Yousuf Al-Kuwailit, who writes the editorials of the Saudi government daily Al-Rai, opined in a December 7, 2014 editorial that, despite the tension that has ostensibly prevailed between the U.S. and Iran ever since the Islamic Revolution, in practice there is secret cooperation between them. As part of this cooperation, he said, Iraq has become nothing but an arena for assuring the interests of these two countries, and Iran has been granted freedom of action in Syria and Lebanon.
Referring to the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks, he said they were a farce that would end in contracts and deals, and perhaps even an alliance, between the two countries. He therefore called on the Arabs not to regard the U.S. as a reliable ally, and warned that the U.S. may force the Gulf states to reconcile with Iran, to the detriment of their interests.
“The U.S. appointed the Shah as policeman of the Arab Gulf, turned Iran into a base for conflict with the USSR, and provided Iran with up-to-date weaponry and a nuclear reactor. [Iran, for its part] attempted to take advantage of this situation, as it saw itself as a superpower. [Only] the strength of the USSR… prevented Iran from undertaking military adventures outside its own borders. With [the rise to power of Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini, despite everything that happened at the U.S. Embassy [in Tehran in 1980], when dozens of its staffers were taken hostage and [then-U.S. president Jimmy] Carter carried out a reckless and unsuccessful operation [in attempt to free them]… [despite all this] nothing spoiled the U.S.’s relationship with this country, which it considers one of its strategic and economic outposts by virtue of its location and its history. So the farce… about Iran’s nuclear reactors and non-conventional weapons has taken a clear and final direction, in the form of several deals [between the two countries]…
“Cyrus [the Great],[2] who attacked and destroyed the Arabs, is the spiritual father of the Nazi trend that has characterized Iran’s governments, whether secular or religious. Racial supremacism vis-à-vis the Arabs is a popular [Iranian] obsession. It exists and it is eternal, and even if the mullahs don black turbans [indicating that they are] descendants of the Prophet and have Arab roots, they do not really recognize these roots, but do this only in order to market their national policy to us, prior to marketing their religious school of thought [i.e. the Shi’a]. Anyone who thinks that diplomatic arrangements are aimed at anchoring coexistence between the Arabs and the Iranian ‘Aryans’ is disregarding the nature of the historical reasons [for the tension between the two sides] and its deep roots in the [Iranian] public mentality.
“In order to better understand the unfolding of events, [we need to realize that] the U.S. and its allies set out the initial plan to divide the Arab [regions] a long time ago, and that the Sikes-Picot agreement is only the first outcome [of that plan]. [We must also realize] that handing over Iraq [to Iran], and annexing Syria and later Lebanon to it, and the [silent] agreement [between the two countries] that Iran would have a free hand in these countries – all these are only a prelude to more dangerous activity.
“[Accordingly], relying on the U.S. or thinking it a reliable ally without properly understanding the strategic changes and aims, place us in a situation [of self-delusion], because all the historic elements of power see how positions and policies change but interests remain. This principle will be ultimately applied to all the countries that have a relationship with the U.S., whether economic or strategic, because the Arabs are part of a geographic area whose borders are changing, including through the disappearance of the centrally[-ruled] state in favor of states [based on] sect or nationality.
“One simple event in recent days is the Iranian Air Force’s incursion into Iraq to attack ISIS positions, which the U.S. confirmed but Iran denied. At the same time, the U.S. also ignores the incursion of [Iranian] ground troops under the command of [IRGC Qods Forces commander] Qassem Soleymani into Iraq, [which has been taking place] ever since the U.S. first started managing [Iraq’s] affairs… [In fact,] U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stated that any Iranian military attack on ISIS was positive. This exposes the significant coordination between the two countries, and belies the statements of U.S. military circles denying any cooperation or coordination [with Iran] in the war on ISIS…
“In the era of [former Iraqi prime minister Nouri] Al-Maliki, Iraq become nothing but an arena for assuring the interests of two players: Iran and the U.S. This came about as part of an agreement that began with [head of the occupational authority of Iraq after the 2003 invasion Paul] Bremer, and no Iraqi government will put an end to it, unless the Iraqis [dare to] oppose their homeland’s dependence on another country – something that is difficult and complicated to do.
“Ultimately, even if the talk about the American-Iranian hostility is true, everything points towards new contracts between the two which are likely to turn into alliance. We could possibly see catastrophic days if the U.S. forces the Gulf states to reconcile with Iran, which will end in a way that will not serve our interests. This is an outcome that should not surprise us, if the reality of [U.S.-Gulf] friendship evolves into [U.S.] dictates [to the Gulf states].”
From the point of view of Obama, the more pressure on Israel, the better. Europe agrees. The European parliaments, one after another, have favoured the recognition of Palestine in non-binding resolutions.
***************
The world is totally committed to the two-statesolution. European country after country is passing non-binding resolutions to recognize Palestine in principle. The parameters of the deal which have been set in stone, notwithstanding that all issues are to be decided by negotiations, are the ’67 lines plus swaps and the division of Jerusalem.
Never mind that such a deal is not good enough for the Arabs. Hamas rejects it outright. Mahmoud Abbas, as President of the PA, is still clamoring for the so called right of return and is unwilling to recognize Israel as the home of the Jews while at the same time insisting that “Palestine” be yudenrein.
The EU has already put a boycott on goods from Judea and Samaria and is drafting legislation imposing sanctions on Israel. It is even rumored that the US is contemplating doing the same. That’s ironic considering that both want to ease sanctions on Iran.
Israel, for its part is going along to get along, at least that is, to a degree. Netanyahu has agreed to negotiate the two-state solution subject to three pillars, “One, genuine mutual recognition; two, an end to all claims, including the right of return; and three, a long-term Israeli security presence.” This is according to his remarks to the Saban Conference. He did not mention borders. Would he accept ’67 lines plus swaps? He didn’t say but I think it is implied. Even so, there are no takers.
