Indian Globe reporter “Goyal” and Sate Dept. spokesman John Kirby.
The U.S. State Dept. fumbled a golden opportunity Thursday to ask, beg or insist that Iran stop threatening to wipe Israel off the map.
Indian Globe reporter Raghubir Goyal asked State Dept. spokesman John Kirby:
In the past, Iranian president said that Israel will be wiped off the world map. Are they going to turn back this and – this as far as this renouncing Israeli – Israel’s existence?
Kirby asked, for clarification, “Who going to turn back what?,” and Goyal, as he is called in Washington, asked again, until he was cut off, “If they are going to denounce terrorism and also what they said in the past that Israel will be wipe –”
Kirby answered by not answering:
Will Iran? Well, I think you’d have to – I mean, that’s a question for Iran’s leaders.
It would seem that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry never asked Iran during the marathon talks with Iran if the Islamic Republic might at least tone down, just for a bit of good public relations, its constant threat to annihilate Israel, as was reiterated on the eve of the agreement.
But Kirby reassured everyone that the United States is “not going to turn a blind eye to Iran’s other destabilizing activities in the region, to include the state sponsorship of terrorists and terrorist networks. Nothing’s going to change about our commitment to continuing to press against those kinds of activities through a broad range of methods, whether it’s our unilateral sanctions, UN sanctions which will stay in effect, or U.S. military presence in the region.”
He is right. The United States is not turning a blind eye to Iranian terror. It is looking at it straight in the eye and figuring it will go away by freeing up to $150 billion for Iran.
President Barack Obama said at his press conference Wednesday night:
Do we think that with the sanctions coming down, that Iran will have some additional resources for its military and for some of the activities in the region that are a threat to us and a threat to our allies? I think that is a likelihood that they’ve got some additional resources. Do I think it’s a game-changer for them? No.
They are currently supporting Hezbollah, and there is a ceiling — a pace at which they could support Hezbollah even more, particularly in the chaos that’s taking place in Syria.
Out of $150 billion, President Obama says Iran will have “some” additional funds. Then he assumes there is a “ceiling” of how much Iran can support Hezbollah.
ObamaDeal raised the ceiling sky-high.
But President Obama is not worried that Iran will “only” pocket “some” of $150 billion to wipe out Israel, which makes its procurement of a nuclear weapon less urgent.
The video below. at 0:42 seconds, shows Goyal and Kirby’s exchange:
Hezbollah leader delivers annual speech via massive screen in Beirut; Pro-Palestinian rallies spread across Iran as a new deadline is set for negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave his annual speech Friday to mark “Al-Quds Day,” calling Iran “The only hope left for liberating Palestine and Jerusalem.”
Nasrallah’s speech was televised and filmed in a hidden bunker and screened in a event in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut. He also said that Iran would be “perverting her own religion” if Tehran agreed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demands that Israel be recognized as a Jewish State.
Nasrallah on the big screen.
He also addressed fighting in Syria during the speech saying that “If Syria goes to Hell, Palestine will go to Hell.”
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Iranians chanted “Down with America” and “Death to Israel” during pro-Palestinian rallies nationwide on Friday, as a deadline on talks to reach a deal on Iran’s nuclear program was postponed until Monday – the third postponment in two weeks.
The “Al-Quds Day” rallies took place as Iran and six world powers were meeting in Vienna to work out a deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for easing tens of billions of dollars in economic penalties on the Islamic Republic.
Photo: AFP
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani made a brief appearance at the rally in the capital, Tehran, but did not mention the nuclear talks that have blown past two extensions and entered the 14th day of the current round on Friday. US Secretary of State John Kerry warned on Thursday that the Americans were ready to leave.
Photo: AP
However, a top leader said Friday the US would be making a “strategic mistake” if it pulled out of ongoing negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program.
Photo: EPA
“If you drive the talks into a dead end then it will be you who will be committing a strategic mistake,” Iran’s parliament speaker Ali Larijani said at Friday prayers following the rally in Tehran, addressing the US “And its outcome will not benefit you since Iran’s nuclear staff are ready to accelerate nuclear technology at a higher speed than before.”
Photo: EPA
At the rally, the hard-line protesters wrapped America, British, Israeli and Saudi flags around pillars and set them ablaze.
Photo: EPA
Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has observed “Al-Quds Day” during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Tehran says the occasion is meant to express support for Palestinians and emphasize the importance of Jerusalem for Muslims.
Iran does not recognize Israel and supports anti-Israeli militant groups like Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Muslim leaders in Minnesota, including Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, argue that the best way to discourage Somali-Americans caught trying to join the Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIL or ISIS) from embracing radical Islam is to allow them to remain in their communities while awaiting trial.
Also the best way to discourage serial killers is by leaving them alone with a room full of knives.
And why even put them on trial? If keeping them out of prison discourages them from joining ISIS, just think how much completely freeing them will discourage them.
I bet they’ll spontaneously break into a patriotic number like Yankee Doodle Dandy. Either that or they’ll get on a plane and join ISIS.
However, Muslim leaders in Minnesota — which has become a hot recruitment spot for terrorists — insist that young would-be IS terrorists like these should instead be allowed to return to their communities and engage in activities such as coaching youth basketball and helping immigrants fill out job applications.
Job applications… for ISIS.
But I can’t see any reason why we should lock up ISIS members when they can instead be spending time around impressionable young people while in a position of authority.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.), himself a Muslim, spoke in favor of such a design.
“If you integrate them back into their family relationships and you have responsible faith leaders, then that’s going to be the check on them that they need,” Ellison explained. “There’s going to be people watching them, encouraging them.”
Isn’t that how they ended up joining ISIS in the first place?
Hamas is continuing to demand massive concessions from Israel as a precondition for even starting talks over two Israeli citizens held captive in Gaza.
In an interview Thursday with Turkish media, senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar reiterated conditions set by the terrorist group Thursday for opening talks over 26-year-old Avraham Mengistu and another as-yet unnamed Israeli civilian it is holding hostage, as well as the remains of two soldiers still held by Hamas since last year’s Operation Protective Edge.
