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Jihadists Using Liberalism Against Itself

December 19, 2014

Jihadists Using Liberalism Against Itself, Commentary Magazine, , December 19, 2014

This of course is the war that Israel has been fighting for years, ever since its creation in fact. Most recently there have been feverish blood libels about the IDF harvesting Palestinian organs, of summary executions during the 2010 flotilla incident, and of a supposed massacre and mass graves in Jenin during the Second Intifada. With all of these accusations Israel is obliged to investigate the conduct of its military, and so it does. That was what was so outrageous about the UN’s Goldstone investigation and indeed the subsequent attempt to have a Goldstone II following the war in Gaza this summer. Such international inquiries are only supposed to be mandated where a state has failed to adequately investigate itself first–but in Israel’s case the international community simply steps in and puts on its own investigation regardless, usually with the conclusion having been written at the outset.

The problem is that while many of them may now realize that the Islamists their armies encounter are unreasonable fanatics, they are equally convinced that the Islamists Israel faces have a legitimate grievance and a just cause.

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While the West’s enemies become ever more unrestrained in the barbaric nature of their attacks, Islamist militants are increasingly pursuing tactics aimed at limiting what the West can do in its own defense. As a recent case in Britain has demonstrated, jihadists and their supporters are more than happy to fabricate the most outlandish allegations in an often successful attempt to hinder the fight against them. This is the kind of thing that Israel has been having to deal with for decades, and at some point other Western states need to comprehend that they are all up against the same enemy, one which is willing to employ the same underhanded tactics against all of us.

In May 2004, British troops became embroiled in a three-hour gun battle with insurgents of the Mahdi Army at Al Amara, Iraq. Following the battle it was alleged that British soldiers tortured, executed, and then mutilated the bodies of twenty Iraqi detainees. These accusations have dragged on for a decade now and in response the UK government commissioned the al-Sweady Inquiry, an investigation which has cost the British taxpayer almost $49 million, with the accusers having been able to claim financial assistance from the British state to fund their case against it.

And what did the tribunal discover? The al-Sweady Inquiry has stated unequivocally that the allegations made against the British soldiers are “without foundation,” and that those making these accusations had given evidence that was “unprincipled in the extreme” and “wholly without regard for the truth.”

So after years of investigation, and tens of millions in public money spent (much of it having been used to assist those bringing claims against the British army), the soldiers have at long last had their names cleared while the jihadi militants have been exposed as liars. Hardly surprising; it’s simply delusional to imagine that those who are so unprincipled as to use terrorism to achieve their aims would suddenly become upstanding and honest witnesses once stood before a war-crimes investigation. What these people are, however, is mendacious and calculating in the extreme, and regardless of what al-Sweady may have concluded, by using public money to advance these outrageous allegations the jihadists have won by hijacking the West’s liberalism and respect for the rule of law for their own advantage.

Quite apart from the tremendous financial cost that this investigation and many more like it have carried, the decade that these allegations circulated for have been an outstanding public-relations victory for the insurgents. The media–large parts of which were eager to see Western forces fail in Iraq and Afghanistan–were all too ready to believe the stories spun by the militants and to think the worst of our soldiers. By parroting these lies ad nauseam, the Western media assisted the militants in undermining public morale at home, eroding belief in the rightness of the cause we were fighting for and convincing many that intervention overseas is rarely a defensible or admirable undertaking. In Europe particularly, these tales provide the recruiting fodder that radicalizes young Muslims into believing that their host societies are evil and that they too must join the war against the West. If nothing else, the constant fear of these damaging war crimes allegations persuade Western governments and militaries to be still more restrained in the tactics that they feel able to use in the increasingly muted attempt to counter our enemies.

This of course is the war that Israel has been fighting for years, ever since its creation in fact. Most recently there have been feverish blood libels about the IDF harvesting Palestinian organs, of summary executions during the 2010 flotilla incident, and of a supposed massacre and mass graves in Jenin during the Second Intifada. With all of these accusations Israel is obliged to investigate the conduct of its military, and so it does. That was what was so outrageous about the UN’s Goldstone investigation and indeed the subsequent attempt to have a Goldstone II following the war in Gaza this summer. Such international inquiries are only supposed to be mandated where a state has failed to adequately investigate itself first–but in Israel’s case the international community simply steps in and puts on its own investigation regardless, usually with the conclusion having been written at the outset.

Israel, like Britain and America, does undertake costly and time-consuming investigations where there are allegations of war crimes. But as we have seen so many times before, within hours the international media will have beamed the most tarnishing accusations against Israel around the world several times over. Months later when investigators have established the allegations as baseless, no one is listening anymore and the damage is done.

The debacle of the al-Sweady Inquiry has naturally caused some outrage in Britain, and so one hopes that some lessons will have been learned. But if observers have been reminded that jihadists are readily prepared to use war crimes accusations as a second front in the war against the West, they should also recognize the same tactic when they see it being deployed against Israel. The problem is that while many of them may now realize that the Islamists their armies encounter are unreasonable fanatics, they are equally convinced that the Islamists Israel faces have a legitimate grievance and a just cause.

Categories: Europe, Fairy tales, Foreign policy, Freedom, Ideology, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Palestinians
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Chutzpah redefined

December 18, 2014

Chutzpah redefined, Israel Hayom, Sarah N. Stern, December 18, 2014

(When reality is unpleasant, as it often is, those not personally experiencing reality make decisions based on pleasant fantasies. — DM)

[T]his is supposed to be a “peace process.” The operative word here is “peace.” How dare we dictate anything to the Israelis, who are forced to live with the deadly consequences of this obviously flawed foreign policy paradigm? How can we presume to know better than they what it is that the Israelis can actually live with?

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In September 1993, when Yasser Arafat was recast from the role of “granddaddy of terrorism” to that of “peacemaker,” the Oslo Accords were marketed to the Israeli public and to world Jewry wrapped in the package of “reversibility.” I remember clearly when a friend of mine, a leftist television personality, assured me: “Don’t worry, Sarah. We will be watching Arafat very closely. It all depends on his compliance with our strict guidelines. He has to stop all the incitement and all the terror. It’s only Gaza and Jericho first. If it doesn’t work, we can always go back and retrieve it.”

That was 21 years ago. Since then, not a day goes by without another fiery Palestinian Authority incident of incitement (painstakingly documented and broadcast to the world by the good work of Palestinian Media Watch). This hatred has metastasized like a cancer and an entire generation has grown up steeped in it. The horrific result is the vast number of Israelis murdered at the hands of Palestinian terrorists.

This past week Khalil Shikaki from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research conducted a poll which indicated that a full 80 percent of Palestinians support stepping up violent attacks against Israelis, including random stabbings and traffic attacks. Over 86 percent believe that Haram al-Sharif (or the Temple Mount, where Al-Aqsa mosque is located) is in danger.

That comes as no surprise because 93 percent of Palestinians consider themselves to be religious Muslims, and the leadership of the Palestinian Authority has been constantly stirring up hysteria that “the Jews are desecrating Haram al-Sharif.”

Although the Oslo Accords were presented as conditional, successive Israeli governments have upheld them, despite the steady stream of constant, daily incitement and increasing number of what the Left used to euphemistically call “korbanot shel shalom” (“victims of peace”).

We Jews seem to have gotten ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole. And many of our leaders do not seem to understand the basic philosophy that “when you are in a hole, you should stop digging.”

American presidents, politicians and diplomats have consistently argued that “Israeli-Palestinian negotiations should be left up to parties themselves.”

Which brings us to Habayit Hayehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett’s spirited debate with Martin Indyk at the Brookings Institute’s Saban Forum last week. Bennett courageously uttered the words: “We’re stuck in the conventional directions that we’ve been working on over the past three decades. There’s only one game [foreign policy paradigm] in town and that is a Palestinian state in the heart of Israel. Now, regardless of whether you support it or not, the reality is, it’s not working. It’s not working.”

The outcry from American journalists and officials, who have based their careers on the success of the peace process and the two-state paradigm, was so intense one would have thought Bennett had said something highly irresponsible, such as that Arabs are the descendants of apes and pigs (a remark that official Palestinian Authority media frequently uses to describe Jews).

After all, this is supposed to be a “peace process.” The operative word here is “peace.” How dare we dictate anything to the Israelis, who are forced to live with the deadly consequences of this obviously flawed foreign policy paradigm? How can we presume to know better than they what it is that the Israelis can actually live with?

The premise of “land for peace,” which has dominated American foreign policy and the its attitude toward Israel over the last two decades, might well work in the West when dealing with a land dispute between the United States and Mexicans or Canadians. But it is patently obvious, when listening to the inflammatory rhetoric that comes directly out of the mouths of Palestinian Authority officials, that they have never laid down the societal groundwork for peace, but rather for its very opposite.

