was speaking at a rally in Antalya on Thursday and gave his assessment of the parliamentary elections in the Netherlands. The outcome of the polls saw a failure for the populist politician Geert Wilders to garner a majority of the votes, after a campaign rallying for the closure of mosques and banning of the Koran.

However, instead of rejoicing that the politician and his anti-Islam views had been defeated by Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), Cavusoglu warned that Wilders’ beliefs are shared by others across the Netherlands.

“There is no difference between the mindsets of Geert Wilders and social democrats in the Netherlands. They all have the same mindset…that mindset is taking Europe to the cliff. Soon wars of religion may and will start in Europe,” Cavusoglu said, as quoted by Reuters.

The comments come amid a bitter feud between the Netherlands and Turkey. Ankara suspended high-level relations with the European country on Monday, after it banned ministers from addressing Turks at a rally in Rotterdam, where they were expected to advocate for a constitutional referendum in Turkey.

Following the ban, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the Netherlands of acting like “Nazi remnants.”

Erdogan also accused the Netherlands of state terrorism and having a “rotten” character earlier this week, claiming the Dutch were responsible for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian War.

Read more

© David Moir

Udder chaos: Turkey deports Dutch cows in strange show of solidarity with Erdogan

“We know how rotten their character is from their massacre of 8,000 Bosnians there. Nobody should try to give us lessons on morality, especially not those who have blood on their hands,” he said.

Dutch peacekeepers have been accused of standing down at the time, allegedly allowing Bosnian Serb forces to kill up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslims.

Prior to Turkey imposing diplomatic sanctions on the Netherlands, Rutte warned Ankara that his country would “never negotiate under threats by the Turkish government.”

He said he would attempt to “de-escalate” the row, but stressed that it “takes two to tango.”

Erdogan is lobbying for 5.5 million expatriate Turks to vote ‘yes’ in an upcoming referendum which would give him sweeping new powers to issue decrees, declare emergency rule, appoint ministers and state officials, and dissolve parliament.

Critics say the move would be a step backwards for democracy, removing the system of checks and balances.

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President Trump, North Korea, and Israel’s nuclear strategy

Posted March 16, 2017 by Joseph Wouk
Categories: Uncategorized

Source: President Trump, North Korea, and Israel’s nuclear strategy – Opinion – Jerusalem Post

ByPROFESSOR LOUIS RENÉ BERES
March 16, 2017 15:17

 

A “mad dog” strategy might work for the US and Israel, but it could also backfire against both countries with potentially egregious human costs.

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. (photo credit:REUTERS)

It appears increasingly plausible that President Donald Trump’s first major test in strategic crisis management will come from North Korea. The spillover effects of any such test, a complex challenge that may or may not have a nuclear dimension, could rapidly involve other countries, including several powerful states in the Middle East.

Context is vital. All world politics ultimately comprise a single integrated system of states. What happens in any one geographic area, therefore, can quickly affect another.

Israel is a case in point. As a beleaguered state possessing a prospective (and still intentionally opaque) nuclear “equalizer,” Israel is no doubt well aware that the use of nuclear weapons anywhere in the world would immediately erase the longstanding nuclear taboo. A prima facie erasure of this sort could increase the odds of subsequent nuclear firings in Israel’s own volatile neighborhood.

Furthermore, as North Korea already has a documented nuclear assistance history with Syria and Iran (the Syrian nuclear threat was eliminated by Israel’s preemptive Operation Orchard on September 6, 2007), Jerusalem’s concerns over escalations by Pyongyang would be entirely reasonable. Over time, for example, Iran, with or without any additional direct nuclear assistance from North Korea, could be encouraged to render itself less vulnerable to an Israeli hard-target preemption or Israeli cyber-deterrence. The extent of any such encouragement would depend, at least in part, on Pyongyang’s prior success or failure in navigating “escalation dominance” with the Trump-led US.

For now, Israel’s nuclear strategy remains deliberately ambiguous. The so-called “bomb-in-the-basement” posture has endured since the 1960s, primarily because Jerusalem has not yet had to worry about confronting any enemy state’s nuclear forces. This once reasonable position would need to change, however, if Iran were perceived by Israel to have become nearly nuclear. Israel’s strategic posture would need to change even more urgently if Jerusalem should find itself facing a nuclear fait accompli in Tehran.

For Israel, however, it’s not just about Iran. For entirely sound reasons, the Jewish State could at some point decide to shift to a more credible and persuasive measure of nuclear disclosure once an actual nuclear attack had taken place anywhere on earth. In essence, there would not need to be any direct connection between such an attack and Israel for Jerusalem to acknowledge new national survival obligations.

For example, any belligerent use of nuclear weapons by North Korea might lower Pakistani cost-benefit calculations of a nuclear war with India. While not directed in any way towards Israel, such a destabilizing development in an already nuclear and coup-vulnerable Islamic state would naturally raise red flags in Jerusalem.