Chief among those conditions is the release of dozens of terrorists who were released from Israeli prisons under the 2011 prisoner swap to release IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, and were later rearrested after returning to terrorist activities.
More than 1,000 terrorists were released – many of them convicted murderers – in exchange for just one Israeli soldier in the lopsided Shalit Deal. Analysts warned that enormous price would merely encourage further kidnappings.
As part of the deal released terrorists had to sign a written guarantee they would not resume terrorist activity, and that if they did they would be rearrested and forced to serve the rest of their previous sentences.
Among the 71 rearrested Shalit Deal terrorists are a number serving life sentences.
Al-Zahar emphasized that Hamas would not issue any responses or open negotiations concerning the fate of the two kidnapped Israelis, and that the matter was “closed” until its conditions were met.
Mengistu – who has a history of mental illness – has been held by Hamas for 10 months, after reportedly crossing the border into Gaza, where he was immediately detained by terrorists.
However, details of his case were only revealed yesterday (Thursday), when a gag order was lifted after his family appealed.
Another Israel citizen – believed to be a Bedouin from the Arab town of Hura in the Negev – is also being held captive, although a gag order is still in place vis-a-vis his identity and the circumstances surrounding his capture.
Hamas is also holding the remains of IDF Sergeant Oron Shaul and Lt. Hadar Goldin, who were killed during last summer’s war with Gazan terrorists.
Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
President Obama recently gave a speech at the Pentagon about our efforts against ISIS that confirmed he has little awareness of the real world our enemies inhabit. The talk reprised the usual received wisdom and unchallenged orthodoxy that comprise most of the foreign policy establishment’s ideas about Islamic jihadism and how we should fight it. Consider the following particularly egregious examples:
Ideologies are not defeated with guns; they’re defeated by better ideas–– a more attractive and more compelling vision.
This statement is a classic either-or fallacy. Anyone familiar with history would have added the adverb “just” before “with guns.” Obama is indulging stealth pacifism, a variation on the “violence doesn’t solve anything” and “use your words” mantras of the junior high playground monitor. Such a stance is politically convenient when the voters are against the use of force, and a leader doesn’t have the will or ability to convince them why force is necessary.
In general, the superior quality of what men fight for is indeed a force-multiplier, as the Greeks proved at Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea. But significant force still has to be applied to kill a critical mass of the enemy. And even with the best ideas, more often it is the “guns” that in the end make the difference. Those victorious Greek hoplites and rowers had weaponry and tactics superior to the Persians’, as well as the better ideals of freedom and autonomy. World War II was another battle of freedom against tyranny. But Nazism was ultimately defeated by the U.S.’s ability to produce armaments at a rate Germany could not match––just in one month of 1944, America produced more Sherman tanks than all the tanks the Germany produced in a year. If the U.S. hadn’t entered the war, the “better ideas” of English civilization, despite their expression in the soaring oratory of Winston Churchill, would not alone have led to Hitler’s defeat.
So yes, “better ideas” are critical for winning a war. As Napoleon said, morale to the material is as three to one. But the importance of “ideas” like political freedom, confessional tolerance, and individual rights lies not, as Obama suggests, in their power to make our enemies change sides or reject the ideas they are fighting for. Rather, their power lies in the way they motivate and inspire those who fight for their own superior ideals because they are confident that they are superior. Obama in contrast is alluding to the power of mere example when he mentions “a more attractive and more compelling vision,” a phrase vague to the point of emptiness. I think he means that if the jihadists or potential jihadists could understand and experience the freedom, peace, and prosperity we enjoy, they would reject their own motivating beliefs, particularly the doctrines of traditional Islam, which they so passionately believe are superior that in their service they will murder innocents and blow themselves up.
This naïve belief in the attractive power of our ideals has been the big mistake of our war against jihad, one made by both parties. To traditionalist Muslims, the ideals we cherish are not self-evidently superior to those of Islam. What we call freedom, for example, pious Muslims like Ayatollah Khomeini understood to be license: it is the “freedom that will corrupt our youth, freedom that will pave the way to the oppressor, freedom that will drag our nation to the bottom.” Similarly, al Qaeda theorist Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote, “The freedom we want is not the freedom to use women as commodities . . . it is not the freedom of AIDS and an industry of obscenities and homosexual marriages.” Of course, our idea of political freedom is much different from these social practices, but the biggest example of Western freedom that most Muslims see is the degrading spectacles available on satellite television, Hollywood movies, and the Internet.
Likewise with democracy, tolerance, separation of church and state, sex equality, and all the other goods that define the Western civilizational paradigm but are contrary to shari’a law and Islamic doctrine. For a Muslim who takes those doctrines seriously––and poll after poll shows that hundreds of millions do–– none of these goods is worth risking his eternal soul. Indeed, they are seductive temptations for the pious, the subtle weapons the infidels use to weaken the faithful and bring about their spiritual destruction. That’s why the mullahs call us the “Great Satan”: not just because in Muslim eyes we are evil, but because we are tempters who addle the minds of the faithful with what the Iranian political activist Al-e Ahmad in 1962 called “Westoxification.”
Our strategy recognizes that no amount of military force will end the terror that is ISIL unless it’s matched by a broader effort — political and economic — that addresses the underlying conditions that have allowed ISIL to gain traction.
The assumption that ISIS exists because of a lack of political and economic opportunity is founded on a similar misunderstanding of jihadists’ motivations. This simplistic explanation of terror has been with us since 9/11, when Bill Clinton said, “These forces of reaction feed on disillusionment, poverty and despair,” and leftist “activist” Barbara Ehrenreich blamed the attacks on “the vast global inequalities in which terrorism is rooted.”
But if poverty or a lack of democracy is the cause of terror, then why aren’t the billions of poor, disenfranchised young men across the globe committing acts of terror at the rate of young Muslim men? Why do so many jihadist leaders and theorists come from affluent backgrounds, like Osama bin Laden, or lucrative professions, like the surgeon Ayman al-Zawahiri? Why do Muslim immigrants in the affluent West, with a level of material existence and citizen rights far beyond those of their cohorts in the Third World, murder their fellow citizens or flock to join ISIS?