This has been going on for over a generation. Words and ideas matter. These hateful words have seeped deep into the consciousness of an entire generation of Palestinians. They lead to tragedies like the recent attack at the Har Nof synagogue in which four Israelis were killed while reciting morning prayers (and a Druze policeman was killed coming to their aid); or earlier this week, when an Israeli family of five stopped to pick up a hitchhiker in Judea and Samaria and was subjected to an acid attack; or in October when a three-month-old, the first child for a couple who had endured years of infertility, was murdered when a Palestinian terrorist rammed his car into a group of Israelis waiting at a light rail station in Jerusalem.

For some, in America, this is merely a statistic. But for Israelis and Jews, this was somebody’s father, somebody’s mother, somebody’s brother, sister or child. Israel is a tiny country. By now there is hardly anyone in the country who does not personally know someone wounded or murdered at the hands of Palestinian terrorists.

If this were a scientific experiment, we would have reached the null hypothesis a long time ago, and realized it was time to go back to the drawing board.

Whether or not one agrees with Bennett, it is impossible not to admire his moral courage and intellectual honesty for publicly declaring something every Israeli and every Palestinian already knows. He is like the little boy in the story who, in front of everyone, points to the naked monarch and declares: The emperor wears no clothes!

As Bennett said, “Let’s stop looking at perfection, the ideal dream of two states living side by side in peace and democracy. Let’s stop talking perfection that has led us to disaster.”

Yet Indyk, who has made a career out of the peace process industry, had the audacity to tell him, “You are talking pure mythology. … You live in another reality. … You live in what Steve Jobs called ‘a distorted reality.'”

Bennett responded with, “This is quite a sentence. I have been through the First Intifada, the Second Intifada. You attend conferences. I have been on the ground there. How many missiles have to fall on Ashkelon until you wake up? How many people need to die before you wake up from this illusion? When will you say you were wrong?”

Bennett deserves high praise for injecting a bit of reality into the fantasy world that exists inside the beltway, where everyone continues to cling to the illusions of 1993. So many of our think tanks, diplomats and scholars look at the Taliban attack in a school in Pakistan or the hostage crisis in a cafe in Australia as a deplorable acts of terrorism, but when it comes to Palestinian terrorists taking the lives of Israeli citizens, our State Department officials say, “Both sides have to try harder,” as Secretary of State John Kerry said at a press conference in London this week.

This is a hypocritical double standard that no one but Israel would be expected to endure. When people impose a standard on Israel, the Jewish state, that they would never impose on themselves, we have one word for it and that word is anti-Semitism.

Sometimes this anti-Semitism comes directly out of the mouths of Jews. Two thousand years of living in the Diaspora has had an indelible effect on our collective psyche. Many Jews are self-conscious of their Judaism, and want the love of the world so desperately that they have to prove to the world how liberal and broad minded they are … at the expense of their own Israeli brothers and sisters.

I could never understand how anyone sitting in a comfortable living room on this side of the Atlantic, never knowing what it is like to constantly fear for their lives and never worrying about having 60 seconds or less to gather the entire family and hide from incoming missiles, can claim to know better than the Israelis about what is good for them.

This gives new meaning to the definition of the term “chutzpah.”

Categories: Abbas, Europe, Foreign policy, Gaza, Hamas, Ideology, Islam, Israel, Leftists, Moral equivalence, Obama administration, Palestinians, Peace process, Terrorism, Two state solution
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Western Indifference to the Palestinian Culture of Hate

December 15, 2014

Western Indifference to the Palestinian Culture of Hate, Front Page Magazine, , December 15, 2014

(Here is the video of the Islamic preacher.

The New York Times is by no means alone in making the “news” fit its ideological narrative. For an excellent analysis of how and why it happens, please read Sharyl Attkisson’s recent book Stonewalled.– DM)

The practice of ignoring such malevolence partly stems from the fact that the New York Times wishes to present a certain narrative at the expense of the facts and partly stems from a systematic inability of some Western media outlets to hold Arabs to a Western standard of decency and morality. Thus, Arab anti-Semitism, the same kind of anti-Semitism practiced in Europe some 75 years ago, is either ignored or attributed to mere cultural differences.

Rarely is the sort of vitriol witnessed in the videos expressed in English to Western audiences. Only the crassest among them publicly share their feelings about Jews, and the West for that matter. But behind closed doors it’s an entirely different story. Groups like MEMRI, CAMERA, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) and many others do an excellent job in exposing the malevolence hiding just beneath the surface. The problem is no one seems to care. No one cared 75 years ago either.

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A shockingly, disturbing video has recently surfaced exposing the true and pernicious face of Palestinian extremism and xenophobia. The video, made available by Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) shows a bearded sheikh giving what appears to be an impromptu sermon on the Jews. (After all, what else is there to talk about?) The venue is the Al-Aqsa Mosque, considered by those who practice the “religion of peace” to be their third holiest site after Mecca and Medina.

The speech itself is filled with gut-wrenching anti-Semitism, the kind that would even make the editors of the New York Times blush. The sheikh describes how the Jews possess the vilest of traits, how they were responsible for killing the “prophets,” how they attempted to assassinate Muhammad, how their time for “slaughter is near,” how they will be slaughtered “without mercy,” and of course there’s the perfunctory, “Jews are apes and pigs” thing.

Interestingly, the speaker doesn’t mention the longing for Palestinian statehood or independence. Instead, he talks of the establishment of the “Islamic Caliphate.” “Oh Allah’” he states, “Hasten the establishment of the State of the Islamic Caliphate,” and further rants, “Oh Allah hasten the pledge of allegiance to the Muslim Caliph.” He spews forth the latter statement three times to chants of “Amen!” from the large, approving crowd congregating around him.

These comments, which would register horror and revulsion in the West (at least in some quarters) are almost banal among Palestinians. In fact, a similar video featuring a different speaker some days earlier at the same venue, conveyed identical sentiment, expressing admiration for the Islamic State and calling for murder of Jews and annihilation of America.

Guttural anti-Semitism is ingrained and interwoven in the fabric of Palestinian society. Despite their minuscule numbers, 78% of Palestinians believe that Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars while a whopping 88% believe that Jews control the global media and still more believe that Jews wield too much power in the business world.

Much of the blame for this can be placed squarely on the doorstep of Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which subjects the Palestinian population to a steady diet of hate-filled, Judeophobic rhetoric through state-controlled media and educational institutions. It is so well entrenched that the process of deprogramming, if it were ever attempted, would take generations to reverse.

Some of the blame however, rests with the Obama administration and the European Union, which continues to fund the Palestinian Authority with an endless supply of taxpayer money without demanding any form of accountability. Western money is openly used to fund the Palestinian Authority’s hate apparatus with money flowing into institutions that propagate anti-Semitism and encourage terrorism.

Some Western media outlets are also culpable in perpetuating the Palestinian culture of hate. The New York Times for example has frequently and diligently covered so-called “price tag” vandalism attacks; a practice universally condemned by nearly all Israelis and vigorously prosecuted by Israeli authorities but rarely, if ever, covers the type of venomous hate speech witnessed in the above-noted videos.

Hate crimes inspired by this type of pernicious speech are also routinely ignored. Highlighting this point is the disturbing case of Asher Palmer, an American citizen who, along with his infant son was murdered when a rock thrown by a Palestinian crashed through the windshield of the car he was driving, hitting him flush in the face. The New York Times ignored the gruesome murders and only mentioned the incident in passing a few days later in the context of a reprisal “price tag” attack against a mosque. Under the unbelievably skewed editorial policies of the New York Times, it took an act of vandalism, ostensibly committed by Jews, to highlight the horrific murder of Asher Palmer and his infant son at the hands of Arabs.

The practice of ignoring such malevolence partly stems from the fact that the New York Times wishes to present a certain narrative at the expense of the facts and partly stems from a systematic inability of some Western media outlets to hold Arabs to a Western standard of decency and morality. Thus, Arab anti-Semitism, the same kind of anti-Semitism practiced in Europe some 75 years ago, is either ignored or attributed to mere cultural differences.

Indeed, the New York Times no longer even bothers to hide the fact that it engages in duplicitous double standards when it comes to reporting Palestinian-Arab racism and hate speech as evidenced from a telling exchange between New York Times’ opinion page staff editor, Matt Seaton and Tamar Sternthal, a director at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).

Rarely is the sort of vitriol witnessed in the videos expressed in English to Western audiences. Only the crassest among them publicly share their feelings about Jews, and the West for that matter. But behind closed doors it’s an entirely different story. Groups like MEMRI, CAMERA, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) and many others do an excellent job in exposing the malevolence hiding just beneath the surface. The problem is no one seems to care. No one cared 75 years ago either.