The Palestine Authority (PA) has turned its back on negotiations which would require it to accept these pillars and instead is getting ready to ask the UN Security Council to recognize the state of Palestine and to call for Israel to evacuate the territories calling for a full Israeli withdraw to the pre-1967 lines by November 2016.
The Obama administrations is working to prevent this but at the same time is considering the implications of not vetoing it. From the point of view of Obama, the more pressure on Israel, the better. Europe agrees. The European parliaments, one after another, have favoured the recognition of Palestine in non-binding resolutions.
Congress, on the other hand, in their spending bill, provides as follows, according to the Washington Post, “The bill stops assistance to the Palestinian Authority if it becomes a member of the United Nations or UN agencies without an agreement with Israel. It also prohibits funds for Hamas.” and provides “$3.1 billion in total aid for the country (Israel) plus $619.8 million in defense aid”. It has yet to pass.
Meanwhile the PA continues its incitement and lies. A recent poll of Palestinians showed that 80 percent supported individual attacks by Palestinians who have stabbed Israelis or rammed cars into crowded train stations and 59.6 percent supporting rocket fire at Israel. Is this a partner for peace? This poll may have been intended to promote the resistance.
At long last Israel is mounting certain responses. 1) Greater police presence in Jerusalem with fewer restrictions on them, 2) Greater penalties, like longer sentences, for any violent rioters and 3) Enacting zero tolerance laws prohibiting incitement. The Bill, not yet passed into law, states, “A call to an act of violence or terror deserves condemnation in the criminal realm as well, even if it is insufficient to lead to violence or terror. It does not deserve to be protected by the principle of freedom of expression.”
Wednesday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon attributed the building freeze in Judea and Samaria to pressure from the Obama administration and suggested Israel has to wait him out.
Speaking to reporters in Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that objection to “settlements” was longstanding and would not change after President Barack Obama leaves office in 2017 and said “Our policy has been consistent for quite some time,”
I am not so sure. Besides, she misses the point. While all administrations, from President Reagan on have considered settlements, while not illegal, to be an “obstacle to peace”, none of them forced Israel to freeze construction and even planning for construction and certainly not in Jerusalem.
The US and the EU continually allege that ‘settlements’ are an obstacle to peace. Have you ever heard them claim the same about PA incitement, or its support of terror or its refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state or its unwillingness to forego the “right of return”? Maybe, a little bit in passing, but they have done nothing to change their position and hardly condemned them.
Furthermore, Obama’s decision to back negotiations based on borders along the ’67 lines plus swaps was a big mistake. Doing so was contrary to his often stated position that any settlement must come through direct negotiations. He has forever repeated the mantra that neither side should take any unilateral moves which pre-determine the outcome. He himself, by predetermining the borders, is pre-determining the outcome.
Had he not pre-determined the borders of the final settlement, then Israel would have been entitled to build everywhere at its peril, meaning that when borders are agreed upon, if ever, the housing on Israel’s side would remain and the housing on the Palestinian side would have to be vacated if the PA insists on the Nazi doctrine of making the land yuden frie (Jew free) and the West supports such a doctrine.
The only unilateral moves proscribed by the Oslo Accords and all subsequent agreements, are those which change the status of the land. By this is meant, claiming sovereignty. So Israel can’t annex the land andthe PA can’t go to the UN and ask them for sovereignty, not so long as the Oslo Accords have not been formally abrogated. The construction of housing by Israel in no way changes the status of the land. And neither does land use planning.
And if you think that Israel will agree to divide Jerusalem, their eternal capital, think again. Nir Barkat, the Mayor of Jerusalem, when addressing the JPOST Diplomatic Conference attended by over three hundred of diplomats, gave a very upbeat assessment of the transformation of Jerusalem that is taking place and will continue to take place. He stressed the commitment by him and the government to maintain the status quo between all religions. He ended by disabusing the audience of any thoughts they might have about dividing Jerusalem. It will never happen, he said, and I believe him.
Israel is consumed with the issue of whether to pass the nation-state bill which essentially declares that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. To do so, claims the left in Israel, is to diminish it as a democratic state. But there is no evidence to support this.
Eugene Kontorovich wrote a two part article in the Washington Post onThe legitimacy of Israel’s nation-state bill in which he said the bill was unremarkable when compared to many European constitutions with similar, and stronger, national homeland provisions.
He also argued that:
“The proposed measure must also be understood in the context of Israel’s diplomatic situation. Israel’s biggest diplomatic issue is the status of Jerusalem and the West Bank, and international pressure to create a new Arab state there and in Gaza. The major argument by proponents of territorial withdrawal (including President Obama and Sec. Kerry) is that despite the serious security risks, Israel must retreat in order to maintain a “Jewish state.” Indeed, even foreign leaders, like President Obama and Secretary Kerry have both justified their pressure on Israel by invoking the preservation of the Israel’s Jewish identity.”
And went further:
“Thus supporters of Israel leaving the West Bank believe having a Jewish state is worth security risks, surrendering historical homeland and religious sites, and expelling over 100,000 Jews. That suggests a Jewish state is not merely a legitimate thing, but one that is worth a great deal. Yet the same voices calling for Israel to undertake dangerous diplomatic concessions in the name of preserving the state’s Jewish identity balk at legislation declaring that the state in fact is what they claim they want it to remain.”
According to a Israel Democracy Institute recent Poll, 75% of Israeli Jews see no contradiction between Israel being Jewish and being dermcratic.
MEMRI, the NGO that for years has translated the Arab media to document what the Arabs including the PA say among themselves as opposed to what they say in English to the West, prefaced their latest report with this:
“Preacher At Al-Aqsa Mosque In Jerusalem Tells Jews: ‘We Shall Slaughter You Without Mercy’ and ‘I Say To [You] Loud And Clear: The Time For Your Slaughter Has Come’; Says Koran Depicted Jews ‘In The Most Abominable Images,’ Allah Turned The Jews ‘Into Apes And Pigs’; Calls To ‘Hasten The Establishment Of The State Of The Islamic Caliphate’”
(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.
