Is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-styled “caliph” of the Islamic State, injured or dead, as some in the media are eagerly speculating?
Better question: does it really matter?
For almost a decade now, every time an Islamic jihadi leader is killed, the Western mainstream media exult, portraying the death as a major blow to the jihad. And, for almost a decade now, I have responded by posting an article that I first wrote in 2006 for Victor Davis Hanson’s website, Private Papers.
The West’s plight vis-à-vis radical Islam is therefore akin to Hercules’ epic encounter with the multi-headed Hydra-monster. Every time the mythical strongman lopped off one of the monster’s heads, two new ones grew in its place. To slay the beast once and for all, Hercules learned to cauterize the stumps with fire, thereby preventing any more heads from sprouting out.
Similarly while the West continues to lop off monster heads like figurehead Zarqawi [or bin Laden, al-Baghdadi, etc.] it is imperative to treat the malady — radical Islam—in order to ultimately prevail. Victory can only come when the violent ideologies of radical Islam are cauterized with fire.
But alas, the Hydra-monster is myth, while radical Islam is stark reality.
Eight years later, this “stark reality” has manifested itself into a head-chopping, infidel-crucifying, mass-murdering, female-enslaving Islamic State.
And yet, in the previous years, proclamations of “victory” were habitually made by media and politicians whenever a top jihadi was killed.
Recall all the exultation that took place in 2006 after al-Zarqawi—the forefather of the Islamic State, or “Al-Qaeda Second Generation”—was killed. Then, almost every major politician, including President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and Iraq’s Prime Minister Maliki, gave some sort of victory speech. The New York Times called his death a “major watershed in the war.”
Similarly, in 2008, after Abu Laith al-Libi was killed, Congressman Peter Hoekstra issued a statement saying that his death “clearly will have an impact on the radical jihadist movement.”
More myopic triumphalism was in the air after Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub al-Masri were killed in 2010 during a joint U.S.-Iraqi operation. Then, U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden said the “deaths are potentially devastating blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq [the original name of the Islamic State],” adding “This operation is evidence in my view, that the future of Iraq will not be shaped by those who would seek to destroy that country”—an assertion that has now proven woefully wrong.
Similarly, U.S. commander Gen. Raymond Odierno asserted that “The death of these terrorists is potentially the most significant blow to al-Qaeda in Iraq since the beginning of the insurgency,” adding that it would be “very difficult” for the al Qaeda network to replace the two men.
And who could forget all the media triumphalism, if not hysteria, surrounding the 2011 death of Osama bin Laden? Then, CNN security analyst Peter Bergen declared that “Killing bin Laden is the end of the war on terror. We can just sort of announce that right now.” Insisting that the “iconic nature of bin Laden’s persona” cannot be replaced, Bergen further suggested that “It’s time to move on.”
Another CNN analyst, Fareed Zakaria, assured us that “this is a huge, devastating blow to al-Qaeda, which had already been crippled by the Arab Spring. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is the end of al-Qaeda in any meaningful sense of the word.”
In retrospect, surely all these assertions and assurances have proven to be immensely puerile—even for mainstream media “analysts.”
To recap, for years, U.S. leadership and its media mouthpiece so misled Americans about the status of al-Qaeda (code name for the amorphous jihad)—thus directly contributing to the rise of the Islamic State: we were repeatedly told that al-Qaeda was suffering “devastating blows”; that the killing of individual jihadis were “major watersheds in the war”; that “the end of the war on terror” occurred in 2011, when bin Laden died (“it’s time to move on,” counseled Peter Bergen); and “that the future of Iraq will not be shaped by those who would seek to destroy that country,” according to Biden.
Yet, lo and behold: an Islamic State, a caliphate engaged in the worst atrocities of the 21st century, has been born—despite the deaths of Zarqawi, bin Laden, et. al.
When it comes to the significance of the killing of this or that jihadi leader, the best prediction I have ever read—a prediction that has proven too true—comes not from U.S. politicians, “experts,” or media. It comes from al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Asked in a 2005 interview about the status of bin Laden and the Taliban’s Mullah Omar, he confidently replied:
Jihad in the path of Allah is greater than any individual or organization. It is a struggle between Truth and Falsehood, until Allah Almighty inherits the earth and those who live in it. Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden—may Allah protect them from all evil—are merely two soldiers of Islam in the journey of jihad, while the struggle between Truth [Islam] and Falsehood [non-Islam] transcends time (The Al Qaeda Reader, p.182, emphasis added).
And there it is: jihad “transcends time” and is not personified by this or that leader—something our myopic leaders and experts, who apparently can’t see beyond their noses, will never comprehend (and how can they, when Barack Obama has banned knowledge of Islam from U.S. intelligence?).
Jihadi leaders, ideologues, emirs, sultans, caliphs, even the prophet of Islam himself, have come and gone for nearly 1,400 years—but the jihad rages on. It’s time Western leaders began to respond to the jihad and not just its individual practitioners.
