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US and Hizballah coordinate spy drone flights over Qalamoun, share US combat intelligence

May 23, 2015

US and Hizballah coordinate spy drone flights over Qalamoun, share US combat intelligence, DEBKAfile, May 23, 2015

U.S._special_forces_operating_recon_drones_in_Lebanon_5.15Reconnaissance drone operated by US special forces in Lebanon

How do Obama’s repeated commitments to Israel’s security square with close US military and intelligence cooperation with an organization whose vow to destroy Israel is backed by 100,000 missiles – all pointed south?

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Another strange pair of bedfellows has turned up in one of the most critical Middle East battlefields: the United States is helping Hizballah, Iran’s Lebanese surrogate, in the battle for control of the strategic Qalamoun Mountains. DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources disclose that a US special operations unit, stationed at the Hamat air base on the coast of northern Lebanon, is directing unarmed Aerosonde MK 4.7 reconnaissance drone intelligence-gathering flights over the Qalamoun Mt arena, 100 km to the west.

Washington set up the base originally in line with an assurance to Beirut of military assistance for the next three years to counter any threatened invasion by extremist elements.

However, it turns out that the data the US drones pass to Lebanese army general staff in Beirut goes straight to Hizballah headquarters – and on to the Iranian officers in Syria running Bashar Assad’s war effort.

The Aerosonde MK 4.7 can stay aloft for 10 to 12 hours at a stretch at an altitude of 4.5 km. It functions day or night, equipped with an advanced laser pointer capability. It is capable of carrying ordnance but US sources say they the aircraft in Lebanon are unarmed.

Since Hizballah is also operating Ababil-3 surveillance drones of its own over Qalamoun, coordination had become necessary between the American team and the Shiite group.  The consequence is that for the first time, the US military is working directly with an internationally-designated terrorist organization – a development with earthshaking ramifications for Israel’s security. This partnership has in fact become a game-changer for the worse in terms of Israel’s security ties with the US and has caused an upheaval in its military and intelligence disposition in the region, in at least six respects:

1. To counter US-Hizballah intelligence collaboration, Israel is obliged to reshuffle the entire intelligence mechanism it maintains to protect its northern borders with Lebanon and Syria.

2.  Israel finds itself forced to monitor the progress of the US special unit’s interface with Hizballah, its avowed enemy.

3.  Israel can no longer trust American intelligence coming in from Lebanon because it is likely tainted by Hizballah sources.

4.  Hizballah is gaining firsthand insights into the operating methods of US special operations forces, which Israel’s methods strongly resemble and must therefore revamp.

5. The Hizballah terrorist group is winning much needed prestige and enhanced status in the region from its collaboration with the US.

6. Hizballah’s Ababil drones are in fact operated by the hostile Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which leaves Israel with no option but to overhaul from top to bottom the intelligence-gathering systems employed by its surveillance drones to track Iranian movements in the region.

At the Washington Adas Israel synagogue Friday, May 22, President Barack Obama wearing a kipah “forcefully” objected to suggestions that policy differences between his administration and the Israeli government signaled his lack of support for the longtime US ally.

This raises a question: How do Obama’s repeated commitments to Israel’s security square with close US military and intelligence cooperation with an organization whose vow to destroy Israel is backed by 100,000 missiles – all pointed south?

Categories: Department of Defense, Drones, Foreign policy, Hezbollah, Ideology, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Obama, Syria, U.S. Military
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Obama expounds the limits of Iran’s anti-semitism

May 23, 2015

Obama expounds the limits of Iran’s anti-semitism, Power Line, Scott Johnson, May 22, 2015

Assuming that Obama intends his remarks to be taken seriously, which I don’t, I find Obama’s comments among the stupidest and most ignorant he has ever uttered, although I concede on this point that that the competition is stiff.

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In the course of his recent interview of President Obama — painful reading from beginning to end — Jeffrey Goldberg asked a somewhat challenging question regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran. “You have argued,” Goldberg observed, “that people who subscribe to an anti-Semitic worldview, who explain the world through the prism of anti-Semitic ideology, are not rational, are not built for success, are not grounded in a reality that you and I might understand. And yet, you’ve also argued that the regime in Tehran—a regime you’ve described as anti-Semitic, among other problems that they have—is practical, and is responsive to incentive, and shows signs of rationality.” Oh, wise man, how do you square this particular circle? Obama responded:

Well the fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn’t preclude you from being interested in survival. It doesn’t preclude you from being rational about the need to keep your economy afloat; it doesn’t preclude you from making strategic decisions about how you stay in power; and so the fact that the supreme leader is anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all of his other considerations. You know, if you look at the history of anti-Semitism, Jeff, there were a whole lot of European leaders—and there were deep strains of anti-Semitism in this country—

Goldberg (unfortunately) interrupted him at this point. Obama then continued:

They may make irrational decisions with respect to discrimination, with respect to trying to use anti-Semitic rhetoric as an organizing tool. At the margins, where the costs are low, they may pursue policies based on hatred as opposed to self-interest. But the costs here are not low, and what we’ve been very clear [about] to the Iranian regime over the past six years is that we will continue to ratchet up the costs, not simply for their anti-Semitism, but also for whatever expansionist ambitions they may have. That’s what the sanctions represent. That’s what the military option I’ve made clear I preserve represents. And so I think it is not at all contradictory to say that there are deep strains of anti-Semitism in the core regime, but that they also are interested in maintaining power, having some semblance of legitimacy inside their own country, which requires that they get themselves out of what is a deep economic rut that we’ve put them in, and on that basis they are then willing and prepared potentially to strike an agreement on their nuclear program.

This appears to have been good enough for Goldberg, but it should make a serious man cry. Let me count the ways.

Obama is in the process of finalizing an absurd arrangement with Iran that will at the same time obviate the cost of its pursuit of nuclear weapons and reward the regime for entering into the arrangement. They will reap the economic rewards of taking advantage of President Obama’s surrender to their (absurd) terms.

The Islamic Republic continues its program of ideological anti-Semitism and regional expansion. We await Obama’s “ratchet.” The regime evidently fears it not. This is glorified hot air.

Obama reiterates “military option [he’s] made clear[.]” The word “clear” here is the tell; it demonstrates that Obama is lying. There is no United States military option. Indeed, Obama’s public relations work on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran is suggestive of its removal from the shelf.

How does a seriously committed anti-Semitic regime weigh the costs and benefits of its anti-Semitism? I long for Professor Obama to draw from the well of his historical learning to apply the cost-benefit analysis to the Nazi regime of 1933-1945. Somebody get this man a copy of Lucy Dawidowicz’s The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945.

The Israelis draw the lesson they refer to in the slogan “Never again.” Emanuele Ottolenghi offers reflections that are precisely on point.

How does Professor Obama apply his cost-benefit analysis to the Iran’s 1979 bombing of the AMIA (Jewish) in Buenos Aires? It targeted Jews and killed 85 people. What costs was Iran prepared to incur? What costs has Iran incurred? The applicable cost-benefit analysis might illuminate how Iran thinks about the prospect of “eliminating” Israel by means of its proxies and with the nuclear weapons it is striving at all cost to obtain.

As for the regime’s alleged need to maintain a “semblance of legitimacy” inside Iran and therefore its alleged need to “get themselves out of a deep economic rut,” what does he mean? Obama is not saying that the regime lacks a semblance of legitimacy inside Iran at present. Obama himself continues to provide the regime something more than a “semblance of legitimacy.” Is the Supreme Leader feeling the pressure? No one outside Obama’s circle of friends can take this at face value.

Assuming that Obama intends his remarks to be taken seriously, which I don’t, I find Obama’s comments among the stupidest and most ignorant he has ever uttered, although I concede on this point that that the competition is stiff.