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.
Obama does not want Americans to be free — to think for ourselves, to have our First and Second Amendment and other constitutional rights or to reject any aspect of His radical transformation of our country and others into nations of which He, in His twisted way, can be proud. Part II of this multipart series deals with Obama’s foreign policy.
When el Presidente Chávez took office in 1999, he began only slowly to implement his “reforms.” To a casual observer, few changes were apparent in Venezuela between 1997 when my wife and I first arrived and late 2001 when we left, probably never to return. We had a few concerns about the future of the country under Chávez but they were low on our list of reasons not to buy land and build our home in the state of Merida, up in the Andes. Mainly, we wanted to continue sailing and Merida is inconveniently far from an ocean.
Chávez’ initiatives increased dramatically in number and in magnitude only when he was well into his seemingly endless terms in office. Maybe he had heard the story of the frog put into a pleasantly warm but slowly heating pot of water. The frog failed to realize until too late that he was being boiled for dinner. By then the frog had become unable to jump out of the pot.
President Obama, flush with victory and perhaps not having heard the frog story, turned up the heat quickly at first. As a result, starting in January of last year, President Obama’s dinner was delayed by an uncooperative House of Representatives. The frog survived for a while longer. If reelected and given a compliant Congress, he seems likely to turn up the heat. We are the frog.
The situation has worsened since I wrote that article in January of 2012, not the least in Obama’s foreign policies. His then already rapid pace has accelerated and the consequences of His actions have become more “transformational.” In no particular order, He has done His utmost to enhance racial divisions, to conduct His own “war on women,” to engorge the welfare state, to import many illegal aliens, to punish His enemies and reward His friends and to conceal His intentions and actions and otherwise to deceive the public. He has also continued to militarize Federal, State and local law enforcement entities and others well beyond their legitimate needs to the detriment of those who obey the law. His transformational depredations have also infested His foreign policies and actions. In particular, He has tried to punish His, rather than America’s, enemies and to reward His, rather than America’s, friends. Despite all of this He remains — although decreasingly — popular with His admirers.
The United States has slashed its defense budget to historic lows. It sends the message abroad that friendship with America brings few rewards while hostility toward the U.S. has even fewer consequences. The bedrock American relationships with staunch allies such as Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan and Israel are fading. Instead, we court new belligerents that don’t like the United States, such as Turkey and Iran. ]Emphasis added.]
Radical Islam is spreading in the same sort of way that postwar communism once swamped postcolonial Asia, Africa and Latin America. But this time there are only weak responses from the democratic, free-market West. Westerners despair over which is worse — theocratic Iran, the Islamic State or Bashar Assad’s Syria — and seem paralyzed over where exactly the violence will spread next and when it will reach them. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
In the late 1930s, it was pathetic that countries with strong militaries such as France and Britain appeased fascist leader Benito Mussolini and allowed his far weaker Italian forces to do as they pleased by invading Ethiopia. Similarly, Iranian negotiators are attempting to dictate terms of a weak Iran to a strong United States in talks about Iran’s supposedly inherent right to produce weapons-grade uranium — a process that Iran had earlier bragged would lead to the production of a bomb. [Emphasis added.]
The ancient ingredients of war are all on the horizon. An old postwar order crumbles amid American indifference. Hopes for true democracy in post-Soviet Russia, newly capitalist China or ascendant Turkey long ago were dashed. Tribalism, fundamentalism and terrorism are the norms in the Middle East as the nation-state disappears. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
What is scary in these unstable times is that a powerful United States either thinks that it is weak or believes that its past oversight of the postwar order was either wrong or too costly — or that after Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, America is no longer a force for positive change. [Emphasis added.]
A large war is looming, one that will be far more costly than the preventative vigilance that might have stopped it.
Islam
Islam is on the march for greater power and against other religions, including Christianity and Judaism. In the Islamic view, Allah is the only true God and Mohamed is His messenger. According to Wikipedia,
Islam teaches that everyone is Muslim at birth[30][31] because every child that is born has a natural inclination to goodness and to worship the one true God alone. . . . [Emphasis added.]
Muhammad commanded: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57). This is still the position of all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, both Sunni and Shi’ite. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most renowned and prominent Muslim cleric in the world, has stated: “The Muslim jurists are unanimous that apostates must be punished, yet they differ as to determining the kind of punishment to be inflicted upon them. The majority of them, including the four main schools of jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi`i, and Hanbali) as well as the other four schools of jurisprudence (the four Shiite schools of Az-Zaidiyyah, Al-Ithna-`ashriyyah, Al-Ja`fariyyah, and Az-Zaheriyyah) agree that apostates must be executed.” There is only disagreement over whether the law applies only to men, or to women also – some authorities hold that apostate women should not be killed, but only imprisoned in their houses until death.
In some but not all cases, it may be possible to escape death by paying, in perpetuity, substantial fines which many simply cannot afford.
Here is a video of Ayan Hirsi Ali‘s September 15, 2014 remarks at a Yale Buckley Foundation symposium. They deal with the clash of civilizations. If you want to skip the introductory formalities, go directly to 03:45. Her remarks begin at 10:33.
Obama, like Ayan Hirsi Ali, was raised as a Muslim child. As she matured and began to think for herself, she found the realities of Islam increasingly hateful. Obama continues to find Islam good and to consider it the “religion of peace. Why?
At a dinner in Washington, Biden attempted to correct her perspective on relationship between the Islamic State and Islam, saying, “ISIS had nothing to do with Islam.” When she pushed back, Biden said, “Let me tell you one or two things about Islam…” [Emphasis added.]
“I politely left the conversation at that,” Hirsi Ali said. “I wasn’t used to arguing with vice presidents.”
Consistently, Obama’s “solution” and that of many other multiculturalists: declare the Islamic State, et al, (but not Islam itself, of course) non-Islamic.
Why Uruguay? It’s one of several South American countries run by Marxist terrorists.
