UN Human Rights head: Trump Policies Might Breach International Law

Posted March 13, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Hypocrisy, Jordanian human rights, Trump's America, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Tags: , , ,

UN Human Rights head: Trump Policies Might Breach International Law, Front Page Magazine, Joseph Klein, March 13, 2017

Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, a Jordanian, assumed his functions as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on September 1, 2014. He has recently been obsessed with criticizing the Trump administration for a variety of alleged human rights sins. Considering the sorry human rights record in his home country of Jordan, Zeid Hussein’s obsession smacks of utter hypocrisy. His charges are also baseless.

In a speech that Zeid Al Hussein delivered in Geneva on March 8th, he had this to say about the Trump administration:

In the United States of America, I am concerned by the new Administration’s handling of a number of human rights issues. Greater and more consistent leadership is needed to address the recent surge in discrimination, anti-Semitism, and violence against ethnic and religious minorities. Vilification of entire groups such as Mexicans and Muslims, and false claims that migrants commit more crimes than US citizens, are harmful and fuel xenophobic abuses. I am dismayed at attempts by the President to intimidate or undermine journalists and judges. I am also concerned about new immigration policies that ban admission of people from six predominantly Muslim countries for 90 days, as well as policies which greatly expand the number of migrants at immediate risk of deportation – without regard for years spent in the US or family roots. These threaten to vastly increase use of detention, including of children. Expedited deportations could amount to collective expulsions and refoulement, in breach of international law, if undertaken without due process guarantees, including individual assessment. I am especially disturbed by the potential impact of these changes on children, who face being detained, or may see their families torn apart.

The charges are baseless. There is no surge in discrimination, anti-Semitism, or violence against ethnic and religious minorities in the United States attributable to President Trump. For example, between 2009 and 2015, the period for which there is comprehensive data while Barack Obama was president, the overall number of anti-Semitic attacks exceeded 7,000. As columnist and features writer for The Jerusalem Post, Seth Frantzman, wrote earlier this month in the Algemeiner, “there were threats every day against Jews and Jewish institutions over the last eight years and most of them did not receive headlines.” Where was Zeid Al Hussein while those threats and attacks were happening? Has he suddenly woken up from a slumber to discover a sudden surge of anti-Semitism for the first time since President Trump took office?

Every country, including the United States, has the inherent sovereign right to control entry through its borders. President Trump is simply enforcing the existing immigration laws, which it is his constitutional duty to faithfully execute. Illegal immigrants make up approximately 3.5 percent of the U.S.’s total population. Contrary to Zeid Al Hussein’s unsubstantiated opinion, illegal aliens living in the United States have committed a significant number of serious crimes while residing in the United States unlawfully in the first place. According to data compiled from the U.S. Sentencing Commission for fiscal year 2015, illegal immigrants were responsible for 30.2 percent of convictions for kidnapping/hostage taking, 17.8 percent of convictions for drug trafficking, 11.6 percent of convictions for fraud, 10.4 percent of convictions for money laundering, 6.1 percent of convictions for assault, and 5.5 percent of convictions for murder.

Deterring illegal immigration to provide better security for the American people does not prevent immigrants from seeking admission to the United States through legal channels.

Similarly, Zeid Al Hussein falsely characterized as anti-Muslim President Trump’s temporary suspension of entry to the United States of refugees world-wide, and entry of visitors from six terrorist-prone countries who do not have green cards or previously issued visas. The president of the United States, acting under explicit federal statutory authority, temporarily suspended entry of such visitors – Muslim and non-Muslim – from only six Muslim-majority countries out of 56 member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, because he determined that step as necessary to protect the American people. Apparently, the UN Human Rights Commissioner and other opponents of President Trump’s executive order believe that foreigners from any country seeking to enter the United States for any reason, no matter what the circumstances in their home country affecting U.S. national security, should have an absolute right favoring their entry that overrides national security considerations. Sorry, but countries still get to decide how best to protect their citizens, not an unelected UN bureaucrat.

Moreover, Zeid Al Hussein’s attacks on the Trump administration’s human rights record displayed his sheer hypocrisy. He did not mention Sudan once in his March 8th speech. Cuba also got a pass. Russia got off with a slap on the wrist. Zeid Al Hussein devoted only a few words criticizing North Korea, which he balanced out with praise for its “accession to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.” North Korean citizens are literally starving to death, while the regime continues to pursue its nuclear arms program in violation of UN Security council resolutions, and this is all that this pretender for the position of High Commissioner for Human Rights can say about the most repressive regime in the world today?

When it came to Zeid Al Hussein’s own country of Jordan, he mentioned it only once in his speech. Jordan was one of a list of countries he said were retreating from their commitments to impose a moratorium on use of the death penalty.

Let’s fill in a few details that Zeid Al Hussein neglected to mention about his home country while he was so busy trashing the Trump administration. In the World Value Survey of social attitudes in different countries taken several years ago, Jordan was listed as one of the five most racially intolerant countries in the world.

As for dealing with anti-Semitism, some Jordanian officials have fanned the flames. For example, two Jordanian MPs went on national television to praise perpetrators of a Jerusalem synagogue attack, whom had killed four Jewish worshippers, shortly after the massacre occurred in November 2014. One of the Jordanian MPs said, “Hating the Jews is a great honor for me and it makes me walk with my head high because they are worthy of hatred.” Jordanian Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour sent a letter of support to the families of the two Palestinian terrorists involved in the synagogue massacre.

Zeid Al Hussein assumed his office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on September 1, 2014.  Where were his public statements from his UN global platform denouncing his fellow Jordanians’ vile expressions of anti-Semitism?

In its October 2016 Freedom of the Press edition, Freedom House concluded that Jordan’s press freedom status was “not free.”  It noted the arrest of journalists during 2015 “in connection with their reporting on foreign affairs and their impact on Jordan.” Journalists were also subject to imprisonment for defamation charges. It is unlawful for online outlets to “insult the royal family,” or “harm ‘Arab-Islamic values.’” Yet Zeid Al Hussein could only muster dismay “at attempts by the President [Trump] to intimidate or undermine journalists”?

Jordan has taken in many refugees from Syria, to be sure, but there is a lack of legal protection for refugees in Jordan. Only 1% of Syrian refugees are said to have work permits. Refugee women and girls from Syria have been trafficked for sexual exploitation.

According to a 2015 report by the International Labor Organization, “Jordanian law makes limited references to asylum seekers and refugees.  Despite having the highest ratio of refugees to citizens in the world, Jordan has not signed the Refugee Convention of 1951 or its subsequent 1967 Protocol.  Several concerns are usually cited over Jordan’s non-signatory status, including…popular sentiment against refugee integration, lack of resources and capacity to provide for refugees, and misinformation about the perceived social and economic burden of refugees and related questions of national security.”

Jordan is reported to have sent some Syrian refugees back to Syria, violating the principle of non-refoulement that Zeid Al Hussein has accused the Trump administration of potentially violating.

Amnesty International has listed other serious human rights abuses it found in Jordan, including torture in detention centers which have led to the deaths of some detainees while in custody.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who comes to the UN from his glass house of Jordan, should not be throwing stones at the United States. And, considering the U.S.’s outsized contributions to his budget,  Zeid Al Hussein should not be biting the hand that has been feeding his bloated bureaucracy for too long.

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Before US whacks ISIS-Syria, Al Qaeda is resurgent

Posted March 13, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Al Qaeda, Islamic State, Raqqa, Trump and Syria, U.S. Military
Tags: , , , ,

Before US whacks ISIS-Syria, Al Qaeda is resurgent, DEBKAfile, March 13, 2017

After the breakup of defeated Syrian rebel groups, who were forced to leave the northern town and head for neighboring Idlib, hundreds of rebels remained and refused to lay down arms. Instead, they joined Al Qaeda and have made the Islamist terrorist group the most powerful independent rebel force still fighting in northern Syria as well as in the surrounding areas of the main towns, including Damascus, Homs and Hama.