For Israel, a key question is this: What scenarios should be considered once Pyongyang has actually fired nuclear weapons at another state (e.g., Japan, or American military targets) or configuration of states (e.g., South Korea, Japan, and/or the in-range US)? The precise manner and extent to which Israel could be affected in any such taboo-breaking circumstances would depend, inter alia, on prevailing geopolitical alignments and cleavages, both regional and worldwide.

More precisely, the expected impact on Israel would lie in the particular way President Trump had handled the nuclear crisis with North Korea. In this regard, all players in both Washington and Jerusalem need to remember that there is no scientific way of ascertaining risk in unprecedented circumstances. That is because in any valid scientific calculation, probabilities must be based upon the discoverable frequency of pertinent past events.

Leaving aside the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which may or may not represent an apt analogue here, there simply are no pertinent past events.

Inevitably, the potential spillover effect on Israel of any nuclear weapons use by North Korea would depend, in part, upon the combatants involved; the expected rationality or irrationality of those combatants; the yield and range of the weapons fired; and of course, the aggregate calculation of civilian and military harm suffered in the affected areas. If, for example, Pyongyang fired nuclear weapons against American targets, military and/or civilian, Jerusalem could reasonably anticipate an overwhelmingly destructive US response. That said, the extent of the American response would depend a great deal on the inherently uncertain “Trump Factor.”

It follows that Israel’s senior strategic planners should already be preparing their best estimates of this eccentric factor – although again, there can be no scientifically meaningful basis for any such calculations.

For Israel, further complications could affect its decision-making. Israeli planners would have to account not only for singular nuclear weapons operations launched by North Korea, but also for any interactions or synergies that might then be expected. Because world politics is not geometry, the Israelis would need to take into consideration that the whole of inflicted harm can be substantially greater than the sum of attack “parts.”

How should Israeli strategic planners cope with such bewildering insights, complications, and expectations? First, they will need to factor into the evolving corpus of national nuclear policy preparation an updated version of Carl von Clausewitz’s classic “friction.” According to this nuanced conceptual consideration, Israeli analysts will have to base their enhanced adjustments of the country’s nuclear doctrine on a widely integrated range of potentially critical factors. This range should involve a calculated loosening of “deliberate ambiguity,” including a recognizable Israeli capacity to deny expected enemy nuclear attack objectives with advanced anti-missile defenses.

Among other refinements, Jerusalem will need to assess whether or not the new American president is able to maintain complete rationality during any anticipated process of crisis escalation, and whether he can grasp certain plausible expected benefits of “pretend irrationality.” In this connection, Israeli leaders will want to recall Moshe Dayan’s advice. Said the Israeli Minister of Defense many years back, “Israel must be seen as a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.”

When contemplating a nuclear crisis between Washington and Pyongyang, Jerusalem must bear in mind that several intersecting and overwhelmingly destructive consequences could extend to other countries, including Israel. To prepare for such a threat, Israel’s strategic planners should be gaming various scenarios in which President Trump (1) hews closely to fully rational “plays;” and (2) adheres to other moves in which he might (however unwittingly) act upon Dayan’s apt metaphor of feigned madness. In the latter case, Israeli analysts should examine Trump’s expected crisis decision-making together with a pretended irrationality option.

Strategic planners should be warned. A “mad dog” strategy might work for the US and Israel, but it could also backfire against both countries with potentially egregious human costs. In the case of Israel, which is half the size of America’s Lake Michigan, these costs could prove existential.

Louis René Beres is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue and the author of twelve books and several hundred articles on nuclear strategy and nuclear war. His newest book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).

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Report: Russia ready to sacrifice Iran to improve US ties

Posted March 16, 2017 by Joseph Wouk
Categories: Uncategorized

Source: Israel Hayom | Report: Russia ready to sacrifice Iran to improve US ties

Despite nominal cooperation, “Iran currently feels that Russia is abandoning it in favor of … reaching understandings with the U.S.” says media monitoring site MEMRI • Russia is seeking to “eliminate” Iran’s role in shaping Syria’s future, it says.

Erez Linn and Israel Hayom Staff
Russian President Vladimir Putin

Russia is willing to use Iran as a bargaining chip to move closer to the United States, and as a result Moscow’s relations with Tehran have been hurt, the Middle East Media Research Institute said in a report released Wednesday.

The report cites several articles and analyses showing that Russia is increasingly viewing its relations with Iran as a liability rather than an asset.

“In February 2017, the Russian news website Pravda.ru reiterated this message, with an analysis by Dmitri Nersevov, who said that Iran is becoming a major problem, first and foremost for Russia’s interests,” the report said.

Another article cited was a Feb. 14 piece in the Russian daily Kommersant in which Maxim Yusin wrote that “Moscow considers Iran a ‘capricious’ and ‘unpredictable’ partner,” and that this “opens a certain window of opportunity for [U.S. President] Donald Trump’s diplomacy.”

