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Arab Press Reports On U.S.-Russia Understandings Allowing Assad To Remain In Power In Syria During Transitional Phase

April 22, 2016

Arab Press Reports On U.S.-Russia Understandings Allowing Assad To Remain In Power In Syria During Transitional Phase, MEMRI, N. Mozes*, April 22, 2016

(The analysis does not mention the Arab press’ reaction to the Putin – Obama agreement to turn Golan over to Syria. — DM)

According to many reports in the Arab press in recent days, alongside the indirect talks in Geneva between the Syrian regime and opposition that are being mediated by UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura, the U.S. and Russia have been conducting separate secret talks to draw up understandings on resolving the crisis. The reports state that the U.S. is inclined to accept the position of the Syrian regime and its Russian ally, namely, that the idea of a transitional governing body should be abandoned in favor of a joint regime-opposition body, and that the Syrian regime should remain in the hands of President Bashar Al-Assad, at least in the transitional phase.

Concurrently, during his talks with the regime and opposition delegations, de Mistura presented an idea that he claims he did not initiate, which involves Assad remaining as a figurehead president and appointing deputies to whom he would delegate his political and military authority. It is hard to imagine that the U.S. and Russia were unaware of this proposal, which is in line with what has been reported on their own understandings regarding Assad’s remaining president during the transitional period. These reports, if true, show that the U.S. has backed down even further from its position vis-à-vis Assad and the Syrian opposition, and that it is disregarding the clause in the 2012 Geneva I communique calling for the establishment of a transitional body with full authority.

Arab press reports on these U.S.-Russia efforts increased greatly after Secretary of State John Kerry’s March 24, 2016 meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin. Following the meetings, Kerry said that both sides had agreed to step up their efforts to achieve a political transition in Syria and had agreed on a timetable and that a draft constitution would be submitted in August 2016.[1] On April 8, Kerry confirmed reports that the U.S. was further backing down from its previous position when he told the Saudi Al-Arabiya TV channel that while Assad can no longer lead his country in light of the many crimes he had committed, he would still be present at the start of the transitional phase. He added that if Assad would facilitate this phase, then a safe exit for him could be discussed.[2]

According to the Arab reports, the U.S.-Russia understandings would be imposed on the parties involved, as with the February 12, 2016 agreement on cessation of hostilities. In another similarity to that agreement, the Assad regime will be the main one to benefit.

This paper will review the reports on U.S.-Russia understandings on the Syrian crisis:

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov (image: Orient-news.net, April 17, 2016)

Anti-Assad Media: American-Russian Deal Includes Assad Remaining In Power

On April 16, 2016, three days after the start of the third round of indirect talks in Geneva between the Syrian regime and opposition under the mediation of UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura, the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported that Western diplomats “are warning that there will be a U.S.-Russia deal on Syria before the summer.” According to the report, it is the Americans who are pressuring the Russians to arrive at understandings that are to be “very close to the Russia proposal regarding the nature of the transitional phase, the regime, the constitution, and the elections.” The diplomats cited in the report said that the U.S. is trusting Moscow to find a solution for the Syrian crisis while ignoring Western and regional elements.[3]

The following day, the newspaper reported that the U.S. and Russia were discussing not only “regime leader Bashar Al-Assad’s remaining in power during the transitional phase, but also the central role he would play in it, including in drafting a constitution and in the elections set for 18 months after the start of negotiations between the sides.”[4] In a later report, the paper cited Western sources who warned against recycling “the Yemen model” under which Yemen president ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Saleh had officially been removed but had in effect remained in control of the armed forces and in possession of many political cards.[5]

On April 17, the London-based Saudi daily Al-Hayat also reported on the U.S.-Russia talks. According to the daily, Robert Malley, the White House Coordinator for the Middle East and chief advisor to President Obama on Syria, and Putin’s Syria envoy Alexander Lavrentiev were holding intensive talks behind the scenes with the aim of drawing up “constitutional and political principles” based on a “political partnership” between the regime and the opposition, “in accordance with an improved Lebanese model.”[6] Under this proposal, the regime and opposition would share executive, military, security, legal, and constitutional authority. The newspaper also stated that Obama would present these understandings during his visit to the Gulf states on April 21, and that the Russians would present them to Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Qods Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who recently visited Moscow. The understandings would then be brought before Syrian regime representatives, and a “select list” of oppositionists who agree to a political solution.[7]

On April 18, 2016, the London-based daily Al-Arabi Al-Jadid reported that in light of the Geneva talks’ failure so far to bring the sides closer together, representatives of presidents Obama and Putin are working in Geneva to formulate an alternative plan in the event that the negotiations fail; this plan would be imposed on the sides via a UN Security Council resolution, under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. Two main proposals to resolve the crisis were presented at these U.S.-Russia Talks: The first is based on the principle of a “political partnership” among all elements of Syrian society, which would be more comprehensive than the 1989 Taif Agreement and would include leaving Assad in power, because he controls the main power base in Syria. The second proposal includes the establishment of a transitional council comprising eight technocrats; this council would lead the transitional phase.[8]

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov denied the reports about secret U.S.-Russia talks, stressing that they were “routine consultations.”[9] However, during the regime-opposition Geneva talks, de Mistura brought the delegations a proposal “from an expert” that also involved Assad’s remaining in power, at least temporarily. Under this proposal, he would continue to serve as president and would appoint three deputies to whom he would delegate his political and military authority and who would manage the country during the transitional phase.[10] It is hard to imagine that the U.S. and Russia, who sponsor the Geneva talks, were unaware of this proposal, which is in line with what has been reported on their own understandings regarding Assad’s remaining president during the transitional period.

As noted, these reports come in addition to similar reports in the Arab press following Kerry’s March 24 visit to Moscow that focused on a U.S.-Russia convergence on the issue of the Syrian crisis. Thus, the London-based Qatari daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported on March 29, 2016 that the U.S. and Russia had drawn up the general details of a three-point plan that includes general parliamentary elections under UN auspices, a new constitution, and creation of a presidential election mechanism allowing Assad to run “even though the U.S. would prefer that Russia persuade him not to do so.” The report also added that the president’s authority would be downgraded.[11] Al-Hayat reported on March 31 that Kerry had informed Arab countries that the U.S. and Russia had arrived at understandings that included Assad’s exit to another country, but not a timetable for it.[12]

On April 11, 2016, a Syrian oppositionist website reported that Russia had prepared an alternative plan in case the Geneva talks failed; it dictated the establishment of a military council comprising both regime and opposition elements; this council would rule the country and prepare for parliamentary and presidential elections. Under this plan, there would be no transitional phase and no interim ruling body, as neither are compatible with the current Syrian constitution. Russia reportedly presented this plan to Kerry during the latter’s Moscow visit, and Kerry assured his hosts that the U.S. would not oppose it but that Russia would have to persuade the opposition to accept it.[13]

Kerry: Assad Should Remain For Start Of Transitional Phase

The American administration’s statements on resolving the Syrian crisis are rife with internal contradictions. For example, officials repeatedly state that Assad is illegitimate because of his crimes against his people, and that he cannot unite Syria, but at the same time Kerry said that Russia and the U.S. have agreed that he should remain for the start of the transitional phase. This effectively confirms reports that the American position is moving closer to the Russian one, and that the former no longer objects to Assad’s remaining in power during the transitional phase.

In an April 8, 2016 interview, Kerry told the Saudi Al-Arabiya TV: “During the transitional phase, Assad will remain in power in accordance with the Geneva [I] communique, since this communique required joint [regime and opposition] consensus regarding the phase. This means that both Assad and the opposition must join this consensus… The U.S. and Russia have reached an agreement that was reached also with many other countries, that is, there is no escaping a transitional phase followed by a united, secular, and non-sectarian Syria… Likewise, we agreed that Assad should be present at the start of the transitional phase…

“The Russians have made it clear that Assad has assured them that he will participate in the transitional phase and support the drafting of a new constitution and the holding of presidential elections. If he does not meet his commitments, I do not believe the Russians will continue to support him.”