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The main thrust of the campaign against the Islamic State in Syria ordered by the Trump administration is still ahead, but ISIS forces did not wait in their Raqqa stronghold for the axe to fall. They moved southeast into the Deir ez-Zour region, where they are beating back Hizballah’s elite Radwan Battalion, which has just been deployed there.

But meanwhile a new-old menace has raised its head: Al Qaeda and its Syrian affiliates which are seizing upon the mounting upheaval in the Syria for a fresh wave of terror. Saturday, March 11, two bomb explosions killed 74 pilgrims, most of them Iraqi Shiites, on a visit to an ancient cemetery in the Old City of Damascus. The second explosion was delayed so as to hit full on the Syrian police and rescuers rushing to the scene.

The same Al Qaeda branch planned and perpetrated the large-scale terrorist attack on Syrian government military facilities in the town of Homs on Feb. 25. Two generals were among the scores of dead troops.

Counterterrorism experts are warning US President Donald Trump to tread very carefully in the offensive he is preparing to launch against ISIS in Syria, since this organization’s defeat may well open the door to an Al Qaeda comeback in full and deadly spate to the Syrian arena.

This is what happened in the wake of the Russian-led Syrian victory in Aleppo in January, DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources note. After the breakup of defeated Syrian rebel groups, who were forced to leave the northern town and head for neighboring Idlib, hundreds of rebels remained and refused to lay down arms. Instead, they joined Al Qaeda and have made the Islamist terrorist group the most powerful independent rebel force still fighting in northern Syria as well as in the surrounding areas of the main towns, including Damascus, Homs and Hama.

On Jan. 26, Al Qaeda announced its merger with four smaller factions under another new brand name, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Liberation of the Levant Organization). The new outfit attracted many new recruits who had never before been attached to Al Qaeda.

Hashim al-Sheikh aka Abu Jabir, who fought the Americans in the Iraq war under Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, was named leader of the new Islamist terror alliance. Reputed to be a skilled war tactician who never gives up, his appointment attracted another wave of Syrian rebel fighters.

Al Nusra’s first commander, Abu Mohammad al-Joulani, has meanwhile reappeared as head of a group calling itself Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. Joulani has tried claiming he operates independently of Al Qaeda, although in fact he follows the orders of Ayman Al-Zawahiri to the letter and, according to some sources, is secretly working hand in glove with Hashim al-Sheikh.

An additional source of Al Qaeda’s renewed strength comes from the success of the combined Russian-Iranian-Hizballah forces to smash all the Syrian rebel groups who once fought the jihadist organization. Their disintegration has left Zawahiri’s following in Syria without effective adversaries. But it has Its Achilles heel too in the turf wars among the Syrian branch’s component groups – especially in the northern Idlib Province.

According to our military sources, the Russian, Syrian, Iranian and Hizballah commanders are together weighing an operation for taking control of Idlib. However, there too, if the Syrian rebels, who are fugitive from other fronts, are driven east or the south, Al Qaeda may again turn out to be the winner..

Therefore, even if President Trump and his generals are resolved to focus fully on a military operation to capture the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa – which has meanwhile emptied out of fighter – it is essential to detach enough fighting strength for dealing with the resurgent Al Qaeda. Failing to do so would leave the US forces at the Raqqa front vulnerable to attack from the rear by Al Qaeda, as the Russians and Iranians have found since they conquered Aleppo.

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In Iran, A Nationwide Teachers’ Demonstration

Posted March 13, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Iran - civil unrest, Iran - human rights, Iran - regime change, Iranian economy, Iranian resistance
Tags: , , , ,

In Iran, A Nationwide Teachers’ Demonstration, American Thinker, Hassan Mahmoudi, March 13, 2017

Amid ballistic missile tests by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and continued economic and political isolation, Iran’s domestic unrest is escalating.

Simultaneous protests of thousands of angry teachers in more than 22 cities broke out in Iran on Thursday, March 9. The nationwide teachers’ demonstration took place in Tehran, Mashhad, Bojnourd, Ferdows, Torbat-heidaria, Mazandaran, Sanandaj, Saqqez, Marivan, Qorveh, Tabriz, Ardebil, Zanjan, Shiraz, Bushehr, Isfahan, Kermanshah, Kangan, Dehgolan, Lordegan, Ahwaz and Aligudarz.

The demonstrators held a sit-in in front of the local branch of the ministry of education buildings, calling for their demands to be met. They chanted slogans against suppression, repression and plundering policies of the ruling mullahs in Iran. They were holding placards that read:  ‘Detained Teachers Must be Freed,’  ‘NO to Prison,’ ‘Teachers’ future must be secured.’ See the photo at right.

According to Iranian Opposition (MEK) report, in Tehran, more than 1,000 teachers, as well as the families of political prisoners, and staff from the Ministry of Education demonstrated in front of the Iranian regime’s parliament, demanding proper jobs and security.  In today’s teachers gathering, one of the security force members of parliament tried to confiscate the smartphone of one of the protestors in a provocative manner, but he was pushed back by the protestors.

In what was an act of bravery for the teachers in Esfahan, they chanted: ‘Teachers are ready to die but wouldn’t be bullied by the government.’ The photo is below.

In Shiraz, the protesting teachers sat at a table with no food on it, in a symbol of their poor economic condition. The problem is so bad many are severely suffering from food insecurity. They said they are unable to feed themselves or their children with the meager wages and salaries they are getting. They had placards that read: ‘Teachers must rise to end the discrimination and a petty monthly salary.’

In some cities, the special anti-riot guards had surrounded the protesting teachers, but the protestors ignored the intimidation and continued with their protest for hours. Passersby hailed the protestors and paid sympathy and tributes to them as they signaled their hatred of the regime.

The security forces prevented any passerby from stopping in the street. The protestors were holding placards that read: ‘We will not rest until we get our rights.’

Teachers in Sanandaj demanded an end to the rising instances of torture and the high number of executions of the mullahs’ government.

In Kermanshah, in southwestern Iran, the presence of female teachers was remarkable in the streets of that city. The suppressive security forces were trying to prevent the demonstration but failed miserably. The protestors continued to protest there and had placards that read: ‘Discrimination and inequality must end.’ ‘We are crying out of poverty and frustrated of discrimination’,

In their final statement, the protestors condemned the exiles and expulsions of teachers for teaching and speaking out, and demanded the freedom of teachers, especially the freedom of Mr. Baghani who is a known teacher in Kermanshah.

In Ardebil, northwestern Iran, the protesting teachers were chanting: ‘Teachers are willing to die but not to submit to discrimination.’ They demanded unpaid wages and benefits.

According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) roundup report of February 2017 on the teachers’ protests, there were 13 protests classified as cultural. Statistics for the month showed a slight increase from January.

Protests were over the lack of salary increases, lack of equalization of retirement wages and lack of formal employment. Also, a group of teachers published a text about the prosecution of Jafar Azim Zadeh. Teachers who retired in 2016 gathered in front of parliament to demand their 30-year employment bonus.

Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, in her last statement regarding the teachers’ protest “hailed the noble teachers who have staged protest gatherings in various parts of the country to attain their lawful rights and to protest the oppressive and criminal measures by the mullahs’ regime. She called on the nation, especially the students and their parents and the youth throughout the country to support and express solidarity with teachers.

Rajavi said: In circumstances where the clerical regime spends most of the Iranian people’s wealth on suppression, export of terrorism, the massacre of peoples in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon, the bottomless and anti-patriotic nuclear projects, or which funnels this wealth to the bank accounts of regime’s leaders and their families, the hard-working and noble teachers of the country that play the greatest role in building the future of Iran are living in poverty and face the most hardship in their lives.”