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Gaza, Hamas, Ideology, Islam, Israel, Jerusalem, Jews, Leftists, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Obama, Palestinians, Peace process, Temple Mount, Terrorism, Two state solution
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The incestuous Government-Media-Business farce

December 13, 2014

The incestuous Government-Media-Business farce, Dan Miller’s Blog, December 13, 2014

(Mainstream media reports in the United States, and reports elsewhere reliant upon them, seem to affect perceptions in Israel and elsewhere of Israel, Islam, Iran and the Iran Scam. Here’s a question. To what extent do Israeli media mimic the U.S. mainstream media? — DM)

All the news that fits the desired narrative, and none other, shall be reported by the legitimate “news” media.

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On February 11, 2013 Vice President Biden said that he and Obama are “counting on…legitimate news media” to help in their gun control efforts.

He said he knew people would continue to “misrepresent” the positions taken by himself and Obama, but that “legitimate news media” would cover them in a way that’s helpful to the administration.

In this post, I use the term “legitimate ‘news’ media” in the same sense that Biden apparently did.

I have been reading Sharyl Attkisson’s November 2014 book Stonewalled. Its thesis is that favored businesses, Government agencies and politicians set the agenda of the legitimate “news” media, which defer to them in what they report and how they report it.

Since Obama’s 2008 nomination and subsequent election, the legitimate “news” media have embraced Him by reporting (or creating) good news for Him and His administration while ignoring or disparaging any reports that they consider inconsistent with their pro- Obama ideological talking points. In doing so, they have relied excessively on administration spokespersons without verifying, independently, what they have been told.

On December 11th, The Washington Times published an article by Monica Crowley titled How do we protect Barack Obama today? It relates to the ideological perspective of the media as related by a broadcast journalist shortly before the 2012 presidential elections.

When I asked her for an example, she replied, “Every morning, we hold a meeting about how to build that evening’s broadcast. We’ve been doing this for decades. Everybody talks about which stories we’re going to air, what the line-up looks like, and which reporters we’ll have live in the field and which ones will be filing taped pieces. In the past, the left-wing bias was always left unspoken. People just ‘got it,’ because they all thought the same. [Emphasis added.]

“Once Obama pulled ahead of Hillary and certainly once he became president,” she said, “the bias came out of the closet. Now, every morning when we meet to discuss that night’s show, they literally say — out loud — ‘How do we protect Barack Obama today?’” [Emphasis added.]

Shocking? No more shocking than any other common but unpleasant reality. And it is congruent with Ms. Attkisson’s multiple accounts in Stonewalled. Less than half way through her book, I have learned more than I had previously understood about what, how and why the media reported — and did not report — on the green scam, the Benghazi scam, the Fast and Furious scam, the IRS scam and others. It’s disgusting but neither shocking nor surprising.

We have a “free press” in the legitimate “news” media. They are free to lie, to accept officially authorized “news” and to reject as not newsworthy or wrong anything which disputes, or is even merely inconsistent with, the prevailing narrative based on the official line.

Here are two interviews with Ms. Attkisson:

Many viewers and readers of the legitimate “news” media seem to be catching on. Perhaps that explains the decline in their numbers of viewers and readers. Do the legitimate “news” media care? They must, because it impacts their bottom lines. Will they continue their march into oblivion by running ever more bland pap while hoping for change they can believe in? Or will they, eventually, begin to report hard news, regardless of whom it might distress?

Please read Stonewalled. Depending on where you live, it may (or may not) be available at your local public library.

Categories: Elections in Israel, Ideology, International Community, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Islam, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Leftists, Multiculturalism, Obama, P5+1
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Op-Ed: Obama Empowers Enemies and Imperils Friends

December 4, 2014

Op-Ed: Obama Empowers Enemies and Imperils Friends, Israel National News, Matthew M. Hausman, December 2, 2014

The panel concluded that the United States and Israel have similar security concerns and identical interests in preserving cultural and political values common to both their societies.  Accordingly, they find the administration’s policies in the region counterproductive and dangerous.

Clearly, Israel cannot place her trust in the Obama administration, but she can still draw strength and inspiration from Yehoshua, whose words have resonated for thousands of years and will continue to do so long after this president leaves office.

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Even after the recent war in Gaza – and in spite of the dangers posed by ISIS and other Islamist forces – many American Jews still do not fully comprehend the risk to Israel and the West of a rejectionist ideology that promotes jihad and genocide.  But the threat is real and arises from a doctrine that demands total submission from the vanquished.  In failing to recognize the scope of the threat, western progressives – Jews and Gentiles alike – view the world as they believe it should be, not the way it actually is.  The reality, however, is that liberal ideals are irrelevant in regions where politics have no existence independent of religion and religion is unforgivingly totalitarian.

This failure is as much political as intellectual.  Moreover, it engenders complacency with the foreign policy of an administration that has not only failed to respond adequately to the Islamist threat, but whose actions have bolstered fundamentalism across the Mideast and undercut the interests of Israel – America’s only stable and dependable ally in the region.

These points were articulated at a security panel conference entitled, “Israel and the US: The Fight to Save Western Civilization from Global Jihad,” which took place in Massachusetts recently.  The program featured retired Generals Jerry Boykin and Tom McInerney, former CIA Station Chief Gary Berntsen, and retired Lt. Colonel (and former congressman) Allen West.  The program focused on the need to recognize the threat of jihadist extremism, as well as the myriad foreign policy failures that have helped destabilize the Mideast.

Secular progressives have become unwitting foils for Islamist radicalism by their failure to acknowledge its supremacist aspirations and their perception of Muslims as a vulnerable minority despite a global population of approximately 1.6 billion.  This view is a little ironic considering the progressive tendency to disparage Jewish national claims and values and to condemn any perceived Christian intrusion into American politics, but nevertheless to discourage speech that criticizes Islam or mentions any Muslim involvement in terrorism.

Secular progressives often support anti-blasphemy laws and are quick to label as racists those who criticize Muslims on political grounds, although Islam is a religion and is not defined by race or ethnicity.  Moreover, while they often rationalize Islamist extremism as an indigenous voice of protest against western chauvinism, its ubiquity is the result of conquest,colonialism, and the subjugation of “infidel” minorities.  It is the height of cognitive dissonance when feminists, gay rights activists and other social progressives express support for religious extremists who persecute and kill based on gender, sexuality, and dissenting religious belief or political opinion, but condemn Israel – the only country in the Mideast where minorities have equal rights and protections under the law.

Over the last six years, the administration has sought rapprochement with the Islamic world through a series of questionable policies.  Domestically, it has discouraged official use of terms such as “Islamic terrorism,” instead referring to terror incidents involving Muslims as criminal acts, workplace violence or violent extremism.  On the foreign stage, it enabled the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, provided funding in areas governed by Hamas despite that organization’s stated goals of jihad and genocide, and failed to honor strategic commitments to Israel during the Gaza war.

Perhaps most troubling, the administration has used the pretense of negotiations to allow Iran to continue its quest for nuclear weapons – to the consternation not only of Israel, but of Saudi Arabia and all Sunni states in the region.  Though it rationalizes that Iran should be permitted to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, critics point out that 55 percent of Iran’s domestic energy comes from natural gas, 42 percent from oil and two percent from hydroelectricity, such that it has no apparent consumer need for nuclear power. Its true intentions are reflected in the statements of its leaders, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who recently tweeted that Israel “… has no cure but to be annihilated.”

Whether promoting Islamists, enabling Iran’s nuclear ambitions, or chastising the way Israel defended herself in Gaza, the administration has pursued policies that have empowered America’s enemies and imperiled its allies.  Furthermore, by drawing meaningless redlines that it refuses to enforce and unilaterally disarming in Europe, it has signaled to the world that it is no longer willing to defend its own interests or those of its allies, but instead will stand aside while Russia, China and other geopolitical rivals assert themselves within traditional U.S. spheres of influence.

Speaking to a packed house at Ahavath Torah Congregation in Stoughton, Massachusetts, Generals Boykin and McInerney, Colonel West, and Agent Berntsen discussed the weakening of American strength and prestige under the current administration, and how this has enhanced Islamist resolve, endangered the safety of Israel, and compromised American interests around the globe.

They spoke with inside knowledge of the U.S. military and intelligence establishments and with a deep and abiding respect for Israel.  General Boykin, a 36-year veteran and the first commander of Delta Force, related how he was in Jerusalem last summer when Hamas kidnapped and murdered three yeshiva boys, and how the outrage it spawned illustrated the inevitability of a military response.  According to Boykin, who has spent considerable time in Israel and lived with the Golani Brigade, the kidnapping was the tipping point in a string of events, including rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and the construction of terror tunnels, which necessitated decisive counteraction.