This economic or political determinism ignores the powerful and passionate reality of religious belief among Muslims, whose faith commands them, “O believers! Fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness” (Koran 9:123). But having reduced religion to a life-style choice, Western materialist determinism cannot imagine that violent acts can be motivated by sincere faith and obedience to Allah’s commands. So like Obama, we search for causes that suit our own materialist, secular world-view, such as poverty or lack of political freedom. But as Ayatollah Khomeini said in refutation of this received idea, “We did not have a revolution to lower the price of melons.”
We’ll constantly reaffirm through words and deeds that we will never be at war with Islam. We’re fighting terrorists who distort Islam and whose victims are mostly Muslims.
This hoary cliché has done the most damage to our war against jihadism. And its patent falsity can be easily documented in 14 centuries of Islamic scripture, jurisprudence, history, and practice. As the Egyptian critic of Islam Ahmed Harqan said recently, “What has ISIS done that Mohammed didn’t do?” Behead captives? In 627, Mohammed beheaded 600-900 males of the Jewish Banu Qurayzah tribe, in line with Koran 8:12: “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.”
Enslave the defeated? Mohammed enslaved the women and children of the Banu Qurayzah, and following his model Islam has been one of history’s great slaving civilizations. Just between 1500 and 1800, the Muslim kingdoms of North Africa took 1.5 million European slaves. These depredations were in line with Islamic doctrine, as the representative of the pasha of Tripoli explained to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1785. It was “written in the Koran,” he explained, “that all nations who should not have acknowledged their [Muslim] authority were sinners, that it was their [Muslim] right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find.” And as Mohammed showed, taking slaves is the just reward for those who, like ISIS, prevail in battle.
Nor is ISIS’s goal of restoring the caliphate some fringe distortion of Islamic doctrine. Since its final dissolution in 1922––the “catastrophe” bin Laden mentioned after 9/11–– the caliphate has remained a potent dream for many Muslims, for whom secular nationalism is an alien Western idea contrary to the unified political-religious polity of Islamic doctrine. Thus as pan-Arab theorist Nuri al-Said wrote in 1943, Arab Muslim nationalism “springs from the Muslim feeling of brotherhood enjoined on them by the Prophet Mohammed . . . Although Arabs are naturally attached to their native land their nationalism is not confined by boundaries. It is an aspiration to restore the great tolerant civilization of the early Caliphate.”
We can hear the larger import of this same “aspiration” in Islamist theorist Sayyid Qutb’s claim that “Islam came into this earth to establish God’s rule on God’s earth” and to form “a Muslim community in which individuals . . . have gathered together under servitude to God and follow only the Shari’a of God.” So too Ayatollah Khomeini’s boast: “We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry ‘There is no God but Allah’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.”
Contrary to Obama and others willfully blind to the reality of Islamic doctrine and history, neither the aims of ISIS nor their methods “distort” Islam. Rather, the soldiers of ISIS are the latest in a long tradition of Muslim warriors inspired by Islamic precept and practice. They are a manifestation of Muslim Brothers theorist Hassan al-Banna’s traditional belief that “It is the nature of Islam to dominate not to be dominated, to impose its laws on all nations, and extend its power to the entire planet.” Obama may have forgotten about “war with Islam,” but war with Islam has not forgotten about him.
Just repeating the mantra “nothing to do with Islam” or “religion of peace” or “moderate Muslims” will not change reality. Neither can the other great illusions of modernity like pacifism, disarmament, or the diplomatic settling of disputes that are created by irreconcilable ideologies and conflicting beliefs. The reality of history teaches us that only mind-concentrating, overwhelming force can convince the passionate aggressor to change his ways. The alternative is this administration’s slow-motion appeasement that has left the region a shambles and is escorting Iran to possession of nuclear weapons.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
On the anniversary of the Battle of Heliopolis, Barack Hussein Obama stopped by the Pentagon to tell everyone there that their big guns couldn’t beat ISIS because “Ideologies are not defeated with guns”.
This would be news to the American GIs that beat Nazism, not with hashtags, but with bullets. WW2 propaganda, much of it of a crude nature that would make a modern sophisticated progressive turn up his nose, helped boost morale, but it was the firepower that took down Adolf’s armies.
On a July 6th, long ago, the Muslim hordes that were the ISIS of the day defeated Byzantium in the Battle of Heliopolis. Since this was the 7th century, it is safe to say that there were no hashtags involved. The outcome of that battle however is the reason why Obama’s middle name is Hussein instead of Harry.
The Battle of Heliopolis gave the Caliphate control of Egypt and opened the gates to Africa. Islam was the last man standing among the ruins of empires and it proceeded to enslave, oppress and convert by force to expand its ranks in a manner quite similar to its modern ISIS successor.
Obama isn’t wrong when he suggests that ideas need to be defeated with ideas. But they’re not the ideas that he has in mind. ISIS’ idea is that its enemies are subhuman cretins and that its victories are inevitable. Obama’s idea is that we are a deeply flawed and racist nation, but still sorta better than ISIS.
The only people inspired by that idea are the Americans converting to Islam and joining ISIS.
The uncertainty of the Byzantine Empire doomed it to defeat at the Battle of Heliopolis. The Muslim invaders benefited once again from a united front while their enemies were divided and quarreling among themselves. Without these divisions among Christians, between Christians and Jews, and the various pagan tribes, Islam would never have become anything other than an obscure silly cult.
At the Pentagon, Obama stated, “Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they are defeated by better ideas. We will never be at war with Islam.” He isn’t talking about uniting us behind a better idea. Instead he would like Muslims to unite behind some sort of better idea. It’s not clear what that idea is, but he can tell us that it doesn’t involve accepting the reality that we are being attacked in the name of Islam.
Obama wants to fight ISIS in a battle of ideas without having any ideas. It’s like being unarmed in a battle of wits, except it’s more like the witless trying to fight a battle of ideas while being shot at.