In response to the question of whether Assad would be allowed safe passage out of Syria if he agreed to step down, Kerry responded: “… If Assad is willing to be a constructive factor in the efforts to make peace in Syria, this safe passage would receive significant attention, and the sides should seriously consider this effort and enable Assad to live safely, which is what I wish for him…”[14]

On April 16, a Syrian opposition website also reported that the U.S. had agreed to postpone the debate on Assad’s fate, and stated that Kerry, on his April 7 visit to Bahrain, had told the Gulf Cooperation Council foreign ministers that Assad’s withdrawal from power should not be discussed at this time.[15]

U.S.-Russia Military Coordination

Although U.S. administration officials reject the prospect of military coordination with Russia and the Syrian regime against the Islamic State (ISIS), there are indications of U.S.-Russia coordination regarding military activity in Syrian territory. Thus, the Syrian Democratic Forces – an umbrella organization of Kurdish and Sunni Arab forces fighting ISIS, Jabhat Al-Nusra, and Islamist opposition factions – received aerial support from both the U.S.-led international coalition and the Russian air force during its takeover of the city of Al-Shaddadi in southern Al-Hasakah in northwest Syria.[16] On March 24, the Pentagon reported that international coalition jets had bombed an ISIS post near Tadmur.[17] A Syrian oppositionist website reported that this attack was carried out as regime forces, backed by the Russian air force, reached the outskirts of the city.[18]

The Syrian Opposition Fears That The U.S. Will Back Down Still More From Its Original Position

The Syrian opposition, represented by the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) that was established in Riyadh, expressed grave concern at the reports of an imminent U.S.-Russia deal enabling Assad to remain in power, and displeasure at the U.S. for not updating it on the details of such a deal. [19] On April 2, 2016, HNC general coordinator Riyad Hijab said: “It is clear that the U.S. has agreed with Russia on vague matters of whose nature we are not being informed… We do not fear rapprochement between the U.S and Russia, but rather the vagueness and opaqueness of these relations.”[20] Basma Qadmani, a member of the HNC delegation to the Geneva talks, stressed: “The American ambiguousness is disturbing to the Syrian opposition… We do not know what the U.S. discussed with Moscow. There are all sorts of rumors, and we are waiting for the U.S. to confirm that it still opposes leaving Assad in power.”[21]

In light of this ambiguity, HNC officials stressed that the purpose of the current Geneva talks was to establish a transitional governing body with full authority in accordance with the Geneva I communique, which they interpret as including Assad’s departure and a replacement of the existing regime.

* N. Mozes is a research fellow at MEMRI.

Endnotes:

[1] Nytimes.com, March 24, 2016.

[2] Alarabiya.net, April 8, 2016.

[3] Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), April 16, 2016.

[4] Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), April 17, 2016.

[5] Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), April 18, 2016.

[6] A reference to the 1989 Taif Agreement that ended the Lebanese civil war and distributed political, civil, and military authority in the country along sectarian lines. Past reports indicated an intention to implement the Lebanese model in Syria as well.

[7] Al-Hayat (London), April 17, 2016.

[8] Al-Arabi Al-Jadid (London), April 18, 2016.

[9] Sputniknews.com, April 18, 2016.

[10] Webtv.un.org, April 18, 2016.

[11] Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London), March 29, 2016.

[12] Al-Hayat (London), March 31, 2016.

[13] Orient-news.net, April 11, 2016.

[14] Alarabiya.net, April 8, 2016.

[15] Alsouria.net, April 16, 2016.

[16] Orient-news.net, February 19, February 20, 2016.

[17] Defense.gov, March 24, 2016.

[18] Zamanalwsl.net, March 24, 2016.

[19] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 6280, Syrian Opposition On Eve Of Geneva Talks: U.S. Made ‘A Scary Retreat’ From Its Former Position, January 27, 2016.

[20] Etilaf.org, April 2, 2016.

[21] Orient-news.net, April 3, 2016.

Categories: Arab media, Assad, Foreign policy, Iran - Syria war, Kerry, Obama and Russia, Obama and Syria, Russia - Syrian war
Tags: Arab media, Assad, Foreign Policy, Iran - Syria war, Kerry, Obama and Russia, Obama and Syria, Russia - Syrian war

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French toast

April 22, 2016

French toast, Israel Hayom, Ruthie Blum, April 22, 2016

It comes as no surprise that the honchos in Ramallah are welcoming the French initiative to hold a summit of world foreign ministers to discuss and plan an international Israeli-Palestinian peace conference.

The Palestinian Authority knows full well that “peace” is a euphemism for complete Israeli capitulation to Palestinian demands, with nothing but bloodshed in return. Indeed, if PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his henchmen were actually interested in bringing about an end to conflict with Israel, they could do so in a split second — you know, by putting a stop to their own behavior. This includes, but is not restricted to, glorifying and funding the families of terrorists, particularly those who die for the cause in the process of killing Jews.

Contrary to what those who are either not paying attention or who hate the Jewish state for their own reasons may believe, Abbas’ ultimate goal is neither peace nor its companion misnomer, a “two-state solution.” No, his aim is to retain an international stamp of legitimacy as a world leader, to protect him from assassination on the one hand and oblivion on the other, and to keep the dollars and euros flowing.

Palestinian statehood is therefore not in his interest. But pretending to strive for it while portraying himself and his people as victims of Israeli “occupation” and “brutality” is what he’s really after. Meanwhile, he benefits from the West’s ostrich syndrome — the very phenomenon responsible for the nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the greatest state sponsor of global terrorism; the one that keeps Palestinian murder machines like Hezbollah in clover. And armed to the teeth.

This is all very old news, as is the fact that an ever-declining Europe and the United States under President Barack Obama would prefer to abdicate all political, moral and military superiority to Third World Islamist thugs than call the shots. It is this Western trait that is at the root of hostility to Israel, which — in spite of its all-too-Jewish inclination to follow suit — dares to defend and steel itself to the Cheshire Cat smiles of its sworn enemies and wagging fingers of its alleged friends.

The irony is that Abbas, like the ayatollahs in Tehran, would be the first to agree with this assessment. Indeed, it is the one thing on which Israel and the Palestinians agree, though the latter would never admit it in any language other than Arabic. Nor do PA apologists bother to believe the translations of such sentiments into English, French or German. They would rather spend their energy interpreting the forked-tongue dialect of parties with whom they insist on engaging in diplomacy.

Which brings us back to the Paris plan for renewed talks between Israel and the Palestinians. To avoid being left with scrambled egg on its face, France has decided that the only foreign ministers who will not be invited to next month’s pre-peace-conference summit are those of — you guessed it — Israel and the PA.

PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki was not too happy about this. But he did receive reassurance from the French that the initiative would not be hindered “in any way” by the Palestinian draft of a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements as the true obstacle to “peace.”

Never mind little details like Monday’s bus bombing in Jerusalem, perpetrated by a Palestinian terrorist from Bethlehem, who apparently botched the bigger job he had in mind when the explosive device he was carrying went off before he reached his destination. According to American officials, he may not even have been a terrorist in the conventional sense, but rather one of those “lone wolves” — or, as U.S. Vice President Joe Biden called them, “misguided cowards.”

Yes, across the ocean, Biden took to the podium at the left-wing J Street conference to chastise the Jewish state, which was still reeling from the 20 wounded victims of the latest act of bloody aggression against innocent people going about their business, in this case, Passover preparations.

“I firmly believe that the actions that Israel’s government has taken over the past several years — the steady and systematic expansion of settlements, the legalization of outposts, land seizures — they’re moving us and more importantly they’re moving Israel in the wrong direction,” Biden said, reiterating his administration’s “overwhelming frustration” with Israel and “profound questions” about its ability to remain both Jewish and democratic without further and more massive territorial withdrawals than it has already made. Biden failed to mention that all previous Israeli attempts to appease the Palestinians resulted in terrorism the likes of which European capitals haven’t even begun to experience — though it appears they are starting to get a taste of it.

Still, they tell themselves that Islamic State terrorism is a different kettle of fish from that of Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. And that Israel is ultimately a provocateur.

It is thus that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to reports of the upcoming “ministerial” summit and precursor to a wider peace conference with disdain.

“Can anyone explain what this initiative is about? Even the French don’t know,” he said.

Categories: Abbas, Biden, Foreign policy, France, Israel, Isreal - Jewish state, Obama and Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Two state solution
Tags: Abbas, Biden, Foreign Policy, France, Israel, Israel - Jewish state, Obama and Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Two state solution

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Saudi Influence in Washington Must End

April 22, 2016

Saudi Influence in Washington Must End, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, April 22, 2016

buddies

The 28 pages of a Congressional report detailing where the 9/11 hijackers got their financing have been classified for years, but what they contain is an open secret. Former Senator Bob Graham explained: “The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier.” So why keep this information secret? Because the Saudis wield undue influence in Washington, among both parties – an influence that has deformed our response to the global jihad threat, and continues to do so.