According to the MEMRI report, “Russia is interested in an arrangement in Syria and sees itself as the decisive element regarding its future, while Iran sees itself in this role both in accordance with the expansionist ideology of the Islamic revolution regime and in light of the massive losses it has suffered in Syria in recent years.”

The report also noted media reports suggesting that clashes have erupted between Russian and Iranian forces in Syria. It said that according to one Iranian media site, Russia is essentially trying to marginalize Iran in Syria and “eliminate” its ability to shape Syria’s future.

“Despite the Iranian-Russian cooperation in recent years in various fields, Iran currently feels that Russia is abandoning it in favor of other vital interests, such as reaching understandings with the U.S. to promote the lifting of sanctions, and with Turkey as its senior regional partner,” the report said.

It said that according to the Iranian website Amadnews, Iran’s strategy to bring Russia closer is two-pronged.

“The strategy is based on two central elements: The first element is to attempt to tie Russia to Iran with a strategic alliance, as part of which Russia will receive extensive benefits from Iran in the form of financial compensation for Western sanctions against it totaling $50 billion, and military-strategic privileges such as military bases and ports in the Persian Gulf on Iran’s southern border. The latter aspect has strategic importance vis-a-vis the U.S., and is historically significant to imperialist Russian interests,” the report said.

“The second element is to operate Iran’s proxies such as Hezbollah and the Palestinian factions in order to spark a war against Israel, which would occupy the Trump administration and remove the pressure it is exerting on Iran.”

The report concluded that Russia “evidently views Iran as a bargaining chip vis-a-vis the U.S., as an open offer to the Trump administration whose implementation depends on the American response.”

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Off Topic | Liberal Jewish zeal fuels the alt-right

Posted March 16, 2017 by Joseph Wouk
Categories: Uncategorized

Source: Israel Hayom | Liberal Jewish zeal fuels the alt-right

Isi Leiber

We try to rationalize that the anti-Zionist behavior of individual Jews does not justify anti-‎Semitic bigotry.‎

However, the crass political exploitation of their Jewish identity by American leaders of ‎purportedly “nonpartisan” mainstream Jewish organizations is unprecedented. Today, in what ‎must be described as self-destruction, a substantial number of irresponsible leaders of the ‎most successful and powerful Jewish Diaspora community seem to have gone berserk and are ‎fueling anti-Semitism.‎

Nobody suggests that Jews should not be entitled, like all American citizens, to engage in ‎the political activity of their choice. As individuals, they may support or bitterly criticize their president, but as leaders of mainstream religious and communal organizations, they ‎are obliged, as in the past, to assiduously avoid being perceived as promoting partisan political ‎positions.‎

What has taken place in leading mainstream American Jewish organizations during and since ‎the November 2016 presidential election can only be described as a self-induced collective breakdown. What might have ‎been regarded as a temporary aberration has in fact intensified in recent weeks. ‎

Let us set aside the fact that many of these liberal Jewish organizations have also distanced ‎themselves from or even abandoned Israel. They have done so even though the administration under President Donald Trump ‎has the potential to restore the U.S.-Israel alliance that former President Barack ‎Obama undermined in a vain effort to appease Muslims. It is also clear that, for many ‎assimilated liberal Jews, Israel is no longer a priority, especially now that ‎Trump has signaled his intention to renew the alliance. ‎

The fact is that liberal Jewish leaders have declared a hysterical war against the Trump ‎administration. Led initially by the Anti-Defamation League but rapidly joined by the Reform ‎and Conservative wings of the Jewish community, many Jewish community leaders have ‎exploited their positions to endorse a vicious campaign in which Trump is portrayed as a ‎satanic anti-Semite promoting fascism and racism, representing the antithesis of Jewish values. ‎This, despite the reality that his presidency highlights an unprecedented acceptance of Jews at ‎the highest levels of government.‎

Headed by CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, a former Obama staffer, the ADL initiated its campaign ‎during the elections by effectively echoing the far-left J Street. It accused Trump of tolerating ‎and encouraging anti-Semitism and white supremacy and engaging in Islamophobia. ‎Greenblatt went so far as to proudly announce that if immigration restrictions weighed against ‎Muslims, he would proclaim himself a Muslim, and called on Jews to do likewise.‎

At the same time, some progressive rabbis, usually without a mandate from their constituency, ‎organized fasts and days of mourning in their synagogues and, donning prayer shawls and ‎kippot, paraded at the forefront of anti-Trump demonstrations that vulgarly undermined ‎the presidency, emphasizing that their political stance was a product of their religious Jewish ‎values.‎

Furthermore, they supported and participated in demonstrations led and hijacked by vicious ‎anti-Israel Muslim activists such as Linda Sarsour and even convicted Palestinian terrorist ‎Rasmea Odeh. In a similar vein, the ADL continues to promote Black Lives Matter, despite its ‎hatred of Israel and support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.‎