NOTE: Noah Rothman also takes a stab at doing justice to Obama’s comments here. It occurs to me that the words of Walter Laqueur in connection with Jan Karski’s mid-war report on the Holocaust in his book The Terrible Secret also apply here: “Democratic societies demonstrated on this occasion as on many others, before and after, that they are incapable of understanding political regimes of a different character….Democratic societies are accustomed to think in liberal, pragmatic categories; conflicts are believed to be based on misunderstandings and can be solved with a minimum of good will; extremism is a temporary aberration, so is irrational behavior in general, such as intolerance, cruelty, etc. The effort needed to overcome such basic psychological handicaps is immense….Each new generation faces this challenge again, for experience cannot be inherited.” In Obama’s world, I would add, experience can’t even be experienced. Ideological blinders render him obtuse (again assuming his words are to be taken at face value, which I don’t).

Categories: Antisemitism, Diplomacy, Foreign policy, Holocaust, Human rights, Ideology, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian anti-semitism, Israel, Jews, Khamenei, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Sanctions, Supreme Leader
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Richard Engel on Obama’s Strategy Against Islamic State: The Definition of Stupidity

May 21, 2015

Richard Engel on Obama’s Strategy Against Islamic State: The Definition of Stupidity, Washington Free Beacon via You Tube, May 21, 2015

 

Categories: Airstrikes, Caliphate, Department of Defense, Foreign policy, Ideology, Iranian proxies, Iraq, Iraqi military, Islamic State, Obama, Palmyra, Syria
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The Pope and the Palestinians

May 20, 2015

The Pope and the Palestinians, Front Page Magazine, , May 20, 2015

(The article also deal with Islam in general, as to which the Pope’s fantasies reflect those of the Obama Administration and others. — DM)

francis-and-abbas-450x253

Perhaps the ultimate expression of this faith in Islam was Pope Francis’ assertion in Evangelii Gaudium that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”

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Contrary to reports in the mainstream press, Pope Francis did not call Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas “an angel of peace.” The correct translation of the pope’s words is “I have thought of you: that you could be an angel of peace.”

Why, then, was it so easy to believe the initial reports? Perhaps because the initial reports seemed to align with previous papal overtures to Palestinian leaders. Pope Francis had previously called Abbas a “man of peace,” he has shown sympathy for Palestinian grievances, and other popes have given the appearance of lending legitimacy to the Palestinian cause. For example, Pope John Paul II is reported to have received PLO leader Yasser Arafat on twelve different occasions.

Arafat was a terrorist. One would think that the Vatican would have wanted to limit its contacts with him. The same goes for Abbas. He has repeatedly honored and praised Palestinian “martyrs” who have slaughtered innocent Jews. There is evidence that he helped fund the 1972 operation that killed eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. Why is he accorded such a cordial reception at the Vatican?

Although the Church has often declared its spiritual bond with Jews, it has had a less harmonious relationship with the nation where approximately half the world’s Jews now reside. The Vatican was the last Western government to accord diplomatic recognition to the State of Israel (in 1993). In addition, on several occasions, prominent prelates have likened Israel to King Herod, the murderer of innocents; and others have accused Israel of being an apartheid state. Meanwhile, Catholic NGOs such as Pax Christi and Trocaire have been major players in the boycott, divest, and sanctions campaign against Israel.

Of course, the BDS campaign directly impinges on Israeli security. So do the calls by numerous Christian leaders to tear down the security barrier that divides Israel from the West Bank. On his trip to the Holy Land a year ago, Pope Francis allowed himself to be photographed in prayer at a section of the wall where a large graffiti message compared Bethlehem to the Warsaw Ghetto. In a naïve gesture of solidarity with Palestinians, the pope was unwittingly lending credence to the idea that the Israelis could be compared to the Nazi occupiers of Poland.

The wall was constructed to prevent suicide attacks against Israeli citizens. It’s estimated that its construction has saved thousands of lives. To suggest that the wall is offensive, as many Christians have done, is to suggest that Jewish lives don’t matter. Moreover, such judgments betray an entirely lopsided view of the situation. Take the Gaza conflict. The Catholic hierarchy typically had little to say about the daily rocket barrages launched against Israeli citizens from Gaza, but it was quick to condemn Israel on those occasions when it finally retaliated. In a similar vein, Fouad Twal, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, blamed last year’s Gaza war on the Israeli embargo which, he said, had turned Gaza into “a factory of desperate people, designed to easily turn into extremists.”

In short, many Catholic leaders have shown a tendency to blame Israel for defending itself. The implication, of course, is that there would be no need for defense if Israel would only go to the peace table and make the concessions demanded of it by the Palestinians. The Vatican’s recent recognition of the “State of Palestine” reflects this naïve view of the situation. The supposition is that the Palestinians only want to be left in peace, whereas there is abundant evidence that the deepest desire of Palestinian leaders is for the extermination of Israel. Have Vatican officials never seen the photos of Abbas holding up a map of Palestine that encompasses all of the territory currently known as Israel? Are they unaware that he has personally called for a Palestine that is Judenrein? Didn’t they notice that when Israel gambled on disengaging from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Gaza soon turned into a terrorist state governed by an obsession to destroy Israel?

From the Israeli point of view, the call to cooperate with the Palestinian “peace” agenda is a call to cooperate in its own demise. Whenever I hear a UN representative or a Vatican spokesman call for peace talks between Israel and Palestine, I think of that scene from Goldfinger in which James Bond is about to be sliced in two by a laser beam. “Do you expect me to talk?” he asks. “No, Mr. Bond,” replies Goldfinger, “I expect you to die.” The Vatican hasn’t yet grasped the point that the Palestinian leadership doesn’t want the Israelis to talk, it wants them to die.

By words and by actions, the Vatican continues to suggest that there is a moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This policy not only does a disservice to Jews, it also does a disservice to Catholics and other Christians. The main effect of the moral equivalence stance is to sow confusion among Catholics at a time when they need to be clear and unconfused—clear about Islam, that is. The Vatican policy toward Palestine reflects it overall stance toward the Islamic world. In other words, let’s overlook the dark side—the terrorism, the anti-Semitism, the oppression of Christians and other minorities—and let’s put the best face on the Mohammedan faith. For the sake of peace. And also for the sake of maintaining the threadbare narrative that Islam is a close cousin of Catholicism and, therefore, a religion of peace. Perhaps the ultimate expression of this faith in Islam was Pope Francis’ assertion in Evangelii Gaudium that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”

How well has this policy worked? Not very. Catholics and other Christians who lived in Muslim lands and who took seriously the Catholic version of “this has nothing to do with Islam” soon found that the tiny minority of misunderstanders were legion and had murder on their minds. Many found out too late. Years of indoctrination in the myth of Islam’s pacific nature had left them unprepared for the violence. Not that the Church was the only culprit. The secular opinion-makers had been preaching the same gospel. The irony is that the Church wants Israel to adopt the same policy of make-believe about Islam that has contributed to the death and displacement of millions of Christians.

The policy requires an almost total denial of facts. In the case of the Arab-Israeli crisis it means ignoring the terrorist ties of the Palestinian government, its unity coalition with Hamas, the massive state-sponsored indoctrination of Palestinian children, and the oft-stated goal of eliminating Israel. Ironically, it also necessitates that one ignore the ongoing persecution of Christians in the Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian leaders do a good job of hijacking Christian themes and imagery in order to gull Christians into thinking that they are, indeed, brothers in Christ. Thus, Palestinians have milked the massacre-of-the-innocents meme for all its worth. They also like to claim that Jesus was the first Palestinian. Another favorite theme is that the Palestinian people are the “new Jesus” who is being crucified by the Israelis.

Many in the Catholic hierarchy seem to fall for the ruse, but the steady exodus of Christians from the Palestinian territories tells a different story. The overall population of Christians in the Palestinian areas has declined from 15 percent in 1950 to 2 percent today. After the Palestinian Authority took control over Bethlehem in 1995, the Christian population there declined by half. In the Gaza Strip, only a few hundred Christians remain. That’s because Christians in Palestine, like Christians in most Muslim-majority societies, are treated as second-class citizens—subject to rape, intimidation, and legalized theft.