Responding to a bill that would allow 9/11 victims’ families to sue governments linked to terror attacks inside the U.S., the Saudis have acted like neither an ally nor an innocent party: they’ve threatened to sell $750 billion in U.S. asserts, vividly demonstrating why their influence in Washington is so detrimental.

Nonetheless, they still have a friend in Barack Obama, a man who has never hesitated to reach out in friendship to those who threaten the United States. Obama is trying to get Congress to reject the bill, and his solicitude for the Saudis is drawing criticism even from members of his own party. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) called on him to release the 28 pages: “If the president is going to meet with the Saudi Arabian leadership and the royal family, they think it would be appropriate that this document be released before the president makes that trip, so that they can talk about whatever issues are in that document.”

The New York Daily News, normally a reliable Democratic Party organ, fumed: “If the President allows himself to get pushed around this way in front of the world, then he earns every bit of the anger being directed at him by the extended family of September 11.”

Of course, all too many Republicans are just as much in the tank for the Saudis as the Democrats. CBS News reported on September 30, 2001, on George W. Bush’s watch, that “two dozen members of Osama bin Laden’s family were urgently evacuated from the United States in the first days following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, according to the Saudi ambassador to Washington.” If Hitler had had twenty-four relatives on U.S. soil on December 8, 1941, would FDR have urgently evacuated them to Berlin?

The FBI under both Bush and Obama has likewise been an apparently willing servant of the Saudis. The Miami Herald reported on July 1, 2014 that “freshly released but heavily censored FBI documents include tantalizing new information about events connected to the Sarasota Saudis who moved suddenly out of their home about two weeks before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, leaving behind clothing, jewelry and cars….This release suggests that the FBI has covered up information that is vitally important to public safety.” These “Sarasota Saudis” were a family that abruptly fled the country shortly before 9/11, “leaving behind three vehicles, food in the refrigerator and toys in the swimming pool.” Mohammed Atta may have visited their home. Yet for years, the FBI insisted that they had nothing to do with the 9/11 jihad plot, and has been extremely reticent about sharing information about their investigation. Whom is the FBI protecting, and why?

Meanwhile, the Saudis have spent untold billions of dollars spreading their Wahhabi ideology, including material such as “Jihad: The Forgotten Obligation,” in areas of the Islamic world where jihad had indeed been forgotten, largely if not completely. The Saudis have, in reawakening Muslims to this obligation, set the world on fire: al-Qaeda was a product of the Wahhabi ideology, and the Islamic State, with its unquenchable desire to commit as many jihad mass murder attacks as possible on American soil, despises the House of Saud and is determined to overthrow it but is nevertheless its demon child. The Saudis remain one of the world’s chief financiers of jihad terror.

This is an ally of the United States? No. The Saudis are not an ally of the U.S. and have not been since 9/11 and before. A presidential candidate who really wants to strike a blow against the global jihad would vow to release the 28 pages and to stand up to the Saudis’ threats, and to break the Saudis’ economic hold on the U.S. by putting the full weight of the U.S. government behind offshore drilling, oil pipelines, fracking, and the development of alternative energy sources.

In 1942, Franklin Delano Roosevelt not only wasn’t making sure that Hitler’s relatives were safely back home; he also wasn’t meeting with the Führer to discuss a German-U.S. alliance. It is long past time that the United States stop behaving like a weak client state of the House of Saud.

Categories: 9/11, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Islam and terrorism, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic jihad, Obama and Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, Supporting Islamic terrorism, Wahhabi
Tags: Foreign Policy, Funding terrorism, Islam and terrorism, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic Jihad, Obama and Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, Supportint Islamic terrorism, Wahhabi

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Column One: Our estranged generals

April 21, 2016

Column One: Our estranged generals, Jerusalem Post, Caroline B. Glick, April 21, 2016

(But, but if Israel accepts that weakness is strength and strength is weakness, as Obama and Europe have agreed, they will support Israel and a lasting peace will break out. Not. — DM)

IDF generals

IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot (R), Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (photo credit:GPO)

It’s been a long time coming, but it finally happened.

The IDF General Staff has lost the public trust.

This is terrible for the General Staff. But it is more terrible for the country, because the public is right not to trust our military leaders. They have earned our distrust fair and square.

The final straw came in less than optimal circumstances.

But such is life. Things are never cut and dry. On Purim, Sgt. Elor Azaria killed a terrorist in Hebron as he lay on the ground, shot, following his attempted murder of one of Azaria’s comrades.

Still today, we don’t know whether Azaria acted properly or improperly. He claims that he believed the terrorist had a bomb beneath the heavy jacket he was wearing in the middle of a heat wave.

Azaria claims that he shot him because he feared that the terrorist – who was moving – was trying to detonate the bomb. This view was shared by emergency personnel at the scene caring for the wounded soldier.

But even before he had a chance to tell his story, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon had already declared Azaria guilty of murder. Based on an initial field investigation and a snuff film produced by the European-funded anti-Israel group B’Tselem, Eisenkot and Ya’alon excoriated Azaria and pronounced the soldier, who was decorated for his service just last year, a rotten apple.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initially joined them in their condemnations. But when he realized that the public wasn’t buying it and that the evidence was far from cut and dry, to his credit, Netanyahu walked back his remarks.

Ya’alon and Eisenkot, in contrast, have refused to let the uncertainty of the situation affect them.

Their continued assaults on the soldier have compounded the damage. Their stubborn refusal to give Azaria the benefit of the doubt and admit that he may well have comported himself properly indicates that they have no idea how their statements are being viewed by the public, or worse, they may not care. They may simply be playing for another audience.

And here lies the beginning of the real problem.

For the public – including the five thousand citizens who came to the support rally for Azaria at Rabin Square on Tuesday – the critical moment was when the film of Azaria being led away from the scene in handcuffs was broadcast on the evening news. That image, of a combat soldier who killed a terrorist being treated like a criminal, was the breaking point for the public. Whether he was guilty or innocent was beside the point. The point was that his commanders – beginning with the defense minister and the chief of General Staff – were treating him like a criminal instead of a combat soldier on the front lines defending our country from an enemy that seeks our destruction.

This image, combined with Ya’alon’s and Eisenkot’s increasingly shrill and caustic condemnations of Azaria, was a breach of the social contract between the IDF and the public. That social contract says that we serve in the IDF. We send our children to serve in the IDF. And the IDF values us and values our sons and daughters as its own.

The sense that our generals are not on the same page as the rest of us has been gnawing at us since at least April 2002, in the aftermath of the battle in Jenin, during the course of Operation Defensive Shield.

Back then, fearing CNN and the UN, IDF commanders sent a reserve battalion into Jenin refugee camp, the epicenter of the Palestinian murder machine, without air cover and without armored vehicles. Thirteen reservists were killed in one day. Twenty-three soldiers were killed in the three-day battle.

The sense of alienation continued through the war in Lebanon four years later when the IDF conducted one of the most inept campaigns in its history. Soldiers were sent willy-nilly into battles with no strategic purpose because the General Staff wanted to “stage a picture of victory.”

This sense has been maintained in successive inconclusive campaigns in Gaza.

Now, with the General Staff’s decision to turn Azaria into a scapegoat at a time when it is failing to defeat the Palestinian terrorist wave in Judea and Samaria, that gnawing sense that something is amiss has become a certainty.

Our generals are not on the same page as the rest of us. In fact, they aren’t even reading the same book.

Our generals are motivated by three impulses and strategic assumptions that are not shared by the majority of Israelis.

The first of those is their willingness to sacrifice soldiers in battles, and, in the case of Azaria, in show trials, in the hopes of winning the support of the Europeans and other Western elites. This impulse is not simply problematic. It is insane, because for more than a decade, it has been continuously proven futile.

At least since the battle in Jenin, it has been abundantly obvious that the Europeans will never support us. The Europeans, along with the UN and the Western media, ignored completely the lengths Israel went to prevent Palestinian civilian casualties in Jenin. They accused us of committing a Nazi-style massacre despite the fact that not only wasn’t there a shred of evidence to back their wild allegations. There were mountains of evidence proving the opposite. The Palestinians were massacring Israelis and would have continued to do so, had the IDF not retaken their population centers and so ended their ability to strike us at will.