The constant false accusations of anti-Semitism were highlighted by the biased liberal media ‎emboldening right-wing degenerates who were provided with enormous exposure. This ‎created a perception of a sudden rise in radical right anti-Semitism.‎

There has been a huge flurry of anti-Semitic outbursts in social media. Jewish organizations ‎have been plagued with bomb threats and several cemeteries were desecrated.‎

The media highlighted these developments and many Jews panicked, in the belief that this was ‎evidence of a dramatic increase in anti-Semitism, and accepted the false allegation that this ‎was a Trump factor. Last week, Greenblatt made the preposterous statement ‎that Trump had “emboldened” anti-Semites and encouraged acts of terror in his own country.‎

Fortunately, to date, not a single Jew has been harmed. It takes only a few fanatical scoundrels ‎to ignite a flow of anti-Semitic tweets and social media activity. It takes only a handful to ‎telephone bomb threats to Jewish organizations. The campaign to blame Trump and accuse ‎him of indifference to anti-Jewish agitation is simply nonsensical.‎

It is also noteworthy that the first person arrested for having made numerous bomb threats ‎was no right-wing extremist but an African-American notorious for his tweets against “white ‎people” and “white media.”‎

Alas, the reality is that in promoting their personal political agendas and vulgarizing and ‎demonizing Trump while posing as Jews motivated by religious principles, these liberal Jewish Americans are ‎hypocritically exploiting their leadership positions and fueling anti-Semitism. ‎

This becomes even more stark in contrast to the eight years of Obama’s administration, during ‎which not a single condemnation was uttered against the outrageously biased statements in ‎relation to Israel. Obama’s repeated statements attributing moral equivalence to Israeli ‎defenders and Palestinian terrorists, his accusations of disproportionate Israeli responses to ‎terrorism, and his refusal to condemn the Iranians as they repeatedly vowed to wipe Israel off ‎the map, were all ignored. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was treated ‎despicably in Washington while Obama was groveling to the Iranian terrorists. ‎

There is no distinction between anti-Semitism of the Right and Left and the forces of bigotry ‎that are mushrooming globally, including within the U.S., albeit the most tolerant nation in the ‎world in relation to Jews.‎

The reality is that today the prime global anti-Semitic threat emanates not from neo-Nazis but ‎from the witches’ brew of far-left and Muslim anti-Jewish incitement that has transformed ‎many American university campuses into hotbeds of anti-Semitism. Jewish students are being ‎intimidated and pro-Israel speakers denied the opportunity to make their case. This has ‎worsened in recent years and today represents the central source of anti-Semitic ‎agitation in the U.S. Where are the shrill voices against this manifestation of anti-Semitism ‎from those who blame Trump for anti-Semitic threats? Greenblatt opposed the ‎legislation against anti-Israel boycotts, insisting that some of their promoters still loved Israel and should not be ‎condemned.‎

A large proportion of Trump supporters are Christian evangelicals whose passionate support ‎for Israel more than compensates for liberal Jews who are more concerned about Muslims, a ‎substantial proportion of whom hate and would kill Jews, endorse jihadism and support the ‎destruction of the Jewish state. Obviously, witnessing Jews purporting to be upholding Jewish ‎values by engaging directly in the demonization of their president must outrage them.‎

It is surely time now for responsible Jewish leaders to intervene and condemn this distortion of ‎Judaism, making it clear that these liberal officials and rabbis have no mandate to speak on ‎behalf of the Jewish community and are simply promoting their personal political agendas.‎

The Zionist Organization of America and some Orthodox Jewish groups are trying to dispel the ‎perception that these attacks on Trump are officially Jewish-sponsored. To his credit, Abe ‎Foxman, himself a liberal who headed the ADL for three decades prior to Greenblatt, urged ‎Jewish leaders to “cool it” and emphasized that “Trump is not an anti-Semite.” He warned that the ‎issue “has been hijacked politically by Democrats who have made it a political issue to attack ‎Trump,” though he also noted that “Republicans made it a political issue to defend him.” His ‎conclusion: “The whole issue has become a political football and that doesn’t serve us.”‎

It is sad and ironic that the decline of the most affluent and successful community will have ‎been engineered by some of its leaders who, in their fanatical liberal zeal, exploited their ‎Judaism and Jewish affiliations to advance a partisan political agenda. Unless this tide of official ‎Jewish anti-Trump demonization is reversed or halted, there will be major long-term negative ‎ramifications on the standing and influence of the American Jewish community.‎

Isi Leibler’s website can be viewed at http://www.wordfromjerusalem.com. He may be contacted at ileibler@leibler.com.

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Trump’s envoy to Abu Mazen: Crack down on terror

Posted March 16, 2017 by Joseph Wouk
Categories: Uncategorized

Source: Trump’s envoy to Abu Mazen: Crack down on terror

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 16, 2017, 9:45 AM (IDT)

US President Donald Trump and his Middle East peace envoy Jason Greenblatt this week engaged two Arab royals for their opening shots at restarting peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. 
Saudi Defense Minister Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was received at the White House, while Jordan’s King Abdullah II saw Greenblatt in Amman. Both were shown the list of demands the US envoy had handed Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), when he visited in Ramallah on Tuesday, March 14.