Uruguayan President Jose Mujica, a former Marxist terrorist, already offered to take in Syrian refugees and a number of the freed Gitmo Jihadists are Syrians who trained under the future leader of what would become ISIS. If they stay on in Uruguay, they can try to finish the job of killing the Syrian refugees resettled there. If they don’t, they can just join ISIS and kill Christian and Yazidi refugees back in Syria.
It’s a win-win situation for ISIS and Marxist terrorists; less so for their victims.
Most of the Guantanamo detainees freed by Obama were rated as presenting a high risk to America and our allies. They include a bomb maker, a trained suicide bomber, a document forger and a terrorist who had received training in everything up to RPGs and mortars.
Outgoing Uruguayan President José Mujica has made clear that Uruguay would not hold or restrict the six Guantanamo detainees who were recently resettled in his country.
“The first day that they want to leave, they can leave,” said Mujica in a Spanish-language interview with state television TNU. [Emphasis added.]
Please see also this article at The Long War Journal for additional information on the released terrorists. It also observes that
In its final recommendations, issued in January 2010, President Obama’s Guantanamo Review Task Force recommended that all six be transferred “to a country outside the United States that will implement appropriate security measures.” [Emphasis added.]
Right. Was it an humanitarian gesture from Obama? An early Christmas present for the Islamic state and related peace loving Islamic terrorists?
Iran and Nukes
The Israel versus Iran context provides glaring examples of Obama’s predilection for punishing His, rather than America’s, enemies while rewarding His, rather than America’s, friends. As I observed here, Iran is well known as a major sponsor of Islamic terrorism. It is also remarkable for its failure to provide even the most basic human rights.
It has been reported that Iran executed more than four hundred people during the first half of 2014. That’s more than two per day.
Despite Iran’s state anti-Semitism, the recent arrest of U.S. journalists, and the continued oppression of women, the Obama administration has been attempting a rapprochement with the Iranian regime. Fending off Iran hawks in Congress and the D.C. punditocracy, the administration has argued for a policy of constructive engagement, pursuing diplomacy over military action to halt Iran’s nuclear program. The execution of two gay men, while it may not be surprising, certainly doesn’t make that “engagement” any easier.
Iran’s abysmal human rights record and support for Islamic terrorism appear to be of little if any relevance to Obama and the P5+1 negotiators as they pursue a deal with Iran. As noted here, Iran is already at least a nascent nuclear power and, due to Obama’s twisted world view and His desire for a legacy consistent with it, the P5+1 nuclear negotiations gave, and will likely continue to give, Iran substantial advantages. Iran continues to use those advantages, as P5+1 continues to give Iran all that it demands while receiving little if anything in return. The recent seven month extension highlights this strategy.
[W]hat is clear is that the Islamic Republic, particularly the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior cadre of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have gained considerable amount of geopolitical, geostrategic and economic advantages from this offer by the Obama administration. The Supreme Leader’s strategies to buy time, regain full recovery in the economy, pursue his regional hegemonic and ideological ambitions, and reinitiate his government’s nuclear program have been fulfilled. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
[T]he extension of nuclear talks offered to the Islamic Republic is not going to alter Iran’s stand on its nuclear program. Iran will continue holding the position that their demands for the following issues to be met: maintaining a specific number (tens of thousands of) fast-spinning centrifuge machines, Tehran should have the capacity to produce nuclear fuel in the future, and maintain specific level of enriching uranium. In the next few months, the Islamic Republic is not going to give up its capacity to produce plutonium which can be utilized for weapons at its heavy water reactor in the city of Arak. Iran is less likely to provide more evidence proving that it did not carry out secret tests on the development of atomic weapons in Parchin or other military complexes. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency recently pointed out that the Islamic Republic continues to deny the IAEA access to sensitive military site which are suspected to be used for nuclear activities. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
After the extension of the nuclear talks, President Rouhani pointed out on state television that “I promise the Iranian nation that those centrifuges will never stop working.” The extension not only will not alter the Islamic Republic’s position on its nuclear program, but will give the ruling clerics the opportunity to be further empowered, making them more determined to pursue their regional hegemonic ambitions. [Emphasis added.]
Alireza Forghani, a former provincial governor (and pro-nuclear radical) who now serves as strategist at a think tank aligned with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in his blog that Iran is pursuing a tactic of “elongation” in the talks, which “never are supposed to be brought to a successful conclusion.” He backs a policy of nuclear weapons being the Islamic Republic’s “definite right” and looks forward to a time when the United States faces “a nuclear Iran who not only has nuclear power, but also is equipped with nuclear weapons.” [Emphasis added.]
In a previous post headlined “Iran Needs a War,” Forghani cautioned that “American politicians should know that their next war with the Islamic Revolution of Iran, the war which guarantees Iranian Muslims survival, will be an utter destruction.” He also denounced “the childish behavior of Obama” regarding the negotiations and said that “nuclear weapons capabilities are essential in order to prevent U.S. freedom of action” and that Iran needed the capability to mount a “rapid response at the level of the atom bomb.” [ Emphasis added.]
The Obama administration is trying to portray the failure to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran as just part of the ebb and flow of the diplomatic process. But the signals coming from Tehran indicate that arms control negotiations are just another tool in Iran’s drive to achieve nuclear capability. [Emphasis added.]
Iran contends that the Obama Administration continues to lie about Iranian concessions, which Iran denies having made. Due to the overall credibility deficit of the Obama administration, I consider Iran more credible on the matter.
Iran over the weekend pushed back against key claims made by the administration to lawmakers and the press about further concessions agreed to by Iran following the last round of talk in Vienna regarding the country’s contested nuclear program.
In talking points disseminated to congressional offices since the extension in talks was announced, the administration has claimed that the terms of the agreement—which will prolong talks through July 2015—included “significant concessions” by Tehran, according to the Associated Press. [Emphasis added.]
However, Iran says that this is a lie and that no new concessions have been agreed upon.