 

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Intel snaps up Israeli Mobileye for $14.9 billion

Posted March 13, 2017 by Peter Hofman
Categories: Uncategorized

In what is the most expensive acquisition of an Israeli high-tech company, the US chip giant Intel purchases Israeli company Mobileye for around $15 billion, paving its entry into the autonomous driving technology market; Netanyahu: ‘This deal proves that the vision we are leading is coming true.’

Reuters and Itamar Eichner|Published:  13.03.17 , 15:18

Source: Ynetnews Business – Intel snaps up Israeli Mobileye for $14.9 billion

US chip giant Intel has bought Israeli driverless technology firm Mobileye for a massive $14.9 billion, in what is considered to be the largest ever acquisition of an Israeli high-tech company.

 

 

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich officially stated that the deal, which is also noted for being the world’s biggest purchase of a company solely focused on the autonomous driving sector.

 

Mobileye’s stock surged 33 percent to $62.90 a share in premarket US trading on the reports.

 

Autonomous vehicle using Mobileye Technology

Autonomous vehicle using Mobileye Technology

 

The two companies are already collaborating with German automaker BMW on a project to put a fleet of around 40 self-driving test vehicles on the road in the second half of this year.

 

For a decade, Mobileye has relied on Franco-Italian chipmaker STMicroelectronics to produce chips which the Israeli company sells to many of the world’s top automakers for its current, third-generation of driver-assistance systems.

 

However, while it was working with BMW, Mobileye also teamed up with Intel for its fifth-generation of chips that aim to be used in fully autonomous vehicles and are scheduled to be delivered around 2021.

 

After the deal was officially announced, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Mobileye CEO Ziv Aviram and congratulated him on the deal, praising the transaction it a national pride.

 

“This deal proves that the vision we are leading is coming true. Israel is becoming an international technological powerhouse. Not only in regards to cyber, but in regards to vehicles as well,” said Netanyahu.

 

Aviram assured the PM that the Mobileye headquarters, along with its hundreds of jobs, will remain in Israel, and that the company also plans to establish an international development center in the country and to take responsibility for the entirety of Intel’s autonomous car project.

 

Ziv Aviram, Co-founder, President and CEO of Mobileye

Ziv Aviram, Co-founder, President and CEO of Mobileye

 

Founded in 1999, Mobileye made its mission to reduce vehicle injuries and fatalities. After receiving an investment of $130 million from Goldman Sachs in 2007, it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014. It has a market value of $10.6 billion.

 

Last October, Qualcomm announced a $47 billion deal to acquire NXP, the largest automotive chip supplier, putting pressure on other chipmakers seeking to make inroads into the market for autonomous driving components, including Intel, Mobileye and NVIDIA.

 

The Qualcomm-NXP deal, which will create the industry’s largest portfolio of sensors, networking and other elements vital to autonomous driving, is expected to close later in 2017, subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals.

 

Mobileye, which employs around 600 people, had adjusted net income of $173.3 million in 2016.

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Humor | Hundreds of ISIS fighters investigated for sharing photos of women’s uncovered faces

Posted March 13, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Humor, Islamic State, Sharia law
Tags: , ,

Hundreds of ISIS fighters investigated for sharing photos of women’s uncovered faces, Duffel Blog, March 13, 2017

ISIS representatives told reporters that all militants found to be involved in the scandal have been assigned a four-hour-long PowerPoint training on appropriate use of the Internet, while all women who were photographed have been summarily rounded-up and beheaded.

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RAQQA, Syria — A massive scandal has rocked the self-proclaimed Islamic State after reports surfaced revealing that many of the group’s fighters have been sharing scandalous photos of Muslim females in a secret Facebook group.

The Facebook group, called ‘ISIS United,’ boasts some 30,000 Islamic State fighters and sympathizers. At least one hundred members have used the group as a forum to post pictures of scantily-clad women wearing revealing hijabs instead of the more conservative burqas prescribed by strict Sharia Law.

“This is outrageous and will not be tolerated,” said Rasool ul Mulaahim, a spokesman for the Islamic State. “Not only do these photos show eyes, but also noses and mouths. Nothing has been left to the imagination.”

In the Islamic State, men are forbidden from gazing upon the faces of women unless they come into ownership of them by forcing them into an arranged marriage.

“It is sickening that some of our men are posting images of someone’s private property for the entire world to see,” said Mulaahim, “and even more sickening that these vile temptresses would allow themselves to be photographed wearing those slutty hijabs.”

Still, the group does have its defenders. Some militants who were part of the secret page have noted that it served as a support group for ISIS fighters, helping to urge many to commit a suicide bombing.

ISIS representatives told reporters that all militants found to be involved in the scandal have been assigned a four-hour-long PowerPoint training on appropriate use of the Internet, while all women who were photographed have been summarily rounded-up and beheaded.

“That will surely teach a lesson to those whores of Babylon,” said Mulaahim.

 

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IRGC-controlled Iraqi militia forms ‘Golan Liberation Brigade’

Posted March 13, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Arab nations, Golan, Iran and Syria, Iranian proxies, Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Iraqi militia Harakat al Nujaba, Israel, Israel and Syria, Israel borders, Israeli security
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

IRGC-controlled Iraqi militia forms ‘Golan Liberation Brigade’, Long War Journal, , March 12, 2017

(Please see also, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards now opposite Israeli troops on 1967 ceasefire line in Golan Heights — DM)

Photo 1: Harakat al Nujaba Golan Liberation Brigade, as portrayed in propaganda video.

The IRGC’s goals in southern Syria are to crush Syrian opposition forces, and build the capability to open another front against Israel. The IRGC hopes a viable Golan foothold would serve as deterrence against Israel and US, and that it could activate in a future conflict, such as another Israel-Hezbollah war. For now, the IDF’s fortified posture in the Golan remains a difficult, if not futile, target for the Guard and its allies. The IRGC nevertheless intends to project steadfast commitment to ideological principles and defiance of adversaries.

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The Iranian-controlled Iraqi militia Harakat al Nujaba this week announced the formation of its “Golan Liberation Brigade.” While it is not uncommon for entities to name themselves after areas they aim to “liberate,” the militia’s spokesman has said that the unit could assist the Syrian regime in taking the Golan Heights, a region in the Levant that has been controlled by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War.

If true, the unit would likely participate in a future offensive to capture territory from Syrian opposition in the part of the Golan Heights still controlled by Syria, before moving on to the much taller order of dislodging the Israelis across the border. This week’s announcement reflects Tehran’s priorities in southern Syria since finally taking the fiercely contested city of Aleppo late last year: crush Syrian opposition, and pose military threat to Israel from the Golan Heights. While the Islamic Republic is incapable of credibly challenging the Jewish state’s fortress in the Golan, reaffirming ideological commitment to fighting Israel signals defiance to a global audience amid a reportedly converging American-Arab-Israeli military alliance against Tehran.

Harakat al Nujaba, or Movement of the Noble, has sustained operations in the Syrian and Iraqi combat zones. An offshoot of the Iranian-backed militias Asaib Ahl al Haq and the Hezbollah Brigades, Harakat al Nujaba was formed in 2013 to fight in the Syrian Civil War as part of Iranian-led Iraqi expeditionary forces. The militia joined the Popular Mobilization Forces, the umbrella organization of Iraqi militia, the following year, after the Islamic State incursion into Iraq. Operating as one of the largest Iraqi-Shiite militia contingents in Syria, the militia has claimed to field 10,000 forces. Harakat al Nujaba played an important role in assisting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and pro-Syrian regime forces conquer Aleppo late last year.

The Iraqi militia functions as an extension of the Islamic Republic. Having sworn full allegiance to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the militia promotes velayat-e faqih (guardianship of jurisprudence), the Islamic Republic’s founding ideology. Harakat al Nujaba takes direct orders from Major General Qassem Soleimani, the chief of the IRGC extraterritorial branch the Qods Force. Last year, the Iraqi militia, which is also known as Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, proclaimed that it and Lebanese Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful foreign militia, were “the twins of resistance.”