Sultan Abu Al-Einein, a Fatah Central Committee official (screen capture: MEMRI, YouTube)
Einein, who also serves as an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, told the Iranian Arabic-language TV channel Al-Alam that “anyone who sells even an inch of our Palestinian land must be killed in the streets and hanged on an electric pole.
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Fatah official praises Yehudah Glick’s shooter, calls for public killings of those who engage in property transactions with Jews.
Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abu Al-Einein said Palestinians who sell their land to Jews should be publicly executed.
Einein, who also serves as an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, told the Iranian Arabic-language TV channel Al-Alam that “anyone who sells even an inch of our Palestinian land must be killed in the streets and hanged on an electric pole.”
The October 31 interview was posted and translated Friday by MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, a US-based watchdog group.
Under Palestinian law, land sales to Israelis are illegal and a crime punishable by death. The PLO’s Revolutionary Penal Code (1979) applies the death penalty both to “traitors” and to those accused of “transferring positions to the enemy.” Since the late 1990s, Palestinian courts have been dealing out death sentences to convicted land dealers, though Abbas has not authorized the implementation of executions since his election in 2004.
In response to recent Israeli acquisition of apartments in Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods last month, Abbas issued an executive order amending the penal code to establish punishments for those who sell land to “hostile countries.”
Abbas’s new punishments for Palestinians who engage in property transactions with Israelis include hard labor and life imprisonment.
In the interview, Einein also praised Mutaz Hijazi, a member of Islamic Jihad who attempted to assassinate Temple Mount activist Rabbi Yehudah Glick last month, saying “the way to defeat the Israeli occupation is the way of the martyr Mutaz Hijazi.”
“If the people do not fight the Israeli occupation in the way they see fit, in order to liberate their land, they do not deserve to live,” he said.
One video version of the song “Run over [the settler]!” by singers Muhammad Abu Al-Kayed and Anas Jaradat has more than 385,000 viewings on the “Quds News Network” Facebook page. On one of the singers’ YouTube channel the song has more than 71,000 viewings.
Clearly, the Palestinians celebrating these attacks are not concerned about age or gender, security-force vs. civilian status, location (“East Jerusalem,” the “West Bank,” and Tel Aviv are all fine), or even whether the victims are Jewish or Israeli. They also are not devotees of a “two-state solution” with “two states living side by side in peace and security.”
Palestinian-affairs analyst Khaled Abu Toameh notes that:
The most popular [current Palestinian social-media] campaign is entitled Daes, which translates into “run over” in Arabic. Daes is also a reference to Daesh, the Arabic acronym for ISIS. The online campaigns feature cartoons that encourage Palestinians to use their vehicles to kill Israelis.
All sources agree that this wave of violence, which also includes rioting in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and in Israeli Arab towns within Israel proper, is being incited by the Palestinian terrorist organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Some sources also say external terrorist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood—and ISIS—have had a hand in organizing or inciting the violence.
A major role is also being played, however, by Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian Authority and Israel’s alleged peace partner, and his Fatah movement.
With Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem serving as a flashpoint of the incitement, as Palestinians are whipped up by the entirely libelous claim that Israel is planning to destroy it, on October 18 Abbas declared that Israelis “must be barred from entering the [mosque] compound by any means. This is our Aqsa…and they have no right to enter it and desecrate it.”
On October 29 in Jerusalem a Palestinian named Mutaz Hijazi, who may well have internalized the message of “by any means,” attempted to assassinate Yehuda Glick, an advocate of Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount—where Al-Aqsa is located, and which is also the site of the ancient Jewish First Temple and Second Temple. The Mount is the most sacred place on earth for Jews, and has a lower degree of sacrality for Muslims.
With anger, we have received the news of the vicious assassination crime committed by the terrorists of the Israeli occupation army against [your] son Mu’taz Ibrahim Khalil Hijazi, who will go to heaven as a martyr defending the rights of our people and its holy places.
Hijazi, it should be stressed, shot Glick, a civilian, at pointblank range. Fortunately Glick now appears to be recovering in hospital.
The assassin’s admirer, Mahmoud Abbas, is the same Mahmoud Abbas about whom President Barack Obama said last March:
I think nobody would dispute that whatever disagreements you may have with him, he has proven himself to be somebody who has been committed to nonviolence and diplomatic efforts to resolve this issue.
That was in an interview where Obama, of course, portrayed Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu as the recalcitrant party who needs to “seize the moment” and make peace.
Palestinian anti-Jewish terror has been rising and falling in waves over the course of a century. After years of relative quiet, this latest wave is clearly propelled by the current regional atmosphere of extreme Islamist brutality.
With Muslim Arabs of different sects committing atrocities against each other, and savagely attacking non-Muslim or non-Arab Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, and others, it should come as no surprise that the Jews of Israel are also under attack.
Israel will deal with the problem and eventually quell the violence as it has before. Israel, though, is the only target of the Middle Eastern aggression that is dogmatically demanded to “make peace” with a community that views it as having no right to live.