Islam and Israel
Islam, the Religion of Peace Death and Subjugation, is not the root of all evil, but it engages in and promotes far more than its fair share of the worst types. Obama assists it in its depredations. Here’s a video of a Muslim preacher at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem speaking with great warmth heat about Jews.
The words of that “preacher-teacher,” as Ayan Hirsi Ali would probably characterize him, and those of like-minded Islamists, have gained many devout followers among Palestinians. According to this article,
An overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs support the recent spate of terrorist attacks against Israelis, an opinion poll released Tuesday finds, according to The Associated Press (AP).
. . . .
The poll found 86 percent of respondents believe the Al-Aqsa mosque is in “grave danger” from Israel. It said 80 percent supported individual attacks by Arabs who have stabbed Israelis or rammed cars into crowded train stations. [Emphasis added.]
Islamists have been regularly clashing with Israeli police on the Temple Mount and escalated a campaign of harassment against Jewish visitors, who are already under severe restrictions due to Muslim pressure. The violence reached a peak with the recent attempted murder of prominent Jewish Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick.
Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has blamed Israel for the ongoing tensions in Jerusalem.
The Iranian regime has launched a nationwide social media campaign called, “We Love Fighting Israel,” which encourages Iranian children, teens, and Internet users to photograph themselves alongside messages of hate for the Jewish state.
. . . .
Thousands of Iranians are reported to have already joined the electronic movement following comments by Khamenei’s outlining Iran’s goal of destroying the Jewish state.
“Our people love fighting against the Zionists and the Islamic Republic has proved this as well,” [Supreme Leader] Khamenei was quoted as saying in a recent speech by the country’s state-run media. “By Allah’s Favor and Grace, we have passed through the barrier of denominational discord.” [Emphasis and bracketed insert added.]
. . . .
The anti-Israel campaign now “has gone viral on the web,” according to Iran’s state-controlled Mehr News Agency, “getting more and more boost from individuals who post photos reading similar sentences, [and] sharing the #Fightingthezionists hash tag.”
In 1975, after repeated attempts to kick Israel out of the U.N., the General Assembly succumbed to the pressure exerted by the Arab countries and determined that Zionism is racism. The decision was the cornerstone of the institutionalized factory of discrimination against Israel at the United Nations. The U.N. waited 16 long years before retracting its “Zionism is racism” decision. The protocols have been updated, but even with no official reminder, the stain remains on the walls of the general assembly hall and the stench is still in the U.N.’s corridors today. [Emphasis added.]
Of the 193 states that belong to the U.N., only 87 are democracies — less than half. The countries that are taking advantage of the democratic process at the United Nations are the same ones that suppress any spark of democracy within their borders. Although the U.N. uses a parliamentary mechanism, many of the hands raised to vote are the hands of brutal dictators. [Emphasis added.]
The U.N. has gone from being a stage for courageous statecraft to a theater of the absurd: The General Assembly allows wild Palestinian incitement, the Security Council has Venezuela and Malaysia managing peacekeeping forces, and then there is the Human Rights Council, in which the guardians of humanity are regimes without a shred of humanity, regimes that invent blood libels against Israel while in Syria, a tyrant slaughters hundreds of thousands of his own people. [Emphasis added.]
The UN created a unique organization, UNRWA, to handle refugees from Palestine/Israel while every other global refugee is managed in an under-funded, undermanned separate agency. The UN compounds the abuse by only allowing descendants of UNRWA to receive aid, while denying descendants of the rest of the world’s refugees any support.
. . . .
The UN only condemned the nationalist movement of Israelis as “racism” while ignoring nationalism of other countries
The UN censured Israel when the Israeli Prime Minister visited the holiest spot for Jews during regular visiting hours, but didn’t say a word while some countries were slaughtering thousands of people.
Unlike the UN believer in the cartoon, Obama remains unwilling to learn about the bases of, let alone to consider, other perceptions.
A senior official of the United Nation Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), also known to some as the United Nations Rocket Warehousing Agency), recently called for a boycott of the Jerusalem Post for publishing an editorial
by Palestinian human rights activist Bassam Eid that called for an audit of all allocated funds to UNRWA and the dismissal of its Hamas-affiliated employees. (“Proud Palestinians must lead the fight to reform UNRWA,” Dec. 1, 2014.)
And Obama often relies on the U.N. to tell Him how and where to “lead.”
For Obama and European leaders, Israel is reducible to the peace process. And the Israeli left depends on the support of foreign governments for its network of foreign funded non-profit organizations. The Israeli left can’t let go of its exploding version of ObamaCare [the peace process] because the left is becoming a foreign organization with limited domestic support. Its electorate isn’t in Israel; it’s in Brussels. [Emphasis and bracketed insert added.]
The Israeli left is short on ideas, both foreign and domestic, and its last remaining card is Obama.
Escalating a crisis in relations has been the traditional way for US administrations to force Israeli governments out of office. Bill Clinton did it to Netanyahu and as Israeli elections appear on the horizon Obama would love to do it all over again.
There’s only one problem.
The United States is popular in Israel, but Obama isn’t. Obama’s spats with Netanyahu ended up making the Israeli leader more popular. The plan was for Obama to gaslight Israelis by maintaining a positive image in Israel while lashing out at the Jewish State so that the blame would fall on Netanyahu. [Emphasis added.]
Obama considers Prime Minister Netanyahu the principal impediment to realization of His fantasy of Palestinian peace through creation of a Palestinian state. “Peace” with the Palestinians will not bring peace to Israel — aside from Islamic peace through death. Yet it seems that Obama is meddling in Israeli politics to get Prime Minister Netanyahu removed from office. Obama recently met with Netanyahu’s Israeli opponents:
The White House is still working on a detailed plan of action, but has lost no time in setting up appointments for the president to receive heads of the parties sworn to overthrow Netanyahu – among others, ex-minister Lapid, opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog of Labor and Tzipi Livni (The Movement), who was fired this week as Justice Minister along with Lapid. [Emphasis added.]