In the panel’s view, Operation Protective Edge was essential, not only to stop rocket attacks and destroy terror tunnels, but because of the existential implications of radical Islam.  These implications are reinforced by various charters calling for the destruction of Israel and Hamas’s explicit goal of exterminating the Jews, by ISIS’s goal of establishing a caliphate throughout the Mideast, and by Iran’s repeated pledges to blow Israel off the map. Despite political differences between the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, ISIS, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and Boko Haram, and doctrinal differences between Sunni and Shiite terror states, they all represent the same threat to Israel and the West.

Boykin sees a clear thread connecting past actions against the United States, such as the bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, with the kidnappings and beheadings of westerners today.  Unfortunately, Americans often have a limited frame of reference, particularly in a political climate that shuts down any critical discussion of these issues as “Islamophobic.”  The problem is exacerbated by an administration that appeases enemies and alienates allies and by political elements in the military that lack the resolve to implement appropriate corrective strategies.  In Boykin’s view, the latter problem is related to the exodus of young officers from all service branches in response to cuts in military spending and concomitant reductions in personnel.

The military is being cut back at a time when Islamist extremism is ascending, as demonstrated by the gruesome success of ISIS.  Political and military leaders willfully ignore the ramifications of jihadi radicalism and the need to confront it from a position of strength.  Despite recent acts of terror committed on North American soil, including beheadings and murders by lone-wolf perpetrators and the attack on Canada’s Parliament, the administration refuses to concede any terrorist links.  Indeed, while Canadian Prime Minister Harper proclaimed that the Parliament attack was an act of terror, President Obama would not draw the same conclusion.

In contrast, Israel knows how high the stakes are because they challenge her very existence.  “Israel has nowhere to go,” Boykin said, and thus cannot afford to be ignorant about the nature of an existential threat grounded in ideology, not geography.

General McInerney, a former U.S. Air Force Vice Chief of Staff and Vice Commander in Chief of U.S. Forces in Europe, agrees that the battle against Islamists is ideological.  “We have to understand the threat we face [and that] Radical Islam is as dangerous an ideology as Nazism and Communism.”  According to McInerney, Islamism is not a response to western provocations, but derives from Muslim scriptural sources.  Likewise, the jihadist impulse does not arise from economic privation, class struggle or geographic dispossession as western progressives often preach.  Rather, it comes from deeply held religious convictions that must be understood if they are to be confronted effectively.

In order for this to happen, though, control of the dialogue has to be taken back from those who censor the use of language deemed offensive to extremists and who employ moral equivalency to justify radicalism.  In addition, the dialogue should be purged of intentionally misleading buzzwords that have become commonplace, including such terms as: “occupation,” which refers to the entire State of Israel; “historical Palestine,” which legitimizes a country that never existed; and “proportionality,” which is used to criticize defensive actions taken by Israel, but not the acts of those who attack her citizens and use civilians as shields.

Accusations that Israel’s military responses are disproportionate are particularly galling, especially considering how she routinely sacrifices her strategic advantage by warning civilians of impending strikes ahead of time and by providing aid to those caught in the crossfire.  The unprecedented humanity displayed by Israel during wartime should debunk the ongoing critique of the proportionality of her response in Gaza and her supposed failure to protect civilians.  Such statements bespeak ignorance, bad faith or complicity in advancing anti-Israel propaganda.

According to General McInerney, the term “proportionality” is simply a euphemism for “not enough Israelis killed” and should be given no credence. Nevertheless, White House and State Department voices seem more vested in chiding Israel for civilian casualties than in blaming Hamas for starting the conflict and using noncombatants as human shields.  The treatment of Hamas as a legitimate political entity defies history, logic and common sense.

The Obama administration’s apparent affinity for Islamists has not garnered it support from the Islamic world, and military reductions on its watch have fostered an image of international weakness.  By unilaterally disarming in Europe, where the U.S. currently maintains almost no tanks or mechanized divisions, General McInerney believes the administration has eroded the deterrent effect of American military strength.

And by treating Iran, perhaps the largest state sponsor of global terrorism, as a rational partner for constructive engagement, the administration increases the risk of a regional arms race as the Sunni states may be forced to seek parity.  The threat of a nuclear Iran cannot be minimized, the panel said, noting that it would take only a few nuclear weapons to destroy Israel.  To claim that a nuclear Iran could ever be trusted is to ignore the radical ideology that has driven its quest for nuclear weapons since the Islamic revolution in 1979 and its dogmatic fixation on destroying Israel.  It also ignores an Iranian worldview in which the United States remains the “Great Satan.”

The panel’s perspective on the spread of Islamism is buttressed by the long view of many in the intelligence community, but the administration seems to ignore any observations and analyses that do not jibe with the partisan and politicized assumptions underlying its foreign policy.  This is all the more disturbing in light of reports during the ISIS fiasco claiming that President Obama does not read all intelligence memos that cross his desk.

The intelligence angle was addressed by Gary Berntsen, a career CIA officer, former station chief and former counter-terrorism director.  A fluent Farsi speaker, Berntsen directed counterterrorism deployments in response to the bombings of the U.S. Embassy in East Africa and the attacks on 9/11, and is familiar with the evolution of both Hezbollah and ISIS.  Whereas Mr. Obama claimed to have been surprised by the rise of ISIS, Berntsen said that U.S. intelligence has been tracking the faction from which it grew for years; and that despite the president’s attempt to blame the intelligence community for failing to identify the threat, the administration has been fully briefed about the capabilities and resources of ISIS on an ongoing basis.

Moreover, in evaluating the evolution of ISIS, the intelligence community had a model for comparison in Hezbollah.  According to Berntsen, there were parallels to the growth of Hezbollah, which together with Islamic Jihad serves as the operational wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Hezbollah maintains a standing army, finances its operations through unsavory enterprises and billions in funding from Iran, and serves as a conduit for Iranian-exported terrorism, Berntsen noted.  Moreover, it has insinuated itself in Lebanon, where it persecutes non-Muslims and threatens Israel.

ISIS followed a similar trajectory on its way to amassing a fighting force of some 30,000 men and a large arsenal of sophisticated weaponry.  Initially supported by a number of Sunni states, ISIS has become self-sustaining by reaping profits from banks and oil production facilities it has seized and by stockpiling weapons and hardware taken from routed opponents across Syria and Iraq.

Though ISIS is certainly a menace that must not be ignored, the United States cannot afford to lose sight of Iran’s influence throughout the region.  Without minimizing the ISIS threat, Berntsen believes that “Iran is the major confrontation state” and that American interests are ill-served by the obsession with concluding a nuclear deal.  The administration appears to believe it can encourage a shift in Iranian loyalty and seems prepared to sacrifice its relationships with Sunni allies, such as Saudi Arabia, in order to do so.  Given that Iran’s official views regarding the United States have not changed, and that it continues to call for the annihilation of Israel, the initiative to flip its allegiance seems grounded in fantasy.

The panel concluded that the United States and Israel have similar security concerns and identical interests in preserving cultural and political values common to both their societies.  Accordingly, they find the administration’s policies in the region counterproductive and dangerous.

These observations are especially poignant in light of recent events, including continuing criticisms of Israel by the administration and State Department over the Gaza war.  Official malice against Israel seemed incontrovertible after General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently lauded Israel for taking unprecedented steps to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza and stated that the U.S. military would adopt similar strategies for fighting in civilian areas.  The State Department responded by distancing itself from Dempsey’s remarks and denying that they reflected the government’s position.

Then there were the recent comments from an unnamed White House source who used expletives to describe Benyamin Netanyahu and called him cowardly for failing to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, although the Obama administration discouraged the strike and reportedly leaked sensitive information (regarding strikes on similar sites in Syria) to prevent Israel from acting.  When these comments are juxtaposed against the administration’s failure to contain ISIS and the domestic loss of confidence in Mr. Obama’s ability to protect and defend, the foreign policy landscape looks very bleak indeed.

The American Jewish community needs to wake up and acknowledge the administration’s abandonment of Israel.  Though some Jewish Democrats still contend that Obama “has Israel’s back,” his order blocking shipments of Hellfire missiles and other military equipment to Israel during the Gaza war shows the fallacy of such claims.   Furthermore, his preoccupation with reaching a nuclear deal with Iran – a rogue regime that has repeatedly vowed to obliterate the Jewish State – should give pause to all who profess support for his administration’s intentions regarding Israel.