The two tracks accentuated the broad Arab-based regional character of the Trump administration’s peace initiative, in contrast to the narrow, bilateral effort which Secretary of State John Kerry working on behalf of President Barack Obama ran into the ground.

Thursday, March 16, the Trump envoy returns to Jerusalem for a summing up of his mission with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

In an exclusive report, debkafile first reveals here the substance of the tough terms presented to Mahmoud Abbas for the US to consent to broker negotiations for a resolution of the decades-long conflict.

1. The Palestinians must return to the negotiating table without pre-conditions – an immovable sticking point until now.

2. Over and above US intervention in the peace process, the Palestinians must also accept a role for leading Arab governments – specifically, Egypt, Saudi, Arabia, Jordan and Arab oil emirates. This is a bitter pill for Abbas to swallow, since none of the four leaders can tolerate him.

On the same day as the Trump envoy’s visit to Ramallah, a conference of the Palestinian leader’s opponents took place in Paris. It was set up by Abu Mazen’s arch-foe, the exiled Fatah activist Muhammad Dahlan. Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah accused Abu Dhabi ruler Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyran of putting up the one-million euros to pay for the event.

3. Abbas must forget about a moratorium on Jewish settlements on the West Bank – although a former Netanyahu government accepted a 10-month freeze. At most, Israel would hold back from establishing new communities in Judea and Samaria during the course of the negotiations.

4. The Trump administration will not be satisfied with verbal statements by Palestinian leaders condemning acts of terror, but insists on aggressive practical steps: Palestinian media must stop broadcasting anti-Israel materials, Palestinian school curricula must be purged of hate Israel propaganda, and the PA must give up naming streets and squares after dead terrorists, thereby treating them as martyrs to a holy cause.
5. The revolving door for captured terrorist suspects must be replaced with proper investigations. Suspects must be held and closely questioned to discover who gave them their orders, name their accomplices and reveal the source of their weapons and explosives, before going on trial.

6. The Palestinian authority must discontinue the custom of remittances to the families of terrorists who were killed or imprisoned, a practice that confers honor on their deeds.

7. Palestinian security forces must be radically overhauled, mainly to end the pervasive practice of moonlighting, whereby uniformed members hold down two jobs and draw two salaries.

8. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah must stop transferring funds to the Gaza Strip, which serve to bolster the regime of the extremist Hamas rulers. The sums transferred draw off 52 percent of the PA’s total budget.

9. The Trump administration supports a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Analysis: Like Israel, Saudis pinning hopes on Trump

Posted March 16, 2017 by Joseph Wouk
Categories: Uncategorized

Source: Analysis: Like Israel, Saudis pinning hopes on Trump – Middle East – Jerusalem Post

By
March 16, 2017 07:11

The meeting between Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman and Trump was billed by the Saudis as a turning point in relations.

Donald Trump Saudi Prince

 US President Donald Trump and Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman take their seats for lunch in the State Dining Room of the White House. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Saudi officials were so ebullient about a meeting at the White House between Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman and Donald Trump Tuesday that they praised the US president as a “true friend of Muslims who will serve the Muslim world in an unimaginable manner.”

The meeting with Trump was billed by the Saudis as a turning point in relations.

“Relations had undergone a period of differences of opinion. However, today’s meeting has put things on the right track, and marked a significant shift in relations across all political, military, security and economic fields,” a senior adviser to the deputy crown prince told Bloomberg. He added: “All of this is due to President Trump’s great understanding of the importance of relations and his clear sight of the problems in the region.”

While Trump is unpopular in much of the world, he has already gained the admiration of Saudi officials for his administration’s pugnacious stance toward Iran, Riyadh’s rival for regional primacy and main threat. The hopes are that he will reverse policies of the Obama administration seen by Riyadh as undermining its regional standing and boosting the influence of Iran. In particular, the 2015 nuclear deal raised Saudi fears that Washington was pursuing rapprochement with Tehran at its expense.

“The Saudis want from Trump a much more confrontational, harder line on Iran’s interference in Arab affairs, whether in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq or anywhere else in the Arab world,” said Brandon Friedman, a research fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Dayan Center for Middle East Studies. “The Saudis biggest concern is the way Iran gets power beyond its borders, and anything Trump does to push back on that Iranian behavior is what the Saudis are looking for.”

Under Obama, there had been a sense among the Saudis that the US at times projected weakness, as when the president failed in 2013 to keep a vow to respond militarily if the Assad regime used chemical weapons. But above and beyond that, the Saudis felt they were not being treated in accordance with their geopolitical importance.