A more rational approach would acknowledge Israel’s identity as an island of light in the region and stop equating it with the side that goes on producing car-rammers, shooters, and stabbers despite all efforts.
This is a guest post by Imam Mohamed allah-Dork, chairman of the Washington Islamist Coalition for Peace and Prosperity (WICPAP). Although it might appear to be satire it is not, because he articulates, far more candidly than most, the objectives of the “progressive” Obama Administration. I found him with the assistance of (another) imaginary “friend,” the Highly Honorable Ima Librul, Senator from the Great State of Confusion Utopia, where happy unicorns frolic endlessly in the service of Obama.
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Hatred of Israel is among our Dear Leader Obama’s most effective weapons against those who oppose Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He has made heroic efforts to encourage and use it, with help from the progressive media and His other friends.
Because of the wise efforts of Our Dear Leader and His brilliant Secretary of State, hatred of Israel has increased in recent years. This has been due, in large part, to Israel’s continuing and patently unreasonable refusals to commit national suicide by agreeing to all of the righteous demands of Palestinian Authority President Abbas, as Obama and Kerry have also demanded. Peaceful Palestinians have responded to Israel’s malicious refusals through non-violent protests resulting in the death or injury of Jewish terrorists, accidentally run over, stabbed or shot.
Jewish Terrorists
The beautiful song embedded above was recently augmented by a new Palestinian musical offering including wholesome family-oriented lyrics.
I am so proud of the composers, singers and musicians that I cry whenever I watch the video!
According to a specious article at a right-wing propaganda site called PJ Media,
That is absurd. They were no more “murdered,” than are filthy dogs which are righteously slaughtered because they are dangers to society at large.
Unless Israel’s refusal to commit national suicide is condemned world-wide, undue attention will focus on the peace loving Islamic Republic of Iran and its legitimate goal of having nuclear weapons to bring Islamic peace to all who desire it. Israel opposes Iran’s quest for Islamic peace through nukes and therefore selfishly rejects it.
Hatred is irrational and bad, except that directed at genocidal, apartheid Israel and others who fail to embrace Islam. Hatred of them is rational and good. Just as hatred of Israel must be encouraged to the extent possible, so must the stupidity great credulity of the American people be fed and used for Progressive purposes, as it was fed and used to give them the blessings of superior health care.
Lies, obfuscation and secrecy for good purposes as praised by our Dear Leader’s consultant Jonathan Gruber, such as the passage of ObamaCare, are good because they are necessary. Leading the way, our Dear Leader promised to have the most transparent administration in history.
It was all diversionary symbolism, of course, because truth, clarity, transparency and accountability in pursuit of bad objectives — such as defeat of our Dear Leader’s policies — are intolerable because it is racist to oppose Him. Also, they might succeed.
That brings us to our Dear Leader’s dominant role in the P5+1 negotiations with The Islamic Republic of Peace Everlasting, Iran.
It is more than simply unfortunate that Western policymakers look at Iran and appear to see only what they want to see. They heap praise on progress in the nuclear negotiations without looking at the actual content. They tune into televised smiles and reasonable-sounding public statements from the Rouhani administration and tune out the bombastic threats, insults and anti-Western rhetoric that invariably accompanies them. They push for large-scale rapprochement with Iran on the apparent assumption that its crimes will disappear if we somehow pretend they don’t exist. [Emphasis added.]
But these wishful thinkers are in the corridors of power in Washington and Westminster. Although ISIS has grown stronger thanks to the sectarian conflict that Iran has helped create, these unrealistic optimists would imply that somehow Iran is our best hope for defeating this menace. So they give in to Iranian intransigence in the nuclear talks by senselessly giving away more and more leverage. [Emphasis added.]
Make no mistake, Tehran’s theocratic rulers are very well aware of this “pie-in-the-sky” illogicality. Indeed, they are counting on it. The regime’s officials are so confident in our diplomatic vulnerability that they have been trying to use the crisis in Iraq not only to obtain unearned concessions in the nuclear domain, but also to pressure the U.S., the U.K. and their allies to modify their stance against the dictatorship of Bashar Assad in Syria. [Emphasis added.]
Nonsense! Iran needs nuclear weapons to pursue its peaceful, humanitarian goals and, with our Dear Leader’s help, will get (or keep) them! Life will then be better for everyone who matters.
No deal with Iran will be finalized unless all of Iran’s righteous demands are met. Unless ample lies and obfuscations are spoon-fed to the American public to minimize the consequences of Iran’s victory, the deal may well be opposed. Lies and obfuscation were needed to pass ObamaCare, even with solid Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress. A deal with Iran is even more important. Our Dear Leader’s wise consultant, Jonathan Gruber, knows this very well and so does our Dear Leader.
Fortunately, a Washington think tank is taking the lead to counter the silly stuff spouted by racists.
A leading liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., has begun enlisting its associates in an “all-hands-on-deck effort to support” the Obama administration as it seeks to ink a nuclear deal with Iran by the end of the month, according to emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Truman National Security Project, a nonprofit think tank with ties to the administration, is assembling a “crack team of writers” to flood national and local media outlets with articles supporting the White House’s efforts before the details of a final nuclear deal have even emerged, according to internal emails sent by the organization to its listserv. [Emphasis added.]