The message delivered by the esteemed panel in Massachusetts was that American and Israeli interests are identical when it comes to dealing with global jihad, and that the failure to support Israel will only embolden those who seek to take the fight directly to the United States.  The proof on the ground becomes more apparent with each foreign policy gaffe, and seems to be denied only by those who choose to ignore it or who continue to promote the administration’s regional agenda out of blind partisan allegiance.

The opening remarks of Colonel West, who moderated the panel discussion with wit and insight, actually set the tone for its conclusion.  “America is at a critical crossroads in our global standing,” he said.  “And this is clearly apparent in the Mideast [where] we’re facing a vile existential threat in ISIS.”  The increase in Hamas’s destructive power, the evolution of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and the empowerment of extremists across North Africa have coincided with the administration’s conduct in pivoting U.S. policy away from its traditional interests in the Mideast and undercutting the American-Israeli relationship.

Nevertheless, Colonel West believes the American people’s bond with Israel cannot be broken by the policies of a hostile administration.  Regarding Israel’s future, he referred to the Book of Yehoshua, which says:  “Be strong and courageous; be not afraid, nor be dismayed; for the Lord your G-d is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua, 1:9.).

Clearly, Israel cannot place her trust in the Obama administration, but she can still draw strength and inspiration from Yehoshua, whose words have resonated for thousands of years and will continue to do so long after this president leaves office.

Categories: Ideology, Iran, Islam, Israel, Jihad
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Humor: By Executive Action, Obama’s life and glory will be soon be presented in a ballet

December 2, 2014

By Executive Action, Obama’s life and glory will be soon be presented in a ballet, Dan Miller’s Blog, December 1, 2014

(Please see also Imagine a World Without America? Obama Can — DM)

A ballet depicting the life and glory of their hero, Hugo Chavez, is the current rage among all good Chavistas. Barack Humble Obama, who has brought us greater peace, prosperity, happiness and even laughter than Chavez ever did, deserves far better.

 

By Presidential Memorandum released on December 1st, Obama directed:

Presidential Memorandum re. public acknowledgment  of My unsurpassed greatness, December First, Year the sixth of the reign of Obama:

By virtue of the authority vested in Me as the Dear Leader of the True American Revolution, We I hereby direct all Federal entities, and request all significant stakeholders, to collaborate in the creation of a ballet to memorialize My uniquely outstanding magnificence, particularly as shown through My numerous  successes.

To that noble end, all Federal Agencies and Departments shall first consider among themselves and, with the voluntary cooperation of all significant stakeholders — including all State and local governmental entities, non-governmental organizations and other interested parties —  shall further consider the highly treasured successes I have bestowed upon them and upon My adoring people:

♥ Vastly improved health care;

♥ Unprecedented governmental transparency;

♥ A massively stimulated national economy;

♥ Uniquely clean Government with no hint of scandal or waste;

♥ Heroic advances in social justice;

♥ Tremendously improved race and multicultural relations;

♥ Greatly diminished White privilege;

♥ My historically unique approach to foreign policy, which has united many of our allies and former enemies; and

♥ Many others which We are I am far too humble to mention here.

As soon as the ballet has been written and I have approved it, it shall be featured by all mass media outlets during prime time and performed in all cities and towns throughout My domain that have suitable facilities. Places unfortunately lacking such facilities are authorized and requested to apply promptly for appropriate Federal grants. My Department of Homeland Security, as well as all other relevant Federal departments and agencies, are directed to approve them expeditiously.

The ballet shall be presented each year on the twentieth day of January, which I shall soon declare a national holiday by Executive Order.

Upon reviewing the Presidential Memorandum with their customary diligence, MSNBC, NBC, CNN, ABC and CBS offered high praise for Obama’s grand initiative. Using a ballet to remind everyone in the United States of Obama of what He has done to for them was seen not only as a true masterstroke but as His most masterful yet, sure to win the hearts and minds of even His most obstructionist opponents.

They suggested that the construction of much needed theatrical facilities throughout the entire country, in places now sadly deprived of the cultural enrichment they bring, will further stimulate our already vastly improved economy. They also suggested that necessary funding be stripped from all warmongering activities of the U.S. military, sparing only funds needed to improve gender equality and multicultural advances.

Faux News had little to say beyond suggesting that such a ballet should be produced after, rather than during, Obama’s term of office. Republican House Speaker Boehner contended that too many horror shows featuring Obama are already broadcast on national television and cable and that, for that reason, no Federal funds should be wasted on Obama’s grand initiative. However, he stated that no shutdown of the Federal Government is now contemplated in response. Some right wing activists terrorists suggested that, as an alternative to Obama’s grand initiative, the Little Abner musical, which they had enjoyed years ago when they were children, should be presented on national television, including all cable channels.

 

It would be gratifying for all to learn, through the medium of ballet, that the country is now in even better hands than ever before.

Categories: Domestic policy, Foreign policy, Humor, Ideology, International Community, Islam, Obama
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Distorted perceptions of Ferguson, Israel and Islam have similar roots

November 30, 2014

Distorted perceptions of Ferguson, Israel and Islam have similar roots, Dan Miller’s Blog, November 29, 2014

Those who find “racist” repression of Blacks in Ferguson, “racist” repression of Arabs in Israel and “racist” repression of Muslims by non-Muslims everywhere have much in common. 

Leftist and mainstream media perceptions of “repression” by Ferguson’s White minority of its Black majority, of Israeli “war crimes” against her minority Muslim residents and of the “peaceful” nature of Islam hinge on increasingly common notions: fairness requires inconvenient facts to be altered if possible to suit an ideology while others, inconsistent with the altered facts, must be ignored. We must speak and act with compassion toward and empathy with the oppressed. Only in this way, it is believed, can true fairness and empathetic compassion be achieved. Then, and only then, will we have true justice.

David Solway, in an excellent PJ Media article titled ‘Politricks’ and the English Language, summed it up:

[T]he Big Lie has been installed among us as the primary form of political and cultural address along the entire gamut of disinformation, from outright interment of fact and customizing of inconvenient truths to unmitigated calumny and virulent libel. The Western media and the “progressivist” left-liberal political class have, over the years, incrementally adopted the discursive techniques of totalitarian states and theocratic dispensations. [Emphasis added.]

Please read the whole article.

Perceptions of Ferguson, Missouri

No justice no peace

Michael Brown, a Black “gentle giant,” was shot and killed by a “racist” White police officer, Darren Wilson, on August 9th. There were eyewitnesses and many others who claimed to be eyewitnesses but were not. The latter based their accounts on what others had told them and on what they believed might have happened. Rather than select a new grand jury, an existing grand jury was kept in session, apparently to avoid claims that the members of a new jury had been chosen to exonerate Officer Wilson. On November 23rd, the grand jury determined that Officer Wilson would not be charged with a criminal offense under Missouri law. Here’s what happened next. Although the facts presented to the grand jury have been released, the facts matter but little:

The riots went forward as planned; the media steadfastly distributed its prewritten narrative of evil racist white cop murdering innocent young black man. [Emphasis added.]

 

Some Blacks defended White-owned businesses. That’s good. Others looted and burned Black as well as White-owned businesses.

Please see also this article by Rich Lowry at Politico. His analysis points to this:

This is a terrible tragedy. It isn’t a metaphor for police brutality or race repression or anything else, and never was. Aided and abetted by a compliant national media, the Ferguson protestors spun a dishonest or misinformed version of what happened—Michael Brown murdered in cold blood while trying to give up—into a chant (“hands up, don’t shoot”) and then a mini-movement. [Emphasis added.]

When the facts didn’t back their narrative, they dismissed the facts and retreated into paranoid suspicion of the legal system. [Emphasis added.]

Beyond that, I don’t consider it necessary to dwell on what happened in Ferguson last August and what happened thereafter, before and after the grand jury declined to indict Officer Wilson for the “murder” of “gentle giant” Michael Brown. Most who will read this article are already familiar with what happened; perceptions and their bases are my focus here.

Reports of “racism” and associated violence help to sell print and broadcast advertising, particularly if the reports can be made consistent with the perceptions of audiences: White people are racist and oppress Black people. Hence, most in the mass media rely, consciously or unconsciously, on confirmation bias,

a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true.[Note 1][1] As a result, people gather evidence and recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. The biases appear in particular for emotionally significant issues and for established beliefs.

The “legitimate” media proceeded in similar fashion when George Zimmerman, a “racist” “White Hispanic,” shot and killed a “defenseless” Black “child” in April of 2012. The “legitimate” media changed or ignored facts in their quests to declare Zimmerman guilty, to encourage rioting and to vindicate their own perceptions that Blacks are “different” and that their actions need to be dealt with more leniently than those of others. Please see also this article about a well to do White kid who said that he deserved to be mugged because of his White privilege. Many in the mass media appear to share his perceptions, at least with respect to the mugging of others.