Like the Byzantine Empire, we’re a divided people wearied by war and burdened with poor leaders. The 7th century ISIS that beat them wasn’t so much tactically brilliant as it used daring and deception to exploit opportunities created by the incompetence and demoralization of a falling empire.
Obama is speaking in terms of an ideological thirty years war, saying, “This larger battle for hearts and minds is going to be a generational struggle.” But like the armies of the Caliph pouring through the porous borders of a retreating empire, ISIS is moving far too quickly to wait around that long.
Liberal foreign policy experts give a great deal of credit to its social media presence while misunderstanding its significance. The Islamic State’s use of social media to message, recruit and gloat is part of its larger tactical strength as a mobile and adaptable organization. ISIS isn’t winning the war on Twitter. It’s using Twitter the way that it adapts and uses everything else that it comes across.
ISIS is not winning because it has the better hashtags. It’s winning because it’s utterly ruthless. Arguing about its ideology on social media not only misses the point about ISIS, it misses the point about Islam.
Islam did not build a worldwide empire by winning theological arguments. It won by winning. Islam is not an empire of faith. It is an empire of war that divides the world up into the Dar-al-Islam and the Dar-al-Harb; the House of Islam and the House of War. Harb originally meant sword. When ISIS beheads prisoners, it is meting out the same treatment that Mohammed did to those in the House of War.
Indeed Mohammed’s sword, one of them at any rate as he had quite a few, was named Dhu al-Faqar or “Cleaver of Vertebrae”. This is the same sword that appeared on the war flags of the Ottoman Caliphate which, like Obama’s middle name, would never have existed if the Byzantine Empire hadn’t lost the war.
The Cleaver of Vertebrae, like the House of War, is one of those dividing elements of Islamic ideology. It divides the world between Islam and everyone else and divides heads from bodies. It is the central idea of Islam that we need a better idea to fight if we intend to keep our own heads.
Islamic ideas are simple, rather than sophisticated. They depend on tribalism and terror to mobilize force. They rely on honor and shame to mark defeats and victories. The only way to argue with them is on those same terms. Islam’s only big idea is that power is religion and victory is proof of its rightness.
The theological counterargument to the Islamic State is crushing it on the battlefield.
Obama’s Hearts and Minds strategy tries to win the war by losing it, putting us at a strategic disadvantage with restrictive rules of engagement on the battlefield to win over Muslims while potential ISIS recruits are shipped into the United States by the hundreds of thousands as Muslim immigrants.
If this “generational struggle” for “hearts and minds” fails, as it must, then we will be in the same position as the old Byzantine Empire, exhausted, weary of war, fighting among ourselves and ready for defeat after having filled our countries with enemies while turning our soldiers into social workers.
Not even the worst leaders of the Byzantine Empire were as foolish as that.
Even now the war is on again for Egypt as ISIS fights in the Sinai. The Islamic Caliphate forces that defeated Byzantium passed through the Sinai. Their armies were invigorated by Sinai Bedouins joining them. Today the Islamic State once again wages war in the Sinai using the Bedouin.
Obama speaks of offering “a more attractive, more compelling vision”, but what does he have to offer that can compete with the reunification of the lands of Islam and the dominance of a Caliph? He has already tried offering his ideas in Cairo. Today Egyptians hate both him and his ideas.
The Battle of Heliopolis on a July 6th long ago shows us that the best way to defeat an enemy is not by appeasing it, but by fighting it with a united front. It was the Democrats who shattered the nation’s unity after September 11 by standing up for terrorists. Obama continues that tradition today as he tells us that we can’t win because our enemies are our friends and that we disgusting intolerant bigots.
America does not need to win the hearts and minds of Muslims. It needs to win the hearts and minds of its own people. We do not need the goodwill of those who believe that we are less than human. What we need is confidence in our nation, our values and ourselves. The best antidote to July 6th is July 4th.
A strong and united nation can see off any number of barbarian raiders. A divided civilization struggling over bitter grudges can easily be divided and conquered even by bands of worthless murderous savages.
The ideas for defeating ISIS are those which unite us, which make us stronger and which resist foreign invasion. The ideas that make it easier for ISIS to defeat us can be found in any Obama speech.
(The views expressed in this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Napoleon sometimes claimed to be a Muslim. Obama often claims to be a Christian. Napoleon sought, and Obama seeks, power and glory through pretense.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon’s life and history are summarized at Wikipedia. He supported the French Revolution and was appointed General of the Army of Italy at the age of twenty-five. Three years later, he commanded an expedition against Egypt. This post compares his and Obama’s religious and political efforts to gain the confidence of Muslims. The lengthy quotations provided in this section of the post are from Worlds at War – the 2,500 year struggle between East and West, 2008, by Anthony Pagden.
While en route to conquer Egypt, Napoleon had his “Orientalists” compose a “Proclamation to the Egyptians.”
It is worth taking a closer look at this document for it summarizes not only the French hopes for the ‘Orient’, but also the ultimate failure of both sides to come to any approximate understanding of each other. It began with a familiar Muslim invocation: ‘In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. There is no God but God. He has no son nor has he any associate in His Dominion’, which was intended to indicate clearly that the French were not Christians. It then went on to assure the Egyptian people that Napoleon Bonaparte, commander of the French army, and ‘on behalf of the French Republic which is based upon the foundations of Liberty and Equality’, had not come to Egypt, as the Mamluks had put it about, ‘like the Crusaders’ in order to destroy the power of Islam. Nothing, Napoleon assured his readers, could be further from the truth. Tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring to you your rights from the oppressors, that I, more than the Mam-luks, serve God— may He be praised and Exalted— and revere his prophet Muhammad and the glorious Qur’an … And tell them also that all people are equal in the eyes of God and that the circumstances which distinguish one from another are reason, virtue and knowledge. 578 Having thus done his best to conflate the principle of human rights— in a language in which there exists no obvious translation for the word ‘right’ 579— with what the Orientalists had persuaded him were the basic tenets of Islam, the man whom Victor Hugo would later describe as the ‘Muhammad of the West’ continued,
O ye Qadis [judges], Shaykhs and Imams; O ye Sharbajiyya [cavalry officers] and men of circumstance tell the nation that the French are also faithful Muslims and in confirmation of this they invaded Rome and destroyed there the Holy See, which was always exhorting the Christians to make war on Islam. And then they went to the island of Malta from where they expelled the knights who claimed that God the Exalted required them to fight the Muslims. 580 [Emphasis added.]