The militia leader Akram al Kabi is close to the top Iranian leadership, including the supreme leader. A co-founder of the Asaib Ahl al Haq – itself an offshoot of the Mahdi Army – Kabi was designated in September 2008 by the US Treasury as a terrorist for aiding Iraqi insurgents. In 2015, he openly said he would depose the Iraqi government if Khamenei issued the order. Last year, top Iranian officials close to Khamenei gave Kabi a highly publicized reception in Tehran, unprecedented in scope and scale for a militia leader. This past December, Harakat al Nujaba publicized Kabi’s meeting with Khamenei on the sidelines of a conference in Tehran.

Harakat al Nujaba has divulged some details about the Golan Liberation Brigade. The commander of the militia’s forces in Syria released a statement declaring the unit to be a synthesis of combat experiences gained in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. The militia’s official spokesman confirmed the event as a press conference March 8 in Tehran at the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency, saying the unit was formed following “recent victories” (an implicit reference to Aleppo). He claimed the Golan unit is comprised of “special” forces.

“Should the Syrian government make the request, we are ready to participate in the liberation of occupied Golan with our allies,” the spokesman said. “We will not permit the soil of Arab countries to remain in the grasps of occupiers.”

Harakat al Nujaba also released a video promoting the Golan unit that showed fighters marching in columns and carrying a banner reading, “Israel will be destroyed.”

(The video is at the link. — DM)

Tehran’s goal of establishing a foothold in the Golan Heights is not a secret. Last year, the head of the Israeli foreign and defense legislative committee revealed without divulging details that Israel had repelled several Iran-directed attempts to move forces into Syrian Golan Heights.

Senior Iranian military commanders are known to operate in Syrian Golan. Last July, the then-commander of the IRGC Basij paramilitary publicized an inspection of Quneitra by the Israel border. In January 2015, an Israeli strike in the area killed several high-value targets including IRGC Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Allah-Dadi and multiple Hezbollah operatives.

A chasm remains between the capabilities and ambitions of Harakat al Nujaba and the IRGC to retake the Golan from Israel. The combined forces of the Syrian regime and IRGC-led militias are no match for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and this disparity is expected to hold for the foreseeable future. Israel could also adopt a more proactive approach in Syria to foil IRGC encroachment by the Golan, for example coordinating with Syrian rebels positioned in the area. Syrian Golan’s flat geography furthermore denies the IRGC suitable terrain to replicate the southern Lebanon model of concealing rocket launch sites dispersed across a widespread area, making it easier for the IDF to search and destroy weapons systems. For years, the IDF has been fortifying positions in the rocky plateau of Golan to face greater capabilities than the IRGC and its allies can muster.

Yet the claim to retake Israeli Golan underscores Harakat al Nujaba’s ideological commitment to the IRGC’s and Khamenei’s declared goal of destroying Israel. Khamenei and his top Guard generals have frequently spoken that that the divine hand would aid the faithful who take steps towards “divine-inspired” ideological principles.

Brandishing the formation of the Golan unit also challenges Arab countries on the Palestinian issue, as the Tehran has accused them of abandoning the cause in service of Israel. The Islamic Republic has slammed reported Arab-Israeli rapprochement and talks to form a US-brokered military coalition with the goal of countering Tehran, as covered in The Wall Street Journal. Last month, top Iranian government officials hosted another round of the Support of Palestinian Intifada Conference in a show of unity and defiance. This past week, Tehran’s interim Friday prayer leader this week excoriated “some leaders in Islamic countries who are with Zionists,” calling them “not human.” Suffering from loss of legitimacy over support of Syrian President Bashar al Assad against a Sunni-Arab uprising and nervous over a converging Israeli-Arab alliance, the Islamic Republic is projecting to the globe and “sell-out”Arab leaders a defiant commitment to fighting Israel.

The Iraqi militia’s Golan unit and IRGC-led expeditionary forces could help pro-Syrian regime forces take opposition-held areas in the south. In February 2015, IRGC-led forces launched a failed campaign in the Daraa and Quneitra in the south. Since conquering Aleppo last year, the IRGC-led expeditionary forces and other pro-Syrian regime forces have been able to redirect their dwindling assets to several fronts in north, central, and south Syria. Pro-regime forces backed by Russian air power have been pounding Daraa in the south for more than a month to slow an opposition offensive, and have recently launched a new bid to capture it. An IRGC colonel was also killed last month in the area. A pro-Syrian regime propaganda outlet late last month reaffirmed the government’s intention to retake all of Daraa and open a major border crossing with Jordan. Meanwhile, pro-regime forces have made progress in the northern pocket of Quneitra Governorate, located in the Syrian-controlled part of the Golan.

Map 1: southern Syria front, March 2017. Red: pro-Syrian regime forces. Green: rebel forces including Free Syrian Army and al Qaeda-affiliate Jabhat Fath al Sham. Black: Islamic State affiliates. Credit: Liveuamap.

The IRGC’s goals in southern Syria are to crush Syrian opposition forces, and build the capability to open another front against Israel. The IRGC hopes a viable Golan foothold would serve as deterrence against Israel and US, and that it could activate in a future conflict, such as another Israel-Hezbollah war. For now, the IDF’s fortified posture in the Golan remains a difficult, if not futile, target for the Guard and its allies. The IRGC nevertheless intends to  project steadfast commitment to ideological principles and defiance of adversaries.

Photo 2.
Photo 3: Harakat al Nujaba Golan Liberation Brigade flag at front, and “Israel will burn” banner in the back.

Amir Toumaj is a Research Analyst at Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

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American Jews and the Trump Administration

Posted March 12, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: 2016 elections, Democrat National Committee, Democrats and Israel, Jewish left in America, Trump agenda, Trump and Israel, Trump Derangement Syndrome
Tags: , , , , , ,

American Jews and the Trump Administration, The Jewish Press, Aviel Sheyin-Stevens, March 12, 2017


President Trump speaking to a joint session of Congress, Feb. 28, 2017

After the election of perhaps the most pro-Israel U.S. administration in history, American Jews seem to have lost the plot. When Donald Trump was elected president of the U.S., many Jews sat shiva to mourn Hillary Clinton’s defeat as if it was a death in the family, making religion out of politics. A number of Conservative and Reform synagogues held special mourning services to bewail the advent of fascism in America. One prominent Conservative rabbi in New York compared the Trump victory to the rise of Nazism prior to the Holocaust. The essence of politics is persuasion; not hysterics.

Trump repeatedly praises Israel and refers to Israel as America’s greatest ally. He has been closely associated with Jews in business and politics. His daughter observes an Orthodox religious lifestyle, after converting to Judaism. Apart from his family, his senior appointments include many Jews and staunch friends of Israel. He endorsed Israel’s position on defensible borders and stated that he has no objection to construction in the major settlement blocs and Jerusalem. He called on the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and stated that the only way to peace is by direct negotiations between both parties. He repudiated Obama’s criticism of Israel for failing to make progress in peace talks, and Obama’s application of moral equivalence between Israelis and Palestinians. He has begun to pressure the Iranians to adhere to their commitments to the treaty of catastrophe, and would terminate it for any violation by the Iranian terrorist regime.

One of the negative repercussions of the Trump victory is the growing influence of the radical anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party. The anti-Israel Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison, who was initially funded by the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations, is the deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee; supported by leading Jewish Senator Chuck Schumer. While, anti-Israel Jewish Senator Bernie Sanders emerged as a powerful force in the defeated radicalized Democratic Party.