They will be accorded attractive photo-ops with Obama and joint communiqués designed to signify to the Israeli voter that the US president would favor their election to the future government and the country as a whole would gain tangibly from a different government to the incumbent one. [Emphasis added.]
This White House campaign would be accompanied by leaks from Washington for putting Netanyahu and his policies in a derogatory light. Messages to this effect were transmitted to a number of serving political figures as an incentive to jump the Likud-led ship to opposition ranks. The US administration has begun hinting that it may emulate the Europeans by turning the screws on Israel as punishment for the prime minister’s signature policy of developing West Bank and Jerusalem development construction. [Emphasis added.]
Conclusions
Should we, who claim to be civilized and therefore to support democracy with freedom — including freedom of religion but not freedom to engage in genocidal religious wars — respect and emphasize with the Islamic views of the “preacher-teacher” in the video embedded above and of Iran’s Supreme Leader that the Jews who infest the Earth must be hated and killed? Does Hillary Clinton’s sympathy and empathy meme apply only to our enemies? Does she consider the preacher-teacher, the Supreme Leader and their ilk to be our friends or enemies?
Rather than be troubled by the nature of Islam, Obama heartily approves of it. As far as the Middle East is concerned, He is troubled principally by Israel’s refusal to commit national suicide by bowing to His every demand which, in His apparent view, should bring peace to the entire region. If Israel fails to do as He demands, it must suffer the fate of a rabid dog so that its infection cannot spread.
Obama has been a disaster as a world leader and, when He has actually tried to lead He has done so, often in conjunction with the U.N., to deprive many of their freedoms while enhancing the abilities of others, particularly devotees of Islam, to trash even more of those freedoms. If, as seems increasingly likely, the P5+1 negotiations as eventually concluded permit Iran to get (or keep) nukes and the means to use them, the world will be a much less safe place for all.
If Obama succeeds, Iran will see to it that Israel is not the only nation to suffer the consequences of His actions.
(But the humanitarian, peace-loving Islamic Republic of Iran, where sanity, good will toward all and freedom flourish, needs nukes to take its rightful place in our multicultural International Community. Right? — DM)
Ali Khamenei / AP
The Iranian regime has launched a nationwide social media campaign called, “We Love Fighting Israel,” which encourages Iranian children, teens, and Internet users to photograph themselves alongside messages of hate for the Jewish state.
The movement has sprouted online in the last few days across social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms as a result of a recent call by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rallying the nation to take on Israel.
The campaign drew outrage from opponents of Iran’s hardline regime and calls for sites such as Instagram to shut it down for violating policies against hate speech.
Thousands of Iranians are reported to have already joined the electronic movement following comments by Khamenei’s outlining Iran’s goal of destroying the Jewish state.
“Our people love fighting against the Zionists and the Islamic Republic has proved this as well,” Khamenei was quoted as saying in a recent speech by the country’s state-run media. “By Allah’s Favor and Grace, we have passed through the barrier of denominational discord.”
These remarks inspired Iranian social media users to take to the Internet and launch the “We Love Fighting Israel” movement. The campaign even has spawned its own hashtag on Twitter, “#FightingtheZionists.”
The anti-Israel campaign now “has gone viral on the web,” according to Iran’s state-controlled Mehr News Agency, “getting more and more boost from individuals who post photos reading similar sentences, [and] sharing the #Fightingthezionists hash tag.”
More than 300 pictures have already been posted to an Instagram account titled, “FightingTheZionists.” The account, which had some 3,000 followers as of Tuesday evening, links to Khamenei’s personal Instagram account.
Users post pictures with messages declaring, “We love fighting against Israel,” “I love to fight Israel,” “We are lovers of fighting Israel,” and “I love fighting against Zionists,” among other similar messages.
One picture in particular has caught the eye of Iran critics on the web and prompted a harsh response to the anti-Israel campaign.
The photo shows a young child decked out in military gear and holding a sign that translates from Farsi as, “I love fighting against Zionists.”
Captioned alongside the photo is an English language message that reads: “Our people love fighting against the Zionists and the Islamic Republic has proved this as well, Ayatollah Khamenei.”
It is not the only photo to depict young children as participating in the campaign to fight Israel.
The photos posted on the Instagram page depict “several groups of people including war veterans, students, journalists, and people from all walks of life joining the campaign,” according to Mehr News.
The American nonprofit group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which works to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, expressed disgust at the campaign on its Twitter account.
UANI lashed out at the Iranian regime for promoting “vile hate” and the “indoctrination of hate children.”
Additionally, Matan Shamir, UANI’s director of research, called on social media sites to immediately take steps to remove the Iranian campaign.
“The Iranian regime’s brazen exploitation and indoctrination of innocent children to hate and commit violence is utterly deplorable,” Shamir said. “Instagram and its parent company Facebook must enforce their own guidelines prohibiting hate speech and incitement to violence, and remove such propaganda immediately.”
Shamir went on to criticize Iran for its own domestic human rights abuses, such as preventing average citizens from accessing the Internet.
“It is intolerable that while the regime blocks its own citizens from accessing many popular social media platforms, it uses them to advance its own crude and hateful ideology,” he said.
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.
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.
[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
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.]
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 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.]
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.
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:
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.]
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.
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
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.
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.]
(The UN’s “responsibility to protect” doctrine now applies principally to groups favored by the multicultural international community, such as the “Palestinians” from wicked Israel, disfavored by the international community. Those needing protection from Islamic terror must look elsewhere. But where? The U.S. of Obama?– DM)
Illustration on the illusion of “Responsibility to Protect” by Linas Garsys
[I]’s ludicrous to propose that the U.N. Security Council — whose permanent members include neo-Soviet Russia and anti-democratic China — should be vested with the authority to pass judgment on the legitimacy of such missions.