After digesting the factual evidence the Zimmerman trial jury disagreed with the mass media and the assorted race baiters upon whom the mass media feasted and found him not guilty. After digesting the factual evidence, the grand jury — which had three Black members — disagreed about Officer Wilson and declined to indict him.

It has been reported that, following the grand jury’s refusal to indict Officer Wilson, the Obama administration promoted indoctrination of students on the basis that Brown was “a victim of police violence.” Part of the “White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans,” the indoctrination apparently is to include this:

“During the first few weeks of classes, students can create a memorial to Michael Brown on a classroom bulletin board. This activity involves having students use whatever they feel skilled in to create something that would honor Michael Brown and other people who have been victims of police and other violence. Students may choose to draw, write poetry, design art pieces, paint, or collect news clippings. Students can use this opportunity to create a counter-narrative to negative stories and images about Ferguson and Michael Brown, or even to document stories and images they have seen in the media about the case. Engaging in this type of activity allows teachers to understand youth strengths and form classroom solidarity.” [Emphasis added.]

It is important for young people to learn how to make connections between the Michael Brown shooting and similar cases that have emerged in recent history. While a discussion of the Michael Brown shooting and the current events in Ferguson are powerful, conversations about Michael Brown with a consideration of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Renisha Mcbride and other cases that involve similar scenarios place the events in Ferguson in proper context… [Emphasis added.]

Assuming that the report is accurate, is the Obama administration trying to heal racial divides, or to exacerbate them as it has often done?

David Goldman, in an article at PJ Media titled How Far Down Do You Define Deviancy in Ferguson? summed up the positions of the current “civil rights” movement and the consequences were they to be adopted:

Young black men are disproportionately imprisoned. One in three black men have gone to prison at some time in their life. According to the ACLU, one in fifteen black men are incarcerated, vs. one in 106 white men. That by itself is proof of racism; the fact that these individuals were individually prosecuted for individual crimes has no bearing on the matter. All that matters is the outcome. Because the behavior of young black men is not likely to change, what must change is the way that society recognizes crime itself. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

[T]he solution is to decriminalize behavior that all civilized countries have suppressed and punished since the dawn of history.  Because felonious behavior is so widespread and the causes of it so intractable, the criminals’ rights movement insists, society “cannot afford to recognize” criminal behavior below a certain threshold. [Emphasis added.]

If America were to accept this logic, civil society would come to an end. The state would abandon its monopoly of violence to street rule. Large parts of America would come to resemble the gang-ruled, lawless streets of Central America, where violent pathology has overwhelmed the state’s capacity to control it, creating in turn a nightmare for America’s enforcement of its own immigration law. [Emphasis added.]

The Ferguson episode was not a civil rights movement in any traditional or otherwise legitimate sense.

The response of the African-American “civil rights” establishment and the American Left to the verdict in Ferguson came quickly and predictably.  Al Sharpton and other racial demagogues urged their followers to take to the streets if anything but a first degree murder indictment was handed down for Officer Darren Wilson. The protestors and rioters were prepared, but Missouri’s governor wasn’t. He failed to call out the National Guard on the day the verdict was released.

What is particularly galling is the argument that the events in Ferguson, and the no bill for Wilson, are a throwback to the segregationist era of the 1950s and 1960s, when the modern civil rights movement engaged in non-violent civil disobedience.  “The Movement,” as they called it then, showed the nation and the world the immoral actions of police chief Bull Connor of Birmingham, Alabama, and others of similar ilk, thereby exposing the injustice of the system of segregation — a system based on power and violence, preventing black Americans from enjoying the rights and liberties guaranteed to them by the U.S. Constitution. [Emphasis added.]

Civil rights movement

Israel

Just as confirmation bias caused many in Missouri — and also in distant places — to condemn a “racist” White police officer and to preach about the benign nature of his Black “victim,” so many throughout the world blame Israel for everything bad that people do.

Blame Israel1

I recently wrote an article titled Hamas, Abbas, Obama and Islamic Savagery. It includes this photo of Palestinians celebrating their brethren’s murders of Jews praying in a Jerusalem synagogue:

celebratingmurder_20141118_105338

Recently, there have been many more attacks on Jews in Israel.

Academia, where leftism now prevails, has done much to slander Israel as a wicked apartheid state, more barbaric than Nazi Germany.

This summer’s Israeli incursion, Operation Protective Edge, provided anti-Semites and loathers of the Jewish state with resurgent justifications for assigning the epithet of Nazi on the Jews yet another time, together with oft-heard accusations of “crimes against humanity, “massacres,” genocide,” and, according to recent comments by Turkey’s prime minister Tayyip Erdoğan, in their treatment of the Palestinians, Israel has demonstrated that “. . . their barbarism has surpassed even Hitler’s.”[Emphasis added.]

The Nazification of Israelis—and by extension Jews—is both breathtaking in its moral inversion and cruel in the way it makes the actual victims of the Third Reich’s horrors a modern-day reincarnation of that same barbarity. It is, in the words of Boston University’s Richard Landes, “moral sadism,” a salient example of Holocaust inversion that is at once ahistorical, disingenuous, and grotesque in its moral and factual inaccuracy. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

[They did so] by redefining Israel as the most glaring example of those human predations, what he called “the embodiment of all evil” of the Twentieth Century: apartheid and Nazism. He defined the process of grafting this opprobrium on Israel as “ideological anti-Semitism,” one which “involves the characterization of Israel not only as an apartheid state—and one that must be dismantled as part of the struggle against racism—but as a Nazi one.” [Emphasis added.]

. . . . [O]nce Israel had been tarred with the libels of racism and Nazism, the Jewish state had been made an international outlaw, a pariah, losing its moral right to even exist—exactly, of course, what its foes have consistently sought. “These very labels of Zionism and Israel as ‘racist, apartheid and Nazi’ supply the criminal indictment,” said Cotler. “No further debate is required. The conviction that this triple racism warrants the dismantling of Israel as a moral obligation has been secured. For who would deny that a ‘racist, apartheid, Nazi’ state should not have any right to exist today?” [Emphasis added.]

Such academic perceptions have spread worldwide. European nations are now rushing to recognize a Palestinian nation, without regard to reality.

Does anyone really think that granting, or recognizing, Palestinian statehood will make them more peaceful? On the contrary. From past experience, any time the Palestinians achieve a political goal without effort, they take that as a reward for their violent behaviour and only increase their terrorist activities.

In that context, the Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. General Assembly recently chastised much of the world, particularly Europe, for accepting such perceptions regardless of reality.

He did not likely make many friends; calling to people’s attention that they are sadly misguided rarely does.

Why are Islamic nations, where apartheid and violence against non-Muslims prevail, subjected to little anger and disdain while Israel, the only free and democratic nation in the entire region, gets nearly all of the anger and disdain? Might this double standard be useful because it caters to the notion that Israel’s freedom and democracy for all of her citizens, including Arabs — particularly along with her technological and financial successes — set her apart? Make her “the Other?” Might it be that Islamic nations, hugely represented at the U.N. and sadly deficient in freedom, democracy and technological prowess, reject Israeli freedom and democracy while envious of Israel’s technological success? They have substantial wealth, but it is largely based on oil and the technology of others. Little of the resulting wealth is shared with their masses.

Islam

That brings us to Islam, the “religion of peace.” According to Obama and other luminaries, the Islamic State is not Islamic. According to Obama no religion — least of all Islam — countenances the violence in which the Islamic State and other comparable Islamic terrorist groups engage. Remember His Eid-al-Fitr message?

While Eid marks the completion of Ramadan, it also celebrates the common values that unite us in our humanity and reinforces the obligations that people of all faiths have to each other, especially those impacted by poverty, conflict, and disease. [Emphasis added.]

In the United States, Eid also reminds us of the many achievements and contributions of Muslim Americans to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy.  That is why we stand with people of all faiths, here at home and around the world, to protect and advance their rights to prosper, and we welcome their commitment to giving back to their communities. [Emphasis added.]

Interfaith tolerance and respect? The “very fabric of our nation?” “Strengthening the core of our democracy?”

Let's have an honest discussion about Islam

Let’s have an honest discussion about Islam

In Islam, peace can come only after all other religions have been destroyed or subjugated. That Islamic belief now plagues Israel and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Islamic Palestinians who murder Jews are seen as heroes and more are encouraged to do more of the same.

Many Muslims adhere also to the view that the Peace of Islam can come only after other Muslims who profess variant religious doctrines — Sunni vs. Shia for example — have been destroyed or subjugated and become “true” Muslims. Sect vs. sect violence was common throughout the centuries and now seems to be worse and increasing.