And yet, despite the trail of UN blood libels from Jenin to the Goldstone Report and beyond, despite the faked media images of purported IDF bombings of civilians in Lebanon and Gaza, despite the hostility of EU diplomats and politicians and the open anti-Semitism of the European media and public, our generals still care what these people think about us.

Eisenkot and his generals still believe that by giving soldiers sometimes life-threateningly limited rules of engagement, by forcing every battalion commander to have a legal adviser approve his targeting decisions, the Europeans will be convinced that they should stop supporting our enemies.

The second impulse separating our generals from us is that almost to a man, members of the General Staff want a Palestinian state to be established in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem and they want that state to be joined in some way with Gaza.

After 15 years of Palestinian terrorism and political warfare, our security brass still believe that the PLO is Israel’s partner. It doesn’t matter to them that the PLO is driving the current wave of terrorism just as it drove all the previous ones.

This is the reason that Eisenkot and his ideologically driven generals insist that we leave the Palestinian population centers after we spent so much blood and treasure fighting our way into them 14 years ago.

This is the reason that while Eisenkot and his generals insist that the PA security services are helping us fight terrorism even though no help would be necessary if the PA wasn’t inciting terrorism.

The generals’ stubborn faith in the notion that Palestinian terrorists who seek the destruction of our country will magically be transformed into allies the minute we turn the keys to our security over to them, sets them apart from the vast majority of Israelis.

Most Israelis support a theoretical Palestinian state that is at peace with us. Most Israelis would be willing to give up substantial amounts of territory if doing so would bring peace with the Palestinians.

But most Israelis also recognize that the Palestinians are not interested in peace with us and as a consequence, it makes no sense to give them any land. Most Israelis recognize that you can’t trust the good intentions of leaders who tell their school-age children to stab our school-age children.

The third impulse separating our generals from the public is their embrace and glorification of weakness. On every front, for more than 20 years, members of the General Staff have embraced the notion that there is no military solution to any of the security threats facing the country.

Until the Syrian civil war, the generals believed that if we left northern Israel vulnerable to attack and invasion by giving the Assad dynasty the Golan Heights, then the Assads would be magically convinced to ditch their Iranian sponsors and make common cause with an Israel that could no longer defend itself.

They have opposed attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, insisting that we can trust the US, even though it has been obvious for years that the US would take no action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

As for the US, the IDF embraces strategic dependency on the US. They insist that we can trust the Americans even though the Obama administration sided with Hamas in Operation Protective Edge. They continue to argue that we can depend on American even though the Obama administration is actively enabling Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Utterly foreign to them is the notion that Israel would strengthen its alliance with the US by acting independently against Iran’s nuclear facilities, because doing so would prove that Israel is not a strategic basket case but a regional power that commands respect.

They oppose destroying Hamas’s military capabilities.

As a consequence, they have conducted four campaigns in Gaza since the 2005 withdrawal that all lacked a concept of victory. And by the way, the General Staff enthusiastically supported the strategically irrational withdrawal from Gaza.

When the public gets angry at our generals for not striving to defeat Hamas, for instance, they look at us like we fell off of Mars. Why would they want to defeat Hamas? Their job is to contain Hamas. And they are doing their job so well that Hamas managed to dig a tunnel right under their feet.

What explains our generals’ embrace of positions that most Israelis reject? Why are they willing to sacrifice soldiers and embrace Orwellian notions that weakness rather than strength is the key to peace? It is hard to say. Perhaps it’s groupthink. Perhaps it’s the selection process. Perhaps it’s overexposure to Europeans or Americans. Perhaps they are radicals in uniforms. Perhaps it is none of those things.

But whatever the cause of their behavior, the fact is that behavior has alienated them from Israeli society. In treating Palestinian terrorists with more respect than it accords its own soldiers, the IDF General Staff is earning the public’s fury. And in their contemptuous dismissal of the public’s loss of trust, our generals – including Ya’alon – are demonstrating that they have become strangers to their own society. This of course is a calamity.

The IDF lost the public’s trust at Purim. Let us hope that at Passover, our generals will leave their bubble and begin repairing the damage they caused. They are not in Europe. They are here.

And they need to be with us.

Categories: Foreign policy, Generals, IDF, Israel, Israel and Europe, Israeli government, Israeli military, Netanyahu, Palestinian incitement, Palestinian terrorists, Politicization, Weakness vs strength
Tags: Foreign Policy, Generals, IDF, Israel, Israel and Europe, Israeli government, Israeli Military, Netanyahu, Palestinian incitement, Palestinian terrorist, Politicization, Weaknes vs strength

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Op-Ed: Obama redefines Palestinian terrorism; Israel will pay the price

April 20, 2016

Op-Ed: Obama redefines Palestinian terrorism; Israel will pay the price, Israel National News, Stephen M. Flatow, April 20, 2016

When does Palestinian terrorism against Israelis not count as terrorism? When the Obama administration redefines it for political purposes.

The State Department’s annual report on human rights around the world was released this past week, and it included an unprecedented denunciation of Israel. The Israeli security forces are guilty of “excessive use of force” against Palestinian Arabs, according to the State Department.

Obviously the State Department has a right to condemn Israel’s security tactics if it believes those tactics are unjustified. No country, not even America’s staunchest ally, should be above criticism. But the administration does not have a right to redefine some types of Palestinian terrorism, in order to classify them as non-violence, so that Israel’s response to them qualifies as “excessive.”

The State Department does not deny the principle that Israeli soldiers are justified to shoot at Palestinians who are attacking them. But it is now redefining what constitutes an “attack.” As examples of “excessive force,” the report points out that during the past year, there were “numerous” instances of “the ISF (Israel security forces) killing Palestinians during riots, demonstrations, at checkpoints, and during routine operations…”

So if an Israeli soldier kills a Palestinian “during riots” or “demonstrations,” that automatically constitutes “excessive force,” according to the Obama administration. In other words, “riots” and “demonstrations” are not in the category of actions which could justify a lethal Israeli response.

Anyone who has ever seen footage of Palestinian “riots” and “demonstrations” –and the footage is freely available on YouTube– knows that they typically consist of mobs of Palestinians hurling Molotov cocktails, bricks, and rocks at Israeli soldiers.

If a Molotov cocktail strikes a soldier, it sets him on fire. It can burn him to death. If a brick or a rock strikes an Israeli soldier in the head, it can blind or even kill him. At least fifteen Israelis have been murdered by Palestinian rock-throwers over the years.

By the way, American courts–and American newspapers–have no trouble acknowledging that rock-throwers are attempted-murderers. I have written previously about the case of three drunken teenagers who threw rocks at cars on the Capital Beltway in Washington, D.C., in 1990. Thirty drivers or passengers were wounded, including a girl who suffered irreversible brain damage. The attackers were convicted of “assault with intent to murder” and each sentenced to 40 years in prison. An editorial in the Washington Post at the time correctly asked, “What’s the difference between assault with a deadly weapon–a shooting–and assault with rocks that hit cars at potentially lethal speeds?”

So why is the Obama administration trying to redefine Molotov cocktail-throwing rioters, and rock-throwing demonstrators, as non-terrorists? Because otherwise it would have no justification for blaming Israel, no way to criticize Israel, no basis for trying to pressure Israel into making more concessions to the Palestinians.

The administration’s entire policy toward Israel and the Palestinians is based on the premise that the Palestinians deserve a fully independent state in Judea-Samaria-Gaza, as quickly as possible. The administration wants Israel to make more concessions, and more withdrawals, to speed up the drive towards statehood.

That’s why it won’t acknowledge that Palestinian mobs are engaged in attempted murder–because admitting that fact would jeopardize the administration’s entire strategy. It would mean acknowledging that the Palestinians are the aggressors, that the Israelis are the victims, and therefore that the Palestinians are the ones who should be making concessions, not Israel. It would take away the administration’s justification for pressuring Israel. It would turn American public opinion so firmly against the Palestinian Authority that Congress might block, or at least reduce, Obama’s $500-million annual gift to the PA.

The administration’s attempt to whitewash Palestinian rioters is not just discomfiting. It is dangerous to Israel. If the idea that rioters are not terrorists becomes the new norm, then any Israeli soldier who dares to defend himself against a firebomb-hurling attacker will be declared guilty of using “excessive force.” And that will then become a justification for condemnations of Israel, pressure on Israel, boycotts of Israel, and worse–all with the blessing of the United States government.