It is hard to say how much Napoleon believed in all this. One of his generals later told a friend in Toulouse that ‘we tricked the Egyptians with our feigned love of their religion, in which Bonaparte and we no more believe in than we do in that of the late pope’. 582 But Napoleon’s personal beliefs were largely beside the point. The point was policy. Napoleon had always practised religious toleration because he knew that religious faiths could make deadly enemies. Toleration, however, was one thing; credence, even respect, was another. It is indeed highly unlikely that Napoleon had read much of the Qur’an he claimed to venerate. As he told Madame de Rémusant, the only holy book which would have been of any interest to him would have been one he had written himself. [Pagden, pp 326 – 327] [Emphasis added.]
Egyptians did not appreciate Napoleon’s Proclamation.
Just as most Muslims today have failed to be persuaded that Western social values can be made compatible with the Holy Law, the Shari’a, so too were the Egyptians who confronted Napoleon. We know something of how they reacted to Napoleon’s profession of love for Islam from the account of the first seven months of the occupation written by a member of the diwan— or Imperial Council— of Cairo named Abd-al Rahman al-Jabarti. Al-Jabarti was a well-read perceptive man who was not unimpressed by French skills and technology (he was particularly taken by the wheelbarrow) and ungrudgingly admired French courage and discipline on the battlefield, which he compared, glowingly, to that of the mujahedin, the Muslim warriors of the jihad. 585 But for all that he was a firm Muslim who could conceive of no good, no truth which did not emanate from the word of God as conveyed by the Prophet. He excoriated Napoleon’s declaration for its language, for its poor style, for the grammatical errors, and the ‘incoherent words and vulgar constructions’ with which it was strewn, and which often made nonsense out of what Napoleon had intended to convey— all of which was no tribute to the skills of Venture de Paradis or those of the French Arabists in the expedition. But al-Jabarti reserved his most searing criticism for what he repeatedly describes as French hypocrisy. The opening phrase of the declaration suggested to him not, as Napoleon had meant it to, a preference on the part of a tolerant nation for Islam; but rather that the French gave equal credence to all three religions— Islam, Christianity, and Judaism— which in effect meant that they had no belief in any. Toleration for a Muslim such as al-Jabarti was as meaningless as it would have been for any sincere believer. It was merely a way of condoning error. The years when some kind of rapprochement between Judaism and its two major heresies might have been possible were long since past. There could now be only one true faith, and any number of false ones. Napoleon could not claim to ‘revere’ the Prophet without also believing in his message. The same applied to the Qur’ an. You could not merely ‘respect’ the literal word of God. You had to accept it as the only law, not one among many. ‘This is a lie,’ thundered al-Jabarti; ‘To respect the Qur’an means to glorify it, and one glorifies only by believing in what it contains.’
Napoleon was clearly a liar. Worse he was also the agent of a society which was obviously committed to the elimination, not only of Islam, but of all belief, all religion. The invocation of the ‘Republic’, al-Jabarti explained to his Muslim readers, was a reference to the godless state which the French had set up for themselves after they had betrayed and then murdered their ‘Sultan’. By killing Louis XVI, the French had turned against the man they had taken, wrongly because their understanding of God was erroneous, but sincerely nevertheless, to be God’s representative on earth. In his place they had raised an abstraction, this ‘Republic’ in whose name Napoleon, who had come not in peace as he claimed but at the head of a conquering army, now professed to speak. Since for a Muslim there could be no secular state, no law which is not also God’s law, the French insistence that it was only ‘reason, virtue and knowledge’ which separated one man from another was clearly an absurdity. For ‘God’, declared al-Jabarti, ‘has made some superior to others as is testified by the dwellers in the Heavens and on the Earth.’ There are few things a believer, especially a believer in the fundamental sacredness of a script, dislikes more than a non-believer. To al-Jabarti the French seemed to be not would-be Muslims, but atheists. [Emphasis added.] [Id. at 329].
Obama
Napoleon, in his mix of religious and political doctrine, was a power-grubbing scoundrel and liar. How about Obama?
Obama has not claimed to be a Muslim and I don’t know what He is. To claim to be a Muslim would be politically inexpedient. However, He has proclaimed His respect and even reverence for Islam and for the “Holy” Qur’an.
overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. . . . People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind and the heart and the soul. This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive, but it’s being challenged in many different ways. [Emphasis added.]
“Tolerance? Egyptian President al-Sisi is remarkable among Muslim leaders for his efforts to promote religious tolerance. Obama appears to despise him for supporting massive public protests against President Morsi and eventually becoming president. Morsi was a Muslim Brotherhood supporter and Obama appears to cherish the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization.
Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism — it is an important part of promoting peace.
And, as Obama tells us, the Islamic State and other such groups are not Islamic.
That sort of stuff didn’t work out well for Napoleon. Are Islamists more dedicated to religious tolerance now than in the days of Napoleon? It does not seem that they are. See, e.g., Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Islamic nations.
The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.
He sought power and glory by opposing those who offend “slander” Islam, including the maker of the You Tube video on which He and others in His administration blamed “spontaneous” September 11, 2011 “demonstrations” at the U.S. Benghazi annex.
I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity. It is an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well — for as the city outside these walls makes clear, we are a country that has welcomed people of every race and every faith. We are home to Muslims who worship across our country. We not only respect the freedom of religion, we have laws that protect individuals from being harmed because of how they look or what they believe. We understand why people take offense to this video because millions of our citizens are among them.
I know there are some who ask why we don’t just ban such a video. And the answer is enshrined in our laws: Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech.