That is to be expected, but why do many nations which do not yet have Muslim majorities tend to ignore these Islamic actions and view Islamic slaughter as not characteristics of Islam? Are they merely ignorant about Islam? Have they been fatally infected with multiculturalism and political correctness? Might they even view adherents to Islam as subhumans, whose violence and other depredations are best ignored or tolerated?

 

Conclusions

It seems reasonable to conclude that the world is spiraling ever deeper into insanity. Until leaders of “the international community,” academia and the mass media revise their views and act on the basis of facts instead of fictions, and on logic rather than on raw emotion coupled with pandering to those blinded by confirmation bias against “the Others,” sanity will continue to be increasingly rare. Insanity will continue to be manifested through violence as it persists and worsens because perceptions drive actions.

These are not optimistic conclusions, because it seems unlikely that “the international community,” academia or the mass media — which tend to proceed in tandem — will reform anytime soon.

ADDENDUM

Is Christianity dead in the Middle East? It probably is in most of the region, but not in Israel.

Is it the end of Christianity in the Middle East?  Could be, he says, at least so far as Iraq is involved:

What is a Christian life there now? The Bishop of Mosul said recently that for the first time in 2,000 years there was no church in Nineveh [an ancient city that is now part of Mosul]. That’s the reality.

It is indeed the reality, and not just in Iraq.  And “the West” is silent, as it has been so often when it faces evil far from its own boundaries.  Meanwhile, [Anglican Canon Andrew White] has moved on, to the one country in the Middle East that provides its citizens with religious freedom and the security to practice their faith.  He’s in Jerusalem, trying to achieve reconciliation between Muslim and Jewish religious leaders.  It’s not an altogether new venture for him;  in his last days in Baghdad, he was the “rabbi” for the city’s remaining six Iraqi Jews.  And back at that conference in Copenhagen, the guest of honor at the closing banquet was the former chief rabbi of Denmark. [Emphasis added.]

Guess what?  During the week, all the Iraqi religious leaders arranged for private meetings with said rabbi.  Why?  They’d looked at the map, and they knew that if things were going to be ok for them, they’d need help from the Jews in Israel.  Andrew knew it too.  He still knows it.  That’s no doubt why he’s working in Jerusalem. [Emphasis added.]

Categories: Antisemitism, Diversity, Hamas, Ideology, International Community, Islam, Islamic State, Jewish occupation of Israel, Leftists, Multiculturalism, Obama, Peace process, Political correctness, Two state solution, United Nations
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Surrender in the War of Ideas

October 7, 2014

Surrender in the War of Ideas, Washington Free Beacon, , October 7, 2014

(The U.S. Constitution, ignored by the Obama Administration whenever convenient, has very little to do with the matter. In any event, Obama has repeatedly claimed that the Islamic State is not Islamic, thus erroneously interpreting and supporting what he apparently considers to be Islamic religious doctrine. — DM)

Constitutional religious clause prevents Obama administration from countering Islamic State ideology.

Mideast IraqIslamic State militants pass a checkpoint bearing the group’s trademark black flag in the village of Maryam Begg in Kirkuk, 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraq / AP

Obama stated in a speech on Sept. 10 that ISIL is “not Islamic” despite the group’s use of a fundamental Islamic precept of jihad, or holy war, in expanding its reach and imposing anti-democratic, hardline Islamic sharia law in areas it now controls.

Analysts and statements by the president and other administration spokesmen also indicate the administration may not clearly understand ISIL ideology, a required first step in developing a counter to it.

The Obama administration, under pressure from domestic Muslim advocacy organizations, has adopted a politically correct approach toward Islam and terrorism that has resulted in removing mentions of Islam from its current policies and programs. Instead, counterterrorism programs and policies are carried out under the less-specific rubric of “countering violent extremism” (CVE).

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

The Obama administration is failing to wage ideological war against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) terrorists over fears that attacking its religious philosophy will violate the constitutional divide between church and state, according to an in-depth inquiry by the Washington Free Beacon.

Instead, the task of countering what President Obama called the “warped ideology” of ISIL is being farmed out to foreign states and Muslim communities that often share some of the same goals as the groups the administration calls violent extremists. This approach allows the administration to avoid identifying links between terrorism and Islam.

“While the government has tried to counter terrorist propaganda, it cannot directly address the warped religious interpretations of groups like ISIL because of the constitutional separation of church and state,” said Quintan Wiktorowicz, a former White House counterterrorism strategist for the Obama administration.

“U.S. officials are prohibited from engaging in debates about Islam, and as a result will need to rely on partners in the Muslim world for this part of the ideological struggle,” he said in an email interview.

Is ISIL Islamic?

Obama announced last month for the first time that his new counterterrorism strategy includes programs aimed at countering ISIL’s ideology. But a review of administration efforts shows very little—if anything—is being done to defeat or destroy the terrorist group’s religious ideology in a war of ideas.

At the United Nations on Sept. 24, the president asked the world body to come up with a plan over the next year designed to counter ISIL and al Qaeda’s ideology. He said ending religious wars through an ideological campaign in the Middle East will be “generational” and led by those who live in the region. No external power, the president insisted, can change “hearts and minds,” and as a result the United States would support others in the unspecified program of “counter extremist ideology.”

The administration’s so-called soft power approach to countering Islamist terrorism also appeared to have difficulty with clearly defining the religious doctrine behind the ideology of the resurgent al Qaeda offshoot now rampaging its way across Iraq and Syria.

Obama stated in a speech on Sept. 10 that ISIL is “not Islamic” despite the group’s use of a fundamental Islamic precept of jihad, or holy war, in expanding its reach and imposing anti-democratic, hardline Islamic sharia law in areas it now controls.

Analysts and statements by the president and other administration spokesmen also indicate the administration may not clearly understand ISIL ideology, a required first step in developing a counter to it.

Sebastian Gorka, a counterterrorism specialist, said the major problem for the administration in countering ISIL ideology is that most senior officials hold “post-modern” and “secular” views.

“As a result, they have almost no ability to understand the drivers of violent terrorists which are religious,” said Gorka, the Horner chairman of military theory at the Marine Corps University.

“When you don’t take religion seriously, it’s almost impossible for you to comprehend the philosophy of a suicide bomber, or someone who cuts off the heads of people in the name of jihad,” Gorka said.

Senior State Department officials have expressed the view that ideology plays no role in Islamist terror and is spawned instead by “local grievances” such as poverty or other economic and social privation, Gorka said. “That is utterly fallacious. If that were true, half of India would be terrorists,” he said.

The latest issue of the ISIL English-language magazine Dabiq reveals some of the group’s ideology, using references to Islamic practices of jihad and sharia law. “The Islamic State has long maintained an initiative that sees it waging jihad alongside a dawah [proselytizing campaign] that actively tends to the needs of its people,” the magazine said, adding that the group “fights to defend the Muslims, liberate their lands, and bring an end to tawaghit[the evil corrupt system].”

The magazine also sought to legitimize its mass executions, beheadings, and other atrocities as religiously justified responses to all opponents who refuse to submit to its ideology.

The president stated in his Sept. 10 speech announcing the anti-ISIL strategy that the group is “not Islamic” because it kills Muslims and innocents, something he asserted no religion condones, and a claim disputed by many experts on Islam.

“I’ve studied Islam and I did not find a very peaceful religion,” said a current senior U.S. counterterrorism specialist who disagrees with the administration’s approach of not directly addressing the Islamic nature of terrorism in counter-ideology efforts.

Wictorowicz, the former counterterrorism strategist, defended the State Department approach. “Having spoken to them at length about this, their position is that Islam, as a religion, is not the issue,” he said. “It is particular interpretations of Islam that are, in part, driving support for violence.”

Not fighting a war of ideas

The Obama administration, under pressure from domestic Muslim advocacy organizations, has adopted a politically correct approach toward Islam and terrorism that has resulted in removing mentions of Islam from its current policies and programs. Instead, counterterrorism programs and policies are carried out under the less-specific rubric of “countering violent extremism” (CVE).

Discussing Islam also has been placed off limits in many government and intelligence community counterterrorism programs as a result of pressure groups and Muslim advisers who insist such topics would violate constitutional separation of church and state issues.

That pressure has inhibited the U.S. government from addressing Islamist ideology in a significant way, critics say. Instead, the government has been forced to indirectly counter claims by terrorists, such as the false notion that the United States and the West are at war with Islam. It used public diplomacy programs and global “messaging” campaigns whose effectiveness has been questionable, to try and counter such claims.

James Glassman, former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, said “absolutely,” that the administration is hampered by concerns over First Amendment constitutional religious issues from conducting aggressive counter-ideology efforts against groups such as al Qaeda and ISIL.