“There was a lack of the trust, confidence and intimacy there had been before Obama, and the US administration flirted so much with Iran. Obama seemed really soft on Iran, and that irked the Saudis,” said Gabriel Ben-Dor, a Middle East specialist at the University of Haifa.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir highlighted the Iranian threat during a speech last month at the Munich Security Conference, saying Tehran was trying to destroy Saudi Arabia and constitutes “the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.” Its subversion, he said, could be found across the region: shipping missiles to Houthi rebels in Yemen, backing Shi’a militias to support Bashar Assad and planting terrorist cells in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.”

What has been so reassuring to the Saudis and what is raising hopes for a honeymoon with Washington is that the Trump administration is casting Iran in a similar light. On February 2, then-national security adviser Michael Flynn said he was “putting Iran on notice,” in reaction to an Iranian missile test and an attack on a Saudi warship by Houthi rebels in Yemen. And new sanctions were quickly slapped on Iran over the missile test. Trump has termed Iran “No. 1 in terror,” and Secretary of Defense James Mattis used the same description as Jubeir, calling Iran “the biggest sponsor of state terror.”

“The president and the deputy crown prince share the same views on the gravity of the Iranian expansionist moves in the region,” said the senior adviser to the deputy crown prince after Tuesday’s meeting.

In the view of Joshua Teitelbaum, professor in the department of Middle East Studies at Bar-Ilan University, the Saudis are pinning hopes on Trump, just like Israel is.

“Even though Israel and Saudi Arabia still don’t know exactly where Trump is going, the sense is that Trump sees things more similarly to how Israel and Saudi Arabia see it. Obama wanted to have a balance between Sunnis and Shi’ites. His idea was there are Sunni terrorists and Shi’ite terrorists, and there is no reason to support one over the other. The Saudis saw this as a pro-Iranian shift. Meanwhile, Israel saw the administration acknowledging Iranian power in the region and viewing Iran is a regional power equal to Saudi Arabia. The expectation of Israel and Saudi Arabia is that now things will go back to seeing Israel and Saudi Arabia as the main powers in the region and not Iran.”

But even with a new closening of US-Saudi ties, Ben-Dor does not believe the Saudis would respond positively to any US prodding that they take steps to engage in a public relationship with Israel, because doing so would provoke public opinion against the regime.

“Relations with Israel will continue to be surreptitious, and Saudi involvement in any major regional conference will be conditional on the centrality of the Palestinian issue,” he said.

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There’s An Emerging ‘Alt-Jihad’ Movement In The U.S. – But It’s Not Muslims Who Are Pushing It…

Posted March 15, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Alt-Jihad, Islamists vs Islam, Muslim Reform Movement, Zuhdi Jasser
Tags: , , ,

There’s An Emerging ‘Alt-Jihad’ Movement In The U.S. – But It’s Not Muslims Who Are Pushing It…,  independent Journal Review, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, March 15, 2017

(Please see also, Is Muslim Reform Even Possible? — DM)

Getty – MAHMUD HAMS

The alt-jihad consists of non-Muslims who refuse to leave room for even the remote possibility of branding Islam and any faithful Muslims into modernity. The alt-jihad is simple, simplistic, self-serving and dangerous. It attempts to deny Muslim dissidents any space, hope, or support whatsoever we so urgently need to make headway. Their parroting of Islamist tyrannical rhetoric and their slash-and-burn approach only strengthens the hold Islamist extremists have on Muslim communities.

[T]he alt-jihad does not care about solutions, especially those advocating American ideas against theocracy within the House of Islam. The alt-jihad does not care about advocating American ideas for the freedom and liberation of secular movements across the planet (the only real allies of the US) that separate mosque and state. No. It’s only about convincing the rest of America and the West that the entire religion of Islam is the monolithic problem and there is no viable path within towards modernity.

No different from the useful idiocy of Islamist apologists who choose willful blindness, the alt-jihad are useful idiots for Islamist jihadists who also view Islam as one interpretation and true Muslims as only sharia supremacists. The alt-jihad is another willfully blind dead-end.

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

The “alt-right” and the “alt-left” are recent terms to describe extreme sides of the political spectrum. While the members of the “alt-“ movements may feel comfortable trying to attach themselves to other travelers on the right and left, most members of the traditional conservative and liberal spectrum reject the extreme un-American nature of the alt-movements.

The insidious, myopic, and extreme nature of one movement in particular has inspired me to coin a new term: the “alt-Jihad.”

Everyone knows the “jihad” of violent and Islamist supremacism. Jihadists are those who advocate the establishment of a caliphate, or any so-called “Islamic state,” via violent or nonviolent (but no less supremacist) means.

The Muslim community worldwide is comprised of 1.6 billion individuals, each with their own relationship to the faith. There are those Muslims who subscribe to the forms of global jihadism of the 56 Islamic states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Most people understand that while they may be a plurality of Muslims, they are a minority. The rest of us – the vast majority – reject it.