Categories: Defense of Israel, Foreign policy, Obama and Israel, Palestinian terrorists
Tags: Defense of Israel, Foreign Policy, Obama and Israel, Palestinian terrorists

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Islam is Winning and Western Civilization is losing – Parts I and II, America and Israel

April 19, 2016

Islam is Winning and Western Civilization is losing – Parts I and II, America and Israel, Dan Miller’s Blog, April 19, 2016

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

CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations are winning. Islamic terror in America, Europe and Israel has killed a thousand or so people. That’s a lot, but Islamization kills entire civilizations; with the death of our civilization, more deaths than Islamic terrorism has brought can be expected.

Should we give up and voluntarily commit civilizational suicide? Much of Europe has already done so and that’s what Obama and His minions are seeking for America. The forces pushing for it are strong and we can react with greater strength only if we have the will. Do we?

Part I – America

a. Muslims already in Obam’s America

The video embedded above promotes a new book titled See No Sharia, which deals with the Muslim Brotherhood and related Islamist organizations. The Muslim Brotherhood’s vision for America is laid out in a document put in evidence at the Holy Land Foundation criminal trial of several Islamist Muslim Brotherhood conspirators for funding Hamas, a terrorist organization, in violation of U.S. law.

[w]ritten in 1991 by a top Muslim Brotherhood operative, Mohamed Akram, and entitled “The Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal of the Group in North America,” this internal correspondence was meant for the eyes only of the organization’s leadership in Egypt. So, the document is direct and to the point: It explicitly states that the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America is “destroying Western civilization from within … by [the infidels’] hands and the hands of the believers so that Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” [Emphasis added.]

Following guilty verdicts against indicted conspirators, the Obama administration could (and should) have sought indictments against their multiple unindicted co-conspirators. It chose not to do so, most likely because pursuing the matter further would have been inconsistent with Obama’s world view — which seems to be consistent with that of the Muslim Brotherhood, et al.

See No Sharia, and to some extent the related video, illuminate ways in which Obama’s America has been seduced by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Muslim Brotherhood-related Islamist groups into requiring our law enforcement agencies to reject the notion of Islamist Terrorism and to accept instead that of non-denominational “Violent Extremism.” We are repeatedly told that Violent Extremism has nothing to do with Islam.

Although the connection between the Muslim Brotherhood and Nazism should not be overlooked, it generally is.

It was the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Cairo in 1928, that established Islamic Jihad as a mass movement. The significance of the Muslim Brotherhood to Islamic Fascism is comparable to the significance of the Bolshevik Party to Communism: it was, and it remains to this day, the ideological reference point and the organizational core for all later Islamist groups, including Al Queda and Hamas. [Emphasis added.]

While British colonial policy contributed to the rise of Islamic radicalism, the Brotherhood’s jihad was not directed against the British, but focused almost exclusively on Zionism and the Jews.

Membership in the Brotherhood rose from 800 members in 1936 to over 200,000 in 1938. In those two years the Brotherhood conducted a major campaign in Egypt, and it was against the Jews, not against the British occupiers. This campaign against the Jews, in the late 1930s, which established the Brotherhood as a mass movement of Islamic Jihadists, was set off by a rebellion in Palestine directed against Jewish immigration from Europe and Russia. That campaign was initiated by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini. [Emphasis added.]

Al-Husseini was extremely impressed with Adolf Hitler and his anti-Jewish rhetoric. In 1941 he visited Hitler in Berlin. He was so enthralled with Hitler and the Nazis, and their plans to exterminate the Jews that he decided to remain in Berlin. He lived there from 1941 to 1945, recruiting Muslims in Europe for the Waffen-SS. He was very close to Hitler. Husseini’s best friends were Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann.

He convinced Hitler that he would be able to persuade his Muslim brothers in the Arab world to carry out the extermination of Jews in the Middle East, just as the Nazis were doing in Europe.

Back then, Hitler was largely focused on the elimination of Jews. That remains the focus of Hamas, of which the Muslim Brotherhood remains a principal supporter. Might it be due to long-standing Muslim Brotherhood ideas that many blame all of the conflicts in the Middle East on the Jewish “occupation” of Israel? That view is held by Obama and members of His administration. Hence, their persistent efforts to turn parts of Israel over to the “Palestinians,” culminating in a two state solution giving Hamas and the Palestinian Authority enhanced leverage in driving Jews from Israel.

Under pressure from the Obama administration, our law enforcement agencies cooperate with Islamist organizations to implement Sharia principles to fight “Islamophobia” rather than to locate, arrest and prosecute Islamist terrorists and wannabe Islamist terrorists. One possible rationale is that if we are nice, they may reduce their efforts to “radicalize” Muslims and, perhaps, stop some Islamic attacks. Another more likely rationale is that our dear leaders actually believe that Islamophobia (along with the Jewish “occupation” of Israel) is the principal cause of Islamic terrorism and that Sharia compliance (along with the “two state solution” and death of Israel) will solve the problems.

America has no blasphemy laws and should want none. They would violate our First Amendment right to freedom of speech. The Organization for Islamic Cooperation, consisting of fifty-seven Islamic nations, has been pushing the United Nations to impose Sharia law-style laws prohibiting blasphemy. They do not seek such laws for their own nations because they already have them to protect Islam. They seek them for America and the rest of what’s left of Western civilization, but seem to have little or no interest in prohibiting “blasphemy” against Judaism or Christianity.

The cartoon is blasphemous under Sharia law because it depicts Muhammed; some Muslims seek to kill those who produce such material. An “art exhibit” featuring an image of the Virgin Mary in a glass of urine is considered sacrilegious; some Christians seek to have government funding removed. I am reminded of this rather old Andrew Klavan video:

b. Muslims coming to Obama’s America

As correctly observed in an article titled How Obama’s Refugee Policies Undermine National Security,

The issue of the admission of Syrian refugees into the United States has understandably ignited a firestorm of protest by Americans concerned about their safety and the safety of their families. These Americans are not exhibiting “xenophobia,” the usual claim made by the open borders immigration anarchists. They have simply been paying attention to what James Comey, the Director of the FBI, and Michael Steinbach, the FBI’s Assistant Director of the Counterterrorism Division, have stated when they testified before congressional hearings about the Syrian refugee crisis. They made it clear that these refugees cannot be vetted. There are no reliable databases to check and no capacity to conduct field investigations inside Syria to verify the backgrounds of these aliens. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

I focused on these issues in my October 7, 2015 article for FrontPage Magazine, “Syrian ‘Refugees’ and Immigration Roulette: How the government is recklessly playing with American lives.”

Further reports have provided disturbing information that ISIS operatives have seized blank Syrian passports and other identity documents, along with the printing devices used to prepare passports and other ID, and have sold these documents to reporters in false names. These identity documents are indistinguishable from bona fide documents because they are bona fide documents — except that the photos and biometrics do not relate to the original person but create credible false aliases for anyone willing to pay for them.

Even if we had the documentation referred to above, it would be of little help because due to pressure from Muslim Brotherhood-related groups, we are not allowed to “profile” Muslims. As noted here,

obeisance to politically correct proscriptions against “profiling” is just one of the myriad ways in which we tell the jihadist enemy we really aren’t serious about the latest battle in the 14-century-long war of Islam against the infidel West.

. . . .

This lack of seriousness is endemic in this administration. Refusing to call ISIS “Islamic,” even going so far as to censor comments by French president François Hollande that used the word, bespeaks a dangerous frivolity. . . .

Our problem, however, goes beyond the politicians. Too many of us have failed to understand that this war did not begin on 9/11. It did not begin when al Qaeda declared war on us in the 90s and attacked our embassies and naval vessels. It did not begin in 1979, when our alleged neo-colonialist depredations supposedly sparked the Iranian revolution and created today’s Islamic (N.B., Mr. President) Republic of Iran, the world’s premier state sponsor of terrorism. It did not begin in 1948, when five Arab nations, all but one members of the U.N., violated Resolution 191 and attacked Israel. It did not begin when after World War I the victorious Entente powers exercised mandatory powers, granted by the League of Nations and codified in international treaties, over the territory of the Ottoman Empire that had sided with the Central Powers.