The Jewish establishment ignored and pretended away the Democratic anti-Semites, even when they were burning Israeli flags at the Democratic convention. They condemned legitimate criticisms of anti-Israel financier George Soros as anti-Semitic while leaving unaddressed truly anti-Semitic assaults by Hillary backers on Trump donor Sheldon Adelson. Moreover, significant sectors of the Jewish community are falsely accusing the Trump administration of promoting anti-Semitism. It is noteworthy that the Zionist Organization of America protested against this partisan defamatory campaign.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) launched a scornful assault against Trump’s chief strategist, former Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon accusing him of being an anti-Semite, while ignoring Ellison’s record of anti-Semitism and support for Israel’s enemies, as well as Ellison’s ties to unindicted co-conspirators in funding Hamas. The accusation that Bannon is anti-Semitic is appalling on its face. Bannon is surrounded by Jews in his media company, Breitbart News, and is known for his fervent support for Israel, opposition to anti-Semitism, disapproval of anti-Israel activism on campuses, and condemnations of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of ADL, accused Bannon of being an anti-Semite who would pave the way for a return to anti-Semitism and white supremacy. In alleging that a friend of the Jews is a Jew hater while ignoring the actual anti-Semitism of another man, the ADL appears to be giving cover to the rising forces of anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party.

Greenblatt did not call for Jews to boycott the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement despite its anti-Semitism and promotion of BDS against Israel, and he referred approvingly to the “positive” aspects of its work. The use of the ADL, created to combat anti-Semitism, to promote Greenblatt’s partisan political agenda is scandalous.

Greenblatt had earlier used the ADL to condemn Republicans as “anti-Zionist” because they excluded a two-state solution in their Middle East policy platform. When Trump declined to dignify David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan by responding to their expressions of support for him, Greenblatt condemned him for “tolerating” anti-Semites. This contrasted with the muted response by Jewish liberals to Barack Obama’s relationship with various radical anti-Semites.

Obama has long-held close alliances with Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Rashid Khalidi, etc. Obama’s political career was launched in the house of the anti-Semite Ayers, a former leader of the Weather Underground, a left-wing terrorist organization that issued a “Declaration of a State of War” against the U.S. government. Obama attended Wright’s sermons with his family, and he officiated at Obama’s wedding and was appointed by him in 2007 to the African American Religious Leadership Committee. He only dissociated himself from Wright’s views after media exposure but refused to disown him personally, relating to him as “an old uncle.” No critic of Trump could suggest any comparable relationship with any identifiable anti-Semite.

Establishment anger over Trump’s weeks-old administration is growing. The mainstream global media, progressive activists, Democratic Party leaders, and many Republicans are essentially at war with him. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently compared his victory to disasters in American history that killed and wounded thousands like the Pearl Harbor bombing and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Some op-ed writers and pundits have openly hoped for his violent death. The progressive “Resistance” talks of removing the new president through impeachment, or even military coup. About one-third of House Democrats boycotted the Inauguration. Congressional Republicans ignore the Constitution, ignore the balance of powers, and ignore written law, while relinquishing their own constitutional authority allowing the courts to run American foreign policy, just to be a part of the establishment’s ‘Stop Trump’ movement.

After Trump had secured the Republican nomination, prominent Jewish conservative editors, like Bill Kristol and Jonah Goldberg, led the “Never Trump” movement. They betrayed the Republican Party, the American people, and Jews when they set out to undermine Trump, which could have elected the criminally challenged Hillary.

The sympathies of Hillary and Obama lie with the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization that launched the Arab drive to destroy Israel and push its Jews into the sea. If Hillary and Obama had their way, Egypt’s leader al-Sisi would be overthrown, the Brotherhood would be back in power, and Israel could be facing a threat from the biggest military power in the Middle East and war with Islamic terrorists who openly call for the extermination of the Jews.

Elements of the U.S. government have been actively opposing the duly elected U.S. president. Employees of the Environmental Protection Agency have been disrupting Trump administration reforms. U.S. government employees recorded Trump’s private calls to the president of Mexico and the Australian prime minister, and leaked selected segments to suggest that Trump was either a buffoon or trigger-happy. The Wall Street Journal reported in February 2017 that career intelligence officers have decided to withhold information from Trump, because in their view he is unfit to receive it. Kristol suggested in a tweet that if he faced a choice between the constitutionally, democratically elected president and career government officials’ efforts to thwart or remove him, he would come down on the side of the revolutionary, anti-democratic “deep state.”

American voters elected Trump because they regarded him as the only opportunity to break with the status quo, a revolt against the postmodernism that has undermined the moral fiber of the West and its willingness to defend itself, facilitating the emergence of brutal Islamic terror. The refusal of Trump’s opponents to accept the outcome of the election was despicable and unprecedented, and contrasts with the acquiescence of the defeated Republicans when Obama won both of his elections. An aspect of the election result is the hysterical reaction by liberal segments of the Jewish community. It is not surprising that 70% of Jews supported Hillary Clinton. This is consistent with their long-standing obsession with liberalism. But the manipulation of Jewish issues as a political vehicle by some American Jewish leaders to oppose Trump could be an act of infamy.

After Israel, the U.S. has the largest Jewish population in the world. Despite credible evidence that Islamic terrorists infiltrate migrants from Muslim conflict zones, American Jews have been at the forefront of the opposition to the Trump administration’s plan to pause immigration for a few months from six Muslim countries with vetting challenges. In America, anti-Semitic attacks are generally by Muslims or radical liberals; however, American Jews supported the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton that promised significant increase in immigration from Muslim conflict zones. During the recent migration crisis in Europe, British Jews repeatedly clamored for massive immigration from Muslim conflict zones; however, in March 2017, the British Home Secretary issued a warning of ‘significant’ radical Islamic terrorist threat to British Jews. From Bombay to Toulouse and beyond, Jews suffer disproportionately from Muslim attackers.

Some Democratic Party Muslim Americans with records of anti-Semitism condemned the recent anti-Semitic attacks against Jewish cemeteries. The Democratic Party is becoming more open in its embrace of anti-Semitism. Terrorist murderers of Jews (Ramsea Odeh, etc.) and supporters of terrorist murderers of Jews (Keith Ellison, Linda Sarsour, etc.) have prominent positions in the party. Odeh is a terrorist that participated in a PLO attack at a Jerusalem supermarket in 1970 that murdered two Jews. Ellison is an anti-Semite that also defends cop killers. He was a long standing member of the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam. Sarsour calls for Israel’s destruction and she supports Palestinian mass murderers of Jews. Malcolm Hoenlein, the head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, pretends that even anti-Semites oppose anti-Semitism, stating that “we can’t afford a split” on Israel among the Democrats and the Republicans. The fight against anti-Semitism is compromised if Jew hating Democrats are viewed as legitimate partners in fighting anti-Semitism, when they aid and abet anti-Semitism.

There are no Christian states striving to wipe Israel off the map, and there no groups in Hinduism or Buddhism seeking to push Jews into the sea; however, Iran repeatedly states its desire to wipe Israel off the map, and large sections of the Muslim world have become a cesspit of Jewish hatred. Polls of Muslims from various countries indicate significant percentages of Muslims have rabid hatred of Jews.

American Jews undermining Trump because of hurt feelings, irrational fear or lust for power will do more to put Israel and Jews in jeopardy than any Trump administration official or travel ban on foreign nationals from hostile regions ever could. Whatever tensions exist between Trump and both Republican-controlled houses of Congress, they share one thing in common: support of Israel. This should not be interpreted that the Trump administration will favor annexation or a one-state policy. Trump has made it clear that he endorses a two-state policy but, in contrast to Obama, he stipulates that it cannot be imposed without providing Israel with defensible borders and all of the security guarantees it requires. Presently, this objective is unattainable.

During the Obama administration, leaders of the American Jewish community demanded increased Muslim immigration, and supported the lawlessness promoted by BLM. Now, like Captain Renault in Casablanca, they are shocked, shocked that there are increased anti-Semitic attacks and increasing bomb threats to Jewish Centers in the U.S. Unfettered immigration from many Muslim countries pose a problem for Jews more than most. If Jews cannot remove leaders that put their party before their community, they should form new organizations to defend their interests. Moreover, American Jews should wish President Trump well. May his triumphs be many.