“There is reticence, especially at State, to criticize a noxious political ideology based on a religion,” said Glassman, now with the American Enterprise Institute.

Glassman said from the start, Obama has played down the war of ideas in the struggle against terrorism.

During the transition from the Bush to Obama administration, “I was told by the Obama operatives assigned to State that the term ‘war of ideas’ was not to be used,” Glassman said.

“The war of ideas had been my focus at State, but the administration had no interest in continuing the work we were doing,” he said. “Ideology provides the environment and the justification for the activities of al Qaeda and ISIL. It must be dealt with—just as we dealt with communism from 1945 to 1990. It’s a long battle.”

“The way around the problem is leadership,” Glassman said. “The president needs to make clear—as President Bush did immediately after 9/11—that the terrorists have constructed a phony ideology and that they are trying to take over an entire religion.”

Obama appears to be in the early stages of doing that “but it is very late in the game and he needs to devote resources, not just words, to the war of ideas,” Glassman said.

Looking for allies

Obama told the United Nations in a speech to the General Assembly Sept. 24 that “extremist ideology” has spread despite more than a decade of military and intelligence efforts to kill al Qaeda leaders. Groups such as ISIL and al Qaeda have “perverted one of the world’s great religions,” he said.

The world, and specifically “Muslim communities,” the president said, must now take steps to “explicitly, forcefully, and consistently reject the ideology of al Qaeda and ISIL.”

However, most of the Islamic countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, so far have not denounced the ISIL ideology and do not appear to be engaged in counter-ideological campaigns designed to discredit the motivating force behind the group.

The president elaborated in the U.N. speech on his administration’s approach to countering ISIL’s message, but not its Islamist ideology. He called for a “new compact” among civilized peoples to stop the “corruption of young minds by violent ideology.”

He called for cutting off funding and contesting terrorists’ use of social media to recruit and propagandize. Additionally, he called upon religious leaders of all faiths to join together and propagate the Christian concept of “do unto thy neighbor as you would have done unto you.”

“The ideology of ISIL or al Qaeda or Boko Haram will wilt and die if it is consistently exposed, confronted, and refuted in the light of day,” Obama said.

Wiktorowicz said he agrees more needs to be done. “Not enough resources are being devoted to the counter-ideology component of the administration’s strategy,” he said. “The long war is the war against violent ideologies and there hasn’t been the resource investment since 9/11. As a result of this and other factors, we’re seeing the reincarnation of al Qaeda as ISIL in Iraq and Syria.”

Wiktorowicz also said the administration is working with partners in the Muslim world “who can push back against the ideology.”

“The Salafi jihadists, however, have assassinated and intimidated Islamic scholars and others who have spoken out against violence, increasing the danger for the brave individuals involved in the counter-ideological struggle,” he said.

A hashtag campaign

To date, the allied campaign against ISIL is limited to U.S.-led missile, drone, and air strikes against vehicles and command posts of the group in territories it controls in Iraq and Syria. The bombing has slowed but not reversed territorial gains by the group.

The Obama strategy as outlined last month will involve four elements: Air strikes; support for local forces on the ground; counterterrorism efforts to prevent ISIL attacks; and humanitarian assistance to deal with the mass of refugees fleeing ISIL control.

Under the counterterrorism program, the president declared: “Working with our partners, we will redouble our efforts to cut off its funding; improve our intelligence; strengthen our defenses; counter its warped ideology; and stem the flow of foreign fighters into and out of the Middle East.”

Asked for specifics on what the White House is doing to counter ISIL ideology, White House and National Security Council spokesmen declined to discuss the matter. Ned Price, an NSC spokesman, provided a recent White House “fact sheet” that contains no reference to counter-ideology efforts.

Price said White House counterterrorism coordinator Lisa Monaco was “too busy” to discuss the counter-ideology campaign.

The fact sheet mentions various steps being taken, including the adoption of a “whole-of-government-approach,” cutting off funds to ISIL, and preventing foreigners from joining the group. An international group called the Global Counterterrorism Forum and other, non-government organizations also are said to be focusing on unspecified efforts to prevent foreign fighters from joining ISIL.

At the State Department, a State-led interagency Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications is engaged in “messaging” on social media and elsewhere. But those efforts appear limited to a counter-terror Twitter feed with few followers and limited reach.

A glimpse into the center’s activity was disclosed in February by a Saudi national who said he was paid to use Twitter in an online campaign to discredit Syrian jihadists.

The Saudi said he was unemployed when he was approached with an offer of money to attend a U.S. workshop with instructors who schooled him on the covert campaign against both al Qaeda and rival ISIL in Syria. The goal was to use Twitter to link both groups to Iran and its Lebanese surrogate, Hezbollah, he said.

The training included the use of hashtags designed to expand the reach of tweets to the largest number of people, particularly women. Instructions were relayed to the Saudi from a special iPhone application downloaded from the State Department web site.

State Department spokesmen ignored repeated emails seeking comment on the counter-ideology campaign, and the department’s public affairs office blocked the Free Beacon from speaking to officials in the center, without explanation.

Ideology as the center of gravity

At the Pentagon, spokesman Adm. John Kirby told reporters two days after the president’s speech that a “purely military solution” would not be enough to destroy ISIL.

“It also is going to take the ultimate destruction of their ideology,” Kirby said.

Ideological destruction, Kirby said, will be done through “good governance” in Iraq and in Syria. “And in a responsive political process so that the people that are falling sway to this radical ideology are no longer drawn to it,” he said. “That’s really the long-term answer.”

Because ISIL is not a formal military organization but a terrorist group, its center of gravity, in military terms, is the group’s ideology, Kirby said, adding that one non-military goal is delegitimizing ISIL while using U.S. and allied forces to destroy its ability to conduct attacks and control territory in the region.

Kirby did not elaborate and referred questions to the Central Command, the military command in charge of military operations against ISIL.

Lt. Col. Steven Wollman, a Central Command spokesman, said the command’s counter ideology efforts against ISIL are focused on exposing al Qaeda and ISIL “fallacies, particularly their incongruity with Islam and their penchant for violence, crime, and terror.”

“We demonstrate that despite their claims of creating a Caliphate for the good of the Muslim world their sole method is violence and only violence which has no positive short term or long term impact on the population,” Wollman said in a statement to the Free Beacon.

“To do so we highlight their total disregard for basic human needs and desires such as education, medical care, a free press, use of tobacco, and an expectation of freedom of choice.”

Additionally, the command said ISIL’s use of extreme violence such as beheadings, mass executions, and rape are “totally out of line of any Islamic teachings,” an aspect highlighted to local and regional audiences.

Terrorist groups also are using all forms of communication, including social media to recruit, fundraise, and spread violent ideology, Wollman said.

“It would be inappropriate to disclose all the specifics of what we are currently doing to counter the al Qaeda and ISIL fallacies campaign, but I can tell you that this command’s information operations activities are focused on foreign audiences across the region,” Wollman said, adding that message dissemination includes website, social media, print media, radio, and television in local languages.

“We align our efforts with other U.S. government agencies, and often are in direct support of U.S. ambassadors and with the knowledge of our partnered nations,” he said.

Additionally, “all of this is conducted by, with, and through our partner nations, often with our partner’s face on the message,” Wollman said.

“We also conduct training on how to combat extremist ideologies with our regional partner nations, as part of Foreign Internal Defense, Security Force Assistance, Building Partner Capacity, and other State Department-led activities.”

‘We won that battle already’

The administration’s point man for propaganda and so-called “soft power,” Rick Stengel, a former Time magazine reporter who is now undersecretary for public diplomacy, said in a recent speech that the administration is not trying to wage a war of ideas against ISIL.

“I would say that there is no battle of ideas with ISIL,” Stengel said. “ISIL is bereft of ideas, they’re bankrupt of ideas. It’s not an organization that is animated by ideas. It’s a criminal, savage, barbaric organization—I feel like we won that battle already.”

However, ISIL and its supporters are using social media effectively both to promote their Islamic-centered ideology and to recruit both foreign and regional fighters to their cause.

Twitter and Facebook have cracked down on ISIL supporters since the new counterterrorism campaign began last month. But the group has found ways to circumvent the crackdown, through innovative ways of creating new social media accounts.

In fact, the group has been so successful online that U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies have been able to use information publicly available on the Internet to track and identify ISIL targets for bombing. In response, ISIL supporters on Twitter and Facebook have launched a campaign to limit the information about the group online to undermine the bombing strikes.

ISIL also uses social media to link to recruitment videos and publications that, according to U.S. officials, have gained wide circulation.

All the videos and publications highlight the group’s adherence to Islamic principles.

Categories: Al Qaeda, Heresy, Ideology, Iraq, Islamic State, Islamism, Multiculturalism, Obama
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