Meanwhile, the Christian population of Israel continues to grow. Palestinian Christians want to live there and so do persecuted Christians in other parts of the Middle East. Despite years of propaganda to the contrary, they have come to realize that Israel is a safe haven in a world of Islamic chaos.

Do Christians who migrate to Israel know something that the Vatican doesn’t know? The facts are there for everyone to see, but not everyone sees them. Why do Catholic leaders persist in assigning moral equivalence when there is no moral equivalence? Normally, a belief in moral equivalence grows out of a relativistic outlook. But presumably we can rule that out in the case of Catholic prelates. A more likely cause of their moral neutrality is a misapplication of the principle of “judge not.” Christians today are highly conscious of the sins of Western civilization and are therefore reluctant to judge those who lie outside it—in this case, Muslims. However, the principle is meant to apply to judgments about the state of an individual’s soul, not his behavior. And it was never meant to apply to withholding judgments about ideologies and belief systems.

The reluctance to see the mote in the other’s eye can eventually slide over into willful blindness. There are numerous warnings in the New Testament about spiritual blindness and they apply to those within the Church as well as to those without. The big danger for Church leaders is not that they will be seen as judgmental in the eyes of the world, but that they will be seen as foolishly naïve in the eyes of history.

“First comes Saturday, then comes Sunday” is a well-known slogan in the Middle East. It means that after the Islamists finish with the Jews, they will come after the Christians. The fate of the Saturday people and the Sunday people is intertwined. And the fate of both is put in jeopardy when Christian leaders insist on holding on to a fantasy-based picture of Islam.

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Appeasement, Christianity, Christians, Diversity, Fatah, Foreign policy, Freedom, Gaza, Human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Jerusalem, Jews, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Muslims, Obama, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Pope, Terrorism, Two state solution, West Bank
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Documents: Feds Knew Benghazi Attack Planned in Advance

May 19, 2015

Documents: Feds Knew Benghazi Attack Planned in Advance, Washington Free Beacon, , May 18, 2015

(Please see also, Arab military chiefs approve Egyptian-led intervention in Libya — DM)


Gutted U.S. consulate in Libya / AP

Documents obtained by Judicial Watch from their May 2014 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits filed against the State Department and the Department of Defense revealed that the Obama administration knew about the attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi at least 10 days before the attack.

The documents also revealed that the DOD immediately reported the attacks on the consulate.

The documents included an August 2012 analysis predicting the failure of President Obama’s policy of a regime change in Syria as well as a warning about the rise of the Islamic State. The documents also included a confirmation that United States was aware of an arms shipment from Benghazi to Syria.

One of the documents from the DOD’s Defense Intelligence Agency dated September 12, 2012, the day after the attacks in Benghazi, lays out the details of the attack on the consulate and assesses that it was carefully planned by the terrorist group “Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman.”

The group is known to have connections to the Muslim Brotherhood as well as  to al Qaeda. Rahman is serving a life sentence in prison for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

The group’s goal was to “kill as many Americans as possible,” according to the documents, which were sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.

An October 2012 DOD document contained the first official document that the Obama administration knew of the shipment of weapons from the Benghazi to rebel forces in Syria.

Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155 mm howitzers missiles.

During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the (Qaddafi) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amount of cargo traffic transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sized and able to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo.

The heavily redacted document did not reveal which weapons were sent to Syria

The DIA consistently warned of the deterioration of the situation in Iraq and warned that it creates an ideal situation for Al Qaeda to return to Mosul and Ramadi, according to an August 2012 report. During this time the U.S. was monitoring weapons flows from Libya to Syria. The agency warned of dire consequences but blocked out what most of what those consequences were.

The State Department produced a single document from a separate lawsuit that Judicial Watch had filed against the department. The document was created by Hillary Clinton’s office the morning after the attacks on the consulate in Benghazi and was sent throughout the State Department.

Neither the State Department nor Hillary Clinton have turned over any documents in regards to Benghazi or her personal email account that was used during her as well as other top aides during her time as Secretary of State.

Judicial Watch has filed multiple FOIA requests and has waited over two years for the documents that they have received.

“These documents show that the Benghazi cover-up has continued for years and is only unraveling through our independent lawsuits,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “The Benghazi scandal just got a whole lot worse for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.”

Categories: Benghazi, Clinton, Department of Defense, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Ideology, Intelligence community, Libya, Obama
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How the Islamic Republic Is Manipulating the U.S.

May 19, 2015

How the Islamic Republic Is Manipulating the U.S., Front Page Magazine, , May 19, 2015

iran-s-rouhani-phones-pm-nawaz-after-soldier-s-killing-1395854702-4802-450x336

Rouhani and the moderate camp have persuaded Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that superficial diplomatic ties with the Obama administration will, in fact, empower the Islamic Republic, further its hegemonic ambitions, and raise Tehran’s economic status without the need for the Iranian leaders to give up on their revolutionary principles, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism.

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There is a crucial Machiavellian (but not a strategic) tactical shift in the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy and its pursuit of regional preeminence.

First of all, Iranian leaders have realized that by superficially showing the Obama administration that the Islamic Republic is willing to restore diplomatic ties with his administration, they can in fact further advance their ideological and national interests.

Second, knowing that President Obama is desperate for a “historic” nuclear deal and the establishment of diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic, Iranian leaders have played the role very well by attempting to satisfy President Obama’s empty goals.

Third, the ruling clerics of the Islamic Republic became cognizant of the fact that dealing with the Obama administration does not necessarily mean that they have to give up anything with respect to its domestic suppression, revolutionary Islamist principles, human rights abuses, regional hegemonic ambitions, anti-Americanism, hatred towards Israel, and foreign policy objectives.

The tactical shift, currently, is to satisfy President Obama’s personal and shallow objectives by allowing him to project that he is making historic moves (such speaking on the phone with the Iranian leaders), while simultaneously pursuing their own ideological objectives.

For example, most recently, Rouhani and the Obama administration agreed on opening new diplomatic offices in Tehran and Washington. For President Obama, opening diplomatic offices can be viewed as another “historic move” cited in his records or on his Wikipedia page. From the perspective of Iranian leaders, it is a crucial pillar for the advancement of Iran’s foreign policy and ideological objectives in the region without pressure from the US.

To pursue their objectives more efficiently, Iranian leaders have agreed to meet frequently with the diplomats at the highest level of the Obama administration, “negotiating,” and having some of their interactions publicly televised on American and Western media. In addition, the American and the Iranian flags are repeatedly shown next to each other in the high level meetings.

These moves, in fact, give legitimacy to the theocratic regime to further its ambitions.

The president was also delighted to make another “historic move” by speaking on the phone with his Iranian counterpart, President Hassan Rouhani. (One would wonder what a great accomplishment it is to pick up a phone and call another president.)

Washington and Tehran broke diplomatic ties in 1979. After the hostage crisis, high American officials and diplomats have not set foot on the Iranian soil due to Iran’s continuous violation of international norms and anti-Americanism.

Nevertheless, President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have decided to turn a blind eye on Iran’s egregious human rights abuses, aggressiveness and violations of international laws.

In another shallow move, Kerry claimed to be proud to set foot on Iranian “territory.” He met with Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, at the residence of the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, Gholamali Khoshroo, in New York.

Instead of attempting to change the behavior of the Ayatollahs and their revolutionary principles, President Obama and Kerry are satisfied with these superficial “historic moves.”

Since Iran’s political establishments and policies are driven, not solely by national and geopolitical interests, but also by ideological Islamist (Shiite) principles, hardliners and the office of the Supreme Leader will always view a real rapprochement with the US as taboo.