Obama, who claims to want a peaceful “two state solution” for the Israelis and Palestinians, has said little if anything about the propensity of Israel’s “peace partner,” the Palestinian Authority, to slander Israel and Judaism on a daily basis while honoring those who murder Jews.
Obama’s romance with Islam
Daniel Greenfield recently wrote a Front Page Magazine article titled Barack Obama’s Unholy Alliance: A Romance With Islamism. Please read the whole thing; it’s long but well worth the time. Mr. Greenfield notes, in connection with the Benghazi attack,
When the killing in Benghazi was done, the Jihadists left behind the slogan “Allahu Akbar” or “Allah is Greater” scrawled on the walls of the American compound.[6] These were the same words that Obama had recited “with a first-rate accent” for the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof. Obama had called it [the Islamic call to prayer] “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth.”[7] On that too, the murderers of four Americans agreed with him.
Those who disagreed and were to be denied a future included Mark Basseley Youssef, a Coptic Christian, whose YouTube trailer for a movie critical of Islam was blamed by the administration for the attacks.
Two days after Obama’s UN speech, Youssef was arrested and held without bail. The order for his arrest came from the top. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had told Charles Woods, the father of murdered SEAL Tyrone Woods, “We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.”
The ACLU, which had developed deep Islamist connections,[9] sent a letter to Hillary Clinton thanking her for her support of freedom of speech.[10]
The Supreme Court’s “Miracle Decision”[11] had thrown out a blasphemy ban for movies, but Obama’s new unofficial blasphemy ban targeted only those movies that offended Islam. The government had joined the terrorists in seeking to deny such movies and their creators a future.
At the United Nations, Obama had compared the filmmaker to the terrorists. He had used a Gandhi quote to assert that, “Intolerance is itself a form of violence.”[12] Americans who criticized Islam’s violent tendencies could be considered as bad as Muslim terrorists and if intolerance of Islam was a form of violence, then it could be criminalized and suppressed. That became the administration’s priority.
. . . .
At the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama attacked Christianity for the Crusades in the presence of the foreign minister of Sudan, a genocidal government whose Muslim Brotherhood leader had massacred so many Christians and others that he had been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.[20][21] And he told Christians that they were obligated to condemn insults to Islam.[22]
Women’s rights? Obama supports those that don’t offend Islam. Continuing with Mr Greenfield’s linked article,
In August 2013, Al-Wafd, a paper linked to one of Egypt’s more liberal parties which supports equal rights for women and Christians, accused Obama of having close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. [60]
A year earlier, Rose El-Youssef magazine, founded by an early Egyptian feminist, had compiled a list of six Muslim Brotherhood operatives in the administration.[61][62]
Beyond Huma Abedin, Hillary’s close confidante and aide, the list included; Arif Alikhan, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Policy Development; Mohammed Elibiary, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council; Rashad Hussain, formerly the U.S. Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference and currently the Coordinator for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications; Salam al-Marayati, co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Eboo Patel, a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.
These were the types of accusations that the media tended to dismissively associate with the right, but both Egyptian publications were on the other side of the spectrum.
Egyptian liberals were the ones brandishing placards of a bearded Kerry in Taliban clothes or a photoshopped Obama with a Salafist beard. The protesters Obama had supposedly sought to support by calling for Mubarak to step down were crowding the streets accusing him of backing terrorists.
What made the Egyptian liberals who had seen America as their ally in pursuing reform come to view it as an enemy? The angry Egyptian protesters were accusing Obama of supporting a dictator; the original sin of American foreign policy that his Cairo Speech and the Arab Spring had been built on rejecting.
The progressive critiques of American foreign policy insisted that we were hated for supporting dictators. Now their own man was actually hated for supporting a Muslim Brotherhood dictator.
By 2014, 85% of Egyptians disliked America. Only 10% still rated America favorably.[63] It was a shift from the heady days of the Arab Spring when America had slid into positive numbers for the first time.[64]
Obama had run for office promising to repair our image abroad. As a candidate, he had claimed that other countries believed that “America is part of what has gone wrong in our world.” And yet the true wrongness was present in that same speech when he urged, “a new dawn in the Middle East.”[65]
That dawn came with the light of burning churches at the hands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters. Under Obama, America really did become part of what had gone wrong by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a crime that Obama will not admit to and that the media will not report on.
The Muslim Brotherhood was born out of Egypt and yet Egyptian views of it are dismissed by the media. Despite the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s final orgy of brutality as President Mohammed Morsi clung to power, despite the burning churches and tortured protesters, it is still described as “moderate.”
Morsi, who had called on Egyptians to nurse their children on hatred of the Jews,[66]was a moderate. Sheikh Rachid al-Ghannouchi, the leader of Ennahda, the Tunisian flavor of the Muslim Brotherhood, who had called for the extermination of the Jews “male, female and children,”[67] was also a “moderate.” Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, went one better with a fatwa approving even the murder of unborn Jews.[68] Qaradawi was another moderate.[69] [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
Obama sits at the center of a web of intertwined progressive organizations. This web has infiltrated the government and it in turn has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Consider the case of Faiz Shakir, who went from the Harvard Islamic Society where he helped fundraise for a Muslim Brotherhood front group funneling money to Hamas, the local Muslim Brotherhood franchise, to Editor-in-Chief and Vice President at the Center for American Progress, heading up the nerve center of the left’s messaging apparatus, to a Senior Adviser to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.[73] The next step after that is the White House.
Time magazine described the Center for American Progress as Obama’s idea factory, crediting it with forming his talking points and his government.[74] In an administration powered by leftist activists, the integration between the Muslim Brotherhood and the left resulted in a pro-Brotherhood policy.
Egyptian liberals had expected that the administration’s withdrawal of support for Mubarak would benefit them, but the American left had become far closer to the Muslim Brotherhood than to them. Instead of aiding the left, it aided the Brotherhood. The Egyptian liberals were a world away while the Brotherhood’s activists sat in the left’s offices and spoke in the name of all the Muslims in America.