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Korean crisis raises stakes of US-Israel missile cooperation

Posted March 12, 2017 by Joseph Wouk
Categories: Uncategorized

Source: Korean crisis raises stakes of US-Israel missile cooperation – Israel News – Jerusalem Post

By
March 12, 2017 21:5

Allies share technology, but Washington’s aid to Israel’s program comes at expense of its own research.
 Kim Jong-un, North Korea leader

Kim Jong-un, North Korea leader. (photo credit:KNS / KCNA / AFP)

WASHINGTON – Meeting with senior Trump administration officials in Washington last week, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman twice referenced the growing threat posed by North Korea’s missile programs preoccupying the White House in its first days on the job.

Liberman described to US Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson an “axis of evil” stretching from Tehran to Pyongyang, according to the Defense Ministry – a striking reference to a past time, the era of president George W. Bush, in which Iran’s military cooperation with North Korea was said to have peaked. American security cooperation with Israel once again has implications beyond the Middle East, the minister added.

The US and Israel have worked together for years to mitigate missile threats from Iran and North Korea, which have in turn worked jointly to advance their programs. But Washington’s cooperation with Jerusalem has been fraught with complications that naturally come with the territory of missile defense.

While offensive missile technology can be easily exported, missile defense technology is threat-specific. It is unclear whether Israel’s response programs to its unique threat landscape are transferable to the US or its allies in the Asia-Pacific region, which face a multitude of missile challenges from an enemy already nuclear-armed.

The question of transferability has led to tensions over funding after Israel began drawing nearly 10% of the Pentagon’s own missile defense budget since its war with Hamas in Gaza in 2014. During negotiations over a new decade-long defense package with Israel in 2016, Obama administration officials suggested its own Missile Defense Agency was running dry of resources to conduct research for the unique intercontinental threats facing the US homeland.

The Obama administration fought to incorporate missile defense funding into the deal – a departure from their preceding defense agreement with Israel – due to its concerns with overall cuts to its own program, one senior official said at the time.
US missile defense aid to Israel was representing “a growing share of a shrinking budget,” the Obama official said. “Given that funding for Israeli missile defense comes out of the same account as US domestic missile defense programs, additional support for Israel means fewer resources are available for critical US programs at a time when the missile threat from North Korea is increasing.”

Israel’s program provides the US with some clear strategic benefits: It is one of the few battlefields in the world in which missile defense programs have actually been tested, and may reasonably face future tests. And the Jewish state shares with the Pentagon much of the technology it produces with US parts using US contractors.

The question is whether Israel’s short, intermediate and long-range programs intended to diminish threats from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran can be of practical use to South Korea, Japan and the US as they seek to mitigate a decreasingly stable North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un.

The transferability of Israel’s programs – in addition to proof of Iranian collusion with North Korea, still unseen – might in the eyes of its advocates in Washington justify an increase in US aid beyond what was ultimately detailed in Obama’s defense package.
Under that agreement, Israel obligated itself not to ask for more funds – and even to hand back the check should Congress offer more money than the deal prescribes.
The MoU guarantees $5 billion in US aid for Israel’s missile defense over the next decade. Israel may ask for additional emergency funding only in the case of war, Jacob Nagel, Israel’s acting national security adviser, said during the signing ceremony in September.
The figure is large, but broken down into annual sums amounts to less than what Israel received in recent years – a statistic not lost on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is considering whether or not to lobby for more aid ahead of its annual policy conference in Washington next week.

Some Republican leaders in Congress say they are prepared to write in more funding for Israel’s missile defense than the MoU allows – and believe that President Donald Trump would sign off on it. But Jerusalem may treat the agreement as inviolable: Some Israeli officials fear that breaking the framework and increasing aid this year would open the door to future aid decreases.

Immediately following Trump’s inauguration, a new White House website floated his intention to fund “state of the art” missile defense programs to counter threats from Iran and North Korea. He has since proposed the largest defense budget increase in modern American history and began campaigning against sequestration cuts that have crippled growth at the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mattis suggested the US “put together a combined air missile defense capability for our Gulf allies” in order to deter Iran’s increasingly sophisticated program. He advocated for increased investments in the Pentagon’s ICBM and missile defense programs.
The Trump administration is actively exploring ways to foster Israeli-Arab cooperation against Iran, which it hopes will blossom into greater normalization of ties.

At the same hearing, Mattis was asked what the new administration could do to improve its strategy on the Korean Peninsula.
“It is going to take an international effort,” Mattis said.

While Israel’s role in this research is not yet clear, Liberman’s decision to incorporate North Korea into his discussions in Washington might signal Israel’s willingness to expand the scope of its missile defense work to incorporate the needs of America’s allies in Asia.

“It’s entirely unclear where we’re going yet, but the Israelis are looking to rebuild ties – and I’d think they would be very willing to demonstrate their value to the Pentagon,” said Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “As this relationship is starting off, I think the Israelis would be remiss if they didn’t raise North Korea as part of their threat matrix, given what the US is looking at.”

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A Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Britain: February 2017

Posted March 12, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Britain, Britain and Christians, Britain and Islam, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic Jihad, Islamisation, Multiculturalism
Tags: , , , , , , ,

A Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Britain: February 2017, Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern, March 12, 2017

(Just another gloriously happy multicultural month in Britainstan. — DM)

Muslim pupils outnumber Christian children in more than 30 church schools, including one Church of England primary school that has a “100% Muslim population.” — Sunday Times.

Six Muslim men shouted “Allahu Akbar” as they were sentenced at Sheffield Crown Court for a total of 81 years for sexually abusing two girls — including one who became pregnant at age 12 — in Rotherham.

“By 2030, one in three people will be a Muslim in the world — that is a huge population.” — Romanna Bint-Abubaker, founder of modest fashion website Haute Elan.

A Chatham House survey of more than 10,000 people from ten European countries found that an average of 55% agreed that all further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped.

February 1. Jim Walker, a 71-year-old volunteer at Carnforth Station, was banned from the premises after someone complained about an alleged racist comment. Walker, who, for more than a decade, has been winding a famous clock at the station, was overheard discussing a newspaper article about young migrants entering Britain from the French port of Calais. Walker said:

“Carnforth Station Trust received a complaint from a visitor who was not happy about me speaking to somebody about the issue…. What they are doing is outrageous. It is absolutely unbelievable, it is a violation of free speech….

“I must be the only man in Carnforth who has a document saying where he can and can’t walk and all for expressing a point of view and quoting an editorial from a newspaper. Now [winding the clock] is no longer possible.”

February 1. Prime Minister Theresa May told the House of Commons that women should feel free to wear the hijab, a traditional Islamic headscarf. Several European countries have imposed bans on parts of Muslim religious dress. “What a woman wears is a woman’s choice,” May said after she was asked — on world hijab day — if she supported the right of women to wear the garment.

On February 1 (“world hijab day”), UK Prime Minister Theresa May said that women should feel free to wear the hijab, a traditional Islamic headscarf, stating: “What a woman wears is a woman’s choice.” Pictured above: Theresa May (then Home Secretary) wears a headscarf while attending an interfaith event at Al Madina Mosque in East London, in February 2015. (Image source: Imams Online video screenshot)

February 2. Six Muslim men shouted “Allahu Akbar” as they were sentenced at Sheffield Crown Court for a total of 81 years for sexually abusing two girls — including one who became pregnant at age 12 — in Rotherham. Three brothers and three other men were convicted of crimes including rape, indecent assault and false imprisonment after the pre-teen victims were “systematically groomed.”