“Our community absolutely must step up and not cede the public narrative to neocon hawks that would send our country to war just to screw the president,” Graham F. West, Truman’s writing and communications associate, wrote in a recent email to the organization’s listserv. [Emphasis added.]
Pay no attention to insane mumblings by the editor of this subversive blog. He has long opposed what he refers to as the Iran Scam and recently wrote this racist diatribe against our own Dear Leader and His quest for peace everlasting. If this sick cartoon isn’t racist, then I don’t know what is.
Our Dear Leader has already accomplished countless wonderful things to establish His magnificent legacy. Here are just a few:
He is the first African American President of the United States.
The award of His Nobel Peace Prize on October 9, 2009, a mere nine months after He became the President of the United States. No other President has accomplished that.
He compelled passage of the Affordable Care Act during His first term in office.
He has already issued more crucial executive decrees than any former President.
He has consistently condemned the apartheid, illegitimate state known as Israel.
Miller even contends, speciously, that Iran’s alleged human rights abuses and alleged support for world-wide terrorism should be considered by the esteemed P5+1 negotiators under our Dear Leader’s helpful guidance. That, like all of his other suggestions, would elevate facts, transparency and accountability for a bad purpose over lies, obfuscation and non-accountability for a good purpose. What great sage once wrote “the truth shall make you flee?” He was right. Truth would make many Americans flee from a deal with Iran, and we need their unthinking support to show that, despite recent election results, they reject racism and therefore still love, respect and have unbounded confidence in our Dear Leader.
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Editor’s comments
In an effort to help Imam Mohamed allah-Dork present his ideas most candidly and therefore effectively, I was pleased to provide the You Tube videos.
I agree with allah-Dork’s thesis that lies and obfuscation are as necessary to secure public approval of a nuke deal with Iran as they were to secure passage of ObamaCare. A nuke deal with Iran would be even worse than ObamaCare.
It will be very difficult, if not impossible, for Congress to repeal ObamaCare outright if for no reason other than that Obama would veto any bill repealing it. However, it is possible that the Supreme Court may deal ObamaCare a fatal blow if it finds that subsidies for customers of ObamaCare exchanges were clearly intended, and stated by the Congress, to be available only for customers of State, not Federal, exchanges.
Once Iran gets (or keeps) nukes, there will be no way for Congress to repeal the agreement, no way for the Supreme Court to overrule it and no way to force Iran to get rid of its nukes. That Iran may get rid of some of them voluntarily — by using them — offers no comfort at all.
Israel, the only free and democratic nation in the Middle East, has served as a useful distraction from the violation of even the most basic of human rights throughout the rest of the region. She continues to respect and implement those rights despite the Obama Administration’s increasing rejection of them and its refusal to take them into account when dealing with other nations. Iran is perhaps the worst human rights violator in the region as well as the most prolific sponsor of Islamic terrorism. As the Obama Administration ignores blatant human rights violations by other nations, it fantasizes that Israel is a gross violator and amplifies its fantasies at every opportunity.
Obama and His cohorts have learned the lessons taught by Mr. Gruber very well and have used them with success. Here is an excerpt from an article by Jonathan Turley, a liberal in the old fashioned sense of the word. He has often supported the ends which Obama has sought to achieve while opposing the methods He has used and continues to use.
In fairness to Gruber, he is again being honest about what happened in the passage of ACA and speaking as an academic. However, such machinations are rarely confirmed by high-level consultants or officials. The ACA was pushed through by a muscle vote on a handful of votes while the Administration made claims that he later had to admit were misleading at best, such as the President’s repeated assurance that citizens could keep your current insurance policy if you liked it. There was a great deal of cynicism and misleading representations made during the ACA debates — reflecting a deep-seated contempt for the intelligence of the American voter. Gruber however seems to celebrate the success in using what he viewed as the stupidity of citizens, to quote his earlier comments, to secure passage of the ACA. It is the triumph of the ends over the means — the mantra of Beltway denizens who view more principled actors as naive chumps. What is shocking for many outside of the Beltway is of course the moral relativism and cynicism reflected in such comments, but Gruber is the norm in Washington. He is the face of the consequentiality morality that has long governed this city. [Emphasis added.]
What is different is that he admits it.
Obama, et al, have consistently applied Gruber principles to the Iran Scam and will continue to do so in seeking public support for any nuke deal with Iran. They will also continue to obfuscate and lie about the Israeli situation to distract attention from what they are doing, relying on their perceptions of the “stupidity” of the American public.
Europe, and now America, turns its wrath against Israel, believing the Jewish state to be the main instigator of Middle East unrest and, as Secretary John Kerry suggested, the reasons behind the rise of radical Islam and the Islamic State.