The [American] left had made common cause with the worst elements in the Muslim world. It formed alliances with Muslim Brotherhood groups, accepting them as the only valid representatives of Muslim communities while denouncing their critics, both Muslim and non-Muslim, as Islamophobes. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
When Obama declared to the UN that the future must not belong to those who criticize Islam’s brutality, bigotry and abuse of women, he was also defining whom it must belong to. If the future must not belong to those who slander Mohammed, it will instead belong to his followers and those who respect his moral authority enough to view him as being above criticism in image, video or word. [Emphasis added.]
With these words, Obama betrayed America’s heritage of freedom and announced the theft of its future. The treason of his unholy alliance with Islam not only betrays the Americans of the present, but deprives their descendants of the freedom to speak, write and believe according to their conscience.
Obama has placed the full weight of the government’s resources behind Islam. He has suppressed domestic dissent against Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood while aiding their international goals.
Is Osama Obama worse than Napoleon?
Napoleon represented a nation which, during the French Revolution, had become largely secular. Obama’s America, under His “leadership,” is becoming largely secular. Napoleon sought, and Obama seeks, each in his own way, to promote himself as deserving the approbation of Islam. Napoleon sought power and glory by lying. Obama does much the same, but He most often lies to the denizens of His America.
In the years immediately following the French Revolution, France was considered a great nation. When Obama took office, America was as well. Although some still celebrate America’s freedoms from tyranny on Independence Day, during the Reign of Obama she has become less free and large numbers of “His people” have become increasingly dependent. It’s time to put America back the way she was.
Postscript: I have read of no reported Independence Day incidents of workplace violencerandom violence Islamic terror attacks on Obama’s America. Might it be possible that Obama has convinced the (non-Islamic) Islamic State, et al, that, so long as He remains in power, terror attacks would interfere with His plans to promote Islam and otherwise to destroy the nation.
Funding alleged Freedom Fighters aka Magical Fighters who historically fall prey to swapping allegiances increase the risk of genocide to astronomical proportions, unwarranted
The Kurdish people are fighting our terrorist enemies and losing their lives in the process, and it’s not just men, 30% of Kurdish fighters are now female fighters, who can never be captured alive. Think about that the next time you can’t find a shopping cart at the local grocery store. Think about it when you’re grilling hot dogs and burgers this Fourth of July, or when you hear the national anthem this weekend. These men and women fight in your place. Think about what you have done for them.
Of course Turkey is making a bundle off of this Syrian proxy war, monies from the USA and concerned European nations are pouring into Turkish President Erdogan’s hands, and Ankara’s political big wigs don’t want the cash to stop flowing. But for now, the Kurds have warned Erdogan to stay the hell out of their Syrian affairs, because they are too busy killing the real terrorists to be bothered with Erdogan’s vendetta against Assad. And the Kurds should get away with saying it too. Not surprisingly, Turkey is upset because the Kurds are expanding their grip on the border, therefore they are able to secure and shut down supply routes from Turkey to the alleged freedom fighters in Syria, while strengthening Kurdish power in Syria.
Arresting the flow of enemy arms into a hot shooting war is a good idea. If our administration was really interested in human rights and human suffering they would be compelled to stop funneling arms into the hands of Syria’s alleged freedom fighters. Remember how the libs always love to say, ‘oh, if it just saved one life, just one single life then it would all be worth it’. Remember that about Iraq? Now the tables are turned and our administration is funneling in arms to alleged Freedom Fighters. Funneling arms and monies into the hands of alleged Freedom Fighters who have pledged allegiances to the same terrorists the Kurds are fighting. And it’s killing their Kurdish brethren not to mention Syrian civilians who are dying by the thousands.
Freedom fighters aka Magical fighters
On to the Magical Fighters! First, to contrast things, we have two articles, just released into cyberspace: First one is titled Syria’s Kurds Warn Turkey Not to Intervene Militarily, and then there is example B, the Obama administration, U.S. Defense Secretary says, that he won’t speed up the training of Syrian Freedom Fighters thereby lowering their abilities. Freedom fighters who have sworn allegiances to known terrorist factions in Syria we ask? They don’t shoot at the terrorists yet sometimes they do? But of course they always shoot at Assad, who protects the Syrian Christians plus other rare and interesting people endemic to this quaint region of the globe. Come on, what is that? Freedom from reality? Are these magical fighters who operate in total submission to an administration in a far away distant capitol? Yet we’re all supposed to believe these magical fighters will somehow make a significant difference. A difference worth losing Kurdish fighters to bullets and arms American tax dollars paid for? At some point we must say, this has gone on long enough, put an end to the lunacy.
To further pontificate. The world’s population see the Kurdish people making startlingly significant gains in an anti terror war by cutting enemy supply lines; and their “reward” is they are now being threatened by a thug, Turkey’s Erdogan, because the Kurds dare cutting off highly profitable supply lines to these alleged Magical Fighters who attack Assad in conjunction with the enemies that they (the Kurds) are fighting right now, aka Islamic terror! See the problem here? The reality is this self destructive Kurdish self sacrifice is being demanded because of this administration’s pipe dream fantasies. Thusly the Kurds, who are actually killing the enemies of humanity (Islamic terror), are being threatened by a Muslim brotherhood thug (Erdogan) because they (the Kurds) are cutting off supply lines for Erdogan and our administration’s outlandish fanatical obsession with killing Assad.
So somehow the Kurds are supposed to allow arms into the hands of alleged Freedom Fighters who have sworn allegiances with the terrorists because these alleged Magical Fighters say they will only shoot in Assad’s direction? And not let their arms fall into the hands of terrorists who would definitely turn the gun barrels and rocket launchers towards Kurdish held areas? These are all the assurances we get? Remember, real people are fighting these terrorist monsters and dying, Kurdish men and women die daily, and to make matters worse this is a hideously ugly Islamic war being fought against Daesh monsters who do the most horrific things to the people they capture. This isn’t a nice squeaky clean Geneva convention conflict. Kurdish women really do carry the last bullet for themselves and in some cases have had to actually use it. This particular war will be long remembered as an incredibly ugly and notoriously dark chapter in human history. You can rest assured of that.