Restoring full diplomatic ties can also be analyzed as betraying the revolutionary principles of the Islamic Republic, which were based on anti-Americanism, as well as their opposition to Western models of socio-political and socio-economic landscapes.

From the perspective of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — who has the final say in foreign policy decisions — genuine diplomatic ties with the US will lead to the empowerment of Iranian civil society and secular factions. From the prism of the senior cadre of the IRGC, relationships with the American government might lead to the opening of the Iranian market, endangering the economic monopoly of IRGC institutions.

On the other hand, Rouhani and his technocrat team, who share the same objectives with the hardliners and want to preserve the interests of the Islamic Republic, came to the realizations that satisfying President Obama’s superficial and shallow objectives of “historic moves,” can indeed assist them in advancing their ambitions.

In conclusion, similar to the ongoing nuclear negotiations, Rouhani and the moderate camp have persuaded Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that superficial diplomatic ties with the Obama administration will, in fact, empower the Islamic Republic, further its hegemonic ambitions, and raise Tehran’s economic status without the need for the Iranian leaders to give up on their revolutionary principles, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism.

Categories: Antisemitism, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Human rights, Ideology, Iran, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamism, Israel, Khamenei, Obama, P5+1, Rouhani, Supreme Leader, Theocracy
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The veneer of civilization

May 19, 2015

The veneer of civilization, Israel Hayom, Sarah N. Stern, May 19, 2015

Throughout the negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, U.S. President Barack Obama frequently stated that “no deal is better than a bad deal” and that “all options are on the table.”

And then, on April 2, after a framework agreement was concluded in Lausanne, Switzerland (but without even a piece of paper to wave, Neville Chamberlain-like), Obama said, “Do you really think that this verifiable deal, if fully implemented … is a worse option than the risk of another war in the Middle East?”

As soon as the choice was altered from “a good deal or no deal” to “either this deal or war,” we witnessed a sudden surge in Iranian swagger and bravado, in both their words and their actions.

On May 7, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Deputy Commander Brig. Gen. Hussein Salami told Fars television: “We welcome war with the United States, as we do believe that it will be the scene for our success, to display the real potential of our power. We have prepared ourselves for the most dangerous scenarios, and this is no big deal.”

On May 12, Mojtaba Zolnour, a member of the IRGC and a close personal friend of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said: “The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has divine permission to destroy Israel. The noble Quran permits the Islamic republic to destroy Israel. Even if Iran gives up its nuclear program, it will not weaken this country’s determination to destroy Israel.”

This Iranian saber rattling has been accompanied by renewed provocations. On April 28, in the Strait of Hormuz — a major oil route — an Iranian crew commandeered the Maersk Tigris, a cargo ship flying under the flag of the Marshall Islands, a U.S. protectorate. They held the ship for six days before releasing it and its crew members. And just a few days after that, Iranian gunboats opened fire on the Alpine Eternity, a Singaporean-flagged ship, and tried to force it into Iranian territorial waters.

The more the U.S. treats Iranians with kid gloves so as not to offend them and to keep them at the negotiating table, the more the Iranians feel a renewed sense of triumph, and disdain toward the United States and its allies. (One would think the Americans were the ones who needed sanctions lifted to help our ailing economy).

On May 6, Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter who has been held in an Iranian prison since July 2014, was charged with espionage. This trumped-up charge was a direct rebuke to the United States, demonstrating just how much contempt the Iranians have for the U.S. It is clear that the Iranians believe that we are determined to give them their cake, and to let them eat it, too. And like a spoiled child in the midst of a temper tantrum, the more we give the Iranians, the more they demand.

The sad fact is that the American negotiating team is basing its entire strategy on little more than wishful thinking. While visiting Beijing at the weekend, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that a deal with Iran “will have a positive influence on North Korea” (although he did add that he wasn’t sure that the North Koreans were capable of “internalizing the message”). One wonders whether the secretary of state also believes in unicorns and fairies.

History indicates that the nuclear negotiations with North Korea were precisely what led to their possession of a nuclear bomb. It is actually the Iranians who have taken note and learned from the North Koreans, and not the other way around.

It has become increasingly obvious that the Obama administration does not know how to negotiate. It seems that they are intent on making a deal, any deal, with the Iranians. And the more they grovel, the more contemptible the United States becomes in the eyes of the Iranians.

That is why the United States Senate needs to hold a free and open debate on the details of the negotiations. Over the last two weeks, the leadership of both the House and the Senate did no one any favors by putting the Iran Nuclear Review Act of 2015 (Corker-Cardin) on the suspension calendar. This means it requires a straight up or down vote, with no room for attaching amendments or for discussion.

The real danger in the Iran Nuclear Review Act of 2015 is that it has turned this negotiation, which has the standing of an international arms treaty, into a bill that would require a veto-proof majority to block. That means that it will become law even if only 34 Senate Democrats support it. While a treaty requires a positive action of two-thirds of the Senate to approve it, now it will take two-thirds of the Senate to veto it, which is much more difficult to achieve, particularly during the immediate aftermath of a euphoric deal-signing ceremony, probably on the White House Lawn, replete with lofty speeches of “peace in our time.”

The framers of the Constitution were prescient when they required two-thirds of the Senate to ratify a treaty. And these negotiations are nothing short of a nuclear arms treaty that will impact the order of the world for generations to come.

When the final deal is signed on June 30, the U.S. Senate must insist that it has the international standing of a treaty and demand that if it does not have the support of 67 senators, it is null and void.

In the meantime, those congressmen and senators who want to pretend that they are attentive to the genuine concerns of the Saudis, the Israelis and patriotic Americans wary of the Iranian negotiations, are now able to hide behind the Iran Nuclear Review Act, this piece of paper that they recently signed.

As the late Congressman Tom Lantos — the only Holocaust survivor in the U.S. House of Representatives — was fond of saying, “The veneer of civilization is paper thin.”

Categories: Appeasement, Diplomacy, Foreign policy, Ideology, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Israel, Kerry, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, U.S. Congress
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Muslim Rape Gangs, Terrorists as ‘Pop-Idols,’ and the Trafficking of Children

May 17, 2015

Muslim Rape Gangs, Terrorists as ‘Pop-Idols,’ and the Trafficking of Children, Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern, May 17, 2015

(What is an “extremist?” — DM)

  • “The boys want to be like them [jihadists] and the girls want to be with them. That’s what they used to say about the Beatles… [Muslim teenagers] see their own lives as poor by comparison, and don’t realize they are being used.” — Nazir Afzal, Britain’s leading Muslim prosecutor.
  • “The extreme views of a ‘racist, homophobe and anti-Semite’ who supports killing non-Muslims and ‘stoning adulterers’ are being made available to prison imams and prisoners…with the blessing of [prison] authorities.” — Newsweekmagazine.
  • “Mohammed was selling me for £250 to paedophiles from all over the country. They came in, sat down and started touching me… Sometimes, I would be passed from one pervert to another… Mohammed’s defense was laughable… His barrister, a woman, implied I was a racist because all the defendants were Muslim.” — Excerpts from Girl for Sale, by Lara McDonnell.
  • “Democracy… violates the rights of Allah. Islam is the only real, working solution for the UK.” — Election posters in Cardiff, Wales.

What follows is a summary of some of Islam and Islam-related issues in Britain during April 2015, categorized into four broad themes: 1) Islamic extremism; 2) British multiculturalism; 3) Muslim integration; and 4) Muslims and the British general elections.

1. Islamic Extremism and Syria-Related Threats

British police believe that about 600 Britons have travelled to Syria and Iraq since the conflict began in early 2011. About half of those are believed to have returned to the UK.

On April 1, police in Turkey detained nine British nationals from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, who were allegedly seeking to join the Islamic State in Syria. The nine — five adults and four children, including a one-year-old baby — were arrested in the Turkish city of Hatay.