If Israel would only accept the two-state solution, and if the Jews would only stop entering the Temple Mount, these world leaders reason that the Palestinians would give up their dream of returning to Haifa and Ashkelon, multiculturalism would flourish in Europe, human rights would be upheld and religions would coexist peacefully.
This hope, however, is baseless; nothing more than a pipe dream stemming from an arrogance that believes in the superiority of secular Western values, which include not only democracy and minority rights, but also ideas like contempt of religion, in particular the Christian faith.
One would think that the rise of the Islamic State (formerly ISIS) would have convinced the Europeans and Obama that Israel is merely the first target in a campaign that will eventually lead to “Rome.” The last issue of Dabiq, the Islamic State magazine, made accessible to all through its English edition, makes this goal abundantly clear.
Anyone who takes this message seriously, instead of blindly hoping that the Islamists will come to their senses, must understand that unless something is done, Europe, which has already abandoned its own religion, could face the same fate as the Yazidis of Iraq.
In an article entitled “The Revival of Slavery,” the Islamic State actually takes pride in being able to fulfill “The Sword Verse,” which commands Muslims to “kill the idolaters wherever you find them, and capture them, and besiege them.” From a Muslim point of view, the enslavement of many Yazidi families is a sensible and commendable way of serving Allah. Indeed, they are taking pride in not to separating enslaved women from their children. How noble.
The same issue of Dabiq also cited the September speech of Islamic State spokesman Mohammad al-Adnani, who brashly warned the “crusaders” (America and Europe) thus: “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women … so mobilize your forces, O crusaders … roar with thunder, threaten whom you want, plot, arm your troops, prepare yourselves, strike, kill, and destroy us. This will not avail you. You will be defeated … for our Lord … has promised our victory and your defeat.”
In the Islamic State’s view of the world, Israel is merely a Roman military outpost that must be taken before marching on Europe. For this reason, Israel is far from being the focus of this magazine, which is all about waging an apocalyptic war against America and Europe.
In fact, one might be disappointed to discover that the latest issue of Dabiq doesn’t mention at all the Palestinians or the summer’s Gaza war, which dominated headlines in the rest of the world.
Dabiq, at least, is honest enough to acknowledge, if not indirectly, that Israel is not the cause of the conflict in the Middle East. Likewise, nowhere does Dabiq suggest that the end of the Jewish state is the ultimate goal of Islam. Europe and Obama may try to deflect Islamic vengefulness away from them by blaming Israel for everything, but, unfortunately for them, the Muslim faithful won’t be deterred by this PR spin.
Arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti urged the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership to give its backing to “armed resistance” against Israel in a letter published Tuesday as a wave of violence surged, according to AFP.
The call came after months of clashes in and around Jerusalem and a growing number of deadly terror attacks by lone individuals.
So far, the Palestinian leadership has been ambivalent on how to respond to the attacks, with some top PA officials encouraging the violence – as well as, obviously, Hamas and Islamic Jihad – but others publicly denying outright support for the attacks.
In a letter to mark 10 years since the death of PLO leader and fellow arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat, Barghouti said that “choosing global and armed resistance” was being “faithful to Arafat’s legacy, to his ideas and his principles for which tens of thousands died as martyrs.”
Barghouti, who is widely believed to have masterminded the second intifada, which exploded across Israel from 2000 to 2005, wrote the letter from his cell in Israel’s Hadarim prison where he is serving five life sentences for attacks on innocent Israeli civilians.
A senior figure within the Fatah movement of PA Chairman Mahmud Abbas, Barghouti was arrested in 2002 and sentenced two years later.
He still wields huge influence from inside prison and is considered the only serious challenger to Abbas as president, with surveys regularly naming him as favorite to win elections should he be released from jail.
“It is imperative to reconsider our choice of resistance as a way of defeating the occupier,” he wrote.
There has been increasing talk of a new intifada in the making following months of clashes in Jerusalem and the series of deadly attacks.
The unrest has recently spread into Israel, with two Israelis killed in two separate stabbing attacks on Monday.
With religious tensions also surging at the flashpoint Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest site, Barghouti urged
the Palestinian leadership to take action and make good on threats to end security cooperation with Israel.
“The Palestinian Authority must review its priorities and its mission… and put an immediate end to security cooperation which is only strengthening the occupier,” he said.
He also remarked on the circumstances of Arafat’s death, saying his “assassination” was the result of “an official Israeli-American decision”. Arafat died in a military hospital near Paris on November 11, 2004; the Palestinians have long claimed that it was a deliberate poisoning.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.
Yesterday afternoon a young woman stood by the side of a road holding up a sign. It read “Gush Etzion.” Those two words summon up spittle-flecked rants about Zionist settlements from the anti-Israel left.
Dalia caught a ride to a bus stop on the way home from her job as a children’s occupational therapist. Her next stop was a shift at Yad Sarah, a volunteer organization for the elderly and disabled. But before that could happen, a Muslim attacker did what songs, cartoons and posters distributed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas encouraging “Car Jihad” had been telling him to do.