February 4. Almost half of the new homes built in the next five years will go to migrants, according to government figures. Soaring immigration means that Britain will need to accommodate as many as 243,000 new households each year for the next 22 years. It is estimated that an extra 5.3 million new properties could be needed to meet the growth in population, and an extra 2.4 million of the new homes will be needed for migrants alone. In other words, one new home must be built every five minutes to house Britain’s burgeoning migrant population.

February 5. Muslim pupils outnumber Christian children in more than 30 church schools, including one Church of England primary school that has a “100% Muslim population,” according to the Sunday Times. St. Thomas in Werneth, Oldham, is reported by the local diocese to have no Christian pupils, while at Staincliffe Church of England Junior School in Batley, West Yorkshire, 98% of pupils “come from a Muslim background.” The Church of England estimated that about 20 of its schools had more Muslim pupils than Christians and 15 Roman Catholic schools had majority Muslim pupils, according to the Catholic Education Service. Some church schools include Islamic prayers in their services.

February 6. The Deputy Mayor of London, Sophie Linden, warned that people who inflict female genital mutilation (FGM) on girls have escaped justice “for too long.” Linden said that “inconsistencies in the way these crimes are recorded” had allowed perpetrators to avoid charges, despite FGM being a “widespread” problem. Although FGM has been illegal in Britain since 1985, no one has ever been successfully prosecuted for such offenses.

February 7. Zakaria Bulhan, a 19-year-old Norwegian national of Somali origin, was sentenced to indefinite confinement at Broadmoor Hospital after he admitted to killing American tourist Darlene Horton and wounding five others in a rampage in central London on August 3, 2016. Bulhan, from Tooting, South London, pled guilty at the Old Bailey to “manslaughter by diminished responsibility” on the grounds that he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the attacks. He had been charged with murder and attempted murder, but the court accepted his plea. During his arrest, Bulhan repeatedly muttered “Allah, Allah, Allah,” and police found a Muslim prayer book, “Fortress of the Muslim,” in his pants pocket. The court decided that Islam was not a factor in Bulhan’s behavior.

February 7. A Chatham House survey of more than 10,000 people from ten European countries found that an average of 55% agreed that all further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped, 25% neither agreed nor disagreed and 20% disagreed. Majorities in all but two of the ten states agreed, ranging from 71% in Poland, 65% in Austria, 53% in Germany and 51% in Italy to 47% in the United Kingdom and 41% in Spain.

February 9. A 44-year-old man from Hertfordshire was arrested at Gatwick Airport on terrorism charges after he disembarked from a flight from Iraq. He was charged under Section 5 of the 2006 Terrorism Act: suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts.

February 12. A National Health Service (NHS) project based on research by Leeds University claimed that Muslims with mental health issues could be helped by re-embracing Islam. Traditionally, therapists have shied away from talking about religion as part of treatment. Lead researcher Dr. Ghazala Mir, of the university’s Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, said:

“We know that in Muslim populations people can get quicker results from faith-sensitive therapies that have been tested elsewhere in the world. They tend to use religion as a coping resource more than people in other religious groups.”

Mir has helped to create a new treatment. Patients are asked if faith was part of their life when they were well. Those who stopped being religious because of depression are re-introduced slowly using a self-help booklet, which highlights passages from the Koran that illustrate that “even people with strong faith” can become depressed and that it does not mean Allah is displeased.

February 13. Nadeem Muhammed, a 43-year-old Pakistani national, appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London after security officials at Manchester Airport discovered a pipe bomb in his hand luggage prior to boarding a flight to Italy. Muhammed, who lives in Greater Manchester, was arrested on January 30 but was later released on bail and was allowed to travel. He was re-arrested when he returned to Britain on February 11 and charged with possessing an improvised explosive device.

February 14. Clayton McKenna, a 22-year-old Briton who converted to Islam while in prison, appeared at Newcastle Crown Court after he carried an axe through the streets of Boldon Colliery, apparently with which to confront his Christian father over “religious differences.” McKenna allegedly told police that he was on his way to his father’s home “to ask him to bow down to me.” Judge Penny Moreland told McKenna:

“It appears you were sober, you had not been drinking or taking drugs. There has been an examination by the mental health team and they are satisfied there are no mental health issues I ought to be taking into account.

“You made a series of statements, both at the scene and in interview shortly afterwards, as to what you intended to do and what was in your mind. It is right to say they were confused and contradictory.

“The statements included a suggestion that you were going to use violence against your father, amongst a number of reasons you said was because he was a Christian and you were a recent convert to Islam.

“I am concerned that there is no real explanation for your confused thinking that morning, nor for those threats made, even though they appear to have been without substance.”

February 15. Faisal Bashir, a 43-year-old father of two from Ilford, was forced to move out of his home after he renounced Islam and stopped attending mosque. Bashir said he was subject to harassment, but police dismissed his pleas for help as “just a nuisance.” He explained:

“These people knew I had become an atheist and soon enough my whole family was being harassed. At least once a week they would hang around near my house, shouting and swearing at me. I was called an apostate, a non-believer, I was told I had betrayed my God and my faith. Sometimes they would even say things to my children — they are far too little to know what was happening, they were very frightened.

“Police always said they could not really do anything because no physical altercation ever took place. But I am not the kind of person to get violent with anybody. Also, it was always different people so they claimed they could not log it as similar complaint. Eventually a police officer told me I should just move house to get away from it all.

“We were not left with any other choice…. The new house is over a mile away, but they still managed to find us again.”

The Chairman of the Ilford-based British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA), Wilson Chowdhry, said:

“Police and councils up and down the country just don’t understand the level of animosity people choosing to leave Islam can face.”

February 16. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, Britain’s top police officer, urged Muslim scholars to step up their efforts to counter the violent ideology of the Islamic State. He said he believed that IS fighters and terrorists were “political criminals” who were carrying out “horrific violence” which had no justification in Islam. In an interview with the Evening Standard, Hogan-Howe repeated the politically correct dogma that the Islamic State is not Islamic:

“The hardest part for the Western world is to interrupt this philosophy that Daesh [Islamic State] is perpetuating which is that Islam in any way supports this horrific use of violence.

“There is no interpretation I would argue that could say that, but some people are getting away with that. Muslim scholars have got to come up and be really challenging of that and be very clear that this can never be acceptable. There is no interpretation that can ever conclude it is okay to kill people. We cannot be at all sensitive to religious beliefs. We have all got to say that is wrong.

“The Muslim community feel particularly sensitive because Islamism is about people who profess to be Muslims. I would argue that they are political criminals — it just happens to be masked in religion. But when you are dealing with that issue you have to be sensitive to the majority who are good people trying to do the right thing.”

February 18. Britain’s first-ever “modest” fashion event was held in London with more than 40 designers displaying garments that comply with Muslim values. Event organizer Romanna Bint-Abubaker, founder of modest fashion website Haute Elan, told Sky News:

“The fastest growing global consumer is at the moment the Muslim market. By 2030, one in three people will be a Muslim in the world — that is a huge population.”

February 19. Counter-terrorism police launched an investigation into claims that Trish O’Donnell, head of Clarksfield Primary School in Oldham, was being forced to work from home after death threats from Muslim parents opposed to her Western values. O’Donnell reportedly has been subject to “harassment and intimidation” in the form of “aggressive verbal abuse” and “threats to blow up her car” from parents pushing conservative Muslim ideals. The school is mostly filled with Pakistani pupils who do not speak English as a first language.

February 20. Members of Parliament debated U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s state visit to Britain. Left-wing MPs called for the invitation to be withdrawn to protest Trump’s travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries. Conservative Party MPs accused their opponents of hypocrisy and insulting the American people. The debate was triggered after an online parliamentary petition seeking to prevent Trump from making a state visit attracted nearly two million signatures. A counter-petition received over 300,000 signatures. After three hours of debate, Sir Alan Duncan, the deputy foreign secretary, reaffirmed the government’s intention to host Trump on a state visit, tentatively set for October 5-8, 2017.