All these acts of aggression were merely the latest in a war begun in the 7th century when Islam attacked the eastern Roman Empire and began its serial dismemberment of the heart of Christendom, the old word for the West. For a thousand years the armies of Allah successfully invaded, conquered, occupied, enslaved, and raided the West, in accordance with its doctrine of jihad in the service of Muslim domination, and in homage to Mohammed’s injunction, “I was told to fight all men until they say there is no god but Allah.” This record of success began to end in the 17th century with the rise of the modern West and its technological, economic, and political advantages. [Emphasis added.]

But the war didn’t end with that Muslim retreat, even after what bin Laden called the “catastrophe” –– the demise of the Ottoman Caliphate, and the division of its territory into Western-style nation-states. The West won that battle, but it did not win the war. One reason is the Muslim nations of the Middle East never suffered the wages of their aggression. They sided with the Central Powers in World War I. They sat out World War II––apart from the many thousands who fought on the side of the Nazis––and received fugitive Nazis as guests after the war. Their serial aggression and terror against Israel has never been repaid with bombed-out capitals or punitive postwar reprisals. Their governments have never been punished for funding and proliferating mosques and madrassas teaching hatred of the infidel and terrorist violence in the service of jihad. [Emphasis added.]

Instead of paying the price of aggression, partly because of the Cold War, more recently because of Western failure of nerve and civilizational exhaustion, Muslims have been the beneficiaries of billions in Western aid, Western arms, Western defense against enemies, Western lax immigration policies, Western appeasement, and Western suicidal ideas like cultural and moral relativism. In short, Muslims have never accepted their defeats, and have never experienced the humiliating cost of their aggression, because the modern West has never forced them to pay for it. [Emphasis added.]

Thus they look at our unserious, godless culture of consumption and frivolity, of self-loathing and guilt, and these serious believers are confident that 350 years of defeat in battle have not led to defeat in the long war. And so the war goes on. The frivolous Western dogs bark, but Allah’s caravan moves on. [Emphasis added.]

Part II — Israel

Israel is constantly attacked by various UN organizations, most recently UNESCO, which has named the Western Wall after Muhammed’s flying horse, ~~Barac~~k Buraq.

There is a concerted effort among “Palestinians” and their supporters to erase all evidence of the historical connection of Jews to Israel. The UN, controlled by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, is a willing partner in these efforts. Besides being motivated by Islamic Jew-hatred, this endeavor is in line with the Islamic supremacist tendency to appropriate the holy places and sacred figures of other religions.

Buraq is claimed to have transported Muhammed from Mecca to Jerusalem, hence giving Palestinians valid claim to all of Israel. Here’s one depiction of Buraq. Obviously, there are no photographs of Muhammed actually riding him, because images of Muhammed are prohibited. Look closely at the picture. Where did the horse’s head come from?

Here’s an explanation of the Muslim nexus with the Western Wall:

Various scholars and writers, such as Ibn al-Faqih, Ibn Abd Rabbih, and Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, have suggested places where Buraq was tethered, mostly locations near the southwest corner of the Haram.^[7]However, for several centuries the preferred location has been the al-Buraq mosque, just inside the wall at the south end of the Western Wall plaza.^[7] The mosque sits above an ancient passageway that once came out through the long-sealed Barclay’s Gate whose huge lintel remains visible below the Maghrebi gate.^[7] Because of the proximity to the Western Wall, the area next to the wall has been associated with Buraq at least since the 19th century.^[8]

A New York Times editorial published in October of last year purported to compare the Jewish and Muslim claims to the Temple Mount. An article by Daniel Greenfield at Front Page Magazine posed a few questions for the ~~NUT~~ NYT editorialists.

The Temple Mount is holy to Jews because of the Temples. So the New York Times chose to discuss whether the Temples really existed. It’s holy to Muslims because Mohammed supposedly flew there on a flying horse (with a woman’s head).

. . . .

Let’s interview some of the same scholars and archeologists as to whether the entire Muslim basis for laying claim to the area has any basis in reality. The New York Times discusses the need for “independent scientific verification” of the Temples. How about “independent scientific verification” of this?

Here are some things for the New York Times to verify…

1. Buraq was a flying horse with a woman’s head. Can we get any verification that such a creature ever existed.

2. Buraq flew from Mecca to Jerusalem and back in one night. “The distance between Mecca and Jerusalem is 755.1 miles. To complete this feat in one night would have meant that Buraq must have been jet propelled in the 7th Century.” Please provide independent scientific verification of the existence of a flying horse with a woman’s head that can travel faster than the speed of sound.

Oddly the New York Times doesn’t appear to be interested in independent scientific verification of Islamic Supremacist myths.

Evidently, UNESCO puts more stock in flying horses than in Jewish claims to the Temple Mount.

In view of the gravity of the Islam vs. Everybody Else situation, I decided to try to inject a bit of humor into only one of the many problems Israel faces with the UN, the OIC, Obama’s America, Europe, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and others. I had originally intended to write a more comprehensive piece on Islam vs. Israel, and will probably do so after I post Part III of this series dealing with the Islamisation of Europe.

A better and more detailed account of the UNESCO – Temple Mount absurdity is provided here.

Conclusions

Obama’s America has the will to “win,” but confuses winning with eradicating Islamophobia and slicing Israel into pieces to give to the “Palestinians” and perhaps Syria, hence bringing “peace” to the Middle East. Under that definition of “winning,” Israel, the only democratic nation and the only solid ally of the United States in the region, will cease to exist; the Islamists will have won.

We need a very different version of “winning,” one under which our constitutional freedoms and our democratic nature will be cherished and protected. Both are inconsistent with Sharia law and are not part of any definition with which Obama would agree.

We can win against Islamist encroachments on our government and in our society only if enough of us recognize the dangers they entail. Then, we will have not only the means to win but the will to do so. A first step will be to bid Obama good riddance and to welcome a successor who recognizes the dangers of Islamism and is prepared — and wants — to move quickly and effectively against it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeJ-iv3MOTo

Categories: 2016 elections, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Antisemitism, CAIR, Christianity, Clash of civilizations, Defense of Israel, Europe, Foreign policy, Freedom of speech, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Islam - submission, Islam and Christianity, Islam and Judaism, Islam in America, Islamic immigration, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Israel, Israel borders, Jerusalem, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama and Islam, Obama and Israel, Obama and Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinian terrorists, Palestinians and Jews, Sharia law, Temple Mount, United Nations, Violent extremism, Western Wall
Tags: Al-Asqa Mosque, Antisemitism, CAIR, Christianity, Clash of civilizations, Defense of Israel, Europe, Foreign Policy, freedom of speech, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Islam - submission, Islam and Christianity, Islam and Judaism, Islam in America, Islamic immigration, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Israel, Israel borders, Jerusalem, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama and Islam, Obama and Israel, Obama and Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinian terrorists, Palestinians and Jews, Sharia law, Temple Mount, United Nations, Violent extremism, Western Wall

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IDF’s drill secures Netanyahu-Putin summit

April 18, 2016

IDF’s drill secures Netanyahu-Putin summit, DEBKAfile, April 18, 2016

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The IDF launched an unannounced military-air exercise in northen Israel Monday April 18. It will also be held in the Jordan valley, strategically located south of the Golan Heights and the Sea of Galilee. Despite the official explanation that the drills are part of the IDF’s training schedule for 2016, it is difficult not to see it as a follow-up to the Cabinet meeting on the Golan the previous day, including Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s declaration that “Israel will never withdraw from the Golan.”

Just as the Cabinet meeting was an “emergency” one, the exercise is not part of standard training, as an IDF statement claimed, but rather part of the overall picture of the war in Syria on the other side of the northeastern border.

The drill is mainly intended to prevent a possible attack by ISIS, Syrian, Iranian or Hizballah forces aimed at torpedoing Netanyahu’s discussions in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, April 21.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the IDF exercise shows only half of the military picture in the area.
On the other side of the border, in the triangular pocket where the Israeli, Syrian and Jordanian borders meet, heavy fighting has been underway for several days between Syrian rebels and forces of the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigades and the al-Muthanna organization, which have both sworn allegiance to ISIS. The battles are taking place across from Israel’s Hamat Gader, south of the Sea of Galilee, which is the reason why the exercise is also being held in the Jordan Valley.