With the 26-year-old woman on the ground, the courageous Islamic Jihadist stabbed her as she lay dying. Then shouting Allahu Akbar, he began slashing at an unarmed man who had stopped to help. When the unarmed man fighting him off with his bare hands proved too much for the knife-wielding Jihadist, the killer fled, was wounded and taken into custody.
Dalia’s father, a volunteer with Magen David Adom, Israel’s Red Cross, heard that there had been an attack. He did what countless Israeli fathers and mothers began doing right after they heard the news.
He called his daughter. There was no answer.
Despite being only in her twenties, Dalia knew what was coming. This wasn’t her killer’s first act of terrorism and it wasn’t her first time as a victim of Islamic terrorism.
When she was seventeen years old, Dalia was attacked by a knife-wielding terrorist in the same place. But the terrorist didn’t have a van and there were armed men at the scene.
“I stood on February 28, 2006 at Gush Etzion Junction when a terrorist came and began to stab those standing at a hitchhiking station,” she would later write.
She described terrorists for whom prison life is “like a hotel”, who watch television, take courses and contact their lawyers. “Those who stab Jews have their rights and privileges. The injustice cries out to Heaven.”
“Punish and expel those who threaten us,” Dalia wrote, “no matter the cost to them. They must pay the price for their terror. That is the only way the terrorism will end.”
As you read this, Dalia Lemkos will have already been buried. Her parents and her five brothers and sisters will have cried over her grave. Her killer will receive the best possible care in an Israeli hospital. The Palestinian Authority will use the foreign aid it receives from the United States and the EU to pay him a salary for life. If he gets out, he will be entitled to everything from special housing to free medical care paid for by you, by me and by all of us.
Stabbing a young woman in the neck while she lay in the street made him a hero of Palestine. He has become a model of Muslim manhood, little boys in UNRWA schools will be taught about his great deed and encouraged to follow in his footsteps. And they will, just as he had followed the example of those great Muslim heroes who had murdered Jewish women and children in Hebron before he was born.
The educational system staffed by Hamas supporters and paid for by foreign aid does its work well. Some countries turn out future doctors and scientists. The Palestinian Authority turns out heroes who can nerve themselves up to take on a 26-year-old Jewish woman as long as they have a few thousand pounds of van or at least a butcher knife on their side. Not to mention Allah and the Koran.
Dalia’s killer may remain behind bars where Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch will complain that his smartphone isn’t fast enough, that his Coca Cola isn’t fizzy enough and that the clothes he shops for remotely with his family using the money that the Palestinian Authority pays to the families of its heroes don’t fit him correctly. But it’s also possible that he will be set free.
He was before.
Dalia’s killer had been in jail for terrorism before he was released. Releasing terrorists is how Israel demonstrates its goodwill toward terrorists.
This year, Obama forced Israel to free over a hundred convicted terrorists as a “gesture” just to get the Palestinian Authority terrorists to discuss continuing talks with Israel. Israel was being pressured into releasing terrorists in exchange for an opportunity to negotiate resuming negotiations.
But Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that it was Israel’s fault because it “didn’t release the Palestinian prisoners on the day they were supposed to be freed.”
The next time that Obama and Kerry force Israel to release terrorists for the opportunity to negotiate the possibility of negotiating with terrorists, Dalia’s killer may be shouting “Allahu Akbar” all over again.
Dalia’s own voice has been silenced. She will be buried in her native town of Tekoa where her body will rest unless the left and their Islamic partners succeed in forcing the expulsion of the thousand Jews of Tekoa, the living in the houses and the dead from the cemetery.
The State Department, which rejects the existence of the living and dead Jews of Tekoa and wants them gone, responded to Dalia’s murder by urging both sides to show restraint.
The AP’s Matt Lee asked State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki whether she meant that Israelis should show restraint by standing still and allowing themselves to be stabbed.
“If you’re standing at a bus stop or something and someone runs a car into you or comes up and stabs you, I don’t know how to, I mean, those people aren’t, don’t need to exercise restraint, do they?”
Psaki laughed and refused to address the question. But it’s a question that ought to be addressed.
Israel is constantly ordered to show restraint. But when does restraint begin? Is it when a Muslim terrorist is running you over with a van and sinking his knife into your neck? Or is it only when you contemplate doing something about the men who sent him and will continue sending more like him?
Israel is generously allowed to fight back once the knife is at its neck. But once it breaks free, then it’s told to show restraint. Taking out the terrorist networks that send out men like this would be disproportionate. Refusing to release the killer of Dalia would show that Israel doesn’t want peace.
Critics of Israel like Jeffrey Goldberg insist that its situation is not “sustainable”. And that’s true. Struggling with an attacker who has a knife at your throat is not sustainable. Either he cuts your throat or you cut his throat. If you keep trying to negotiate with him, then eventually he will kill you.
Dalia survived her first attack. She didn’t survive her second attack.
There are only so many second chances when someone wants to kill you. And if you are a non-Muslim in the Muslim world, then someone always wants to kill you.