February 21. Rezzas Abdulla, a 33-year-old man from South Shields, was sentenced to eight months in prison, a sentence then suspended so that he could receive treatment for mental health problems, for assaulting a woman and her nine-month old baby. Rebecca Telford, 25, and her daughter Layla-Jean, were strolling in South Shields in January 2016 when Abdulla leaned into the baby carriage and spat into the baby’s mouth, and allegedly said, “white people shouldn’t breed,” before launching into a tirade of racial abuse. Telford told police:

“There was no eye contact and no words had been exchanged. I had never seen him before. I believe he spat on her purely because we are white, I was a lone female and an easy target.”

February 22. Jamal al-Harith, a 50-year-old British convert to Islam, blew himself up at an Iraqi army base in Mosul on February 20. He had received £1 million (€1.1 million; $1.2 million) in compensation from the British government after being freed from Guantánamo Bay in 2004. Al-Harith, originally named Ronald Fiddler, was born in Manchester to parents of Jamaican origin and took the name Jamal al-Harith when he converted to Islam. He was also known more recently as Abu-Zakariya al-Britani. Captured in Afghanistan in early 2002, and released from Guantánamo Bay after two years, he later joined IS.

February 23. The BBC paid “very substantial” libel damages and broadcast a full apology to Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, founder member of the Muslim Council of Britain, who was falsely accused of calling for the lynching of author Salman Rushdie.

February 26. Shahriar Ashrafkhorasani, a 33-year-old Iranian-born convert from Islam and who is set to be ordained as a Church of England priest, accused Oxford University of discrimination and bias after he was told he could not ask a lecturer critical questions about Islam. During a seminar about love in religion, Minlib Dallh, a research fellow at Regent’s Park College in Oxford, allegedly pointed at Ashrafkhorasani and said: “Everybody can ask a question except you.” Ashrafkhorasani said that Dallh had discovered during a coffee break that he was a convert from Islam. He said that Dallh refused to let him ask questions about the lecturer’s description of Islam as a religion of love and peace. Dallh’s project was partly being sponsored by the King of Jordan. Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, who was a senior fellow at Wycliffe Hall until last year, said that a “politically correct” atmosphere is “very widespread in the university as a whole.” He added: “If people are taking money from these [Muslim] sources, then that can limit the critical approach to the study of Islam and Muslim civilization generally.”

February 27. A spokesman for the West Midlands Police wrote on social media that parents caught practicing female genital mutilation (FMG) on their children should not be prosecuted. He revealed that the force is opposed to “prosecuting/jailing” parents for FGM because it would be “unlikely to benefit” children who fall victim to the crime. He added that the best course of action is to focus on “education.” Tim Loughton, a member of the Home Affairs Committee, condemned the reluctance to pursue prosecution:

“It is absolutely key to expose perpetrators and to nail them for it. The police must go after offenders. This is deeply disturbing because a key part of eradicating the violence of FGM is exposing, prosecuting, and nailing the perpetrators. Every time a prosecution fails to materialize, it encourages those that are behind this that it is not a serious crime, and they can get away it.”

February 28. Patrick Kabele, a 32-year-old convert to Islam, was found guilty of preparing terrorist acts — namely attempting to travel to Syria — contrary to the 2006 Terrorism Act. During his trial, jurors at Woolwich Crown Court heard how Kabele, from Willesden in North London, tried to join the Islamic State in Syria, where he wanted to buy a “nine-year-old virgin, the younger the better.” He added that if he had enough money, he would buy four wives. Kabele was arrested after he tried to board a flight from Gatwick to Istanbul, Turkey on August 20, 2016 with £3,000 in cash. Kabele, who was born in Uganda and became a British citizen, told police after his arrest that he did not “owe an oath of allegiance” to the United Kingdom.

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Erdogan accuses Netherlands of ‘Nazism,’ urges intl sanctions as diplomatic row deepens

Posted March 12, 2017 by Peter Hofman
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , ,

The Dutch will “pay the price” for its “shameless” treatment of Turkey’s minister, President Recep Tayip Erdogan said in a strongly-worded statement. He also urged international organizations to put sanctions on the Netherlands.

Published time: 12 Mar, 2017 12:03
Edited time: 12 Mar, 2017 16:07

Source: Erdogan accuses Netherlands of ‘Nazism,’ urges intl sanctions as diplomatic row deepens — RT News

The Dutch will “pay the price” for its “shameless” treatment of Turkey’s minister, President Recep Tayip Erdogan said in a strongly-worded statement. He also urged international organizations to put sanctions on the Netherlands.
Read more

Demonstrators gather outsidethe Turkish consulate, Rotterdam, Netherlands March 11, 2017. © Yves Herman

5 biggest Turkey-EU scandals before Dutch diplomatic row

“If you are willing to sacrifice Turkish-Dutch relations, you will pay for it,” Erdogan said on Sunday, as cited by Hurriyet. “What’s more, we’re not done yet,” the Turkish leader added.

Over the past few days, the West has revealed its “true face,” Erdogan continued, referring to the recent deportation of Turkish Family Minister Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya, who was escorted out of the Netherlands by police.

Erdogan reiterated his previous assertion that the Netherlands’ conduct towards the Turkish officials was a sign of “Nazism, fascism,” repeating once again. “I said Nazism is dead. I thought Nazism was over, but I was wrong. It turns out that Nazism is reawakening in the West,” the president asserted.

“They will pay the price of treating my citizens, my foreign minister… in an impudent way,” he said.

Banning the family minister from entering the Turkish consulate was inconsistent with the freedom of movements, Erdogan said, hinting that he himself may travel to Europe to attend the rallies: “I can go to any country I want if I have a diplomatic passport.”

 https://twitter.com/AP/status/840895617920573441?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

The Dutch “will learn what diplomacy is,” Erdogan said, adding that their actions “cannot remain unanswered,” according to AFP.

“They went as far as to lock the door of the consulate [in Rotterdam],” he stated.

Erdogan has also branded the Netherlands a “banana republic” for the way it treated Turkey’s foreign minister.

In another comment, the Turkish leader urged unspecified international organizations to “raise their voices” and impose sanctions on the Netherlands, AP reported.

The Netherland’s prime minister, Mark Rutte, reacted to Erdogan’s comments by saying that Ankara must apologize for comparing the Dutch to Nazis.

Rutte called the Turkish leader’s statements “unacceptable,” adding that they aren’t helping to de-escalate tensions between the two countries.

The Netherlands will have to respond if Turkey continues on its current path, he warned.

Earlier, Rutte said he is determined to ease the flare-up in tensions, saying “we want to be the more prudent party,” as quoted by Reuters.

“If they escalate, we will have to respond, but we will do everything in our power to de-escalate,” he said.

As tensions between the two countries mount, top-tier officials in Ankara have promised retaliatory measures. In Turkey, the authorities sealed off the Dutch embassy and consulate, while the Dutch ambassador to the Turkey, who is currently home on leave, was told not to return to his post “for some time.”

In his latest remarks on the conflict, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said making a formal apology “is not enough,” warning that the Netherlands’ “fascistic” actions will have consequences, according to Hurriyet.

Cavusoglu went even further in his accusations when he gave a speech in Metz in France on Sunday afternoon.

“The Netherlands, the so-called capital of democracy, and I say this in quotation marks because they are actually the capital of fascism,” said the Foreign Minister.

The French Foreign Ministry said that Paris “calls for a de-escalation” in tension between Turkey, the Netherlands, and other EU members.

“It also calls on the Turkish authorities to avoid excesses and provocations,” the ministry said in a statement.

Turkish Foreign Minister Cavusoglu was successful in addressing a rally in eastern France on Sunday, as Paris explained that “in the absence of a proven threat to public order, there was no reason to prohibit the event.”

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