One of those arrested was Waheed Ahmed, a student of politics at Manchester University. His father Shakil, a Labour Party councilor in Rochdale, said he thought his son was doing an internship in Birmingham. He said:

“It’s a total mystery to me why he’s there, as I was under the impression he was on a work placement in Birmingham. My son is a good Muslim and his loyalties belong to Britain, so I don’t understand what he’s doing there. If I thought for a second that he was in danger of being radicalized I would have reported him to the authorities.”

Also on April 1, Erol Incedal, 27, a British national of Turkish origin, was jailed for 42 months for possessing a bomb-making manual. His friend, Mounir Rarmoul-Bouhadjar, 26, a British national of Algerian origin, who admitted to having the same manual, was given three years. Both men had been to the Syrian-Turkish border and mixed with jihadists, who taught them about weaponry and explosives.

Meanwhile, it emerged that the father of one of the three teenagers from Brent, northwest London, who were arrested in Turkey in March on suspicion of trying to join the Islamic State in Syria, works for the British Ministry of Defense. The father, who may have had access to the names and addresses of British military personnel at home and overseas, was placed on “compassionate leave.”

On April 2, Yahya Rashid, of Willesden, also in northwest London, was charged with “engaging in conduct in preparation for committing an act of terrorism, and engaging in conduct with the intention of assisting others to commit acts of terrorism, between November 2014 and March 2015.” Rashid, 19, was arrested at Luton Airport after arriving on a flight from Istanbul. The Middlesex University electronics student was allegedly returning from Syria after travelling there via Morocco and Turkey.

On April 3, six Muslims were arrested at the Port of Dover in Kent on suspicion of attempting to leave England to join the Islamic State. The Crown Prosecution Service said that three of the individuals were found in the back of a truck in an apparent attempt to smuggle themselves out of Britain. They were charged with “preparing acts of terrorism.”

On April 5, Abase Hussen, the father of runaway British jihadi schoolgirl Amira Hussen, conceded that his daughter may have become radicalized after he took her to an extremist rally organized by the banned Islamist group Al-Muhajiroun, run by Anjem Choudary, the British-born Muslim hate preacher.

Amira, 15, was one of three girls from Bethnal Green Academy in East London who flew to Turkey in February to become “jihadi brides” in Syria. During a hearing at the Home Affairs Select Committee in March, Abase blamed British authorities for failing to stop his daughter from running off to Syria. Asked by Chairman Keith Vaz if Amira had been exposed to any extremism, Hussen replied: “Not at all. Nothing.” The police eventually issued an apology.

Abase, however, changed his story after a video emerged which unmasked him as an Islamic radical who had marched at an Islamist hate rally alongside Choudary and Michael Adebolajo, the killer of Lee Rigby. Abase, originally from Ethiopia, said he had come to Britain in 1999 “for democracy, for the freedom, for a better life for children, so they could learn English.”

On April 8, Alaa Abdullah Esayed of South London admitted to posting 45,600 tweets in support of the Islamic State in just one year. The tweets included pictures of dead bodies and encouraged children to arm themselves with weapons. Esayed’s tweets also included a poem, “Mother of the Martyr,” which advises parents on how to teach children about jihad. Esayed, 22, faces up to 14 years in prison for encouraging terrorism and disseminating terrorist publications.

On April 9, the families of two teenage boys from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, who are believed to have traveled to join the Islamic State, said that they were “in a state of profound shock” and deeply worried about the safety of their “ordinary Yorkshire lads.” The 17-year-old boys, Hassan Munshi and Talha Asmal, are believed to have gone to Syria after heading to Turkey on March 31. The boys reportedly told their relatives that they were going on a school trip, but instead used the Easter holidays as a “window of opportunity” to flee Britain.

On April 20, a 14-year-old schoolboy from Blackburn, Lancashire, became Britain’s youngest terror suspect. He was arrested in connection with an Islamic State-inspired terror plot in Melbourne, Australia. Police said messages found on his computer and mobile phone indicated a plan to attack the centenary celebrations of the Anzac landings at Gallipoli during the First World War. (Anzac Day — April 25 — marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War.)

Also on April 20, police in Turkey arrested a British couple and their four young children on suspicion of seeking to travel to a part of Syria controlled by the Islamic State. Asif Malik, his wife Sara, and the four children — aged between 11 months and 7 years — were detained at a hotel in Ankara. Turkish officials said the family had crossed into Turkey from Greece on April 16 and that they had been detained after a tip-off from the British police.

On April 24, Hassan Munir of Bradford was jailed for 18 months for posting links to Dabiq, an Islamic State propaganda magazine, on his Facebook page. The court heard that Munir, 27, had ignored repeated warnings by Facebook and by police after he posted jihadist material, including items about beheadings. The judge said magazine posed a serious danger because it incited people to take up arms for the Islamic State.

On April 27, Mohammed Kahar of Sunderland was arrested after being caught disseminating extremist material, including documents such as “The Explosive Course,” “44 Ways To Serve And Participate In Jihad,” “The Book Of Jihad,” and “This Is The Province Of Allah.” Kahar, 37, was also accused of plotting Syria-related terrorism acts, supporting a proscribed organization and financing terrorism — in all, 10 offenses stretching back 18 months.

On April 28, an 18-year-old jihadist, Kazi Jawad Islam, was convicted of “terror grooming” for trying to “brainwash” his friend, Harry Thomas, “a vulnerable young man with learning difficulties,” into attacking British soldiers with a meat cleaver.

The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales (aka Old Bailey) was told that Kazi Islam — allegedly inspired by the beheading of serviceman Lee Rigby in 2013 — befriended the then-19-year-old Thomas in October 2013 after meeting him at college. The court heard how Islam also “ruthlessly exploited” his autistic friend into preparing to make a bomb.

In an interview with the Guardian, Nazir Afzal, Britain’s leading Muslim prosecutor, warned that more British children are at risk of “jihadimania” than previously thought because they see Islamic terrorists as “pop idols.” He said:

“The boys want to be like them and the girls want to be with them. That’s what they used to say about the Beatles and more recently One Direction and Justin Bieber. The propaganda the terrorists put out is akin to marketing, and too many of our teenagers are falling for the image.

“They see their own lives as poor by comparison, and don’t realize they are being used. The extremists treat them in a similar way to sexual groomers — they manipulate them, distance them from their friends and families, and then take them.

“Each one of them, if they go to Syria, is going to be more radicalised when they come back. And if they don’t go, they become a problem — a ticking time bomb — waiting to happen.”

2. British Multiculturalism

In April, officials at the Lostwithiel School in Cornwall publicly humiliated nearly a dozen pupils between the ages of eight and 11 whose parents had refused to allow them to participate in a school trip to a mosque in Exeter. Some parents said they were concerned about the safety of their children, while others said they were opposed to the teaching of Islam in school. But school officials forced the non-compliant pupils individually to give an explanation in the student assembly.

On April 5, Victoria Wasteney, 38, a Christian healthcare worker, launched an appeal against an employment tribunal that found she had “bullied” a Muslim colleague by praying for her and inviting her to church. Wasteney was suspended from her job as a senior occupational therapist at the John Howard Centre, a mental health facility in east London, after her colleague, Enya Nawaz, 25, accused her of trying to convert her to Christianity. Wasteney’s lawyers say that the tribunal broke the law by restricting her freedom of conscience and religion, which is enshrined in Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

On April 8, the Guardian reported that there has been a 60% increase in child sexual abuse reported to the police over the past four years, according to official figures obtained through a Freedom of Information request that make public for the first time the scale of the problem in England and Wales.

The number of offenses of child sexual abuse reported to the police soared from 5,557 cases in 2011 to 8,892 in 2014. At the same time, the number of arrests for child sexual abuse offenses in England and Wales fell from 3,511 in 2011 to 3,208 — a drop of 9%.