On the other side of the border, in the triangular pocket where the Israeli, Syrian and Jordanian borders meet, heavy fighting has been underway for several days between Syrian rebels and forces of the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigades and the al-Muthanna organization, which have both sworn allegiance to ISIS. The battles are taking place across from Israel’s Hamat Gader, south of the Sea of Galilee, which is the reason why the exercise is also being held in the Jordan Valley.

On the other side of the border, in the triangular pocket where the Israeli, Syrian and Jordanian borders meet, heavy fighting has been underway for several days between Syrian rebels and forces of the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigades and the al-Muthanna organization, which have both sworn allegiance to ISIS. The battles are taking place across from Israel’s Hamat Gader, south of the Sea of Galilee, which is the reason why the exercise is also being held in the Jordan Valley.

On Sunday, the leader and commander of Al-Muthanna was killed during the fighting. The goal of the rebel attack is to capture the Syrian villages in the territory held by ISIS, which threatens the Galilee and the Golan communities of Tel Katzir, Shaar Hagolan and Masada. Sources in Kuwait reported last week that Jordanian special forces and Israeli drones marked in the colors of the Jordanian air force are participating in the battles. The developments on the ground indicate that the goal of the attacking forces is to uproot ISIS from the Israeli and Jordanian border areas.

DEBKAfile’s sources provided the following exclusive details on April 17:

The Israeli cabinet holds its weekly session Sunday April 17, on the Golan. Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu will visit Moscow on Thursday, April 21 to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and to launch the most important battle of his political career, and one of Israel’s most decisive contests of the last 10 years: the battle over the future of the Golan Heights.

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources and its sources in Moscow report exclusively that Israel’s top political leaders and military commanders were stunned and shocked last weekend when they found out that US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin have agreed to support the return of the Golan to Syria. The two presidents gave their top diplomats, Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the green light to include such a clause in a proposal being drafted at the Geneva conference on ending the Syrian civil war.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu seen during a security and defense tour in the Golan Heights, near the Northern Israeli border with Syria. April 11, 2016. Photo by Kobi Gideon/GPO *** Local Caption *** ??? ?????? ?????? ?????? ????? ?????? ?????. ????? ?????? ?????? ????? ?? ????? ??????? ???? ????? ?????? ?????? ?????

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu seen during a security and defense tour in the Golan Heights, near the Northern Israeli border with Syria. April 11, 2016. Photo by Kobi Gideon/GPO

Israel captured the Golan from the Syrian army 49 years ago, during the Six-Day War in 1967 after the Syrian army invaded Israel.

In 1981, during the tenure of then Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Israel passed a law defining the Golan as a territory under Israeli sovereignty. However, it did not state that the area belongs to Israel.

While Israel was preparing for a diplomatic battle over the future of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, Obama and Putin decided to deal a diplomatic blow to Israel and Netanyahu’s government on an unexpected issue, the Golan.

It is part of an endeavor by the two powers to use their diplomatic and military cooperation regarding Syria to impose agreements on neighboring countries, such as Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

For example, Washington and Moscow are trying to impose an agreement regarding the granting of independence to Syrian Kurds, despite Ankara’s adamant opposition. The two presidents are also pressuring Riyadh and Amman to accept the continuation of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s rule, at least for the immediate future.

DEBKAfile’s sources report that just like the other diplomatic or military steps initiated by Obama and Putin in Syria, such as those for Assad’s eventual removal from power, the two powers see a resolution of the Golan issue as a gradual process that may take a long time, perhaps even years. But as far as they are concerned, Israel will have to withdraw from the Golan at the end of that process.

It should be noted that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not traveling to Washington to discuss the Golan issue with Obama. The frequent trips by the prime minister, senior officials and top IDF brass to Moscow in recent months show where the winds are blowing in the Middle East.

However, Moscow is not Washington, and Israel has no lobby in the Russian capital defending its interests.

It should be made very clear that the frequent trips by senior Israeli officials to Moscow have not created an Israeli policy that can influence Putin or other senior members of the Russian leadership. Putin has made occasional concessions to Israel on matters of minimal strategic importance, but on diplomatic and military steps regarding Syria and Iran he has shown little consideration of Jerusalem’s stance.

It should also be noted that there has been no basis for the enthusiasm over the Russian intervention in Syria shown by Netanyahu, Israeli ministers and senior IDF officers.

All of the calls by a number of Russia experts, mainly those of ll of the calls by a number of Russia experts, mainly those of DEBKAfile, for extreme caution in ties with Putin have fallen on deaf ears among the political leadership in Jerusalem and the IDF command in Tel Aviv.

Amid these developments, three regional actors are very pleased by Washington and Moscow’s agreement to demand Israeli withdrawal from the Golan: Syrian President Assad, the Iranian leadership in Tehran and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Now, they do not need to risk a military confrontation with Israel over the Golan because Obama and Putin have essentially agreed to do the dirty work for them.

Categories: Assad, Defense of Israel, Foreign policy, Golan, IDF, Israel, Israel borders, Israeli security, Jordan, Netanyahu, Obama and Israel, Obama and Russia, Obama and Syria, Putin, Russia - Israel, Russia - Syrian war, Syria war
Tags: Assad, Defense of Israel, Foreign Policy, Golan, IDF, Israel, Israel borders, Israel security, Jordan, Netanyahu, Obama and Israel, Obama and Russia, Obama and Syria, Putin, Russia - Israel, Russia - Syrian war, Syria war

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Saudi Arabia Threatens To Sell Off $750 Billion In U.S. Assets If Congress Allows 9-11 Families To Sue

April 18, 2016

Saudi Arabia Threatens To Sell Off $750 Billion In U.S. Assets If Congress Allows 9-11 Families To Sue, Jonathan Turley’s Blog, Jonathan Turley, April 18, 2016

abdullah_of_saudi_arabia

president_barack_obama1

The Obama Administration is shrugging off the insult to our legal system by a country that violates every core principle of due process and civil liberties in their own country.

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

While the level of protection afforded Saudi Arabia in Washington is hardly a secret, the level of that support was on display this month when officials pushed the Obama Administration to release long-withheld pages from the 9-11 report, as we previously discussed. Those pages reportedly implicate Saudi Arabia in the 9-11 attacks. Saudi Arabia response with an express threat to sell off hundreds of billions of dollars of assets if Congress were to pass a bill allowing the Kingdom to be held liable for the attacks. One would think that the response would be outrage at the threat. After all, the bill would only allow citizens to sue and a bipartisan group of Senators have joined to support the 9-11 families. Saudi Arabia could still defend itself (and according to its government, vindicate itself) in a court of law. Of course, the United States has a real court system as opposed to the government controlled, Sharia “courts” used in the Kingdom to mete out medieval justice.

The Administration not only is staying silent about this insulting threat but is doing precisely what the Saudis are demanding in trying to block the bill. When push comes to shove between the victims or 9-11 and the Saudis, the choice appears clear.

So that there would be no mistake about the threat, Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s message personally last month — threatening a sudden sell-off of $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets to cripple the economy. The rationale is to avoid the assets from being frozen by American courts. Interestingly, this assumes that you are likely to be found guilty of complicity in the worst terrorist attack in United States history. What is interesting is that the use of al-Jubeir seemed calculated to maximize the threat. The same message could have been delivered through leaks that the Saudis were preparing such a selloff for strategic reasons. The open threat was a serious miscalculation by the Saudis in my view. Few Americans would take the threat as anything short of a slap in the face of the victims of 9-11 and the country as a whole.

The Obama Administration is shrugging off the insult to our legal system by a country that violates every core principle of due process and civil liberties in their own country. Instead, it is suggesting that holding Saudi Arabia liable for American deaths could put Americans at legal risk overseas. Whatever the merits of the argument against the access to the courts for these citizens (and I would be very interesting to hear them), the Administration should have delivered a clear message that we do not respond to such threats, particularly when another country is balancing American lives against foreign investments.

What do you think?

Categories: 9/11, Foreign policy, Obama and Islam, Obama and Saudi Arabia, Obama's weakness, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Congress, U.S. courts
Tags: Foreign Policy, Obama and Islam, Obama and Saudi Arabia, Obama's weakness, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Congress, U.S. courts

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Christians wither under Muslim rule

April 17, 2016

Christians wither under Muslim rule, Israel Hayom, Yoram Ettinger, April 17, 2016

Bethlehem’s Christian Arab leaders lobbied Israel against transferring the city to the Palestinian Authority. Thus, in 1993, on the eve of signing the Oslo Accords, the Christian mayor of Bethlehem, Elias Freij, urged then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to annex Bethlehem to Greater Jerusalem, as it was under Ottoman, British and Jordanian rule of the area, predicting that “transferring Bethlehem to the Palestinian Authority would relegate it to a town of many churches, but devoid of Christians.”