While the Islamic State is currently attracting the most attention, it is the Islamic Republic of Iran — which has been using proxies to kill Americans on and off for the past 35 years — that could soon have nuclear weapons as well as missiles to deliver them to targets anywhere in the world. Hezbollah and other terrorist groups offer an alternative means of delivery. Iran’s radical Shia rulers are more sophisticated than the Sunni jihadis displaying disembodied heads on pikes. However, their goals differ little from those of their rivals.
[T]he notion of an international community that can prevent or halt mass atrocities is a chimera.
***************
Remember R2P? Not to be confused with R2-D2 (a robotic character in the “Star Wars” movies), “Responsibility to Protect” was an international “norm” proposed by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan following the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and the mass murders in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica a year later. The idea was for the “international community” to assume an obligation to intervene, militarily if necessary, to prevent or halt mass atrocities.
Why has R2P not been invoked to stop the slaughters being carried out in Syria and Iraq? Why isn’t it mentioned in regard to the Syrian-Kurdish city of Kobani, which, as I write this, may soon be overrun by barbarians fighting for what they call the Islamic State?
Here’s the story: In 2009, Mr. Annan’s successor, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, issued a report on “implementing” R2P. The foreign-policy establishment cheered. For example, Louise Arbour, a former U.N. high commissioner for human tights, called R2P “the most important and imaginative doctrine to emerge on the international scene for decades.” Anne-Marie Slaughter, an academic who served under Hillary Clinton at the State Department, went further, hailing R2P as “the most important shift in our conception of sovereignty since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.”
In 2011, President Obama cited R2P as his primary justification for using military force to prevent Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi from attacking the opposition stronghold of Benghazi.
If that was the apogee of R2P, the nadir was not far off. The intervention in Libya has led to chaos and bloodshed with no end in sight. Meanwhile, in Syria, four years ago this spring, Bashar Assad brutally cracked down on peaceful protesters.
Mr. Obama made Mr. Assad’s removal American policy but overruled the recommendation of his national security advisers to assist Syrian nationalist opposition groups. Civil war erupted. Self-proclaimed jihadis from around the world flocked to Syria to fight on behalf of the Sunnis. The opposition was soon dominated by the al Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate, and the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL), whose leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, broke with al Qaeda and, audaciously, declared himself caliph, or supreme leader.
As for Mr. Assad, he is supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran, deploying both its elite Quds Force (designated in 2007 by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization) and Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based militia loyal to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Russia also backs Mr. Assad, even supplying on-the-ground military intelligence specialists.
With no U.N.-approved R2P effort to rescue the innocent civilians of the region from these brutal forces, the death toll in Syria and Iraq has topped 200,000, and the number of refugees is in the millions.
Failed experiments, like crises, should not go to waste. Among the lessons to be learned from the R2P debacle: First, the notion of an international community that can prevent or halt mass atrocities is a chimera. If such work is going to get done, the United States has to do it, perhaps supported by a coalition of the willing and, with few exceptions, not particularly able. Second, it’s ludicrous to propose that the U.N. Security Council — whose permanent members include neo-Soviet Russia and anti-democratic China — should be vested with the authority to pass judgment on the legitimacy of such missions. Third, American power should be used primarily in pursuit of American interests. Sometimes that will include humanitarian interventions, but that’s a decision for Americans to make.
This, too, should be clear: While the Islamic State is currently attracting the most attention, it is the Islamic Republic of Iran — which has been using proxies to kill Americans on and off for the past 35 years — that could soon have nuclear weapons as well as missiles to deliver them to targets anywhere in the world. Hezbollah and other terrorist groups offer an alternative means of delivery. Iran’s radical Shia rulers are more sophisticated than the Sunni jihadis displaying disembodied heads on pikes. However, their goals differ little from those of their rivals.
In response to this dire and deteriorating situation, Mr. Obama should be instructing his advisers to present him with a range of strategic options. I’d recommend conceptualizing the global conflict not as disconnected “overseas contingency operations,” and not as akin to World War II, but more like the Cold War. That is to say, the United States should plan for a long, low-intensity struggle. In particular, we should support those willing to fight the jihadis who threaten them.
Economic weapons can be powerful if used correctly, which has not been the case in the past. For example, though sanctions brought Iran’s rulers to the negotiating table, premature relief from sanctions pressure has encouraged Iranian intransigence as the talks proceeded.
Also long overdue is a serious war of ideas — it’s insufficient to leave that to Bill Maher and Ben Affleck on HBO. Bottom line: We are not really engaged in a conflict against “violent extremism” or even “terrorism.” What we’re confronting are ideologies derived from fundamentalist readings of Islamic scripture. Proponents of those ideologies stress the supremacy of one religion — much as communists stressed the supremacy of one class, and Nazis of one race. There is no reason to suppose that saying this clearly, rather than obfuscating, will radicalize Muslims not already favorably inclined toward killing infidels.
Our aim should be, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Obama, to “degrade and eventually defeat” jihadism. Nothing is more imperative than preventing Iran’s rulers from taking the next, short steps toward a nuclear-weapons capability that they clearly intend to use to threaten not just their neighbors, but also Americans for decades to come. For an American president, this is where the R2P needs to begin.
The Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine (Arabic: حركة الجهاد الإسلامي في فلسطين,Harakat al-Jihād al-Islāmi fi Filastīn) known in the West as simply Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), is a PalestinianIslamist organization formed in 1981 whose objective is the destruction of the State of Israel and the establishment of a sovereign, Islamic Palestinian state.[2] PIJ has been labelled a terrorist organisation by the United States,[3] the European Union,[4] the United Kingdom,[5]Japan,[6]Canada,[7]Australia,[8]New Zealand[9][10] and Israel. Iranis a major financial supporter of the PIJ.[11][12][13][14] Following the Israeli and Egyptian squeeze on Hamas in early 2014, PIJ has seen its power steadily increase with the backing of funds from Iran.[15] Its financial backing is believed to also come from Syria.
Secretary-General of the Islamic Jihad Movement Ramazan Abdullah arrived in Iran on Tuesday to confer with senior officials of the country on the latest security developments in region.