The biggest increase in reported cases in a single police force over the past four years took place in South Yorkshire. The force saw an increase of 577% in cases from 74 in 2011 to 501 in 2014, apparently reflecting the exposure of the Muslim sexual abuse scandal in Rotherham.

On April 14, the president of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, Lord Neuberger, said in a speech that Muslim women should be allowed to wear veils in court. He added that in order to show fairness to those involved in trials, judges must have “an understanding of different cultural and social habits.” He said:

“Well known examples include how some religions consider it inappropriate to take the oath, how some people consider it rude to look other people in the eye, how some women find it inappropriate to appear in public with their face uncovered, and how some people deem it inappropriate to confront others or to be confronted — for instance with an outright denial.”

Neuberger’s comments came after a judge upheld a ruling allowing Rebekah Dawson, a 22-year-old convert to Islam, to stand trial wearing a niqab, a veil that only leaves the eyes visible.

On April 15, Newsweek magazine reported that the “extreme views of a ‘racist, homophobe and anti-Semite’ who supports killing non-Muslims and ‘stoning adulterers’ are being made available to prison imams and prisoners throughout England and Wales, with the blessing of [prison] authorities.”

The magazine interviewed Haras Rafiq, managing director of the Quilliam Foundation, a counter-extremism think tank, who warned that British prisons have become “incubators for Islamic extremism” because inmates are being allowed to read the works of controversial South Asian cleric Abul Ala Maududi. Rafiq described Maududi, who died in 1979, as the “grandfather of Islamism.”

Newsweek discovered that hundreds of copies of Maududi’s analyses of the Koran were distributed in March at a training event for prison imams and chaplains held at the prison service college in Rugby. The books came from the Markfield Institute for Higher Education, part of the Islamic Foundation, a UK-based organization that is “inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood.”

On April 22, the Daily Mail published excerpts of a new book, Girl for Sale, which describes the shocking ordeal of Lara McDonnell, who became the victim of a Muslim paedophile gang when she was only 13 years old. She wrote:

“Mohammed was selling me for £250 to paedophiles from all over the country. They came in, sat down and started touching me. If I recoiled, Mohammed would feed me more crack so I could close my eyes and drift away. I was a husk, dead on the inside.

“Sometimes, I would be passed from one pervert to another. In Oxford, many of my abusers were of Asian origin; [in London] these men were Mediterranean, black or Arab.

“Then, at the start of 2012 [some five years after the abuse began], Thames Valley Police asked to see me. They had been conducting a long-overdue investigation into sexual exploitation of young girls and wanted a chat. I told them everything, and by the end of March, Mohammed and his gang were in custody. Unbeknown to me, five other girls were telling police the same story.

“Mohammed’s defense was laughable: he claimed I’d forced him to take drugs and have sex with me. His barrister, a woman, implied I was a racist because all the defendants were Muslim.

“Because the defendants were Muslim, the case had opened sensitive issues about race and religion. My view is clear: they behaved that way because of differences in how they viewed women.”

On April 25, the Telegraph reported that British taxpayers are paying the monthly rent for Hani al-Sibai, the Islamist preacher who “mentored” Mohammed Emwazi (aka Jihadi John, the Islamic State executioner). Al-Sibai, 54, a father of five, lives in a £1 million home in Hammersmith, a district in West London. According to the Telegraph:

“The public purse has also paid for a number of legal actions brought by al-Sibai against the British government in his battle to prevent his deportation to Egypt and also attempts to have his name removed from terror sanctions lists.

“From his home, al-Sibai, also known as Hani Youssef, runs an effective al-Qaeda propaganda machine that includes the al-Maqreze Centre for Historical Studies. In recent months he has used various Internet sites to praise bin Laden and glorify al-Qaeda for waging war against ‘the Crusader-Zionists.'”

Also in April, the Reverend David Robertson, who will soon take over as Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland, wrote a hard-hitting essay on the Christian Today website in which he argued that “fear of Islamophobia is blinding many of our politicians to the threat we face from Islam.” Robertson wrote:

“Christianity is the bedrock and foundation of our secular society. Islam is different. Islam has no doctrine of separation of the spiritual from the political. Islam is, and has always been, a political movement. There can be no such thing as secular Islam. In the Islamic view the world is divided into two houses, Darus Salma, the house of Islam, and Darul Har, the house of war. The former is the actual area controlled by Islam, full political and religious control; the latter is those areas of the world still unsubdued by Islam. Islam means ‘submission,’ not peace.”

Robertson added:

“I recently attended a Monday night meeting at a mosque in my city. … I was impressed by what I observed. There were 150 mostly young men on a Monday night at a prayer meeting. This was not Friday prayers. This was only one of five mosques in the city. And there was a community, social and political aspect which was very impressive. But I was also depressed. Because I knew that there was no church in the city that would have 150 men coming to pray. Because I knew that there was no political or social organization in the city that could come remotely near matching what I observed. And this in a city where only 2 per cent of the population are Muslim. Imagine what power they can hold in a town or city where 25 per cent are Muslim?

“It’s not so much the numbers — government is not done by opinion poll. It’s the organization, social cohesion, wealth and internal discipline that brings the political power; if you want it. And Islam does. A survey was released this week which shows that in the UK as a whole Islam will be 11 per cent of the population within a couple of decades.”

3. Muslim Integration

On April 8, the Leicester Crown Court jailed Jafar Adeli, an Afghan asylum seeker, for 27 months after he admitted to attempting to meet “Amy,” an underage girl, after grooming her online. Adeli, 32, who is married, arranged to meet the girl after engaging in sexual conversations online and sending an indecent image of himself. But he was duped by a paedophile vigilante group called Letzgo Hunting. “Amy” was in fact a vigilante named John who was pretending to be a young girl.

Adeli, who has filed an appeal to remain in Britain, was placed on a ten-year sexual offenses prevention order. Judge Philip Head said: “It was your intention to have full sexual activity with someone you believed to be 14 and something you know to be a crime in this country. You were grooming this person for sexual activity.”

1072Jafar Adeli (left), a 32-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, was jailed in April for 27 months, convicted of arranging to meet an underage girl for sexual relations. Pakistani-born Mohammed Khubaib (right), 43 was convicted in April of sexually grooming girls as young as 12 with food, cash, cigarettes and alcohol.

On April 10, Abukar Jimale, a 46-year-old father of four who sought asylum in the UK after fleeing war-torn Somalia, walked free after sexually assaulting a female passenger as he drove her across Bristol in his taxi. Although Jimale was found guilty of sexual assault and causing a person to engage in sexual activity without her consent, he had his two-year sentence suspended. The defending counsel said that Jimale, who left Somalia in 2001 because he was being persecuted, was a hard-working father who had lost his job and good name as a result of the offenses.

On April 13, Mohammed Khubaib, a Pakistani-born father of five, was convicted of grooming girls as young as 12 with food, cash, cigarettes and alcohol. The 43-year-old married businessman, who lived in Peterborough with his wife and children, befriended girls in his restaurant and then “hooked” them with alcohol — normally vodka — in an attempt to make them “compliant” to sexual advances.

After a trial at the Old Bailey, Khubaib was found guilty of forcing a 14-year-old girl to perform a sex act on him and nine counts of trafficking for sexual exploitation involving girls aged from 12 to 15 between November 2010 and January 2013.

On April 14, Mohammed Ali Sultan, 28, of Wellington, Telford, was sentenced to five years in prison after having been found guilty of two counts of rape and one count of attempted rape. The sentence is in addition to a seven-year sentence after he pled guilty to two counts of sexual activity with a child and one count of controlling child prostitution in 2012.

On April 22, four Muslim men were charged with sex crimes against children in Rochdale. Hadi Jamel, 33, of Rochdale, Abid Khan, 38, of Liverpool, Mohammed Zahid, 54, of Rochdale, and Raja Abid Khan, 38, of Rochdale, were each been charged with one count of sexual activity with a child. The charges relate to alleged offenses against one girl who was under 16 at the time.