Before Oslo, the Christian mayor of Beit Jala — Bethlehem’s twin town — Farah al-Araj, told the late New York Times syndicated columnist William Safire: “The PLO will force a wave of Christian emigration, making Belize in Central America a home for more Beit Jala Christians then left in Beit Jala.” In 1967, shortly following the Six-Day War, then Mayor of Bethlehem Elias Bandak, a Christian, warned then Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan: “An Israeli failure to annex Bethlehem to Greater Jerusalem would doom the city’s Christian character.”

Since the 1993 establishment of the Palestinian Authority, the Christian majorities of Ramallah — Mahmoud Abbas’ headquarters — Bethlehem and Beit Jala have been transformed into insignificant minorities, due to physical, social, economic, legal and political intimidation. More Christian emigrants from these towns reside in Latin America than Christians remaining there.

The violent discrimination of Christians has been a systematic feature of Muslim Arab societies. For instance, in Saudi Arabia, Christians were murdered, expelled or converted until the 10th century. Currently, non-Muslims cannot become Saudi citizens and Christians working in — or visiting — Saudi Arabia are not allowed to worship, or display Christian items (Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings, etc.), openly. While Egyptian President, General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, has attempted to minimize the traditional intimidation of Egypt’s Coptic Christian (10%) minority — which possesses ancient Pharaonic roots — the abduction of Coptic women and girls has been routine and Copts face deep-seated discrimination in all walks of life. Moreover, conversion to Christianity is prohibited under Islam. While physical assaults on Coptic communities were a daily occurrence during the brief rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, it has become a monthly event under el-Sissi.

The persecution of Christians in Arab lands is based on the teachings of Muhammad, which dominates the social, political, cultural, judicial, military and educational aspects of the Muslim Middle East. Therefore, the political establishments in Muslim Arab countries are not secular in the Western sense. According to the Quran, Jews and Christians — “the people of the book” who rejected Islam — transgressed egregiously, were the enemies of God, were rejected by God, causing Judaism and Christianity to be replaced by — and subordinated to — Islam, the only legitimate and inherently supreme religion. Islam commands Muslims to pursue the domination of the “House of Islam” over the “House of the infidel,” which includes Christians. Hence, the centrality of jihad, the holy war.

A typical Quranic reference to Christians and other “infidels” appears in Surah 5:60 and 86: “God cursed and blustered those whom he transformed to apes [Jews] and pigs [Christians]. … The infidels shall inherit hell.”

The submission of Christians and other “infidels” to Islam was further institutionalized under the seventh-century Pact of Umar, which severely restrained and humiliated Christians — and later extended to other “infidels” — consistent with the Quran.

In fact, the legalized persecution and scapegoating of Christians are in accordance with the Muslim concept of “dhimmis,” who are the non-Muslim citizens in Muslim lands. As stipulated by the Islamic code of law (the Shariah), they are subordinated to and protected by Islam as long as they accept Islamic supremacy. The attitude towards the dhimmis is specified in the Quran 9:29: “Fight the people who received the book [Jews and Christians] — who do not adhere to the truthful religion [Islam] — until they pay the jizya [infidel tax], while they are humiliated.” Non-Muslim citizens are faced with three choices: conversion to Islam, accepting dhimmitude or death.

Since the 1683 defeat of the Ottoman Empire at the gates of Vienna, Islam has declined dramatically, witnessing the rise to global domination by the “infidel, inferior and arrogant” Christian world, and alarmed by the penetration of “infidel” ideologies and values into the “abode of Islam.” This perceived humiliation has led to tectonic eruptions of Islamic rage and terrorism, aimed at regaining the, supposedly, inherently supreme, megalomaniacal status of Islam.

Also, the Islamic religious and political establishments consider the “infidel” Christian/Western modernity and civil liberties clear, present and lethal threats, which fuel endemic domestic instability. Furthermore, the recent erosion of the Western posture of deterrence, as well as Western appeasement and retreats, have provided a tailwind to the Islamic surge, fueling the anti-Christian/Western Islamic rage in spite of the generally pro-Arab Christian/Western policy (including the U.S. arms embargo during Israel’s War of Independence, while the British supplied arms to the Arabs; punishing Israel for destroying Iraq’s nuclear reactor; pressuring Israel to redivide Jerusalem; and President Barack Obama’s courting of Muslim regimes and condemnation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies).

While most of the Christian/Western world pressures Israel to accept Palestinian demands, a common battle cry in Palestinian Authority-inspired rallies is: “After Saturday comes Sunday,” which communicates a Muslim warning to Christian minorities throughout the Arab world: Muslims will do away with Christians after they have dealt with the Jews!

As befits the fate of dhimmis, churches, convents, monasteries, Christian cemeteries, schools, homes, land and Christian women in the Palestinian Authority are subject to desecration, destruction, burning, confiscation, intimidation, rape and harassment. For example, in April-May 2002, Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity — with its priests and nuns — was hijacked, looted and booby-trapped for 39 days by Palestinian terrorists.

The 1970-1982 Palestinian terror surge in Lebanon accelerated the flight of Lebanese Christians, reducing them from the ruling sector to a dwindling minority. Since 1993, the Palestinian Authority intimidation of Christians has intensified the flight of Christians. However, the Vatican and most Christian and Western governments have — knowingly — sacrificed the religious and civil liberties of Christian minorities — and their very existence — on the altar of wishful thinking, political correctness and appeasement.

Categories: Bethlehem, Christians, Foreign policy, Islam - submission, Islam and Christianity, Islam and Jews, Islamic supremacy, Israel, Jerusalem
Tags: Bethlehem, Christians, Foreign Policy, Islam - submission, Islam and Christianity, Islam and Jews, Islamic supremacy, Israel, Jerusalem

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John Kerry’s Latest Excuse for Terrorism? ‘Human Rights Abuses’

April 15, 2016

John Kerry’s Latest Excuse for Terrorism? ‘Human Rights Abuses’ Truth Revolt, Tiffany Gabbay. April 14, 2016

kerry_24

Because it couldn’t have anything to do with Islam.

Where would the Left be if it couldn’t make up asinine excuses for why terrorists go on murderous rampages and are proliferating at record speed? During the Arab Spring, President Obama blamed the uprising on the fact that “middle class folks” were just trying to “catch a break.” Then, Sec. of State John Kerry blamed the crisis in Syria on “climate change” and “climate refugees.”

Of course the so-called “Israeli ‘occupation’ of Palestine” is a favorite among leftists who attempt to excuse violence within Islam at all levels, regardless of where in the world that violence is committed.

And now the latest excuse for Islamic terrorism? Well, it’s because human rights abuses are being committed against Muslims. Stars and Stripes reports:

A crackdown on dissent by authoritarian governments last year contributed to a rising tide of human rights abuses that has allowed terrorist groups to flourish, according to the State Department’s annual human rights report released Wednesday.

Although the report found human rights abuses on every continent, Secretary of State John F. Kerry singled out the Middle East.

“The most widespread and dramatic violations in 2015 were those in the Middle East, where the confluence of terrorism and the Syrian conflict caused enormous suffering,” he said.

“Given the horrors of these past five years, I cannot imagine a more powerful blow for human rights than putting a decisive end to this war, to the terror, to the repression and especially to the torture, to the indiscriminate bombing,” he said, “and therefore make possible a new beginning for the Syrian people.”[…]

Of course it couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that President Obama, along wth former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, completely destabilized the Middle East by destroying partners like Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi — both of whom were cooperating with the U.S. to tamp down the radical elements within their respective countries; or that cutting and running in Iraq created the vacuums in which radicals now flourish.

It apparently also isn’t obvious to Sec. Kerry that there is something fundamental within Islam that fosters hatred, radicalism, and a penchant for armed jihad among no trivial number of its adherents.

Of course the simple, most obvious and truthful answer will never do for leftists, especially when it doesn’t suit their agenda.

Categories: Foreign policy, Islam and human rights, Islamic terrorism, Kerry, Leftists
Tags: Foreign Policy, Islam and human rights, Islamic terrorism, Kerry, Leftists

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