Abdullah, who arrived in Tehran last night, is to hold separate meetings with Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani, and Member of Iran’s Expediency Council Saeed Jalili later today.
He will also hold meetings with some other Iranian officials during his stay in the country.
Late in August 2012, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei asked participants in the 16th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran to pay special attention to the Palestinian issue, and called on the American backers of the Israeli regime to accept Iran’s proposal for holding a referendum in Palestine.
The Leader reminded the Zionists’ bloody occupation of Palestine over 6 decades ago, and blamed the Zionist regime for waging various wars, massacre and state-sponsored terrorism in the last decades.
He blamed the western world for supporting and defending the Zionist regime of Israel against the oppressed Palestinian nation.
The leader further renewed Iran’s solution to the Palestinian issue, calling for a “comprehensive referendum to be attended by all the indigenous residents of Palestine, including those refugees who have been away from their motherland for decades to determine the country’s fate”.
The Iranian supreme leader cautioned the US against the continue support and defense for the Zionist regime of Israel, reminding that decade-long support for the Israeli regime has incurred many costs and losses on the American people.
The leader called on the White House leaders to revise their Middle-East policy and “show courage and opt for the referendum solution” presented by Iran to put an end to the astronomical spending that has been inflicted on the American nation for its support for the Zionist regime of Israel.
To conclude his remarks, he urged for collective management of global issues, asking the NAM member states “not to be afraid of the bullying powers and remain loyal to their own causes”.
He reminded failure of communism and capitalism, and said the world is pregnant to new events, saying the Islamic Awakening and the US and Israeli failures in North Africa and the Middle-East are indicative of the very same fact.
(Churchill stood nearly “alone” during the mid to late 1930’s in his arguments concerning the dangers of Germany under Hitler. Churchill was right, Chamberlain was wrong. Churchill’s arguments were eventually vindicated — but only after the substantial damage left by his predecessor had diminished Britain’s abilities to fight Nazi Germany and had to be fixed. Like many directed against Churchill, the post provided below is in large measure a selective hit piece against Netanyahu. Still, it’s worth reading because it apparently reflects the views of many. Churchill was right and so is Netanyahu. Will he be vindicated as well? — DM)
The client retains its value only so long as it aligns itself with the interests of its patron — or at the very least tries not to undermine them. On Iran, however, Netanyahu has repeatedly attempted to dictate to America what its interests should be in trying to hamstring his patron’s push toward a nuclear deal with Iran.
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For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, are essentially the same thing.
During a diatribe against Iran in his United Nations speech on Monday, Netanyahu asked: “Would you let ISIS enrich uranium? Would you let ISIS build a heavy water reactor? Would you let ISIS develop intercontinental ballistic missiles? Of course you wouldn’t.”
It was almost as if Netanyahu views Iran and ISIS as interchangeable. But the rest of the world doesn’t see it that way — least of all the United States, which is making a crucial last push for a comprehensive agreement with Iran on its nuclear program, even as it musters an international coalition to fight the Islamic State.
In insisting that Iran and ISIS are essentially the same enemy, Netanyahu broadcast his isolation among world leaders and underscored the jadedness of the idea that he has championed for most of his political career: the imminence of an Iranian nuclear bomb and the apocalyptic threat it would pose to the free world.
After all these years, Netanyahu still calls for every nook and cranny of Iran’s nuclear program to be demolished by military force, though preferably not Israel’s alone.
The isolation of his views was evidenced not only by the near-empty General Assembly hall when he gave his speech, but also in the Israeli media.
Although the Islamic Republic of Iran (which Netanyahu persistently, if not naggingly, referred to as “The Islamic State of Iran”) was referenced in Netanyahu’s speech many more times than ISIS, the Israeli media did not follow suit.
They instead focused on Netanyahu’s appeal to “moderate” Arab states to unite against common threats, including militant Islam. A few outlets looked at Netanyahu’s riposte to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ charges of genocide. And even the most pro-Netanyahu daily, Yisrael Hayom, led with a headline proclaiming the Israeli Defense Forces to be “the most moral army in the world”– a quote from the speech, but not about the Islamic Republic’s nuclear project.
The Israeli media’s disinterest in Netanyahu’s Iran obsession is matched at home. In poll after poll, Israelis consistently put Iran behind such concerns as street crime and the rising cost of living.
Netanyahu’s fixation on Iran has also deepened divisions between Israel’s political leadership and top military brass. The nadir was reached in 2010, when Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the army to stand by for an imminent attack on Iran and the chief of staff refused to comply.
Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who related the incident two years later, added that he’d never before seen the entire political leadership adamantly insisting on one course of action and the entire professional military leadership absolutely opposing it.
Four years on, the issue still festers. At the peak of the war in Gaza this summer, analyst Shlomi Eldar accused Netanyahu of all but turning a blind eye to Hamas’ tunnels that formed a pretext for the ground incursion. The reason for this, Eldar charged, was that the prime minister was completely “obsessed” with Iran.
Netanyahu’s absolutist approach to Iran is also straining Israel’s bond with the United States. For all the grandeur, courtesy and genuine complexity that feed into the staple American reference to Israel as an ally, the relationship between the two is, on the strategic level, fundamentally that of a patron power and a client state.
The client retains its value only so long as it aligns itself with the interests of its patron — or at the very least tries not to undermine them. On Iran, however, Netanyahu has repeatedly attempted to dictate to America what its interests should be in trying to hamstring his patron’s push toward a nuclear deal with Iran.
Such an agreement could radically shift the power paradigm in the Middle East toward a more open, less violent and more consensus-based arrangement. Would Israel see itself as a player in this new arrangement or outside it?
Depends on who you ask.
The relative silence of most Israeli institutions on the talks on Iran’s nuclear program suggests they are reluctant to make themselves entirely external to the potential new paradigm. But Netanyahu’s speech — intransigent as it was – indicates that at least one Israeli leader will go down fighting rather than bring Israel on board.
Yousuf Al-Kuwailit
WarSclerotic 
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