The charges are the latest to be brought following Operation Doublet, a probe by the Major Incident Team of the Greater Manchester Police into allegations of child sexual exploitation in Rochdale. In March 2015, ten men were charged with sex offenses alleged to have been committed against the girl and six others.

On April 23, Britain’s Electoral Court found Lutfur Rahman, the mayor of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, guilty of election fraud and ordered him to vacate his post immediately. The Bangladesh-born Rahman and his supporters were found to have used religious intimidation through local imams, vote-rigging and wrongly branding his Labour rival as a racist to secure his re-election for a second term on May 24, 2014.

Rahman, who has been banned from seeking office again, was also found to have allocated local grants to buy votes. He was ordered to pay immediate costs of £250,000 ($390,000) from a bill expected to reach £1 million.

On April 23, the Birmingham Crown Court sentenced Imran Uddin, 25, a student at the University of Birmingham, to four months in jail for hacking into the university computer system to improve his grades. Uddin used keyboard spying devices to steal staff passwords and then increased his grades on five exams. Uddin is believed to be the first ever British student to be jailed for cheating.

On April 23, a jury at Chester Crown Court heard how Masood Mansouri, 33, from Saltney, Flintshire allegedly kidnapped and raped a 20-year-old woman, from Mochdre, near Colwyn Bay, after pretending to be a taxi driver to a woman trying to hail a cab. Five days later, the woman took a fatal overdose, the court heard. Mansouri denied all the charges.

On April 28, Aftab Ahmed, 44, of Winchcombe Place, Heaton, was charged with threatening to behead David Robinson-Young, a candidate for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in Newcastle East.

4. Muslims and the British General Elections

On April 4, the Telegraph reported that a front group for Muslim extremists boasted that it would act as “kingmaker” in the May 7 general election, and that it was “negotiating with the Tory and Labour leadership” to secure its demands.

According to the paper, Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) built links with both parties after claiming to promote “democratic engagement” by Muslims. However, it was actually “a façade to win political access and influence for individuals holding extreme, bigoted and anti-democratic views.”

During a MEND event on April 3, a man named Abu Eesa Niamatullah, who has called British people “animals,” demanded that women should not work, attacked democracy and said that “the Creator is the one who should decide what the laws should be.”

Meanwhile, Ed Miliband, the Labour Party’s candidate for prime minister, vowed to ban “Islamophobia” if he emerged victorious in the elections. In an interview with The Muslim News, Miliband said:

“We are going to make it [Islamophobia] an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people’s records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime.

“We are going to change the law on this so we make it absolutely clear of our abhorrence of hate crime and Islamophobia. It will be the first time that the police will record Islamophobic attacks right across the country.”

The move — which one observer called “utterly frightening” because of its implications for free speech in Britain — was widely viewed as part of an effort by Miliband to pander to Muslim voters.

Previously, Home Secretary Theresa May pledged that if the Conservatives win the elections, every police force in England and Wales would be required to record anti-Muslim hate crimes as a separate category, as is already the case with anti-Semitic crimes.

In Derby, Gulzabeen Afsar, a Muslim candidate for the town council, sparked outrage after she referred to Ed Miliband as “the Jew,” in comments made in Arabic.

Meanwhile, the British-born Islamist Anjem Choudary actively discouraged Muslims from voting. In a stream of Twitter messages using the #StayMuslimDontVote hashtag, Choudary argued that voting is a “sin” against Islam because Allah is “the only legislator.” He has also said that Muslims who vote or run for public office are “apostates.”

Other British Islamists followed Choudary’s lead. Bright yellow posters claiming that democracy “violates the right of Allah” were spotted in Cardiff, the capital of Wales, and Leicester, as part of a grassroots campaign called #DontVote4ManMadeLaw.

One such poster stated:

“Democracy is a system whereby man violates the right of Allah and decides what is permissible or impermissible for mankind, based solely on their whims and desires.

“Islam is the only real, working solution for the UK. It is a comprehensive system of governance where the laws of Allah are implemented and justice is observed.”

Categories: Antisemitism, Britain, Human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic supremacy, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jews, Multiculturalism, Political correctness, Sharia law
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Obama’s Not-So-Ironclad Guarantee

May 15, 2015

Obama’s Not-So-Ironclad Guarantee, Commentary Magazine, , May 15, 2015

Now that the nuclear deal makes an Iranian bomb only a matter of when rather than if, the Gulf nations were hoping for more than just a carefully worded expression of American indifference.

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This was supposed to be the week when President Obama put on a show of his desire to reaffirm America’s support for its Arab allies. Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states have spent the last year in the unusual position of agreeing more with Israel than the United States, as Obama pushes for détente with Iran. Like the Israelis, the Arabs are pondering their future in a region dominated by an Iranian nuclear threshold state that appears to be the lynchpin of the president’s foreign policy legacy. So to demonstrate his good will, Obama invited these nations to a summit at which he would convince them they had nothing to fear. But with the U.S. putting nothing on the table of substance that would allay those concerns about the weak nuclear deal being negotiated with Iran, the Saudi king and other leaders snubbed the event, turning it into a fiasco even before it began. But it turned out King Salman didn’t miss much. Though Obama offered what he called an “ironclad guarantee’ of America’s support for the Arabs, it was phrased in the kind of ambiguous language that rendered it meaningless. The meeting and especially the statement epitomized an Obama administration foreign policy that puts a premium on appeasing foes and alienating friends.

The wording of the president’s “guarantee” is a marvel of lawyerly ambiguity that any connoisseur of diplomatic doubletalk must appreciate:

In the event of such aggression or the threat of such aggression, the United States stands ready to work with our GCC partners to determine urgently what action may be appropriate, using the means at our collective disposal, including the potential use of military force, for the defense of our GCC partners.

Let’s unpack this carefully so we’re clear about what the United States isn’t promising its Arab allies. As even Obama’s cheerleaders at the New York Times noted, this “carefully worded pledge that was far less robust than the mutual defense treaty the Gulf nations had sought.” In the event of aggression, the U.S. isn’t going to spring into action to defend them. Instead it will “work” with them to “determine” what they might do. That falls quite a bit short of a hard promise of collective action, let alone the drawing of a line in the sand across which the Iranians may not cross. In other words, if something bad happens, Obama will talk with the threatened parties but he won’t say what he will do in advance or if he will do anything at all. If that is an “ironclad guarantee,” I’d hate to see what a less binding promise might sound like.

To understate the matter, this is not the sort of pledge that will deter an Iran that is emboldened by its diplomatic victory in the negotiations that let them their nuclear infrastructure and continuing working toward a bomb. Iran’s push for regional hegemony has also been boosted by the triumph of their Syrian ally Bashar Assad with the help of Tehran’s Hezbollah terrorist auxiliaries. With the Iran-backed Houthi rebels threatening to take over Yemen and Iran also resuming its alliance with Hamas in Gaza, the axis of Iranian allies has Arab states understandably worried about their future. Now that the nuclear deal makes an Iranian bomb only a matter of when rather than if, the Gulf nations were hoping for more than just a carefully worded expression of American indifference.

That’s why the statement at the end of the summit made no mention of America’s chief worry about the Gulf states: the possibility that the Saudis will, either acting alone or in concert with their neighbors, seek to match Iran’s nuclear potential. As critics of the Iran deal foretold, far from saving the Middle East from an Iranian bomb, it has set off an arms race that has will make the world a fare more dangerous place.

This omission will likely make the Iranians even more reluctant to give in to U.S. demands about sanctions, Tehran’s military research and the disposition of its stockpile of enriched uranium in the final stages of the nuclear talks. A better guarantee for the Arabs might have convinced the Islamist state that the president really meant business about strengthening the deal. In its absence, they have no reason to think Obama won’t fold as he has at every other stage of the negotiations.