The price of restraint is death. Negotiating with your killers lets them trade up from a knife to a van, from a stone to a rocket, from an outpost in Lebanon to fortresses within range of your major cities.
Dalia tried to warn Israelis. She tried to warn the world. Now her voice speaks from the grave. It is the voice of the dead. It is the voice of truth.
“They must pay the price for their terror. That is the only way the terrorism will end.”
PA president says Palestinians will never give up demand to make Jerusalem their capital; says Muslims and Christians will never accept Israeli claims.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday accused Israel of dragging the region into a religious war and vowed that the Palestinians would never agree to Jewish prayer on the Muslim-controlled Temple Mount.
“Israel’s leaders are making a huge mistake if they think they can now establish facts on the ground and divide prayer times at the al-Aqsa Mosque as they did at the Cave of the Patriarchs,” he said in a fiery speech in Ramallah to mark the tenth anniversary of Yasser Arafat’s death. “By doing these things they are leading the region and the world into a devastating religious war.”
Mahmoud Abbas: We will protect our holy places (Photo: EPA)
Speaking after weeks of clashes between Israeli security forces and Arab residents of East Jerusalem, as well as a series of terror attacks in Jerusalem, Abbas also repeated the Palestinian pledge to make East Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian state.
“The Muslim and Christian world will never accept Israeli claims that Jerusalem is theirs,” he said. “Jerusalem is our capital and we will never give this up; Jerusalem that was occupied in 1967 is our Jerusalem. We will safeguard and protect our holy places.”
The Palestinian leader also blasted “the daily incursions and attacks from the settlers and the leaders of the Israeli occupation army.”
He went on to praised the Muslims who are continually present at the Temple Mount to ensure that visitors to the site, which Jews believe was the location of the first and second temples and now houses the al-Aqsa Mosque, do not pray there.
“They ask us who are these guardians? They sit at al-Aqsa and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to pray and to protect. And if (the Israelis) attack them, it is their right to defend themselves the holy places. Keep the extremist settlers away from the al-Aqsa mosque and our holy places. Don’t let the our holy sites be contaminated, Keep them from us and we will stay away from them.”
Ali Khamenei / AP
ran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei published early Sunday a 9-step plan to “eliminate” Israel, prompting Israel’s prime minister to file a formal complaint with Western negotiators involved in nuclear talks with Tehran.
Khamenei’s official Twitter account on Sunday tweeted out the 9-step plan explaining “the proper way of eliminating Israel.”
“Why should & how can #Israel be eliminated? Ayatollah Khamenei’s answer to 9 key questions,” Khamenei tweeted, along with a graphic illustrating the plan to annihilate Israel.
“The only means of bringing Israeli crimes to an end is the elimination of this regime,” Khamenei wrote. “And of course the elimination of Israel does not mean the massacre of the Jewish people in the region. The Islamic Republic has proposed a practical and logical mechanism for this to international communities.”
Khamenei accuses “the fake Zionist regime” of committing acts of “infanticide, homicide, violence, and iron fist while boasts about it blatantly [sic].”
Israel’s enemies must commit to “armed resistance” until Israel is eliminated, Khamenei says.
“Up until the day when this homicidal and infanticidal [sic] regime is eliminated through a referendum, powerful confrontation and resolute and armed resistance is the cure of this ruinous regime,” the supreme leader writes. “The only means of confronting a regime which commits crimes beyond one’s thought and imagination is a resolute and armed confrontation.”
Khamenei also reiterates his call for the West Bank to be armed like Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Khamenei’s plan is another example of Iran’s extremism.
Khamenei is “publicly calling for the annihilation of Israel as he is negotiating a nuclear deal,” Netanyahu said in videotaped remarks.
“There is no moderation in Iran,” said Netanyahu, who sent a letter to the P5+1 negotiators outlining Khamenei’s extremist rhetoric. “It is unrepentant, unreformed.”
Khamenei “calls for Israel’s eradication, promotes international terrorism … and [Iran] continues to deceive the international community about its nuclear weapons program,” Netanyahu said. “I call on the P5+1—don’t rush into a deal that will let Iran rush to the bomb.”
Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, a Research Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and a Professor of Classics and Humanities at the California State University.
He is the author of nine books and numerous essays on classical culture and its influence on Western Civilization.
His most recent book, Democracy’s Dangers and Discontents Hoover Institution Press, is now available for purchase.
The news that President Obama has sent a secret letter to Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei––apparently promising concessions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for help in defeating ISIS–– is a depressing reminder of how after nearly 40 years our leaders have not understood the Iranian Revolution. During the hostage crisis of 1979, Jimmy Carter sent left-wing former Attorney General Ramsay Clark to Tehran with a letter anxiously assuring the Ayatollah Khomeini that America desired good relations “based upon equality, mutual respect and friendship.” Khomeini refused even to meet with the envoys.