The ideological divisions are far more complicated and to that end, I was recently interviewed in the Federalist: “A Muslim Reformer Speaks about his Battle Against Islamism and PC.” Steve Postal interviewed me to commemorate the one year anniversary of the founding of the Muslim Reform Movement. Our declaration is a must read for Americans who seek to find ways to ideologically discern which Muslims share our American values and are working with us versus those who are Islamists.

Most Americans have long known the American ‘petro-Islamic’ establishment who have long been the “useful idiots for Islamism” who “willfully blind” themselves to the evils of Islamism in the name of progressive politics. Sen. Ted Cruz had hearings on this “willful blindness” last year.

A deceptively similar yet polar opposite (alt-side) is the willful blindness of the ‘alt-jihadists.’ Alt-jihadists support, empower, flaunt, and legitimize Islamist radicals and their leaders by branding all Muslims and all Islam as one and the same, and deeming us all to be enemies of freedom.

Alt-jihadists are non-Muslim thought leaders who are defined by two characteristics. Regardless of their intentions, first, they view Islam as a terminal monolith, a supremacist political ideology leaving no room for a distinction between the faith of Islam and Islamism. Second, they universally dismiss and vilify anti-Islamist reformers not as Uncle Toms but essentially similarly calling them “liars” and “illegitimate.” Alt-jihadists take it upon themselves to excommunicate anti-Islamists reformers from their monolithic version of Islam.

These two characteristics, like the apologists, only end up serving entrenching the global jihad and its Islamist monopoly from which the alt-jihadists claim to want to save the world.

The alt-jihad consists of non-Muslims who refuse to leave room for even the remote possibility of branding Islam and any faithful Muslims into modernity. The alt-jihad is simple, simplistic, self-serving and dangerous. It attempts to deny Muslim dissidents any space, hope, or support whatsoever we so urgently need to make headway. Their parroting of Islamist tyrannical rhetoric and their slash-and-burn approach only strengthens the hold Islamist extremists have on Muslim communities.

The alt-jihad does not sincerely seek for Muslims to find solutions to the problems plaguing our communities, but rather seeks the containment, if not the elimination, of Islam as a faith. Some even seem to advocate that this happen “by any means necessary.” For the alt-jihad, there is no hope for modernization of Islam – there are terrorist Muslims, and terrorist Muslims-in-waiting.

In the past few weeks the alt-jihad criticism of our work has spiked. Is something afoot? Stephen Kirby penned this for Robert Spencer’s JihadWatch.org: “Muslim Reform Group reached out to 3,000 US Mosques, got only 40 responses.” Kirby is the head of the Act for America Des Moines Chapter, and like Carl Goldberg here in Arizona, has long trolled our work, blindly striking us at the knees whenever possible.

Among many deceptive missives he wrote this patronizing fatwa (legal ruling) from his own quasi “sharia court:”

But I would like to save the Muslim Reform Movement (MRM) time and non-Muslims money. Instead of a new study on why the MRM has virtually no Muslim support, I will provide the answer: in terms of Islamic doctrine, the MRM declaration is blasphemous, and the MRM should not be surprised that over 99% of the larger Muslim community does not want to join in with that blasphemy.

It is only attention from the non-Muslim world that will enable the Muslim Reform Movement to remain on life-support, visible but irrelevant.

There you have it. With the strike of a few keystrokes from a comfortable bunker in that Iowa haven of anti-Muslim engagement, Kirby rendered his fatwa. His like-minded echo chamber across the blogosphere has since reposted these words of mass destruction and dancing gleefully on our grave.

That was not from the propaganda arm of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s PressTV, or Qatar’s and the Muslim Brotherhood’s AlJazeera, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan’s state TV, nor the propaganda of American Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups – it was from the alt-jihad.

Kirby was only to be then echoed by the fatwas of Diana West at the Daily Caller (Islam Catastrophe Continues), John Guandolo at UTT  (Unfit for Duty), and Militant Islam Monitor to name but a few in the metaphorical Alt-Jihadi Shura council. Their primary target was hit pieces on Sebastian Gorka, but why pass an opportunity to collaterally eulogize Muslim reformists? Therein alt-Jihadists declared the Muslim Reform Movement “an abject failure”, “utter nonsense” and “a personal fantasy Islam.”

The alt-jihadists malignantly took one fact about the poor response we received from American mosques and willfully disregarded the rest of the interview and the body of our 13 years of work at the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) and the new Muslim Reform Movement. Instead of honestly dissecting strategic position papers like this one: Fighting for Victory against Islamism: A Blueprint for how the West can Counter Islamist Tyranny, the alt-jihadists trip over themselves to dance on the graves of Muslim dissidents.

Beyond being destructive, the entire premise of the alt-jihad is absurd: we put out our challenge to the self-appointed leaders of the community to prove that it’s true that the vast majority of the Islamic establishment would not sign our declaration. We’ve been saying essentially that since our founding. Our effort was another public demonstration of that fact, with a new way to demonstrate it to the broader Muslim community, who are now able to see which principles their self-appointed leaders refuse to sign on to.