Arresting the flow of enemy arms into a hot shooting war is a good idea
Once again, in a hot shooting war it’s a good idea to starve the bad guys of weapons while funneling superior weaponry into the hands of those who are fighting in our stead. Our Administration has let their ambition get the better of them in that weapons being funneled into a region known for factions allegiances changing overnight puts thousands of civilians at risk and could case the loss of Kurdish fighting men and women. Let us be crystal clear about Assad. Yes, Assad has done some really bad things, everybody knows that. Yet he protects Syria’s Christians who are just one faction amongst many rare and unique peoples in Syria, and Assad supports a secular society, yet he has used gas in the past. And it is here where we come down to the hard realities of this whole nightmare. Hard realities beget hard problems that demand the harshest remedies. And the realities in the region aren’t this Zinn and Chomsky blame-America-First alternate reality, but the one true reality, which is that Assad, like him or not, his Syrian dilemma is incredibly similar to Muammar Gadhafi and the collapse of Libya. It is a dramatically yet eerily similar situation, only it is happening in a completely different country. So hear our warning now, pull the keystone out of this particular arch and an entire nation comes crashing down in genocidal ruins. This is the reality, not some alternate reality, where the Freedom Fighters turn into Magical Fighters and defeat Assad then plant their magical flag in Damascus and the Terrorists all go away! Just like the comic books! Please, Washington, get a grip, come on, people. This isn’t that hard a thing to figure out, if we can do it, then our government should be able to do it too.
We are subjected to an endless Assad obsession
Time and time again we think ‘what the heck is it with the obsession to oust Assad’. Is it that Obama once said he would (and like his promise to pull out of Iraq) topple Assad regardless of the consequences? Is that it? Is it petro dollars being fueled into this horrible specter shooting war to oust Assad and build the Islamic pipeline? Is that it? Is it oil rich checkerboard Arabic states? Is it them? Are they the ones fueling the west’s fantasy that they can oust Assad and then become billionaires by investing in the mega Islamic oil and natural gas pipeline that would surely be constructed? Is it being done to further cripple Russia by breaking their grip on European fossil fuel markets? Is it a vendetta, pure hatred or blind ambition and greed? What compels one to funnel in vast amounts of arms and money into the hands of deserters and insurrectionists who can change allegiances overnight? Many put it up to man’s vanity. Some say it’s being done because it serves the egos that fuel their oppositional defiant disorder. But the overarching reality remains, people are needlessly dying because of it. This policy could touch off the worst genocide of the new millennium. With America’s Magical Fighters being the catalyst, all preventable.
Smoke rises in Egypt’s northern Sinai, as seen from the border of the Gaza Strip, on July 1, 2015, amid fierce clashes between government forces and Islamic State-affiliated gunmen. (Abed Rahim Khatib /Flash90)
The IDF has acquired intelligence that Hamas is providing weaponry and other support to the Islamic State’s Sinai affiliate, Wilayat Sinai, the group thought to be behind Wednesday’s deadly attack on Egyptian security services, a top Israeli officer said Thursday.
The coordinator of government activities in the territories, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, told the Arabic-language news network al-Jazeera that along with military support, Hamas has also been providing medical support to injured IS operatives.
Wednesday’s attack, which included a wave of suicide bombings and assaults on security installations by dozens of militants, saw Sinai’s deadliest fighting in decades. Security officials said dozens of troops were killed, along with nearly 100 attackers.
Mordechai claimed a high-ranking officer in Hamas’s military wing, named as Wa’al Faraj, has been smuggling injured Islamic State fighters into the Gaza Strip for medical treatment.
COGAT commander Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, left, at the Bitunya Crossing near Ramallah (Photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/ Flash 90)
Another top Hamas commander involved in training fighters, Abdullah Kishta, had been lending his expertise to Islamic State jihadists in Sinai, Mordechai said, adding that the IDF has “proof” of these direct ties.
Wilayat Sinai (Province of Sinai) was known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis before it pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State.
The IDF on Thursday beefed up its presence along the border with the Sinai Peninsula following the attacks, as security officials cautioned that the IS-affiliated group could attempt to overrun the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli army deployed additional troops and was monitoring the fighting across the border using UAVs, Israel Radio reported Wednesday.
“We see in front of our eyes IS acting with extraordinary cruelty both on our northern border and at our southern border,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday, referring to operatives of the group who have been fighting in the Syrian civil war.
“Our hearts are with the Egyptian people, we send our condolences to the Egyptian government and the families of those who were killed in battle by cruel terror.”
Egyptian officials said the military killed 23 extremists in dawn raids Thursday in northern Sinai, just south of the border town of Rafah, near the Gaza Strip.
They said the army was also seeking out militants house to house in the town of Sheikh Zuweid — where the militants attacked at least five army checkpoints the previous day — and de-mining roads in and around the area that extremists had booby trapped with mines and improvised explosives devices.
A photo shared by the Egyptian military shows a weapons cache seized from IS-linked jihadists in the Sinai Peninsula (Facebook/Egyptian army)
The Sinai attacks were the most brazen in their scope since jihadists launched an insurgency in 2013 following the army’s overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.
Militants took over rooftops and fired rocket-propelled grenades at a police station in Sheikh Zuweid after mining its exits to block reinforcements, a police colonel said.
“This is war,” a senior military officer told AFP. “It’s unprecedented in the number of terrorists involved and the type of weapons they are using.”
One car bomb attack against a checkpoint south of Sheikh Zuweid killed 15 soldiers.
The Islamic State group said its jihadists surrounded the police station after launching attacks on 15 checkpoints and security installations using suicide car bombers and rockets.
Troops regularly come under attack in the Sinai, where jihadists have killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since Morsi’s overthrow.
IS said the assault had involved three suicide bombers. “In a blessed raid enabled by God, the lions of the caliphate have simultaneously attacked more than 15 checkpoints belonging to the apostate army,” it said in a statement.
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