Such obvious contempt for our “outreach” should have been illuminating, but the same mistakes have recurred over the past 4 decades. But Obama has been the most energetic suitor of the mullahs, sending 4 letters to Khamenei, none directly answered. In May of 2009 he sent a personal letter to Khamenei calling for “cooperation in regional and bilateral relations.” Khamenei’s answer in June was to initiate a brutal crackdown on Iranians protesting the rigged presidential election. Obama’s response was to remain silent about this oppression lest he irritate the thuggish mullahs, who blamed the protests on American “agents” anyway. Even Carter’s phrase “mutual respect” has been chanted like some diplomatic spell that will transform religious fanatics into good global citizens. In his notorious June 2009 Cairo “apology” speech, Obama assured Iran, “We are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect.” This latest letter repeats the same empty phrase.
But our president is nothing if not persistent. In October of 2009, it was revealed that Iran had failed to disclose a uranium enrichment facility in Qom. Obama commented on this obvious proof of Iran’s true intentions, “We remain committed to serious, meaningful engagement with Iran,” and promised that the “offer stands” of “greater international integration if [Iran] lives up to its obligations.” Iran answered by increasing the pace of enrichment, helping the insurgents in Iraq kill our troops, and facilitating the movement and communications of al Qaeda with other jihadists.
Indeed, every concession and failure to respond forcefully to Iranian intransigence and aggression confirm its belief that Iran is strong and America weak. As Khamenei has said, “The reason why we are stronger is that [America] retreats step by step in all the arenas [in] which we and the Americans have confronted each other. But we do not retreat. Rather, we move forward. This is a sign of our superiority over the Americans.”
Given this long sorry history, how long will it take for our foreign policy geniuses to figure out that Iran’s theocrats don’t want better relations, or “mutual respect,” or “international integration,” or anything else from the infidel Great Satan and its Western minions, other than capitulation? The mullahs and their Republican Guard henchmen may lust for wealth and power as much as anyone, but the foundation of their behavior is a religious faith that promises Muslims power and dominance over those who refuse the call to convert to Islam and thus by definition are enemies of the faithful to be resisted and destroyed.
Given these spiritual imperatives, the material punishment of the regime through economic sanctions, particularly limited ones, is unlikely to have much effect. During the hostage crisis, mild sanctions and the threats of more serious ones were brushed away by Khomeini. The Economist at the time pointed out the obvious reason why: “The denial of material things is unlikely to have much effect on minds suffused with immaterial things.” Khomeini made this same point after the humiliating disaster of Carter’s half-hearted attempt to rescue the hostages in April 1980, when mullahs were televised worldwide poking their canes in the charred remains of 8 dead Americans. Speaking of the sandstorm that compromised the mission, Khomeini preached, “Those sand particles were divinely commissioned . . . Carter still has not comprehended what kind of people he is facing and what school of thought he is playing with. Our people is the people of blood and our school is the school of Jihad.”
With their eyes on Allah’s intentions for the faithful, the leaders of Iran see the acquisition of nuclear weapons as the most important means of achieving the global power and dominance their faith tells them they deserve as “the best of nations produced for mankind,” as the Koran says. Thus duplicitous diplomatic engagement and negotiation are tactics for buying time until the mullahs reach “nuclear latency,” the ability quickly to build a bomb. Every concession or offer of bribes from the West are seen not as an inducement to reciprocate in order to meet a mutually beneficial arrangement, but rather as signs of weakness and failure of nerve, evidence that the mullahs can win despite the power and wealth of the West. That’s because the Iranian leadership views international relations as resting not on cooperation or negotiation, but on raw power. As Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institute quotes from a hardline Iranian newspaper, “Our world is not a fair one and everyone gets as much power as he can, not for his power of reason or the adaptation of his request to the international laws, but by his bullying.” And the Iranians believe that their power politics serves the will of Allah.
Obama is not the first president who has completely failed to understand the true nature and motives of his adversary. FDR misunderstood “Uncle Joe” Stalin, and George Bush misread the eyes of Vladimir Putin. This mistake of diplomacy reflects the peculiar Western arrogant belief that the whole world is just like us and wants the same things we want––political freedom, leisure, material affluence, and peaceful relations with neighbors. Some Iranians may want those things too, but a critical mass wants obedience to Allah and his commands more. Obama’s endemic narcissism has made this flaw worse in his relations with the rest of the world, for he can’t believe that the leaders of other nations, many of them brutal realists indifferent to the opinions of the “international community,” aren’t as impressed as he is with his alleged brilliance and persuasive eloquence.
As a result we are on the brink of a dangerous realignment of the balance of power in the Middle East. Despite Iran’s continuing defiance of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, and its long record of lies and evasion, Obama allegedly has offered to raise the number of centrifuges enriching uranium from 4000 to 6000, bringing the mullahs closer to “nuclear latency”––in a regime that has officially been designated the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism; that has threatened genocide against Israel, our most important strategic asset in the region; and that for the last 40 years has stained its hands with American blood.
Rather than the ornament of his foreign policy legacy, as Obama hopes, his pursuit of a deal that will make Iran a nuclear power will be remembered as his Munich.
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