We admit the majority have been asleep. The alt-jihad claims in an un-American blindness to the anti-theocrats that we have no oxygen to breathe in the House of Islam.

This didn’t start this month. Alt-jihadists declared our reform movement dead on arrival at our outset in December 2015, much as they did over ten years ago with AIFD when we launched. Kirby had issued his fatwa declaring our “still-birth” days after our first press conference in December 2015: The Muslim Reform Movement plays Fantasy Islam. His Wahhabi sharia court “welcomed his readers to a personal version of Islam that had nothing to do with Islam”.

Classic alt-jihadism. The alt-jihadists have for years invoked takfirism (excommunication) against our work. But who needs an Iranian or Saudi Islamist Supreme Council of Inquisition when we have Stephen Kirby (July 2015, Dec 2015), Diana West (2012), Robert Spencer, and others to dismiss reformist dissenters inside the House of Islam as illegitimate Muslims?

But really. What brilliance and foresight does it take to defeat a nascent dissident reform movement by declaring it DOA? The alt-jihadi cabal’s arguments are not bolstered by their own strongly held Islamic interpretations, exegesis, and beliefs but rather by simply conveniently parroting the tyrannical dogma of their favorite Islamist theocrats. After I initially debated Stephen Kirby in Omaha, he went on to write the “the Lure of Fantasy Islam.” The archetypal alt-jihadist, he dismisses my own knowledge of Arabic, Qur’an, and Hadith, and instead with no rationale just regurgitates irrelevant fatwas of salafi-jihadis.

We offer theological deconstructions of Salafi-jihadi arguments and the alt-jihad’s only response is to channel the scoffing of the Islamist establishment.

There is far more than one interpretation of Islam. Our belief is that the future of freedom depends upon the victory of the Muslim Reform Movement over Islamists. And as I stated in the Federalist, Muslim interpretations of Islam cannot ever be reformed under the boots of tyrannical regimes across the 56 OIC Muslim majority nations who torture and assassinate dissidents.

But the alt-jihad does not care about solutions, especially those advocating American ideas against theocracy within the House of Islam. The alt-jihad does not care about advocating American ideas for the freedom and liberation of secular movements across the planet (the only real allies of the US) that separate mosque and state. No. It’s only about convincing the rest of America and the West that the entire religion of Islam is the monolithic problem and there is no viable path within towards modernity.

In fact, if the OIC had sought to create both, Orwellian foils and promoters of their own global supremacist form of the Islam of their sharia states, the alt-jihadists would be it. My attempts to graciously address the “concerns” of the alt-jihad are not new. I’ve engaged Robert Spencer in a debate on his conclusions regarding the Prophet Muhammad and Islam in 2010. Pamela Geller also ruled in her fatwa that I practice my own “Private Islam.” As I said in my response to similar dismissals from Pamela Geller’s in 2011, one of her numerous lies exposed was that I was “kicked out of my mosque.” Then she doubled down and I was somehow “kicked out of his mosque twice.”m I was never kicked out and never said I was. The fact they intentionally ignore is how I actually publicly took on the leadership of our mosque here: “I was bullied for criticizing Hamas.”

Alt-jihadists live in a world where truth and intellectual credibility are optional. They have one purpose: to obstruct any hope or path towards a solution within the House of Islam.

Despite the now over 14 Muslim leaders in the US, Canada, and Europe that launched our diverse Muslim Reform Movement and their diverse followings, the alt-jihad waits to impugn motives, declare us liars, or declare themselves more informed about Islam – much like the playbook of every OIC tyrant and government paid Islamist cleric across the planet would also do. But they are the traditional global jihad.

The wind beneath the sails of the traditional global jihad is the alt-jihad.

Lastly, make no mistake. The opinions of alt-jihadists are free speech. But their disagreements with us reformers are neither professional, respectful, nor hopeful of our space within the faith. They are only dismissive. Defeatist. Islamist. Exactly how the Saudi government, Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, or Khomeinists scoff at Muslim thinkers and reformers as “un-Islamic,” the alt-jihad does the same. Their work never sees the hope of our reforms for the possible synergy of secularism with our interpretations of Islam. Instead, they empower the Islamist establishment.

It is actually rather bizarre that their like-minded ideological bedfellows in takfir (the declaration of another Muslim as not being ‘Muslim’ or ‘Muslim enough’ in their behavior or ideas) are the Islamist supremacists. They seem to have all the conclusions and answers about who is and who is not a legitimate Muslim thinker.

Alt-jihadism at its core is takfirism by any other name.

No different from the useful idiocy of Islamist apologists who choose willful blindness, the alt-jihad are useful idiots for Islamist jihadists who also view Islam as one interpretation and true Muslims as only sharia supremacists. The alt-jihad is another willfully blind dead-end.

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