Under the circumstances, it’s little wonder that Bahrain’s King Hamad preferred to go to a horse show London rather than confer with Obama. Just as Israel has learned that the United States is more interested in a new Iran-centric policy than it backing its traditional allies, so, too, must the Arabs come to grips with a new reality in which their Iranian foe is no longer restrained by the United States.

Categories: Arab nations, Foreign policy, Ideology, Iran, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Israel, Middle East, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Red Lines, Sanctions, Saudi Arabia
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A Preview of ‘Palestine’

May 12, 2015

A Preview of ‘Palestine’, Front Page Magazine, , May 12, 2015

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[W]hy is the Obama administration placing mammoth pressure on Israel to cede vital strategic territory and why is it besotted with the idea of dismembering Israel by tearing away parts of its ancestral heartland? The answer lies in a flawed foreign policy that rewards tyrannical regimes while back-stabbing allies; a foreign policy that favors Iranian Fatwas over concrete empirical evidence of malfeasance.

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Anyone wishing to get a glimpse of what a future “Palestinian” state might look like, need look no further than recent actions taken and official statements made by both the Palestinian Authority and its rival Hamas this past month. While these two governing entities detest each other (perhaps even more so than the infidel Yahuds), it is difficult to discern why, since both of these governing bodies spew forth nearly identical xenophobic rhetoric and act with typical autocratic ruthlessness to stifle any whiff of internal dissent. In essence, they both act in a manner that is not dissimilar to the 20 or so chauvinistic, anti-democratic Muslim pseudo-states of the Middle East.

Most Israelis harbor deep reservations about the creation of an “independent Palestinian state” for a multitude of reasons. Chief among them is the fear that a Palestinian state would devolve into an entity similar to that found in Gaza and that’s a best case scenario. There are far worse, more frightening scenarios. But while Gaza is contained in the southwest corner of Israel and can, relatively speaking, be monitored and controlled, the same cannot be said about the West Bank with its long, torturous border along the imaginary Green Line (the 1949 armistice lines). Moreover, in contrast to the Gaza periphery, much of Israel’s population and industry faces the West Bank, which juts out like a bone into Israel’s throat.

But even if the Palestinian Authority, headed by its aging, autocratic leader Mahmoud Abbas, succeeds in rebuffing a Hamas takeover – an unlikely prospect – the Palestinian Authority’s leadership has proven to be just as extreme, xenophobic and malevolent as its rivals in Gaza. Palestinian Authority TV and media outlets as well as PA-backed NGOs, routinely spew forth ancient anti-Semitic canards involving ritualistic Passover blood libels and conspiracy theories involving Jewish attempts at world domination.

On April 5, in an official PA television interview, Fatah spokesperson, Osama Al-Qawasmi, invoked the notorious early 20th century Czarist forgery known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to back up his spurious claims against Israel. For the sake of perspective, both Hitler’sMein Kampf and the Hamas Charter incorporate the Protocols to buttress repugnant supremacist views and reinforce ancient calumnies.

Al-Qawasmi comments, largely ignored by the West, represent views that are commonplace within the Palestinian Authority. In fact, most high-level officials within the PA subscribe to Hitleresque positions and this comes as no surprise given that the father of the modern “Palestinian” movement and the man who gave birth to Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin al Husseini, was a Nazi collaborator and a dear friend of the Fuhrer.  In January 2013, “President” Abbas, whose own ventures into Holocaust denial are well known, showered the Hitler-supporting Husseini with acclaim.

The Palestinian Authority has also been known to perpetuate ancient ritualistic Passover blood libels. In July 2014 Mahmoud Abbas’ official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, featured an op-ed which claimed that Jews use the “blood of [Palestinian] children” as a key ingredient in Matzah or unleavened bread used by Jews during the Passover holiday. Shortly thereafter, in a variation of that insidious theme, Palestinian Authority TV claimed that Israel was injecting poison into the Palestinian water supply.

In 2013, a Western funded Palestinian propaganda outfit called MIFTAH (which publishes in both English and Arabic) published an article in Arabic criticizing President Obama for speaking of Passover in a favorable light. The author then went on to invoke the ancient blood libel stating,

Does Obama in fact know the relationship, for example, between “Passover” and “Christian blood”..?! Or “Passover” and “Jewish blood rituals?!’ Much of the chatter and gossip about historical Jewish blood rituals in Europe are real and not fake as they claim; the Jews used the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover.

Palestinians routinely spew forth revolting babble and nonsensical conspiracy theories in Arabic but are substantially more reserved when addressing Western audiences who would find such utterances disquieting to say the least.

MIFTAH was founded by the Palestinian Authority’s spokeswoman and PLO Central Committee Member Hanan Ashrawi. Incredibly, when confronted with the outrage, Ashrawi, a seasoned politician who makes frequent guest appearances on Western news programs, refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing and actually attacked the blogger who exposed the incident claiming that she was the victim of a “smear campaign.” She also risibly noted that she was committed to “open dialogue” and in any event, a “disclaimer” in the publication absolved her and her organization of any culpability.

To a vile terror apologist like Ashrawi, blood libels are part of her concept of “open dialogue.” Only after drawing the ire of her Western donors did Ashrawi express contrition and posted an apologylaced with the requisite dose of crocodile tears. That served to placate MIFTAH’s gullible Western enablers.

But while Palestinians are free to spew forth the vilest canards against Israel and Jews, any whiff of criticism or dissention directed against any Palestinian body, Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, is ruthlessly dealt with. In April, a Palestinian civil servant was arrested for expressing views on Facebook critical of Yassir Arafat. More precisely, he failed to subscribe to the view that Arafat was a “martyr.” He was charged with “attacking and harming the martyr, eternal leader and symbol of the Palestinian people Abu Ammar,” Arafat’s nom de guerre. His niece was expelled from Birzeit University near Ramallah for expressing similar views and all other Palestinian universities have been instructed to deny her admission.

In Hamas-controlled Gaza, in a rare show of defiance, a group of between 150 to 200 Palestinians demonstrated against the governing authorities. The demonstrators were beaten with sticks and some were herded off in jeeps by thug-like Hamas enforcers.

These two incidents are demonstrative of the complete absence of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly in areas governed by Palestinians. Conversely, Palestinians are completely free to let loose with the vilest canards as long as the objects of derision, defamation and ridicule are Jews.

A Palestinians state, whether governed by Hamas or the “moderate” Palestinian Authority, will almost certainly resemble the 20 or so Arab pseudo-states currently in existence.  It will be dysfunctional, autocratic, xenophobic and unable to survive without massive financial assistance. That will be the nature of the state that lives alongside Israel’s long and tortuous border with the West Bank. That will be the state that will have full view of all commercial airlines that come and go from Ben Gurion International Airport. And that will be the state that juts into Israel’s narrow 9-mile wide waistline overlooking Israel’s heavily populated coastline.

Considering these facts, why is the Obama administration placing mammoth pressure on Israel to cede vital strategic territory and why is it besotted with the idea of dismembering Israel by tearing away parts of its ancestral heartland? The answer lies in a flawed foreign policy that rewards tyrannical regimes while back-stabbing allies; a foreign policy that favors Iranian Fatwas over concrete empirical evidence of malfeasance.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has just formed a governing coalition with a razor thin majority. Yet his coalition partners, cognizant of the dangers they face, both on the battlefield and in the political arena, appear to be solidly behind their Prime Minister. One can only hope that the Prime Minister will stand fast in the face of massive pressure he is sure to encounter from an extremely hostile Obama administration. Good luck Mr. Prime Minister, you’re going to need every bit of it for the next 18 months.

Categories: Abbas, Diplomacy, Fatah, Foreign policy, Gaza, Hamas, Ideology, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Netanyahu, Obama, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Terrorists, Two state solution
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